How to Take Control of Your Wealth & Life with Tom Bilyeu

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26:40That's incogni.com forward slash disruptors or click the link in the description. Is conflict necessary to be successful? Ooh, yes. Now it becomes a question of, are you good at knowing when to lean into the conflict and when to give grace? So grace is one of those words that sounds super lame, but it really is the best word that I can think of. So here's how I think of it. All of us are morons in a thousand in little ways. And I will often see people force other people to embrace all the ways that they're being a moron. And that to me is really stupid. What you want to do is remind yourself, ah, yes, I have all my weirdnesses where I do some dumb thing where I'm pushing on something I shouldn't push on.

27:32I'm telling a little lie to save face, whatever, whatever, all the things that we want that other person to acknowledge in real time. And I'm like, classic example, you're in an argument. You know you're right. They know you're right, but they don't have an exit ramp. You're not giving them one. You need them to admit that they were wrong. That's a very unwise form of conflict. Now, I might say, hey, we're not going to do that thing, but I might, I mean, depending on the situation, I may offer them and say, oh, I mean, weren't you saying something like this before? I might even be just regurgitating your own idea.

28:07Now, I may know that's a lie. They may know that's a lie, but it gives them an off ramp where they were like, yeah, actually I was really into that idea. That one works a shocking amount of the time, but knowing that I could just as easily be the person that's now doing a dumb behavior because I've done so many dumb behaviors in my life. So I'm going to give that person grace. I don't need them to embrace that. I'm not going to run around saying like, oh my God, that person just couldn't admit when they were wrong, which you see online all the time. And I would just be like, cool. I get it. I hope you give me grace when it's me being foolish.

28:36I'm going to give you a little bit of grace. I'm I'm going to offer you an exit ramp so that you can save face. And then as long as we're doing the thing that we need to do to move towards our goals, I'm a happy camper. But if we're doing something that's not moving me towards my goals, I'm freakishly blunt. And I really believe that people need to face their inadequacies. And so I'll tell people like, hey, this is the thing that you're doing. I don't think it makes any sense. You're not good at this. This is something I say here all the time. People, they can just say to my face the things that I'm not good at.

29:01And I will equally say to their face, these are the things you're not good at. I will say it in front of other people, which is like, leaders will tell you that's terrible. I will tell you if you can't do that, you're never going to get where you want to go because you create a whisper culture, which is terrible. It's a whole different topic. So I will tell people to their face. I will say in front of other people, this is what you're not good at. But I will also make sure that I'm giving them an exit ramp, that I'm making more deposits about the things that they are good at, that I'm making withdrawals, pointing the things that they're not.

29:28So yes, you cannot be afraid of conflict, but man, you need to be artful. what are you not good at then tom oof you want that in alphabetical order or order of importance oh order of importance like the the biggest thing okay yeah so the biggest thing that i'm not good at is my memory is god awful and if my memory were better i would be i mean i guess depending on how much better my memory was twice as successful 10 times as successful that that really matters. I also am a very slow thinker. I am a deep thinker. I can get to good answers. I can solve novel problems. I can think from first principles, but it really takes me a long time.

30:13And I have suffered tremendously because I get to a right answer, but whoa, boy, do I have to fail and just experience the tragedy sometimes of that failure for me to finally find the answer? So those are two things that really have an extreme impact on my quality of life. Now, anytime people that know me hear me say that I'm not a fast thinker, they always want to argue. So I will say, just to spare the comment thread, I'm not as fast of a thinker as would be useful for my business. So if I were a faster thinker, I would get better results. It has a material impact on the quality of my life. It has a material impact on my business.

30:55Look, nobody should cry for me. have a great life, great business, but I am hyper aware of my limitations. So yeah, those things have a day-to-day impact on my life. What do you think about the theory that you should never let neither nor both criticism or praise get in the way of your goal or your mission? Well, that's for sure. I don't think you should let anything other than your ethical compass get in the way of your pursuit of your goals, as long as you prioritize your goals well. So for instance, my number one goal is not success. It's not my business. It's my marriage. And so I prioritize that accordingly.

31:33And again, I don't let anything other than my ethics get in the way of my marriage. So yeah, I think that that's very, very important. And do you think it's very easy to get distracted by both criticism and praise? I think it's very easy, especially by criticism. While it's a very sort of advanced level class to say to somebody, hey, don't believe the praise or don't give into it. Don't let it overrun your emotions because then you open yourself up to the criticism. And that is very true. But I think just the vast majority of humanity is so caught up in the negative things that are happening to them.

32:10man, give them the wins. So my advice for the average person is you have to be really, really careful to have a value system that you believe in, that is stated, that you are clear about, that you are living in accordance with, and that every day you just run a tally. Did I live in accordance with my values? If you lived in accordance with your values, then today's a win and you should feel good about yourself. If you didn't live in accordance with your values, then yeah, you should say, hey, I didn't do it today. I'm going to do it tomorrow. I'm going to refocus. but that way when people are coming after you, you can look inside and say, am I living in accordance with my values?

32:44And as long as you assess your values and you believe that they're honorable, then cool, I have honorable values. I'm living according to them. The fact that other people disagree, fair enough. Like I can't control what other people think, but I can control whether I live according to my values or not. And I really believe that is the single most important thing that will control the quality of your life is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So yeah, I think people should be really thoughtful about that. What are the downsides of being a billion dollar entrepreneur? I mean, look, more money, more problems.

33:15That is for sure. That is very, very true. When people think that there's something that they can get from you, they will come after it. So you have to be careful. But other than that, to become that kind of person, you've really stacked a lot of skills. And so I just wouldn't spend time complaining about it. The reason I can't give like a super fast downside other than yes, legal things. That's, that's going to be real. That's definitely in the Mo Money, Mo Problems book. Uh, but to become the kind of person that you need to become in order to generate that kind of wealth is, is worth all the trade-offs.

33:50Okay. So what are the trade-offs? Uh, you're going to work a lot. There's no doubt about that. You're going to have to have a level of clarity that other people don't have. You're going to have to get control of your emotions. It's a level of discipline. That's really, really intense. You are going to sacrifice some things. It's just a reality. There's only so much time in the day. Um, yeah, I mean the, those downsides are real. You're going to get things like family members that need financial help. They're coming out to you. Uh, you're going to get people to ask for your advice and then don't take it.

34:19Um, but yeah, I mean, ultimately those are really, really a small price to pay for gaining the set of skills that allow you to execute at that level. So you founded Quest Nutrition. What would you say was the biggest scam you ever saw in the nutrition industry? I mean, honestly, the biggest scam is perpetuated by the food industry itself, which is when we were at the height of Quest, people didn't understand that sugar was the problem. And so the overconsumption of sugar will literally kill you. And that message now is not really controversial, but whoa, boy, 10 years ago, that was controversial.

35:02So that is terrifying to me that people were told that fat is the villain, that carbs are A-OK. Many people still don't understand that there really isn't biologically a difference between just carbohydrate and sugar. By the time it becomes glucose in your bloodstream, it's the same thing. Uh, so I look, I won't say that when N of one, when I eat high sugar foods, ice cream, we'll let ice cream be a stand in or because most people are going to, they might focus in on the dairy, uh, anything with just a massive amount of refined sugar. I feel worse. I will get, uh, my gut feels weird in a way that I can, uh, overeat other kinds of calories.

35:46Like I can overeat sweet potato, let's say, and I won't have the kind of digestive distress that I will have with refined sugar. Now it's possible that I haven't paid close enough attention that I'm just way overeating the refined sugar. It's possible, doubtful, but possible. Do you ever just relax, Tom? Because you seem very switched on, very thoughtful. Is that sometimes tiring for you? Do you ever just want to go there? No. So this is, and this is asking my wife is probably a better question. I think it drives her crazy that I am on all the time. Once you understand that you can become anything you want, but not everything, how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration.

36:29So I am obsessed with optimization and because I love it. So the thing that people need to understand, like I woke up today at 2 AM. Now I don't set alarms. I just, when I woke up, I go to bed at nine. So it's five hours of sleep. Not ideal. I would much rather sleep six or seven hours, which is my average now is usually closer to seven. But because I love what I do and I've orchestrated my life to build the things that I wanna do, like to give you a, for instance, today. So I wake up at 2 a.m., try to fall back asleep, I can't. So I have a rule in my life. If you are awake, you have 10 minutes to get out of bed.

37:04Technically, it's if you're awake and you've had at least five hours of sleep. So let me caveat that. But today I had. So that means I have a 10 minute clock to get out of bed. Cool, couldn't fall back asleep. I get out of bed and I immediately go to work. So this morning I knew I was going to be live streaming. So I'm building a video game. I'm going to guess your audience either doesn't know me or they have no idea that I'm building a video game. But like I said, impact theory is about entertainment. It's not the part that I'm known for yet anyway. So I'm going to be streaming because we have our our latest phase of our video game called Project Kaizen launches soon.

37:35And so I was going to be live streaming me playing Fortnite. Now, that's not exactly a struggle, but that's actually me marketing. So I'm doing one of the most effective things that I can do to market my upcoming product, but that happens to be playing Fortnite. So this is where people have to understand when you architect your life in a certain way that all of a sudden things are a lot more fun. So for instance, I was obsessed with getting in shape during the Quest Nutrition years. So being focused on diet and exercise and nutrition was like awesome, I was having a ball. So once you realize, oh, I can architect my life, now all of a sudden being on all the time and researching something while I'm brushing my teeth or listening to a podcast while I'm working out or streaming Fortnite or whatever.

38:18All of these things move my business forward, but that's not an accident. I built my business to be a thing where I could monetize the things that I would do for free. Tom, you said impact theory is now about entertainment and I think you said you're not known for that. So you've obviously gone on a journey. You mentioned before about personal development. I know you've interviewed lots of really successful people. So can you do just like a quick journey, a timeline of impact theory and where it is now and why you're taking it where you're taking it? Okay, I'll give it to you in a small nutshell.

38:52And then anything you want to push deeper on, we can go. At 12 years old, I realized I want to be a filmmaker. I go to film school. I think I'm going to graduate and get the three-picture deal. I do not. I graduate in 98. I have no idea how to break into the industry. I end up meeting these two very successful entrepreneurs. And they said, look, you're coming to the world with your hand out. If you want to control the art, you have to control the resources. So you should get into business and get rich. Thought that sounds amazing. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it worked.

39:24And so in that whole journey of all, I always thought I was 18 months away from being a filmmaker, my whole, literally, since I was, uh, since I graduated college. And so when I finally realized, okay, wait a second, this, I may never be able to get into film. I better do something that I love even in failure. Then all of a sudden I started having a reason to tell stories. So I wanted to help people that, that became like my whole thing. And in wanting to help people, I realized, oh man, I can actually do this through story. and so I'm at Quest and I'm like, hey, I want to exit Quest, start what I would have told you at the time was a film studio.

40:02I can finally do it. I've got the capital. So I exit Quest and I start Impact Theory. Literally, my last day at Quest was a Monday and the next day on Tuesday, we start Impact Theory because I was like, I've been building towards this for almost 20 years and so I want to get started. So we launched it with the thing that I knew that I could do, which was I could talk about mindset. I could build an audience and my thesis was I'm going to build this audience and And then I'm going to write comic books and I'm going to tell my audience, go buy my comic book. And then the comic book, I'll be able to, it's a traditional feeder into film and TV comics will be able to turn into film and TV, but we'll have other people because Hollywood's eaten up way more guys that are far richer than me just over and over and over.

40:41They come in milk you for hundreds of millions of dollars. You never get the eight teams anyway. It's a whole thing. So I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to create the IP. Then I want to sell the IP to Hollywood. let them take the big financial risk and I'll build my IP like that following a model laid out by Disney who started in these really short animation interstitials. Long story about that, but had learned a lot from that. That didn't work. I had, there was a broken part of my thesis. That is the way that you build an audience has a straight line between the content that you create for that audience and the product.

41:14And I did not, it was completely erratic. I'm doing mindset videos and then saying, go buy my comic. And people are like, what? I don't read comics, let alone your comic. So had to update that. So anyway, then you get into now as a host, I'm growing like weed, having all this success, but I'm getting bored. And I'm asking the same questions and hearing the same answers over and over and over. And it gets to the point where from a mindset perspective, I felt like, look, I can get better mindset answers than most of my guests. So I told my team, you're either going to lose me as a host or we're going to broaden the scope of the show.

41:45And I'll save you a lot of time, but we've gone through three phases and we're now in world affairs. It's me. My life as I think about it, Impact Theory as a company is bifurcated between adults and kids. Adults are 2 % of the impact that you're going to have in the world. Kids are 98%. But the thing that we're doing for kids is way more expensive, way more time consuming because now I've left film behind. We can get into it if you want, but video games are clearly the future in my estimation. So two and a half years ago, we started putting all of our story, not all, but most of our storytelling resources and our creative resources into gaming.

42:24And so we've released a couple phases along the way and we're about to do a big release. But that is like when I stream, I'll have like 30 people watching me. And I'm like, this is hilarious. I get almost 10 million views a month on YouTube. Sorry, 10 million views. Yeah, a month on YouTube. And when I stream, I've got 30 people. It is hilarious. But I'll just like when I started on YouTube, I had one person watch my videos. We'll build it up and we'll see. Thanks for the journey, Tom. Appreciate that. So you said world affairs. So I'd love to know what you think of the state of the world right now.

43:06Because there you go. So if we're talking about the West, we are in a state of decline. We no longer know what our values are. And if you don't know your values and you don't have an end state that you will be able to march towards, or maybe we do have an end state and it's just very clearly, we'll round it to socialism. I have very strong feelings about what history tells you about that belief system. That is, I think, very early in this interview. I said, this moment in history is marked by people exchanging what sounds good for what works. sorry, they're exchanging what works for what sounds good.

43:41And that is going to have huge consequences. I don't know if that's in five years or a hundred years, but it, it will happen a lot sooner than 500 years. I will tell you that, um, history doesn't repeat, but it certainly rhymes as people have heard over and over and over. Uh, and this is a super predictable cycle that's tied to debt. Uh, you don't have to look very far to see that, that the, the U S for sure has got real debt problems. We add a trillion dollars in debt in like every hundred days. That's not sustainable. So when you have the world's largest economy cratering itself from the inside, you have a problem.

44:19So do you think we're headed towards socialism and why do you think that's bad? Well, so you will have to define we. If you say the collective West, yes, I think that the The Collective West is marching down the path of empathetic suicide. What Gadsad calls suicidal empathy. He's literally writing a book on it right now. Shout out to Gadsad. He's amazing. And yes, I think that we're doing it because the world, from an evolutionary standpoint, humans are split between people that lean left in US political language versus people that lean right. And I think that's good. I think you want dynamic tension between the two.

44:59You do not want to get rid of either side. And when one side or the other gets unbalanced, then you have pathology. And we're in the cycle. You've heard this repeated ad nauseum. But this, again, you're having a biological experience. And the way that the human mind reacts, this is just a cycle. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. And so we are in the weak men part of the cycle, unfortunately, because things have been so wonderful. and because anyone human doesn't see the cycle, they just see their part, they cannot help but play their role in either becoming strong or becoming weak and it's just a reality.

45:39And so we are doomed to live on that loop. Unless AI breaks us out of it, I don't see any way not to exist on that cycle. And so here we are, you never know if your life is just gonna be in a slow decline, like, hey, life may be perfectly fine for the rest of any of our lives, or it may break in Argentinian style and we go from, people need to look at the story of Argentina. It is unbelievable. They go from one of the most, if not the most prosperous nation in South America, certainly one of the most, to suddenly like that on a dime over a very short span of time. They end up just absolutely decimating their entire economy.

46:24And everybody thinks it can't happen here. And unfortunately, if you look backwards, every single empire, not most, every single empire has collapsed. Again, not most, every single empire. So it's a little bit like any human going, I'm gonna be the first generation that lives forever. And I spent a lot of years saying that. And then at some point you go, huh, what are the odds that every human before me died, but we're the generation that will live forever? Now, it will almost certainly happen to some generation. What are the odds that it's us? So anyway, I just think statistically speaking, it is far wiser to say every time socialism has been tried, it has been an absolute disaster.

47:05Every empire falls. It crumbles for super predictable reasons, including declining birth rate, including debt, including a loss of value system. So you've got the cocktail. But again, I don't think people should, with my value system or my frame of reference, you would never look at the glass and say it's half empty. You look at the glass and go, people respond to ideas. So let me start talking about these incredibly important ideas and hopefully we can nudge people in the right direction. Yeah. The thing that was coming into my mind, because I mostly agree with what you said, Tom, is, okay, so if good times have created weak men, then surely some strong men can stand up and just jump and butt the trend a little bit.

47:52You would hope. And history says that that won't work, but people do respond to ideas. And so I think that even if you just want to forestall so that the decline can be an easier landing and it's not a super abrupt crash, I think that people should go hard and they should put positive notions out into culture. They should look for things that uplift people. They should look for things to bring us together that don't divide us. They should say, this is my goal. These are my values. This is how I think we get there. And if people would do that, if they would just define, this is my value system, this is the goal, this is the end state that I'm trying to march us towards.

48:30And I'm perfectly willing to look at the data to say we either are or not moving towards that, not hiding behind complexity. This stuff is complex, but man, you can tell if you're moving in the right direction or not. And if you're not, then by definition, the things you're doing are not working and you need to change, but people don't want to do that. They want to score political points. They want to win. They want to be right instead of getting to the right place. And look, I don't have kids, but I think about how do I make the world better for the next generation? And when people think like that, then you get them thinking in the right way.

48:57If they're not thinking about that, or at least like think I'm going to live forever. And so I want to make the world a better place for me. Fine. But if you're not thinking about long-term, how do we make this a better place? Yikes. And so what people end up doing is they borrow from the future and all the classic things. is it okay to ask why you don't have kids? I don't have kids because I really want kids desperately, desperately, but I just a little more desperately want to not have kids. This comes down to a, it's a little bit like people always say, I don't want to live forever, but I also don't want to die today.

49:39So it's like, I want to have kids. I just don't want to have kids today. Like if I didn't have to worry about my wife, who's now, I mean, could we get pregnant? Probably, but God, that would be hard. It would be pretty medical miracle-y territory at this point. But let's just say, if I didn't have to worry about that, then yeah, I'd be like, we're going to have kids, just not today. That literally would be my stance. If there was no biological clock, I'd be like, we are 100 % having kids, just not today. And that's how it started. We were going to have kids, literally, for the first decade plus of our marriage.

50:13We were going to have kids, just not today. And then suddenly it was like, do we really want to have kids? It's like, yeah, we do. But, and then you just start facing biological realities. It'd be interesting. I've actually never asked my wife point blank. If you could have kids at any time, would you still think, oh, I'm going to have kids one day? I think she would. I think my wife would say, yeah, if I never had to worry about my biological clock, I'd have kids at some point, just not today. And so my wife and I've talked about this a lot. People need to be very thoughtful because my wife and I have not been caught off guard by that.

50:49So we know now we're not gonna have kids because it'd just be so hard for her to get pregnant. And we still have this sense of we want kids, just not today. But we know that we have to plan for the eventual phase of our lives where we will regret that decision. And I don't think people go into things eyes wide open knowing that your psychology will change. So I know that my 80-year-old self is gonna be like, hey, jackass, it'd be really cool if we had grandkids right now, but you didn't have kids. And so because you didn't have kids, we don't have grandkids. And that sucks. And so I know that.

51:18I'm planning for that. I'm making sure that I build my life in such a way that when I have a frame of reference where I won't let myself spiral in that way, that I will have young people in my life that I can mentor, that I can feel like I can impact. But I also think that one of the most amazing contributions people can make to society is to have children. So now I'm like, okay, I have to contribute to society. And I have taken out one of the coolest, most beautiful ways to do that. I think there are other amazingly cool, amazingly beautiful ways to contribute. But I've now closed a door to one of the beautiful ways that I could contribute to society.

51:59So it's like, okay, now you've got to find a way to contribute. And I think that, that, again, that's an algorithm running in my mind. And on top of that, that's my value system is I believe that I should be contributing, which is why I think a lot about empowering people. And I think about putting positive ideas out of the world, so on and so forth. Tom, what do you think right now are some meaningful missions that the world really needs? I think that the thing I am most equipped to contribute to the world with is to get people to understand what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is if you put time and energy into getting good at something, you will actually get good at it.

52:35Now, again, once you understand that, your life, how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration. I think people can do a lot of amazing things for a society. I think I can contribute in a way that is thinking well through difficult ideas, and I see a lot of other people doing the same. Anybody that can contribute to bringing the world together, I think is incredible. Anybody that can bring the world to think from first principles, that's incredible. helping to make us multi-planetary. I think it's incredible helping us deal with climate change in a way that doesn't create climate emergency, where people are now doing things that where the cure is worse than the problem.

53:15I think those are huge population, huge finding ways to spread what I'll call enlightenment values. I don't know that everybody agrees on what that is now. I think that's hugely important. I think that that's benefited society and pulled more people out of poverty than anything else in recorded history. Creating art, putting a smile on somebody's face. I mean, there are many, many ways, big and small. Food, that's a big one. Making sure that we don't keep messing up people's health is mahoosive. Yeah, off the top of my head, those are some pretty meaningful ways to contribute. Do you think the current system of governance i know that there are nation states but people talk about globalism um do you think the current system is a blockage to all those meaningful missions oh uh we'd have to define what we mean by the current system so right now i think that we are all in the grips of algorithms that are not transparent that leverage our emotions against us uh i think that we are discovering at scale the level of turmoil that social media brings but i think every major technological advancement brings turmoil and so you you have to process through it you have to figure out how you put uh brackets around things so that it doesn't get out of control but um it was written language that allowed for the rise of nation states and boy oh boy have those done good and bad things.

54:49The rise of the printing press also influenced wars. And so obviously that is a religious wars, I mean, very specifically. So that's obviously been both a very good thing and a very bad thing. So the internet is going to have its share of challenges. AI is about to have major impact on society. In fact, another thing that people can be doing to contributing well is to make sure that we align AI. I think that's going to be hugely impactful. So yeah, I think it's to be expected, but I think that people need to understand that if we don't figure out how to navigate this well, that we're going to be, we're really going to be in trouble because of the way that it puts people in echo chambers, because of the way that it radicalizes people, because of the way that it creates massive anxiety and depression in kids.

55:41I think that probably we're going to see people realize you just can't let kids have social media that if they're under, let's say 16, it's just a non-starter. Um, I'll be very interested to see the data keep coming out about that. I think that's going to be super important that people look at that. Um, so yes, I think that we are moving through a super weird time right now as many generations before us have done. Um, so I do think the system is in need of refinement, but I'm not a burn it to the ground guy. I think that you want to adjust and not just say, you know, this is the great evil and try to smash it to the ground.

56:16I think that'd be a mistake. So how does an individual make an impact? So let's use the algorithms on social media as an example, because Andrew takes probably the greatest recent case study, I would say, of social media algorithms where it seemed that he could create a frenzy. Some would call it turning into hate speech and essentially hack these algorithms to create massive virality. Then there was obviously a big pushback against him and then they all cancelled him. So they gave him the platform. He figured out the algorithm, but the algorithm is the algorithm. They gave him the platform. He went wildly viral.

57:03And then they turned and cancelled him and then sort of washed their hands away, but couldn't really shut him down. I would argue that he wouldn't have been able to game the algorithm if the algorithm wasn't gameable. And if the algorithm had maybe more values, should we use your words, or some kind of virtue, this wouldn't have happened. And I don't really know what the question is other than how can an individual hold social media to account? Like we would hold police to account or our government to account with votes and things, because it just seems like the social media platforms can do whatever they want.

57:45Well, so I think the key is to make the algorithms transparent. They are super complicated, so I don't even think companies have to necessarily worry too much about it. But the future is going to be people saying, okay, I don't like the way that algorithm manipulates or whatever. I want one that does X, Y, Z. So this is where I think Elon Musk becomes incredibly important. First of all, he's made the algorithm for X available so people can see exactly how the algorithm works. I think that's super amazing. Community notes, I also think is very, very important. Let other people say, hey, here's a fact check against this.

58:21I think that's very important. But as long as a human mind is gameable, algorithms are just trying to match the human mind. They're trying to basically take advantage of the human mind. So the algorithms are only as gameable as a human mind is gameable. But letting people choose their algorithm, letting them decide that frame of reference, the distortion through which they want to view the world, I think is really important. And people are going to wake up just like they finally woke up to sugar. People are going to wake up to even your comments. The order in which you view the comments is determined by an algorithm.

58:51Like they are really trying to maximize your engagement on the site. And as long as you understand that, then you become not unmanipulatable because nobody's going to be unmanipulatable. But suddenly you begin to understand, going back to one of your earlier questions, you understand how the world works. And so, you know, ah, they're presenting these comments to me in this order. And that's something about me. So your algorithms is a lot more about you than it says about the company. And I think if people understand that, embrace that, make demands on the platforms to make these things visible to ideally, that one I think, would I get behind the government mandating that you make the algorithm transparent?

59:31As of today, I would say yes. I haven't looked into it closely enough to know if I'm right about that, but that feels intuitively correct. I would definitely start there. But I wouldn't want the government dictating what the algorithm has to be. I do not trust any centralized body to make those decisions. I don't trust any centralized body to make most decisions. I think it is a horrible way to make decisions. I wouldn't trust myself as the dictator. So I think people, in fact, man, for a while, I was really pumping this message. People need to distrust themselves. People trust themselves too much.

1:00:06People need to go into something going, I am a fallible human being, and I do not trust myself to be right about all of these things. I I want other people to challenge me. I don't want only left. I don't want only right. I want dynamic tension. I don't want only me. I don't want only somebody else. I want dynamic tension between the way I see the world, the way other people see the world. I think that is critically important. So that's where I would like to see us go with social media for sure. We'll see how it plays out, but that's where I'd start. Are there any newer, so let's say younger or TikTok or newer narratives and soundbites about being successful and wealthy that frustrate you or you think are really wrong?

1:00:53There are age-old issues that people are always going to struggle with. People want to get rich fast. That's always a mistake. Even if it, let's say you pull it off. If you get rich fast, you won't have become the kind of person that you need to become in order to feel good about yourself when you're by yourself. So it is way better that that be this like hard struggle that you claw and fight your way and then you finally get there. Because the getting it is like, it's a fun moment for a minute. But the way that the human mind works is you will always have an appetite for more. I don't care how much you get.

1:01:26And so you have to understand that it's the pursuit. The greatest thing that life has to offer you outside of love is the moment where you're pursuing something at maximum effort and you really think it's about to come true. So in terms of my success, when it looked like, oh my God, I've just bled for quest for years and I actually think I'm about to become rich. This is crazy. That period was way more exciting than actually being rich. so man i live for that high which is why even though i'm very successful i am constantly like let's think about this going back to what i was saying about being a streamer who gets 30 people or less that show up to his live streams and i'm i'm full energy man i'm all in because i'm like it is the build that i love it's the growing it it's the i hope right now people are laughing at me, that they think I'm a fool.

1:02:23What is this guy doing? He's pushing 50 and he's in here playing Fortnite. Come on, man. What a loser. And I know not only am I going to build a huge following on streaming as long as it serves my business, but also it serves my business. And so that like push into something new, forcing myself to learn a new skill, growing an audience, like the gamification of my everyday life is awesome because I know that it's the pursuit, not the having that matters. Do you think that if you follow success principles, the laws of the universe, it is giving and rewarding every time? No, definitely not. So, uh, there are eight-year-olds with leukemia and they die and the parents did everything right.

1:03:09And their child still dies again, uh, to all my religious people out there, I love you to death. I think religion is a great way to transmit values. Unfortunately, I am not a believer. And so my thing is just the world is not a fair place, man. It's literally physics and then everything else just happens. So I don't think there's meant to be. I don't think that there is divine justice. I think we all do the best with what we have and that's all you can and should ask. And yeah, it's not all going to work out? And I think the right question to ask is not what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail because failure is the most likely outcome.

1:03:48The right question to ask is what would I do and love every day, even if I were failing? And if you construct your life that way, like for instance, I may fail at building a video game, but it's the most fun I've ever had in business bar none without fail. Like I built huge audiences. I've generated tons of money, but the thing that I love the most is building a virtual world. I couldn't have told you that that would be the most fun thing I've ever done. It's also the hardest thing I've ever done, but dude, it lights me up inside, but it might fail. And if it fails, which again is the most likely outcome is I'm going up against some of the biggest entertainment companies on planet earth.

1:04:27But boy, oh boy, will I have had a great time? I'll be sad. Don't get me wrong. I will be very sad. I'll be outright traumatized. I won't stay there, but the day-to-day grind of trying to build it is awesome. Okay. So what do you think about the financial system right now? I know it's a broad question. In the US, very broad. So I'll give you a nice broad answer. In the US, the financial system is in like this crazy, fragile equilibrium where if you pay attention to Ray Dalio. You understand we are bouncing on a knife's edge. The debt is so problematic and virtually nobody is paying attention to it.

1:05:08We are now spending more on the interest of our debt alone than we are on military spending here in the US. It is pure insanity. And at the rate that we are going, it will not be too many years before basically all of taxes go to just servicing the debt. That's not sustainable. This is why people break into hot wars. You have to have a debt jubilee. Now, debt jubilee makes it sound good, but the reality is a debt jubilee usually comes at the cost of bloodshed, where so many people die. People are just like, oh God, we just want the war to be over. And so you forgive a bunch of debts. But when you forgive debts, there was somebody who loaned that money and now they're not going to get it back.

1:05:46So their entire net worth is wiped out as you zero out somebody else's debt. So it It is a brutal process that nobody wants to live through. Not the people whose debt is cleared out, not the people who obviously never get paid back. It's just unbelievably brutal. And we are Ray Dalio, who I think is the right person to pay attention on this pegs. Last time I looked at this pegs, our chance of civil war at, I think, 40%. So that's bad mojo. and if we were to break into civil war, oh man, can I guarantee anything? Absolutely not. But if we were at civil war, even if it was a fierce enough cold civil war where we're just breaking geographically where all the states begin to fragment, you're gonna see China probably move on Taiwan.

1:06:31Who knows what Russia is gonna do? So yeah, it would not be a good time and that will all be echoed in the financial milieu. And as we're recording this, the US stock market just got kicked in the face. Crypto got kicked in the face. So that instability where the Fed is now trying to control everything, the Fed is just a disaster. You should not have this being controlled from the outside. The Fed should probably just not exist. I'm conflicted on that, which people in the libertarian community want to punch me for. But the reality is I kind of like that it exists. I just don't like how much it's involved.

1:07:08Printing of money is just, oh, God, it's so dangerous. So dangerous. It's theft. Let's start with that. But if they could give me a world that was stable and wonderful, I might be willing to accept it. But they don't. They give me a world that's hyper choppy and they're stealing from people. Yeah, we could really go on a tirade there. You tell me how deep you want to go on that. I want to go deep on that because it's one of my favorite subjects. So why is the financial system theft? The financial system in and of itself is not theft, but printing money is theft. Okay, so here is what people have to understand about printing money.

1:07:47It feels good because they print money and sometimes they give it right to you. So it's like, why does this hurt the middle class? So let's walk through COVID. Middle class would have gotten eaten alive if they hadn't printed money. So I was like, whoa, printing money is actually really good. Thank God this happened. I was so grateful. And then I started looking at it and I was like, wait a second. How does the money actually get into the system? When you get a STEMI check, okay, that goes direct to you. but it's a very complex way that money gets into the system where the federal reserve is actually essentially buying u.s debt now who owns the u.s debt uh people that buy bonds okay so people that buy bonds now are getting their bonds purchased they're getting protected they're getting wealthy this is why people say if you own assets you're going to get wealthy so uh everybody is buying up those bonds.

1:08:39They're keeping the whole market liquid and flush with cash. But the problem is that the middle class is not being able to take advantage of that by having either the protection of their bonds or the stock market, which is almost certainly going to go up. Real estate's going to go up as the money is printed into the system because people are buying the assets in the system or the reserve specifically is buying the assets in the system. But now people have the capital to buy the other things. So the, uh, number go up as they say now where the problem arises is that you didn't create anything new and the creation of money, money is created out of thin air.

1:09:16We probably don't have time to go into exactly how, and I'm probably not the person to explain it. I can give you a really high level thing, but this shit goes deep fast. Uh, but money is just created out of thin air all the time, but it's usually in conjunction with people have done a thing. They created a thing. That means that there are more things in the world to buy with that money. Okay. So there's more things in the world to buy with that money. Prices hold relatively stable or they actually go down because we got more efficient over time. When you print money, you didn't create a new thing.

1:09:43You have the same number of things that you can buy. Let's just say you have the same number of iPhones that you can buy, but now there's everybody has more money. So what do the economic pressures say? They say, oh, we have the same number of things, but more people can now afford it. So now you have demand is going up. What's going to happen into the price when demand goes up. The price is going to go up. So now you felt like you got more money, but the reality is you didn't go, you get more money. Your pricing power actually went down because now all of a sudden, if you had a hundred dollars in your bank and let's say that they inflate the money supply by 10%.

1:10:16Now, even though you still have a hundred dollars, you have the spending power, the buying power of$90. It is exactly the same. It's exactly the same as if they had just taken$10. You just don't feel like it's the same. So everybody goes along with it. And now all of a sudden, when you look historically at inflation, it's insane. Your parents bought a house for$1.50 and it costs you like 1.5 million. It's not that crazy, but it's close. And so that's why people are like, wait, what the fuck? And so it seems like if you're like me, that inflation is, oh, just, it's just a fact of nature. It's not true.

1:10:52Things inflate because money is printed, pumped into the system. It disproportionately helps people that have assets, which are the people that are already rich. And it hurts the middle-class and lower-income people because even though they still have$100 in their bank, it only buys$90 worth of groceries. And people don't understand that 90 becomes 80, the 80 becomes 70, 60, 50, 40, 30. And all of a sudden, it's like, oh my God, you've been eaten alive by printing money, which by the way, wars are fueled by printing money. Remember, you said you wanted to go deep on this. Why are wars fueled by printing money.

1:11:24Wars are fueled by printing money because normally the government would have to come to you, the taxpayer, and say, hey, we want to go to war with Russia. And then you go, yeah, I don't want to go to war with Russia. That sounds terrible. I'm not going to fund that. And Congress goes, boo, we don't have the money. We can't go to war with Russia. But if they can print the money, they don't have to ask you for anything. They literally just print the money. Let me say that again. They don't have to ask you for permission. They just tell the Fed, print money. And the Fed literally just makes money up out of thin air.

1:11:54They pump it into the system. They fund the war. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh, I guess we're at war, but hey, no big deal. It doesn't matter because they didn't ask me. My taxes didn't go up all as well. Your buying power is going from$9 to$80 to$70. And by the way, because this is one you're going to hear, but we've tamed inflation. We've got inflation down back down to 2%. The problem is That's 2 % on top of the 15 % that it was up over the last two years. So that's why grocery prices still suck because it doesn't deescalate. It goes in one direction. The cost of things just keep going up and up and up and up.

1:12:33And that's why when you look at housing prices from 50 years ago, it is absurd, absurd how much they've gone up. What's the solution then to this apparent Ponzi scheme of fiat currency? Okay. Well, this is where we get into, I will make bold statements just to give people directional things to look at, but this is so complicated. Nobody has the answer. That's the real answer. But now let's talk the clip. What we should do is stop printing money and we should stop going after Bitcoin because Bitcoin allows money to be decentralized. When you decentralize money and it can't be inflated, now all of a sudden, people are no longer beholden to their government acting like a moron.

1:13:18They're no longer beholden to the Fed printing money. They just say, huh, there's only ever going to be 21 million units of this thing and I'm going to go get some of that. It literally can't be inflated. And now, cool, I have a place to store my wealth. Now, Tom Bilyeu believes that governments have a moral obligation to allow their citizens to save in a non-inflatable currency. And the reason that I believe that is I think it's evil, and I'm using that word on purpose, I think it is evil to steal money by printing. That is bad mojo. Now, that's the same guy that said, I was so glad during COVID that they printed money because I didn't understand the ramifications.

1:13:55I was just glad in the moment that people didn't get hurt. The problem is in the long run, you are stealing from people, you are turning people into degenerate gamblers because they can't keep up with inflation. So now you can't just be a janitor working a job and squirreling away some money to save because inflation is higher than the interest that you get on your money. So now you're actually disincentivized to save. That's crazy. That's crazy. And if people actually understood how money worked, they would be very upset because you should actually be able to work a job, save the money, and 100 years from now, that money still buys$100 worth of things, and it does not.

1:14:38100 years from now,$100 will be worth some tiny fraction. You can actually map this out with the British pound. Over the last 100 years, the British pound has gone down in value something like 98%. I mean, that is directionally correct. If it's not 98%, I don't think it's less than 90. So it has dropped so dramatically that imagine if you're a 100-year-old, a dollar that parents gave you on the day that you were born is now worth somewhere between 10 cents and two cents. That's offensive. That's evil. You can't do that. You can't do that because now you're asking the average worker who has busted their ass to figure out how to invest their money.

1:15:22That's gross, man. I don't like that. I don't like that. And look, I'm a reasonably sharp guy and investing is tough. Investing is tough. And now you're asking everybody to do it. It's bad mojo. Is there not also a problem of education? Because my personal mission is to help as many people on this planet get better financial knowledge. And I realized the deeper I go down, the education system is just designed there to back up the financial system. I don't think that there's anything such as a savings account. I think there's a store of money. And if you put it in a bank, that store goes down. And I think if you put it in something like gold and silver, that store probably goes up.

1:16:05But investing for the average person you say is hard, but French for the average person when you're nine is hard. But by 13, you can get pretty good at it. So if we talk about investing and finance properly in school at the right age, surely we could get the baseline middle working class up to a level where they know how to manage money. it would be a dramatic improvement over the status quo. If we were to teach money and finances, there is no doubt about that, but anybody that's good at it will go do it. And they won't come back and teach it, which means by nature, the people that are going to be teaching it, actually, I'm going to take that back.

1:16:40The way it will work in the future is one person will teach it very well online. Uh, and that should be broadcast to the world. That is actually what will happen. Uh, we live in an amazing time, boys and girls. So yes, I think that would be wonderful. I love seeing that shift where people are now getting educated by the smartest minds in the world and these super important and sometimes hyper niche things. But now one teacher can reach the vast majority of the world. So yeah, but I think that getting good at investing because it is so dynamic, but I really want to set and forget. I make money.

1:17:15That money goes into my bank account. I don't have to worry about putting it here, there, anywhere. It's just, I made a hundred dollars. It'll be worth$100 in 100 years. That's where I would love. And then people on top of that want to invest because investing is great for growth, great for business. I love that. I want to see people have huge opportunities to generate wealth by investing. I just don't want to see people forced to invest. Tom, what's the secret you've never shared or a story you've never told? Oh, good Lord. Can you narrow it down? I don't know off the top of my head. i'm a pretty open book uh if you point me in any direction i can probably give you a better answer okay in your business career some mad shit that happened that you haven't yet shared i don't know if i've ever talked about this on a podcast before this is the first thing that came to mind so back at quest we uh i have a philosophy in life it doesn't matter who you are today it matters who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there and so my wife and I were talking like, do we really mean that?

1:18:21Is that just rhetoric? Is that real? We're like, no, that really is real. So we're like, cool. Then we would consider somebody for employment, even if they had a felony conviction, right? Yes. Okay. Well, we were in Compton at the time. So when you say, Hey, dear local population, uh, even if you have a felony conviction, we will consider you for employment. You get people lining up around the building. And so we were having to interview people two and three at a time. Now the reality is you're not going to bat a thousand percent. And so I, one day had a guy come to me and he's like, Hey, uh, there's like a ring of people that are stealing from you and, uh, I can prove it to you and I'll call him up and tell him I want in on it and I'll get him to confess to how he's doing it.

1:19:04And so like a proper sting operation, man, I'm in the car with him. He tells me be quiet. He calls the guy in speakerphone, you know, Hey man, what's up? Like, Hey, uh, I know that you're, you know, running this, whatever. I don't, he wouldn't have called it a scam, but you're doing this thing and I want to get in on it. Oh, what do you mean? What do you mean? He's like, no, man, I know you're doing this at, and the guy's like, okay, yeah, well, you know, if you can do this, then okay, we'll let you in on it. And I was like, holy shit. Like this guy is like for real doing like a sting bust. I feel like an undercover cop right now.

1:19:35It was crazy. So that was a going back to what we were talking about earlier with suicidal empathy. It was like, all right, just because you want to give people a chance, like that's dope, but you also have to really scrutinize who are the people that have not left that world behind. Like they're not ready for a second chance. And so we really had to start like scrutinizing people a lot harder. And so I wanted to do a good thing, but I realized pretty fast, like you've got to be really careful. Malevolence is real. People will take advantage of you. You have to be really thoughtful. And so that began this process of me really realizing how much tougher I had to be.

1:20:15But we ended up and we had some amazing people. But as I remind people now, I don't hire people with felony convictions anymore. Not that I like am super opposed if somebody had the right story, but it's like, ooh, that idea of just like, I want to create opportunities and, you know, I'll work with people. It's like, that's, it's too much work. You end up creating a drag on your company. And so I still believe it doesn't matter who you are, It matters who you want to become. But I need to see evidence of past success. I need to see somebody that's moving in the right direction already. Like, I'm not going to be that jumping off point.

1:20:48Like, you have to start, you have to put up walls. You have to come in ready to fight all the time. It gets pretty exhausting. What's your most brutal life lesson? Sometimes things don't work out. Now, if you want the specifics of where that's happened, I, for the first year of our game development, I spent millions of dollars. That was simply because I was too stupid to know better. And while I hope one day I make that money back, I may not. That first year was a kick in the face. It damaged my marriage. I was working 120 hours a week. It was grueling. Would you do it again? Yes, but way more intelligently.

1:21:30A lot of the things that people have heard me say over the last couple of years have been lessons that I learned in that period. So look, to your point earlier, suffering means that, hey, you're in a vein of something here. And I certainly had to endure that period of suffering. And I'm very glad that I did. And I earned a lot of my own respect by persevering. But when my wife said, you are now damaging our marriage, I said, look, I will find my way back to you. And I did. And I'm proud of the finding my way back to her, which was finding a way to limit the amount of time that I was working, to be way more efficient, to be smarter about the things that I was doing, to figure out what were the mistakes that I'd made?

1:22:06How do I avoid them in the future? So failure is a tremendous teacher, but the goal is to learn. And so I learned my lessons and I shan't be repeating those. Let me tell you that. What's the best advice you ever remember receiving? me. If you want to make a woman orgasm, she has to trust you. That's real talk. That is arguably the most useful piece of advice I've ever received. And that came from my mom, by the way. Shout out to mom. She knew what she was talking about. I never would have guessed trust. That's just for a guy. I just need a place that's warm and safe. Other than that, maybe not even safe.

1:22:44So yeah, Yeah, very different. What about the worst advice you ever remember receiving? Ask yourself what you would do if you knew you couldn't fail. Why is that the worst advice? Because you're most likely going to fail. And so if it's only an enjoyable way to spend your time, if you win, you're going to waste years of your life, which I did. I wasted almost a decade of my life chasing money because I thought, well, this is what I would do if I knew that I couldn't lose. That was a waste. That was a catastrophic waste. Why was it a waste chasing money? What were you not doing? I wasn't realizing that I could enjoy the struggle.

1:23:26And once I realized I could enjoy the struggle, I got rich. But until I realized, oh, this is about stacking skills and adding value to people's lives and doing something you love and architecting your life in a way that, hey, on the upside, this could be massive. but on the downside, you may spend a decade doing this and have no money to show for it. So if at the end of this story, you're like, oh my God, that was an incredible, yes, we failed, but that was an incredible decade of my life. I love that. That's where I would be now. If impact theory failed, I'd walk away going, yo, that was awesome.

1:23:58I left it all out on the field. I played to win every day. We didn't win, but that was a ball. This show is called Disruptors. What does the word disruptive mean to you, Tom? To go into something that has a status quo, think from first principles and deliver a better result. And where can we follow you? Can you tell us what you're working on? Where are you commenting the most on your future projects? At Tom Bilyeu on the socials, but the most important part for anybody watching this show would be something called Impact Theory University. That is a pride and joy of mine where I teach all the lessons that I've learned over 20 plus years of building businesses.

1:24:42So if you're serious about building a business, getting more out of being an investor, we teach those kinds of principles. And if you could pick your two favorite parts out of your university, what would you shout out? So we have something that is called zero to founder. And what that allows people to do is launch their first company. And we walk people through exactly what you need to do step-by-step to go from working for somebody else and building their dream to building your own. And I love it. I love teaching it. I love the interactions with the students and it's helped a ton of people launch their own companies.

1:25:17We've had people build multi-million dollar companies after taking it. So I'm super excited about that. Tom, I'm really grateful. Thanks for giving up two hours of your time. Thanks for having me, man. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you very much.

1:25:36more. And if you'd like to learn how to invest and build multiple streams of recurring income, I recommend you join money.school. Money.school is my global financial education platform to help as many people on this planet get better financial knowledge. For less than four Starbucks coffees a month, there are hundreds of hours of courses, resources and masterclasses going back a decade to teach how to make, manage and multiply money and gain financial freedom. So join thousands of other money and freedom seekers on the link money.school and start today your journey to financial freedom and more money.

1:26:31Thank you.