Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 230 - Tom Bilyeu

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Tom Bilyeu is the Co-founder of Quest Nutrition, Creator of Inside Quest, CEO and Host of Impact Theory. Impact Theory is a business and mindset-focused interview show that will teach anyone aspiring to greatness the secrets to success. Tom went from being a kid in Tacoma, Washington with no particular talents or abilities to ultimately become one of the most prolific co-founders & entrepreneurs of our decade. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Yeah, we're all good to go. We're rocking and rolling. We're rolling. Here we go. All right. I don't know if you mind if we pick up where we were just leaving off, but I liked some of that that you were sharing with us because it gives us a lot of insight into why you talk so much about mindset. A lot of this started through nutrition. Is that right?

To say it started through nutrition would probably be misleading. So I started like I always viewed myself as a mindset guy because that's what I had to do to myself to make the changes that I wanted to make in my own life. I grew up feeling very frustrated and lost and scared that I wasn't smart enough or talented enough to do anything with my life. I had these big dreams and really had what bordered on crushing fear that I wasn't good enough. And because I had a fixed mindset and didn't believe that I could change that, that was leading me in like a really weird path.

And so make a very long story short, I begin to cobble together what we would now call a growth mindset, but back then didn't have a name. Started with brain plasticity for me, learning about that, realizing that there was this hotly debated thing around that. I decided to believe in it. That begins taking me in a new direction. And then, you know, fast forward 20 years later,

and my life is unrecognizable. And I realized that I did to my mind what you'd done to your body. And so then it was like, I'm obsessed. I want to tell people about this. your body. And so then it was like, I'm obsessed. I want to tell people about this. And right about that time that I have this growing obsession, we happened to found a nutrition company. And so nutrition was, was a, just a survival mechanism for me. So I grew up in a morbidly obese family. And in my early twenties, I started eating less than I'd ever eaten in my life and started putting on more fat. And so I was like, fuck, I know where this goes and I don't want to end up there. And how do I avoid it? And so finding that avoidance technique forced me to learn about nutrition. I started getting around people that had amazing physique. So finally in

that clutter of like, who's right, who's wrong. I was just like, I'll just fucking listen to them. I know it worked at least once. So let me just ask these guys what they did and so that allowed me to make really big gains because I wasn't wasting time I mean look at everything I did with suboptimal. There's no question, but it I didn't waste time doing really stupid shit And so I had some pretty early Good gains early on and just knew enough about the mechanisms of adding muscle and losing fat that that journey ended up being ultra productive for me. And so eight and a half years into my business relationship with these guys who were also teaching me about the body and nutrition, we decided for three very different reasons to start a nutrition company. So, but had I been on

my own, I would have gone straight to what I'm doing now, which is media. You know, I find the story of quest nutrition to be so fascinating. I know everyone gets hung up on that, so we're not going to spend too much time on it, but I do want to address the fact that I'm not sure if people understand the level of talent that was brought around quest nutrition, uh, the type of, type of doctors and the type of people that were brought in, the experts that were brought in. And I remember kind of following along with some of the story and knowing some of these people that have been brought in. And I'm like, they're doing all this crazy research. They have this keto pet sanctuary and they have all these crazy things going on. And I was like, and all they did was make a protein bar. I'm like,

it seems like an injustice to the world. I know that there's probably bigger, there's probably a bigger mission there in general, but can you explain to us like a little bit of what that looked like? Like, and what was, how obsessed was Quest Nutrition with trying to find the best people in the world that knew the information about nutrition? Yeah. So the, the whole journey of creating quest was really, really exciting. Our mission was to end metabolic disease. And so we wanted to create a food company and, um, metabolic disease, just obesity, I guess. So, um, some people will shorthand it to metabolic syndrome, but we were, we were really trying to go way beyond that. And we were looking with Keto Pet Sanctuary specifically,

what's diet's impact on cancer, for instance. And so we were asking some really big questions about metabolism and its impact on human performance, longevity, disease, all of that. And so obesity is the most visible and it was the easiest one to get people to understand. And quite frankly, probably the one that even we understood the most in the beginning, but it was not where we knew we were going to stop. And so my one partner, Ron was just beyond obsessed with nutrition. Like we're, we were a technology company, um, way before that. So our company before that was a company called awareness tech. We made software data loss prevention. Uh, it was pretty boring shit shit, to be honest. But in all of that, we would just sit around the lunch table all day and talk about nutrition and fitness and all of that. And one of the reasons that I wanted to work with them

was when I first met them, they just represented the two things for me that I had promised myself as a kid growing up in a morbidly obese family and being a little bit chubby myself, that I said, one day I'm going to be rich and I'm going to have six pack abs. And when I met them, they were these ultra successful entrepreneurs and they had six pack abs. I was like, these motherfuckers, like I would like wherever you guys go, I want to be a part of it. And so we, you know, end up working together. And so even though we're this technology company, we were always talking about diet and nutrition and our wives were making us protein bars at home. And like, so that was the culture. So to the outside world, it seemed really absurd that we were going to start a nutrition company going from where you make wealth, which is

technology. Uh, but we didn't have the passion for it. And so again, it was for three very different reasons. Ron was just beyond obsessed with the, the sort of technology side of nutrition. Like, like if you think of the body as, as a, you know, a technological unit and you think of food as a technological unit, that like that interplay for him was just, just fascinating. And so he was constantly researching it. So he drove a lot of that, like in terms of bringing in the experts, in terms of understanding where things were going and all of that. Um, and, and that was really exciting to, to be around and to be a part of it. And then my thing was, I came from the human side and having grown up in a morbidly obese family and knowing that I was going to lose my mom and my sister too early because they struggled so profoundly with food.

And you put those two ideologies together of like, I was just beyond obsessed with helping people and saving them. And like, like there's a real community to be built here with him, like being so deep into the realities of metabolism. And so that became like our central focus was, is this shit real? Like, forget what you can market. Is it fucking real? And so we just had an obsession with what is real. And so that drove everything.

It's amazing, you know, have an opportunity to work out with Ron before he came up to my gym and we worked out and he was like, he started asking all these questions, super inquisitive. And he's like, why are we doing this first instead of that? And why are we doing this exercise that way? And I was like, I don't fucking know. I said, we're just training, dude. Just relax, you know, but he he's not going to let it go.

Right. Yeah. No, he's he definitely wants to understand things at their like base level with, you know, regards to, you know, the ketogenic style diet and things like that. Is that something that you still mess with yourself? Do you still eat that way? Yeah. So I'm one, I'm big into cycling,

so I don't stay ketogenic year round. Um, but ketogenics is, is the one thing I've tried in my life that I will say is transformative. It was like taking a drug. Um, and I was told, I was convinced that fat made you fat. It's like the worst naming convention of all fucking time. If they'd called it anything else, Zargon's whatever, like we wouldn't have the problem that we have today because there are people like myself, I'm not exactly a stupid guy. Like I'm not the smartest guy ever, but I'm not stupid. And for me, it just made sense that eating fat is going to make you fat. Like there's a real logic to that. It's totally false, but like I believed it. And so for years I avoided fat like the plague because I was again terrified that I was going

to get fat, totally bought into the low fat movement. All of that just made sense. I remember a friend of mine telling me, I think if you eat too much sugar, it turns into fat. And I was like, that doesn't even make sense. Like how does sugar become something else? Like there was no logic in that for me. So I just, yeah, I avoided

fat like the plague. And then Peter Atiyah and Dom D'Agostino come into quest one day and they're like, you guys are thinking of this all wrong and it's metabolic pathways. It's signaling, it's totally different. And a ketogenic diet might have this real impact and anti-cancer properties. And so I, I really, really want to live forever. Like, I don't mean that, um, like conceptually, I actually want to never die. Um, and, uh, that that's a whole podcast, but so somebody says anti-cancer and you think, fuck yes, like whatever it is, I'm going to try. And so I was like, I'm going to do this ketogenic thing. Now, when I do something, I fucking do it. So you've got that quote, you're either in or you're in the way, do something, I fucking do it. So you've got that quote, you're either in or you're in the way.

Homie, I was in. So I was like, what's the ratio? What do you do if you want to live forever? And they were like, you need to do a therapeutic range, which is basically to shorthand it. Cause there's like a whole math thing, but four to one. So for every combined gram of protein and carbohydrate, you can eat four grams of fat. Now, if you've never tried that shit, it's basically the most ridiculously small portions and it's wet and nasty. It's disgusting. So gross. And if you've been a sugar burner your entire life and now you're switching over cold, going straight to four to one and restricting the shit out of my calories, it was misery. And I had keto flu in the whole nine, but I fucking stuck it out, dude.

I didn't play. My numbers were perfect. I kept myself like I was testing my blood constantly and I was in range. And I was like, this is misery on a level. But I told myself that I was going to do it, whatever, for two weeks, whatever it was. And I did it. But the weird thing was I needed to distract myself. I was, I just felt like such garbage. So I started playing video games. Now at the time, I couldn't play video games for more than one hour a week. And even doing that, I had to ice my wrist every night to be able to do that because I had such, um, is that what's wrong with your wrist now? Yeah. Well, it's not from video games, but like for 15 years, I had to ice my wrist every night because I just had this chronic inflammation and And I do this ketogenic diet.

It's total misery. I'm telling myself I'm never going to do it again. I start playing video games to distract myself, and I realize I'm playing six, eight hours a day on the weekends. No pain. And I was like, what the fuck? Well, now we got to know what games you're actually playing. At that time, it was a first-person shooter that, I don't know,

it totally faded out. But now if somebody really wants to know, Destiny is my jam. That fucking game I'm obsessed with. Got my wife to play. So it's quality family time. And gaming. For sure. So yeah, anyway, that's a whole thing. But it was more profoundly impactful from an anti-inflammatory standpoint than ibuprofen. It was transformative. And so I was like, I'm never taking fat out of my diet again. I thought I would never do keto again and I didn't for almost a year. Um, but I, I elevated the fat in my diet and it was just a game changer. But yeah, I still fuck with keto hard

now. You know, for a diet like that, especially doing true keto, that's four one. Um, it first off takes a lot of commitment and takes a lot of, uh, you have to stick with it and it's very, very difficult. Now you were talking about mindset when you, when we first started here and you're very, very big into the growth mindset, the book by Carol Dweck, you talk about that all the time. Now I know you didn't always have that type of mindset in the past. What was it? And what was your mindset before? How'd you make the switch to that type of growth mindset? Yeah. So pain and suffering is how I made the switch and it went something like this. So I, I go to film school and I believe myself to be talented. So in high school I cheated on everything, but I believed that I was smart

enough to do the work. And so that was sort of how I got around. It was like, I didn't feel guilty cheating because I was like like I could do this work But there are things that i'm more focused on like building my social skills Which aka chasing chicks like that was my whole thing and so I thought but when I go to college It's the thing. I actually want to learn. It's not like this bullshit. We're doing in high school It's the thing I really care about and i'm going to take tens of thousands of dollars in student debt So i'm actually going to do, so I do it myself. So I walk into film school and I say, ARF, sink or swim, I'm doing this all myself. I'm never cheating again.

And I stuck to that, not fucking once. And I actually did better in college than I did in high school. So I thought, yeah, this is it, man. I knew it. I'm smart. Like I got this. And I get into film school and getting into USC film school, you're more likely statistically, not from an intelligence standpoint, but statistically speaking, you're more likely to get into Harvard law than USC film school. So I get in, everyone told me I wasn't going to be able to. And I got in, I thought, yep, I got this early film school. I'm killing it. And I'm just like getting everybody's attention. And I'm like, this is it. They only choose four people to direct a senior thesis film. I was one of the four people chosen so like my life is just stacking up right I have this whole

thesis about I'm smart enough to do this I'm a natural born filmmaker and like everything is is proving me right until my senior thesis and I get this you know one of four fuck yeah I'm gonna make the senior thesis I'm gonna graduate get my three picture deal I'm gonna be set I'm the next Steven Spielberg this is this on lock. And then I fuck up my senior thesis film so badly that I steal the master because I never want this thing seen. And this is not me being humble. This is, it was real garbage.

Like it was absolute trash. And I realized that I had this one sort of key insight in the early films, which made it seem like I had talent when really I just wasn't making the same catastrophic mistake every other beginning filmmaker makes which is to treat because back in my day there was it wasn't like YouTube there were no video cameras you were doing this on real film so everything was silent and black and white so I just told story types where you wouldn't expect people to be talking so the film just seemed natural in a way that when it's basically somebody trying to crush a feature film where you expect a lot of dialogue and all this change to happen in five minutes and there's no dialogue, it just seems stupid. So I just have that one key insight,

which tricks me into thinking that I'm talented. Then in my senior thesis, I realized I'm not talented. Okay. Now when you have a fixed mindset, that's fucking terrifying. So I spin off into this. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I thought I was the next Steven Spielberg. I'm a total moron. I have no talent. My whole world implodes in on me. And I begin to realize that my greatest fear is about me being not smart enough. Cause in high school, have you guys seen the movie Amadeus? No, it's fucking rad. So check this movie out. It it's, it's fucking rad so check this movie out it it's it's about um mozart and it is there's a it's told from the perspective of this character named solieri solieri is a real guy by the way and he was a contemporary of mozart and his whole thing in the movie is i'm just good enough to realize i'll never be as good as mozart and i was like that's fucking me i'm just smart

enough to realize how much smarter other people are i I'm like, if I could just be a little dumber and be totally oblivious to this, it would actually be better. And I wouldn't have the self-esteem issues that I have now because I'm just smart enough to realize I'm never going to be great. And that really fucked with me. And so my senior thesis becomes proof. See, like you were good enough to get the senior thesis, but not good enough to do anything with it. So I'm like, fuck, my whole life is this. I'm Solieri. And I actually begin to tell myself that.

I'm fucking Solieri. I'm good enough to realize I'll never be the next Spielberg. And so after I graduate, I'm in this fucking downward spiral, man. And I'm in a real dark place and I'm sliding towards depression. Now to condense the story, because you asked a very simple question, I'm dragging this shit out. But I'm sliding towards depression. Now to condense the story, because you asked a very simple question,

I'm dragging this shit out. But I hit this moment where I realized, I read about this thing called brain plasticity. And people were like, it's bullshit. And other people were like, no, it's real. But my whole life, you know, as a kid of the 80s, all you ever heard was, you're born with a certain number of brain cells.

Don't do drugs because you're, you know, you're erasing those brain cells and you'll never get them back, which is total bullshit. But that's what I was taught. So I read this thing that, no, no, no, you can change your brain at any time. You can actually change the physical structures of your brain and get good at something even as you age,

which just was not a thing. People didn't believe that. And so I was like, all right, fuck it. I choose to believe that's true because if that's true, then the fact that I'm not talented today is not a death sentence. I can become talented. I can get good. I just have to work. And that deciding to believe that, even though it was like this contested thing changed my fucking life. Now, if Carol Dweck had already written her book, my life would have been a lot easier because out of desperation, I would have been willing to believe it. And I began to cobble

together a growth mindset. And I start, I stumble into Tony Robbins and I start reading his stuff and listening to his tapes and like thinking, okay, maybe I really can do something. And I start reading and just start getting obsessed with the brain because I, and I'm not sure what gave me this key insight, but I was like, okay, I experienced the world through my brain. If I don't understand how this thing works, then I'm going to have a real hard time. So let me learn about the brain. So I start researching the brain like a fiend, become sort of the first thing I become obsessed about. And I just start researching how it works. Neurochemistry, brain plasticity, what is it? How do you take advantage of it? Repetition, neural pathways, like the default network,

all this shit, right? And so I start going, okay, well, if that's like my body and I can believe that I can change my body, then can I make these same changes in my mind? So it's like the way that I work from a mindset perspective is what is the nature of the organ, the brain? And then as long as I'm not asking myself to believe that I have to violate the nature of this thing, then why can't I do whatever? And so that became that where it was like, I'm putting in the work, I'm doing the practice, all of that. Then I meet entrepreneurs who they act in accordance with an empowering mindset. They do shit that, you know, it's like believing this is going to make me better. So I'm going to believe it. And it's like, I just start cobbling together what are now the 25 points of the impact theory

belief system. And that became the thing that changed my life was putting those things together, codifying them, writing them down, and then living in accordance with them. What do you think the first thing is the first step for someone to try to change their mind? Very simply, you have to believe that the brain is designed to change, that there is an adaptation response and that the average human has that ability. And the story that I heard, and if this doesn't just change your mind about what's possible, there was this woman who was born with half, half a brain, half, like you scan her brain. It's just black on one side and activity on the other side. And so it's like, okay, hold on a sec. If you've got this woman who is a high function,

we have our alarm system is testing itself. That's wonderful, forgive us. It should stop here momentarily. But if you've got a woman who is born with half a brain and look, she wasn't like completely normal. Her parents knew she had developmental challenges, but it was like people knew, oh, she'll be able to live on her own and all that.

So you would not expect to scan her brain and find that she only had half of it. And the brain just adapts and goes, oh, I don't have that region. Let me rewire, reallocate things. And you, it grows and changes both form and function. So if the brain can do that to make up for half of the brain being missing and still be a high functioning adult, like you've really got to believe that just being like, oh, I'm not good at reading or whatever. You can get good. You're going to have to put yourself into an adaptation response. And it's just like fucking building muscle. You don't build muscle by curling twos, right? You build muscle by fucking pushing yourself, going to failure,

sweating, working till you vomit, like thinking about your food, coming back in, spending hours in the gym. It's fucking hard. But if you trigger the adaptation response, even as the most like diehard average person on the planet, nothing special about you, just you're hopelessly average that you can make change. Now, if you believe that, it's what I call the only belief that matters, then you'll put time and energy into it. But if you don't believe it will happen, then you don't put the time and energy and rightly so, because if wasting time and energy is going to be the only outcome, why would you bother? But once you know that the human animal is designed to adapt, then all of a sudden you'll take the steps. How did you make the brain grow and change? You know, with lifting, there's sets and reps and weight associated with it what

were the sets and reps and weights for your brain fuck yeah so this is the right question so i'm writing a book about this right now because this it isn't what people think can you give me some of the book now i'm gonna give it to you all i'm gonna give you the entire book so my whole thing is give everything you know away as fast as you can give it away and if your knowledge is so limited that it can actually be taken or stolen or whatever, you didn't have anything in the first place to fucking worry about. So here, my best shit,

I'm gonna give it to you as fast as humanly possible. All right, so you already believe, based on the diatribe I just gave you, that the human animal is designed to adapt. Okay, so how do we force ourselves into the adaptation response from a purely mental place? All right, number one is just fucking repetition. The brain is designed to conserve calories. So it's like whatever, three pounds uses 20 to 30% of your energy.

So only way you're going to survive is if your brain has a mechanism to make shit easier. It's what's called the default network. So your job is to get a lot of powerful shit into the default network. Now what's the default network when you're driving to work and you do it all day, every day, and you get to work one day and you're like, fuck, I don't even remember how I got here. How did I like not die? That's the default network, right? That shit is, it's actually burned in. It's hardwired. Okay. So what does the hardwiring process look like? Your brain is ultra adaptive, meaning it can, it can be designed to do one thing one day and then begin to actually unwind and break apart physical connections between the neurons, create new connections because now you're doing something else and

you're doing that something else a lot. And what it's going to do is it's going to atrophy old connections and begin making new connections. Okay. So as you repeat something over and over and over and over, it begins to neurologically hardwire. And then to make the electrical impulses travel more quickly, it does what's called myelination. And this fatty tissue wraps around the connections that fire together more. So the slick thing people will tell you is neurons that fire together, wire together. Okay, rad. So how do I make these neurons fire together? You're going to do shit. Now here's the crazy thing about the brain. Some of that do shit is just thinking. The thoughts that you think repeatedly become the easiest to think. They then slide into the default network.

They require less calories, less energy and effort to think. And so you're going to always just boom, default back to that. Now, why is that important? Because if you think negative shit a lot, negative shit becomes easy to think. And now you're trapped in this negative death spiral because your brain, when it slides into neutral, slides into negative shit because you spent all your time rehearsing how things are going to go wrong, what a dumb fuck you are. And so your brain is like, yeah, fuck, that's really easy. Let's think about that. You're fucking stupid. You're never going to be able to figure this out. And here's the hard part. That shit will now come with a neurochemical cascade of feeling like a dimwit. So you think I'm a moron. You start feeling badly about being a moron. That all goes into the

default network. You get these electrical storms that happen because they're hardwired now to happen easily. So you've got it at the physical level. You've got it at the electrical level. So all of this negativity that people allow themselves to soak in That shit is now the easy way to think and so they just find themselves there and they're fucking there and some percentage of depression Is that I won't say it's all I don't know enough, but i'll say it's a fucking lot And then all the patterns ways you think become problematic. Okay, so that's part one understanding that part two So we already understand repetition now. why don't people repeat empowering shit? Because it's fucking hard. It's, it takes energy and it takes effort. Unlike something where you already have the neurochemistry pushing you. What do you have neurochemistry pushing you to do by default? Um, have sex, jerk off, um, eat ice cream,

like things that are just like nature is giving it to you, right? And there are a lot of people listening to this right now, like, yeah, motherfucker, that sounds good as hell. And so video games, video games have been, and social media, they are really smart fucking people going, what are the dopamine response systems in your brain that I can tap into and get you to prolong your activity in here, which then of course hardwires it and you get basically the addictive effect. Okay. So now to create these new patterns,, which then of course hardwires it and you get basically the addictive effect. Okay. So now to create these new patterns, it's going to be hard. And this is where the value that I'm going to bring to the world is to talk about values, motherfucker. You choose to

value something. And this is where I was going in the interview with you on health theory is like, I want to know that moment where you decided to value some shit because you decide to value something. Now, the problem is this happens when you're young. It's usually handed to you by your family. So whether it's your parents or your older brothers or whatever, you're just around somebody that says this is valuable. Now, here's where it gets fucked up. You confuse that with truth. You think that somebody has simply presented to you a universal truth that it is valuable to be strong. So you look at somebody who's fucking weak and you think, how the fuck do they do that? Like they must feel like shit all the time. But the reality is they don't. They have a totally

different value system. Their value system may be shit should be easy, right? There are people I love in my life and that's their value system. Ease is the highest value. And so they chase ease. Life should be easy. At some point, they just got that in their head. Life should be easy. Life should be easy. And so now because they value that, they seek it out everywhere. Everything in their life, like it's just- So maybe they don't value like inconvenience. Maybe they don't value sitting in the middle aisle, sitting in coach, but they value the easy route. And so maybe they're therefore by default value being kind of in the middle, middle class. Correct. And it's even more insidious than that because they don't realize it is a value. They simply see it as objective truth. And so when they look at

somebody who goes into a gym and does all that, they're like, what the fuck? They look at that person like they're mentally ill. And what they don't understand is, no, no, no. They've just chosen to value something different than you. Now, here's why it's powerful what they've chosen to value. It's tied to the intrinsic reward system that the brain has of wanting to get better. Mastery, the desire to gain mastery is fucking hardwired. It is how nature has compelled the species to move forward, to seek out new regions, to make sure that you're able to feed yourself and your family, to do more. It's just, I mean, you need only look at the way that cities have progressed and the way that we've taken over the world to understand that humans have an innate desire to gain mastery and

dominion over their domain. It's just like what we do. We explore and then gain mastery. Okay, so if that's hardwired and you can find a value system that taps into what you're hardwired for, that's where the shit gets starts to get really interesting. But first you have to decide to value it because it doesn't happen by default because we have this weird conflict between the brain, what you're hardwired for is both to fucking conserve calories and relax, do the least amount possible because that's advantageous from a survival perspective, but becomes a lot less advantageous as you live in a world of abundance. And then the other one is you want to improve and get better and gain mastery and all that. But when you don't need that to survive, all of a sudden you default

to the relaxed one. But the relaxed one isn't tied into the self-esteem mechanisms that we have. So you get in this really fucking weird place where everything is pushing you to be lazy, to chill, to just kick back and watch Netflix and play video games. But you're not feeling good about yourself. So you have this weird fucking sketch of like, I want to do it. It's rad. It's momentarily happy and it's awesome. But in the long term, it sucks.

So understanding that fulfillment is the name of the game not momentary happiness and that fulfillment actually is born out of doing hard shit so it's like this ultra fucking complicated cocktail of things people have to understand but to to get out of it is about choosing a value system that's going to compel you to do hard things which will then help you gain self-respect which then gives you the clear head with which to start setting goals and building towards things. Did I get most of it with these four words? Do more, be more. You're getting really close. Yeah. You can even say do hard shit. Like that's three, right? So we can boil it down. Yeah. Yeah. Do you take like a, an opportunity while you're trying to educate people, like the same neurological pathways and stuff?

It's the exact same thing with food. Like you have some French fries. Ooh, there's a new connection in my brain. You have French fries again. Both you guys love French fries, by the way. And I was,

Oh my God. There's a whole nother section I want to get to cause there's a lot in common. But, uh, yeah, people don't understand like their brain actually does change when you start eating these bad foods and then you get these bad habits. unfortunately people think like oh i just i can't do that i

can't not eat fried foods just like mark was saying on your podcast and to that i will say fuck your elbow like fuck your elbow do people that listen to your podcast know that like that that whole notion of the most terrifying thing about excuses is that they're valid. Like, yeah, maybe you really do have a hard time losing fat. Like that, that might be real. Maybe you have a harder time losing fat. Cause this will be true of one person that you have a harder time losing fat than any human in all of human history. But to me, that's not an excuse not to have the body that you want. Now it it's like, it's going to be really fucking hard for you. I totally get that. And you may decide it's not worth the time and energy. And I respect that. Like for me, I'm not going to walk around at

4% body fat. It's not worth the time and energy. It is possible. It's not worth the time and energy. I'm just saying to people, don't ever say it's not possible. It's fucking possible. You just don't want to put the time and energy. And that's's so freeing because it's like yes i could but i'm not interested in doing that now that's only step one of like a value chain thing but like once you no longer are a victim of your genetics or whatever else you're playing victim to you're in total control it's already empowering so that's like i'm always trying to get people there to just at least recognize that i love the quote uh it says you know excuses make sense to those those those of us that are making them up you know that's the thing to understand

is like they're made up like you made it up but you made up the excuse probably so you can have a nice uh warm soothing reason on why you're not doing something to kind of block you from it so you feel more comfortable about it well it okays it right it goes back to what you're saying like we want to be you know self-preserving we want to be lazy i don't want to admit that i am lazy so i'll just make up this excuse and be like actually it's not me it's yes genetics whatever it is, you know. One thousand percent. So what are some things that you actually practice? I know you got the like cold showers and you do some things that are fairly extreme and taxing.

What are some things that you maybe practice on like a weekly basis that help you get the right mindset? So I'm that help me get in the right mindset. That's very specific. So let me answer that. Um, I repeat things to myself a lot. I think repetition is hyper underutilized. Um, I've written my belief system down, so I actively have it and can scan over it at any time. Um, in anything that I'm doing in business. You alluded to this in the podcast. Things go wrong all the time. It's almost comical where it's like there's never a time where everything is just working. There's always like this is me. Oh, but this fucking broker, you know, that we're having a problem over here. So it's in those moments I'm going through that. oh, this is practice or, oh, looking at in terms of mindset going,

this is my fault. Like I've done this. So what can I do now differently to overcome this? And just constantly reaffirming and reframing your life in these ways that are very consciously like I have this belief system that gets me this result. And so I'm going to plug this belief into this moment. So for instance, I believe that people should always be solution oriented. So when I'm, you know, I encounter something, I pull on Tony Robbins quote, how is the worst thing that ever happened to you? The best thing that ever happened. So, Hey, the shitty thing just happened. Cool. Why is this the best thing ever? And once you switch that and that becomes the frame, you start looking for the way in which this can be empowering. Not only does that change your neurochemistry and lower your stress levels,

but it also just puts you in this frame of reference of being solution oriented. So just constantly like everything. So there were times even today in the interview where I'm thinking, okay, how do I migrate us over to this thing, but do it smoothly? I've never been in this exact situation before, which for me would be anxiety provoking, except for the fact that I remind myself that this is practice. So I'm like, oh rad. So as we're doing the thing, I'm sitting there reminding myself to use the word practice. This is an opportunity to practice doing this thing. So it's like, it's all very conscious. I've got these tools that I pull on all the time to frame things in the right way

that help me manage my anxiety and that keep me in a solution-oriented mindset. Great leaders are, you know, by nature, just extremely repetitive. You think about the best coach that you ever had or best mentor you ever had, you're like, that fucking guy just kept saying the same shit over and over again. He told me me every day like they keep telling you their mission do you ever

get tired with either doing that for yourself or do you ever get tired with doing that with employees i get tired of saying the same things so i'm always trying to like i'm a i'm a big believer that in one human lifespan you can never possibly max out your potential. So I'm just constantly looking for like, what's that new insight? So I'm always terrified that I'm getting into dogma, that I'm no longer being nimble in my way of thinking. And so I'm constantly trying to check myself. So I'm actually glad that I get bored, like repeating the same shit. There's only so many things that are true. So I'm like, I'm never going to say something just because it's new and different. Like it's got to be

something that's actually real. But when I find myself in that space, usually it's because it's like, it's no longer having that visceral impact on me that I want it to have. Or I'm realizing, oh, the old way of saying it's already gotten through to all the people that it's going to get through. So like, what's that new key insight? Like what's something that either I can learn about the nature of the human mind or I can really reflect back on? We were talking in the podcast. Let's see if I can capture this.

We were talking and you were saying something. You were describing people struggling with something. I don't remember exactly what it was. And I thought, fuck, yeah, people do struggle with that all the time. And I've not been able to break people through that. So that means that there's a fundamental misunderstanding for me. So what is it that I'm misunderstanding that's not allowing me, like my vision of the world and the way that people are has got to include that like period where they just won't hear it. So how do we address that period? And so it's like,

how many years did I just brush that niggling thing away? And then finally that one time I thought I need to let this sink in. And so that often is born of that frustration of just like, Oh, I'm saying the same shit because one, it's like, I haven't pushed my own thinking. And two, obviously I'm not having the breakthrough with this person that I want to have. And so do you guys know Peter Thiel? Yeah, I know the name. All right. He's got this rad concept. He's one of the most successful people ever. Billionaire, crazy guy. One of the founders of PayPal wrote this book called Zero to One. And he talks about this notion. Ask yourself why you can't complete your 10 year plan in six months. And I thought

that's such a rad way to think about it. Right. Like people will they tell me all the time some people just aren't reachable. You're not gonna be able to get through to everybody. And I fucking just reject that. Like that closes off so many approaches if you believe that it's not possible. But if you actually believe, so the standard that I hold myself to

is to believe that it's possible to take the most fixed mindset of person ever, somebody who grew up with like disadvantages that's genetically disadvantaged. Like their mindset is so fucked that like most people are just going to say, don't, don't waste your time and energy. And my thing is I will not have achieved my goals until I get to the point where I can reliably in 30 seconds or less have that person have a breakthrough that will last and completely turn their life around. Now, maybe it's not possible, but I'm

going to chase it like it is. And I think that forces me to aim at something that is so far away from my current skill set that it will constantly remind me of just how much better and more effective I can get. Do you feel like there's people living their life behind? That was something I mentioned on your podcast and it may have been kind of what you're referring to. And sometimes that's how I interpret the way that I see some other people living their lives, but maybe it's just a false interpretation. Maybe they're fine where they're at. And maybe it's just me like, you know, having a character flaw and I almost like looking down on somebody. But do you think people are kind of living their life behind? Like they're unprepared for a lot of the things that are coming next or should they be where they're at well i think that there are many

different ways to live a life that's deeply fulfilling and so the punchline of life is fulfillment that's it how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself and i'll tell you right now money can't touch that so making a lot of money is not going to do that for you you could be a monk and just feel fucking awesome. No one's ever going to feel awesome all the time, but your sort of baseline sense of self is rad. So I don't think the punchline of life is success. It's not fame. It's not fortune. The punchline of life is self respect, basically. It's to really feel good about who you are when there's nobody around to cheer you on or anything. Or in the midst of people telling you that you're an absolute asshat, can you still feel good? Like, are you able to be

like, no, I actually, these are the things that I value. I live in accordance with them. I help not only myself, but other people like all that is in alignment because fulfillment is a, I'll call a naturally occurring phenomenon. So it is hardwired in us from an evolutionary perspective. It's something that for whatever reason kept us alive long enough to have progeny and then make sure that those kids stayed alive long enough to have progeny. So for whatever reason, evolution has made sure that we all have this. So as long as somebody's in that zone, their life may be something that I'm wholly uninterested in. So for instance, Buddhists, there is the whole notion of desire is suffering and that all of life is suffering and that it's born of desire. And if you could just let go of desire,

like even the desire for enlightenment to let go of that. And my thing is, Matt, just doesn't sound interesting to me. So I want to fully engage with life. Now that doesn't mean that they're wrong. It just means that they're wrong for me. Now I could possibly re-break down my whole value system and, you know, for whatever reason, if I was so motivated to build value around that and spend years sort of reshaping my mindset and what I'm into and all that, that I could get into it. But right now with where, how I was raised and the things that, you know, have occurred to me over my life, like there's just other shit that I'm into that I want to chase that I value. So they live a life that is not interesting to me, that I have no desire to go for, but it seems pretty apparent that there's deep fulfillment in that way. So, but there are also other people that their, their lives are a fucking mess and they

would have you believe that there's no wrong way to live your life. And I will say any way of living your life that makes you feel badly about yourself is wrong in that the highest value that I'll hold is, um, wellbeing of sentient creatures. And you're not going to have wellbeing if you think you're a piece of shit. You know what you just mentioned, you're not going to have well-being if you think you're a piece of shit. You know, what you just mentioned, you're not going to have well-being if you think you're a piece of shit. There's so many people that they have a dream that they want to do. They have something that they want to try and achieve, right? But there's something in the back of their head that just continues to tell them you cannot do it. You cannot do it.

You cannot do it. Even if they're trying to build values and systems to be able to get to that place. Now, you know, you've mentioned that you want impact theory to be at the level of Disney. And when someone hears that, like initially they're like BS, like how can someone even like think of something to be that ridiculous? So if you do want to have to be able to dream that large, how can you get rid of that voice that's continuously telling you that you probably will not be able to achieve that? Yeah. So I don't think you want to get rid of that voice. So I think the name of the game is mental jujitsu. So the negativity in your own head,

your bias towards negativity, these are all things that have helped us survive a very long time. So I'm just going to assume that they have benefit. Now, I also know that if you stay there and you allow anything to diminish your sense of self, to make you feel badly about yourself, that doesn't serve you. And so one of my highest values is to do and believe only the things that move me towards my goals. So there are times where I need to kick myself in the ass. I need to recognize that I have been fucking up. I have been underperforming or I've made some catastrophic mistake or whatever, I've done that. But I don't want to sit in that space. And so I immediately want to use that as a way to remind myself that I can get whatever skill set is lacking, I can learn to be better at this next

time or to not put myself in that situation, whatever the case may be, and to begin focusing on that. But I use that negativity as a habit loop trigger to play one of my empowering messages to get me taking action in a way that's going to serve me. That's going in. And when I say serve, I mean that, which is going to move me towards my goals. So when you do that, instead of trying to silence the negative voice, which I think will be endless pain and suffering, it's like trying to learn to meditate in the thought that one day you will never have thoughts. And it's not, at least in my experience, it's not the punchline. The punchline is to be able to come back to the breath, right? So that, ah, yeah, I'm thinking again. And to be able to come back to the breath and maybe

have longer gaps. But you're going to think it's the nature of the human mind. So I'm going to have the negative voice. It's the nature of the human mind. But I want to make the negative voice useful and not destructive. And so reframing that and building a different relationship with it. And at first it feels really awkward to be like, I'm a piece of shit. Oh, remember when you think you're a piece of shit, you need to remind yourself you can get better at anything over time. And so what is that thing that I want to get better at? But after a while, it really does hard wire and it becomes second nature. So now when I have a negative thought, it flips within milliseconds into that reminder that I can develop a new skill set in any direction that I want to go. And so

what is that skill set? And if I decide that, oh man, it really bums me out that I'm not good at this thing, and I never planned to put energy into it, then I have to reassess my value system. Why am I being driven towards something at a point where either I need to increase its value in my mind, like take singing. I want to be good at singing, but I'm not willing to put in the time and the energy. Okay, well, that's weird. So now either I need to accept that it's okay that I have this weird thing and at least realize it gives me a fun example to tell people in moments like this, or I need to decide that singing is a higher value for me and that I'm going to invest in actually getting good, or I need to reduce its value and say, oh, this is pointless. Why do I even care? And diminish its

value so that I don't think about it anymore. But like any one of the three is going to get you to an interesting outcome, but it needs to be a self-aware, thoughtful process that you go through. What about, like you hear people talk about making the leap. You just said, you know, it's not all about the money. Right. But the great Kanye West said having money is not everything. Not having it is. So there's somebody that's passionate about photography. They're passionate about podcasting, but they're stuck at a job that they cannot leave because

they mix it. They make just enough. And they're hearing you say it's not about the money, but it's like, well, shit, it's easy for you to say. That's a common thing that everybody here. Let's get into it. I like the hard fucking question. So yeah. What do you tell this person? Like, like, dude, follow the passion, not the money, but they're like, I need the money right now. And let's really complicate it. Money will make everything better except how you feel about yourself. It's the one thing money can't touch, but money problems are solved by money. And so when you have a lot of money, you can do insanely cool shit. So like, I don't want people to misunderstand my message. I'm all about wealth

creation and I'm all about even becoming more wealthy than I am today because I know it's utility. But my relationship to money is very simple. Money is the great facilitator, period. Money facilitates shit. But if you don't know what you want to build, there's not a lot of point in going out and getting money. So to that person, I will say very simply, you have an awesome goal to set before yourself, which is you must have six months cash in the bank so that you wouldn't have to change your lifestyle one iota to keep living exactly like you're living right now for six months cash in the bank so that you wouldn't have to change your lifestyle one iota to keep living exactly like you're living right now for six months. Anybody that does, I don't care how little money you make, go do some Google searches. They're like, uh, there was a guy, I

think he was a postal worker and over 70 years saved up some ungodly amount of money. I want to say that with compounding interest, it was over a million dollars. It was, it was just pure insanity. So there are definitely ways, no matter how much you're making, it comes down to the differential between what you make and your lifestyle. So if you're making very, very, very little money, then you might have to do some crazy shit. When I was making very, very, very little money, I managed apartment complexes. So my rent was either free or just ridiculously cheap. And it was a pain in the ass. And the second I was making enough money to not need to manage department complexes, I fucking stopped.

But there are like, the number of things that people haven't even begun to explore that they could be doing is near infinite. I gotta have that Netflix, bro. Hey, respect. Like rank order them. If Netflix is one of them, rad, get your Netflix.

But understand, like map it out, right? So Netflix is this, you're gonna give up something else. If you're not eating, I don't even know if they exist anymore, but understand like map it out. Right. So Netflix is this, you're going to give up something else. If you're not eating, I don't even know if they exist anymore, but when I was dirt poor, there were these things called Tina's burritos. They were three for 99 cents. Just the frozen burritos, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was super rad. So I was like, Hey, I can eat. I'm not saying that that helped for longevity or for body composition, but I can sustain myself on this really dirt cheap shit. So, you know, right there, three Tina's burritos, that's like a day's worth of food for 99 cents. So it comes

down to lifestyle. When Lisa and I founded Quest, we had to get rid of one of our cars. And so we had, you know, at one point the company was worth, I don't know, it's probably worth over a hundred million dollars. And we were still driving in this beat up Ford Focus with a leaky exhaust that started rattling at like 55 miles an hour. But it was like, you just do what you have to do to be able to take that risk. So if you don't have six months, you're beholden to your job because it's just panic time if you lose that job. So you need to make sure that you have the six months cash. Like that's to your job because it's just panic time if you lose that job. So you need to make sure that you have the six months cash. Like that's step number one. Then you can really start to focus on getting a job that fulfills you, that you love, that you enjoy.

And if you're not willing to save that money, then you're your biggest enemy. You're creating a problem in your life. And it's like, we all create problems in our lives. I don't fail to have empathy for that person. Like I really get that. And I spent so many years of my life making really stupid decisions, but it's like, there is a path out of all this. And it really does at the end of the day, it comes down to fuck your elbow. Like at some point you just have to fucking do it. Like map out what you want and get to it. And yes, it's going to hurt. And yes, it sucks. And yes, it's unfair. And yes, yes, yes, all that. But either you want the thing that you say you want or you don't. And so, yeah, the going back to money specifically, six months solves a lot of those problems in the early days.

And then in terms of wealth creation, like there's a whole path to doing that. And you have to decide whether you want to be on that path. And if any part of your answer is, I want wealth because I think it will make me feel better about myself, or I think people with wealth are just cooler, better people, I will just stop you right there. I promise you, it will not change how you feel about yourself. Not one bit. All your anxiety, all of your insecurities, all your self-loathing, it will follow you no matter how much money you get. So that one is just like, make sure you're chasing money for the right reason, which is you want to facilitate something fucking awesome and then go for it. Do you sometimes look back and wonder a little bit about how you're able to cash in maybe on

the mindset, the personality that you used to have compared to what you have now? Because it seemed like a lot of this knowledge maybe is newly acquired or were you growing appropriately with the amount of money you were able to capture? Well, it's interesting. So I think that the getting the money is a reflection of the skill set that I built. And that was the fascinating thing. So when the money hit the bank, it was fascinating the way that Lisa and I got wealthy. So we had built a lot of money on paper. We had paper wealth. So we were worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but we were still driving the beat up Ford Focus. And look, right before we took some of the money out of the company,

don't get me wrong, I was no longer hungry. Like we were making a very wonderful salary, but it was like, we didn't have wealth the way that people think about wealth. We just had an awesome salary. And when the money hit the bank, it was like, I'm looking at a normal bank account and you're hitting refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, and then one final refresh and you're fucking wealthy. And it's so surreal because it's not like, Oh, I have $100,000 in the bank this year. And then $500,000 the next year. And then a million. And you're like, oh, wow, shit.

Yeah, I guess we do have $10 million in the bank or whatever. It was like normal, normal, normal, ridiculous wealth. Like within one bank refresh. It was crazy. Did you like screen capture that or save that? We actually did we took a picture the picture is me going like this like my just arm up in there i'm like yeah motherfuckers uh and the the funny thing was though it became so clear i feel exactly the

same and i liken it to the first time i had sex i don't know about you guys but before the first time i had sex i thought thought shit is gonna be different, like fundamentally. Like colors are gonna be different. Smells are gonna be different. The world's just gonna be changed. Everything is gonna be different. That my life will be like this demarcation point.

Before I had sex, after I had sex, it's just gonna be, everything is different. And then you have sex, you're like, that was rad. Don't get me wrong,

that shit was rad, but like, my life is still the same. Like everything else about my life, colors are the same, sounds, smells, everything, me, it's just, it's still the same. Like everything else about my life, colors are the same, sound, smells, everything. Me, it's just, it's all the same. Money is exactly the same.

It's rad. Don't get me wrong. It's well worth having. I'm super stoked that I have it. But it didn't change how I feel about myself and my like day-to-day life is the same. And I remember when I went to, or that day,

Lisa was like, you know, what are you going to do today? Now that you have money. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, what are we going to do to celebrate? And I was like, I'm going to work because the person I had to become in order to make the money had a value system that was like, you get the fucking work done. And I had shit to do. So it was like, I went into the office, same as I would any other day, the day that the money hit. It was like that just, it's the transformation of becoming that person that's capable of generating those funds that are going to be the game changer. It isn't the money itself. So like what I always tell people is the struggle is guaranteed. The success is not. Like there's absolutely a parallel

universe in which I do all of this. I learn all the things that I've learned, all of it, but I never make the money. It just never comes because there's elements of luck and all of that. So because I know that you just can't guarantee, like going back to your question about Disney, we may never build Disney. I get that. Like this, the punchline of all this may be that we worked really hard and didn't win. In fact, that is the likely outcome. So the question is, do you believe in the thing enough that you're going after? And do you love the struggle? If you love the struggle, then you can't lose. And so that transformation that you go through in doing the struggle, that's the point. Like that's what it's all about. Impact theory seems like it's on fire. Well, it is on fire. What are you obsessed with right now?

What's like, what is the kind of driving mission behind the whole thing? I know you're trying to empower people and help people and so on. And we're seeing your content, you know, continue to explode. So like, what's the driving force? So this is a, it's a very weird story. And it goes back to when I was in college, I wanted to get into film school and I wanted to prove everybody wrong. Now, getting into USC is not the same as getting into USC film school. And I didn't know that. So I went, turned my life upside down, moved to California, almost didn't. And I was panicking.

And my mom basically kicks me out of the nest. And I get to USC only to be like, I'm not in film school. And they're like, no, no, no, it doesn't work like that. You have to apply separately. And I was like, oh my God. And that's when they tell me the whole, like you're statistically more likely to get into Harvard law, which they were telling me to let me know you're not getting in. Like they just said that to my face. Like it was one of the times of just like the most extraordinarily clear doubt that somebody gave me. And they're like, you're not going to get in. I see this all day. You need to stop taking film classes. You're going to end up being here for five years because you wasted time. And I was like, no, no, no, there's got to be a way. And so

I went out to lunch with one of the people on the admissions committee to film school. And I said, what do I need to do to get in? And cause my SATs were really bad. This is a part of the story I forgot to mention. So took the SATs twice, my combined score. So the best of math from one and the best from verbal from the other was nine 90. Now I know they've changed the way that they rate this. So I don't know a younger audience knows how bad that is. Uh, but people in my age group are like, damn, like that's really bad. And that, you know, like, like I said, I did not show early signs of being successful. So get the nine 90. They wanted a 1300. So to get into film school, you need a 1300. I'm

like astronomically far away from that. So I go to the guy and I'm like, what do I have to do? I have terrible SATs. And he said, look, man, SAT stands for scholastic aptitude test. Supposed to tell me how well you're going to do in college. He said, you've already missed the time where you can get accepted as an incoming freshman. So you're not eligible again until you're an incoming junior. So he said, that gives you two years to get good grades. And he was like, if you get good enough grades, I'm not even going to look at your application. So he's like, I'm just going to see. Yep. Cool. This kid knows how to learn. And that'll be that. And I was like, rad. So I locked myself in a room for two years. I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. I didn't date nothing. All I did was study.

And I was in a class and give you an idea of how paranoid I was. I was taking the class pass fail. And the teacher said, does anybody want extra credit? I nearly threw my arm out of the socket, raising my hand and say, I wanted extra credit. And he's like, cool, we're going to send you in the inner cities because USC is in the ghetto. And we're going to send you into the inner cities to tutor these kids. Now, of course, they give you the most problematic children ever. So I get this little kid named Rashaan. Rashaan's probably about eight years old, and he is a freak of nature. This kid, he would fight. He was tiny because he was on probably Ritalin because he was hyperactive, and he was tiny, but he would just fight anybody. It was crazy, and I was supposed to see him for an hour a day for eight weeks,

anybody. It was crazy. And I was supposed to see him for an hour a day for eight weeks. So, um, once a week. So basically eight sessions, hour long first session. I'm, I'm just trying like damage control to get this kid to like sit down and focus, do his homework. Won't do it. Pushing the paper away, throwing the pencil, ripping it up, getting in fights. I was like, Jesus, I just have to survive this fucking eight weeks. Cause this is crazy, but I need my extra credit. And then when I say, all right, I have to go, he starts crying and begging me, please, no, no, no, like I'll do my homework. So I stay for a second hour. Around week five, I realize he's trolling me and that he fights and freaks out for the first hour and then cries and begs, and I end up staying two hours. I'm like, man, at week six, you're supposed to tell him, hey,

I'm only coming two more weeks. I tell him and he goes nuclear, like a kind of crazy I've never seen a kid do before. And he's just shrieking and crying. And I was like, whoa. And I said, look, is this because I said I was only coming for two more weeks? And he's like, yes. And by now, I'm like, I'm starting to develop a relationship with him. And I'm like, look, Rashaun, I will make you a deal. If you do your homework, the second I get here, instead of like throwing the

tantrum and all that, you start doing your homework. The second I get here, as long as I live in Los Angeles, I will help you with your homework. Is that a deal? And he said, yes. And he started doing it. And that eight week relationship turned into an eight and a half year relationship when the whole thing happened. And he's standing right over there. Oh man, I really wish that that was the punchline to the story. And this is part of what drives me. year relationship when the whole thing happens and he's standing right over there oh man i really wish that that was the punchline to this story and this is part of what drives me so for eight and a half years i'm taking him around i'm taking him to movies in beverly hills so he sees that there's a whole nother side that there's a world that isn't made of concrete that there are beautiful

things in this world and all this and he's extraordinary he's bright he's charming he's all these things but i I'm like, like, I'm not sure his life is going to add up to anything because his like mentality is so fucked. And so I'm trying to break him out of it. But I'm so young and so stupid that I don't know how to help him. I didn't know how to help myself. Like this is that whole period where I'm convinced that like I'm too stupid, my solary period. Right. So like, I don't know how to help him. I'm totally a mess. And he is being abused by his mother, which I didn't know. He ends up getting taken out of his home.

I was made the guardian to help him into the court system and all that. I mean, like this whole thing. And he gets put in foster care, gets moved farther and farther away over a couple of years and ends up getting moved so far away, I lose contact with him. And I've tried to get in contact with him. I've reached out a couple of times and just haven't been able to. But, you know, you can find enough online to know he's been in trouble with the law and all that. So I'm like, I really fucking failed this kid. And flash forward 15 years later, and I've got a thousand kids now. So I have 3000 employees, about a thousand of them grew up hard, like Rashawn, like hard. And I'm hearing stories like one guy has, in fact, this kid better fucking be here

in this house right now, works out of the house, is an independent contractor, doesn't work for us, works for other people, but worked for me at Quest and is one of the most extraordinary come up stories fucking ever. And just because I want to make sure

that this kid goes somewhere in his life, I'm like, work out of the house, work out of impact theory. I just want people to be around other people because this fucking team is so diehard, you can't imagine. So just being around that mentality, I think is super important. So anyway, I'm at Quest. I hear his story. His sister shot to death in the heart with an AK-47 in his front yard. His best friend laid under a car hiding while his friend was about eight inches

from his face, bleeding to death from a gunshot wound at point blank range to the stomach with a shotgun, fucking holding his intestines and bleeds out. He's telling me this story. Other guys, crazy fucking stories of either having to kill or having friends killed. I'm just like crazy shit. You can't believe it's happening. Like this is all I'm building this billion dollar business, right? This crazy rich guy. And the people that I'm working with are these extraordinary people, but their lives are on a different track than mine man And but i'm beginning to realize i'm not smarter than they are but I have a way better operating system And i'm like well if it's just the software I can give them the software

So I get fucking obsessed with this and we're building a protein bar company has nothing to do with all this mindset shit And I start getting obsessed with I I can teach this shit. Like I can really give you all the things that I had to do to my mindset. And I begin realizing it's working, but only for 2%. So this kid Carlitos, who now works out of the house here, who went from a minimum wage line worker to starting his own technology company, fucking crazy. He'd never owned a computer before in his life. And like, I teach him all the mindset shit and he does it. This other guy who took the job at Quest because he wanted a front for his drug money because he was a successful drug dealer, but his probation officer would never believe that he was making money unless he could

show it, but then gets caught up in the mindset, stops drug dealing. And it's like, fuck, this is real. This guy's teaching me like how to climb up goes from again, minimum wage line worker to one of the executives on the line. It was just fucking crazy, these incredible stories. But 98% of people, they encounter the mindset and they do fuck all with it. And I'm like, oh man, like I'm not okay. Like some people are like, as long as I help one person, my life is okay. You will never fucking hear me say that. If on my deathbed, I realized I only helped one person, I'll be like, my life was a catastrophic fucking failure. I did not figure this shit out. So I'm about scale, motherfucker. So I'm like, all right, I'm not okay with the 2%. I want to help the 98%. How the fuck do I help the 98%? And so I get obsessed with,

you have to be able to impact culture. Like that's it. Because the way that people's mindset is formed, which that's what this game is, the way their mindset is formed is formed by the zip code they grow up in. You can do some simple, quick research to find out how much your zip code impacts your future success because of how it impacts your mindset. That shit terrifies me. Who your parents are, because the only way you're going to escape that is if you have some rad fucking parents who give you an empowering mindset, believe in you, push you, educate you, all that shit. Or three, what does society think is cool? Because it's going to influence how we think. And so I thought, all right, I can influence? Because it's going to influence how we think.

And so I thought, all right, I can't influence your zip code. I can't influence your parents, but I can fucking influence pop culture. How? Through music or narrative. It's the only ways to influence pop culture. I'm not good at music, so that's out. That leaves the very thing that has been like the core love of my life, which is storytelling. So I know, I recognize just as a marketer, we're living in this unique time where if I'm willing to step in front of the camera,

which I wasn't for years, I had my chief marketing officer was like, dude, you understood social media before anybody else did, but you don't understand where it's going now. This it's now called influencers. It was not back then, but he was like, you need to fucking step out front. And I was like, absolutely not. I have no interest in that. I said no for three fucking years until I realized he's actually right. And now I'm, I'm really late to the game, but I'm going to step out and I'm going to create marketing for my studio by giving away content that is value add. I am literally trying to give away every fucking secret that I have. And that's going to allow me to build basically a marketing channel

for the film, the TV, and the comic books that we're creating to try to influence pop culture. And look, if people want to know why I say we're modeling ourselves after Disney, it's for two reasons. One, and most importantly, is credible historians will tell you that Disney's Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf was part of how the US got out of the Great Depression because people began singing the song that they put in the cartoon, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf became, everybody understood what you were really talking about was the Great Depression. And by flipping it, by being able to reframe it and say, I'm not afraid of this thing, they began to change the cultural narrative, which allowed them to then begin to get out of it.

That's how you influence pop culture. And then you need only look at when you stack the Marvel Cinematic Universe compared to every other franchise in fucking history, it towers over everything. It is insane. Now, the problem is they don't marry it to takeaways that you can put in your own life. But if they did, and the superheroes never were given powers, they had to earn those powers. And there was a whole ethos behind it. And you could read a comic book, go see a movie, and then fucking tune into impact theory. And I can tell you how you use that shit in your real fucking life. And then it works because it has to be real. Now you've got this thing. It's multi-generational. It's a 70 year plan. It will not work with any one person. This is about cultural impact. It's about getting culture to think about things differently, to make empowerment cool, to make it just fucking,

that you can't get to 15 without hearing about a growth mindset. You can't get to 15 without realizing that the brain is plastic and that you can grow and get better. And it doesn't matter if you think you're a moron now, who you are today is irrelevant. Only matters who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. And that that is just so deeply infused in culture that they all have those little things that they can repeat in their head. Like that's the mission. But it all started with Rashaan. It started with failing that fucking kid and realizing that I had a real opportunity to make a difference in his life and I couldn't. And like that shit haunts me. And there's this Mother Teresa quote, many people or no one will act for the many, but people will act for the one. Right. And so I think about Rashawn. I think about Carlitos,

who's the kid that's working out of the house. Now I think about a lot of people back at quest that are extraordinary fucking humans that won't do anything with their lives because they don't believe they can. Damn. That was awesome. I don't want to take up any more of your time. I think that was awesome. And that leaves us with plenty more to talk about when we meet again in the future. Hopefully we'll get you up to Sacramento sometime, get you training, get you lifting some weights up there because I'd love to show you some stuff and share some more great content with you. But it was awesome. It was a pleasure having you on. We've been following as the world is following what you guys are doing here at Impact Theory.

Unbelievable. Thank you for inviting us into your home slash studio. It's been a fantastic day. We've had a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Awesome, man. Thanks for having me. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later.