The Rich Roll Podcast - Tom Bilyeu On Exiting The Matrix, How To Develop ‘Techne’ & Why Mindset Is Everything

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

Like most of us, Tom Bilyeu chased money for nearly a decade only to end up emotionally bankrupt. What this filmmaker and serial entrepreneur came to realize is that the struggle is guaranteed. The money is not. So you damn-well better love the struggle. Acting on this epiphany, Tom and his partners sold their technology company and founded Quest Nutrition — a play premised not on profits, but rather on creating value for people. Ironically, Quest exploded, becoming a billion-dollar business in roughly 5 years, making it the 2nd fastest growing company in North America according to Inc. Magazine. This is all very interesting of course, but it’s Tom’s next chapter that captured my curiosity. After exiting Quest, Tom embarked on a mission to truly empower people — an act of service aimed at eradicating, at scale, what he sees as an epidemic of impoverished mindset. Hence was born Impact Theory — a media company with a juggernaut talk show cornerstone in which he goes deep with all manner of inspiring people dedicated to positive transformation. The aim? To influence the cultural subconscious by building a single-minded content creation machine that makes exactly one type of content — content that empowers people. A long-time fan of Impact Theory, I had the good fortune of being a guest on Tom's show a few months back. I walked away from that experience even more impressed with Tom. Sure, he's über successful. And the legacy he is now building is as masterful as it is laudable. But it's his generosity of spirit, matched with a keen and heartfelt curiosity, that left a lasting impression on me. The more I looked into this man and his mission, the more convinced I became that he would make a great guest for the show. And so here we are. This is an exchange designed to upend your sense of personal possibility. Shock you out of The Matrix. Change the story you tell yourself about yourself. Facilitate greater expression of the true self within. Access reservoirs of hidden potential. And ultimately become the best version of who you really are. And it all begins with changing your mindset. As someone who operates in a similar landscape, I have the upmost respect for Tom's mission and him as a person. Chocked with practical advice and implementable takeaways from the frontlines of business, relationships, personal growth, self-improvement and everything in between, this conversation does not disappoint. To view our conversation on YouTube, visit bit.ly/tombilyeu425 And don't forget we're also now on Spotify! Let the master class begin! Peace + Plants, Rich

So when it came to do I buy an island and retire or do I double down, it came down to what will make me love my life the most. And the reality is that the thing that will make me love my life the most is to do the things that are fulfilling. And I think fulfillment has a very specific universal formula. And that formula is work your ass off to get very good at something that you care deeply about that allows you to serve not only yourself, but other people. That's it. You got to have all of it. That feeling, which will survive through moments of suffering, hardship, loss. That is all that matters. That's when you feel good about yourself. When you're by yourself. That's Tom, Bill, you this week on the Rich Roll podcast.

The Rich Roll podcast. Hey, everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. Welcome or welcome back to the show where I go deep. I go long with the most inspiring paradigm-breaking changemakers across a wide cross-section, a wide spectrum of culture, science, entertainment, sports, medicine, spirituality, basically a whole variety of topics with the idea being to help you help myself continue to grow to evolve to progress towards our most expressed selves as we trudge this road of happy destiny did you guys watch the oscars yeah i know there's something weird about competition when it comes to art and creativity but on some level i I don't care. I still really

love watching the Oscars. I always have. I get into all the pomp and circumstance and oh my God, Free Solo, that's documentary, right? How unbelievably cool was it to see Chai and Jimmy and Alex and Sonny on stage getting their statues from none other than Aquaman, who's quite a climber and athlete in his own right. And it was just a beautiful moment and so, so well-deserved. Is it weird that I feel this odd pride about the whole thing, even though I have absolutely nothing to do with the movie?

I don't know, but just being honest about that. And I gotta say, it is the second year in a row that I've had the best documentary winning filmmakers on the podcast. So if you're new to me or to the show, check them out. Last year, it was Brian Fogel, who is the guy behind the amazing documentary, Icarus, which won the Oscar last year.

It's a must see. And that was a must listen conversation, RRP 328. And then I had Alex Honnold on. That was RRP 351. And then Chai Vazirelli and Jimmy Chin. That was RRP 407. So please check those out if you haven't already. Did I mention Tom Bilyeu is on the show today?

Well, he is, and I, for one, am pretty excited about this. And that's coming up in your ear hole in a couple few, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety, and it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources It's a real problem.

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the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care

tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you.

I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Can I read an email? This is something I like to do from time to time.

I haven't read one in a while, but I got one the other day that really just stopped me in my tracks and I wanted to share it. It's from a guy called Scott Cutshall and it goes like this. Rich, I stumbled across you while deep diving some Lance Armstrong on YouTube,

specifically you interviewing him, which led to now binge watching your channel on YouTube. First of all, thank you for your passion, your channel, your taste in guests, your questions and insights, your presence. Second, my personal story is extraordinarily bizarre and fucked up, but I did want to share it with you as my allotted Warholian 15 minutes of fame has, for the most part, expired on it. But it does apply on occasion and definitely in light of what I'm seeing on your channel. Born in 1963, upper middle class, blonde hair, blue eyes, born to a United States Marine who fought and survived the Korean War, who married his childhood sweetheart and together with the aid of the GI Bill, then went to Syracuse, she working at Westinghouse as a stenographer typist while he barrel-assed his way through to a degree in accounting and business in a touch

under three years before settling into the now dead American dream. Career, stepladder up from lowly accountant to junior to CPA to senior partner, house on the hill with two sons and a new Cadillac every two years. It was all mine for the taking, but it was not meant to be. My brother, five years my senior, was tougher, cut different than his baby brother, me, and somehow knew and understood how to blow off the fights and the squabbles, the slights that wound and stick and fester between two parents that forgot their love for one another. But me, no, I was the sensitive one. I absorbed it all. I tried in vain to break up the adult fights, always to zero avail, and in

the process went from golden child to fat fucking disappointing slob. By 11, I had little boy tits and was sporting a slightly pregnant belly. Gym class was brutal. Dating was asinine. The former jarhead dad was unforgiving, while the loving mom, making up for it all, hugged me while feeding me, always out of dad's eyeshot. Pizzas, subs, chips, ice cream. It was her way of saying, I shot pizzas, subs, chips, ice cream. It was her way of saying, I'm so goddamn sorry you were born sensitive to a fucked up, love-wounded marriage between two parents that lost their way. Besides food, my only solace became music and my bicycle, i.e. freedom and independence. By 15, I had 185 pounds on my five foot nine frame. By high school graduation, I weighed 220 pounds. Lots more horrid shit I can mention,

but I know you're busy and probably get tons of these types of emails, so I'll fast forward. I got pretty good at music while getting a lot worse at figuring out my inner demons, but Rich, I did look out, maybe I am not so evil and worthless after all, with an amazing woman who was blind

enough to look at me from the inside out instead of the opposite and marry me. Together, we made an amazing daughter before I peaked at 501 pounds in 2005 and was given a death sentence by the medical community. Bariatric surgery or death, bro. Then I got angry at all of it the slights the demons the teasing the shit talking the pe teachers way back when that i begged to not put on the skins team that they always somehow did anyway and on death's door had the blissful good fortune of watching a bicyclist commuting to work through our living room window one day. And it all flooded back to me. Possibilities, cycling, being my own captain, running from my parents' anger and arguments, and much more. Fast forward again. Three years later, early 2008, I had lost 332 pounds.

No surgery, no pills, just me and a custom-made bicycle lots of veggies and a metric fuck ton of support from my wife and daughter the press showed up oprah showed up the today show final fast forward and then i'll shut up 11 years later i'm still small i did it i fucking did it i burned out riding though too many miles too many close calls with texting, Starbucks sipping soccer moms and BMWs, SUVs, too much alone time too. So I walk a bunch now and row my ass off to forget all the shit talk from years ago. Your channel makes me feel like there are folks out there,

blood brothers, if you will, that are bound by deep hurts and a slow burning flame that softly says, I might be damaged beyond repair, but I am not entirely fucking broken. For that, I thank you. Namaste, Scott Cutshall. Yeah, man, that's right, Scott. You are not entirely fucking broken, my brother.

And that is the deal. That is the why. That is the way. Because on some level, we're all at least a little bit fucking broken. And recognizing it, acknowledging that is the first step in moving past it, in growing, in evolving. And it's the reason I feel so strongly about sharing these stories, the stories of others who have confronted their own brokenness, their wounds, and their trauma and found a way forward. Because change is possible. And it's really these stories that

light the path. And as I was watching the Oscars last night, I keep reflecting back on my favorite part, which was Rami Malek's acceptance speech. He won Best Actor for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. And he basically said that they made a film about a man who was just so unapologetically himself. And the fact that that film and Rami's performance is so celebrated's proof that we're all longing for authenticity. And I think that's right. I think that's true. And in my own small way, it's really what I'm trying to do here, to tell stories that allow us to seek and find belief in our own wounds, our own innate potential within ourselves.

Change is our mandate. And it's also infectious, and it's contagious. So anyway, thank you, Scott, for reaching out and sharing your story with us today. Okay, Tom Bilyeu. So many of you likely know Tom as the host of Impact Theory, which is this super popular, very inspiring YouTube talk show slash podcast, which I had the good fortune of being a guest on some months back. If you missed that, I'll put a link up to it in the show notes. In any event, I walked away from that experience really impressed with Tom, not just his incredible entrepreneurial success or the incredible show that he's built or his professionalism, but mostly by his warmth and his curiosity, like true, true curiosity.

If you watch his show, I think you know what I mean. And all of this just made me more curious about him. And the more I looked into him, the more interested, impressed, and convinced I became that he would make a great guest for this show. And so, yes, here we are. For those unfamiliar, Tom is a filmmaker and serial entrepreneur, perhaps best known for Quest Nutrition, which is a company that exploded, becoming a billion-dollar business in less than five years, making it the second-fastest-growing company in North America at that time, according

to Inc. Magazine, which is all very interesting, of course, but it's Tom's next chapter that really interests me more and compelled me to get him on the show. Because after exiting Quest, Tom has been on this mission to really and truly empower people, to eradicate what he sees as this mass poverty of mindset, and to do this at scale through this media studio that he's built called Impact Theory. And as somebody who operates in a similar landscape, I got to give it up for Tom. He's really raised the bar and I have the utmost respect for his work and for him as a person. And this conversation, which I think you will very much enjoy, it's chalked with great practical advice and takeaways from the front lines of business, relationships,

mindset, personal growth, self-improvement, and everything in between. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to exit the matrix. So give it up for my man, Tom Bilyeu, and let the masterclass begin. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Yeah, you and me both. Yeah, man. Thanks for making the trip all the way out here. I appreciate it. That is a pleasure, for sure. I have to say that I had an extraordinary experience doing your show. Everything from top to bottom was amazing.

And of course, there's the production value side of it. I mean, you've got like this staff of people and you've got like 2000 cameras going and a sweeping crane and it's all very impressive. You're running it like a legitimate network daytime television show, like at the highest, highest level. So that's impressive. But I think what really stuck with me and has really pushed me and

made me think more deeply about what I do is the intentionality that you put into the conversations that you have. Like there is a lot of time and deep thought that goes into what you want to accomplish when you sit down with people. Yeah, for sure. So elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah, that one started with, if I was going to enter the space and start doing something, there were two things that had to be true. One, I really had to deliver value. And this started for me as an exercise of creating something that would be valuable for my employees. And at the time that I started the show, I had 3,000 employees, about

1,400 full-time and the rest part-time, but had a lot of people. And I had written this thing called the Impact Theory Belief System. And it was the 25 things that anybody needs to do to their mindset in order to empower themselves to do whatever they want. And I had one overarching fear when I wrote it, that people would memorize it, but they wouldn't live by it. And so people would come up to me and they would say, oh, like bullet point 14 is my favorite or whatever. And I'd be like, I don't even know what bullet point 14 is. I don't have it memorized and I'm living by it, but it isn't something that I memorized. And that was beginning to become apparent that people could, they could remember the concepts, but they weren't necessarily putting them into practice in their lives. And so

part of it was, they're only hearing it from one person. They're only hearing it in one way. And I think that people oftentimes have to be hit from multiple angles until the analogy or whatever that really clicks with them or they hear it at just the right moment or they hear it from somebody who just talks in a different way. And so it really resonates and changes their lives. And that was always my goal to change people. And so I thought, I'm going to start bringing people on. This whole podcasting thing is really taking off. It's becoming something pretty extraordinary. So let me enter that in a way that's going to bring value to my employees. And that was sort of the thought at the beginning.

And then I thought, well, if we're going to go to all this trouble, let's really do something that will reach a broad audience. And then I thought, okay, well, if I'm going to do that, there are a lot of people doing this. But I just have a fundamental belief that there's always room for the best. And so I wanted to come in and bring something new. And what was that new thing that I could bring to the table and I thought people go on and they give the same interview over and over and over and it's really dictated, one, because they've got talking points

that they want to get across so that can be difficult to get around but two, people ask the same question and so I thought what if I could go watch essentially everything that they've put out, listen to every podcast, read their book, do all of that, which would admittedly take an extraordinary amount of time. But could I learn something new in that, which hopefully will improve my life? Could that allow me to package this interview up better for my employees and the people listening to this? And then could I honor

the guest with that so that they really saw that I took their knowledge very seriously. I really wanted to learn from them and then that I could get them out of what I call their loop. So they're used to saying all these things. They've already given those interviews probably, certainly in the beginning, by the time they got to me, they'd probably already done 10 other interviews. So I had to know their loop so that I could build, and this is where the intros came from, I could build an intro that with all the love, respect in the world, took that story away from them. So it had already been told at the top of the interview. Yeah, and that's not easy to do.

I mean, you have to, there's certain people come in and they have their talking points and that's their goal, right? They want to communicate those talking points. And my strategy has always been, that's fine. I will give them that bandwidth, but we need to exhaust that and move beyond it, right? And so that's why mine tend to go longer and you don't get into it until the later stages of it because people have to go through that exercise, right? To get to the other side. But I mean, you've done a

masterful job of that. And I think there's a lot packed into what you just said, but at a very high level, top level, what you're doing is an exemplary example of this incredible moment that we're experiencing right now, this democratization of not just education, but powerful information that holds the potential to be transformative. For sure. And it's cool to be a part of that movement. I often think about what would I have done when I was 18 years old or 16 years old, and I was struggling with who I wanted to be and what I wanted to express and what I wanted to invest my time in. And there just weren't the resources that there are now. So I don't think that we can overestimate the impact of this movement on what future generations

are going to look like, which is cool. Dude, I agree aggressively. And I think that we're still in the beginning stages of what this is going to become. But this is really pretty extraordinary. One, the people are embracing long form. And I remember when I started, I don't know if you got the same feedback, but everyone was like, Tom, you cannot do an hour long interview. That's crazy. Like no one is going to listen to that. And I was like, that's not true for me, certainly. And I actually seek things out that are longer. Me certainly, and I actually seek things out that are longer. And so we did like the original episode that I did with Tim Ferriss. We broke it up into four parts, even though it was only an hour long, which now seems just ridiculous. But my team was just convinced that it would never work. And my thing is like you were saying, part of this is you have to build rapport. Now, thankfully, you and I have already done an interview.

So dude, when I say that I'm ready, you can take me as deep as you want, as fast as you want, and I will go there. I've already done an interview. So dude, when I say that I'm ready, you can take me as deep as you want, as fast as you want, and I will go there. But oftentimes you have to first build that trust, build the rapport live in the interview as you're going.

And so then the ends of the interviews tend to be better because it's longer and you've gotten to build a little rapport. So that just felt all true to me. So we stayed with the long format, even though at the time, everything seemed to run contrary to that. Well, the with the long format, even though at the time, everything seemed to run contrary to that. Well, the format lends itself to being long form and it's an antidote to our short attention span soundbite culture. And I think there is a deep, you know, you speak a lot

about mythology and I think it taps into this thing that we all have within us to hear a great story or tell a great story. And if it is being well told, then there shouldn't be some kind of finite time limit on it. And I know for myself, when I'm listening to an amazing podcast, I'm frustrated if it's short. I'm ready for it to go as long as it needs to go to play itself out. And it's the one medium that you can enjoy while you're doing something else. And it's not on television once. And then you miss it. You can, you can, if you feel like it's too long, you can break it up and enjoy it over time. And yeah, I got that same feedback early on, but I just knew for my, I just tried to, I try to have conversations that I would want to hear and that I would enjoy. And I knew as a fan of the medium early on as an early adopter, that those were the conversations that impacted me the most and stayed with me over time.

Yeah, for sure. You know, so in another thing you said is you were talking about these fundamental principles that you divined and how people would point out one or the other. And yet there was this gap between call it inspiration or motivation and actual implementation. And that's where I really like to dig deep into, because I think there's a ton of motivational content out there. We can look at an Instagram post and feel inspired, and it lures us into this false sense that we've actually accomplished something, right? Yeah. It's very different to put that idea into action. And I think people sort of fall into this place where they think they've implemented it when they actually haven't, right? And I know you're somebody who said, motivation is, I don't know what you said exactly, overrated or it's bullshit.

So how do you think about traversing that divide? I think that everything in life comes down to what your own value system is. So what's your identity? What are your beliefs? What are your values? What are your habits? What are your routines? When you figured those out, if you just gave me a sheet that told me what those were about somebody, I would tell you what the outcome of their life is going to be. And for me, implementation, being willing to face the fears, the anxieties, the unknown, the need to stare at my inadequacies so I can figure out what skills I actually need in order to go and do something. Because implementation is really a question of skill set.

So that's why motivation ultimately is going to let you down. It's like you may be motivated to go do something, but let me walk you through exactly what will happen. You're motivated to try this thing, which you don't know how to do, and you suck at it. And so you go do that thing, you suck. It hurts your ego because your ego is tied up in being right, being good, being talented, worthy, all those like permanent set states that people don't realize are malleable. And so they get stuck in that. It damages their self-esteem. So they want to run in the opposite direction. Psychological immune system kicks in, reminds them that that was stupid anyway. Why were they worried about even trying that? And so they back off. And any

one time doing that, it's not a big deal. It's just that people do that over and over and over and over and over. And my thing is that's such a predictable pattern in humanity. It's like, what do you have to do to counteract that? And the thing you have to do is emotionally reward yourself for being willing to take the steps. So, okay, I know I'm going to do this. I'm going to suck at it. It's going to hurt. It's going to hurt my self-esteem. And so what do I need to do to make sure that I don't trip up over that in a way that makes me turn and run in the opposite direction? Number one, stop valuing myself for being good at something and start valuing myself for being willing to learn. So that's just a core part of my value system is I am a learner. That's my

identity, being willing to put in the energy to learn and get better as a part of my, not only my belief system that people can do it, but part of my values that that is important to do as a human, you should do that. So when I see something that I want to accomplish, then I know that I'm going to have the fortitude and the stamina to see that through because it taps into my identity of the learner and my value system of this is important and should be done. So then I just keep going down. So I hit the, the wall of my inadequacy and I don't meet that with stopping. I meet that with cool. Now I know what I have to get better at. I'm now aware of what the skillset is. And so now that I know what skillset I need to develop, and I believe that it can be developed, then I just put the work into developing the skill. Now, the one thing that

I think gets lost in all of that is people lose desire. And they think that that means that, oh, it wasn't as important as I thought it was, or I didn't want it as much as I thought I did. The reality is that even desire is something that you have to learn to cultivate, to turn into a raging inferno. Your wants have to become needs. And I think there's some weird pushback that people think that if it's real, if it's love, then there's no energy that's put into building that up. And I think that's BS. So you think that desire is a teachable concept? Desire is definitely a teachable concept. The real question is building that desire,

will that actually work? And so I think people have something in their mind of something they were forced to do that they didn't enjoy and there was no natural inclination towards that. And I'll say, yeah, you're probably never gonna be able to build something there. So that's like trying to start a fire with wet moss. It probably is not going to

happen. But if you have something where it really is a spark of real interest, it's not a love, it's not a passion, but it's a spark of real interest. Now that's something that you can work with and really turn into something by building it because there is a process that goes along with building that desire. There is a process that takes something from interest to full-blown passion. And if people are willing to go along that process, then you really can evolve that initial just sort of, oh, it's a spark of interest to the very thing that I'm willing to give my life over to completely. And your mindset for entering into that is this idea that you're a learner, right? That you've cultivated some level of self-awareness

around this concept. So how did you arrive at that? And how can other people do the internal work to figure out what it is that is their kind of internal barometer for approaching personal growth? So I'll give people the answer to the second question first, because it'll be more usable. And then because it's entertaining, I'll tell you how I came to it, which is unfortunately grotesquely clumsy. But what they should do is read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. I think it's the most important book in the English language, bar none. It is- That's a bold statement. It is. And I keep waiting for flack on this, but certainly nobody that's read it pushes back.

They may not agree, but they don't think I'm crazy. Right. And the reason that I say that it is that important is I can't think of anything more foundational. So in terms of how to structure your belief system in order to then leapfrog and learn stuff and get out of your own way. So at a very simple level, the book says this. There are some people who think that their talent and intelligence are fixed traits.

That's a fixed mindset. Then there are other people who believe that their talent and intelligence are malleable traits that can be developed. And they are developed through challenge. And those are people with a growth mindset. So people that believe they can grow into basically whatever they want to become.

Do humans have limits? Yeah, almost certainly. But there is such a gap between where you are and the upper bounds of human limitation that to even worry about limitation just doesn't make sense. We put people on the moon. So like once you accept that we could figure that out, it's like you're not aiming at anything crazier than that. So it's going to fall within the limits of what humans can do.

So going after that and developing that mindset and being aware of what Carol Dweck calls the false growth mindset, which you alluded to earlier, where people think they're thinking in the right way. They think they're implementing something, but they're really not. So once you have that, so I wish I had read that book because it would have made that all clear. Unfortunately for me, I had the like king of all fixed mindsets and I was convinced that my talent and intelligence were fixed, that it was just about, you know, not what hand life dealt me, but playing that hand well. And so to play my hand well, and even then I wouldn't have understood what well meant,

but I know how it was acting and well in those days for me meant feeling good about myself. Okay. So what age are we talking about? Early twenties and below. Okay. So what age are we talking about? Early twenties and below. So I'm wondering whether that's entirely intellectually honest, because I do know that when you were a young person, you had this goal of going to film school and everybody told you that was not going to happen and you were intent on making it happen and you made it happen. So on some level, if you were, if you were, if the messaging that you were on the receiving end of

was you don't have the talent, you don't have the resume, whatever it is, you had enough of a growth mindset to decide to overcome that signaling, or was that just pure competitive, I'm going to show them they're wrong? It wasn't a growth mindset at all, but it was that I believed that I was talented. So I believed in myself enough to think, oh, I have the talent to do this. Now I had deep fears that I was wrong about that. And that plays itself out and you see it in people's lives where they're really going for something, but you can see when they're not making it, they're like in panic mode because they think that means something about themselves other than they're just still more skills to gain. So at the time I had the belief that I was a,

that I had God given talent. And so I believed that I, where did that belief come from? My dad made an offhanded comment when I was 12 that I ran with for the next like 10 years, which was he and knowing my dad may have actually just been trying to save me from embarrassing myself. So what he said was his actual words, now that I play them back, were, I think you're actually better behind the camera than you are in front of the camera. Now, he may have meant, hey, you should stop trying to act and you should get behind the camera. But the way I interpreted it in my 12-year-old mind was, you're really talented behind the

camera. Now, admittedly, in the little movies that I was making with my friends with the VHS camcorder, which I mean, when I think about what it is compared to today, it was crazy, but I knew where to put the camera to make it funny. And funny was my only goal back then. And I was legitimately funny. So you take the, um, the initial wins that I got, cause I don't think we're blank slates. So. And I think that some people think that's my mentality. Oh, we're all blank slates. You can be whatever you want.

I think that the degree to which you can change is so profound, it's probably better just to think of yourself like that, even though it's not actually true. So I have predilections. And I've always gotten disproportionate gains. Anytime I put energy into verbal skills or written skills, I would get disproportionate gains. Anytime I put energy into verbal skills or written skills, I would get disproportionate response. So me and the next person could spend the same amount of time with the same amount of intention and ferocity, and I would just get a little bit better than they did at anything related to verbal or words or writing. And so because of that, I was really focused in

the early years on things that were verbal. So I wanted to be a stand-up comic. I did stand-up comedy for a long time. I've been in like young author programs and speech and debate since I was, you know, 11 or something. So for sure, I got early. That's very extroverted for somebody who characterizes themselves as an introvert. Well, now help me process through this. So then I for sure would have told you I am the extrovert of extroverts. Now, either I misidentified that or I have changed over time. And I honestly don't know what the truthful answer is. But now for sure, I am not in any way, shape, or form drawn to social situations.

I want to retreat. I am a terrible networker. So people mistake a persona that I use, the ability to speak on stage, because it's a skill that allows me to do what my truest, deepest desire is, the ability to speak on stage, because it's a skill that allows me to do what my truest, deepest desire is, which is to help people. So I want to impact people. I want to see them go on the same kind of transformational journey that I went on. But when I think about what gives me massive anxiety, it's getting up and speaking in front of people, even doing a podcast like this. These are things I've had to learn to manage in myself because I'm just not

drawn to them. I like to be alone. When you said you like to be hermetically sealed in your space, dude, that resonates with me emotionally in a way that you can't imagine. Right. Well, let's take it back. Paint me the picture of young Tom. So young Tom found my space in the family was to be the peacemaker and to be the comedian. So that was the way that I could have a unique voice. I was the youngest in the family was to be the peacemaker and to be the comedian. So that was the way that I could have a unique voice. I was the youngest in my family. I remember asking my

mom one time, I was funny when I was a kid, right? And she said, you were busy. And I was like, that's not funny. That's not the same thing. And so as a kid, I definitely, my identity was being funny, making people laugh. That very much carried through my high school years. And in high school, I basically did like an impromptu comedy routine five days a week around my lunch table with the nine or 10 other guys. And I did that every day. And was there a driver behind that? Was that self-esteem? And what, was there a driver behind that?

Was that, I mean, you hear a lot of comics say, you know, it was their way of distinguishing themselves or overcoming some sense of awkwardness or trying to find a way to fit in to the social circle. 1,000%. So I was emotionally weak. So, and I found that being funny stopped me from getting picked on by bullies. So that was rad.

I could make them laugh and I would diffuse it. And I remember there's this really gigantic guy at my school, like pituitary tumor big, I mean, just crazy big. And he said one time, don't pick on Bill. You he's funny. So that became my defense mechanism. So if somebody wanted to fight or that typical teenage things, I would just diffuse it by being funny because I was terrified, absolutely terrified that I was just going to get beaten up. And because I didn't know how to fight and was too emotionally weak to deal with pain that I didn't learn to fight or anything like that. So that sort of insecurity about how to navigate my way through that I did with humor, it matched up with my value system. I didn't think less of myself. I thought, wow, this is a great strategy. I can talk my way out of things. And so by being funny, I got left

alone, which was great. And so none of that was like an issue for me. I didn't grow up as the kid that was picked on or anything like that. That wasn't a part of my identity. So, and I loved being able to make people laugh, made me feel good about myself. So, and part of that was driven by the people that I was really close to growing up. I believed they were much smarter than me. So I always felt dumb. Because I felt dumb, I needed something to be better than them at

so I could feel good about myself. And I was just funnier than they were. And this, you mentioned that you were the peacekeeper or the peacemaker. Was there strife or conflict in the house? It didn't seem like that at the time. I mean, looking back, three weeks after I left, my dad moved out. So clearly there was something going on.

And when he left, he said that he'd been unhappy for 10 years. So that puts me at eight years old. So from the time that I'm eight, there's something going on. I certainly didn't understand it. When he left, it took me by surprise, but is it possible there was that? My dad was very distant from me emotionally. So was that, and I considered him to be funny. So was that me trying to emulate him to get his attention? I honestly don't know. It's never been like a real pain point for me. So I've never done the hard sort of emotional work to figure out why I ended up doing that stuff.

never done the hard sort of emotional work to figure out why I ended up doing that stuff. To me, the more interesting question is, why did I stop? So when I left for college, I said, I'm not going to be funny anymore. I'm going to take myself seriously as an artist. And that became really important to me. And so I didn't do comedy or anything until after I graduated college, had failed at film school, which is a whole nother framing. Because there's two ways you could look at my film school career as being this tale of, you can do anything you set your mind to, or you can look at it as it failed and it really changed me. And that is the perspective that I use. Cause I think it's more powerful. But when I got out and I was sliding towards depression,

then I returned to comedy because that was like, okay, well, I failed as a serious artist, but I'm going to go back to being funny, which is a whole story. Because I got back into it. I performed at the Laugh Factory. And do you know who Mitch Hedberg is? Yeah. Okay.

So imagine this. I've never heard of Mitch Hedberg. I have no idea who he is. I'm in this really dark place in my life. I think I failed as a filmmaker. I have no idea how to get back into film, none. And it's paralyzing. And I'm like, okay, what do I do? What am I good at? Comedy. Great. I'm going to get back into comedy. I start practicing again. I can feel my mind almost speeding up. I see the opportunities for jokes everywhere. This is great. I feel good.

I feel like my old self, like I did back in high school. It's amazing. And I go to the laugh factory and it's open mic night. Now in an open mic night, major comedians will come, but they're trying out new material. So they're terrible, even though they're famous. And after all the open mic night or mic people, most of the audience is already gone because they all came to see their friend try their hand at comedy. And then more famous people come up. Their material's terrible. So by the time we get to the last person, there's only, I'm not joking, like 15 out of 300 people left. And so I'm like, I don't think I can do another one of these. But I wanted to learn, right?

Like I'd been listening to how they try material, all that. And I get up to leave, my friend and I. And Mitch Hedberg's manager comes on stage and is like, guys, guys, before you go, the next man coming is the funniest man in America. You are not going to want to miss this. And I thought, you got to, with that kind of buildup, you got to give it a shot, right? What could it hurt? So we sit back down and this guy had never heard it before ever in my life walks out. And he is so funny, Rich, that actually during his bit, I'm laughing so hard. I thought to myself, can you die from laughing? Because I could not catch my breath. It was that funny. And I thought if he keeps going, I'm actually going to die here in the theater. And so at the end of that, I

thought, okay, that's funny. That's how good you can get. And I thought to get that good, I would have to dedicate my entire life to it. And I'm not prepared to do that. So that became this moment where I was like, okay, I closed the door on that. And it's not as clean as it's gonna sound in the story, but I closed the door on being a comic and that only left filmmaking. And so I was like, how am I gonna get good at this? And so I started researching the brain.

I came across brain plasticity and it was hotly debated in the late 90s. Is the brain plastic? Can you learn as you get older? Or is it sort of done at 11, 12, 13? And I thought, well, some people are taking it seriously that you can change your brain, that you can learn new things that you can push yourself. And people now can't remember that this was actually credible scientists saying you can't what it's locked. What you have is what you have. There's no way to change it. You're losing brain cells every day. And there's a reason that you can't learn a new language without an accent.

It's just, it's done. But I chose to believe that the people who are saying, no, no, no, the brain is plastic until the day you die. I choose to believe that they were right, even though I wasn't sure. And that led me down this path of thinking about, because I started teaching filmmaking and I was like, I'm able to make their films better. If the brain is plastic and I can learn something new and I'm able to make their films better, why can't I make my own better? And so that became the thing that ended up putting me down the path of actually developing what we now call the growth mindset, but back then didn't have a name. Right. And so why then did you not pursue filmmaking to the hilt with this newfound understanding of brain plasticity, or at least this belief

that you could develop your skill. Why did that not be the path? I did, it was. You did? Oh, yeah. So what happened was I was teaching film and looking for any way to have the time to write, to put together a screenplay that I could go out

and basically pull an M. Night Shyamalan where the script is so good that I know that somebody is going to let me direct it. So that was the path I was on. I was teaching. Meet these two guys, very successful entrepreneurs. There were two things I promised myself when I was a kid. One, one day I'm going to be rich. Two, I'm going to have six pack abs. Now I legitimately went through this thing in high school where I was like, I like poetry and I like filmmaking. Which am I going to pursue? And the reason I ended up pursuing film was you couldn't get rich being a poet. So I was like, cool. I love film. And it was in the eighties, it was just cranking out millionaires. So I was like, this is rad. I'm going to go do that. Something I love. And it's

something that can make me rich. So they come across my life. They're yoked. These guys were like bodybuilder types. They had six pack abs. They were successful entrepreneurs. And they were like, look, man, you're coming to the world with your handout. If you want to control your art, you're going to have to control the resources. So stop being a teacher. Stop trying to work your way up. Come with us. Be a part of this startup. Work your ass off. Become a true entrepreneur. Get a piece of the company. When we sell, you'll be rich and you'll be able to finance your own films. I thought my god this is perfect we thought it would take about 18 months to build this technology company up and sell it and of course it ended up taking 15 years took multiple companies a not a nervous breakdown but a spiritual crisis and all of that to realize i was never

going to chase money again because chasing money, the struggle is guaranteed. The success is not. So I needed to love what I was doing. That's a whole nother story. But in there, I also actually had a screenplay produced, uh, and a movie starring Michael Madsen, um, who's famous from Tarantino films. And I thought this is it. This is my break. This is the beginning. And, uh, it was atrocious. And I was so heartbroken with how the movie came out that I was like, I have to stay on this path. I have to control the money. And so I buckled down. I did it for 15 years, built a billion dollar company

and exited that with a whole lot of cash and am now building my own studio. So you finally arrived at this place where you can get back to storytelling. Correct. Yeah. Do you still have, you have aspirations of doing narrative content? Oh, yes. Like feature films and things like that? Aggressively so, yeah. Well, you just went through the whole timeline of everything to back it up a little bit. It's interesting that you jumped into this startup situation because I'm not getting from you that business was a driving force for you as a kid.

It was about art and expression. Yes, 1,000%. I am not a born entrepreneur. Not in the slightest. Part of the reason that my philosophies are what they are is because I have lived them. So, um, when I talk about the, you know, having a negative voice, it's because I have one and it is aggressive. When I talk about anxiety, it's because I had anxiety. When I talk about being able to become an entrepreneur,

it's because I had to. So I didn't have the instincts. In fact, from an instinct perspective, I didn't have any, and I had to learn all of that't have the instincts. In fact, from an instinct perspective, I didn't have any. And I had to learn all of that. Now I would say I do have good business instincts because I've trained them over time. But I certainly didn't have them in the beginning. And in the beginning of my business career, and this is real, and I really want people to feel what I feel when I say this. The only contributions that I would make for probably the first two years of being in business,

the only contributions I would make to a conference call were to say goodbye. And I remember looking forward to that because I was finally going to get to say something. But because at least I knew enough to keep my mouth shut when I didn't know and I didn't understand, I didn't want to look stupid. So I would just be quiet. I would listen and learn. And I'm very grateful to the guys that gave me that opportunity. They would let me on the call.

So I was often in rooms that I probably would never have been allowed to be in if I'd been in a traditional company. But because it was a startup, they just kept letting me listen in on phone calls and stuff. So that ended up being really, really extraordinary for me. But yeah, I had to learn to be an entrepreneur. So why did these two yoked dudes want to invite you in to this startup play? Like, what was it about you that attracted them to you? So they, God, what words would they use?

So they thought that I was bright. They thought that I could write. And they thought, we need a copywriter. So let's bring this guy in. We're basically going to get underpriced talent. Because as a teacher, you're not making much money. They didn't have to fight very hard to pay me what I was making as a teacher. They moved me over.

They said, look, this is our whole vision. They were very, very compelling. This is our vision, 18 months, sell the company, come over, be a part of this. You're going to have what you need to finance your own film. So I thought this is amazing. And I remember asking them, guys, this all seems too good to be true. Everyone I've talked to about the job offer you guys have made me is telling me that don't do it. Like there's no stability. These guys are crazy. If it sounds good to be true, it is too good to be true. And so of course, because no one in my family knows startups or anything like that. And I said, this isn't a trick to get me into business. Is it? Cause you

know, I want to be a filmmaker and they were like laughing and they're like, Tom, don't be so ridiculous. Like there are easier ways to just get a traditional employee. And I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then, and in all sincerity, I think what they saw was a kid, they understood his dream. They really thought they could make it happen. And they really didn't think it would take 15 years. So while I ended up getting sucked into business, I really don't think that was. I just think they saw somebody that they could get more out of than they were going to pay for. That's the truth.

And so you had an exit from this technology play. And is it the same dudes that you started Quest with? Yeah, yeah. So I ended up working with them for 14 years. So what started the technology company was rapidly turning into an, I don't know what this is going to be. So at about six and a half years, I went in and quit. I said, I can't do this anymore. I'm moving to Greece. My wife happens to be Greek. I'm going to move to Greece because I speak Greek, but I won't say that I'm truly fluent. So I'm going to go there, get truly

fluent, cut my expenses to nothing, live some meager existence and write. And I'm going to come back being fluent in Greek and having a couple of screenplays that'll just be bulletproof. And they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I said, here's your equity. Because by then I'd earned 10% of the company through sweat equity. And I said, here's your equity back. If you sell the company tomorrow for a billion dollars, you're never going to hear from me. I get it. I'm not crossing the finish line. I shouldn't get anything for this. And that was huge for me because I really believed at that moment that I was walking away forever. And I knew no matter what I would never, because they had been sued by other people who felt in previous companies. And they were always like, oh, so gross.

You create opportunity for people. And I was like, they created opportunity for me. I'm walking away. So I was like, yeah, there it is. And I'm going to go do my thing. And they said, look, we could do this without you, but we don't want to. And that's what I needed to hear to reconnect and to the brotherhood and be about something other than the money. And so I said, look, I've already done the hard thing, which is quit. So now let me tell you who I really am, what I'm really about, what drives me. And I thought that my primary driver was getting wealthy. And I realized now that it's not. And my primary driver is fulfillment and chasing money does not fulfill me. And so, Hey, I'm living the cliche of money can't buy happiness. So you had that realization before the money came in?

Oh yes. Well, yes. So on paper, I was technically a multimillionaire, but let me tell you, there's a huge difference between paper money and real life money. So when I gave back the equity, I was giving back about $2 million, but it was just paper money. It's not real. Right. So I don't expect some like, oh my God, that's so amazing. It was, maybe one day it'll be worth something, maybe it won't. But you didn't go to Greece. I did not. Right. I didn't even make it home. And I was pulling into my driveway when they called me and said, come out to dinner with us. And then that changed the course of my life because then I could finally say like, look, I want to create value in people's lives. I don't just want to

sell them something. I didn't use the words authentic at the time. It's a buzzword now, but back then nobody was saying it. But what I said was I want the company to reflect our real personalities, who we are, what we want to do in life, the things that we're passionate about. I want it to just pour through in everything that we do. And so we moved away from really boring security software to something that we were going to be passionate about. And the phrase that I used was, we need to ask ourselves, what would we do and love every day, even if we're failing? Because the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. So for three very different reasons, we end up launching Quest Nutrition. But it was born out of that misery. It was born out of, I'm never going to be this unhappy again. I want to feel alive. I know about myself. I like

community. I like connection. I like seeing people, being able to help them. I want to feel alive. I know about myself. I like community. I like connection. I like seeing people being able to help them. I want to add value. I don't want to steer by money. Look, money's important and don't get me wrong. I want to make even more money in my life, but there's a certain way that I want to make it. I want to make it by creating things that people value tremendously, and they would rather have than the money. I don't do hard sales tactics. It just doesn't make me feel good. So there are ways to generate tremendous wealth in your life that are all value add humanity plus. And so that was the driver. Now, part of the reason that we ended up being so successful is while that's

now in vogue at the time, everyone thought we were crazy. We come out talking about authenticity, about passion, about community, that there wasn't social media as a phrase didn't exist. But using today's language, we're going to do all of this socially. All of our marketing is going to be social media. I'm going to use storytelling. I'm going to go back to stories. I'm going to tell people what it means to support this company, to buy this product. What does it say about them? Who are they? Who are we? And then we're going to step forward as people, as individuals. We want people to know who we are and we're going to put employees first. So it's employees first, then customer. And when you do that and you're building this like tight ecosystem of people that you believe in, that believe in

you, it's just, man, it's really extraordinary. And now it's a movement, but we were early, just early enough using social media, just early enough that we just broke and it just went crazy. Yeah. What's interesting is that I guess I thought, oh, you exited the technology play and then we're sitting on some cash and then had the idea like, okay, well, what's next? But it wasn't like that, right? It was more of a pivot midstream. For sure. So walk me through the pain moment of making that decision and how you come to this realization that you want to be involved in a more purposeful, fulfilling, service-oriented kind of endeavor?

I was, for the first three years, I felt so amazing. I was on fire. So I leave teaching and I go into this place where I know nothing. But now I'm thinking about brain plastic amazing. I was on fire. So I leave teaching and I go into this place where I know nothing. But now I'm thinking about brain plasticity. I'm thinking about learning. And now I'm around guys, they believe in that to their core. And they were all like, what do you wanna be? You can be anything,

but you've gotta like bust yourself in half to figure this stuff out. Who are these dudes? Like you just stumbled into quite a partnership. A thousand percent, life-changing in a million ways. And the fact that they were so growth minded now put me when they say you're the average of the people you spend the most time with the five people. So now I have my wife, totally growth mindset. And I have

my two business partners who at the time were just my employers, but they were totally growth mindset. And they held me to a crazy high standard. And so they kept telling me, stop thinking like an employee, start thinking like an owner. If you act like an owner and deliver results, we'll make you an owner. But you have to actually live up to that. And they're like, you can have any job in this company you want, but you have to become the right person for the job. I thought, whoa. Like, what if that's real?

What if that's not a gimmick? And so I put it to the test. And I remember one day deciding, OK, cool. If this is real, I'm going to show up every day acting like I'm the only person here. And that if I don't do it, it's not going to get done. Which means I don't have a job description anymore. There's just shit that needs to get done. And I'm going to do said things.

And that changed everything. It changed our relationship, changed the dynamic. So for the first three years, it was empowering me. I was learning lessons. And even though I was in a pretty intense sort of almost like martial arty environment where it was like, you just get kicked in the face and knocked down and nobody is helping you back up. Part of it is they want to see if you'll get back up. And so it was intense to say the least, but for me, what I needed, I needed to toughen up. It's not what everybody needs, but that was precisely what I needed.

And I was a kid that I remember one time getting hit in the leg with a soccer ball in the middle of a game and it's cold in Washington but got hit in the leg and it left an imprint of the soccer ball and I just walked off the field because it hurt and so to me it's like it hurt why would I keep doing this and so that was like a pattern in my life like if it hurt emotionally or physically I would just quit and so this was the first time where I was around these like tough mofos. They did not play around. They expected you to rise to their level. They led by example.

They were all in, busting ass. And I just thought, this is rad, man. This is what I need. I need to go hard. And the harder I went, the better I got. And I saw like, and I started working out, which this is huge. You'll get this more than anybody. So never really worked out my entire life.

I'd started probably a year before I met them working out. And I was like, whoa, you can actually change your body. It goes into this whole brain plasticity thing. And then I met them and they were yoked. So I was like, just tell me what to do. And for the first year, they wouldn't. They were like, you're never going to stick with it. You're never going to see it through.

It wouldn't even tell you. No. So I started working out basically to prove them wrong, to be like, no, no, no, I'll stick with this. And then the more I worked out, the more they started giving me advice, I chose to listen to just them. And so all of a sudden, all the noise of the world of like, do this, don't do that. Ah, like people giving you conflicting information. I just had one ideology to listen to. Maybe it's not the best ideology, but once you're focused and you have at least one thing, you'll optimize for that. And so it just changed my life. And I ended up putting on like 60 pounds, largely fat, but also muscle. And that showed me that, whoa, you can transform your body. And that really made me believe in just how far I could transform my mind. Yeah. And you grew up like as an overweight

kid, right? Here's the problem you grew up like as an overweight kid, right? Here's the problem. So I was a chubby kid, but I did not think of myself as chubby. And I was only chubby by the standards of the 1980s and early 1990s, which if you saw a picture of me now, you'd be like, you weren't chubby. Compared to today, I was shredded. But back then, to give you an idea, so I grew up, my family is morbidly obese by any standard, even back then. And I thought, okay, I'm the skinny one in a heavyset family. And then I go to college and because I'm working so hard now, which is a whole nother story, working my ass off, I lose like 30, 35 pounds my freshman year.

Wow. So it was just crazy. Without thinking, without trying, I was just working too much and I didn't have any money. So I couldn't afford junk food. So I go home and, or no, sorry, the next year. So the beginning of my freshman year, I met a girl I knew in high school. And she takes one look at me. She's like, oh my God, I didn't even recognize you.

I always used to think of you as the chubby kid. And so at 19, all of a sudden, in like a sixth sense moment, my whole life played back as me as the fat kid. And I was like, how is this possible? And so I realized that like, even though I would suck in my gut, so it wouldn't push out my shirt too much, people could tell I wasn't exactly svelte. So it is very unfair of me to say that like, oh, I was obese or anything like that. I didn't get heavy until I was in my mid twenties. Then I got heavy. And so why the – it seems like a strange pivot to go from security software to nutrition and bars. A, it's completely unrelated business. And B, it's also a crowded marketplace. Everyone told us we were crazy.

They're like, what are you doing? You make money in technology. You lose money in food. What are you doing? They're like, what are you doing? You make money in technology. You lose money in food. What are you doing?

And in 2009, when we first started planning on launching the company, there were 1,600 flavors of bars and combinations of companies on the market, just in bars, 1,600. I can't imagine what it's now. Oh, even worse. And we went to a distributor, and he said, I need another protein bar. I need another hole in the head. And we thought, whoa, okay. But there isn't a single bar in the market that myself and my partners would eat. So we know there's at least a market of three. And our whole thing is steer by what's metabolically true. So we were just like, man, you can take your blood sugar and figure out if you should be eating those bars or not. I mean, they had like 30 and 40 grams of sugar in our

competitors' bars. So we're like, this is crazy. They either have no sugar and taste terrible, or they have all kinds of sugar and tastes good, but your blood sugar is going to spike. You might as well eat a Snickers bar. No joke. So we were like, we're going to make the first bar that tastes like it has sugar, but doesn't. Now, needless to say, that was infinitely harder than we thought it was going to be. But because we had such aggressive growth mindsets, and by this point, even I, and I was the new kid on the block, had eight and a half years by the time we founded that company of just diehard entrepreneurial experience. So you've got three seasoned entrepreneurs coming into this company, not knowing anything about it, but having

the will to win. And so what ended up happening was I'm sure a thousand people before us had formulated a bar that tasted just like ours and had no sugar. And the reason they never went to market is the second we went in because equipment has developed in lockstep with the use of high fructose corn syrup. As soon as you take the high fructose corn syrup out, your bar may taste amazing, but it won't mass produce because all of the equipment is counting on the existence of that because of the texture that it gives it. So all of the pressure tolerances and all that are designed to have high fructose corn syrup. So everybody else hits that roadblock and they just start adding high fructose corn syrup and they try to add as little as possible, but they do it to make it run. We said, oh, I guess we're going to have to

develop our own equipment and become our own manufacturers. So when every manufacturer told us you can't make this bar, not profitably anyway, no way. We said, okay, well then we'll have to do it ourselves. We bought equipment, learned very quickly that people were right. You can't produce it on standard equipment. But it just so happened that one of my partners is a literal Iowa farm boy and could fix anything. So he's looking at the equipment. He's like, I know how to cut this apart and put it back together and it'll work. We without, if we do that and you're wrong, we're now in real trouble because all of our money will be tied up in this. Whereas before we could have at least resold the equipment and he does it and it works. And it was just like, holy hell.

What was it that had to be changed about the equipment to allow you to produce at scale without that ingredient? We had to be able to put more pressure on the product because ours wasn't like liquidy, like high fructose corn syrup is. Ours is more like Kevlar, really soft until you put it under pressure and then it would get hard. So we had to put enough pressure that it would form the bar and that it would stick through as it was cut, but not so much pressure that the bar itself to the end consumer would be hard. So that was a big thing. And then also in traditional manufacturing, you cool it before you cut it. But if we did that, our product became too brittle.

So there were just all kinds of changing equipment and reordering things and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you have your own facility, manufacturing facility? Yeah, I was manufacturing. So for the first year, I was the only one that was there full-time.

My other two partners were still running the tech company. And so I'm in a hair net every day, lab coats, gloves, and making protein bars. Wow. And what is the secret to go? I mean, I'm trying to think about how to articulate this. So you have this bar, but that's still very different from the ubiquity that bar has today. I mean, you can't go anywhere without seeing it. The thing is everywhere. How did you penetrate the market so completely? Well, that's a very long road, but it starts with social. So we're like, all we care about is community, man. Maybe this is maybe this is a big business. Maybe it's not. But I'm going to go speak to people that I know and understand that no one understand me. So we're going to go after other people that are lifting weights every day like we were.

And so we went after bodybuilders and figure competitors and just said, look, this is the first protein bar that isn't a candy bar in disguise. We hit them up on social. We, you know, it wasn't called DMing back then, but like you build this relationship on social. And so you can connect with these people from all over the place. Well, this is a model that's repeated time and time again. Now it's standard. Then it was like, what are you doing? Like people actually did not understand it. So, but because we knew like our marketing messages

that were good people, we're not trying to sell something. And we're living through a time now where the most powerful marketing message you can have is to actually be a good person to lead with value creation, to try to give more value than you get. Like it's just powerful marketing stuff, but no one was doing it back then. So you want to talk about cutting through the noise. We cut through the noise like this. Hey, rich calls quest. And he says, Hey guys, look, I'm really trying to get in shape. What should I do? You should eat chicken breast and broccoli. Do you guys sell chicken breast and broccoli? No, we don't. Then why is that your answer? Because it's true. And you should only eat our product in those times where you're on the run or you need something that just tastes like a cookie and you can't have any more boiled vegetables or whatever. And so people are like, whoa,

like these guys aren't trying to sell hard. We would send out a newsletter and it would just be recipes that you could make with our product. So never said go buy our product. Nothing just like, Hey, here's cool stuff that people are doing. And we developed what we called mirror marketing. So we wanted to reflect the consumer back. So we told people, Hey, if you put the bar in the microwave, it makes it really soft. So people went nuts for that. But then they started telling us, Oh, by the way, if you do this and this and mix it with this and chop it up, you can make ice cream.

You can make cookies. You can do, ah, we're like, Whoa. So we started saying, Hey, so-and-so told us you can do this. Look at this. Isn't this amazing? So people are like, wow, that's rad. Like, if I submit stuff, they might call me out and hype my stuff. And so it just became them seeing themselves.

Community. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's amazing. So you go over like a four or five year period. Yeah, it's amazing. So you go over like a four or five-year period. Well, from 2010 to 2013, you become one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. That's crazy.

Right? Crazy. I mean, you must have had to staff up like crazy. Oh, dude. I wish people could see this now because people think of growth like that as being like a digital product or something where it's like what did Instagram got to a billion dollar valuation with like eight employees or something. That is not how things went for us. So we were a manufacturing business. So we had to buy equipment, which has like six, eight, 12 monthly times.

So imagine you're growing, you're doubling month over month, and you've got to project out 12 months. Think about how terrifying that is from a capital perspective because you're only making the money you're making today, but you've got to spend the money that you're going to need to be spending for 12 months from now. It's absolutely bananas. Did you do a crazy capital raise? No. We had one mezzanine debt round, very small, but it gave us enough that we were able to get to the point where we could borrow against accounts receivable. So we could get the line of credit. And again, mad love to my partner who managed all of that stuff, which is absolutely a genius with building those relationships.

We had a belief, make friends before you need them. So it was like we were very proactive in that stuff. But even just getting the square footage that we needed to be manufacturing out of was pure insanity. And you would move into a space and think that we're good here for the next three years. And I'm not joking. You'd be out in six months. It was so crazy. It was just happening so fast.

And we had to staff up. The way that we had to staff up was crazy. It led to one of the most beautiful periods of my life, though, which was we needed people. So we put out on the street that we would hire people even if they had felony convictions. So we had people lined up around the building just to get an interview. Oh, wow. And that was extraordinary and introduced me to just some beautiful, beautiful humans that completely shaped my belief system is why I launched Impact Theory.

Because when you see enough lives where it's like, these are extraordinary people who will do nothing with their life because they don't believe they can like that. Yeah. That really shaped me. Wow. So by 2015, was it around 2015 that you're at the billion dollar point? But yeah, by 2015, we'd already like cashed out a little bit and had, um, just tremendous financial success. Is that when you exited? I left at the end of 2016. Okay. And when did you start Impact Theory? The next day. Oh, you did. Okay. So there was a clean break in between the two for you.

Well, yeah, it was transitioning from one to the next. Right. So most people who would come into obscene wealth like this, you know, would think about buying an island or, you know, go going off and living some crazy life of luxury or traveling the world for the next five or 10 years, essentially doing nothing. And you decide to invest in this new endeavor seemingly immediately. Why did you make that decision? Well, that was thankfully a reaction to, I went through the pain of living the cliche of money can't buy happiness early.

So that was the very thing that gave birth to my true financial success. So walk me through that though. Because most people will never experience what it's like to come into crazy wealth. Yeah, it is a really funny moment. And funny is the right word. It's fun, but it's also funny.

In that when I was growing up, part of the reason I wanted to get rich was I looked at those people with admiration and I did not look at myself with admiration. So I thought, oh, well, if I can get wealthy, then I will look at myself with admiration. This would thought, oh, well, if I can get wealthy, then I will look at myself with admiration. This would be amazing. And then when I got the money, by then I had changed myself fundamentally as a person.

And I had earned so much self-respect and so much self-worth that by the time I got the money, I wasn't looking for anything from the money other than it is the great facilitator. It will let you do extraordinary things. But it won't make you an extraordinary person. It won't make you feel any differently about yourself. And because the money came literally like that, because we had paper wealth. So I was a worth hundreds of millions of dollars on paper, but I just cannot stress enough. That's meaningless in your real life. I was driving, you know, at one point a beat up Ford focus, my wife and I had to share it, had a leaky exhaust. And yet I'm worth at that point, I was worth tens of millions of dollars.

But there were employees that were living far better lives than I was from a financial standpoint. So that's paper money. Now, bank account money came in an instant. And so it was about, I don't know, six years into our journey. And we decided to take a small investment to diversify. So it was a pure founder liquidity moment. And because the valuation of the company was over a billion dollars, you can imagine even at a small percentage, just the raw number of dollars is

insanity. So all of a sudden I was fantastically wealthy, but I was like, it is so, in fact, this, this was how that day went. So everyone I said earlier, beliefs, values, identity, habits, routines, right? These are the things that make people up. And I just have a value system that says it's not about the money. It's about building something you believe in. It's about serving other people. It's about work ethic. It's about showing up and working.

And I value myself for that. So on the day that the money hit, it hit at like, I don't know, 8am in the morning or something. And my wife, we're both in the gym and she's like, what are we going to do today? And I was like, what do you mean? I'm going to work. And she like, couldn't wrap her head around that. She's like, whoa, we're going to go to the Lamborghini dealer. She's like, come on, we've got to like, go do something. We've got to celebrate. And I'm like, there's no universe in which I don't show up for work today.

None, under no circumstances. So if you were to ask my employees, when did the money hit? They all be like, I have no idea. They knew that it did hit, but they didn't know what day because I acted completely the same. And the thing that I want people to understand is I feel the same.

So all of the like things that I believe about myself to be good, I still believe to be good. I earned them. I earned them by doing the hard thing time and time and time and time again. I know how much I'm willing to serve people and my family and myself and all. I just know I've done it for years and years and years. So when it came to, do I buy an Island and retire or do I double down? It came down to what will make me love my life the most. And the reality is the thing that would make me love my life the most, because it would still be fun to just go home and be with my wife. But the thing that will make me love my life the most is to do the things that are fulfilling.

And I think fulfillment has a very specific universal formula. And that formula is work your ass off to get very good at something that you care deeply about that allows you to serve not only yourself, but other people. That's it. You got to have all of it. Technique. Literally. Yes.

Rich, it is literally technique. Yeah. And people, they don't think about that. Explain what that is for people that don't know. So it's this ancient Greek notion of fulfillment, basically. And the fact that it's coming from that word technique, like to get good at something and something that's hard. So the way that I explain it to people is people think of like doing something like going and ladling soup at a soup kitchen, which may be

the right place to start, but ultimately you're going to realize anyone can do this. And so I haven't earned something special that allows me to serve myself in humanity. So it's part of it is working your ass off to get a set of skills that have real value. And my, my whole thing here's, this may be the biggest problem we face as a society. People don't remember that skills have utility. They let you do something. You don't learn to build a house to impress your parents. You learn to build a house so people can parents. You learn to build a house so people can live in the house you build. And once people understand that, like, holy shit, you're building this house so somebody can live in it, build a home in it, have a family,

be sheltered from storms, like, fuck, it's a real thing, man. And so all of that effort and energy you went into, I have the chills right now, is so you can create that moment for yourself, for other people. It is something so much more than going to architecture school, which maybe you went to because your parents wanted that and they were architects. And so you do that thing for that and you forget that the whole reason you became an architect was to build houses. And so once people realize, oh, I'm putting all of this time and energy to build these things because they let me do something. What do I want to do? this time and energy to build these things because they let me do something. What do I want to do? What do I want to give? What do I want to create? When you

look at skills from that perspective, it is like it is being a superhero. It is being a superhero. You're going to collect these abilities. These abilities actually let you do something. The fact that Superman can fly allows him to save people, allows him to do things other people can't do. We all have this opportunity to become capable of the extraordinary, to be able to do things other people can't do. And that feels so good. The thing is though, most, the thing that's unique about you is that you were able to come to this realization and develop a level of maturity and self-awareness without having to go to the, you know, play it out at the Lamborghini dealership, right? Because most people who would come into that kind of wealth would go and have that experience for a period of time only to discover, you know, what you just expressed, but on the other side of it. So why were you able to do that?

Why were you able to avoid that? Why were you able to avoid that experience and circumvent it? They say a fool never learns. A smart man learns from his mistakes and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Far too often I've been a fool and have repeated mistakes over and over and over. But I really do try to be smart. I'm not usually as wise as I would like to be and just find that I learn things the hard way, but I really do learn them. So pain for me is a tremendous instructor, maybe because I hate it so much and just want to move away from it. But thankfully, I don't run from it. I figure out what I did that made me feel that pain, whether it's what I value myself for, or whether it's just, Hey, bad skillset, you need to address it and then actually addressing it.

So in the time where I was chasing money and, uh, like I said, the first three years gave to me, and then the next three years chipped away at my, my ability to enjoy my life. So it's actually in the founding of quest that you learned that lesson. It was in the, it was in building awareness technologies. So building awareness technologies, I did not enjoy the process. And so at the end of that, I had spent about three and a half years being profoundly unhappy, profoundly, where it's like, it was hurting my marriage. My wife would want to talk about work and I wouldn't want to talk about it. I would get this like sense of dread as I approached the office. It was just gnarly, man.

And it was in that period that I developed really crushing anxiety because a, I was always in over my head because I didn't know anything about business and it was just really hard to learn. Uh, I was in a very intense, um, environment where it was just like, you'd hear things like only an idiot would do that like all day, every day. I was really like, Oh my God, this is exhausting. And so you put that all together and I'm doing all of that for, for a product I don't believe in. I'm not building community. I'm not connected to people like community, all that stuff. None of it existed. So I was just like, I am so unhappy. And so talking to my wife, I was like, anything would be better than this. And somebody wrote an article. Unfortunately, I only read the headline, but I so know the feeling that it resonated. And it was the joy of quitting. And there's that moment when you first

quit and it's like the lift, the burden lifted off you is so profound because that particular frame of reference is just in an instant, it's gone. And that's amazing. And that's what I was thinking about when I went in and quit. I was like, I just need the change of circumstance badly. And so my solution was going to be to go do the only thing that ever made me feel awesome. And that is creating film. And I didn't have the finances to make actual films, but I could write them, which is essentially just your time. And I remember there was a time before I quit where I had directed a feature film.

And I direct this feature film over a few weekends. And then I edited it myself nights and weekends. And there was a time I was, if I could finish it before Christmas, I'd be able to play it for my family. Cause it was never going to go theatrical. And I was so excited to do that, that I was sleeping between 45 minutes and two hours a night without setting an alarm for like 10 days. And I thought, this is inhuman. How is it possible I'm waking up with this little sleep? And it was because I was so excited. I wanted to get this film done and show it to everybody. And the actual act of cutting it together, which for anybody who messes with film

here off camera, they know it is so fun when you see it come together and you're creating this moment. You feel something and you give yourself the chills. It's like that for me makes me feel alive. I was like, I want to feel like that all the time. So that was all I knew. I was no smarter than that. I just knew feeling dead inside, hating my life, hating my job was so miserable. I'd rather be poor doing something that I loved than rich doing something that I hated. And so now I knew that about myself. Then building Quest really taught me about technique, fulfillment, all the things that mattered. Meeting these former drug dealers and gangbangers and really connecting with them as a human and watching them blossom

gave me something that I never could have predicted. And then I haven't talked about, I don't remember if I've ever mentioned this to you. I big brothered for eight and a half years. Oh, wow. And that ended up planting a seed. It didn't, unfortunately, I was too young. This is one of those moments where I was definitely not being wise and I was probably being a fool.

I was being changed by this relationship, but I didn't really understand it. I was being changed by this relationship, but I didn't really understand it. I was too young. So I started big brother when I was 18 and I, he was eight and I stayed with him until he was 16. It was a crazy experience. Um, he was very, had massive developmental problems and was just a great kid, man. He was just a great kid. And it started as an extra credit assignment. And it was only supposed to be eight weeks. And at the six week mark, they tell you to warn them. I warned him that I was only coming for two more weeks and he went nuclear. And I was just like, what is going on? And I'm like, is this because I said I'm only coming for two more weeks? And he says, yes. And I'm like, all right, look, as long as I live in Los Angeles, I will help you with your homework.

But you have to stop freaking out all the time because he was really problematic. I was like, you have to do your homework. When we're together, you have to do your homework. Is it a deal? He says, yes. And that turns into the eight and a half year relationship. And I end up finding out that he was being beaten by his adoptive mother. And he gets taken out of the home. I get made the guardian. I helped him into foster

care. I mean, it was really, really crazy, but I was too young and stupid to really know what to do with that or what to make of it. And unfortunately I will say I probably didn't. I gave him somebody he knew loved him, but I didn't change his life. And that makes me sad. Do you know what he's doing now? I touched base with him like through somebody else once briefly about four years ago. And I've tried to get in touch with him again, but he didn't have a phone. And so, no. But is the point of that story that that experience informed how you would then create bonds with these ex-felons that came to work at Trust?

That was part of it. Then create bonds with these ex-felons that came to work. That was part of it. The reason that I was so open to hiring ex-convicts was, one, I just have a belief that it doesn't matter what you've done. It only matters who you want to be and the price you're willing to pay to become that person. So it's like, yeah, we all have pasts. We've all either done stupid things or had stupid things happen to us. And so being stuck there doesn't make any sense. You get to choose what you do tomorrow. So that just being in my ethos. And then Rashaan, who was the little kid, he was a beautiful human and everybody thought he was a

piece of shit. And I just thought that sucks. Yes, he has misbehaved. That is for sure. But he's a beautiful human and they're just too overwhelmed to have the time to stop and see the person. And so that sort of made me fall in love with them. And I just thought this kid is so like amazing. And I thought of him like my own little brother. And I was just like, dude, I love this kid and I want good things for him. And so it just showed me that like, there are, there's a whole swath of humanity that people just sort of brush aside. And through him, they spoke to me. And so that made me want to create this opportunity for other people that I knew were in similar situations that had had rough upbringings of the most extraordinary

kind. And I knew some percentage of them, not all, but some percentage of them are going to be the most beautiful, kind, loving, compassionate human beings ever who are capable of these amazing things, but somebody has to introduce the mindset to them. And so that became my mission. Yeah, it's interesting because the more predictable route for you once you exited Quest would be to get an office in Hollywood, hang a shingle out, hire a development exec

and start reading scripts and getting involved as a producer, right? I mean, nobody would have batted an eye. Lots of people do that. That's kind of the tried and true route for the newly minted rich guy who wants to get into film. Yeah, that is for sure. And I think- Did you think about that or- No, no, not even momentarily. To me, it was very clear that I want to stay in control of the project. So whenever you're doing something, ask, who's living my idealized life? And looking at that, it was very clear the person living my idealized life in terms of their ability to impact was Walt Disney.

life in terms of their ability to impact was Walt Disney. And so, okay, I'm like, I'm looking at this guy and I'm like, what made him so different? Why is the Walt Disney company still the most powerful studio? And it became very clear to me that they had done something that had never been replicated and that I was the right person to replicate it again. And that was, they told one story from a thousand different angles. And because of that, the brand became to mean something. And keep in mind, the world's changed so much, social media, all that. So that's in the back of my mind as well. I've already had luck at this social thing. People are resonating with my message. I'm able to touch people. It's real. What I'm putting out there, if you follow the advice, it will change your life for the better. Universally, I believe that. So I thought,

okay, well, I can have the discipline to only tell one kind of story so that the brand itself begins to mean something so that the ultimate marketing vehicle becomes to just leverage the brand to say, this is an impact theory thing. And once you know, oh, wow, this is an impact theory thing, then it's like, you don't have to do all the legwork. And the way I explain it to people is if I say I'm going to go see a Paramount movie or a Warner Brothers movie, you don't know anything about it. But if I say I'm going to go see a Disney movie, you already know something. So I have one belief and that is the 25 point belief system. That's it. That encompasses my whole ethos. So I want to tell stories that empower people, period, simple as. So my thing is if Disney can create the most magical place on earth, could we create the most empowering place on earth? And I don't mean physically like a Disneyland, but by telling stories, both nonfiction through

social media and fiction through comic books, movies, TV shows, could I create an ethos that was as clear and easy to recognize as Walt Disney's magic that was about empowerment? And so that's what we're about. So there will be some element of we're reading scripts and being producers and attaching things and just getting things produced. But the real thing is if Disney were founded today, I think there'd be a huge social component. And it's not a mistake that Walt Disney at one point was considered the most famous man in the world. And the US government literally would send him on goodwill missions to other countries. So there's just something about when you have an ethos that people can believe in when there's a face to the company and it's not just a corporation, there's someone to believe in. There's someone to get value from, even if you're not consuming their product. Like there's just people gravitate towards that now in the era of social media. And I have the same feeling I have now that I had a quest, which was

it's the right message at the right time. And so given where everything is going, so we started two years ago, the word impact now is like everywhere. And it's because that was, we could see like emotionally because that's where I was. I wanted to make impact and I could see that that's where the world's going. Like people just want to make impact and millennials feel it, but Gen Z is obsessed by it. And so I think that there's just, I'm on a collision course right now to make content that Gen Z is going to be changed by. And so that, that is really what I'm about is, is creating the content that is going to define culture. And what is the long-term vision?

Is Disney. I mean, that's the easiest way to sum it up. The reality is it will take roughly 75 years to mimic a Disney. I get that in terms of where they are today. Theme parks? I don't think so. And this is where it gets into any 75-year time horizon is absolutely laughable. So I use Disney as a shorthand. Things will change so much technologically in the next 75 years. We may be uploading our

consciousness. Like I get it. It's going to be so different. It is quite literally impossible to predict where we're going. So I don't even bother trying. I just, so people understand the sort of gravitas of what we're trying to build is to say, we're building the next Disney. So then you understand that I'm going to be in comic books. I'm going to be in movies. I'm going to be in TV show. I'm going to be in distribution. We're going to be in video games. We're going to be in VR. We're just not going to do it all at once. We're going to start with an area of core competency. Right now, our area of core competency is the social stuff. We make an awesome show. I'll vouch for that. Beyond that, we're completely untested. We've put out a

comic book. We're getting early traction. And I think that it's amazing. And that's why that we give it away. Because I just want people to read it. I want people to see that the quality will speak for itself. But we did get picked up. We are going to be in stores. So starting in March of 2019, we'll be in your local comic book shop. You can also order it online, but that I think is going to show people that we can really tell a story at the absolute highest level. We're already working to get that translated into film and television. So goal in 2019 is to get that placed at a studio and being actively developed for production. So I'm super excited about that. We have two other projects that are being developed, but that just helps people

understand like the grand vision of where we want to go. Yeah. It's a big vision. I mean, it's an audacious vision. Like where does this audacity come from? Man. So everybody lean in. If you're listening to this, this is one of those things that audacity is, is nothing. Don't, don't worry about being audacious. The reason people fear being audacious is they don't want to be me 10 years from now when this all fails, right? They're thinking, oh man, what if this doesn't work? This guy's going to look like an asshole.

And it's like, yeah, maybe other people will think that I'm a total dumbass. It doesn't matter. And why doesn't it matter? Because of technique. Because if I know how to build a house, I can build a house. So my thing is, I'm not trying to posture or be cool. I'm telling you, I have a set of fucking skills. That set of skills lets me do things.

I'm just interested in doing those things. So whether or not I hit my timelines does not matter. I'm in the skill acquisition game. Skills let you do things. I'm in the game of doing the things that my skills allow me to do. So I want to impact people's lives. Maybe I'm not able to pull it off at a film level.

I'll find another way. Or maybe it takes me a lot longer to pull it off. Okay, fine. As long as I love what I'm doing, even when I'm failing, there's nothing to lose. No, because on this idea of technique, along the way, you are fulfilled with every step on the journey. For sure. Right?

Every time you upload a new conversation, a new episode of your show, it's a cool feeling to be able to put that out there and know that it is, quote unquote, impacting people. And it is. It is. And that's the thing. You know this. You say something into a microphone.

Like right now, the feeling that I have while I know people are listening, the feeling I have is it's just us in this room. But one day somebody's going to come up to you or me and say, I heard that podcast you guys did, and it really touched me, and it changed me in this way that's all i need so i'm not i'm not afraid to be audacious because i know that you're never going to exceed what you're aiming at so you're only your hope is to hit some percentage of what you're aiming at so i might as well dream massive and one it excites me and then two i'm not afraid of the failure so once you have that like oh it's exciting for me to dream big, and I'm hyper-conscious

of, you break it down into small pieces. Like, I'm not worried about building theme parks and all that stuff right now. What I'm doing right now today is make a good comic. Put out a good interview show. That's it. That's what my life consists of. Stay in business. Be profitable.

Like, those are the things that I think about. So I keep my goals, my immediate term goals very manageable, but I make sure that they're feeding naturally into the grand vision. But I don't get scared or lost and thinking, oh my God, I have to do all that. Nope. Right now, today, I need to read a script. I need to make sure it's okay. I need to authorize it to be drawn. That's it. That's today. And as long as you're able to focus on that and get good at that, and then just always push yourself to make your skill set better and better and better, as long as it's leading towards that thing and you have clarity on where you're trying to go so that you make

sure the skills you're acquiring will actually lead you there, you'll be fine. Yeah. As Yuval Noah Harari famously says, clarity is power. Indeed it is. You have a very distinct and profound degree of clarity about what you're doing, and that drives this engine in large part. And you also have very set kind of rules about how you regulate your time and live your life and these principles that you've divined about what drives success, et cetera. So I'm curious how or if the guests that you have had on your show

have challenged that worldview. How have you grown or changed as a result of doing the show that you do? Yeah, I mean, that is one of the greatest gifts that doing a show like this can do. I think you may be the one that said this. Like, it gives you a chance to meet people that would otherwise not give you the time of day.

And I'm just like, oh my God. That's for sure. So true. Like, people, they just need that little excuse for like, okay, I have very limited time. Why am I coming? I don't know you. So you know what I mean?

Like, why am I making it? So once you have like, oh, I can help you reach an audience, get your message out there, give a thoughtful interview, then it's like, okay, that brought us together. Now we may have real chemistry. Like I'll speak from my side. I've real chemistry with you. So you asked me to come out here. I was like, fuck yes. Like I was so excited to do it. Um, and hopefully that this will be one of many times that we get to spend time together, whether it's on record or not. So it's like, that is super fun now because, because I'm a learner, because that's my identity and because I really believe whatever skillset you have today, it's already taken you

as far as it's going to take you. So unless this is where you want to be for the rest of your life, you've got to be open to change. You've got a hunger for it. So a, I don't fear change. I actually enjoy change because change has been the thing that's allowed me to improve my life consistently. And so I'm always looking for ways in which I'm wrong because I don't value myself for being right. And once people understand that, that for me, it wasn't in the beginning, I was just telling myself to do that. It wasn't at a limbic level. Now I've been telling myself to value myself only for my willingness to admit when I'm wrong and to learn that at a limbic level, it's true. So when somebody tells me I'm wrong, I have this rush of like, oh my God, this is amazing. Cause if they're right and I really

am wrong and they're making me aware of this, I'm going to get more powerful. So, and that goes back to my real belief in skills, having utility. So it's like the ego doesn't have utility, maybe some, but it's not when misplaced and built around the wrong things can be super dangerous. But because my ego is actually built around my willingness to stare at my inadequacies, when somebody tells me that, oh, you're doing this bad, wrong, or whatever, I don't spend time. It does still sting. I think that's just natural. So it'll be like, oh, that sucks. But oh, a reminder that this is going to give me something powerful. And so I use it sort of as mental jujitsu. And then I open myself up and I learned. So, um, so David Goggins. So like I said, the thing I've struggled with in my life is, um, emotional weakness. So being around people

that are very, very tough inspires me to rise to that challenge. So really understanding his notion of like what it took him to break the world record for pull-ups and how many times he had to fail to go through it, what he had to do to his mind, to callous his mind, that whole notion of like what it took him to break the world record for pull-ups and how many times he had to fail to go through it. What he had to do to his mind to callous his mind, that whole notion of like getting so tough, things get easier over time because just like you'll callous your hands, you callous your mind. That's been tremendously impactful. Um, give you as an example, like everything that people know you for comes after this extraordinary battle with alcoholism, which is like so rad. Like you're so much more interesting to me because you went through that. So you, the, the like sage-like quality, which by the way,

you feel when you're near you. And I know a lot of your guests have probably never gotten to actually be in your vibe and like, it's rad. And there's, it's so cool because it was born of somebody that had to go through, like they went through the hero's journey and they've come back to teach. Right. And so that makes that really profound. So when I think about, okay, really having to go through something and wanting to be wise because I haven't had to go through that particular thing, I can draw on your wisdom of having the tenacity to rebuild, to not be afraid to rebuild, to not be afraid to make amends, to look at what you did and maybe most importantly, to reach back, to help others. And that becomes the thing that really solidifies people in their journey. So it's like all of that stuff and just like what you've done physically,

man, it is crazy to me how old you are. Like, it seems impossible. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. But what I think is interesting about that is, and we talked about this when I was on your show, that for me, pain has always been a great teacher. that for me, pain has always been a great teacher. It's what reminds me of the mistakes that I've made. It's the thing that gets me to wake up and actually modify my behavior. And I always couch that by saying that, you know, you don't have to be in pain to change.

The opportunity to change is always within your grasp, but it is the rare individual who can grab onto that without having to suffer some kind of consequence that drives that decision change, right? And I look at you and I see somebody whose trajectory skyward is not as linear as perhaps an internet narrative might couch you. You've had your ups and your downs and you've battled with, you know, everything from self-confidence to depression and all kinds of things in there. But you haven't had like some big bottom reckoning moment. And I think it's that commitment to being a learner that's allowed you to short circuit that and grab onto these lifelines as you see yourself moving in perhaps a negative trajectory to course correct

before having to pay that cost. And that has created this kind of accelerated trajectory to bring you to where you are. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about this today. People don't have enough rules in their life for themselves. So for instance, I get out of bed in 10 minutes or less, doesn't matter. And I don't want to. That's why I have the rule. Because I went through- You calloused your mind. Literally. I went through a period where I would lay in bed for three to four hours, awash in shame

at my inability to get out of bed. And it just embarrassed me. And so I felt badly about myself. So I wanted to make a change. So I knew that I needed a bright line. So bright line, 10 minutes or less, you get out of bed. As soon as you realize you're awake, that's it. And the rule is more specific. I have to have less, you get out of bed. As soon as you realize you're awake, that's it. So, and the rule is more specific.

It's like, I have to have had at least five hours of sleep. But once you put the rule in place, then you just live by it. And that's how you earn credibility. Like right now, I don't feel the way telling you that, that I want to feel. This is a good moment. He's on my team. I'm pointing to him. This is a good moment.

So I'm saying this and I don't feel good about saying it. Why? Because today I don't know what happened. I got out of bed in 11 minutes and I was so literally time it. Oh yeah. I mean, from waking up to actually physically getting out of the bed. Correct. My feet must be on the floor and I must be standing up before it ticks over into the 11th minute. And today I don't know what happened. I was, I was aware of the time I knew I needed to get up. And for whatever reason, one of the minutes just went faster than I thought. When I looked back, I was like of the time. I knew I needed to get up. And for whatever reason, one of the minutes just went faster than I thought. When I looked back, I was like, damn it.

And so I'm surprised you even made it here today then. Right? So now this comes into like knowing how to handle something like that. Like if you totally fall apart because you don't live up to one of your rules, you're violating another one of my rules, which is don't do anything that doesn't move you towards your goals. So it's like, yes, it is a part of my identity to confess this. So because I'm talking about it, I want to say it now to an audience.

It's the only thing that will allow me to reset and be able to feel good about it again. Cause I don't lie when I miss it. I own it. Well, look, if your biggest problem is it took you 11 minutes to get out of bed instead of 10, this is a high quality problem. Right. Yes. Very true. But my thing is people don't have the rules. And so I have other rules. For instance, I wear a size 32 pant. And it's just, that's it. And so.

No matter what your waist is. No, no, no. I won't let my waist get out of line with that. So I use the pants as a way to guide. Now I would go down if I got so lean that I was, you know, a 31. That's not a problem. But I'm not going to allow myself to go up. And it's super tempting.

Like, especially around Christmas. I don't try to hold abs through the winter. So during Christmas, like right now I do not have abs. So, and I'm totally fine with that. I switched a different part of my mentality. I, during the holidays, my wife and I definitely celebrate with food and it's amazing. And I love it the most. So, but if that celebration took me up to like 32s don't fit anymore, I got to come back because I have a rule. So it's like, that's how I keep myself in a lane. I keep myself from getting into trouble. I know the things that I accept for myself and what I don't accept for myself. And it's all like stated, it's very clear. So as somebody who is in this world of self-empowerment and trying to address this poverty of mindset, to use your phraseology, what are the challenges that you have?

Where are your blind spots? If we're in this zone of vulnerability and confession, what do you still need to work on? I think that really doing things that scare me is something I believe in and don't want to do. So for instance, I got hired to speak at a freediving conference. Now, I told my team that I would do anything within my code of ethics to help build the company. So when I got the offer to do the freediving and he wanted me to freedive, Rich, when I say my greatest fear in this world is open water, company so when i got the offer to do the free diving and he wanted me to free dive rich when i say my greatest fear in this world is open water i don't fear anything i can help you with that

that's interesting and maybe you're the exact person to to help me with it but i that is a gripping fear for me and so when the offer came in i said yes i have to do it and i didn't want to do it and i was fucking dreading it and the guy ended up not getting enough people to sign up for it and i was happy about that oh it did and so he he canceled it and i was so ecstatic and i was like yeah this is my problem i was glad it got canceled i should be traumatized because it was a real moment what you should do here's what gave david goggins would tell you what you should do is still go to whatever that location is and get a free driving instructor and follow through on that.

Correct. And I'm not going to do that. But this is the question you asked, right? So I don't value that in myself. I think what you just said would be the best thing for me in terms of continuing to earn credibility with myself, and I have no intention of doing it. And I excuse it away because it doesn't lead me towards my bigger goal of building the company. It would be time away that I'm not getting revenue that I can give back to the company. So it's like, they are excuses though. The reality is I'm not doing that because I'm scared and I don't want to have to face that fear. So I have fears that I allow to stay in my life that I don't respect that about myself. I want to talk about your marriage a little bit. Yes. You have an amazing relationship with your wife. Thank you. And I'm curious as to how you

make it work as life partners and as business partners? Because this is something that's personally interesting to me as somebody who does the same. So part of it is that we're building the same company because it did not work like that when I hated my job. She wasn't working at all. She was a stay-at-home wife at the time. And I'm working. I hate my job. I don't want to come home and talk about it. I'm working around the clock, around the clock. And so I just wasn't spending time with her. So it was a nightmare. And so finally at six and a half years, she pulls me aside and says, this is now damaging our marriage. Now, going back to like your rules and all of that, it, my highest value is my marriage. That's the thing I value over the wealth, over ambition, everything. So if ever I was doing something

that's damaging my marriage, I'm going to correct course. And so that was part of why I went in and quit and I started taking time off. And you got married young, right? I did. I did. Yeah, I got married at 26. And so realizing that, okay, I'm now damaging the marriage and that the marriage is my highest priority, then it's very clear I need to change something. So one, that I have now damaging the marriage and that the marriage is my highest priority, then it's very clear I need to change something. So one, that I have that in the right order in my life so that when my wife says, hey, you need to make a change, I actually make it.

And I'm not conflicted about it. It's very easy. Then my wife is very good at giving me all the rope in the world to be ambitious, to pursue those things that matter to me so much, but that she speaks up when it gets to the point where she is actually having a hard time now. And she is very good at that on two levels. One, not saying it too soon. And two, actually protecting the marriage because I'm bad at that. So I get so focused on what I'm doing. And I'm so in love with trying to solve that puzzle and push it forward and all that,

focused on what I'm doing. And I'm so in love with trying to solve that puzzle and push it forward and all that, that I would push things too far for sure. And so it's an area where I always tell people the one group that I think there is a tool that is underutilized by this community, and that is anorexics. And I totally get it. It is truly a battle. You're fighting for your life. I totally get it. It is truly a battle. You're fighting for your life. I'm not making light of this at all. I just know about myself that the intoxication of the willpower to not eat is something I feel very strongly. It's how I ended up losing 60 pounds and getting really lean. The way that I did it was essentially by starving myself over extraordinarily long periods of time. I felt so good about myself being able to do it. I thought, ah, this is how people get themselves in trouble. There's actually a positive side to this. And

the sense of control and power and all that is very self-affirming. And I thought, okay, well, if I know that about myself and I know that I have anorexic tendencies, then I'm just going to tell my wife, you're in complete control of this. The second you tell me that I'm acting in any way, shape or form in a way that's edging up towards illness, I will stop. Not because I want to, but because I trust you and I'm empowering you with something I don't think I can trust myself on. And so she did.

And so when it got to that point, she said, okay, it's now you're starting to worry me. I think that we're edging up on it. And I changed instantly. Not because I had reached my goals or because I thought she was right, because in a moment of emotional sobriety, I empowered her to know that I can't trust myself. So getting into that space where you go, I know this is an area that I have a blind spot. I'm not the right person to make this decision, even though it's actually about myself. I'm going to empower somebody that I love and trust. And then I'm actually going to follow through with that. And so that's a tool that's served

our marriage very well. I know I can trust her to be the guardian of the relationship in terms of that. Are we spending enough time on it? And then it's just constantly looking for ways to better communicate, defining terms. There's a whole host of very specific tools that we use. And then we both have growth mindsets. So we want to get better. Yeah. But you're on the same mission, I think is a fundamental aspect of that. And, you know, people ask me all the time, like, how do you work with your wife? How do you make it work? And it's a gift, you know, it's amazing to have a collaborative partner. That's also your life partner. It's also fraught with minefields. You know, you have to be more consciously aware of how you're navigating your relationship and

also bifurcating the professional aspect of what you're doing from the personal. Because as you know, what you do now doesn't feel like work, even though it is work. And it's very easy without erecting healthy boundaries and being consciously mindful of the relationship that all the conversations can suddenly become about what you're doing, the projects that you're working on and the professional aspect of what you're doing. And you have to really carve out that time to put that aside and focus on the relationship itself. So true. Yeah. But she gives you that hard feedback. She does. She's very good about that. Um, she's equally excited about her own growth as an entrepreneur. So it is

very exciting for us. Um, but like you said, we are very careful to carve out the time to just be husband and wife, to play, to do things that are fun, to make sure that we're having sex, that that's huge. And I think that oftentimes people let bed death creep into their life. And keeping that passion and that physical connection has been a huge win for us. And it's something that, look, it doesn't take a lot of effort to want to do that. But to make sure that we're cognizant of that, that we have, it's not something that we state, but we're terrified of becoming roommates. And so we're very conscious to keep that physical spark, the passion very much alive, exciting, not routine. So that served us well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to think of kind of what imperils humanity right now can be boiled down to,

kind of what imperils humanity right now can be boiled down to, well, many things, but essentially a crisis of consciousness. So many people are living their lives reactively. And I don't mean to be flippant about that. Life is hard and people are just trying to earn a living and put food on the table and get through the day. In your experience with all the business experience that you've had, the books you've read, the people that you've spent time with, what do you think is the biggest impediment to people waking up out of this matrix-like existence that's so easy for us to fall prey to? So I've had a realization recently that I'm not an all lanes driver. There are certain things I've spent so much time thinking about that I'm very good at answering questions and there are certain things that I'm not. So I'll give you an answer to that question from my very specific

lens, which is all about the person. So I think that if the things in the world that scare me, the divisiveness scares me. And when I think about what is the individual's creation of that divisiveness, it is one, a desire to belong to a group intensely, a fear of being ridiculed or emotionally ostracized. And once we know that we have this like sucking need to belong, to be respected, to be liked, you can really begin to decide what are the things that you want to be liked for, respected for. And when those are things that you respect yourself for, then all of a sudden it becomes very easy to do two things, to build something that is born of connection, community, kindness. Not that you're not selfish. I'm very selfish. It just so happens that the more selfish

I am, the more I like to connect and help other people. I am very much doing it for me. But it manifests in a way that is humanity neutral, worst case, and I think humanity plus ultimately. So that starts with me, having a growth mindset so that you want to see how you're wrong, that you can have these really ferocious ideas, but hold them loosely. Because the moment that your identity is wrapped up in your ideas, you are in real trouble, man. Your identity should be wrapped up in your outcome. What outcome do you want? And are you actually getting that outcome? And then as long as you're not a sociopath with an ugly outcome, like people that get into identity politics and things like that, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say, no, for

real, the world they imagine is a beautiful world for the people that they love and care about. Okay, fair enough. So I'll just give them that they're trying to do something positive. But when you look at the outcome in terms of how it affects everyone, it starts to break down pretty fast. That's where it really starts to worry me. So that to me says that your identity is based on something that isn't necessarily anti-fragile. It's probably based on something pretty fragile. So to use Nassim Taleb's term, something that is fragile, that's easy to understand. Something that is anti-fragile isn't something that's strong or resilient. Those are still defined by their breaking point.

It's just that their breaking point is far away. But ultimately, even something that's strong, it's strong because you think, wow, it can take a lot before it breaks. Something that's anti-fragile, on the the other hand actually grows stronger the more that it's attacked So and that doesn't mean you entrench in a position that clearly everybody is saying like this is crazy The only anti fragile position that I can think of is to be that of the learner That is truly anti fragile so for instance if you come at me and say that I'm stupid be like Amazing in what way and the reason that I say amazing amazing is because I know that skills make me more powerful.

So you've just said that I have a blind spot, which means that I'm less powerful than I could be. And I'll define power because I think it weirds some people out. To me, powerful just means you can close your eyes, imagine a world, a better world than the one that we have today. You can then open your eyes and actually create that world. So that's the kind of power that I'm trying to amass in my life, the ability to impact people at scale in a positive way.

So if you're telling me that I'm less powerful than I could be, amazing. I want to know in what way, because once I'm aware of it, then I can address it because I know about myself that I'm willing to accept that I'm inadequate because I know that it's a temporary state. I'm not good at it yet. If I decide that it really does match with my goals and what I want to state. I'm not good at it yet. If I decide that it really does match with my goals and what I want to do, I can get good at it. So it's not ego damaging for you to tell me that I've, you know, I'm not doing something in a way that I

could be, it could be better. Cool. Tell me how, when people don't want to hear that, it's like, oh, it's, they're in a very brittle place. They're being backed into a corner and people lash out and they're backed into a corner. So at an individual level, I would say to everybody, if you feel that you're blood boiling, when somebody challenges you, if you feel like a caged animal or like you're being backed into a corner, I promise you 100%, it is not the truth of the world. It is that you have a fragile something, a fragile ego, a fragile belief system, something in there can break. And because it can break, you're trying to protect it. And the more you try to protect it, the more hardened and potentially violent, vicious,

cruel, whatever, that you may become. So when it isn't that, and you're not afraid of that thing breaking because you want to take information in, you want to assess it, doesn't mean you're going to agree. You may take that criticism and go, I actually don't think that's accurate, but I'm really grateful that you gave me that piece of information. And look, intention matters. You can tell when someone's just trying to be a dick. So it's like, you've got to be cognizant enough of that. But when you get to that point where you're, you're leading with everything is my fault, including the way this person's coming at me, I've done something to make them want to come at me too hard or whatever.

way this person's coming at me. I've done something to make them want to come at me too hard or whatever. So at the individual level, I think that the fragility versus anti-fragility is where everyone should start. Well, to be anti-fragile, you have to feel safe, right? So if somebody's coming at you and they have a criticism or a critique and you feel yourself recoiling or having some kind of fear response, chances are that there's some truth to it because if somebody lodges some completely outlandish accusation at you, you can laugh it off, right? So there's a kernel of reality there that you're being forced to confront. And on some level that challenges your membership in your tribe, somehow you feel unsafe in being open to looking at that. So you have to feel secure in your self-esteem or in your position in life on some level

in order to receive that in an objective way. And your self-esteem has to be built on something that they can't attack. That's the problem. So if your self-esteem is, I'm a good tribe A, then as soon as I say, well, tribe A sucks, you're in real trouble because your whole esteem is built around your identity to that group. All the things that make you good are based on that. So for instance, in gang culture, there's this notion of putting work in on the street and could be selling drugs, could be murder, could be whatever. So if I now come

and say, well, your gang sucks, there's no way you're going to take that because you may have killed for that gang or done things that put you at tremendous risk, or you've been defending your brothers this whole time. So you cannot take on board that that group isn't worthy, right, just, amazing. So it becomes this real emotional conflict. So my thing is, going back to what is anti-fragile, and you want to talk about something I'm open-minded to being wrong about, I just keep coming back to being the learner, right? So your identity isn't group A, politic this, politic that, tribe this, tribe that. It is, I'm a learner, first and foremost. I'm somebody that wants to

bring value to myself and to the world first and foremost. So it's like, once you get to that, then as people are assaulting you, chances of them triggering a self-esteem, like in, like if somebody wanted to hurt my self-esteem, they would need to call me out on, on, are you really spending time learning or have you really improved? I think you're the same that you were two years ago. Like, whoa. Like if I really, like you said, felt that that might be true, then I would really, that would call some shit into question for me because that's my identity. Right. If somebody came to you and said, actually, you're not a learner. Yeah. And so that's one of those, for me, where my belief is now that's so absurdist that i would brush it off but

if they were able to like compel me to see it the funny thing is being a learner then kicks in again and i'm like shit if they're really right then here's my chance to finally actually be a learner but so that's why i think that one's anti-fragile but that's where it's like you can get yourself into trouble if they're hitting on the very thing that your identity and self-esteem are tied to. Right. Well, these things can be at odds with each other if that ethos of being a learner starts to conflict with your identity within a certain tribe, right? So which is going to supersede the other? And people have to make those decisions. That's like, I am ultra ambitious. And I told my wife, the only thing you can never ask me to give up is ambition. And at the same time, my marriage is my highest priority.

It's my highest value. So I'm constantly balancing the, is she asking me to give up my ambition? Or is she just reminding me that we've hit a moment where I need to put it first and I need to stop working for a day or two days, whatever, and really just give her my undivided attention. And as long as it doesn't feel like she's actually asking me to get rid of my ambition, then it's like, yeah, of course, because that is what I want for myself. It is the thing that's brought me the most value in my life is my marriage, for sure. Where does that ambition come from then? I don't know. It's the one thing I wonder about in terms of like, okay, we're not blank slates. Was I just given ambition like at a neurological level?

Maybe, certainly possible. I've made it bigger and more all consuming throughout my life. That is for sure. I have just enough stubbornness in me that growing up when people told me I couldn't do something, part of my like, every time someone told me I couldn't do it, I would say, well, I'm going to do it bigger. You can't even do this, let alone that. Then I'm going to do this.

And we ultimately get to, I'm building the next Disney. So it's like there is- So it's externally driven then. Some of it, for sure. But some of it is everything in my life is driven by how something makes me feel. And I really believe all you have in this world is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So on that dark, quiet night, when you're all alone, do you feel good or not?

And so I steer by that. And when I start losing sleep because something is stressing me out or I think I handled something poorly, I have to correct that. And what are the tactics? So part of this is you have a belief system through which everything is filtered. So my thing is, okay, belief system, I can get good at anything I set my mind to. Belief system number two, having a growth mindset is the absolute ideal. So that means that just because I'm not good at something now doesn't

mean I can't become good at it, that I should only value myself for being a learner. I shouldn't worry about being smart, right, good, talented, nothing, just the willingness to stare nakedly at my inadequacies. So if I've done something and it's making me feel badly about myself, I start running through those filters. Also, does this beating myself up, is it moving me towards my goal or away from it? Now, a little bit of beating yourself up actually probably does move you towards your goal

because it kicks you in the ass and gets you moving. Taking it seriously, you're really thinking about it. But then too much of it begins to erode yourself. And so I have to balance, like, am I just beating myself up and now I've taken it too far and I'm losing sleep over something. I just need to let go and focus on getting better instead of punishing myself. Like just get better at it. Um, so those, those are the tactics that I use. The word yet is a huge tactic for me, Tom, you suck. Oh, I'm not good at that yet. Okay, cool. Thank you. Got it. Um can get good at that. And just keep coming back to those very simple, basic building blocks of my belief system, what I value, where my priorities lie,

what my goal is, having total clarity. Am I actually moving towards it? And then just really holding yourself accountable to that without damaging your self-esteem. And how do you apply those tactics day to day? Like what is the actual process? Is it journaling? Is it meditation? those tactics day to day? Like what is the actual process? Is it journaling? Is it meditation? Well, I'll give you the one with the, well, so I do meditate not every day, but I try, um, that makes it sound like I can't do it if I want to, uh, meditation falls in a certain order in my priority list. And there are days where, because, um, sleep in terms of time allocation is my number one priority. So I get as much sleep as I need. I haven't used an alarm with any regularity in 15 years, maybe a little more. So that for me is number one. So now if I sleep longer than I expect, unless I have an early morning meeting like today, so I slept longer than I

expected and I had an early morning meeting. So now it's like, oh, I've got to truncate. Working out to me is more important than meditating. So working out happens first. Then if I have time, if I've worked out and I have time, I'll meditate. So my order goes working out, learning, meditating. So depending on what the order is and the order might flip, if I'm like really in a stressful period in my life or something like that, then I may make meditating a priority because I'm not feeling good. So you've got to have some flexibility. But because I know the order that they go in, like today I worked out and I wasn't able to learn or meditate. I did a little bit of learning because I do in transitional moments. But I didn't get to sit down and really clock some time.

And what does the learning look like? Reading books? Reading and podcasts. But by reading, shout out to audible, I mean, listening. Um, but yeah, I do almost exclusively. All of my reading is audible. You can speed it up to 3.5 X now. That's so sexy. I can't even tell you like I had that. I'd have to listen to it again. Really? No, you can, I don't know that I could retain. You could work your way for sure. A hundred percent. And what is the what does the meditation process specifically look like?

Dead simple. So I use what I call Just Breathe. So it was born of Mark Devine's box breathing. At least he was the one that introduced it to me. So he preaches do it for equal parts. So you've got the inhale is the exact same length as the inhale hold, exact same length as the exhale, exact same length as the exhale hold. Now, doing that made me feel out of breath. I just felt weird. So what I started doing was I'm going

to maximize the pleasure in each part of the breath cycle. So for me, it happens to be a sort of medium inhale, a very short inhale hold, a rapid exhale. I just let the air out. And then a very prolonged exhale hold. And that rhythm feels awesome. And I do that for 10 or 15 minutes and I can get into an alpha wave state. I feel calm, creative. It just feels awesome. That's one of those things that people that haven't tried meditation or tried it, but never got to the part where it feels awesome. My heart breaks for them. It is a tool I rejected for so many years because it felt wussy to me. And remember, I'm the guy that had to learn to toughen up. So I feared that that

was like backwards momentum. And so finally when Mark Devine looked at me and was basically like, stop being an idiot and try this. And he's like this tough ass Navy SEAL. I thought, all right, I'm going to try. And then it changed my life. It's interesting that it took you that long, given your interest in neuroplasticity and brain development and being open-minded and all of that. Yeah. I was as a learner. I was a moron. There's only two ways about it. Right. Do you have a, uh, council of mentors? Like who do you look to for advice and guidance other than your wife? It's really books, man, books and podcasts. So, you know, like I have the very good fortune

of bringing on essentially a mentor every week to come in and people think of it as the hour that I spend with them recording. It's really the 12 hours I spend researching them. That's where it's like 12 hours in Rich Roll's world. And then capping that with, you know, an hour, hour and a half where we just get to talk and get to know each other. Like that's on a whole nother planet. So that's really my mentorship these days. You have a very interesting interest in longevity. Yes.

Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I want to live forever. I'm doing my best to plan to live forever. But here's, I find this very interesting and I'm way interested in the potential blind spot that I'm creating around how I should be acting today, given that as of right now, I am going to die. So I'm very aware of that. It does not cause me emotional distress to think that I'm dying. So it's not, I don't spend a lot of time struggling

with it. There are two types of people. There's move away and there's move towards. I'm not moving away from death. I'm moving towards living forever. So I don't have a fear of dying. I think that when I'm dead, I'm dead and that's it. I don't think there's anything after that. I think it is a light that has been turned off. Wow. No spiritual perspective on that at all. If that's how you define spiritual, zero. And I personally think that's amazing. So I think that the fact that life, one of my favorite quotes came from Phil Jackson, sounds very Buddhist to me, things come together, things fall apart. That's just how I see it. For right now, my atoms are together. One day they will fall apart. And cool. I dig that about life. There's a sense of renewal that comes with that. And that's one

thing I struggle with. If we all start living forever, what happens to ideas? So, because I think they will stagnate. I don't think most people push themselves. So, um, I think there, there are problems with that, but because I love life because I believe in a near infinite ability to change and grow and adapt. And because I'm so excited about hard work and struggle and building and creating and connecting, it's just, it's just rad. Like I can't imagine ever, unless my life became just pain, then yeah, I'd be like, no, this doesn't make sense. Tap out. Well, the idea of living forever as a pure thought experiment is fascinating because you would have to believe or imagine that a huge percentage of the population, should this

become an eventuality for people, would suddenly be struck incredibly risk averse because of the cost of taking a risk is so high. If you could perchance live forever, why would you skydive? Why would you do any of these things that would put that prospect in peril? And I think it would create mass paralysis for a lot of people. So this is really fascinating. And I think that would be true for the next 50 years. And then after that, we'll get to the point where either you can upload your consciousness or

you can, and let's say you don't buy into 50 years, a hundred years, a thousand years, it will happen. So yes, we may go through a period of paralysis. And I think that is utterly fascinating. I would be one of the paralyzed people. I'd be like, no, no, no, I have a chance to live forever. I don't want to go outside. So until life became so mundane and it's intolerable, right? The idea that the prospect that you would live forever. I mean, we can't even, I don't think our brains are plastic enough yeah to really fully well so now you comprehend really fascinating shit about like how much so when i think about living forever immediately assume i mean as a cyborg because i really believe that we're going to begin augmenting our brains

either just by uploading our consciousness or by augmenting our wet works to the point where we're we have brain computercomputer interfaces. Elon Musk says in the next, God, like six months, he plans to make an announcement that he thinks is going to shock people about the state of computer-brain interfaces. So it's not here today by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not far away. So it's certainly coming. It's measured in decades, not hundreds of years. So that's super trippy and super interesting to me. And how much of these things can we mess with? So like, for instance, you live forever, but you're not afraid to take some amount of calculated

risk. And then we have to ask the question, how much of the emotion that causes people to do such dumb and hurtful stuff do we want to get rid of? Any of it? Maybe none of it. Maybe we accept that you're going to get mass of? Any of it? Maybe none of it. Maybe we accept that you're going to get mass shootings because some people go to such a dark place and that it's better off to have the mass shootings as tragic and horrifying as they are. Or no, maybe we should

get rid of those entirely and not tolerate that. I don't know, man. I am not the person to answer those questions. I just want to be there for the debate. And this is what I find so interesting. It never occurred to me until I was I find so interesting. It never occurred to me until I was on Joe Rogan. It never occurred to me that some people don't want to live through the apocalypse. I always thought everybody wants to be the person on the other end. And that was the first person that was like, no, no, no, I don't want to be, I don't want to make it through. I was like, wow, that, that mindset just never occurred to me. That's interesting. Well, That mindset just never occurred to me.

That's interesting. Well, I think the thing that is most appealing about that, if I entertain that concept, which I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about, the thing that appeals to me is the – I mean, I'm somebody who – time is my most precious resource. I'm always trying to get more time. It's the one thing that I can't renew, right? And there just isn't enough time to do all the things I want to do. What would life look like if suddenly time was the most available resource that one has? There's a book that covers this. It is amazing. Have you read Einstein's Dreams? No. Oh, you'll love it. You will love it, dude. I'm telling you. So this whole book deals with like time, just like it's, um, it's a totally fiction book that just does a whole bunch of thought experiments in narrative form about different aspects of time. And one of them is

a world where everyone lives forever and the world bifurcates into two kinds of people. I read this when I was like somewhere between 12 and 14, it left such a lasting impression on me. It is why I'm obsessed with living forever. So I read this story and I, and he's, he says the world bifurcates in these two kinds of people type a, they do nothing because there's always time to do it tomorrow. Time is so infinite that they, they never do anything. And then type B does everything because they know there's time to get truly great at everything they've ever loved. And I was like, that's me, that's my camp. There's so many things in this world

that I am absolutely in love with, passionate about, let alone just interested in, but I don't have the time. And so my life is a constant triage of having to say, because they say 80% of business is knowing what not to do. It's like, I don't just want to build the next Disney dude. There's so many more things that I find so interesting. I want to travel to Mars, but I'm never going to do it because it takes me away from the one thing I've had to say.

This is my mission in life. My mission in life is to influence culture, to give everyone an empowering mindset. What they do with the empowering mindset- But it's driven by a sense of urgency. If you remove that sense of urgency, I don't know that you can really anticipate the downstream impact on your internal drive. Absolutely true. And I'm willing to accept I'm completely ignorant to that. But from my perspective today, let me tell you how it feels. And I use that word super intentionally. So just

doing the thought experiment for me, and I've, this is a little cheeky to put it in this way, but I've lived through the moment where I know what I would do when I have money and I have to give it up to do something. And I choose to go do something that makes me feel alive. I've had the moment where I've had all the money in the world and I know what I do. Do I retire? And the answer is no, I don't. I keep going as if I had urgency. For what though? You could say, oh, to have the impact, to leave the legacy.

But I don't think legacy at all in the slightest. If you told me, Tom, you could spend the next 40 years building the same, but no one will ever know who you are. I'd be like, fine. Does the impact actually happen and carry on? Yes, perfect. It is that experiment of thinking like, whoa, we can actually make the world better and that people will go on? Yes. Perfect. It is that experiment of thinking like, whoa,

we can actually make the world better and that people will go on to do amazing things. The only thing that matters to me is what I think about it. It doesn't matter what other people think about me. That's irrelevant. I can't control it. It's going to change throughout my life. It just too many people have said, if you stay in the game long enough, you will see yourself become the villain. So I know like right now people will come up to me crying and thanking me for their help. I'm one sentence away from saying something that really upsets people. And then people come and are like, fuck you. I hope you burn. So it's like, I get it. I know how that plays out. So I don't care

about that. It's beautiful when it's positive and I've helped somebody, but I'm only worried about what I think about myself. So I know about myself. The thing that I'm moving towards is really thinking that I'm making impact. And while it's possible that on a long enough timeline, I will stop being neurochemically rewarded for that and not care anymore. And thus I might slow down and not want to do anything, but nothing in my 42 years of experience lead me to believe that that is true about me. So I am, there's nothing, there's no shortage of things I'm so excited about that the thing that scares me, I have two fears. My wife dying because we have this beautiful shared experience, and I don't want to try to recreate that. And it can only be recreated in real time. So it would take me 18 years to get back what I have with her. The other thing is brain damage, because if I can't process data the way that I process data now, I worry it won't be as fun. So like the struggle of everything, the trying, that's I value myself for that.

And that's what I really love. And then just innately, and I don't know that I did anything to earn this. I love change. So where other people are freaked out by change, dude, I welcome change aggressively. The bigger the shakeup, the better. Well, that fear of brain damage might have something to do with your aversion to freediving. Oh, that is, well, the freediving is thalassemiophobia?

Thalassophobia? Oh, there's a word for it? I think the fear of the deep, yeah. So it is a completely irrational fear of being consumed by sharks or other gigantic creatures of the deep. There's something that really freaks me out about how deep and dark it is below you. And this may be as simple as I watched Jaws and it just scared me that much. Right.

But dude, you don't know something in the ocean. Nope. How about where it's clear, like in the Caribbean? I'll swim out to where I could get back within six seconds of where I can put my feet on the ground. That's it? That's it. Wow. What does success mean to you?

How do you define that? Techni, 1,000%. That's it. That is all that matters. So building a set of skills that was insanely hard to do, but it meant something to you to build it that gave you the ability to do something you care deeply about that allows you to serve not only yourself, but other people that feeling, which will survive through moments of suffering, hardship loss. That is all that matters. That that's when

you feel good about yourself. When you're by yourself. Conversely, how do you think about failure then? Not trying. For me, to not have the audacious goal, to not really give it a real shot. And I know I'm constantly gut checking myself for, am I playing at building the next Disney or am I actually building the next Disney? That means something to me. So if I get to the end of this and the world is clapping for me and they're like, oh my God, you're so amazing. And look how far you went. But I know that I was only playing at trying to get there and that I kept dialing it back

because I was getting too scared. That will be failure for me. Yeah. And what about the difference between inspiration or motivation and real impact? I love inspiration and motivation, but it is the neurological equivalent of candy. It's rad. It has its place, but everyone, because those just happen to be fleeting neurological states. Yeah. You, you just have to find something that's way more grounded. You need a mission. You need a grand why you need to know what it is. And this is not a discovery. It's a thing you decide. to know what it is. And this is not a discovery. It's a thing you decide. I decided now because I tell it as a story, people think, oh, it was unavoidable. He meets this kid, Rashawn, and that coupled with all the people that he worked with at Quest, it's sort of inevitable that he decides that he's going to build impact theory and try to change culture to give everyone an

empowering mindset. Yeah, well, literally a year before I decided to found impact theory, my mission in life was to end metabolic disease. So it's like you decide, and then you point yourself at something. Nothing is ever going to feel right. Like this is what I was put on earth to do. It won't feel that way until about a year or two years after you've been saying, that's what you're going to do. That's what you're committed to and actually acting in accordance with that. And then you'd be like, yeah, this actually is my mission. So people just have to decide and actually acting in accordance with it. And then you'll be like, yeah, this actually is my mission. So people just have to decide and start going down that path. Right.

So when someone comes to you and says, oh my God, look what you've built. It's so inspiring. But I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what makes me passionate. I'm not sure which direction to take. What is the counsel? I'm sure you field this question all the time. What is your counsel to that individual?

So first and foremost, go play. Go discover, like wander around, go to a different country, like encounter enough stuff that you see what actually gives you that spark of interest. Don't expect a spark of passion. It doesn't happen like that. You're going to be interested by something and that something will be maybe a little more interesting than the next thing. That thing now go down the process of really engaging with it. Like go full in. So if you were traveling around India and you went and taught a week-long math class and you were like, I've never been this fulfilled in my life, move to India and teach in the slums for a year. And if in that process- Or how about just when you go back home, maybe start tutoring kids.

Like you don't have to revolutionize your life overnight, but if you start bringing greater expression to that impulse, it will lead you in a trajectory that you can't foresee in that moment. Super powerful answer. So I'm a thousand percent with that. Engaging with it, whatever face that takes, but really spending time with it, really doing it.

Then if it turns into a full-blown fascination where you're like, I really dig this, then we're going to go down the process of gaining mastery. Only in the process of gaining mastery will you find passion. So to me, passion comes out of, it's kind of like love. I don't believe that love, it needs a different word. Unrequited love is a very different neurological state than reciprocal love. So if you have unrequited love, to me, that's something you really, like I love singing, but I'm shit at it. So I have unrequited love. I love singing, but singing does not love me back. Now, I could go down the process of gaining mastery, and then I may find that I have a real passion for it because part of it's going to become,

oh, I'm gaining this skill, and this skill of singing allows me to have an emotional impact, not only on myself, but on other people. I can make them feel good. I can change their mood. I can tell a story, whatever it is that you want to do with the music. But when you're able to do that and you're truly good at it and it has the outcome that you desire, then it can become a passion. But to get a passion, you've got to fight through just ridiculous amounts of boredom, fatigue, everything to truly become good enough at it that it's a skill that has utility. Yeah, people don't like that. I mean, two observations. The first is people want the fast track superhighway to being where somebody like you is. They don't see all the toil and the obstacles, et cetera, that got you to this place. And I think secondary to that, or perhaps the primary thing really,

is commitment to self-understanding and self-knowledge such that your level of awareness is adequately tuned so that when that impulse arises, you can recognize it. But if you're disconnected from yourself, from this meat suit that we're walking around in because you're eating shit food and you're watching too much television and you're just reacting to your environment 24 seven, then when that moment arises, you're unlikely to recognize it. So,

there's an actualization process of commitment to self, I think, and it's an ephemeral concept, but that, I think, is the key to being able to act on that impulse when the moment occurs for sure. Yeah, because otherwise, I think we're all visited by these moments. So the difference is who's paying attention. Do you have like the silver bullet for self-awareness? I have a mechanism, but I'm not sure that it's very good.

I don't have a silver bullet. I think it's a long slog. I think it's a daily process and commitment to self-connection. And that's gonna look different for all different kinds of people. It can be yoga, it can be meditation, it can be exercise, it can be reading, it can be journaling, it can be any number of things. But I think carving out that time and that space to focus

inward in whatever way that resonates with you, I think is crucial on that journey of self-discovery and self-actualization. Yeah. Would you agree? I would. And as you were talking, I was like, God, this is a book worth writing. And it's a book worth writing, one, because I get asked about it all the time. Two, because you're right and it is so fundamental. And three, because I don't have the easy answer. I'm not even sure how I did it. So it's like- If somebody gave you an easy answer, I wouldn't trust that answer either. But I want that easy answer. Yeah, of course.

We all do, right? But you're absolutely right. But it would be fun to do that work of figuring out, what did I do? Because I was, me particular, I was very unselfaware through most of college. And it had its advantages, for sure. Because there were, like I had, had i was saying earlier i didn't feel bullied growing up but there was one kid who came up to me after high school and apologized for bullying me and i was like bro i was so like unselfaware i had no idea yeah so if you were

making fun of me i just didn't make my radar i had a couple people i had those conversations as well which is nice which side were you on? I was on the, I was the bullied. Yeah. But I've had people atone for that with me, which is cool. Yeah. I wish that I had been like more aware of it.

I was like, wow, how oblivious was I? So that was pretty crazy. Yeah. And are you going to get back up and do more standup? I don't think so. It's not a driver for me. So the thing is it never came from a place of like, Oh, I have some sucking wound that can only be salved by, um, you know, getting that adulation from people. I loved it. It was fun. It was,

it was, uh, something I got very good at and I enjoyed making people laugh. And, but I, the, the truth of the matter is I'm living room funny. I'm not stage funny. And to get stage funny, I'd really have to put work into it. So when, like it, to me, it's far more interesting. And the funny thing is now so many years of like letting that muscle atrophy, I, it's not like a go-to thing for me. I don't have the jokes like there. Plus I only ever knew how to be self-deprecating. So my funny came from when I was just a storyteller. So I wasn't like, like Mitch Hedberg told jokes. Um, I didn't have jokes. So it was just like, let me tell you about my first prostate exam. That was one of my best bits. Fucking hilarious. But that was, it's just a story. Well, that's incompatible with how you live your life now as somebody who's very intent about the language

that you use about yourself, right? Very, very, very, very. And I've noticed you catching yourself a couple times even today throughout this conversation where there's a bit of negative self-talk creeping up and then you course correct it. Yes. So what is that relationship

between language and manifestation? I think it. Yes. So what is that relationship between language and manifestation? I think it's massive. I don't think that thinking something or saying something makes it true, but I think that thinking something and saying something makes you believe it. And the things you believe you will unintentionally guide yourself towards. I think your belief about yourself and what you're capable of influences your accomplishments more than you can imagine, just because you don't put in the extra mile of effort or whatever that it was going to take because you don't believe that you can or you don't even allow yourself to dream it and if you don't dream it you're never going to come up with a plan so it is wildly influential in terms of

what happens just not in a mystical way in a very like tactical you just end up either doing or not doing the things you should yeah mean, if anybody doubts that, I challenge you to take a week and write down all of your internal self-talk, every thought that you have as it occurs. And most people would be shocked at the internal dialogue that we all have with ourselves. I had to do so much work and it's still such a challenge

to overcome a lot of that negative speak that goes on in my head. Can we dig into something fascinating here? Yeah. Because I have the luxury of seeing you from the outside and not the inside, that's so weird to me. Now, I get it. I believe you because I'm exactly the same. So I have all this negative self-talk and it's like, God, what do I have to do and accomplish for that voice to fall silent? And the answer is it will never fall silent. I'm not even sure I want it to, but you can counter program a thousand percent. It's so interesting to me looking at you from the outside, being around you makes me feel some kind of way. And that's some kind of way is more at ease. Um, ah, spiritual is the wrong word, but that's like the vibe. Like there's just

like depth that like sort of hums off of you. Like somebody who's knows something that you want to know. It's it's people say that to me. And I know there was some feedback from me doing your show on that level. Like, Oh, he's so chill, but that's not how I feel. That's the fascinating part. And that's what the reason that I really stopped to put a finger on this is I want people to understand that you feel like rich, but you may look like rich to other people where people are like, whoa, like you've really got stuff together. And once you can come to terms with, oh, this is the nature of being a human. The nature of being a human is the brain developed a mechanism over millions of years of evolution to pitch up this negative stuff and you don't have to believe it. It is merely meant to keep you safe. So you may hear it as

one of the voices, but when it's the only voice, you're inherently in trouble. And so people think they've done something wrong, that they are a bad person because they have this negative voice that's beating the shit out of them. But the reality is that voice is a mechanism. It's like being mad that you have a second arm. It's like, learn how to use it. Well, it requires you to distinguish, and I don't know how you feel about this with your perspective on spirituality, but I look at it like the brain is bifurcated between the thinking brain and your higher consciousness or higher state of thinking, your unconscious mind. And this thinking mind can run rampant and run all of these narratives. And we think we don't

have control over that, or we identify that with our higher consciousness. And understanding that these are separate and distinct from each other, and also understanding that you actually can control that thinking mind, and you can decide whether you're going to pay attention to it or not, is, I think, the first step in recalculating that story and taking greater control over how you think and behave. Yeah, most definitely. And it's almost like you have to play a trick on yourself. And for people that have trouble understanding that, just imagine you're having an amazing dream. And in that dream, you're having a conversation with somebody. And that person says something to you that you an amazing dream. And in that dream, you're having a conversation with somebody. And that person says something to you

that you did not anticipate. Well, your brain came up with that in the deep recesses of your unconscious mind that was conjured up without your awareness of it. And I think that should give you a glimpse of the complexity of this thing. And we're all walking around with stories, stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and who we are. And I think we vastly underestimate the power of those

stories to shape the lives that we ultimately end up leading. And if you can take control of that story and change that story as a storyteller, your life will change. More dramatically than people can imagine. Yeah. All right, well, let's wrap this up with one little final inquiry here for the person who's stuck, for the guy or gal who's in the cubicle,

who hates their job, is in a dysfunctional relationship, is in debt, whatever the case may be, desperately wants a way out, a way forward, a lifeline. Where does that process begin for you? What is the advice that you give that person? So it begins with believing or acknowledging that humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. So the thing that has made us the apex predator is not that we're stronger. It's not even that we're smarter. In fact, the quote often attributed to Darwin is that, oh, it's the survival of the fittest. He actually didn't say that. What he did say was, it's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most

intelligent, but rather the most adaptive to change. Now, the reason that humans are the apex of all apexes is because we are the most adaptive species to change. So if you know that, then it becomes infinitely less important who you are today. And what matters is who do you want to become and what price and the price being the time and energy that you're going to put into acquiring the skills to become that person. So imagine the person that you want to be, how would they act? And then start acting like that. If the person that you want to be would leave their job and, you know, regardless of whether they had a safety net, burn the ships and go after something new, then that's what you

should do. If the person that you want to be would start working nights and weekends because they very much value having a stable income that they can provide for their family or themselves, whatever, but are going to be disciplined and spend nights and weekends to get the skill set to go be more valuable somewhere else or to start their own company, whatever, then do that. So there are a thousand ways to make your life what you want it to be without even changing your circumstance. You could just, like you were just talking about, change the framing, the perspective from which you tell your story. In fact, now I

will tell you my film school story from both angles. This is the facts of what happened. I applied to USC, but didn't realize you had to apply to USC film school separately. So I get into USC, but I have terrible SAT scores. I took a 990 or I took it twice and I got a 990 combined score. It's terrible. They do it differently now. So people don't realize just how bad that score was. That was atrocious. And so when I looked at the film school, it required a 1300. And so I was like, whoa, how am I supposed to get in? I go see the school counselor at USC and they say, listen, Tom, stop. Cause I was taking film classes, the general education classes. They said immediately stop taking those classes. You are not going to get into film school.

Not words like that. Those words, they said, statistically speaking, you're more likely to get into Harvard law than you are to get into USC film school. The number of people that apply is ungodly. The number of slots are tiny. You're not going to get into USC film school. The number of people that apply is ungodly. The number of slots are tiny. You're not going to get in. You're going to end up spending a fifth year here because you will have wasted your time. And I said, okay, I'm going to get in. Thank you very much for the stubbornness in me. So if you say I can't, I'm going to. And I said, there's got to be a way to figure this out. And I found out that one of the teachers that was on the admissions committee would let you join him for lunch.

So I joined him for lunch. And as much as I can't believe this, no one else did. It was just me. And so I'm sitting down with him and I'm like, all right, look, dude, here's the situation. I want to get into film school, but I got a 990 in my SATs. He was like, Tom, what does SAT stand for? And I said, scholastic aptitude test. He's like, that's correct. It's meant to tell me how well you're going to do in college. So there are two admissions periods. One is you're coming into

college, in which case I care deeply about your SATs. And then the other is as an incoming junior. He said, you've already missed the freshman window. So your SATs don't matter anymore. What I want to see is how good of grades can you get? Because that tells me how well you're actually doing in college. He said, I don't care if you're already a good filmmaker. We want to make you a good filmmaker. I just need to know you know how to learn. So he said, get good grades. So I locked myself in my dorm for the next two years. I didn't drink. I didn't party. I didn't date. I didn't do anything but study. And I studied like a beast. And at the. I didn't date. I didn't do anything but study. And I studied like a beast.

And at the end of those two years, I either had a four point or like a 395, something crazy. And so I got into film school. So now I'm like, all right, motherfuckers. I told you I was going to get in. I got in and I did it in a clever way. I went and asked the guy what I had to do. He told me I did it for two years. I was crazy disciplined and it worked, man.

And I'm here. There are three production classes that you have. You've got a 290, a 310, and you crew a 480, which is a senior thesis film. So I do my 290s. They're pretty good. I start getting attention for my filmmaking. So in 290, people are like, well, this kid, he's kind of one to watch. Because my 290s were so good, for 310,'s kind of one to watch because my two, my two nineties were so good for three 10, you have to partner with somebody. Now you have to either be a director or a cinematographer. Now, needless to say, everybody wants to be a director, but then if you're not going to be a director or sorry, if you're going to be a director, you want to get

the best cinematographer. And so what ends up happening is the people that can't get a cinematographer end up being cinematographers. So a lot of times people sort of make do. I wanted to be a director, and one of the other best directors wanted to be a cinematographer. So now everybody wanted him as their cinematographer, and he chose me. So now I've been one to watch in 290. I get the ideal partner for 310, and we kill our 310. How'd you get that guy? He thought I was talented, fun to be around,

and that I was one to watch. And so in terms of, I would be a good person to partner with in order to get a good 480. So partners with me and we kill it. And we don't make the classic mistake that most student filmmakers make, which is to tell a feature length film

as a silent film. So we told a very short moment in time as a silent black and white film where you wouldn't expect people to talk anyway. So it didn't feel like a silent film. So people love it, does very well. We both get top level crewing positions on a 480. We both crushed that. And both of us actually end up getting selected. Only four people get chosen for a 480. And we both got selected to direct a 480. So now I go from, you're never getting into film school, kid. You're more likely to get into Harvard Law than USC film,

to being one of only four people to not only get in, but direct a senior thesis film. So, right? I'm killing it. Tom, what are you talking about? You failed at film school, baby. You did everything. You were one to watch.

And I was like, man, I'm making it. I'm going to to graduate I'm going to get my three picture deal this is going to be amazing I'm naturally talented I knew it everything has proven to me that I have natural talent as a filmmaker fixed mindset all day but who cares baby because I got the talent then I go into the 480 as a director and I fuck it up

and I crash and burn so spectacularly that people are taking snippets of my film and cutting them into what we would now call memes. But at the time was just like mean to be funny. And they would like screen it in front of the class. People would be pissing their pants with laughter because it was so bad. And I was having like basically an emotional breakdown. And I call my mom from the middle of the school. I'm laying on the ground on a pay phone. And I'm like, my life is over.

And I'm going to graduate now from film school with no senior thesis that I can show anybody. And this is a point in filmmaking. There's no like digital filmmaking. No one's ever made a film on digital before. That doesn't exist. If you want to shoot a film minimum for a no budget films, $100,000 dollars that might as well have been a hundred million

dollars so i graduate i steal my master by the way which i still have because it is that bad i know when people hear this story they just think i'm being humble i'm telling you just like you should over my fucking dead body oh come on like everybody everybody has that one thing i've told the story many times i don't i think my wife has seen it but only once so yeah over my dead body the thing will never be seen although i have to admit like at some point maybe it'd be cool to show when once i have something that i'm that i've done that i'm proud of i might show it um you could make that part when you give when you give uh presentations just show a clip of it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Anyway, sorry I interrupted you.

No, not at all. So I steal the master because it's that bad and I never want people to see it. And I graduate and now I feel lost. And I'm like, I'm never going to break in. My life is like, I had one shot. I actually made it and I totally messed it up. And so it's over.

I'm never going to be a filmmaker. And that was my identity. I was a filmmaker. And so now that was gone. And I was like, wow, I don't know what to do. And so I was sliding towards depression. I would lay on my, the floor of my unfurnished apartment because I couldn't afford to furnish it. And I remember the feeling of the vinyl carpet smashing into my face because I would just lay there for an hour, two hours at a time. And I was like, yep, my life is over. I don't know what to do. I'm sliding towards depression. And thankfully I started reading about the brain to avoid sliding towards depression. So now there are two ways to look at my film career. One is dude, against all odds, you became through hard

work and discipline. Not because anything was given to you. People told you would never do it. And you worked and worked and worked and you got it and you did it. And you were one of the four people selected to do a 480. And the amount, even though your 480 wasn't good, the amount that you learned from that 480 transformed you, not just as a filmmaker, as a human being and became one of the most transformative, revolutionary things that set you up. That's real. That story is there in what you just heard. The other story is you got arrogant. You got cocky. You believed you were the next John Woo that you could roll up on set that you were naturally gifted. You didn't have to work. So you hardly broke your script at all. You like,

I wrote the script in like an hour before having to turn it in to be considered. I never touched it again until the first day of shooting. Didn't storyboard, nothing. Just rolled up and thought, I'll know where to put the camera. It'll all just feel instinctive and intuitive. And so I went and nothing was working. It was all garbage. My crew didn't believe in me. The film was falling apart. Teachers tried to save me, but couldn't get through to me because I was so convinced. I know what I'm doing. And it just turned into a pile of garbage because I have no talent. Now, both of those scenarios are true. It is true that at that time, I did not have talent. Now, it doesn't mean I couldn't develop skill, but I didn't have talent.

So which story do you repeat to yourself? For the first probably two years after I graduated, I repeated the I'm not talented story. Then I began reading about the brain and realized, oh, I just haven't developed skills yet. And so then I began to change the story and to focus on the discipline and all the things that I'd learned and all that. But both are true. And so what I tell people is because you're more likely to believe something negative, don't even worry about what's true. Worry about what empowers you. When it comes to just yourself, I'm not talking about, you know, fake news or, you know, a post-truth world. I'm just saying for yourself.

Both of those narratives are based on facts. So the truth of one or the other doesn't matter. One is empowering and one is disempowering. Act in accordance with the one that's empowering. It's a great place to end it, dude. Powerful. There it is. Boom. Awesome. How do you feel? Feel great, dude. Anytime I'm hanging out with you, I'm a happy man.

Yeah, thanks for bringing the heat today, man. My pleasure. I loved it. If you're digging on Tom and impact theory, he's an easy guy to find on the internet. Probably if you type in Tom on Google, it'll pull up your stuff. I don't know if I'm that cool yet,

but if you type in Tom BI, I'm your man. Yeah, so impact theory on YouTube, on iTunes, wherever you enjoy your narrative storytelling, empowering content, you can find him, at Tom Bilyeu on Twitter and Instagram as well. Yes, yes. Do you have any good interviews you're excited about that are coming up?

Well, I will say if they haven't heard yours, it's always cool to see the roles reverse so I highly recommend that episode which I think came out amazingly well we've got our David Goggins episode 2 coming out that one's going to be huge you've already recorded that?

yeah he's coming over here pretty soon too amazing he's evolved as a person he'll bring that it's just phenomenal so yeah I'm super amped on that one. Cool. All right, man. Come back and talk to me again.

Anytime. Cool. Peace. That's great, right? What an amazing guy. What an amazing energy Tom has. Super smart and successful, but also down to earth. And I think it's his earnestness, if I really think about it, that makes me feel most

connected to him. In any event, let him know what you thought of today's conversation at Tom Bilyeu on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all the places. Of course, if you haven't checked out his show, Impact Theory, please do that. It's so good. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well as a number of other resources to expand your education about the world of Tom and impact theory there at richroll.com. If you're struggling with your nutrition and you're looking to dial up your nutritional program and need a little guidance,

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can find on YouTube. Jessica Miranda for graphics, DK, David Kahn for advertiser, relationships, and theme music, as always, by Analema. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here next week with another amazing episode. Who is coming up next week? You know who it is? It's Chris Schumacher. This is an amazingly impactful episode of a guy who basically went to prison for taking another human's life and has been on a redemptive journey since his release. It's a very emotional and I think touching and intimate conversation with an incredible human being so you have that to look forward to too uh until then take it easy everybody uh have a great week and uh let's get out there and be our best selves shall we peace We'll be right back. Thank you.