The School of Greatness - 201 How to be a Jedi and Master The Mind with Tom Bilyeu of Quest Nutrition

Episode Date: July 13, 2015

"Values and identity drive behavior." - Tom Bilyeu If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/201.

This is episode number 201 with Quest Nutrition co-founder Tom Bilyeu. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome, everyone. We are on to episode number 201.

I am so excited and grateful to be along this far in the podcast series. I had no clue that we would ever get to 200, but you guys make this possible because you keep sharing the message, you keep spreading the word, you keep listening, subscribing, and I thank you so very much. So please make sure to head back to lewishouse.com

slash 201 and share this episode with your friends because I believe you are going to love what you hear. This is one of my favorite episodes so far. Really appreciate Tom Bilyeu for all that he shares today. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. For those that don't know who Tom is, he's a co-founder of Quest Nutrition, which Inc. Magazine's list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies in the United States in 2014, named as the second fastest growing company in the nation that year. They have blown up since they started in 2010, all with an idea and a dream to create a protein bar that didn't have all the crap and sugars in it. And man, has it taken off.

Tom didn't start out as the health food business expert that he is today building this incredible company. He actually started out as a CMO of a technology company. And I'm going to have him share with you his story about how this all came about and what he's created with this incredible culture with his company, how they've grown so rapidly each year over and over and over, how they're expanding, how he hires people effectively, how he inspires people to actually leave the company if they have a bigger idea of their own, and so much more around the philosophy and mindset of becoming a successful

entrepreneur, not only in business, but applying that mindset to the rest of your life as well. I really believe you're going to get a lot out of this. For me, it was one of the most fun, captivating interviews that I got to listen to because really, I just had him share his wisdom and there's so much golden wisdom that you're going to hear today. So without further ado, let me introduce you to the one, the only Tom Bilyeu. Welcome, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about today's guest. His name is Tom Bilyeu. What's going on, brother? Good to see you, man. Thank you so much for having me. This is badass. And your view, by the way, is crazy. Anybody that's done the show over Skype, I promise you, you've missed out. The view here

is ridiculous. The view is nice looking over West Hollywood. And Tom is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, Quest Bars. We just enjoyed one, a mint chip one, which was delicious. And I've known about Quest for probably two and a half, three years. I believe my friend John Romanello introduced it to me probably three years ago. I was at his house. John's OG. Yeah. My man.

And he had like this big package of quest bars and i was like what is this and he was like well you haven't heard of these new bars it's like the new thing they only have like five or six ingredients or something and they're really clean and they're blowing up and i had one there i was like oh my gosh these are amazing and ever since then i think i've seen you everywhere you know seen everywhere, every fitness convention I go to any sporting event, I see, you know, quest reps, giving them out and, and, and supporting the brand. So it's incredible what you've created. And I'm excited to learn more about what you've done and how you got there today. So how big is quest today? How big of a company? Um, we're, we're big. So, uh, in our first three years alone, we grew by 57,000 57 000 percent that's not me misspeaking that's

really the truth we were just featured in ink magazine as the second fastest growing private company in north america and behind who oh man i'm so hurt by it the funny thing is they're in el segundo like of all things we're in el segundo they're in el segundo what are the odds um ah i'm actually blanking on their name i'm sure that's the fury inside my soul that we came in second you're blocking it so much actively but they do software for kids and they just killed it man much respect to them they earned it they grinded it out and just have they've really done something amazing they won two years in a row which is nuts hardly ever happens what what you have to do in the metrics between year two and three to win two years in a row is crazy.

Wow. Okay. So credit to them. And how many employees do you have now? Because it seems like you're going like 10 people a day or something. Yeah, it's nuts. So we have 1,300 full-time employees. And then we have almost another 1,000 part-time ambassadors.

So the people that you're saying you saw out in the shows and stuff, we have a whole army of those people literally around the world that work shows for us. An amazing group of human beings. Just a cool army that we've put together. 1,300 full-time? Full-time, yeah. And then how many? 1,000, yeah. 1,000 extra part-time ambassadors.

Wow. That's crazy. Just like writing that many checks alone every two weeks must be overwhelming. Yeah. Our CFO literally yesterday was like, you know that my full-time job is writing checks. It's amazing. All we do is pay people. Writing checks, but also counting the money that's coming in. If you're writing that many checks, there's got to be a lot coming in. Fair. Yeah. It's like complaining about paying taxes. Like if you have to pay taxes, something good is happening.

So what's the, it's a public, the information's public, right? The value of it right now. It is up through what we did with Inc. And then we stopped reporting. Gotcha. So what was that reporting at? We stopped reporting at 86 million. And we're now, just to give you a ballpark, we're more than three, maybe four times bigger than that. Okay, cool. Awesome. So it's growing. It's incredible. And you started in 2010. Yeah. And how did this idea begin? And I've heard your story, but I want everyone to hear. And if you can, just adjust the mic

maybe a little bit in towards the front. Yeah, see if we can get a little. Oh, we don't know. A little more intimate. We better, we better. Welcome into my bedroom, everybody. Okay, so Quest is really

a company born out of misery. And I wish that wasn't true, but it really is. So my partners and I, we were successful serial entrepreneurs before this. We had a technology company called Awareness Tech. That company back in 2010 was named as the 42nd fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte and Touche.

We were making money, we were winning awards, and we're standing in this beautiful conference room overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And we turned to each other and we're like, we're completely miserable. And it was a joke. I mean, we're literally living the cliche of money can't buy happiness, which is ironic because we're three guys that really believe in the power of money. And I really think the greatest problems that we face as a society are going to be solved by people with access to resources. And wealth really is the great facilitator. So here I am a guy that believes that wealth is a great facilitator. It's going to solve these problems. And it's people that know how to generate money that also know how to execute. Um, so I should be right now feeling my most powerful. I should be feeling like, Hey, I'm on top of the world and

I'm not. And why not? Uh, and relentlessly self-assessing, which is something you talk about in your own book, relentlessly self-assessing what comes from that is truly powerful. So we were willing to say, okay, maybe everyone else is looking at us and saying, you guys have made it, but we don't feel that way. So what have we done wrong? And that's when we realized that there's two types of happiness. There's framework happiness and there's momentary happiness. Momentary happiness, bowl of ice cream, a trip to Bermuda. Those things are awesome, right? Love them. You can put somebody in an fMRI machine, give them a bowl of ice cream, and you can literally see it triggers the same dopamine cascade that you would get if they were

doing drugs or doing anything pleasurable. But it ultimately goes away. It's very transient. So that was sort of the part of money that we had tapped into was this really transient, momentary, nice car, nice house kind of thing. But we hadn't gone beyond that to something mission-based. So we said, okay, if we tap into that framework happiness, which is being something, right? I go to the gym every day. I absolutely hate it. I used to be 230 pounds. I come from a morbidly obese family. So for me, the struggle that I had with weight forced me into the gym. It forced me to do something every day that I didn't want to do. But the things that I had to do to my mind in order to show up and do something that I don't want to do was incredibly powerful.

And it became my sense of identity. I'm the guy that shows up in the gym and doesn't give up when other people give up, right? When other people want to stay in the warm bed just as I do, I don't and I go in. And as I told myself that over and over and over, I realized that values and identity drive behavior. So we wanted to take that kind of realization and apply it to business. What part of our identity, what part of our value system could we build a business around? And so we said, okay, first and foremost, we're going to bring value to other people. Like that's just meaningful to me, right? I want to do something that's great for you. And I woke up

every day thinking about my mom and my sister, right? They were morbidly obese. And I just didn't accept that I had to embrace that it was their choice to make whether to lose the weight and be healthy. And I thought, I understand human psychology. I understand if I can make food that they choose based on taste, and it happens to be good for them, that I can get them in a positive direction. So for me, and we started the company for three very different reasons. But for me, that desire to save my mom and my sister and bring value to other people was what kicked it off. That's what drove it for you.

That's why you wanted to go into the health business or the nutritional business. And honestly, so going back to the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, it's important to me to have the balls to look at the biggest problems we face as a society and say, that's my problem to solve, right? Obesity, metabolic disease, the slide towards ill health, however you want to categorize it, that's my problem. Like, I don't even wake up thinking that's my business partner's problem. That's my problem. I'm working with my business partners because they're very sharp guys. But at the end of the

day, like, I own that responsibility. And that's awesome to me, right? Like, having that, it isn't a weight that drags me down. It's like this goal to chase that's so big that I'm just stoked that there are people in the world that are prepared to dream that big. Like I'm inspired by that in others and hopefully can inspire other people with our dream. Now, what is, um, how did you change your mindset to do the hard things in the gym and get up when you didn't want to, when so many people don't do those things, what allowed you or what tools did you use or what practices in order to stay committed? Because a lot of people, they're just not committed over a long period of

time. So how did you have that when other people didn't? To answer that question, I have to take you back. So now it was about 15 years ago. I had this sense that I was stuck in the matrix and my life could be something more, but I know how to make it more. Right. And part of that was on a day when I wanted to stay in bed when it was warm, I did. Uh, and then time just feels like it's getting away from you and you haven't really identified that the problem was that you didn't have something specific enough to get you out of bed. Right. You weren't setting goals. You didn't have a vision. You weren't executing on your dreams. You might be dreaming. Like I was dreaming. I've always dreamed. Uh, for me, ambition was never the problem. I was the most ambitious, laziest person you're ever going to meet 15 years ago. And it was realizing, wait,

just because I'm lazy by nature doesn't mean I have to be lazy in actuality. Like I can actually get the discipline to develop real drive to acquire those skills. So, uh, when I met the guys that are now my partners, uh, they put me into a scenario where there was a very real world consequence, both positive and negative for living up to the acquisition of skills. And that environment, that gladiator pit that I ended up stepping into is the business world. And the great thing is when you're no longer an employee and it's your business and everything you have is on the line. And if the business fails, you lose your house. Like that, that's real. It's real to you in a way that it's not to an employee, right? Because now there's a real consequence that goes beyond, well, I have to look for another job,

right? This goes into, I could lose everything if I can't solve this problem. Now that can scare you away and keep you wanting to be an employee where it's a little bit safer, or that can be wildly motivating to you. That was interesting to me. So I wanted to be able to say the harder I work, the better result I get. And they gave me the opportunity to plug into business where that became true. If I could solve these problems, if I could build a better product, if I could market a better whatever, that better results came. And so there was like now a connection between how hard I work, the skills I acquire, and the reward I get. And that was all I needed. And then for me, being in that loop allowed me to do things

like the gym. Sure. So when did you discover your new values and what are those values, personal and then business and they intertwine? Yeah. For me, they're totally connected 100%. And that's by choice because for a long time they weren't connected. The way that I got the value system was truly looking at what works, right? And so I believe that I'm going to give away my answer to something you're going to ask me later, but I believe that the purpose in life to be great, you have to acquire as many skills as you can that have utility and then put that utility to the test. Because now you can see, did I actually get the skill that I thought I got? Did I get the result from that skill that I wanted?

And you can judge both what skills you need to acquire and whether you have effectively required them. And business like that is the closest thing to say MMA fighting, right? MMA is you want real-time feedback on whether you're learning and getting good at something. Let someone whose sole intent is to take your head off come in and test whether you can defend a choke or defend an armbar. It's so real and so visceral. You can think of it, either it's pure metaphor or there's no metaphor, right? Like you were in that moment.

So finding ways that business can be like that for me allowed me to create a set of values out of pure efficiency. So when, for me, the one thing I can't, I can't give you ambition. I can't make you want something, right? I can't want it for you. But once you want something, now you plug into something very real. And if you accept, so I talk about this, 25 bullet points is the quest belief system. And that was me trying to give people the thing that they needed to escape the matrix.

And in that is the belief that you can acquire skills, that the human mind, human potential is nearly limitless, right? So you start putting all this stuff together and it's like, okay, essentially everything falls on my shoulders. If I want to be great, it's all down to me and whether I execute on that or not. It's all down to my ability to say, this is the thing I want. This is the gap and skill set between who I am today and who I need to become in order to acquire that thing that I want.

Like for me, I want to end metabolic disease globally, right? So now I know what set of skills I need, right? I'm going to have to understand nutrition really well. I'm going to have to understand psychology really well in order to build this business. I'm going to have to understand just business in general to get the metrics right so that people can afford to buy these products, on and on and on. So you can identify the skill sets that you need and then you get to test them, right? Because if I have learned the wrong skills or failed to learn a skill that I thought I had,

the business doesn't grow, right? So you have this feedback loop. And really, my value system was born out of that. I was so clear about what I wanted to accomplish that I could just test the skills that I was getting. And that sort of desire to accurately assess and acquire skills really is my value system. Right. But I think you started Quest when you were 34. Is that right? When did we start Quest? Started Quest five years ago.

I'm 39. Yes. 34. Well done. You know me better than I do. So how long did it take you to, I mean, get clear on what you wanted? Did it take 35 years, 34 years for you to get clear on what you wanted? And what was that process of actually figuring it out that you got clear? Yeah, that's, yeah, it's so

tempting to mythologize everything and to tell you the concise story, which is maybe more useful, but is a little misleading. So the truth went something like this. We're miserable building this company that's a product we don't care about. Step one, what do we love? What do we care about? And what would we do and love doing even if we were failing? And that was the question that we asked ourselves. So, okay, the thing that we would do for three very different reasons is to make this food that people choose based on taste and it happens to be good for them. And I've already explained my reasons. Um, and so then as you know, we're starting to do the company, honestly, you're looking at what's working and what's not working

and you're relentlessly self-assessing. So it was just clear to me that people didn't think the way that we thought. So the three of my partners and I, Ron and Mike and myself, we think a very certain way, right? What we call the quest way. And because they had developed that over the school of hard knocks and starting businesses and failing, they were able to bring me along much later in the process. But because I knew nothing about what they had learned up to that point, and they weren't teaching me, they just drug me into deep waters. I had to learn. And because of the way my mind works, I was processing that into basically a list of, okay, here are the lessons I've learned. I was codifying it, right? Turning it into a map for success that I could hand to other people. And that ultimately became the 25 bullet points that are the quest belief system. So as we're going, and I realized in my head, I've got these, what I didn't know at

the time was 25 bullet points, but anyway, I've got this way of thinking and I realized in my head, I've got these, what I didn't know at the time was 25 bullet points, but anyway, I've got this way of thinking and I'm encountering these employees that don't think like that. And so accepting that there's a, that was really when I started to realize there's a gap between who people are and what they tell you they want to accomplish. Because in the beginning I hired everyone, everyone. Not because I'm super smart and thought, Hey, I should. There was no one else. We had the smallest handful of people ever. And so I started doing the interviewing. As I was doing it, I start realizing, God, these guys tell me they want to do something amazing with their

life. And if you just listen, like, wow, yeah, I want to be on your team, dude. You're going to do amazing stuff. And then you realize they can't execute on that dream. So why can't they, they don't have the mindset yet. Like there's a, you could do an entire podcast series on how to get the mindset, but I'll just use Carol Dweck and her amazing book mindset up there too, on the show somewhere. I'm sure such a good book. I see Simon Sinek up there. It was also very influential on us. Uh, and she says some people either believe they're as smart as they're ever going to be, and that's that. So they're going to be ego protective, and they're going to try to thwart anything that makes them feel like they're not the smartest person or whatever. And then there's people with a growth mindset, and they realize, I'm not the smartest person, and I'm certainly not as smart as I could

be. So even if I am the smartest person that ever lived, I could get a little bit smarter. And so when they're confronted with contradictory information, they learn and they soak it up like a sponge. Whereas other people are fixed mindset, right? Correct. They're fixed on like, no, this is the way and I'm right and that's wrong. Yes. And I would say the world – everyone's on a spectrum, right? Even I, as much as I believe in it and work my ass off to be a growth mindset, I still have let's call it 10%% where I catch myself and like, come on, dude, you know better than that. But so people that fall on the, let's

say sub 50% spectrum of the growth mindset, it's got to be 98%. So what's the question you ask people now when you hire them to know if they have a growth mindset of our fixed mindset? You ready? It's a weird thing. People actually, I don't let them do it anymore, but people actually used to ask if they could come in and sit in on the interviews because they were so weird. Not intentionally so. It was just to really get to a human being and who they are, it requires some weird stuff. So it goes like this. You walk in the door.

There's a couple bad things happening. One, your anxiety levels are through the roof because you're in this weird setting. You're on my turf. You're sitting across from me. They built me up. Oh, it's the are through the roof because you're in this weird setting. You're on my turf. You're sitting across from me. They built me up. Oh, it's the president of the company. So people come in and if you like – Billion-dollar brand.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put their fingers – put your fingers on their aorta, their arteries, and you're going to – the heart is going to be just racing out of control. So that's problem number one. The blood is literally leaving the prefrontal cortex and they're just in a bad state. They probably want to say anything to get the job. And that takes us to the tyranny of being chosen. Well said, my friend.

So people come in, they want to be picked, right? Being picked is awesome. Accepted, acknowledged, chosen. Yes. Hell yeah. We all want that. Yeah. I teach people about the tyranny of being chosen and I still have to check myself.

Yeah. Because it's just rad to be picked. Like there's no two ways about it. So they walk in, they're nervous as hell. They've got the tyranny of being chosen. They want to win the job. They're not trying to assess the opportunity. They're not asking, is this job right for me? They're merely trying to be selected. So step one is, hey, welcome. I understand this is a very weird situation. So I want to bring your anxiety levels down as much as possible. You should be interviewing me. You should be kicking my tires and figuring out if I'm right for you. You're offering to give me 50% of your waking hours.

You better love this job. Like for some reason, this job better be moving you towards what you want for selfish reasons. So literally I opened the interview by saying that and then saying, I'm here to answer one question and one question only. When you're at your most selfish, interview by saying that and then saying, I'm here to answer one question and one question only. When you're at your most selfish, are you good for me? And when I'm at my most selfish, am I good for you? And when you see an alignment of selfish desires, it really is beautiful. And I'll give you an example. My chief marketing officer, Nick Robinson, really, really sharp kid. He wants to build a media empire. He's not so worried about obesity. He struggled himself a little bit. So I think it resonated with him,

but that wasn't a stated thing for him. He's got much bigger goals that he needs to build a media empire to do it. Now I need a media empire in order to get this brand to mean something to people. So it can bring the kind of value to their lives that I wanted to bring. So here I need somebody that has, when they're at their most selfish, they are learning about building a media empire.

And he's thinking, I need somebody to fund this whole thing while I learn how to build a media empire and try that because i can't pay it all myself and yeah exactly so that's that's the alignment of selfish desires so i'm trying to put people in that position where they're just trying to figure out if this is right for them which hopefully lowers their anxiety levels and they're no longer worried about being picked and then the the sort of trojan horse is i'm trying to get them outside of the interview answers because i'm not going to see the real them i'm going to see uh the representative that they sent and when you were on um inside quest there was a moment on the show and that's why i stopped and i

was like the way this dude is looking at me like i wish everybody could see because you weren't there to give me pat answers you were actually actually engaged. I mean, I was almost crying at a couple of points. I was like, I wanted to be as real as possible and be engaged as possible. And I think you got to allow yourself to go anywhere and everywhere to get that truth. For sure. Yeah. And when you, and it was like a beautiful moment, right? Thank you.

It was so cool to share that and to have been able to create an environment like that where you could be so raw, so real. We had an audience. I mean, it was just like – so it created this whole vibe in the room. It's like one of those late night where it's dark and everybody can like let their guard down. If you can get that to happen in an interview as uneasy as that is, then you get to the real person. So the technique I use for that is a confession. So I tell them, look, I'm going to try and get you to lower your guard and reveal yourself as quickly to me as possible

so that I can judge you. And I'm going to reciprocate and I'm going to lower my guard and reveal myself as quickly to you as possible so that you can figure out whether- If this is what you want. Yeah, exactly. If it's what you want. Right. And the confession is really simple. And what I'm about to say is actually true. I want to be a Jedi. First of all, I think in movies almost at all times. So the matrix is the perfect example of my life. And comics. Yes, a hundred percent.

And so I have no interest in wielding a lightsaber. That's not interesting to me, but the ability to influence, these are not the droids you're looking for. That is so meaningful to me. One, because it allows you to control your own mind, right? There's no more powerful mind control than control over one's own mind. And then because I believe that I use it not only for the good of that person, right? You should be a quest for the exact number of days that it's the most selfish thing you can do. So I'm already thinking of you.

And then we've got – So you don't want them to stay forever if it's not selfish for them anymore. No way. You want them to get out as quickly as possible. 100%. Interesting. Dude, nothing terrifies me because I lost eight and a half years of my life. Being complacent, being safe because it was comfortable, good money, good –

Exactly. All those things, yeah. And it really felt like I lost them. And I was like time is the most precious commodity you have. And I mean, look, I reframed it because it doesn't do me any good to sit there and say, I lost eight and a half years of my life. I learned a lot, but it was like, it, it was unnecessary. The way that I went about, like I learned every lesson the hardest way possible with the most pain and suffering possible. Um, so I'm emotionally just keenly aware of what it means to to service someone else's dream rather than your own and I think so Elon Musk inspires the life out of me like that guy just

dreaming the way that he dreams is so incredible to me I want to find the next Elon Musk light them on fire and get them to believe that they can do that and they can execute on that level and so the the sort of background thing that's running – Even if they leave you. 100%. So help you get to the next level while cultivating that within them. And then when they're ready to leave and it no longer serves them or you, then you want them to go out and be happy.

For sure. And we've had – I've taught two people to be direct competitors and they've gone on to launch nutrition companies. Their own bars? Yep. Wow. And to me, that's the – if you take it out to the natural conclusion. So we make a promise to our employees, and I'm going to try to set you free.

I think of it in matrix terms, right? So I'm going to try and free you from the matrix. As someone helped free me from the matrix, I feel obligated to pay that back. And getting free of the matrix is shorthand for learning to think like an entrepreneur, right? You hit an obstacle, you don't stop. You find a way around it. You have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Um, I want to do that for people. And I want quest to be that environment, whether you meet me, spend time with me should be irrelevant. Just the quest environment is going to provide that to you. Um, so to that end, we tell people, I will teach you anything you want to know. I will

give you the list of books in order that I think you should read to be able to take my job from me. I will at every corner encourage or every turn encourage. If you have an entrepreneurial spark and you want to chase it, I will encourage that. I will never ask you to hide your passions from me. The only catch is your tuition. You have to be killer at your job yeah right if you're killing it at your job do whatever you want right then your reward is quest university and our goal is to teach you all those things and some of it's formalized teaching people basic finance and things like that the whole show inside quest was meant to be us paying that forward and teaching people that mindset bringing on people like yourself to come on and just show people how

far you can take that mindset you know how you can go from injury to just massive accomplishment in a ridiculously short period of time. People are super inspired by that. So that kind of thing is our promise. But if you follow that out to its natural conclusion, ultimately someone comes and says, yeah, you'll teach me anything. You'll encourage me entrepreneurial, teach me how to build a nutrition company and we'll do it. And the reason we do it isn't because i'm eager to build you know my next competitor it's really because it's a it's a value system that i believe in right and so i don't want to artificially limit it also to be honest i believe that the the juice is always in the execution and if they can out execute me that's bad on me yeah right or it's something you can learn about what they have and for sure interesting

execute me, that's bad on me. Or it's something you can learn about what they have. Interesting. Now, I saw this is all great stuff, and I saw somewhere online that when you launched Quest, there were 1,600 other protein bar companies that launched in 2010. Flavors or companies.

Flavors or companies. What gave you the audacious mindset to think that you could compete against all those, plus the 10-20 years of other nutrition companies out there and beat them? Yeah, it's – Without having any experience in this. Yeah. I'm going to give you a phrase that I play in my own head that I know when I say out loud 50% of people love it and 50% of people hate me for it.

But it's true. So, hey, here we go. I have the arrogance of belief. I believe in myself. Now, I believe in one thing we go. I have the arrogance of belief. I believe in myself. Now, I believe in one thing about me. I am not the smartest guy. I got a 990 on my SATs. I took it twice.

That's my combined score. Better than me. That's bad for both of us. I always joke with people, a monkey smearing feces on the test could score higher than I did. Like, it's literally terrible. Yeah. But I always believed that I could do whatever I set my mind to. Right. So that's the only, the only credit I will give myself is when other

people break and give up and stop. I just don't. Right. And it comes down to the story you tell yourself about yourself. And that's the story I tell myself. I was just this last weekend, I was at, um, uh, an entrepreneurial organization and they brought a world-class mountain biker in and said, Hey, anybody that wants to go for a ride with her go. And I thought, okay, you know,

I'll go. And, and cause she's saying, uh, we can do a beginner course or whatever. And I thought, Oh, that's perfect.

You know, jump on the bike and go. I've never been on a mountain bike before ever in my life. I haven't been on a bike of any kind, probably in 15 years. That was probably stupid. And we're in, oh, God, Sun Valley, Idaho. So it's not exactly flat land.

And we go mountain biking, and I'm dying. I'm exhausted. I'm just done. It's at like 6,000 feet, first of all. So I cannot catch my breath. And I keep stopping. And everyone's like, oh, you know, it's okay, man. Like, go ahead and turn back.

It's all good. It's all good. And I'm like, I don't think you know the story I tell myself. Like, there's no universe in which I stop. So I keep going. Finally, they've done the loop, right? Some people have turned back, whatever. They've done the loop.

And now they're coming back. And they're passing me. I'm still headed out. And they're like, you need to turn around. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, but I'm not going to turn around. And they said, okay, but then we're no longer responsible for you. And I was like, oh, okay. I'm like, it is what it is, man. I appreciate that. No worries. I'm a big boy. Like go. And I just kept going. And I, I must've come in an hour and 20 minutes or something after everybody

else, but I finished. And that meant so much to me. I was like, I'm going to ignore the fact I got my ass handed to me and I came in dead last. Yeah, yeah. But I'm going to be proud that I didn't quit. Interesting. Did you say arrogance of belief? Is that what you said? Arrogance of belief. You know, it's interesting. When I study champion athletes, there's one thing that they have over everyone else, one of two things. And it's a belief in themselves or their beliefs in something higher giving them that strength, courage, athleticism. Whenever I listen to champions on interviews after the Super Bowl, whatever it may be, the first thing they say is, how do you feel?

The broadcasters say, I want to say thanks to God who gives me all the glory, who gives me all my strength, my courage, everything. I believe 100% in him and his power and in that power. Or the other athlete is like, I believe in myself so much. I'm the best. I'm the greatest. I believe I will do whatever it takes. I believe that I can go through any adversity. It's that belief, that arrogance of belief, either way, that I believe makes people great or not great.

And even if you're – the other person may have a lot of belief as well, and sometimes it just doesn't fall your way. You know, Tom Brady has been and has lost a number of Super Bowls, has also won a number of them. But it's getting to that opportunity, I think. You've got to have that belief either way. So that's a good point right there. What makes you guys different than everyone else?

There's really two things. One, the product is just different. So we were the first ones. In fact, I never really answered your question. So there's 1,600 bars products into a declining market. Everyone told us we were crazy. But there was nothing in the market that we would eat. So we knew there was at least a market to eat.

Too much stuff in it, too much chemicals. And we just thought, look, man, if we can deliver this product that's real people will respond and you know and and wanting to build a company of value so that people could love it in two ways so one was just we created a better product yeah um and then two we said right from the beginning there's two things that we export our product and our philosophy and that made us weird right out of the gate and we said look, look. But different is good. Yeah, right. And this was really different in a positive way because we wanted to own up this. There's two things going on with the company. There's the ability to make this superior product and get it out into the market and all that. And then there's the mentality that we have that has allowed us to do this.

And we want to share that mentality with other people. And we have a similar global desire by exporting that mentality, which is we shorthand it to Elon Musk, but I mean, the next Bill Gates, people doing big things, world changing things, right? We want to find those people. We want to give them the arrogance of belief in themselves, or a less controversial way of saying we want to give people the confidence of belief. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that they can be confident, that they can believe in themselves enough to take a risk and quite frankly, survive failing. And a lot of people, I think, get eaten up by failure, which is not useful.

Yeah. So helping people develop a mentality that inoculates them from the pain of failing, from the pain of not being chosen, all those things that really knock people back, we want to export that philosophy. And that certainly plays well for the brand because the brand is always meant to be empowering. We had to make a decision early on. Is a Quest bar what you give to somebody who has six-pack abs and you say, well done, son, you get to eat one of these? So is it a trophy or is it a catalyst for change? Hey, I see somebody, this guy, this gal, they're struggling and I want to give them an inclusive community. I want to give them a product that feels good,

that they can celebrate with, that they can reconnect to joy. And that's what we want to be. We don't want to be a trophy. I want to be a catalyst for change. So when you're already just in the mindset, we want to be a catalyst for change. And you're trying to put that out into the world in ways that, by the way, do not serve you from a financial standpoint in any way, shape, or form. It actually allows you to create an authentic connection with the consumer and being real and really connecting with them. That does serve you from integrity of the brand. Sure. Yeah. And you said eight and a half years of your life, you feel like it was was taken from you i sold it cheaply you sold it i won't allow myself to say it was okay you sold it cheaply sold it cheaply

um i'm curious what were the biggest lessons you learned about yourself in those eight and a half years that you apply now to your business and also do you feel like you would have such a big company and mission and purpose with quest without those eight and a half years? I definitely wouldn't. So did you sell it cheaply then? Yeah. Is it the classic case of I wouldn't change anything because it brought me to where I am? Sure.

That's not an interesting mindset to me, right? Because I don't want to sit here and fumble for the next eight and a half years. Now I want to be deadly efficient. Yeah. Now I want to be deadly efficient. So that is the – it's a better framing device for me to say that that was time sold cheaply to remind me not to make the same mistakes. Again. But I have reframed it in my mind as well and I understand I learned very powerful lessons. So what lessons did I learn? really have to set your mind to acquiring a certain set of skills with all the efficiency in the world that you can acquire those skills. First of all, uh, that anything is possible as

long as you set your mind to it. And that the most, and this is probably the most important lesson that I learned, um, that what is working against you is your own mind. Now, if you stop there, you're in trouble because it's not specific. So we all have insecurities that get triggered and then we start acting foolishly as a result of that trigger. Now, the one, so we all have a superpower. I'm sure you've heard that before. We all have a superpower. Mine is the ability to understand my own emotions and drivers, even when they're petty and ugly. And I just admit to them, and I'm talking within seconds. even when they're petty and ugly. And I just admit to them.

And I'm talking within seconds. Like if I have just a horrible, petty, thought-feeling driver, I'm like, okay, I'm doing this for a really stupid reason. And because I'm aware of it, I can't always stop it. So this is not like, yay me. I can't always stop it. But because I at least recognize it, I can then train it out of myself over time. Because it's like, okay, when you do that, it's because this person triggered that insecurity and you're dealing with it this way.

And that also lets me then teach other people. So if you walked into a meeting at Quest, it would be really weird because we're talking vulnerable. We're being totally vulnerable with each other. We're being really honest about what insecurities are being triggered. And if somebody makes a weird face when somebody else says something, I'll just be like, you made a weird face. Let's talk about the weird face. Because I know that weird face

is because some insecurity is being triggered, right? And what happens when people's insecurity is triggered, they'll fight for a dumb idea just because it's theirs, right? And they don't want to feel stupid. So they want to win the argument. And the thing that I think I learned over the eight and a half years

that a lot of people don't really understand, and if I could give this gift to people, it'd be very powerful for them that everyone is going to build a massive ego. Everyone, everyone in this room right now, the three of us, we all have big egos. I promise you. It's only a question of what did you build your ego around? Did you build it around something that's positive and empowering, or did you build it around being perfect? perfect, something that's very fragile, something that you could never uphold, so you're going to end up fighting to protect your ego to what may be essentially a really bad idea, but because it was your idea and it made you feel good, you're going to fight for it.

So I realized very early on, because I'm not as bright as my partners, and intelligence is not a predictor of success, so that's not a big thing for me. But I'm really not, just like on a raw IQ level, I'm not as bright as my partners. So they can process data much more quickly than I can. And in the beginning, it made me feel very inferior. And so that triggered an insecurity. And so I would fight for dumb ideas because they were mine. And sometimes I could actually convince them. And it was one day realizing I actually won that argument. And now I'm terrified because I've convinced them.

Whether it's not the right thing or not only what if, I know it's not, I know it's the worst idea, but I've just out argued them, right? Like I've fatigued them. They no longer want to fight over it. So, and I thought, wow, that's really dumb because if I'm goal oriented, if my goal really is X, Y, Z, right? I want to end metabolic disease. Then you know you're either moving towards that goal or you're not. And so having that realization made me go, I need to build my self-esteem around something that is at all times empowering. So rather than building my self-esteem around being right, which is what I've been doing

up to that moment, and being right still feels good, right? Everybody loves it. It feels great. But there's a more powerful one, which is to identify the right answer faster than anyone else, which means you may have the right answer. And then I'm going to be like, Lewis has the right answer. That idea is so badass. And then I'm going to get so hardcore behind your idea and be the driving energy behind it that people will actually- To enroll everyone else.

Yeah. And the whole time I'm going to be screaming, this is Lewis's idea. Lewis is a genius. This man did it. But everyone is getting behind me because I'm running harder and faster than anyone else. And because I'm bringing so much energy to the right answer, it makes me feel good. Like I feel rad. I feel as rad as I would have if it actually had been my own idea. Let's talk about self-awareness because it sounds like you have a lot of self-awareness.

How important is it for everyone to have self-awareness because it sounds like you have a lot of self-awareness. How important is it for everyone to have self-awareness? And how do you cultivate that understanding, that skill set? It absolutely is critical. I think it's probably the most important skill that you can develop. And here's how I train people to do it at Quest. So I'll give you one specific application. There's many, obviously. So this will be very, very specific.

In interviewing, the first thing you need to do, you need to keep a seven second journal in the first seven seconds of meeting somebody. You have a feeling and that feeling usually emanates from your gut, right? You're either drawn to that person. You want to hang out. They make you feel uneasy, whatever. You probably don't understand why you like them. You may not understand why you don't like them, but you have a reaction and it comes way too quickly for them to talk you out of it. So just take note. Then what I do is once I recognize, oh, I have a positive or, ooh, I have a negative feeling for this person. I then open my mind up. If I love them, I open my mind up to they may be terrible here. Or if I really don't like them, I open my mind up to they may be the best thing ever.

And so I go through the rest of the interview simply remembering what the first seven seconds told me. Then I get to spend, let's say, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour with that person just trying to find out who they are, revealing myself, getting them to reveal themselves. And through that, I will form a new opinion. And it may be the same as my first seven seconds. It may be wildly different. And then if I hire them,

I get to test, was I right? And which one was right? If I initially reacted poorly, but then ended up hiring them, was I right the first time or the second time? So you just over the repetition of, of going through the,

I have an emotion that I don't understand, but I'm going to make mental note of it. And I should tell people to write it down, um, going through that process and then later identifying it, that becomes really, really useful. Because you can start to test the hypothesis. I feel this way and I think it's because of this. And then you see over time if it wasn't.

How many people do you stick around more than six months once you hire them? Do I hang around? How many people stick around and stay at the company for more than six months? Is it like a quick decision? If you know in the first 30 days, is it like a marker where they either make it or they don't and you're like, okay, it's probably not the best fit? How do you judge that? That's actually something that I struggle with because I would say we have a relatively high turnover rate. The reason is we're a really, really particular flavor. For people that have a growth mindset, you will not find a better place to work. But if you have a fixed

mindset, we sound like lunatics, right? Like imagine you walk in with a fixed mindset. You actually believe you're as smart as you're ever going to be. And that's that. Some people are born with more than others. And that's just the way it is. You think of yourself as a very bright, very intelligent person. Thank God, right? And to you, it's like height. You either have it or you don't. And you walk into a meeting and somebody makes a funny face and I can tell they're shaking their head because there's some historical disagreement between these two. And I say, literally just today, by the way, this is a real example. I'm like, you're shaking your head because you believe you've told somebody something and they haven't listened, right? To somebody with a fixed mindset, that's like, this isn't a therapy session, dude.

Like, what are you doing? But to me, knowing how people entrench themselves into bad behaviors that they can free themselves from, and that's all judged by efficiency, by the way. So it's not like, shoo, shoo, Tom thinks this. It's, we have a goal and I judge every behavior, every smile, frown, whatever whatever against does it move us towards where we're going or away from where we're going. So, yeah, for the people that stay, they stay for a very long time. For the people that leave, they leave fast. I believe that we can't achieve our goals without a great team.

And it sounds like you're building a great team. But with everyone turning over quickly, how does that dynamic fit in with creating a connection with people if you know their office mate right next to them is gone within a month and they're being vulnerable and opening up and sharing and connecting and being honest and sticking to these 20 25 bullet points these values how does someone fully open up and express themselves and trust that they can if they're going to leave and go do something else and be gone. Yeah. So the way that we have it, I would say probably about – it's going to be north of 90% of the people that once they're in, they're in. So there's this ever-building snowball of people that have been working together now for years.

Yeah. So there's like a cultural lexicon. So the way that we refer to it is the island has voted you off so it it it really becomes that collective of people who make up the core of the company are like this guy just he's not having fun we call him clock punchers he's a clock puncher he's a nine-to-fiver right he's not he hasn't bought invested into the brand yeah not even not even that because we don't think like that like i don't want people the dream to end metabolic disease is my dream if you happen to share that dream wow that's fantastic um but if we're not serving something that's intimately personal for you you shouldn't be here

right and when someone is serving themselves everything about them is different they've got more ideas more energy they put more time into it with a bigger smile they're just just more energetic. So when people walk into Quest, the first thing they say, almost without exception, is, whoa, there's a real energy here. Because that's people, that's whatever, 1,300 people that are there for their own selfish reasons. So while I say we have a high turnover, it's high by my standards because I want everybody to have a growth mindset, to really fall in love. But yeah, I mean, how we compare to other companies, I don't know. Sure. And are you accessible to everyone?

Do you give your time? If anyone wants time with you, are you just like, let me clear my schedule? Do you have set hours where you say I'm available to schedule time with me if you have any challenges or you want to talk about anything? Or how does that work? It's been evolving. So yes, if anyone says they want to see me they will get to see me for sure and they'll get to see me within the next week oh the next 48 hours for

sure um but i know the truth of being available is to go sit out in the middle and beckon people to you because as much as i hate it, there's an intimidation factor to the position. So people think, oh, he's the president. He's the owner. I can't go up to him. Absolutely hate that. And that holds them back, which means it actually holds my company back. So it's like, I would love nothing more than people to kick my door in and be like, you work for me. You know what I mean? That's when, okay, now I know you're here for some reason. What do you need? Tell me what you need.

You're trying to make something happen. Yeah. So I used to sit out in what we call the living room. So if I'm awake and not in the gym, I'm at work. Monday through Friday, obviously. So I'm in there really early and I stay really late. And I used to sit out in what we call the living room and just invite people to come and talk to me.

And it was awesome. And I had this touch point and people we call the living room and just invite people to come and talk to me. And it was awesome. And I had this touch point. People could tell me what was going on. And I got to continue to push out the mindset and let people see it from like a thousand different angles, like how I would handle this problem or that problem or whatever. Sure. Do you sit on the big beanbag now? I don't anymore, but that's exactly the space I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah.

And what I found was – in fact, this is why I ended up starting Inside Quest, because it didn't scale. Right? I could maybe touch 10 people at a time, but when you've got 1,300, that's not enough. Crazy. And I thought, we've got 1,300 now. Where are we going to be in five years? So we started thinking, okay, how can we make this scalable? And the answer was to do a show where I bring on people like you.

this scalable? And the answer was to, to do a show where I bring on people like you. Um, and we get to go back and forth and really push each other and sort of challenge ideas and let people see that and engage in it as much as they want. And now that a, it lives forever and B, they can come in and see it recorded in real time and they get to ask you questions. Yeah. Yeah. And ask me questions as well. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. But if they did want to talk to you one-on-one, they could just schedule it with you or your assistant or whatever. And then people do all the time. Gotcha. Cool. Um, and we were talking about this before the show a little bit. And so I'm curious to hear your opinion on one marriage and two children. When you have such a big vision to end something like you want to end, is it possible to achieve this massive worldchanging vision and be married and have kids?

Right. It's an awesome question. I'll give you the best advice I've ever gotten on the subject of having kids. I asked the guy. I was going really, really having a hard time deciding if we were going to have kids or not. I saw this guy and he was talking about his kids. Successful entrepreneur. And I said, dude, do I have kids or do I not have kids?

And he said, have kids, don I have kids or not have kids? And he said, have kids, don't have kids. It doesn't matter. But whatever you do, do it all the way. And that hit me to my core. And I was like, dude, that is the, I said, I'm going to remember you for a very long time. And I promise it like hit me that hard in the moment. I was like, It hit me that hard in the moment. I was like, that advice is going to shape what I do. So for me, and this is just me, I want to continue to achieve grand goals, very, very big goals, goals that demand me to give myself to them completely. Not just 9 to 5 and clock it in and clock it out, but at any time during the day.

Right. Anytime at night. Yeah. So my wife and I together, we both work in the business. My wife is a dynamo. That woman is so good at her job. She's great. She's crazy. Better than me at a lot of things.

I'm so honored to have her in the company. Honestly, that woman is, she makes me sweat to keep up. Wow. She's just the real deal. So we're both engaged in the same business with the same end goal in mind, sharing this life together, like all in. And we both really want kids really, really badly. The only thing we want more than we want to have kids is to not have kids, to not be conflicted, to be all in at the business, to not then miss the

opportunity to be all in with the family. And I just don't, for me, for the way I want to feel the life I want to live is deeply personal. I totally get that. But for me, it's a no-brainer. So we don't plan to have kids. We're all in at the business. So do you believe you can have it all?

You believe you can have the kids, the marriage, and go for the big vision? Or are you saying that for what's true to you, you don't believe you can have both at this time? If you have my limited mental capabilities, you can't do it all. I've seen other people and they seem legitimately happy with exactly where they are in their business, exactly where they are with their kids. And talk to any business owner, man. And if a business owner has kids, he will tell you 99 times out of 100, the kid's the best thing I ever did. Nature is going to make sure. Once you have the kid, nature is going to take over your brain.

Yes. So I get it. If I had kids, I would end up saying the same things. Oh, my God, this is the most profound thing that's ever happened to me. This trumps anything I've ever done in business. Forget the global slide towards ill health. That's nothing. This is the world.

This is it. And honestly, some of that talk is what freaked me out. Like I, so many times I heard parents say like, my child is my best friend. And I'm like, homie, you're married. Like, does your wife know? Right. So that, that always gave me unease with what I know about humans, but clearly it works magically for many people. And there's a lot of people super happy. I just judge myself purely against the life I want to live, and the life I want to live mandates no children.

But you believe being married is definitely something possible to achieve your vision and be in a committed exclusive relationship, and that supports the vision. Yeah. Now we're going to get real controversial. Is that where we're headed here? I'm just kidding. So I'm going to give you the truth. Let's keep it real.

Yeah. Gentlemen, if you're out there listening right now, most of you should not get married. I'm going to be real honest with you. It works for me, and I love it so much. And my wife is the center of my universe, and I am on fire with love and passion for that woman. And we've been married for 13 years, been together for 15. She has helped make me who I am. I would be a lesser man without that woman in no uncertain terms. Like it is easy for me to understand. I would be a lesser man, lesser accomplished,

less skills acquired, all of it. If it wasn't for her, like she is, she's there for me at every moment I've ever needed her. She is just amazing. So I'm a big believer in love. I am a big believer in marriage. I just think if you're not prepared to acquire the skills that will make you successful in marriage, then don't get married. What are those skills? So the generic answer-

While having a huge vision and conquering that vision. The great news is it's exactly the same. The same thing that makes me being good as an on as an entrepreneur makes me good as a husband. And I'm willing to make that statement knowing that you could ask my wife and you will see her. She will back it up. I promise.

And only because I grind it out. I work my ass off. Right. So and I accept the realities of the human condition. And I think that's one thing that people don't do a lot. And, and, and I get asked to speak a lot about, you know, how's quest been successful. And every talk I give is some variation of every problem you're having in your company is a result of you not acknowledging some reality of the human condition. Right. So your employees are not sinister. They're not trying to bring you down. They just

don't feel significant in your business. So they are lurching, they're groping in the dark to find significance. And once you understand that, ah, I can provide you significance and then you can go on and do something. So communication, but very specifically, understanding where the other person is coming from so that you can talk to them in a way that they can actually hear you. So my wife and I define words. So I'll give you an example. We define the word important. If I say, hey, this would really mean something to me if you did that, no alarm bells go off.

Hey, I really need you to be there. No alarm bells go off. Hey, it's important to me that you be there. I'll drop whatever I'm doing and be there. That's like this is the most important thing. 100%. Yeah. So if you use the word important, everything else stops and I come and do there. That's like, this is the most important thing. 100%. Yeah. So if you use the word important, everything else stops

and I come and do that. That way there's none of the miscommunication of, but I told you how important it was to me. Interesting. So. How did you learn that?

Through pissing off my wife over and over and over and finally realizing, okay, wait, communication is what I do. Yeah. How are we like missing each other?

So I just had the sense we were two ships passing in the night. Um, and so, uh, we decided we were going to start defining terms. Like, what does that mean to you? Um, like I, if she calls me twice, I can ignore it. If that phone rings a third time in a row, and this has actually happened where I've ran out of a business meeting, like the house was on fire. I'm like, I got to go right now. No explanation. Out the door. Because we agree, if you dial the third time, assume I'm with President Obama and we're about to make something really magical happen and that this call forces me out of the room. It's got to be like that type of situation. She's only done it once just to give you an idea. What if you don't have the phone on it? Then I'm screwed. That's just bad mojo. But I've got the Apple watch now, so we're good. We're good.

Wow. This is fascinating. And has there ever been a moment in your marriage where you felt like this is taking you away from your vision or it's not going to work or challenging times where it made you question it? No, but there's definitely, because my wife is in the business. If she wasn't for sure. And therefore while in the company before I was working more hours, certainly than I am now. Cause I was so terrified that I would never figure the code out and get out of, um, you know, where we work. Cause my wife and I started very poor. Um, uh, I joke cause her father's very successful down the streets.

Literally. Yeah. Tiny, tiny one bedroom, 700 square feet. Uh, she was clipping coupons. I mean the whole nine, like we were legit at one point about 15 years ago, scrounging through my couch cushions for enough change to put gas in my car. Like that's where we started. Um, so I went through a period where I was like, dude, I need to be successful. Like, it's not just a one, like I have to real, I can't live like this. So, um, I worked just inhuman amounts of hours, seven days a week. I wouldn't let her take a vacation, not a single day for six years. Uh, and then finally she was like, this isn't sustainable.

So yeah. Okay. Now, if you're not working together and you're, you're married and you're working in different careers or she's not working with you, how do you work that out? I mean, if you're, you know, if you're working all these hours, how do you communicate in a way that's, you're there for the marriage, but also there for your entrepreneurial dream. There's a lot of entrepreneurs listening that might have that question of like, how do I manage the balance to make sure that I'm there for my wife or wife is there for the husband, but also going after the dream and the vision and

making it happen and not sacrificing that time for the dream, the time of your vision and feeling like it's a compromise or a sacrifice. I think it's the same advice for people in relationships as it is for parents. They've done studies on this and it doesn't matter how much time you spend with your kids to a point, obviously, if you're not like spending some time, it's going to be a problem, but it's not the time. It's the happiness level that you show when you're together. So if you're with your kids five hours a day and you're miserable, you're unhappy, you feel lost, you're depressed, that's not great for the kids, right? They're not going to establish good relationship with you. They're not going to have necessarily positive relationships moving

forward with, you know, like a daughter wouldn't necessarily have a great relationship with a future husband because there's the dynamic she's used to with a male figure in her life is off, right? So what they found is it's correlated purely to happiness. If you come in and you're just like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy to see you and you're playing with the kids and you're having a great time, it doesn't need to be a lot of time. It just needs to be awesome quality time. So I think the same is true of a relationship. If when you're with your significant other, you're still playing on the phone and they've got to get your attention and they never feel like they're number one.

And that, so going back to the marriage question, you got to answer this question. The whole point, the only reason in my mind to be in a long-term committed relationship is how good it feels to be one person's number one, not number two, number one. I would not stay with my wife if I wasn't her number one. And I would encourage her not to stay with me if she wasn't my number one. Like she knows in all the world, no matter how bad it gets, we lose the house, the company crumbles, everything goes to hell. Our families pass away. All of it. She's got one person for whom she is number one. She is it. Nothing is more important. The business means a lot to me. Accomplishing what I want in life means a lot to me. Ending, you know, metabolic disease, that means a lot to me, Accomplishing what I want in life means a lot to me. Ending metabolic disease,

that means a lot to me, but it doesn't even compare to what she means to me and the way she makes me feel. And if I had to pick and I've had moments where I've gotten to prove this to her, that is her. It's her all day. So if you're in a relationship where somebody makes you feel that, that's just a rad feeling. Yeah, that's cool. What are you most proud of in your life so far with everything you've done? Shifting my self-esteem from being right to pursuing the right answer. It's the most impactful thing. Every success that I've had in life has been from waking up to the fact that what I was doing was dumb and not moving me forward and being willing to go, I have to

rebuild my self-esteem around something completely different. And that was terrifying because for a minute I had an identity in that I had a story that I could repeat in my head, but no one else believed in it because up till that point I had been, you know, the guy that just always wanted to be right. Yeah, man. There's so many questions I want to ask you actually about when you started Quest and, you know, you guys started with a few of you who are just hand rolling out the bars and all the equipment failures that i read about and just figuring out recipes and taking all this time to really like get to the next step there's so many questions i want to ask about that and i'd love to have you come back on to do another session but i want to ask you i want to ask you a few final

questions which you already know what they are uh one is what are you most grateful for in your life right now? Oh man, without question, my wife, like, uh, she's just that she wants good things for me. Yeah. She wants good things for me. And today, uh, we crossed paths in the gym and she just wrapped herself around me and literally climbed up me until she, you know, like you hold a kid and she was just clutching onto me. And I was like, this is 15 years in, you know what you hold a kid and she was just clutching on to me and I was like this is 15 years in you know what I mean like this and it wasn't even necessarily like a passionate on the sexual

side it was the passion of a life shared together and like just you're connected and so totally guardless with that person it was just a rad moment, man. It was a rad moment. She just made me feel important.

Without a word, made me feel important. Do you guys have a gym at your place or do you go to a gym? Yeah, it's at our house. Yeah, okay. So you can be a little more affectionate. Yeah, it might be weird. Although we have done that before in an actual gym.

This is like monkey crawling on top of you, yeah. What are the three books you'd recommend to someone if you had to pass on three books? Only three. Awesome. So books are my ish. They have changed my life. I have a whole list which people can find in order that I think they should be read on on insightquest.com.

But I'll give three incredibly powerful ones right now. I'm assuming the person asking is an entrepreneur and they want to run a business. So it would be three different books if they just want to be a linchpin or something. Let's say to the kids that you never had. Okay. Okay.

Whether they were an entrepreneur or not. Just self-empowerment. Yeah, just whatever books you think. Definitely for me, it's going to be self-empowerment. All right. So Mindset for Swayze for Swayze. That is the first book

in a human being. Carol Dweck, Mindset. It's the most important book in the English language, in my opinion, for personal success. The next one, it's so hard to pick. The next one I'm going to go with is Linchpin by Seth Godin. That one's critical. Whether you want to be just an awesome employee or you want to be an entrepreneur, that one's critical whether you want to be um just an awesome employee or you want to be an entrepreneur that one to me applies uh across everything and then non-entrepreneurial related

um i've read the first like 45 pages of the school of greatness and if i can be that guy like uh that's pretty legit. And I've got it sitting here in front of me because I haven't finished it. I won't make it my official answer, but the, the beginning is strong, super strong. Thank you. And it's got things you're supposed to execute on, which I really respect. Um, so third book, I'm going to go with, um, I'm going to go with bold by Peter Diamandis. It's, if you don't want to be an entrepreneur, you're going to have to reframe it a little bit because he's giving it to you in the sense that you want to accomplish something big. But I think even if you want to be just like, you want to be the best stay-at-home

dad ever, that book is going to teach you to think bigger. It's going to teach you not to stop at a no. It's going to teach you to keep pushing until you get what you want. It's an important book. I like it. Three truths question. If you could write down only three truths. I know you got 25 bullet points. But if life came down to three simple truths, what would those be for you?

This is going to rile some people up because of the words I use. So first one, human potential is nearly limitless. Just believe it. You can do anything you set your mind to without limitation. Uh, and then the last one, um, which is maybe a little bit controversial because I use this word to get people's attention. It's all your fault. Um, that, what I mean by that is you always can control the outcome of anything. So the example I give to people, do I have time to give you? Of course. So the example I give to people, and this is something that I do in the interview a lot so that people understand how we think at Quest.

And if they think it's crazy, I tell them, if you think this story is crazy, you should turn and run in the opposite direction. You will hate it here. Tell him, if you think this story is crazy, you should turn and run in the opposite direction. You will hate it here. But if in hearing it, you're like, oh my God, I want to be around people who think like that, then you'll get us after hearing this story. It goes like this. My wife is British.

That's actually true. Let's say that she was at home visiting her family in London. She's in the bed that she grew up in. The doors are locked. The alarm's on. Her mom's there. She's safe and sound. Right at that moment, a meteorite comes screaming through the atmosphere,

crashes into her bedroom, and kills her. Whose fault is that? Now, every time I ask that question, once people stop trying to guess at what they think I'm going to say and they just give their answer, they say, it's nobody's fault, divine providence, fate, force majeure, dumb blind luck, however you want to sum it up, but that. And my answer is no, it's entirely my fault. And the reason it's my fault is because I know that there's a group

right now that track what are called near earth objects. That's very true, by the way. They're trying to find some way to knock them off course. So if it could be something truly dangerous, so whether it's a laser beam, a planted nuclear explosion, whatever it is, something to bump it off course so it doesn't collide with Earth. I've never sent them an email with encouraging words. I've never sent them a dime of my money. I've never called them up to give them any ideas, nothing. And I know they exist. Now, I think that's smart because the likelihood of my wife being killed by a meteorite is very, very low. I'd be much better off focusing on car safety or something like that. But I choose not to contact these people. I choose to leave my

wife at risk of being hit by a meteorite. So even though I would be mortified and sad if it happened, I would never waste time saying that it wasn't my fault because I could have done something and I chose not to. That to me is empowering. I don't want people feeling guilty about it. You shouldn't waste like, I wrote an article about it. You shouldn't waste, like, I wrote an article about this one time. People were like, yo, you're blaming the victim and all that stuff. And what I'm trying to say is you don't have to allow yourself to be a victim, even if you've been victimized, right? Like you can transcend that and you can look back and go, what could I have done differently? Oh my gosh, I could have done all these things. Awesome. I'm now in control again, right? Because being victimized is inevitable. But being a victim, that's a choice,

right? It's like pain is inevitable. Suffering is a choice. So once I freed myself from the belief that I couldn't break out of certain things, like everyone told me, ah, dude, your mom and your sister, like they've got to want it. People kept saying that they've got to want it. They've got to want to change. And I was like, I reject that because they're going to die. Like they clearly don't want it. So, but I'm not willing to accept that I'm going to lose these people who I love so much. I'm not willing to accept that. So I'm going to acknowledge the human condition, which is that they eat for pleasure and not for sustenance. So I'm going to give them food that they can eat for pleasure. That's good for them. And my sister's lost 120

pounds. So it works. Right. And my sister's lost 120 pounds. So it works, right? And my sister owns that. Like she did, excuse me, she did the hard work. Like she put the grind in. She should be super proud of herself. But at the end of the day, it was born of me not accepting that she, you know, that I had to wait for her to make that choice. You took the responsibility.

Yeah, exactly. So paint that to any area of your life, whether it's you want success, it's not happening because your boss is a dick or whatever. No, your boss may be a dick, but you haven't learned how to persuade dicks to do what you want. Right, right. Right? Which is how I think, which is why I say I want to be a Jedi. Because I want to be able to persuade people to do things so that I can move the ball forward on the big goals that I want to accomplish. And yeah, just own it. You can always change something.

That's a great answer. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. Before I ask you the final questions, where should I send people to to learn more about what you're up to personally or the company?

Where should we have people check out? Well, the company's easy, questnutrition.com. Personally, there's at Tom Bilyeu, and I'll spell that T as in, Hey, Tom, I was an arm Amazon for anybody that's out there as a friend's fan. So Tom, Bill, you and Bill, you spelled bill. Wow. B as in Bravo.

I L Y E U. If only it were easier. Uh, and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter under that handle. Um, I'm also on angelist for any of you entrepreneurs out there that want to see the investments that I'm looking at. And then also InsideQuest.com is where I do my much less cool version

of the School of Greatness. But Lewis has been a guest. So if you guys want to see him on the flip side of this table. It's actually very impressive. And I was like, man, this is like so inspiring to me. You want me to step my game up now.

So I'll have that show linked up here. My man. That's coming out sometime soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll make sure to have that linked up so people can see the magic of Inside Quest. It's a whole production and studio. So that's very cool. Cool.

Make sure to check out there. Anywhere else to check you out? No, those are the ones. And I'm curious, why do you make other investments and not put it all into your one passion? Yeah. So that's, I don't have one passion. I have more, truly, this is the biggest frustration in my life. I have more passions than I could possibly pursue in one lifetime. There are more things that I love below that to do in 10 lifetimes and things that I really like below that. So just in terms of things I really want to be involved in, it's purely a time thing. So doing the business that I'm doing now is because that's

the most important to me, but it is not my only passion. And then also, because I am not a born entrepreneur and I had to learn how to do it, I feel like I have a unique ability to explain to people how to go from being a beginning entrepreneur or worse, having an employee's mindset and how to take it all the way

to really grand scale success. So that's fun for me to engage with people and to watch their minds change, watch them develop a growth mindset and all that. I just really love that. That's cool. I like it.

And diversification, quite frankly. There you go. I like it. I mean, that's the entrepreneur's curse. You know, there's always another cool thing we want to do. Of course. We put our time into. So, well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you.

And this is big, you know, big for me to do this. And I acknowledge you for, first, for for me to do this. And I acknowledge you for first for bringing me on your show and for our connection. I really honor and appreciate your intimacy, your connection and your, how prepared you get. You're such a prepared human being for all possibilities and everything that comes to you. And I just experienced that in the two interactions we've had in person. And your willingness to serve others by also serving yourself on a very selfless level, but willingness to serve others and help them grow, it's becoming more and more evident after being at your headquarters, seeing how happy people were there. It was unbelievable to see how happy and excited people are about growth.

And I think the gift that you give to people for that is the most powerful gift anyone can give to someone. So I want to acknowledge you for giving that gift of growth and open mindset to people and being a powerful leader that you are to raise people to the next level. So it's amazing to watch. I'm excited to learn more and hopefully connect more over the years, man. I'm very excited about everything you're doing. So thanks for all that. Final question, what's your definition of greatness? The willingness to tackle the biggest problems with the understanding that there is a gap

between who you are and who you need to be to execute on that. So it's about acquiring as many skills as you can that have utility and put that utility to the test. And staring down the, and the big thing is they don't have to be global, right? It can be intimate for you. So staring down, I'll give you one in my own life with medical stuff, right? So you, let's say you've got, you think it's IBS or whatever, and you go and the doctors are giving you kind of lame answers and you you're getting tested, and you're getting answers that don't quite ring true to think big enough to say, I am going to figure this out. And I have more drive and grit and determination in me than the doctor.

And so I am going to become a bigger expert in this than they are. And that mentality to me, that's greatness personified. That's it. Tom Billion, thanks for coming on, bro. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. What a pleasure, dude. This was so much fun.

Every minute with you is awesome. Thank you. Thank you. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, if you did, please head back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 201. Share this with your friends. Let Tom know that you enjoyed this episode.

Hit him up over on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. All of his links over there will be up at lewishouse.com slash 201. And I hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you did, make sure to subscribe if this is your first time on the show and let your friends know about it. Also, check out some Quest bars and everything else they have over at questnutrition.com. Some great stuff they have there. I always enjoy eating their Quest bars. Again, thanks, guys, so much for all that you do.

I can't believe we're on episode 201. This is amazing and inspiring. And I'm excited to create another hundred episodes for you here very shortly. We've got some incredible guests coming up, some powerful minds, some huge influencers who are going to bestow upon me all the answers about how to be great. And I'm going to share them all with you. So stay tuned. Subscribe. Keep sharing the message of greatness. And you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. ស្រូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បាន� Outro Music