Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Lisa Bilyeu: From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss, My No-BS Guide to Radical Confidence | LEAP Replay

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

For eight years, Lisa Bilyeu lived the life others expected: a traditional Greek wife focused on supporting her husband and running the home. But deep down, she knew she was meant for more. With no business background, zero confidence, and no clear roadmap, she decided to rewrite her story. She co-founded Quest Nutrition with her husband and built a billion-dollar business. In this LEAP Replay, Lisa opens up to Ilana about breaking free from cultural expectations, showing up authentically in the face of criticism, and how you can build radical confidence without needing external validation. Lisa Bilyeu is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and co-founder of Quest Nutrition, a multi-billion-dollar company. Her mission is to use content creation to empower women to break free from limiting beliefs and build extraordinary lives. In this episode, Ilana and Lisa will discuss: (00:00) Introduction  (02:22) Her Upbringing and the Weight of Expectations (06:44) Velvet Handcuffs: The Trap of People Pleasing (10:55) Transitioning from Housewife to Co-Founder (19:13) Handling Your Emotions in Business  (24:25) How Lisa Tackles Online Hate and Criticism (33:12) The Three Keys to Mission-Driven Content Creation (37:25) Lisa’s No-BS Guide to Success  (44:40) Why She Chose Her Mission Over Motherhood  (1:03:06) Building Radical Confidence Through Self-Reliance Lisa Bilyeu is an entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of Quest Nutrition, a multi-billion-dollar company that transformed the health and wellness industry. She is also the founder and host of Women of Impact, co-founder of Impact Theory, and bestselling author of Radical Confidence. Lisa’s mission is to use content creation to empower women to break free from limiting beliefs and embrace their full potential.  Connect with Lisa: Lisa’s Website: https://lisabilyeu.com/ Lisa’s YouTube: www.youtube.com/@LisaBilyeu  Lisa’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisabilyeu Resources Mentioned: Lisa’s Book, Radical Confidence: 11 Lessons on How to Get the Relationship, Career, and Life You Want: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JPHK9C3 Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW WAY for professionals to fast-track their careers and leap to bigger opportunities. Check out our free training today at https://bit.ly/leap--free-training

Wow, this show is going to be incredible. So buckle up, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast-track to leadership, land dream rules, jump to entrepreneurship, or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download.

never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in. It's very comfortable to stay where you are. But the handcuffs is the thing that keeps you there that allows you to never leave. She's the co-founder of a billion-dollar company, Quest Nutrition. She's the best-selling author of an incredible book, Radical Confident, and she's the host of Women of Impact show. When we started Quest, we put our house up for collateral. So if Quest doesn't work, My house goes away. In all honesty, how do you have the audacity to think that you're going to be better than me when I've put in 10,000 hours and you haven't even put in one?

You chose to Netflix and chill. But that's okay, because it's your decision. Just don't trick yourself into saying it's not my decision. I wish, I wish, I wish. I love working. I love building these businesses with my husband. Why would I change that? Do I need to birth my own children to have a legacy?

And the answer is that. I'm not telling people so that I can negotiate whether I'm going to have children or not. And I've accepted the backlash that would come with it. When I go to bed, at the end of the day, I can be at peace with the decision I've made because... Last year, I got a chat. with Lisa Bill You, and it was one of the most energizing, fun, and eye-opening conversations I've hosted on The Leaf Academy show. Lisa's journey from spending eight years as a stay-at-home wife feeling stuck to co-founding Quest Nutrition, a billion-dollar company, and building impact

theory is filled with lessons on courage, confidence, and living a life on your own terms. I knew this was a conversation worth bringing back because Lisa doesn't just inspire. She gives you the tools to act. From breaking free from others' expectations, stirring fear into fuel and building what she calls, radical confidence. This replay is packed with strategies you can use right now to stop waiting for permission and start creating the life you want. Plus, I guarantee it will keep you smiling. So if you need a bold reminder that you are the hero of your own story, you'll love this sleep replay with Lisa Billion. Lisa, look, you grew up in an environment that believed that you will only get to be married,

take care of kids, and now your life is like complete 180 degrees from that. So can you take us back in time to teen Lisa? Absolutely, yeah. So I was brought up Greek Orthodox. And a big part of my upbringing was being taught that as a Greek woman, that my goal in life was to get married and have kids. and be an amazing mother. And even when you're a kid and you have all these crazy dreams, I wanted to come to America, I wanted to win an Academy Award. Over time, every single day,

it becomes the dripping effect that ends up changing who you are. Now, I liken it to, have you ever seen a water drop on a stone over time? It just starts to change its shape, right? You have this rock and the water drips, and over time it ends up molding. I think of that as your belief system. So you have a belief system each day that drip of water is draining on you. And then over time, you end up doing something or being something that you'd never dreamt of. That was exactly what happened to me. I grew up with Orthodox. I end up in America married to a man of my dreams, having these big audacious dreams. But how on earth did I end up for eight years being a stay-at-home wife taking care of my husband, which was the thing that I didn't want to do? It's not that it's bad.

there's anything wrong with being a stay-at-home wife? In fact, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it wasn't what I wanted. And I asked myself, how the hell if I had such big dreams and I went to college and I knew what I wanted in life? How the hell do I end up doing something for eight years that I despise? And when I look back, it is absolutely the drip that ended up happening on the rock that became who I was. So my dad tells me every single day that I'm going to be a great Greek wife. My grandmother tells me if I'm running on the streets and I fall, she literally, the message she would tell me is she would pick me up off the floor, wipe off the blood and say, oh, it's okay, you're going to be fine by the time you'll get married. The messaging that that's doing, right, this Greek woman, to this little susceptible Lisa that's telling me that don't worry, no matter what bad things happen in your life, the goal is to get married. Once you get married, life will be fine. So there's no surprise that I ended up living a life that didn't serve me, living a life that wasn't mine. but living a life that absolutely was the path that my parents created. Now, the question is,

how the hell do you get out of that? Most people end up living their lives in that space. Most people will end up living their lives for the greater good of other people, especially once you've started. Once you're in it, you're like, well, I can't upset so-and-so. I can't say this. I can't change my mind. I can't let this person down. I can't, I can't, I can't. That's one part. The other part is you put off your own dreams because you're living in service of us. other people. So what you end up doing is you say, I will do that when. I will go for my dream once my husband is happy. I will go for that dream job once my kids are in college. I will fill in the blank, do that when something else happens. Now, what you're doing is you're using an excuse,

but that excuse feels real. And that's where it gets complicated. Because in those moments where you're self-soothing yourself and you're telling yourself, don't worry, you're doing it for the greater good, That can be wonderful, right? You're doing it for your kids. That's a beautiful feeling. You're doing this for the family. That's a beautiful feeling. The problem is, is that the excuse ends up getting in the way of you actually living out your dream. And I ask anyone listening right now, if you want to get shaken awake, ask yourself this question, what if the when never happens? So if you say, I'm going to do this when my husband is happy. What if he's never happy? I'm going to do this. I've got enough money in the bank.

What if you never have enough money in the bank? What if that win never happens? Are you okay with living in the means of where you are now? Are you happy doing that job? Are you happy doing that activity? Are you happy? Or are you just putting off your dream? Because you think eventually one day, that excuse will go away, which, spoiler alert, it never will.

It becomes comfortable to stay stuck and it becomes harder to get out of the stuckness. You have a beautiful story. of you come to study film, you come to the U.S., which I think it's out of your comfort zone as well. So leaving Greece, leaving the family, coming to the U.S., so you already had that drive, but something caused you to then push yourself and start compromising. Talk to us a little bit about that, because again, a lot of our listeners are people that are driven. They're like you. They want more. And they're suddenly found yourselves a fraction of who they could be. And they're not sure how to get out of that. Yeah. I mean, I think it came from the

idea of being a people please and making everybody else happy. That's number one. Number two, I think it came from using gratitude as a piece to get through. And then what I realize over time is that gratitude of being grateful that I've got a husband that loves me. I'm grateful that I've got a roof over my head, all these things that I was grateful for, I had to recognize, turned into toxic gratitude. And what that meant was the thing that helped me in the first year or two, like, all right, you're a housewife, you're not quite happy, but, you know, I'm really grateful that I have a husband that loves me, right? That feels good. That second year, the third year, the fourth year, when you get to like year six, where you're using that same gratitude piece,

it starts to become toxic. So now imagine my dreams and my desires are getting louder inside my head, They start off like a swissor like, are you happy? And then they start getting louder and louder and louder. As that voice starts getting louder and louder, I ask myself, okay, is this gratitude that is making me feel better? Actually, it's the thing now that's holding me down. So when that voice gets louder like, Lisa, you're not happy. That gratitude turns into, well, how ungrateful you, after year seven, after year eight,

you want another life. If you want to go out and work when other women don't even have to work and you don't have to, how ungrateful are you? And what I realized was that gratitude piece was now actually keeping me stuck. It was creating the guilt and the shame for me to even want to speak up. So that's a big piece. I had to address the gratitude. The second big, big piece that I don't think we talk about enough is the validation we get from people pleasing.

It's easy to blame other people. I people please because I was brought up to do it. But the truth is, I feel good about people-pleasing. Let's just take the extreme, Mother Teresa. She helped so many people. Are you telling me now, Mother of Teresa didn't get validation from helping people? Of course she did. If she didn't get validation, she wouldn't have done it.

So I go, okay, I'm getting validation from being the good Greek wife. I'm getting actual validation from being the woman that's willing to do the hard thing for her husband. and I'm scared to let go. And so what I call this in my book is the velvet handcuffs. It's going back to your comfortability of what you said before. It's very comfortable to stay where you are. That's the velvet. That's the velvet around your wrist.

It's like it's comfortable. It's soft. It feels familiar. But the handcuffs is the thing that keeps you there that allows you to never leave. So when I think about the reason why I didn't change and why I spent eight years, eight years. a human, go from a baby to eight years old. That's a long time. How on earth did I not speak up for eight years? It's because I was so afraid and I was so insecure about getting my validation from

somewhere that I was afraid to let go of the one thing that I knew people were priding me on, and that was being a good Greek wife. So what I had to acknowledge in that moment is that the people pleasing was on me, it wasn't on anybody else, and it was on me to find a different place of where I could get the validation from so I no longer sort it out from somewhere that actually made me unhappy. Once I then addressed that, I put an action plan in to take the leap and make a different change in my life. It's so easy to talk about so hard to do. And somehow you are starting to work with Tom Unquest and you're starting to take more and more responsibility, including management. And you never learned any of it. It's totally,

out of your comfort zone, Lisa, can you talk a little bit about this shift? Because it's a massive shift, you know, especially when you hear those eight years and where your confidence is. How did that shift suddenly happen? I think I'm very goal-oriented and I get out of my own way. And what I mean by that is if I feel insecure about something, if I'm an emotional about something, if that doesn't serve my goal, I just tell myself that I cannot use that to influence how I show up. So let's take a real world example. Quest has grown at 57,000%. So that takes you from in three years you go the second fastest grown company in North America. In five years, we go from zero to a billion dollar company. So that's how fast we were growing. Now remember,

I've just said that I was a stay-at-home wife for eight years. So I was a boss of two dogs. That was it. That was my experience. Two little chihuahuas. So now we grow so rapidly, we start to build our manufacturing, and because I was the one that was shipping bars from my living room floor, I would just walk into the post office mailing one box here and there. When you're grown at 57,000 percent, what that looks like is one day you're shipping from your living room floor, a couple of bars, and then within two years, I've got 10,000 square fee, I've got 40 employees working just in my department alone, and half of those employees have criminal records and ex-convicts. Now, we started our business in Compton, and my husband used to work in the inner cities and

big brother. And one of the things that we always said is we don't care where you come from. You maybe have made mistakes in your past. What we actually care about is who do you want to be and are you willing to show up today and fight to be that person? That's what I care about. If you've robbed a car in your teenage years because you had bad guidance, that in and of itself shouldn't be punishment for the rest of your life. So Tom and I really did open up. the doors to say who wants to come in. Now look, it's a beautiful idea, but when it comes to reality, you have a 5'1 British chick trying to command respect with some guys who are 6'5 ex-convicts with tats all around their neck and a teardrop on their cheek. Now, if no one

knows what a teardrop on the cheek means, go just search it on Google. I would just leave it at that. It means that you have paid your dues in a very heinous way. Now, when I say that, you can imagine the imposter syndrome. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. So here I am trying to take the leap from being a housewife to an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what I was doing. Now, there was a couple of elements here that I'd like to break down of how I just kept going. Number one was back in the day, before we started Quest, fear was the thing that stopped me from taking action. I don't want my husband to judge me that I don't want to take care of his clothes or his food anymore, so I'm not going to speak out loud that I'm unhappy. That's fear

preventing you from taking action. When we started Quest, we put our house up for collateral. So if Quest doesn't work, my house goes away. So that fear that once upon a time would hold me back from taking action actually propelled me forward to take action. So every moment that I found myself not knowing what I was doing, I said to myself, Lisa, you have a choice. You can do what you used to do, which was run and hide, or you can save your house. Which one do you want? And every time the fear of losing my house came into effect, I said, well, you better figure it out. So that became the motto I would use that you've got to better figure it out. Now, there's multiple ways to figure it out. The problem is, if you just blindly listen to somebody, you're going to find

yourself not succeeding. Even if you're listening to this podcast right now, you'd be like, all right, Lisa said to do this, I did this and it didn't work. Well, I guess I'm no good. No, you have to out the thing that actually works for you, which means you have to try a bunch of stuff. You may have to try 50 things to find that one thing that actually serves you and your goal. And I'm speaking from experience. So I started trying to figure out how do I get these ex-convicts, these really big dudes. How do I command respect with them? So I went in reading all the books.

I read the Cheryl Sandberg book Lean In. I read all the leadership books. And I went in trying to be like Cheryl Sandberg. And I was like, all right, well, Cheryl said to do this, so this is what I'm going to do. Didn't work at all, Ilana. What a surprise, right? You're dealing with different people in a corporate world with people that come from, let's

say, college is very different than working in manufacturing and talking to a human that doesn't care about your degree. They just care about your interaction with them. So I tried a bunch of things, nothing worked. So eventually I just said, okay, I know I still have to reach a goal. I have to command respect with the team. otherwise I'm never going to succeed. We're not going to be able to ship these bars out in time.

So I said, what do I know? Forget about all the lessons that I'm reading. What's in my heart? And in my heart was they were guys who loved hip-hop. I'm a freaking hip-hop fan. I grew up in the 90s. I wasn't listening to pop music. I was listening to Tupac, Biggie.

I wanted to be a rapper. If I really could, I'm another life, Ilana. I would be a rapper. So in saying that, I was like, hang on, This is something that's really genuine. I freaking love Tupac so much that I know half of his music. I probably know 90% of the lyrics because I've learned them so much. So I was like, I love freaking rap music.

These guys like rap music. On a busy day, instead of cracking the whip, if you will, and just yelling and being like, work harder, work more, I'm just going to connect with them. And so I went out to the store. I bought these big speakers. I put them in our shipping facility, and every time we had these big orders and we were on a clock because you've got these big trucks coming to pick up the orders, I would blast the music and I'd be like, all right, guys, who can rap faster than me? Now, what I would do is when I would use rap as the analogy, right, because we would have to wrap pallets with plastic. Now, what they

don't realize is by the time I hired them, what they didn't realize is that I used to do their job. So they saw me as this woman that's working in the office that doesn't have any idea about what they're doing. And what I realized was I needed to show them that I knew what it was like. I needed to show them that I knew how hard you had to work in this department. And I had to make it fun. No one wants to just work hard. So I would do these competitions and with Blas Tupac. I would have these rapping competitions where I would make people try to see who could beat me with wrapping these big palace, and I'm quite speedy, so like we would wrap while rapping to Tupac. So you're doing the double entendre, right? You're rapping and you're rapping. And at the end,

if someone beat me, I would give them free quest bars. Now, what that did multiple things. That number one showed the team that nothing was ever beneath me. I was willing to do exactly what they were willing to do. It showed them that I wasn't stuffy, that I actually had something in common with them. And that was the fact that we appreciated rap music for the last. lyrics, the meaning behind it, et cetera. And it showed then that I was willing to be a teammate, that when things get hard, I was willing absolutely to roll up my sleeves and jump in with them. Now, over time, that absolutely commanded respect. That wasn't something I learned in a book, and that wasn't something that anyone could teach me. It was just me stabbing in the dark,

trying a bunch of things, and then realizing the thing that worked for me and connected me to my team. Now, I know that was a really long story, but I take that and I echo that type of thing in everything I do, whether that's built in my YouTube channel, whether that's built an impact theory, that idea of as a leader, you need to show by example, you need to be a part of it, people need to have fun, and now I use laughter as a metric in my company to know how my team is emotionally. So that's really a big lesson that I learn in that whole scenario. If you're feeling stuck, underpaid, or unappreciated, or you're simply ready to take your career in life to the next level, I have the perfect solution for you. We have a program that helps you

fast track and leap your reputation and career. Become the best version of yourself. Get the dream role you deserve, move up to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or even build a portfolio career. This program helps hundreds a year, and it will help you gain the income, influence and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today at leapacademy.com slash free hyphen training. The link is in the show notes. Now back to the show. One of the things that I see continuously in your book and in everything that you do is that

emotional intelligence, that EQ and those instincts, that you somehow able to figure things out completely out of the box. it's not something that is learned. It's more experimentation, I guess. And it just figure things out. And what I love about that, and I want to make sure the listeners are hearing this, again, this is not about a college degree. It's not about something in a book. It's really about just taking action, just figuring things out, just trying things out, just being able to get out of your comfort zone, try different things. It's just so beautiful because you have multiple stories like this of how you got to ship things faster and you were the candy person and you have all these things that every time

it's like, wow, genius. But again, it's more about knowing your audience, understanding what they care about, understanding what will move the needle and being able to be that person that is in the extra mile. There is no traffic in the extra mile. You were there. Thank you. Yeah. And that EQQ that you mention is really coming from the fact that I had terribly cute is how I used to see it. I would take everything personally, everything was emotional and everything was based on emotion. Well, I feel this, so it must be true. And what I realize is every time I match my feelings and emotions to the goals I'm trying to get to, I realize that a lot of the time my emotions were actually getting in the way because I would take things personally. And that's where

I started to go, okay, this doesn't serve me. And what I understand about emotions is the fact that if I don't eat for, let's say, 10 hours, I know I'm going to get moody. I'm going to get agitated. If we all know as humans, we all act like that, why do we not think that emotions are going to be driven by multiple sources? So when I get overwhelmed or let's say I make a decision from an emotional standpoint, well, what if I'm tired? What if I have eaten sugar that day? What if I just had an argument with my husband? Do I think that that decision is going to be done with clarity. No, all the things that I've just gone through are going to fog my decision making. And I just call myself on that. Instead of trying to hide it, instead of trying to be embarrassed

by it, I just say, right now, I'm really irritable so I can't make any decisions. I need to go and eat. I need to sleep. I need my nine hours. What are the things that are going to allow me to have what I call emotional sobriety. And emotional sobriety is when you are not allowing your emotions to make a decision. Now, it's not that I don't think emotions are important. I actually think emotions are very important because they're going to be signals to tell you something that you may be ignoring. If you're irritable, okay, well, what are you ignoring? Don't ignore the feeling. Actually address why am I feeling like that? The problem is, I think, then people, they don't do that work. And so they take their feelings as facts. And I'm very

aware that my feelings are not facts. So now when I approach a situation, I address why I'm feeling a certain way, but I then try to see the scenario for what it is instead of how I feel. And if people still aren't with me, here's the perfect analogy. Have you drunken alcohol before, Ilana? Of course. Okay. So what do you like if you had one shot of vodka? I am a little woozy, I guess. Like just, yeah, but I'm not in control, which I hate it. Okay, there you go. So what I was going to say is, the shot number one, I get giggly. Shot number two, I'm very loud. Shot number three, I'm dancing on the table and kissing the security on the way. out of the club. I just know that with every shot of vodka, I am going to have a response in a way

that doesn't actually align with who I really am. If we can all agree there, then why can we not just say the same as for emotions? If you have a shot of frustration, if you have a shot of anger, if you have a shot of upset or a shot of disrespect, if you have too many shots of that, what's going to happen? You're going to respond in a way that isn't accurate to who you really are. If we can just agree, I just then say, when have I had my shots? And if I've already had my one shot of anger, then you can't make business decisions. If I've had two shots, I better freaking walk away. I don't beat myself up over feeling it and I don't pretend it doesn't exist. In knowing all of that, now I know in moments where I'm bringing a motion to the table

and I can't have this discussion. In fact, this just happened like a week ago with my husband. he said something that triggered me. I realized I was triggered and I said, look, I know you didn't need to trigger me right now. I'm having an emotional response. I don't think it's healthy if we keep talking. Let me walk away and I'll come back once I'm emotionally sober. And I actually said those words. It's not like I pretended to say those words. I actually said those words. And what my husband did, he was like, all right, thank you for being honest. Thank you for just not storming off, being moody, pretending, like a lot of us do, like, no, I'm not upset. What do you mean? Right? It's like, everyone can tell that you're upset. So that is how I handle emotions in

moments where I don't feel good enough, emotional moments where I don't feel like I can really bring my all. I just admit it. I know what to do about it. And then I'm always acting in accordance. And the last piece that I want to make sure everyone hears, I do all of this without shame and guilt. Which is the most important piece because that's what takes you away. But I think one of the things that you're talking is that extreme ownership that no matter what, you are looking in the mirror and you're really, really honest with, where am I? Can I make this decision? Do I need to take action in a different way? And I think one of the things that I'm hearing also is bring the data, not the drama. So the minute there's too much drama in it, like we can't make the right

decisions. So we want to separate it, but by the time you actually need personal help, it's too late. So you want to create that distance, which is so, so, so brilliant, even though I still want to go to Quest for a second, but I have to ask you. So you talked about being that person that does take things hard. There is a lot of hate in the digital world. It becomes so easy to comment on people, to bash people. How do you cope with it? Because I think for a lot of us, that's scary piece. When you get out there, you start getting hit. Yeah, so here's the thing about this.

There's going to be two things. There's going to be one thing where people are going to throw hate and it's really not going to bother you. Probably the reason why it won't bother you is because you don't feel it. It's not true to you. So if someone says, oh, my God, Lisa, I hate that you're five foot one. It's like, all right, you hate that on five for one. I can't do anything about that.

I just brush it off. But if someone says, you're so. ugly, that hurts and stings in a very different way. Why? Because I've never beaten myself up or felt badly about being short. I very much beating myself up and felt badly about myself about my looks. So when someone comes at you, when it's something that doesn't trigger you, you're going to let it roll off your back. You're not going to think about it. The ones that really do hurt are the ones that actually hit home. And now you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do about it? So there's a couple of things that I did. So to get started, because that's

always the hard thing. How do I actually get started? So imagine, I get bullied for my looks. I get teased. I get called big nose. All of the things. I used to have a unibrow. I never had a boyfriend. If you were the Disney character, right, and you were going to write the most ugly young and girl, that was how I felt. So you take that. Wait, can I stop for a second? For those that are listening to the podcast and not watching it on YouTube, she is gorgeous and the sweetest person ever. But let's continue, Lisa. Thank you. That's very kind. Look, everyone has a belief system, right? And when you're told over and over and over the same thing

and it becomes a wound, you really do believe it. So here I am, as an adult, not feeling good, not feeling like I'm pretty or anything like that. And so I really wanted to start a podcast because I really wanted to help women. So I go to start the podcast and I say to my husband, I'm just going to do it on Zoom. I'm going to do it with my friends and I'm just going to do it on Zoom

and it's just going to be audio only. Now, my husband being the person that says, we promised we would be with each other, is he called me on my own BS, basically. And he said, hang on a minute. We have a set. We have six cameras. And we have an entire team that can film this for you. Why on earth would you not get in front of the camera? Now, in that moment, I realized the truth was it was a conflict between my mission and my ego. And I had to be honest about it, because my mission is to help women. Do I think that if I could go video and audio that I'm going to reach more women than just audio. The answer is yes. Okay, if I know that

is true, why do I not want to get on camera? It's my ego. I don't want to be bullied. I don't want to be made fun of. I don't know if I can cope. I don't know if I can handle it, right? All the things that are going through my head. As soon as I just put them out, the reality of what is more important, Lisa, your mission or your ego, then there was nowhere to hide. Now, I like to do that. I like to not hide anywhere because that's where the reality always comes through. So once I realized that I had to make a decision, I let go of any judgment. That's the second piece, is that if I chose ego, no one's got a right to say that's right or wrong. I have to do what is right for me. I have to do what makes me feel good when I go

to bed at night because no one's around except for me and my thoughts. So if I can't be proud of myself, it doesn't matter what other people think. So just remember, guys, when you're asking yourself this question, what's more important. It doesn't matter what other people think. What actually matters is what you think. Because it's not like it's wrong for me to choose my ego. It's not wrong. Wrong according to who? So once I was allowed to remove the judgment of it as well, and I was like, oh, which one is actually the thing that you're going to be proud of when you go to bed at night? And I knew it had to be getting in front of the camera. It had to be my mission was more important. And so now that just gave me the decision making, the decision was, I now have to get in

front of the camera. That doesn't eliminate the fear. It doesn't eliminate the ego, taking a dent. Like, it doesn't eliminate any of that. But it allowed me to just make the decision. And now I wasn't second guessing myself. And then that piece then allowed me to start moving forward and get in front of the camera. And that was how I ended up taking the leap is I had zero confidence. I didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't like I thought it was going to work. It wasn't like I had confidence in myself to be a big YouTube channel or anything like that. It was just I had to stare nakedly at the decisions I was making, take the freaking blinders off and be confident, at least in the decision I was making,

not confident that one's going to succeed or one's a better option, just confident in the decision I was making for myself and blocking out all the noise and blocking out what other people thought. So now you can imagine, I'm on camera, I see these hate comments in my YouTube channel, because I've so tied myself to why I get on camera in the first place, you can imagine now when someone throws hate at me, I say, does this matter more than you helping women? Does this bad comment matter more than your mission? And every single time I ask myself the question, I'm like, no, this freaking comment doesn't matter. So that's the first step. Now, the second step is what

do you do to respond? Do you ignore it or do you respond to it? I have. happen to have a massive empathy in my body. I don't know where it comes from, but every time I see hate, I'm like, wow, what's happened to that person where they're so cruel towards me and they don't know me? So then it comes the empathy piece where I'm like, wow, how much hate have they had to get in their life to think that it's okay to come on my YouTube page or my Instagram page and be that cruel? Wow, they must have gone through some hard crap for them to say this. So That's the second piece is the empathy. Then the last piece is sometimes I ignore them because I'm like, it won't serve me or them.

Sometimes I will respond. And I used to respond with, this is actually very spiteful, right? Like I would highlight the cruelty that was behind the comment. And then I realize, you know, all that's doing is actually making them feel worse. I'm not actually helping the scenario. So now my response, and I did this two days ago, in fact, my response is it probably took you two minutes to write this hateful comment. Can you imagine all the good you could do in the world if you took that two minutes and told someone in your life that you loved them? Could you

imagine what a world we would live in if we did that? And within two minutes, they deleted their comment. Now, I hope that they deleted it because I actually got through to them, because that's my goal. I'm not looking to make anyone feel badly. But the truth is that if I can greet that type of negativity with grace, what world could we live in? And that's really now where you're finding me, where how can I greet hate with love? And every time I see the hate, I show love. What would that look like? And it's an experiment, I don't know. You may find me in a year being like that experiment failed. Everyone just met me with more hate. But I, again, I'm going to keep repeating, I want to reach my goal. And so every time I'm just willing to try different

strategies. I'm willing to try different techniques in order to get there. So in a year, if I realized why that didn't do anything, I may try a different technique with the haters. And that will be my next step. But I won't give up because I'm so dedicated to the goal. That was like a mic drop over here. I love that. And speaking of your mission, I do want to go back. But your mission is huge, right? Is to hope women become this confident, badasses that you're meant to be. Talk to us a little bit about impact theory and your mission today. I do think this is really, really important because confidence is one of the biggest thing holding with people back. Yeah, exactly. And the thing that used to hold me back from reaching my confidence

is my emotions. So there's no surprise there. One of the big things that is important is making sure that I am so aligned with my mission and that I'm always reminded me of what my mission is, that I never allow my emotions to take lead. Because often we may do things that make us feel good in the moment, but end up derailing us from our actual mission and goal. So instead of saying, my mission is to help people, that's so non-tangible. What does that actually mean? How do you show up every day knowing if you're working towards your mission or not? So I have these two parts of me. I have the emotional sides of my brain and I have the very mathematical science side. So every time I try to get out the emotion, I need to put a mathematical equation in to know that I'm working towards it.

Now, what do I mean by that? A mission to me becomes a mathematical science. mathematical somewhat of a sentence, a framework. It needs to have the what, the why, and the who. This allows me to know exactly what my North Star is, because sometimes you can get derailed. So know your North Star. Write a mission statement again that creates the who, the what, and then the why. So my mission statement is to create content that impacts women, to help them with their mindsets. They never have to rebuild or unwire the negative mind. set I've had to. Who? Women. So if you were to ask me, at any point, Lisa, will you come and speak in front of a thousand men? I go, does that fit my mission statement? No, because there isn't a

woman in the audience. So while I really want to help men, and I think it's super freaking important, my specific mission of why I show up every day is to help the woman. Okay, the what? Create content. Why? Because I went to film school. I love creating content. So if you want to know how I'm going to be able to show up every day and fight for my mission. It's doing the thing that I love. Now you can imagine, Lisa, can you come on a fishing trip with me and talk to my daughter, my daughter's cousin, or my daughter's friend's cousin? And I'll be like, all right, well, let me go back to my mission statement. Creating content, this isn't content creation. And I would just break down. Okay, it's a woman, but it's not content creation. So actually,

that isn't where my energy should go. And so I'm able to say no with respect and politeness, but I know that's not my North Star. And then why? To help women unwire the negative mindset that I've had to do. So now when you ask, when Leap Academy reaches out and says, Lisa, will you come on, of course I'm going to say yes, because I look at my mission statement and it fits perfectly. But if you were to ask me to create content that helps women paint their nails, again, it fits two, but it doesn't fit that third one, which is actually to help women unwire the negative mindset. So you can see where there's all these different opportunities potentially that could derail me because I love nails. Oh my God, yes, I want to teach women nails. It would

derail me from my mission. Oh my God, yes, I really want to help men. It will derail me for my mission. Yes, I want to help women so much that I'm willing to do a one-on-one for five hours. No, it would derail me for my mission. So that's why the mission statement is so damn important. is because every time my emotions get in the way, I just go back to my mission. Does this align? Yes or no. Okay. So hopefully people understand the mission. Now, the last piece that I'd love to say, though, Ilana, is make sure you check in every single year. I would advise every quarter that your mission actually still aligns with the life you want. Because often I think what we do is we'll go to college, right? We tell our friends, we may actually make a massive check. We may sell our house, move,

state and say, this is what I want to do. And then three years later, I'm freaking miserable. And now I no longer want to do it. But I'm too embarrassed or I'm too ashamed to tell people that now I actually want a different life. So what we end up doing is we somewhat kind of half dip into our mission. We don't actually take it seriously. We're not really committed anymore because we don't actually enjoy it. And then we wonder why we've never gotten to our goal or to our mission. It's that reason. So every quarter, I ask, myself, do I still want to help women? Do I still care to pour my heart and energy into actually helping women? That's something that we should be able to ask ourselves without feeling guilty

about. I ask myself, do I still want to be in a partnership with my husband? Do I still want to run a business with him? Now, remember, I've been in business with my husband since 2010, since we started Quest, but I still make sure that I ask myself that because I never want to get trapped again. And I think that there's so many of us get trapped in making that leap because we don't want to upset people. We've already told people that we've poured a heart and soul into it, and so we don't want to make that change. And we put off taking that leap for years and years and years. First of all, the fact that you have literally the GPS, right? What are I going to say yes to? What are I going to say no to? Makes it so easy when you have that mission. But for me, what you just shared about checking in with

yourself, I wish I thought about it a few decades ago. But that starting to be, really intentional, very, very strategic was every move you make is becoming so critical. It's such a big piece of Leap Academy, but also even though I climb up the ladder, whatever, VP, all the accolades, at some point it's like, but I'm not excited about it. So why am I doing this? Right? I'm doing this because I'm scared to let go of everything that I already built. But that's not the way to look at this. And you actually share in your book a moment where you hear this like amazing public speaker. Lisa Nichols. Yes, that. Amazing quote. She literally says something like, don't make me extraordinary to get yourself off the hook, which is so powerful to start catapulting yourself and not

giving excuses to not be extraordinary. So can you talk a little bit about that, Lisa, for me? That was just like, whoa, powerful. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was definitely one of the big pivots in my life and completely changed how I thought. So my husband was interviewing her when we were still at and I was executive producer of the show. Flash forward, Quest was growing so quickly. I moved from the shipping department to the media department because I wanted to use my film degree for actually something, because I love content, going back to that.

So I build a studio, I build a set, my husband's a host, the show's called Inside Quest and he has this motivational speaker. Now, she's literally, I mean, there's a room full of maybe 100 people and every person's in tears, like crying that she's just moved us all to our core. So I'm sitting at the back of the room and I'm like, wow, this woman's amazing. I'm like, I could never be as good. Like, wow, she's just amazing. Right. So literally, in real time, as I'm thinking, I could never do that. She's so amazing. She goes and says, don't make me extraordinary to let yourself out off the hook. And I was like,

oh, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm saying she's so good that there's no way I could do that. That's literally, you're letting yourself off the hook because you project that someone's got some magical spell on them that you don't. And what it does is it gives you the excuse to not even get started. It gives you the excuse to not even try. Now, I think what's so important is to never compare your beginning with someone else's middle or end. And that's what we do. One of my favorite movies of all time. Did you ever see Karate Kid? Of course. Love it. Okay. The whole wax on, wax off is literally the analogy of practice, practice, practice. So that we're when you eventually get in the ring and someone goes to crank it you or you're prepared.

So what is your version of practice? When you are about to get started on something, you don't think about the fact that that person is put in all the practice. So if I was to look at you and be like, oh my God, she's such a great podcast host, I could never be as good as that. No, of course you can't if you don't get started. If you go, I've put in a thousand hours. I've put in 10,000 hours.

In all honesty, how do you have the audacity to think that you're going to be better than me when I've put in 10,000 hours and you haven't even put in one? Put in the reps, homie. It's a blessing. And when you're in that position, you can con yourself because of your ego. But when you're in the advanced position, you can look back and be like, of course you're not going to be as good because you haven't done the work. So if we can just start there, if we can say, I haven't done the work, what does the work look like? How many hours do I need to put in? And And then the last thing is never comparing yourself to the other person. Because Ilana, it may have taken you by your fourth interview. You may have been like, oh my God, this woman has it down. She's so great a question. It may take me 100 interviews. Now imagine if I paint my future on what you've done. Now after episode 10, if I'm not as good as you, I'm beating myself up versus saying, what is the thing that is going to allow me to get to my mission? And if that means I have to put in 100 hours and that 10 times more than Alana, then cool. I've got to put in a hundred hours. You maybe have a skill set that I don't. So maybe I'm starting

behind the eight ball. Let's say you played the flute or the clarinet when you were a kid and I didn't. And now I want to learn how to play the piano. All right, well, you're ahead of me because you know how to read sheet music. So I go, even if she's never played the piano, she knows sheet music and I still have to learn the sheet music. So there's so much complexity to how someone got where they are. And I get the natural inclination to make them extraordinary, because sometimes you don't actually want to do what it takes to get there. And that's where I talk about in the book, playing the game, no BS, what would it take? No BS, what would it take for me to have a podcast as big as Ilanhas? Like, actually play the game. Maybe, in fact, Ilana, how long do you spend on the podcast, Leap Academy?

Roughly how many hours a week? Probably about, I don't know, but I have a full team, 20 hours a week. and on our program is probably another 50 hours. Like, I'm working my ass off. Like, if somebody thinks that I'm sitting on the freaking beach, I am not. Okay, perfect. So let's say you do 50, 20. So you're probably doing around 70, 80 hours a week, which is absolutely insane.

To your point, you don't have time to go to the beach. Okay. So now let's say someone's sitting here and they're listening to this podcast and they're like, I want to have a podcast like Ilanas, I want to be able to monetize it. I want to be as big. I want to be the, you know, number one or number two in education. Amazing. Now play the game.

No BS. What would it actually take for me to be as big as Alana? Because you can't just expect that to happen. So that's where I go into, get detailed. No BS, what would it take? You can't go to the beach. You can't go on that vacation. You can't say yes to those dates.

If you've got kids, maybe you can't go to every parent-teacher meeting. That is the realities of showing up like Ilana. That's the reality of having something like Leap Academy. So when someone's sitting at home right now saying, I want a podcast, how do I get it? I'm not even going to get started because I'm not as good as Alana. That's the one excuse. The second excuse is that I don't have the time or I can't. Well, if you put in 70 to 80 hours and you played no BS, what would it take?

And you have to say no to those beach vacations. And you have to say no to those outings. and you have to say no and no and no, and no, now you can see how you end up getting as good as Alana, but you have to put in the reps. And if you're not willing to do the reps, of course you're not going to be as good as them. But don't trick yourself in thinking.

It's because you don't have the capability. That is incredible. And she's speaking, but she has like a million and something and followers on YouTube and a million people on Instagram. But it's about asking better questions and looking in the mirror to say, what are you really willing to do for success, right? Because the truth is, I hear it all the time. Oh, my God, I want the freedom.

I want my company to be successful. And then they go and binge watch Netflix for five hours a day. I can't afford that. I wish that sounds cool, but no, that's not happening in my future. So you better work hard for it. Or not work hard and just accept that they're never going to be as potentially as big as you, which a game is okay. But don't be yourself up. And then in 10 years, say, I can't believe I'm not as big as Leap Academy. Well, no, you're not as big as Leap Academy because you chose those

moments where Alana's off working, you chose to Netflix and chill. But that's okay, because it's your decision. Just don't trick yourself into saying it's not my decision. I wish, I wish, I wish. Ooh, powerful. But tell me, you are very honest with two things. And I wonder about them, because I think some listeners will be very inspired by them, if that's okay to go there. One is about your eating, and another one is about deciding to not have kids. First of all, what made you be so honest about it? And second, tell us the story maybe of one of them. Being Greek Orthodox, it wasn't even in my brain or thought process to realize I had a choice,

whether I wanted kids or not. Now, that may seem crazy now, but I was born in 79, so that I'm 45 years old. So it was at a point where I was like, of course I'm going to have kids. It didn't even dawn on me that I could ask myself, did I want children? Now, as Quest started to grow and as I started to just help out, that was like what I was, I'm just going to help out. I'm in the good Greek wife, remember? I'm just helping my husband out, not realizing we would grow so quickly. So I'm like, I'm helping out. And then every day, I was like, wow, I really love this. Yesterday I had no idea how to do X, Y, and Z. Today, I figured it out. Wow, I didn't realize I could do that. And yet, I managed to figure it out. I had such loose self-esteem

that every day I was doing something and figuring something out, I started to build pride. And that pride made me realize that I could maybe be unstoppable. And I actually said that, huh, maybe you could just keep going. Maybe you can keep figuring things out. And you're not as dumb as you thought you were. So that's an insight into me. When I was a kid, I used to think that I was dumb because I was the artist in the family and I wasn't getting AIDS. I was getting C's. So the narrative I taught myself growing up was that I was the dumb one in the family. So by the time Quest started to grow and I started to realize, well, hang on a minute. I've had this idea that I was really stupid, but I've kind of figured this stuff out. Maybe I'm not as stupid as I

thought I was. I was finding the validation. And that validation piece that I said that I was getting from being the stay-at-home wife, I realized I could now build my validation and being the person that didn't know something one day and could figure it out the next. Now, that idea was so enticing to me. Because imagine now, I fail. Oh, well, if I fail, what did I learn? Oh, great. I'm more powerful for it. Brilliant. Now I validated myself through the failure, which is insane in and of itself. So I was like, this is fascinating. I wanted to keep going. And that was where I just paused and I said, but Lisa, you're about to have kids. And I was like, well, hang on a minute. do I actually want kids? And that's where the idea came from. So the way that I process it is I just

are very honest. What does life actually look like in every possibility? So I just started writing out what are the possibilities? Number one, I quit my job and I'm a stay-at-home wife. That's a possibility. Number two is that I keep working and I still have babies. That's a possibility because I know women that have done it. Number three is that I decide not to have kids and I just keep working. All right. Those feel like three very possible buckets. Now what I do is I take an average Wednesday because, Alana, we can all trick ourselves into thinking something's going to be amazing, right? We can trick ourselves into be like, oh my God, I really want to have a million subscribers

on YouTube like Lisa. Well, let me tell you what a million subscribers come with. Demands. You have to keep serving. So the idea and the reality are very different because you can paint a beautiful picture. But let's face it, every time you paint a beautiful picture, it never looks like that. So instead of me saying, I could very much. much get carried away with the excitement of having children. That is true. The idea of feeling

like I've got a baby grown inside of me, I could get emotional just thinking about it. The idea of having a little Tom with his ears and he's running around and he's like Tom Jr. the fourth is what we're going to call him because Tom was the third. I love that idea. So I could for sure convince myself why having kids is amazing. But what happens on an average Wednesday? That's what I really want to focus on. Not on the convincing of how magical it will be. What does your average everyday life actually look like? So now let's paint what an average Wednesday looks like in each of these buckets that I just painted for you. So an average Wednesday of me having both, right, having kids and running a business. All right, I'm waking up, let's say the kid is six.

I'm waking up at 3 a.m. I'm helping them with their fever. I'm running them to the doctor at 7 a.m. Because I've got to get to work by 9 a.m. I'm at work at 9 a.m. but my kid is crying because they want their mommy and I've left them with a nanny. Okay, then I feel really guilty. And so I'm trying to struggle to get home, but I have this big presentation. That's what a freaking average Wednesday looks like. Oh, yeah. I can help you. It's true. Oh, there you go. There you go. So I just ask myself, with no judgment, is that the life I want? Not anyone else. Does Lisa Billu enjoy that idea of that life? And the answer is, no, that feels like freaking chaos to me. I don't function well in chaos. So it actually doesn't sound like a life that I want, an average Wednesday

that isn't appealing to me. You know, when everyone like dreads the week, I don't want to be the person that's just dreading living. I want to enjoy my average Wednesday like I do a Saturday. So I said, that isn't the life I want. Great. Now at least I know. So then I went down to the next bucket. What does it look like if I gave up work and dedicated my life to my children? And that's a very possible option. And so I laid out what an average Wednesday. like, okay, well, my husband has been very honest and told me he's very ambitious. He's told me he's not coming home at 6 or 7 p.m. at night. So the reality is, I'm somewhat of a single mom Monday to Friday. Now, I'm the type of person that appreciates my husband just telling me. I don't

want to find out after I've had the child. So he's like, peace out you're on your own. No, thank you. So he's told me this. And so, again, not pretending what it would be like to have a child, the actual realities of what it's like to have a child with my husband. And that would be, I'm a single mother from Monday to Friday. Number one. Number two, I'm no longer involved in his daily life, which is building the business. Do I want that? Am I going to be resentful towards the child? For now, I'm not with my husband doing the thing that actually makes me feel good about myself. I will ask myself all of these questions. And then I will go to the final bucket. And that is, what if I don't have children? What would it be like on an average Wednesday

right now? I would be doing the same. But what will it look like on an average Wednesday? day when I'm 80 years old. Maybe my husband's passed away. And now I don't have children and I don't have a husband. Will I be okay? And I'm just honest. Once I'm able to be that honest with myself, I'm not pulling the wool over my eyes and I know I know exactly what I'm getting into. And so any decision that I end up making, I know that in two, three, five, ten years, I won't have regret because I've looked at the situation with the utter reality of what it actually is. And now, Now I would say, I made the best decision with the knowledge that I have. So that was how I ended up saying, I love my life.

I love working. I love building these businesses with my husband. Why would I change that? Now, the final piece is listening to other people. A lot of the times, and when we make a decision and what we feel, we're like, we want to block everyone out. Don't persuade me. I don't want to hear you.

Now, why? Are we so worried that they're going to persuade us? But if they persuade us, aren't they actually then showing us something else that we haven't seen? So I think if my decision cannot withstand people's disagreements, people's rebuttals, then maybe I wasn't strong in my conviction in the first place. So what I then did is I allowed to listen to people to say why they think I'm crazy to make the decision that I don't want children. So number one was my dad. Oh, who are you going to leave your money to?

that was his thing. It's like, Dad, I don't live in the ancient times. A, I think if I've actually spent every last penny on my dying bed and I'm taking my last breath and then I'm writing the last check, that's a life well lived. Then he would say, who's going to take care of you when you're older? And I thought, okay, that's actually a very valid thing. I cannot ignore that parents do turn to their children to have that support system when they're elderly. What am I going to do? I better build a great friendship circle. I better have people around me that I've poured my heart and soul into and just because I haven't given birth myself doesn't mean that they're not going to be around. And then the last piece is your legacy. People always say, yeah, but what about your

legacy? I had to then just ask me, what the hell does that mean? People throw around phrases and you kind of repeat the phrases, but you don't actually ask yourself what that actually means, right? So I'm like, what does it actually mean to have a legacy? And I perceive the word legacy as being something that you are remembered even after death. Great. If that's true, do I need to birth my own children to have a legacy? And the answer is no. So that, I know it was a lot and I know that was a really long explanation, but that's how I make decisions. And that was exactly how I ended up deciding I don't want children and I just want to keep helping other women in the world. I love this story because I think your honesty is really, really important.

I think a lot of people are doing a lot of things because what society expects from them versus what they really want for themselves. I think what you're sharing about asking really strong questions and you see it all throughout this conversation and everything that you share, but you ask really hard questions and really honest questions with yourself and the level of questions that you can ask yourself will determine the level of decisions and results that you're going to get. And I think that is so powerful. Why did you decide to be so open about this and everything else in life? I think the truth is that I felt like I was alone. When I was making the decision to not have

children especially, and I don't know where your listeners are from, but when you're brought up in a very heavily cultural background, like being Greek Orthodox, that's a heavy thing. And so for me making that decision to not have kids was unheard of. In fact, marrying someone out of my religion was unheard of. Did you see the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? I did not, but I come from a very similar religion, so I get it. Do you really? Yeah, Jews are the same. Like, it has to be within the same. It's exactly the same. So I found that the pressure, marrying someone in my culture was already pressure as it was. Marrying my husband, and him asking my dad for his blessing to marry me. And my dad said no. And I still married him

was one really freaking hard because I was daddy's girl. So how do you make a decision against the person in your life that is probably one of the most important humans, which was my dad? And then go against his wishes. How did I navigate that? So that was one of the big things where I was like, okay, unfortunately going back to asking yourself the hard question, what does my life look like when I'm 50? What does my life look like when I'm 60? And if nature takes its course while it's heartbreaking to think, my dad is going to die before me. If my dad dies before me, that means he's not going to maybe be around when I turn 50. Okay. If I turn 50 and my dad's not around and I've not married the man of my dreams, who do I have to blame? I can't blame my dad. So do I

want to get to 50, not have my dad around and have made a decision on my love life that was to please him and not me, no. So that was how I was able to make the decision. Again, I listened to my dad's opinions because I think there's some validity in what he was saying, because he was like, it won't work. Dad, why won't it work? Because two cultures that don't understand each other can never work. Okay, my dad actually had a point. He actually waved a flag that while other people may either try to push out because they don't want to hear negativity or ignore, I was like, what if this is true? And so what I did is, if it was. is true, then me and Tom have to sit down before we get married and talk through our culture.

And that means what is important to me? If we have kids, I want them to learn Greek. If we have children, I want them to get christened Greek Orthodox. And here were all the things that were important to me. And so Tom then said the same thing. And so we were able to align on the cultural differences that I don't think we would have. If my dad hadn't said, it won't work. So I take the negativity as actually a lesson and a warning sign of what I can do differently. So going back to your question, knowing that I've already upset my dad once by marrying a guy that he didn't want me to marry was hard. Now I moved to America, which is another thing, is like, against your culture, you don't move that far away from your family. In fact, my dad bought the house opposite

him when I was nine years old and he said, when you get married, you live in this house. That's, I mean, you're laughing probably because you know exactly the same thing. I do. I do. Exactly the same. Something. Exactly the same. So when I think about the pressures that we get from other people, when I think about

the decisions we make because we don't want to make the hard decisions, we don't want to defend ourselves and we don't want to upset people, we end up doing things that don't align with the life that we want. And because I had done that for eight years and I made a promise to myself that I would never go back there again, I think when it got to the point where I was making it. a decision with children, I just said to myself, Lisa, it's your life. And if you can listen to other people and be gracious in your decisions, but make sure that it's not negotiable. I'm not telling people so that I can negotiate whether I'm going to have children or not. I'm telling people to

inform them. And if they have advice and an opinion, I'm going to listen. But this isn't a negotiation. And so I went in there knowing this wasn't a negotiation. It was my life to live, that, God forbid, something happens to these people around me, my dad or anything else, the people who are telling me, well, you should have kids. I know that when I go to bed, at the end of the day, I can be at peace with the decision I've made because I've done it because I've wanted to, not because other people have influenced me. And I've accepted the backlash that would come with it. And the backlash originally that came with it, especially being a Greek woman, was, you're selfish? I even had a comment that I screenshot and saved. I wish I had it with me.

The comment, you want to talk about bad comments? Someone said, Lisa, your husband is pretending that it's okay you don't have children. When you turn 50 and you're old and wrinkly, he's going to leave you for a younger woman and have children. So now in that moment, you can convince yourself that that person is right. You can convince yourself that they have the right to shame you. No one has the right. And I won't allow it. And that is in my control. I won't allow it to shame me. And so in that moment, I just took the comment and I said to my husband, I just want to make sure this isn't true. And he just looked him and he's like, of course it's not true. I was like, all right, great. Thanks, babe. Love you. Bye. But like going

back to like always checking in on people, maybe my husband has made the decision, right? Like, has changed his mind. When we decided not to have children, he was very okay with it. But if he want children now, we've created a space to have that honesty where he can come to me and say, look, I know you're 45, I know you probably can't bear children anymore, but I want kids, would you consider adopting? Would you consider fostering? There's always space for us to say to each other the hard thing and ask each other the hard questions, but it's always in service of trying to get to the answer that feels right for you. So at the end of the day, hopefully the description, the breakdown of how I handed children, people can use for children or anything in their lives.

But don't you dare let other people make a decision for you. I'm not religious, so I don't necessarily believe in an afterlife. Now, look, I know other people do, and there's zero problem with that. But I just go, okay, I believe my life on earth is finite. So if my life is finite, what the hell am I doing with the 24 hours I have right now? Am I living it in service of someone else or am I living in service of myself? So to me, yes, we have one life to live and how are we maximizing it to create the life that we want, not just a paycheck, not just tick the box of what our society expects,

but really, how do you live the life that you want for yourself? Which is just so powerful, Lisa. So one of the things, my favorite questions towards the end is, if you look back to teen Lisa, who is lacking confidence, what would you share with her? Or maybe the person in the house. So either the teen or the person to stay at home, whichever one. But what would you share?

What's interesting is that the somewhat truth but cop-out answer is I wouldn't share anything because I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't experienced it. Now, I need that to be true. And the reason why I need it to be true is I tell myself that the next time something goes wrong. I'm just like, oh, this happened for a reason. You're going to learn from it. So every time something bad happens, I need it to be true that I'm going to get better for it. So if I go back and I try to soothe the Lisa, then I'm kind of,

eliminating the belief system that I have today. So I want to make sure that I'm never given a fake answer, which is why I give all of that caveat. If I could still learn the lessons that I've learned and assume that that doesn't go away, I would go back to the old Lisa and I would say, you've got your own back. You've got your own back. Because I spent so many years looking for people to have my back. I was looking to be safe. metaphorically and actually. And every time I was looking to my dad, I was looking to my mom. I was looking to friends. I was looking to coworkers. I was looking to my husband. And you had said it earlier, I've had massive gut issues. And one of the biggest realizations was I got married

very young. Me and my husband are very much intertwined and I love him and we trust each other, but I would turn to him for everything. And so what ended up happening was I didn't build my own backbone. And so it got to a day where my gut was so bad, I couldn't even stand up. I was having excruciating pains. I was 20 pounds lighter than I was now. And I was in the middle of a photo shoot and I'm getting these pains where I could barely breathe. So of course, being a woman, you don't want to make a fuss. This is what I told myself. So I just politely excused myself. I run upstairs and the pain is so bad I actually fall to the floor. Now, in that moment, I have my husband to lean on. So I've got my phone next to me. We have a rule that we're allowed

to call each other and we're allowed to ignore each other. I can ignore the first call. I can ignore the second call, but if one of us calls the other person for the third time, it means I don't care what you're doing. You could be interviewing the president of the United States. If I call you three times in a row, you drop everything and you answer. That's our code. Great. So imagine I'm on the floor, I'm taking a breath. I'm trying to call him, hey, I need your help. He doesn't answer. I call again the second time, he doesn't answer. But the third time, I'm like, oh, he's going to answer. We've got the deal. He doesn't answer. So here I am thinking that my safety net, my savior, is going to be here to help me, and he's not. Now, in that moment, I'd already built a

billion-dollar company at that point, but in that moment, I kept turning to other people. And in that moment, I said, oh, no one's coming to save you, Lisa. The person you thought was coming to save you, he's not here. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stay on this cold bathroom floor? Or are you going to freaking get back up and know that you get to save your own life? and in that moment I was like, well, I guess I've got to get up. And I physically got up and I physically went back downstairs. I emotionally sobered up. I got myself back together. I took some deep breaths. I had a glass of water. I went back downstairs and I finished the photo shoot. Now, that story happened in 2000, I want to say, 2016, 2017. I remember that story like it was yesterday.

Why? Because I remind myself, no one's coming to save you. You are the hero. of your own life. Get the F up. And that's the story that every time I fall metaphorically, every time I fail, I tell myself over and over. And that's the lesson. I wish every single person could know because no one's coming to save you. And that's the best news ever. Why? Because now you can stop waiting. Now you can actually do something about it. You can get back up and you can take action. And that is so empowering. It's just so, so, so powerful. Oh my God, Lisa, like this is, I told you, my hardest problem would be in this conversation is not to talk to for hours, but thank you. You're just incredible. You're just full of sunshine. Like, I hope

everybody will also see it on YouTube. You're just full of happiness. And it's just so great to talk to you. Thank you. And here's the reality. I'm not always happy. You know, there are moments where I'm like, I'm stressed, I'm frustrated, I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out. I mean, even on this interview, there were two moments where I forgot what I was saying, and I'm going through perimenopause right now. And so part of that is I actually have brain fog, and you're seeing me in real time handle having brain fog. And the reality is, just like everything else, I have to be honest about it. I have to give myself the grace, and then I have to figure out ways around it. So thank you for having me, and thank you for saying that.

But I want people to know that even in being happy, it takes action, it takes work. I put my hair in a certain way. I wear my Wonder Woman jewelry. I love women. So coming on and seeing you and talking to you is so energizing. All of this is absolutely deliberate to make sure that I show up in the way that I want to show up. None of it's by accident. It's not like I have a happy bone that I'm always, you know, like most of the time I'm actually stressed.

But I just make fun of myself and I try to be lighthearted about it. Incredible. Thank you for everything that you're doing. And thank you for this big mission. that you're sharing with the world, Lisa. Oh, thank you for having me on. It was such a joy to speak to you. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

If you did, please share it with friends. Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com slash training. that's leapacademy.com slash training. See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with the Ilan and Godin show.