The Equation To Every Successful Entrepreneur | Tom Bilyeu EP 412

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:10For 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 when I met the guys that are now my partners, 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.

0:42And 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. And that was interesting to me. So I wanted to be able to say the harder I work, the better result I get.

1:14And 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 it 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. So when did you discover your new values and what are those values? Personal and then business and they intertwine? For me, they're totally connected 100%. And that's by choice because for a long time, they weren't connected.

1:46The way that I got the value system was truly looking at what works. 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.

2:20Let someone whose sole intent is to take your head off come in and test whether you can defend a choke or defend an arm bar. It's so real and so visceral. You know, 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. 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, I talk about this 25 bullet points is the quest belief system.

2:57And 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 and 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 in 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?

3:28So 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. 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. So you have this feedback loop. And really, my value system was born out of that.

3:55I was so, 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. 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? 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?

4:30And that was a question that we asked ourselves. 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. Then as 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. 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.

5:06But 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 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. 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'm encountering these employees that don't think like that.

5:36That 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.

6:05Why can't they? They don't have the mindset yet. I'll just use Carol Dweck and her amazing book, Mindset. And 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.

6:37Whereas other people are a fixed mindset, right? Correct. They're fixed on like, no, this is the way, and I'm right, and that's wrong. Everyone's on a spectrum, right? Even I, as much as I believe in it and work to be a growth mindset, I still have, let's call it 10 % where I catch myself. I'm like, come on, dude, you know better than that. People that fall in 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 or a fixed mindset? You walk in the door, there's a couple bad things happening.

7:05One, 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've built me up. Well, it's the president of the company. 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. We all want that. I teach people about the tyranny of being chosen, and I still have to check myself.

7:34Because it's just rad to be picked. There's no two ways about it. So they walk in, 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.

8:05Like 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, 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's got much bigger goals that he needs to build a media empire to do it.

8:33Now, 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 want it to bring. So here I need somebody 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. Because I can't pay it all myself. Yeah, exactly.

8:57Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:52Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

10:04Thank you.