The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 104: Tom Bilyeu: How To Grow Your Business 57,000% In 3 Years

Episode Date: March 7, 2016

Episode 104: Tom Bilyeu: How To Grow Your Business 57,000% In 3 Years Tom Bilyeu is an incredible leader… I really appreciate that he’s actively seeking out opportunities to learn and grow.  His company has had massive amounts of success in an extremely short period of time.  They’ve grown 57,000 % in the last three years.  Tom has an energy and excitement in his voice that moves and empowers people. Tom Bilyeu is the Co-Founder/President of Quest Nutrition.  Quest is number 2 on the list of Inc.’s 500 Fastest Growing Companies.  Tom is also the Host Inside Quest – An incredible show he publishes on YouTube where he speaks with some of the greatest leaders in the world… People who are titans of their industry like, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Rainn Wilson, Robert Greene, Lewis Howes, and more… Episode 104: Tom Bilyeu: How To Grow Your Business 57,000% In 3 Years Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show “When You Have A Growth Mindset, Those Inadequacies Are Opportunities” In This Episode, You Will Learn: Being real… Being able to see where you’re deficient and not let that be a knock on your self-esteem leads to sustained excellence The importance of having a growth mindset Understanding your strengths as well as turning your deficiencies into strengths Build a business on a foundation that leads to fulfillment. “The harder you chase the money the less likely you are to get it.” Kai Whiting is doing it right – Intellectually and emotionally generous Key characteristics you must possess to work at Quest Nutrition Grand ambition – Understand the big challenges and embrace them DRIVE – Be an executor not just a dreamer Compassion – Be great but want to win as a team Understand that 15%-20% of time you’ll get it wrong 57,000% growth in 3 years!  How? Marketing by giving product away Being a learning leader means you’re always hungry to learn… Being out front.  Willing to do whatever is asked of you “We Boot-Strapped A Manufacturing Business To $1 Billion In 5 Years.  It’s Crazy” Continue Learning: Go To: questnutrition.com Follow Tom on Twitter: @TomBilyeu Watch: Inside Quest To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 001: How To Become A Master Connector W/ Jayson Gaignard From MasterMind Talks Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 082: Dan Pink – The Science of Motivation, Legendary Writer & Ted Talk Episode 086: Seth Godin – How To Become Indispensable & Build Your Tribe Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Tom Bilyeu on the show, please don’t hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell Bio Tom Bilyeu is the Co-Founder/President of Quest Nutrition.  Quest is number 2 on the list of Inc.’s 500 Fastest Growing Companies.  Tom is also the Host Inside Quest – An incredible show he publishes on YouTube where he speaks with some of the greatest leaders in the world… People who are titans of their industry like, Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Rainn Wilson, Robert Greene, Lewis Howes, and more…

If they say, even though this is a weakness, even though this is something I am innately terrible at, and on top of that, I really don't like it. But if I put the time into it to feed my greater goal of being a professional athlete, it can pay off. Now, that person, that person is unstoppable. They have fed their innate strengths. They've gotten to really enjoy the beauty of things that come more easily that you just feel sort of in rhythm with. But they've also not been afraid to grind it out and just do the hard, badass work of getting something done, even when it's not your core strength.

That person accomplishes more than the person who either just invest in strengths or just invest in shoring up weaknesses. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, before we get to this great conversation, I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Mizan and Maine.

You'll probably remember from episode 64, I spoke with a CEO of Mizna and Maine, Kevin Lavelle. And, you know, we promised to continue that dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have, and we formed a partnership. And Kevin and his great companies and support and people that he works with have agreed to sponsor my podcast. But for me, I'm very picky when it comes to this. I only wanted to work with people who I truly believed in their products. So this is not just a sponsor to me. This is an endorsement.

I absolutely believe in everything that Kevin and his company stands for. I love who they partner with, whether it's Tony Shea's Vegas Tech Fund or the Loan Survivor, Marcus LaTrell's Fund, or Chris Kyle Frog Foundation. I love that. But I also most importantly love the product. their shirts are my absolute favorite shirts. They feel very similar to the clothes that I wear when I go and work out. I didn't really believe that was possible until I tried one.

But the four-way stretch fabric is literally like nothing I've ever felt before. And so originally I bought one just to try them out to see if this is really true. A button-down shirt that looks great with a suit or in business casual. I'm like, there's no way this thing is going to feel like people tell me it will. Well, it felt even better than that. And so after I bought that first shirt, I ended up buying six more shirts and two Henleys. And so we've set up a deal for you guys to go to Ryan. com.

So that's Ryan. com. Pick your favorite shirts. I love the button downs. You'll see on that site my favorite shirts. And when you're checking out, use the code Ryan Hawk to get free shipping if you're only buying one shirt. If you happen to want to buy three button downs like I've done a couple of.

times, use the code Ryan Hawk 3 and you'll get $50 off. Again, I love Miz and Maine. I love everything they stand for and I promise when you try the search, you will too. Hey and welcome to the Learning Leader show. I am Ryan Hawk thrilled with tonight's featured leader. It's Tom Bill You. Tom is the co-founder and president of Quest Nutrition. They are number two on Inc's 500 fastest growing companies list. Get this. They've grown 57,000 percent in three years. Just incredible growth. Tom's also part of the Unicorn Club. That is, he's the president of a startup that's valued over $1 billion. In our conversation tonight, we talked about the three qualities you must possess in order to work at Quest Nutrition, how Tom is able to find and ensure that you

he's not fooled in the interview process. And then specifics around how they bootstrapped a manufacturing business to $1 billion in just five years. A crazy story that Tom talks about. And then the story about how we were connected. Kai Whitting, a PhD student from Lisbon, Portugal, is a fan of the Learning Leader show and as a big fan of Tom Bill You. He realized we were like-minded individuals and that Tom would be a great fit for the show.

And he connected Tom, Ryan Holiday, and me on tour. Twitter. We followed up via email and what do you know less than a week later. We're recording this episode together. I highlight that story to let you know that all of you listening are able to do that. All of you can make introductions via social media or our websites. If you find someone who's like-minded to what this show is all about, please let's make an introduction and make it happen. I love it when fans do that. So thank you so much, Kai. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Tom Bill You. Tom, so pumped to have you here, man.

I've been really looking forward to this conversation with you on the Learning Leader Show. So to get us kicked off, we've got a quick question around sustained excellence. And you have spent time around a lot of those types of leaders. You obviously are one of those yourself. I love to get from you some of the common characteristics you found in people who have sustained excellence over extended periods of time. Awesome, man. Well, before I answered that, let me just thank you for having me on the podcast. I think you've got a great podcast. I love the story behind why you started it, which I'm sure your audience knows very, very well. But I was certainly moved by that and your sincere quest to learn from other people I share in such massive magnitude that, yeah, I totally get it. I think that we're quite like-minded. So it's really exciting to be here. to answer your specific question, how real do you want to be?

How real? I want it to be as real as humanly possible. All right. So here's the truth. I get asked that question a lot, and I've been asked that on different podcasts. And one thing that drives me crazy when I research people that are going to be on my show is that they give the same interview over and over and over. And I totally understand that.

Like, I get how that happens. You get asked the same questions. and you've got a way that you're really used to saying it. But the truth is, in any one question you're asked, there's so much nuance. So I'm going to go into a little bit of nuance. What I'm about to say that needs to be taken in the grander context of the full-blown nuance of things that have already been said on your show. So I've listened to your show.

I think a lot of great answers have been given. So this is meant to supplement those. One thing that I don't hear people talk about very often, they're going to talk about hard work, discipline, positive attitude, and all of those are 100% true. But one thing that I've learned to leverage in my own life, and I think is a really underused ability, is being able to look at the areas that you're deficient in, being able to say, I'm completely unsatisfied with this part of my skill set, and doing so without letting that be a knock on your self-esteem, right? Most people, when they focus on the negative, they focus on the things that they think are inadequate about themselves, they pass judgment on themselves. And they say, oh, man, I'm bad because of X, Y, Z. I'm not good at this. But if you've read Carol Dwex, amazing book, which I'm sure you have, mindset, you know, you just slap on the word yet to the end of that. And suddenly it can become very empowering. But I would be lying if I said that part of what allowed me to get where I am today was my willingness to look at the things that I was just out and out inadequate.

at. And to, you know, I tell people, one of the things that I actually build my self-esteem around is my very willingness to look at the areas in which I'm inadequate. And I judge that inadequacy, by the way, against I'm trying to get to a goal. Does my current skill set allow me to get to that goal yet? If it does, then I'm not inadequate. If it doesn't, then I am. That doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Doesn't mean I'm lesser in any way, shape, or form because I have a growth mindset. I just know that there's a chasm that I have to cross between who I am today and who I need to become in order to accomplish that goal. Now, when I look at the people who've sustained excellence over a long period of time, they share that, that willing, that almost drive

to want to like ring every bit of opportunity out of themselves. And one of the things that fuels that is a willingness to look at it and say, I'm inadequate and that bothers me. And I want to get great, but without passing judgment on themselves. I love, I, I knew. I knew. I knew. I You had a feeling, Tom, you would put so much thought. And I really appreciate, you put so much prep into everything you do, I can tell, including a podcast that you're coming on like this. So I really appreciate that. Can you share an example of some of things that maybe in the past you felt were inadequacies

and now have potentially developed into strengths for you? Yeah, sure. So I'll give you two, one in business and then one in my personal fun life. In business, as we've grown, the three of us have bootstrapped everything. So in the beginning, we weren't able to bring people on that knew already that job. So our last company before Quest was a technology company, which first of all, I didn't know anything meaningful about technology. I was coming off of being a teacher of film.

So it went from teaching film to running a tech company, which I knew nothing about. And then transitioning into Quest where I had finally gotten my feet under me as a an entrepreneur, but I didn't know how to manufacture food. So it was literally every day coming in trying to make these bars. I knew nothing about what I was doing. I didn't know how to fix equipment. I didn't know how things should look when they're running right. And instead, and we couldn't hire somebody, right? There's plenty of people that have that knowledge. We just, because we were bootstrapping, we couldn't afford to go out and pay for that expertise. So we had to gain that expertise. So I was looking every day at I have this many bars that I want to

produce in a given period of time, and I'm falling short of that. So I know by definition, I'm inadequate somewhere, and it was about identifying those areas where I wasn't adequate from learning how to fix some of the equipment myself, which is something that I had, like my dad is obsessed with cars, and I always felt bad as a kid because I was not, and in any way, shape, or form I'm interested in learning how to fix things. And then here, you know, I am 30 years later, I guess maybe not quite that much, 25 years later, certainly. My livelihood depends now in my ability to learn how to fix this stuff. So not only did I have to kick myself in the ass for not having paid attention as a kid when my dad was desperately trying to teach me this stuff,

but now I had to say, cool, I don't know this. I'm not good at it. That bothers me. I want to get good at it. What do I have to do to double down and really figure this stuff out? And so I'm by no means in my mechanic extraordinaire, but sat with my business partner who is very gifted at that and tried to be as helpful and useful to him so that I could carry those skills when he wasn't there. And that ended up being a lot of fun for me to gain what was admittedly a very base level of understanding with that stuff. But, you know, when you have a growth mindset, those inadequacies are opportunities. And that's really how I see it. So I don't spend a lot of time in the zone of, oh, man, I'm bummed out that I'm not good at this. And this makes me look bad. And it

really did make me look bad. Like when I was first starting to try and fix the equipment, I just looked like a buffoon, didn't know what I was doing. I don't know if I was putting something back together or breaking it apart. But a willingness to never be afraid to look stupid because I know I'm going to get it. I'm going to learn this thing. And everybody around me that's afraid that looks stupid, they're never going to have this skill sets. Well, I might not have it today. I'm going to have it tomorrow. That's super empowering because you can apply it to different things. So that's one way. And our company, you know, obviously ends up growing as a result of that. And so those garnering those real skills have real application. Then on the other side of my life,

when I'm at home and I'm doing things that are purely pleasure-based, and I'm not trying to derive any major life-altering growth out of it. But even video games, which I enjoy very much. You know, I play first-person shooters. Now, everything about my physiology, my biology, I'm naturally just terrible at them. So my reflexes are way too slow, having to process all that data of all this stuff coming at me. I can't process data that quickly.

So you put my wife, who has no interest in playing first-person shooters, and me next to each other on day one of a game, she will outperform me because she can process a ton of data. She's got amazing hand-eye coordination things that I'm not necessarily good at. But I am so enjoy getting good at it, like going in and saying, okay, I'm going to practice this. And the great thing, I'm going to write an article about this one day, what I learned playing first-person shooters, because it is so binary. What you're doing, what you're doing either works and you're alive or what you're doing doesn't work and you're dead, right? It's this beautiful thing where you can die over and over and over without any real life consequences.

It's pretty powerful and it gives you an opportunity to have a hypothesis. I think this is the skill that I lack. Then get that skill, you know, acquire, practice, work at it until you have it and then see, did I actually advance or not? It's really, really fun. So those are two areas where I have just very visibly fallen on my face over and over. But over time, gotten so much better that, you know, I'm unrecognizable even a few months down the road in terms of skill set. I love the example and I was not expecting it I didn't think a video game was coming and I'd love it

I got a question that I wasn't going to go here but because it came up so I obviously love Carol Dweck and the growth mindset and her phenomenal book and all of her work I think people who listen know I've brought her up so many times the other the other movement I guess could but that that might be out there that I've read a lot about as well is around strength finder

and focusing on specifically what you're really good at and doubling and tripling down on that. What do you think about that in relation to what we were just saying? You talk about sustained excellence and people understanding where their deficiencies lie and to try to turn those, look at those opportunities and turn them into strengths versus the other school of thought that is out there, out and about right now when it comes to, I think you do these 360s or all these types of HR type of test where people say find your strengths and focus on those. And I get it. I've studied that.

I understand that as well. What do you think about those two different types of thought processes around how to or where to focus your time and effort? I'll answer it with something that I think will really resonate with you. So you play football, obviously go on to playing in the pros. and I've got to believe that what drew you in the beginning was that you had early success, right? You were good at it. It gave you confidence. You went out on the field and you didn't have to deal with emotionally overcoming the difficulty of really being bad at something

and maybe having people ridicule you or make fun of you, right? You didn't have to deal with that. I'm possibly making this statistic up, but I read something like two-thirds of all professional athletes were the oldest in their class. Now, I think the reason for that is they're bigger, stronger, more emotionally developed. So it makes sense that they would go on and they would have early victories. And those early victories gave them confidence and people cheering them on or wanting them on their team. Like, that feels so good, you're going to move towards that.

So to live a life where you don't identify your strengths and get to really enjoy what that means, you know, it's an area where you're going to have some easier wins. It's an area where any effort you do put into it is magnified. super powerful. It's a beautiful part of the human experience. I wouldn't want for anybody not to experience that. And then I also think that in terms of trying to get really large success, if you're not leveraging those things, you just have an easier time with a more innate gift, or you just have been training at it longer than somebody else to not leverage that, I think, would handicap you. So I think that's absolutely critical. Everyone should know what their strengths are.

Everyone should push their strengths and really try to magnify them and turn them into something awesome. But just like when you're on a football field, you have a very specific goal, right? I want to play at a professional level. Let's say that was your goal. If that's true, you're going to leverage the things that you're good at, but you're also going to find to get to that level, you've got to identify the places where you're not good. They are absolutely not strengths, and you're going to have to get good. So let's say you've got a football player. He's brilliant physically.

Like, man, he just gets it. he can read the field, his body will withstand hard cutting, so he can, you know, jag, left, jag, right, whatever the case needs to be. And you put that all together and people just say, wow, that person is athletic. Now, he may not be good at memorizing plays or understanding the logic of the plays or anticipating how the defense will respond to the plays. So that person has to spend a ton of time doing something they may absolutely hate sitting down, watching the tape, watching the tape, watching the tape, and really figuring it out. But if they do, that if they say, even though this is a weakness, even though this is something I am innately

terrible at, and on top of that, I really don't like it. But if I put the time into it to feed my greater goal of being a professional athlete, it can pay off. Now that person, that person is unstoppable. They have fed their innate strengths. They've gotten to really enjoy the beauty of things that come more easily that you just feel sort of in rhythm with. But they've also not been afraid to grind it out and just do the hard, badass work of getting

something done even when it's not your core strength. That person accomplishes more than the person who either just invest in strengths or just invest in shoring up weaknesses. I love it, man. So good. Tom, let's dive into you. There's so much here about you, your background, certainly your company, Quest, Nutrition. I'm a big fan of your story as well as obviously, I mean, at a practical level of your products that you produce. So I love for you now to take a few. Take a few minutes here and walk us through a little bit about your background and why you started Quest Nutrition, which is the second fastest growing private company in America. That was in 2014. So we got there's some time between then and now. I want to hear some updates as well as really

some of the good things that have happened along the way, but almost maybe more importantly, some of the tough moments that you've had to deal with through this journey of starting your own company. Yeah, so the part of my story that's most relevant to Y Quest is I grew up in a morbidly obese family. And they say that you can't be prejudiced against somebody that you love. And I think that's so true. And when I was 12 years old, my uncle ate himself to death. And that was really scary and heartbreaking to watch. And it's left me with this lasting impression of people that I love are going to die too soon because essentially a metabolic disease and really wanting to touch the lives of those people closest to me do something incredibly powerful for people that I love.

And look, I was well aware that there's also a big business opportunity because, you know, at this point, there's hundreds of millions, maybe a billion people or more that are touched by metabolic disease in one way or another. So it was this perfect collision of something where I thought, yeah, there's a big business opportunity. There's a real opportunity to solve a truly grand challenge. And then on top of that, if I pull that all off, I'm helping these people that I love. And those are the ones that I think about every day. Those are the ones that I fight for. Those are the ones when there's a hard business decision to be made between what's going to be more profitable say and what is better for the

customer, where it's so easy for me to do what's better for the customer because the customer is a very real group of people that I see all the time that I just have, you know, crazy amounts of love for. And So that really makes it easy. Struggles that we've had, honestly, the struggles in quest have been pretty minimal. And the reason that the struggles and quest have been minimal is because we built this company on a foundation of things that we knew would lead to at least one thing. And that was fulfillment, right? So every other point in my life, the companies that I had done before I met my partners and then certainly with my partners, they were companies designed to make us rich. And like that sounds as gross to me as I'm sure it does to everybody else.

But at the time, like that did not at all seem problematic to me. I didn't want to swim in my money like Scrooge McDuck. I just knew money is a great facilitator, right? That is still true. Bill Gates is going to cure malaria and is going to do it because he has access to resources. But there's something so weird about the human condition where the harder you chase money, the less likely you are to get it. And then when you tap into something that is core to who you are as a human being, you believe in it, you're willing to fight for it, it's just this incredibly important thing in your life.

Then all of a sudden, because you're focused on something else, you're focused on connection, you're focused on giving back, you're focused on learning and growing as an individual, then all of a sudden, if you have the business acumen, you can really turn it into something special. And what my partners and I have done with Quest is crazy. Like even from the inside, it just seems crazy, right? So we bootstrapped a manufacturing business, which is already madness, from nothing to over a billion dollars in corporate value in five years. Like it's literally crazy. It's crazy. And the irony of it all is that we did it by saying,

I no longer care about pursuing money. I'm not going to do that again. I did that for almost a decade in our last company. I came up with a lot of money and absolutely emotionally bankrupt. And that does not make any sense. Like, I want to love what I do every day. I want to believe in what I do every day. So we said, all right, cool.

Let's sell this technology company. Let's do something we love. Let's lead with passion. And let's answer one question. What could we do that we would love every day even if we were failing? And it was the even if we were failing part that made it so powerful. Because then you're not focused on anything other than, like, what's going to fulfill me, right?

What's going to make me feel fulfilled? And it certainly isn't going to be money. And look, money is part of the plan for sure because money puts you in the driver's seat. It allows you to execute on things. And it's just incredibly, incredibly powerful. And you will never hear me say that money is not a meaningful thing that people need to really focus on and figure out because that's the thing that's going to let you do some of the great things that you want.

But if you don't have a mission, if you don't have a vision for what you're trying to do with that money, then the money becomes intrinsic, right? It's all of a sudden it just is its own thing. And once it's no longer a facilitator, that's when money gets weird. When money is meant to be hoarded, kept, held on to, not enjoyed, that's where it gets that sort of dark cloud over it that people think of. But when money is the driving engine of social change or changing your life or helping your family or whatever the cave, whatever it is that you value that you want to do that's going

to require resources. When it becomes that, then it's super, super powerful. Incredible story. And I want to, I think sometimes it's good to share stories of how people meet. And so in this case, I want to do it. And then I got a follow-up question to it. But so there's a big fan of yours, who happens to be a big fan of my show as well. His name is Kai Whitting. He lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Oh, I know Kai well. Yeah. And so Kai, you know, knows my work, knows your work. And also as a fan of Ryan Holiday, he sends a tweet to you, me, and Ryan Holiday.

He says, Tom, you know, because Ryan was a previous guest to my show and he was, you know, incredible. He crushed it. He's great. We still talk regularly. And Kai said, hey, Tom, you and you and Ryan got to hook up and do this thing. And so to me, it's cool how a guy in Lisbon, Portugal, here I am in Dayton, Ohio, and I know you're out west. in California and Kaiser in Portugal and Ryan Holiday in Austin. And this one guy connects us and we're like, boom, let's do this thing.

We're emailing back and forth and then here we are today. It's the power of communication and the power of, I think, movements that happen and how it can empower and inspire people is the stuff I love. I think it is the coolest part about doing this, man. And it's neat how I encourage people to do more. more of that type of work. If certain people inspire and empower you to do big things, connect connect them with others who do that.

Because like this is me, I know Tom, you and I feel like we're on the same page, this run the same speed, you know, even before we were recording it, just like this thing just clicks, man. And so it's really cool to me to see how that's the way I believe the world really works when relationships are built out of a subset of people who just get excited and empowered and inspired around similar topics. I totally agree. I have a question.

So how did you connect with Kai? Like that dude is on another plane. What's been your relationship with him so far? Just Twitter. He just started tweeting at me. And then he started emailing me from my website. And we email back and forth now about ideas. And he's trying to get his own thing started.

And he's a PhD student in Portugal. And he's really smart guy. And really, he just, I think, found me on Twitter. as a listener of the show, and then he's always emailing me and tweeting ideas, and I'm like, hey, this is great. I mean, he's a true fan, and it's nice to have those. Yeah, and I want to take a second and just recognize everybody watching, listening to your show or my show, for that matter. Man, Kai is doing it right and represents a lot of the people out there where Kai is intellectually and emotionally generous, right? You talk about him sending you ideas, tweeting you, I'm sure he gives you

feedback on the episodes, guest ideas connecting us together. I mean, that, if anybody out there is listening and thinking, I'm stuck in some random corner of the world and I really want to get connected to other people and I want to start a movement or a company or whatever it is that you want to do, dude, Kai is the prototype. He assesses the content that he's taking in. He understands He stands it. He lets it affect him, right? And that's something that a lot of people don't do. They're not open to being changed. Like, Kai's open to being changed. And the way that he got my attention was he wrote this really long email. I mean, it was like, it should have been broken into chapters. The email was so long. And he just detailed how the sort of core shows that I had put out, the ones that really impacted his life, exactly how they impacted his life and what he was doing as a result of it. And I was like, like, dude, this guy gets it. Like, he understands why we're doing these shows, right? Like, the goal is to help other people.

The goal is to give back and the goal is to meet amazing people that inspire us and we learn from. And that's, you know, a beautiful part of this whole podcasting community. And Kai understood that and went right for it with me, right? He knew how to get in. And so if you're out there in some random corner of the world, it doesn't matter. If you're really connecting with the content, if you're. if you find a way to bring value to the person

who's attention you're trying to get, you will get their attention, right? We're all hungry for that connection. We're all hungry for that real moment where something happens and you go, I see you, Kai, right? Like, I get you, man. Like, he's not, like, he transcended being just a follower

and became somebody who I can actually identify with and think that you, theory of mind, right? I can put myself into Kai's shoes now because he just shares so much. much. He's so open, so thoughtful. But anyway, moral of that story is deliver value, right? People hit me up for a job all the time and they do it like, hey, I want to work for you. Okay, like I get where you're going. But if you deliver value, it doesn't need to be me. It could be whatever organization, decide what company it is if you want to work there.

And deliver value to those people long before you even get an interview. Because if you can pull that off, if you can show people that you can deliver value even over Twitter from whatever, 3,000 miles, like, that's when people really stand up and take note. Everyone here in the Inside Quest community, everyone knows Kai. Everyone read that email that he sent. I mean, look, we're all humans at the end of the day, and when you understand what's going to resonate with people, go for it. That's so underutilized. People, I forget who said this was so true.

People do the minimum effort and expect the maximum result. It just never works that way. Well, and it is a good answer to, I'm very fortunate to get notes like that from college kids and they ask, how can I be a giver? How can I find ways to give back or to help when people help me out? And I think without any money or even a ton of connections, you can find creative ways to connect people. And if you are a connector connecting like-minded people, that is such a powerful thing to do. And it just takes a little bit of creativity, a little bit of thought. maybe using some social media, finding people's websites, email addresses, and connect people.

And all of a sudden, you are a guy. You're one of those people who is known as a connector. And there's a lot of, I think, really impressive things that can get going in your life if you're one of those types of people to connect others. And so you mentioned it briefly, Tom, about people hitting you up for jobs. And I'm curious about to dig in more as you're leading this company. I'm reading a lot about this now in a number of different books around your philosophy of hiring, whether it's a business partner, someone that's going to work immediately beside you, or anyone that's going to work at Quest Nutrition. What are the few or the primary things that these people must have in order to work with you guys? There's three.

So the first one is grand ambition. And I use the word grand on purpose. First of all, I'm going to seem crazy to you if you don't have. grand ambition. Like if you can't see that there's a certain subset of human beings, they are reaching for the moon. Like they want to do something that gets them excited. And the grandeur of the challenge, the grand notion of being able to make radical change on a global scale, like there are just certain people that that resonates with. Now, you don't have to want to be the one out front. Not everybody he does. But if you like to be a part of a team of people who dare to dream that big,

like that says something about you. And so we're trying to collect those people. So that's number one. You've got to have grand ambition. Number two, though, is you've got to have drive. Because the only thing that drives me crazy about people with grand ambition is when they're an empty dreamer. And the word, you know, if somebody says, I'm a dreamer, like I immediately get skeptical and I don't I don't even like to say that about myself I'm an executor that's what I like to think of right I'm going to execute on my plan I'm going to figure out what skills stand between me and who I need to be to accomplish what I want to accomplish and I'm going to religiously go about acquiring those skills on a day-to-day basis I'm going to do that sloppy ugly in the mud practice to get better

I'm going to fall in my face I'm going to ask other people for help I'm going to learn the things that I need to learn, which means going back to the very first question you asked me, that I'm going to have to be honest and ruthless in my self-assessment without damaging my self-esteem. That's very important, which I encourage everyone to get very good at looking at where you're inadequate and say, I am an amazing human being because I'm willing to look at the things that I'm currently inadequate at, because that's just a skill set question, versus looking at it and feeling bad about yourself. But so that, that's really the second thing is if you don't have that drive to actually accomplish your grand ambition, it's not going to work here. And then the third thing,

and this is the most maybe not strange, it's the unique piece that makes us quest. So usually when you find ambition and drive together, you find people who are hyper competitive, who really buy into that sort of doggy dog thing. Now, for me, and this, I'm not. saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying it is the way that I'm wired. I don't go in for that. So for me, the third thing I look for is compassion. I want to win. I want to be number one. I don't just want to be the best. I want to be the greatest of all time. But at the same time, I want to win as a team. Like, I want my individual performance to be as a part of a collective and part of a collective where I actually want to see the other people on my team shine. I want to

see them do well. Now, for them to do well, I've got to know when to take a back. backseat, right? If we're all just competing for the spotlight, it's never going to work. So when you put those three things together, somebody who has grand ambition, they really want to make lasting and radical change on a massive scale. They've got the drive to actually see that through, to get the skills, to persevere when it gets hard, and it will get hard. And then they've got compassion, and they actually want to see their teammates win, and they want to cheer their teammates on. and when their teammate has a great idea, they will tell them. Like, that kind of environment is intoxicating.

And that's what I see here. And we are no way are we perfect. And I always tell people for some percentage of the employees, this is the best thing that ever happened to them. And for another percentage, it's the worst. And it really comes down to whether you've got ambition, drive, and compassion. If you have those three things, honestly, and you're not just saying it because you desperately want to fit in.

But if you actually have that at the core of your being, you'll love it here. You'll kill it. And if you don't, it just won't be fun because to really accomplish the things that we want to accomplish, we all have to hold each other to a standard. We all have to push. We all have to grow. We have to get better. We have to look at where we're weak and work on getting stronger.

That's just the truth of it. How do you, you know, I think people know you well when they probably come to interview for a job there, not necessarily they're all interviewing with you. But let's say you are the one interviewing them. How do you ensure you're not being fooled in an interview when somebody's trying to. come work at Quest. They're really excited, but they know that your three main keys. And so they're kind of planned for that, but maybe they don't truly have it. What's your, do you have a specific process in place to, to, it's impossible to ensure anything when it comes to the interview process. But I'm curious about that, the people that maybe you say, hey, I don't really feel this, I'm not feeling.

Is it a gut feeling or is there a specific process in place? It ultimately does come down to a gut feeling. But I will say, don't trust your gut unless you've trained your gut. And I've spent at this point close to 20 years training myself through very active processes from reading books on the subject to just the sheer volume of people that I've interviewed to understand the nuances of a gut feel that I have. And then I've had the great fortune of watching it play out right. So I've interviewed over 1,500 people.

everybody that comes in my office I thin slice, right? So I don't know how familiar you are with the lingo around this, but so you're going to thin slice the person, right? And then that's a hypothesis in my opinion. My gut has given me a hypothesis. I like this person.

I don't like this person. I think they're aggressive. I think they're too passive. I think they're just right. Whatever the case may be. It's a hypothesis. I don't know. And then of the people that I've hired,

I've gotten the C, was I right? Like, A, I thought this guy was going to be a performer. There's so much kindness in this woman's eyes. but she's got the drive, like whatever the case may be. I then get to see how it plays out. And 100% I get bamboozled. So there's no question there are time, not 100% of the time, but truly, truly I do get bamboozled.

What's the percentage? I'll be generous to myself and I'll say between 15 and 20% of the time, I get it totally wrong. And I don't think that there's any way to get to 100%, which, man, I'm trying. But I just think that there's, there are oftentimes the person is bamboozling themselves. They think that this is right for them. They think they really do have the drive, but they've never actually been tested. You know what I mean?

Like there could be all kinds of reasons why we both buy into something. They buy into me. I buy into them. And then we both find out that we were wrong. So that definitely happens. But, you know, you at the end of the day, just have to refine that process and try. to get better and better. And there's my interviewing process has gotten very atypical.

And while this is kind of cute and funny, it's actually one of the reasons that I stopped doing so many interviews, but people used to want to come in and sit in on the interview. So all of a sudden I would find, you know, if it was a high level employee looking to be hired, that their immediate boss would come in and then a couple other people that would be on the team all under the guise of, well, no, we just want to spend more time with them and see. and then of course realize they're there for the kind of show. Because what happens in the interview process, I've got to get you somewhere real, right? I've got to get you where you lower your guard.

So the first thing I do is I lower mine. So I'm super honest and 100% authentic. And my thing is, as a company owner, you've got to be focused on arbitrage. And the arbitrage here is intellectual. So you come in on day one, you know what you know. But five years from now, if you're my kind of person, you're going to know, a whole lot more. And it's that arbitrage that I want to take advantage of.

If you're going to be here in this environment, making the mistakes and learning the lessons, the last thing I want to do is lose you to somebody else where you're going to then take that knowledge, those lessons, and go away. So I'm all about finding that path to really authentically each side of the equation answering the question. Could they really love it here? So you grew 57,000% in three years. Just an insane number and even more since those numbers have been published.

Distill that down into how in the world that is possible. I know that probably could be a book's worth of information, but I'm curious. Yeah, I think I can get you something at least approximating directionally correct. So what happened was we built this company. It was born at a misery. So we came at this industry from a totally different perspective. So you had this pent up demand and it was growing every day for a product that was metabolically real. And you had a whole lot of people that knew that protein bars weren't metabolically real,

meaning they had a ton of sugar in them, they had a lot of carbohydrates, they just weren't very good. So even though they had protein in them, people likened it to if you took a Snickers bar and put protein in it. So still not something that you want to eat. So we thought, okay, we're going to create this product. We're going to come out here with the formulation that's never been seen, and we'll meet this pent-up demand. And what we realized was the bar that we wanted to make, just it couldn't be made on the equipment that existed. Now, this is the moment where we made a choice that ends up allowing us to grow the 57,000 percent. What I realized is the formulation wasn't our gift to this industry.

I'm sure a lot of people had formulations just like ours. The problem was when they hit that wall, which was this bar without sugar, cannot be produced on this equipment because soluble corn fiber, excuse me, high fructose corn syrup and other liquid sugars, they give the bar a pliability that otherwise is missing. And once you strip away the high fructose corn syrup from the product, then all the equipment that's been made for the last 50 to 70 years, it no longer functions. And we were swapping out those liquid sugars for a liquid fiber. And the liquid fiber that we use now is soluble corn fiber. So not to be confused,

and that creates a fair amount of confusion in people. But soluble corn fiber, when you use that as a binder, now you have to revolutionize the equipment. So everybody else ran into that problem and they said, okay, I either have to change my formulation or the equipment, I'm going to change my formulation. And they put in the sugars. We hit that wall and said, well, we're not going to compromise nutritionally

because again, I'm thinking about my family, the people that I love, it's got to be metabolically real. So we're going to have to change the equipment. And in that moment, boom, we became a manufacturer. We went out and started making the bars by hand with rolling pins until we realized that we had some sales things were taking off. And then we personally, out of our own pockets, bought the equipment that would allow us to produce at scale. And that really, that moment of being able to look at the decision to change the formula, which would be much easier, or change the equipment, which was so unknown as to how problematic that would become.

And we chose that path because it was about doing something right. Now, you couple that with the timing of social media. and just there was this influx of educated people on nutrition, meeting social media so that we now didn't have to pay for marketing and advertising because there were people there that understood what we had done. They turned the package over, they read the ingredients, and they said, whoa, there's no way that this is going to taste good. And then all we had to do was get them to try it, right?

Because if you read our macronutrient profile, no sugar, gluten-free, low-car, people just thought there's no way you can have 20 grams of protein and none of those other things and it still tastes good. So our marketing was just to give the bar away. And that's when you've got a product that you can build a business just by giving the product away and then supporting your community on social media, you've really got a hit. And so we just focus on value. Let's deliver value. And because we didn't have to pay to market, we could just engage socially, kept our costs down really low, put all of it back into manufacturing, which is where all of our, our big cost pressure was, and boom, you grow.

How much of those, did all that, like, what was the investment needed from you guys to buy all of the equipment needed? We had probably, we had to have been getting close to a million dollars in sales before we bought anything other than rolling pins. Wow. So you were like basically hand-making them your way. I mean, it's truly bootstrapped, hand-making them your way to get enough money to then invest to manufacture them.

Yeah, that's almost true. So what we did was in the beginning, we got to about a million dollars in revenue with about probably $10,000 in investment with the ingredients and the rolling pans and renting the kitchen and all the things that we were doing at the time. And then when we realized, okay, this is real, we've got a business, we've got real sales, we've got repeat customers. Then we took some of the liquidity from selling the previous company and put it into the equipment. So it wasn't just like straight out of our business. our checking account, we did have a liquidation event from our past company. But it wasn't nearly as big as any of us would have wanted. Wow. So what's next for Quest Nutrition? Cancer. So we're looking at what we're doing now. Our mission truly, truly is to end metabolic disease, to not play at ending metabolic disease, but to actually end it. We have a hypothesis right now that cancer at least responds to dietary treatments. And so we want to look at either in conjunction with standard of care or preemptive to needing standard of care, if the cancer's caught early enough, can diet play a role in that. So if you've looked into ketogenic at all,

ketogenic shows a huge amount of promise. About two years ago, we started investing heavily into answering the question as to whether or not ketogenic would play a therapeutic role in cancer. We opened a 55-acre dog ranch in Texas brought dogs that had, unfortunately, had cancer, were put on kill lists in shelters, and we went around and we said, give us these dogs who you're about to euthanize and let us try to save them through a dietary protocol. And we put them on a hyperaggressive ketogenic and therapeutic oxygen treatment where they're in hyperbaric oxygen. And we have had just absolutely astonishing results. We just helped put on a ketogenic conference with some of the greatest minds in ketogenic's and just sharing what they're learning, sharing what we learned

at the pet sanctuary, and now we're moving into looking at the same thing in humans. And it's, you know, from our perspective of doing social good and really wanting to answer these questions, we have already invested millions of dollars into answering this question. And there's no drug at the end of this, right? It's going to come down to either ketogenic helps or it doesn't. And if it does, awesome. And we will share that information freely with people. And any food company willing to get into the ketogenic game can join us. We will certainly be doing an entire line of ketogenic food. But we know we can't solve this problem by ourselves. So kind of like Elon Musk at Tesla, where he's opening up his patents to people because he needs more companies

to get involved. We need more companies to get involved. We need more companies to see ketogenic and other nutritionally based therapeutics, I'm sure, will get more and more research and people will understand better and better how to do this stuff. So maybe more of an answer than you were hoping for, but I'm super, super excited to see the world just getting behind some of these nutritional protocols. I think it's going to be pretty powerful. Grand ambition, drive and compassion, Tom. I love it, man. One more question. When you hear the phrase learning leader, what's the first thing that pops into your mind? Man, honestly, oh, God, this is going to be so wonderfully serving to you, but it's actually true. So after watching your podcast,

I think of you and I think that you really sum it up. You are the consummate learning leader doing these shows and so humbly seeking knowledge. Like, it's so inspiring to me to see you do that. It is certainly the way that I hope I am conducting myself as well. Like to honestly come to somebody and say, you know something that I don't. And it doesn't matter what walk of life. Maybe you're already successful. Maybe you're not.

It doesn't matter. I am just so hungry to learn that I will never be afraid to look stupid because I'm going to acquire that knowledge. But the thing that makes it so much more powerful is to look at the other things you're doing on your website, right? You're building a business on the back of the things that you're learning. So you're showing people, learning isn't this idle pursuit. Learning is something that you do in service of a goal. And when people have that secondary goal, that's when I think people can really see the power of learning in their leadership. And I think when leaders are either empty dreamers or they are just so hell-bent to move forward

that they intentionally or otherwise blind themselves to the things that they don't have right, that you will inevitably fail to lead. And so I firmly believe a learning leader is out front. They're willing to do what they're asking other people to do. And they're showing the most important lesson, which is that you can build your self-esteem around identifying the right answer rather than building your self-esteem around being right. And, dude, you have that in spades. Thank you so much, Tom, for being here.

I really appreciate you what you're doing. It's certainly what you just said. That means a lot to me, especially coming from you. Where would you send everybody to find more about you online? You can find me directly on all the usual suspects, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, where we're super active at at Tom Bill U. My last name is spelled B is in Bravo, I, L-Y-E-U. And then Inside Quest is really the hub of everything.

So if you go to YouTube.com forward slash inside quest, we have a show where we do something similar to what you're doing now, just try to bring on people that inspire and move us and, you know, trying to do the same thing. You've done Man of Bill, just a community of people who are trying to help each other, trying to push each other. So yeah, check us out, contribute.

It would be an honor. Huge, awesome, incredible guests. I highly recommend checking it out. You're a phenomenal interviewer as well, Tom, leading that show. It's great, whether it's Tim Ferriss or, gosh, Tony Robbins. I mean, there's so many great, great people that you've connected with. The list goes on and on. But thank you again, Tom, for being here, man.

And I definitely want to continue this dialogue as we both progress on our journeys, man. Truly would be an honor, dude. I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me on. And thank you for putting out amazing content that will actually move people forward if they're listening and put it into action. All right. Awesome, man.

Thanks so much. You got to. Have a good one. Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.