Radical Confidence with Lisa Bilyeu: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:28Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. yourself, do self-assessments and listen to red flags from your body. That is important to do. You can do it. You should do it and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Lisa and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Lisa, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:15What up, Fire Nation? All right, the thing that I think people would disagree with that I didn't realize until it actually happened to me is success doesn't make you feel better about yourself. and I really thought it would. That's a really important revelation for you Fire Nation listening right now because a lot of people say, once I'm successful, I'll be happy, everything will be good and then you get there, that happens and when that doesn't actually become true, it can be devastating for some people. So just, hey, know this now, know there's other things and reasons and life opportunities that can do that for you but it's not just success alone and that's actually one thing that we're gonna be talking about here today which is radical confidence.

1:58And I want to dive right in with that one word confidence. Like why Lisa is confidence such an important topic for you? So here's the thing. Everyone kept asking me, Lisa, where do you get your confidence from? Um, and I honestly, I was like, they're surely not talking to me because I don't feel confident. And because I just kidding, I kept getting it. I was like, what am I missing? The other people seem to think I am. And what I realized is people see me act. People see me move forward. People see me say, well, I don't know how to write a book, but hey, I'm going to write a book. And they think it's from confidence, but it's actually not.

2:35It is radical confidence, which means I actually don't believe in my skillset right now. I actually don't know if I'm actually capable of doing this, but I'm going to have a set of tools and a plan to move forward, even though I don't have the confidence. And that is what keeps propelling me forward. And then the second part is people think of confidence. It's kind of like happiness, right? What you just said earlier. It's like, if when I'm happy, people think that with confidence, when I have the confidence, I will do this. And the truth is, is that you just want to feel good about doing something.

3:07And what I do is I don't focus on the confidence part. I say, what do you want confidence to do? And so many people, when you reframe it like that, like what's the goal that you want confidence to have in order to get there? It may be, well, I want to be a speaker, a public speaker. I want to get in front of the camera and start my YouTube channel. And I go, amazing. That's what we should be focusing on. How on earth do I get on stage and become a speaker? How on earth do I start my YouTube channel? That's what I want people to focus on. That's how I have shown up every day, even with total inadequacy and multiple times with things where I don't know what I'm doing, but I just say, how do I do it?

3:47And what are the steps I need to take to get there. I love this topic and the whole theme that's kind of developing as we're going through this because so many people say, John, like I'm just scared, like I'm fearful. Like how do you take that next step? Like why don't you have that same fear, that same doubt, that same imposter syndrome? And I always respond, of course I do. I'm a human being. Human beings have those emotions. Every human being that's ever walked this earth has had doubt, has had fear, has had stress, anxiety, because that's a natural human emotion. So look yourself in the mirror, say, I'm a human being.

4:18I'm having these emotions. Let's move forward now with that in our knowledge bank, in our back pockets. And you kind of went through that whole confidence and you went through that process. But when you decided to sit down and write your book, you didn't just write the book called Confidence. Your book is called Radical Confidence. And radical is a very strong word. Let's just say it right now radical is a confident word so what made you choose isn't it true isn't it true like radical is a confident word like you don't use the word radical unless you're confident in the next word being the word so why radical confidence i think it is because we focus on confidence and we focus on feeling good about ourselves and radical confidence to me just means that it's not about feeling good about yourself it's about all the messiness that comes with and i think about radicals like even the design of a book it's like it has to be messy like the word radical needs to be just like spray paint and all over the place because that's what radical confidence is it's not like hey this is the clear path and this is what you do and guys just take these three steps and you're going to be successful it's not that there's so much messiness in success there's so much messiness in showing up every day and so to me it's if i was going to write a book I have to be honest about the messiness that comes with it.

5:36And a lot of that is the messiness of, I don't feel good like what you just said, right? So many of us are human and we all are human. And so, so many of us feel the fear and have all these things. The problem is, John, just by saying that, it doesn't actually help people to act, right? When I'm in that moment where I, let's say I'm in the moment where I'm getting on stage and I've got crippling fear, standing there and telling myself oh but other people do like so my husband he's an amazing speaker and so if I stood there and just said oh but Tom's amazing don't worry he feels the fear too it still doesn't make me feel better about myself and it doesn't make me want to get on stage it almost just says well then you don't have what it takes so radical confidence to me is saying when you're in that situation let's say you want to get on stage and you're having the crippling fear it's about what are the steps I can take so I'm not in my own head and so I list all the different tactics and tricks and things that I've used in order to go from absolutely petrified on stage and my first speaking gig was a TEDx gig and so but I was petrified and I had to have a guide a toolbox that I could dive into to know even though I know I you know everyone else that says they speak fills the fear too I that wouldn't have gotten me on stage so I had to have a toolbox I had to have a skill set or basically a toolbox to go to in order to make me act and not freeze.

7:02Radical confidence. And I'm just planting this seed. I'm not going to ask you right now. This will be later in the interview. I'm going to have you share one of your favorite stories from your book on this topic. But what I want to kind of move into right now is an acronym. I personally love acronyms. My favorite acronym has always been FOCUS. Follow one course until success. Now, I want to talk with you about decision making. And I know that you have an acronym for this. N-B-S-W-W-I-T. What the heck is that all about? So that's no bullshit. What would it take? And this was basically a game me and my husband started to play when we had to start making decisions about our life and we had goals and we had these dreams and we're chasing them and they don't happen and so pausing and just saying no bullshit what would it actually take for me to achieve this and this is stripping yourself of all assumptions it is so mandatory to strip yourself of assumptions when you play this game because the whole point is to say if I really want to be successful okay what will it actually take for me to be successful so what Tom and I did he was going to go out and make enough money so that we can make movies so we're like all right this should be fairly easy obviously naivety at the beginning but um it was like okay if we're going to do this no bullshit what would it actually take for us to make enough money to make movies and so tom had met these entrepreneurs and so he said babe i want to become a partner now because if i become a partner then i'm actually making enough money so that we can go off and make movies we want to sell the company it's like okay great let's play the game no bullshit what would it take so number one was okay for us to be able to become a for him to become a partner we had to move so we want to live really close to them so anything they need tom is right there okay that's step number one step number two um decision making we all know we only have a certain amount of decisions we can make with utter clarity per day learned that from steve jobs so tom read this interview with steve jobs and was like oh so babe you know he only wears black shirts so he doesn't have to make decisions so we said okay if you were going to go out in the business world and really do the no bullshit what would it take for you to go all in on the business world that means all other decisions need to be taken off your plate and so that's what we decided so I said great I'll make all other decisions all you have to decide on is it is the things at work and so we wrote out what that actually meant that meant a I would put out all his clothes so he never had to make a decision about what to wear b i would cook every single meal for him because he never had to decide what to eat and as you can see you know down that path so we did this and we said okay we're going to do this for a year and a half and we're going to make all the money we need to and so we had a plan and it was a plan where we put the game into place and we said are we willing to do it and the answer was yes and so we said great now let's do it so that was how we started playing the game no bullshit what would it take because if we didn't play that we wouldn't have thought about hang on do we need to move to be close well hang on a minute um how is tom going to juggle home life and business no no we actually said no bullshit what would it take for him to go all in at work this was the conclusion we came to we stepped back and we said now is this what we want to do and that's the key part the whole point of playing the game isn't to go well god now i've got to do it the key part is go oh this is what it's going to take to be successful this is what it's going to take to you know build quest or this is what it's going to take to build a youtube channel am I willing to do it?

10:27Fire Nation, look in the mirror. NBS WWIT. What the heck is it going to take for you to take that action? And we have some really cool stories and some really important things to chat about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, you don't buy a business when it's posting record profits and you don't buy crypto when it's sitting in an all-time high. Well, right now, Bitcoin is sitting 25 % off from its all-time high from earlier this year. And here's what I've seen from historical trends. Bitcoin has proven time and time again to rebound, every cycle going from a higher low to a higher high.

11:02And you can own it in a tax shelter retirement account thanks to BitIRA. BitIRA helps you convert an existing IRA or 401k into Bitcoin or several other cryptos. You can continue to fund it like any other retirement account with pre-tax funds. BitIRA protects your assets with end-to-end insurance, highly secure storage, multi-encryption, and registered with the US government. Your IRA is fully IRS compliant. Best of all, you can trade crypto within your retirement account without incurring taxes on any buys or sells. Just go to bitira.com slash JLD and request a free info guide. Once you do that and open your IRA, you'll get a free ledger.

11:38To diversify your retirement accounts into crypto before its next leg up, go to bitira.com slash JLD. Again, bitira.com slash JLD to open a tax sheltered IRA in Bitcoin. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business, and they are also our featured partner, HighLevel. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, HighLevel is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white label solution.

12:16You can build funnels, send SMS and email campaigns, schedule appointments, manage pipelines, run memberships, and even launch your own branded mobile app. It's drag and drop simple, incredibly customizable, and built for serious growth. My favorite part, you can resell high level under your own brand. That means recurring revenue, loyal clients, and total control. So whether you're tired of duct taping tools together or ready to start offering high value services with ease, high level is your unfair advantage. On top of it all, their support team is second to none and has your back every step of the way.

12:49Seriously, every question that pops up, they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Lisa, we're back and I want to talk about failure. year. And you have a story and I love stories, Fire Nation love stories on the PB &J bar. Tell us about that. This is such a pivotal moment in my life that literally if this hadn't happened, I honestly don't know how I would think about life.

13:34So we're at Quest. It's really early in the days. Every penny counts. We all know startups are just, you know, ridiculous accounting how much money you're spending on pens. I mean, it's like, you know, you're counting every single penny. and we just had enough money that we'd hire three people to run our production so we're in the office and all of a sudden one of the guys comes in and he's got this ghost look on his face he just looks horrified we're like what's wrong and he's like i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry now i'm a bit of a panicker so i go into panic mode and i'm like oh my god what happened he's like i've just messed up a batch of bars now at the time it was five thousand dollars roughly for a batch of bars and we all know when you're doing a startup five thousand dollars is literally make or break and so I'm panicking my husband is just much as coolio compared to me so he's like all right look before we panic let's just get up and assess the situation so we walk into the facility and there's these big buckets laid out of all these protein bars that have been made that had just been put into a bucket and he starts to tell us he's like look I was making a batch of bars and we had the peanut butter lined up we had the mixed berry lined up and then we had like the lemon bar lined up and I was going to make a batch at a time so he puts in the peanut he makes peanut butter first he puts in the peanut butter flavoring sorry peanut butter flour peanut butter protein powder he puts in the peanuts and he accidentally grabbed the mixed berry flavoring of the mixed berry bar and so this guy literally thinks he's about to get fired I'm like oh god what the hell are we going to do with this horrible tasting like blob that we have and Tom's just like hey let's just try it so we're all like plugging our nose right in in the for the love of the company i'm sure you know that only too well so it's like okay for the love of the company let me try it so we all try it and all of a sudden someone says it kind of tastes like pb and j so from that one comment we're like maybe we can put this out as if it's a prototype so we because we're like either that or we have to trash it so we're like well there's no point we don't get anything by trashing it so let's just give it a shot so we have the silver foil wrapping and so we put them in the machine we wrap them in this silver foil we get the peanut butter nutrition because you can't sell food without nutritional value but because the only difference was the flavoring actually still use the same nutritional value so we print these out my little staples printer we fold them up we put it in the box and then we blast on facebook because this was back in the day where that was our main uh promotion so you're looking at you know maybe 2000 and maybe 13 12 something like that um and so we were we had a big group on facebook and so we put this blast out on facebook and we're like prototype exclusive limited edition 200 boxes only come and get them dude we sold out in like two hours it was insane and then what we didn't expect um a few days later people started posting oh my god this is the best flavor i've ever tasted so now you start to get everyone talking on facebook about this new flavor and then you get all the people that didn't get to try it have massive fomo so they start saying hey guys we want to try the peanut butter pb and j where can we get it where can we get it so we immediately took our design made a design of pb and j put it up on our website as the new flavor and it became our number one selling protein bar In that moment, it was, oh my God, when I can see failure as being potentially the best opportunity ever, it shifted my mindset on a global scale in everything I do in business, in relationships, in friendship.

17:08It's like failure can be an opportunity. Oh, it's such a beautiful lesson. And then obviously having just a fun story to tell, like the PB &J one, is such an amazing thing to keep. Every time it doesn't feel like it, right, when you fail, it doesn't actually feel like it's an opportunity. It still stings. It still sucks. So I just go back to, yep, but that's what you thought about PNB and J, but that's what you thought about PNB and J. So now it becomes this staple in my mind of shifting my perspective every time I face failure. Fire Nation, within failure, there's a chance of opportunity and you just have to look for it.

17:41You just have to believe. And Lisa, to shift a little bit, because I want to talk about your personal health issues that actually led to an idea that's now a thriving business. So you took ownership of this, which I know Tom's very proud of you and multiple other people, and especially the people you're not helping within this business. Can you tell us that story? So this is really where my first answer came from, where success actually doesn't make you feel better about yourself. Everyone, when you're starting up a business, you need every ounce of focus in order to keep going. you even said that earlier right focus and it's such a powerful thing but sometimes when you're tired when you're um hungry when you're exhausted when you're facing hurdles and obstacles time and time again you need something for motivation and so for tom and i our motivation was we would drive around beverly hills and we had this really crappy car at the time and it had a hole in the exhaust and it like the steering wheel would like shake as you like get to 60 miles an hour but we were all in on the company quest we'd started it with his business partners and we said we're going to spend every penny we can put it into the company our house was up for collateral but even on those days even on those days where you're um exhausted and you're like well hang on you're going to lose your house sometimes you need the opposite i need like a positive thing versus just the negative that is the fear so we started to drive around beverly hills and we would dream about the day that we would find our dream house in beverly hills now coming from england having a zip code of 90210 and it's just exciting it I've still got that young little girl inside me that gets very excited over things like that so that would be our motivation and we would drive around now cut to three or four years later quest becomes a billion dollar company and we actually now can buy a house in beverly hills it's like I was blowing my mind like you think like the dreams actually come true I couldn't believe it and so I was like oh my god I'm living this dream I had this vision I would always joke with Tom.

19:37I'm a 90s girl. So I really love hip hop. And I love like all of that sort of thing. So I would say to Tom, babe, it would be so meaningful because I need to attach myself to an emotion. That's the key. Babe, when we get our Beverly Hills house, I'm going to twerk under a waterfall for you and pour Dom Perignon down my body. Like I wanted to make it fun. I wanted to make it like a 90s hip hop movie video. And so I was really energized and we bought the house and it happened to have a waterfall. And I was like, I can't believe this is actually true. Like everything you dream work hard for is actually happening and so I get under the waterfall Tom goes to take a photo of me and as I take a swig of the champagne in that moment I liken it to it felt like my gut erupted and from that day on the dream literally in the moment it couldn't even it couldn't be more cliche John like in the moment of the fact that I'm having champagne to celebrate my entire health crashes and burns now in hindsight I figured out what happened with my gut and it was years and years of bad nutrition I thought fat was bad because I had a very unhealthy relationship with food so I thought fat was bad carbs were bad I was getting sick a lot and then because I was getting sick I was taking a lot of antibiotics so that's just kind of a quick very quick recap on how it led to me all of a sudden on that day my gut collapsed it for about a year I could eat maybe four to five ingredients for a year I could eat beef coconut oil salt chicken and some I think turkey or lamb sorry for a year I couldn't eat and my hair was falling out I was 20 pounds lighter than I am my nails were brittle I put a bit of a tiny bit of pepper on my chicken and it caused me such gastric pain and almost had to rush me to the emergency room like that's how bad it got I couldn't stand up for more than five minutes at a time so it got so bad in that moment I was like why me I can't believe I've worked so hard and I had that mindset for about a year or two and I kept going to doctors wishing for them to fix me because I thought oh you just you know pay pay the right money go to the best doctors give me a pill and then I can move on with my life now in that in that entire journey it hit me after two years where I wasn't getting better and once I started to realize it was because I had the unhealthy relationship with food it was because I had stopped eating fat it was because when I was getting sick I was taking the antibiotics I used to blame the doctors and I thought well if they were good for me the doctors wouldn't have given them to me but the most beautiful realization in all of this horrific story that I'm telling you is the fact that I realized I did it to myself.

22:23I took the antibiotics. I swallowed them. When the doctor said to me, you know, I shouldn't be giving you all these antibiotics. I never asked why. I never came home and did my own research of what antibiotics does to you. I just gave my power away and said, well, he's the expert. He knows better. And so after two years of looking for experts to fix me and they couldn't, that's when it hit me. Oh my God, I did this to myself. And taking ownership over that means that I can actually take ownership of healing myself. And that pivot for me changed the way I thought, changed the way I acted. I started, I got myself an aura ring.

23:01I started, I got myself a continuous glucose monitor. I started to assess with my little black book, all the times that I was waking up in the middle of the night, my aura ring would tell me. It would then correlate to the fact that I would get massive dips in my glucose levels. and I realized that that's why I wasn't sleeping well and that's why I was always waking up tired so I started to just take ownership over it do my own assessments listen to my body because so often we don't listen to the red flags especially when you're doing a business you're so gung-ho you so want your business to succeed that I literally ignored every single red flag that was whipping me in the face telling me that I was going down a dangerous health path and I just ignored it and so since then since i took ownership since i started healing myself and that idea of the opportunity to take ownership to take control to take whatever word you want to use i like to say it's all my fault because the word fault actually triggers me in a positive way to act but whatever word you need to use that is going to inspire you to act but taking ownership and looking inside yourself to say what can i do differently right now change the game for me what's an inspiring story fire nation and i've always loved that book extreme ownership by jaco i mean it's just so key when you're willing and able to take extreme ownership of everything that's happening in your life then guess what you're just released you're free because now you have the ability to find those answers just like lisa found her answers and lisa i want to end with you sharing with Fire Nation, what do they need to know about your book, Radical Confidence?

24:45If you could leave them with just one value bomb gem, what would that be? That whatever you think about yourself right now, this book will help you reframe that and make you see what you're capable of. Because who you are today does not dictate the person you can become. And this book is to help you on that journey, whatever journey that is for you. And it's very tactical. I give you my own experience, but I also try to position it as what is this version of for you? What is going to help you? Yeah, that's really the takeaway of the book. I hope it helps people get to their goals and reframes the way that they think of themselves.

25:26Where's the best place Fire Nation can go to learn more? You can go to radicalconfidence.com to get all information about the book or you can just follow me at Lisa Bill you on Instagram and all the socials. What a fantastic URL way to snag that one and fire nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with LB and JLD today. So keep up the heat. Head over to EO fire.com type Lisa in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about. And of course, check out radical confidence.com. Lisa, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

26:05For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. I'm so thankful to be on here. Thank you, John. Thank you everyone at Fire Nation. It's been a pleasure. Fire Nation, today's episode was brought to you by Lisa. And if you're thinking to yourself, I want to start a podcast. Well, guess what? I have a free podcast course for you. It is completely free. It is amazing. It will teach you how to create and launch your podcast, freepodcastcourse.com. And I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies?

26:40Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.

27:01Thank you.