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Your Mind Can Transform Your Life with Tom Bilyeu

Harry. What's up? It's Chase. Welcome to another episode of this show. That's right, The Chase Service Life Show here on Creative Life show. This is where I sit down with amazing humans, and I do everything I can to unpack their brains and help you live your dreams. Whether that's in career and hobby or in life. My guest today created a $1,000,000,000 That's right 1,000,000,000 with a B dollar brand called Quest Nutrition. You've probably had the bars. He's since started interviewing people where he's got almost a 1,000,000 followers on his channel called Impact Theory. They have several shows. If you haven't checked that out, is most recently launched a comic book with Celebrity Steve Aoki, one of my favorite DJs. This man needs little introduction, although Ivory stack a few things in your favor here, Mr Tom. Bill, you What's going to the show? Thank you for having me. I have had the privilege of being on yours here in Los Angeles. So it was about time and we were working on a little...

bit happy to reciprocate. And thanks for joining Dude. Really excited to be here. Uh, we got to go back to the start, I sometimes will wander in the woods a little bit the beginning, but to me, the concept of creating a $1,000,000,000 brand leaving it all to build on Internet television show or Siris of shows You do like four or five hours a week. It doesn't come on accident. It happens because of something in your past. I want to know. Was there an entrepreneurial like we raise an entrepreneur family, start me at start. Oh, man, at the beginning. So no, I was not raised in an entrepreneurial family. Um, I always tell people very sincerely that my family taught me to be a good employee, head down, do as little work as possible and avoid punishment at all costs. And that is that's truthfully how I was raised and growing up. My dad always wanted me to go to school, so that was a thing like in my family. It was just assumed you were going to go to college, so it wasn't like if you went it was like, What college are you going to when you go when you graduate? And so I was had toe have jobs during the summer to make sure that I understood that menial labor was not where I wanted to be and that I would actually go through with school. So in the beginning I had paper routes. I worked in a paint factory, a paint store, um, actually manufactured paint for a while. Pain because my dad worked at a company. So back in your hometown ish in Tacoma, a company called Parker Paint. I don't think they exist anymore. I remember I could draw the logo. Nice. Wow, that's amazing. So I was music group in Seattle's Yeah, they know for sure. So I worked there for a bunch of summers and really did learn work ethic, and it was ends up becoming this sort of wax on wax off moment. But at the time, I just hated it and so didn't have entrepreneurial instincts and really did see Job is sort of something where you kind of hide as much as you can, and you just punch in and punch out. And so go to film school. Have, ah, very film school. Yes, that was that risky when they said Yes, I'm going to college, dad, but I'm going to film school, though, and you know, it's funny. I never asked my dad about that and that, I think probably more felt of my mom. My mom was like, What do you want to do, Chase your dreams? And in fact, I almost chickened out of going to school. I was one of the only two kids from my graduating class left the state. Everybody else either didn't go to college or went to state schools. And it was me and one of the guy and I was like, really panicking about leaving home right at the 11th hour. And my mom was like, Look, you have to go. We got this huge fight and shell, but kicked me out. It was like, You are going You're never gonna look back and say what? If so, I was like, All right, So I end up going and I get there to here to Los Angeles. And, man, I really take to it. And I believe that I was naturally talented, and so I'm doing my film school things going really well, and, uh, well, actually, even before that, I don't have the grades to or the S A t scores to get into film school, OK, and I didn't realize they're actually separate. So just cause I got into USC didn't mean I was going to get into USC films and business school is a subset, so they have, like, 19 different colleges. You have to apply separately, which I had no idea. And I go to the career counselor and she is like, Listen, you're not going to get into film school and you're taking classes, your G classes, like you've already been accepted. She goes, you're gonna end up being here for five years. You're gonna have to repeat this year. I see this happen all the time. You're statistically more likely to get into Harvard law than you are to get USC Film school. And that's with the S A. T scores. And, homey, you do not have the S A T scores. I got a 9 90 It took it twice as my combined score. Some like none, And I'm going to get in. And I found out one of the guys on the admissions committee was one of my teachers. So he had, like, thes lunch hours where you could join him for lunch. So I joined him. Nobody else did. And so I had him for an hour and I was just like, what do I do to get into film school? I said, I don't have the S A t scores for this, and he said, Tom, look, s a t is just supposed to tell me how well you're going to do in college, but you're not eligible again until you're a junior anyway. So he's like that gives you two years toe, actually get good grades. So if you get good grades, he's like, I'm not going to read your application and we'll let you in. So I locked myself in a dorm room for two years. I don't do drugs. I didn't drink. I didn't date nothing. I studied and I got At that point, I probably had a 4.0, end up getting into film school. I realize I'm actually really good. I have the natural talent, I'm killing it. And there's three classes in film school, your first ones to 90 really basic black and white simple, separate stuff. Then you go to a 3 10 where for a whole semester it's you and one other guy. And based on my class. Before that, I had gotten, like the best guy to agree to be my cinematographer, which was already a big deal. We make it awesome. 3 10 crushes gets a lot of attention. And I'm one of only four people selected to direct a senior thesis film. So I'm like, Then I got this, like, I'm national talented. I knew it like I had an instinct that this was gonna be my thing. And then I screw up my 4 80 thesis film so badly that people are like, making names of it and making fun of it and like cutting these gag reels together because it was that bad and I realized a very painful truth. I had no talent and my whole world came crashing down on me. And so I graduate film school, and I think I mean, imagine I get into the school that I'm more likely to get into Harvard Law told him, never going literally straight to my face, told I'm never going to get in, I get in. Then, out of all those people that get whittled down, I get whittled down again to one of four. So I think I'm gonna make this film, and you also think you have talent isn't like 100. But you do clearly have town that well, so we're gonna have to differentiate. And this is one thing in my story that I really, really want people listening to understand because the punchline becomes I build a $1,000,000,000 business but from not having entrepreneurial instincts. So right now I know people are watching and they don't believe in themselves. And here's the bad news, their right not to believe in themselves. But there's one thing that flips it all around, which is you can learn anything. So I graduate film school. I have this horrifying moment which humbles me and literally slaps me around. Makes me the laughing stock. And I have to face the truth. I don't have talent now. I don't yet understand Carol Dweck notion of a growth mindset. So I'm like, Captain fixed Mindset. So I leave film school. I thought I was gonna have my thesis film. I thought I was going to get me a three picture deal, and it just ends up that I'm now. I don't know what to do, right, cause this is before YouTube There's no like, easy way into the film industry. It's like if you want to make a no budget film, you need $100,000. I've never seen $100,000 in my life at this point. I don't know anybody that has $100, so it really might as well have been $100 million. And because I have a fixed mindset and zero entrepreneurial instincts, I'm just sliding towards depression. So I'm coming home. I cant afford furniture. I'm laying face down on the floor of my apartment. I lived on an air mattress with a leak in it for almost two years. With the leaking that's next level. I would wake up every morning on the floor because it would deflate slowly overnight and every night, no matter how tired I was, I had to blow that thing up, and I don't want to spend the $20 it would have taken me like, but that's the level of broke. So I'm just in this really, really dark place, and almost a year goes by. And it's the summer after my graduating year in this school called the New York Film Academy comes to L. A. And they're like, Hey, we're doing summer classes and we need teachers. And so I end up being a teacher and you have enough Hamlet, right? So now I'm pan it. Will those who can do those who can't teach right? So that's the adage. So I'm thinking, Well, this makes sense. I can't make films. At least I can go teach And so I go to teach and I'm kind of panicking, so I don't feel like I know enough to teach. So I start researching at night like how to teach and it begins So, like, crystallized everything I've learned and I go in and I'm able to teach it, and I realized I could actually help them make their films better, like I know what they need to do. And when they listen, their films get better, and I thought, Wait a second. If I could make their films better, I should go to make my films better and right at this time is to the late nineties. There's this whole hotly debated topic about brain plasticity, and some people are saying, Look, you're born with what you're born with Jane's right stuff yet you've got the number of neurons you've got, you've got that, said Homey. Every beer you drink is like, you know, 10,000 less, and it's just it's a one way street to decline. And then there was another camp going. That's just not true. And you're making new neurons your entire life. You can learn new tricks, rewire the brain up until the day you die. And I thought, All right, I don't know who's right But I'm going to choose to believe the people who say I can learn something new or right, and I'm going to just pour myself into that. And so I start reading voraciously about the brain and about how it works, because for me, if I can picture how it works, like I can sort of grab a hold of it. And so I just started learning about the brain, the brain, the brain, and it allowed me to start climbing out of. I won't say I was depressed. I've seen depressing this wasn't it? But it was like a dark place. Yeah, and so I see even a fixed mindset is a dark place, and in some ways you know it's like, if you believe that you can't change where you are. That's free. Tough place for sure. Yeah. So and that's exactly how I felt. I thought, Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to get out of that. And that gave me the first glimmer of hope than teaching really began to reinforce it. And it just showed me there might be a path here where I can just practice and practice and practice. And I happen to be at the school now where I can help students with their films. I could borrow the camera, so I'm in, like, this perfect environment. And then, um, I end up meeting these two very successful entrepreneurs, and they were a little bit older than me and way, way farther ahead in their business journey. And I was getting really frustrated because the business of film is that you have to try and appease people that have the finances, but they may not be good at the art. And now I've spent all this time getting good at the art and they said, Look, you're coming to the world with your hand out. And if you want to control the art, you have to control. The resource is So I said, Come with us and get Rich were founding this new technology company 18 months from now. Kid, you could be a multi millionaire and I was like, This is amazing. I'm like, all right, this is too good to be true. But on a mattress with everybody's like, Dude, there's no way these guys were totally bs ing you and I was like, But what do I have to lose exactly? Like, Let's say I go and it's a total sham. They're paying me a paycheck. The second the checks bounce, I go get another job. So it just seems self evident to me that it was worth the risk. So I joined them and they say, Look, we're hiring you as a copywriter, but we're always looking for partners Will set of settled for employees, but we're looking for partners, so you can have any role. You want this company, you just have to become the right person for the job. You're gonna have to get the skills when I'm just gonna give it to you. And they said that to dozens of people and one by one, all those people fell by the wayside, and I just kept at it and just kept working and didn't have any sense of, like, shame. Or, um, something was beneath me. So I would just do everything, everything, Everything. And I just slowly started climbing up. And probably about 6.5 years later, I was the chief marketing officer in the company. They had given me 10% equity just for sweat. I never invested a dime in the company. And about that point, though, I'm burning out. I'm just working around the clock and I'm just chasing money. I'm just trying to get rich, like, every day. I'm saying you're doing this to get rich, to get rich, to get rich. And so there was no bigger Why, right? And so is cheesy as it sounds all of a sudden, I really am. I mean, it took 6.5 years, but on paper, I am worth probably about $2 million. Okay, Paper on paper, very different to real money. Let's be very clear about that. Even the real money is made of paper. This is a different kind of very different. And I the equity paper. Yes, I go to my wife and I said, Look, I know I promise you that I would make you rich, but I am so miserable that I'm gonna have to take us backwards, not giving up. But I need to do something every day that I love. I need to feel alive again. That was my phrase. I need to feel alive again. And the thing that makes me feel alive, which were just talking about before the camera started rolling, is writing. So I was like, I need to go back to writing. We're gonna move to a small town in Greece because she's Greek on. I was gonna really, because I can speak Greek ish and I was like, really gonna learn Greek. And I was gonna write screenplays and just live on next to nothing. And so I go in and I'm full of shame. It becomes a cool part of my story because of how it works out. But at the moment, I was really ashamed of myself cause I was quitting. Yeah, and I said, Guys, look at that point. Like we were like brothers. We've been working together a long time, and I said, I just cannot do this anymore. I am so profoundly unhappy. Here's your equity back. If I don't cross the finish line, I don't want to get anything for this. I'm leaving you guys alone. I feel terrible about it and I'm gonna go right. And they were stunned. And they say what becomes sort of famous words of my life. We could do this without you, but we don't want Teoh and that let me reconnect to something other than the money. And so I'd already done the hard thing which was quit and shame myself. And so I said, All right, if we're going to keep working together, this is what it would have to look like. It would have to be something based on passion. I would have to be something where we're bringing value to people's lives. We're not just selling something. It's got to be something where I can let my real personality come through. And that's what kept saying. I want my riel personally want to be who I really am all day, every day now, of course we would say the authentic. But back then, people we're using that words just like yeah, well, It's a little later than that. But I was like, I just need to be myself. I need to be myself. And so, for three very different reasons, they said they felt the same. But for three very different reasons we end up founding, Quest, nutrition and for me. I grew up in a morbidly obese family, and I wanted to save my mom and my sister. And I just thought, The one thing I know is the struggle is guaranteed. The success is not so. You better love the path. So I thankfully, I'd chase money for so long that I realized you could give me all the money in the world right now. And if you ask me to keep doing this, I wouldn't. So I know that money is not going to solve my problems. Money solves money problems, and money is actually more powerful than people think. But it doesn't touch how you feel about yourself, and it doesn't impact your joy or your fulfillment. So we come into it just like hungry to do things in a way that would fulfill us every day that we would love be on fire for passionate fight through everything. And I knew when it got hard I was gonna need someone or something that I loved to fight for and that just became a mom and my sister, my mom and my sister, my mom and my sister. And so when it got hard, and of course it did, has that and it it just It was crazy. It was We were doing things for the right reasons. We were fed up of chasing money. We wanted to create something beautiful in the world. We wanted to add value. We before it was like, Ah, thing we were saying, We no longer prioritized money. This is gonna be about doing the right thing and just adding extreme value to people's lives. And so we were doing that right is this former filmmaker is like fed up and wants to do things on a daily basis. When I wanted to be shooting, I want to be surrounded by cameras and artists. So we start doing all the content creation in house and build a studio inside of a protein bar company and people like What are you doing? But it was like I wanted to be doing that and my partners and I had agreed We may make very unconventional business choices, but it will all be in the name of loving what we dio So cool. We're gonna shoot our own commercials, do our all of our own packaging design everything ourselves. And so I finally got to be surrounded by artists and just doing things that I love, which is, you know, makes it a lot easier to work crazy hours. And so we just at the right time had the right message, right? A social media was going crazy, right? As the world was realizing, it was like super size me is happening. And everyone realizes that I need to eat better. And so all of this stuff just came together And the penultimate like success, the victory lap Looks like what you guys grow. The company decided to sell it. Is this you selling out of your from your partnership? Is it? You sell All three of you go together, You say cool. I'm out because having a business that spins off cash is different because you're still invested in a business has been cash. So what, like close the loop for us? What you built a great business. Yeah, well, so building the business is a podcast unto itself was so extraordinarily transformative, largely because businesses go through a phase phases. And in the beginning, you need hustlers. You need people that just ride or die. They're going to be there a 2 a.m. On a Saturday night and just in it. And so because we were doing manufacturing, we were in the inner cities were just in bad neighborhoods. We were Compton of Compton, adjacent for years, and we put the word out on the street that we would hire people even if they had felony convictions. So we had former gang members and ex drug dealers and ex felons. I mean, it's just like this rag tag group of people, but we were giving them hope for a world that didn't involve drugs and gangs and that they could learn anything going back to what I said earlier, like I had transformed my life and taken myself from, you know, laying on my floor, feeling like I can't do anything with my life because I don't have talent. Is a filmmaker to realizing I could build businesses toe having this vision to build this extraordinary food company and it was working and it was going. So I said toe every one of the employees making the protein bars of your tuition. But we have Quest University. So if there's anything else you want to learn, I'll teach you everything that I know and so became this extraordinary relationship with these people who wanted to do something amazing with their lives, going through these extraordinary transformations as they were learning because we were opening inside. This is sort of like learning and development inside inside the company. And it was it was just amazing. And it would take so long to tell those stories. But like it just know that it changed me as a human and is what made me ultimately do impact theory. So we build the company up. Everything is working well, being true to what we said. We're making the right decisions, even when it's hard like it was just awesome, Man, it was awesome to be inside of it, and the world was just rewarding us. And so the company was growing hand over fist. It was crazy long hours, and it was brutal work. And there was a time where I was waking up with my hands cramping closed because making protein bars is especially when you you're starting off and you've got sort of the rickety equipment. It's very physically demanding thing on. I would always take the hardest job because I was of the three partners. I was the 1st 1 to go to quest, full time, the other ones, because we didn't just like wrap the company. It took us like a good year to begin to separate from awareness technologies. So I leave first. I'm there for about a year on my own, so I would take the hardest job on the line to show the guys. Not only will I do the hardest job, but I'm gonna do it with a smile. I'm gonna be lifting you guys up. You're getting you excited. I'm gonna leave from the front and like, despite all of that, it was just a joy. And the company grows fast, and it about the five year mark. We were valued at over a $1,000,000,000. It was bananas, and we knew that. Look, at any time a company like this, you're one like peanut allergy related death away from just collapsed. So we wanted basically ah, founder liquidity event. We didn't want to exit the company, but we wanted to founder liquidity events. We took a very small investment, but at over a $1,000,000, the numbers are just ridiculous. So it just completely changed our lives financially. And at that point, as we continue to go, it was like we've now got the finances where we can do whatever we want. We didn't share a vision for how to grow the company anymore. So it was like rather than let that relationship begin to deteriorate, we just said, Well, we don't We're in a very fortunate position. We no longer have to agree. So I spun the studio out that we built into impact theory, and that's where we are now. So I still have massive ownership in the company. I'm just not involved day today. It'll isn't that a fascinating like you mentioned different phases of the business. There's a what I find you know, having been through this with Creativelive is it's interesting to see where my skill set was really needed and where it wasn't it when I was president. When I wasn't and how been so in it for last several years. And you just look around the landscape and it's sort of like, uh, people in your life. They come and go at different times, and it's It's fascinating. I don't know if you know folks at home have never built a business. If you have, you probably understand this. It's really only, you know, looking backwards that you can connect the dots and it's just that it's a brilliant little piece of wisdom there. So I think it's a There's a lot of things I would like to unpack. I'm gonna put a pin in a few things first. So in your in your, uh, lifeline, we're now about to start impact theory. But let's go back and check out a couple of things that you learned along the way. So this idea of leading from the front willing to do whatever it takes uh, is that a thing that you felt like you learned? Go back to neuro plasticity? Is that because you it's just ineffective way to be in the world and you could be an inspiring boss and still get the work done? Or was that a You know something that you learned in your childhood was it taught is that there's a square in downtown Los Angeles and there's a film premiere outside. Yeah, I know. He feels like they're screaming for us. I know it sounds. That would be amazing. What is so surreal? My wife is at that premiere. No, totally randomly. And I was like, I'm going to the ace hotel. And she's like, What, Like I'm going to the hotel was like, How is that possible? So very randomly. My wife and I have ended up in the same place tonight. Um, sounds like she's having a lot of all right. Really? So where did I learn that? Honestly, most of what I've learned has come from film. So I you know, you watch and end up worshiping these characters and you see what they do and what they go through and what you admire about them. And, you know, being obsessed with somebody like Bruce Lee growing up and reading the geek, the Daljeet condo. And I'm like, 14 or 15. I'm just, like, so impressionable, um, and just beginning to see what, like, really human potential expressed looks like and then seeing people who put themselves at risk that go out front that aren't fighting from the back and sending other people into danger like they take the lead. And then when they win, like and they do it, they put themselves at risk. And then Alexander the Great like learning about him and how he used to, like, be at the front and like you couldn't get a spear out of the guy's hand. You're like, Dude, you literally control the entire known world. And yet you're at the front and just trusting, like how much that resonated and being like, you hear the stories and the hair on the back, your next ends up and you get the chills. And just like, Whoa, so you know, between movies and just stories and people that I had admired in real life, it was like, Yeah, I want to be like that And then also having enough awareness about. And this is one thing I will say. I've studied psychology a lot and so understanding what excites people, what draws them, what makes a good leader. Um, I knew that if I was going to get this particular ragtag band people together. I could not be who they think of as, like the man, right? Yeah. The guy that just sits in his office and tells people what to do. I had to be out there. I had to outwork everybody. I had to be better than everybody. Like they had to see that listening to me was the right answer. Time and time and time again. They had to see that I would never ask him to do something that I wouldn't do myself. They had to see that I would take the artist job. They had to see that I would push past fatigue, then to see that I would do it all and try to uplift them at the same time. And men that, like you want to talk life lesson. If you do that for people, if you outwork them, you're right more than you're wrong. As much as I wish that wasn't important, you actually have to be effective. And then you like, show them. I want you toe win and I'm gonna set you up to succeed. People will follow you anywhere. Wow. I don't even have to ask any questions. You said what's and I was gonna say that the question was and then said, What's the outcome of something like that? And you just said it all. All right, so we're gonna go back to the beginning, which is between not the beginning, being but the beginning of quest. You knew in your heart that you were not satisfied with the tech company, that there's something in there I find having talked with 150 or 200 people like this, that there's something that it's a very hard truth and to just call it self awareness. I find it doesn't do anybody any good, because when you say self awareness, I just be more software. You know, there's a, uh I think it's a tautology where you reference the thing that you don't know you have or whatever, so get weird. But how did you figure that out? How did you what was what was actually happening? We're, like, physically sick, emotionally sick, and you know, most people that I know they don't listen to those signals and what made you listen? So there's one of my favorite quotes. They say a fool never learns a smart man learns from his mistakes, and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. And unfortunately, I've been a fool so many times in my life that I really let pain drag out and one of my greatest benefits. And one of the things that oftentimes will get me in trouble is I haven't immeasurable tolerance for emotional pain. And so if I was really wise, I would not have needed to learn that money can't buy happiness, right? Because I had heard it 1000 times were saying in here. Yeah, in case you're not sure, So just look at us. Do we look great? No. Yeah. So it's all dressed in black. We got bags under. No, you look great. Um, so, yeah, I really had to learn that one the hard way. And then So it was physical pain. I did not feel good. I was just Justin in duress, like you. And actually, here's a better way of explaining it. Everything just seemed lane like going into work. It was like a dark cloud hanging over just made me feel uneasy. And it was like I don't want to go back on Sunday night was like Oh, man, the weekend's over like this. Such a bummer. Like even Friday night. You're like, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow. There's not gonna be a day insulating me between, you know, going back to work, and then you're at work and just, like, fucking miserable. And people are irritating me and I go home and I'll be short with my wife. My wife is saying like, Yo, what's happening to you like you're not. She was, like, used to be playful, you know, playful anymore. I'm like, Yeah, man, Wow, you're right. I used to be playful, but I don't feel that I don't have any sense of, like, wanting to be silly or anything. And it just all started to seem boring and dull and like drudgery. And where, when you're thinking of those thoughts about the world, that's just that's a mirror. Such a clear, clear reflection of what's happening to you in the choices and what's going on your mind set, No question. And then I think the real thing was the one. My wife is trying to slap me awake during this whole thing and is like you're changing the feeling that our marriage has you're clearly not happy, and then you'll do something where it light you on fire for a minute, and you're like, Whoa, I want to feel like this all the time, like this weekend. So I was working on the comic book screenplay and that that was like it, man. My whole weekend I had the curtains closed, the lights off, headphones on. I'm listening to the sounds of nature. So I'm just in the screenplay and I'm I'm on fire creatively in a way that's hard to explain. And so immediately as Monday's approaching, I just had to check my schedule. I want to eliminate anything, Isn't this? I'm gonna cut it. I'm gonna slash, and it's so at that time, I had that feeling of everything in my life pulls me away from this feeling everything. And they're all choices I've made. And so you start thinking, I know I want to feel this way. I've been feeling this way worse and worse and worse for years now. People that I love and trust or like, Yo, you're not fun anymore. Like what is going on? So and you just go play this out. Flash forward. 10 more years. You keep feeling like this, but you get a $1,000,000,000. Was it worth it? And I was like, No, if I have a $1,000,000, I feel like this, like all I'm gonna want to do with a $1,000,000,000 is stop doing what I'm doing now and sleep on it. Yes. So it's like, Whoa, So you're telling me that the $1,000,000,000 simply buys you out of what you're doing to work, to get the $1,000,000,000? Okay, we'll run the math. What's the probability of the $1,000,000,000? Well, given out hard I've been working and how hard this business is to build. I'm going to give it, I don't know, a 20% chance. So the odds are not in my favor. So this does not seem like a wise experiments play out. So given that I can immediately feel joy and that's incredible and pursue something that brings me fulfillment and that sounds wonderful and reignite my marriage and just like everything and that would be guaranteed causes things I can control, I'm just gonna go do that. And then my mantra became I still want to get rich, but I'm only gonna pursue well through a vehicle that I love. The day today. Actions off the process. Yet the process. Exactly. So that became like my obsession. I'm still gonna get rich, but I'm gonna do it doing something that I love that brings value to the world. Wow. All right. You put a pin in a few things. We went backwards. Now we're gonna go forwards back to Did I? I think I can understand the change that you're making now from Quest Nutrition to impact theory because we just played through that scenario was doing at the second time Easier because you were smarter. Yeah. Yeah, the second time. It wasn't even like it almost wasn't a transition. So I your extracting the studio they had already made from within that. So we had the staff for sure. But, um, it was I wrapped up quest on a Tuesday and impact the restarted on a Wednesday. So it was when you're actually driven by a white like and this is maybe even a more powerful story about that. So, um, I had the very good fortune of the way that I came. Teoh riel Wealth was instantaneous. Now had been building it for years, but in building it for almost 15 years. But literally, it was refresh, refresh, refresh on the bank account, app, and then boom. All of a sudden it's a lot of commas and zeros. And so in that moment, you realize I don't feel any differently about myself. I now have purchasing power, and that is fascinating and is is amazing. But it doesn't change how you think about yourself. And so that just became instantly clear. And my wife was like, Oh, my God, we're so rich. What are we gonna do today? And I was like, We're gonna goto work. And she was like, What do you mean? We're gonna go to work? And I said, This isn't about the money. I'm not doing this for the money like that. Every time that I've said that over the last whatever five or six years has been true. I'll never go back to that. I'll never be chasing money again, So I believe in what we're doing. I believe in the people that we've brought together to do this, and I'm gonna show up in lead. And so if you went and asked people at Quest. What dated the money hit that be like, I have no idea. So we just rolled up and got back to it, and that is, I think, one of the things that I'm most proud of. And it's certainly things that's one most revealing about my personality. So in terms of, like the transition, I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. And while this sort of end result of ending metabolic disease, which is what I was doing it quest or pulling people out of the Matrix by giving them an empowering mindset, which is what I'm doing at impact three, they are definitely different outcomes. But for me, I've always told people there's two ways to get to the mind and go direct to the mind and go through the body. But at the end of the day, I was always looking for that emotional moment of awakening where someone realizes that they can control their life. So it was just sort of ah, pivot. And yeah, I'll never live in that place again, where I'm like, Oh, I'm unhappy and I've been unhappy for a long time, like you can see it coming now because I don't have to worry about finances. It's like it just wouldn't make any sense. What's the most common question that you get about your transition? Her mother's? I could ask all the questions. The one the one that people are I think always most curious about is like a man you lost your baby like, Are you OK? Like, is it? We're not showing up there anymore. And I was like, Wow, I don't think of the world like that. So that was one thing, and I think that I really do understand that. And I think that was a lot harder for my wife to go cause she went from housewife never thinking she was going to be an entrepreneur, to ending up being a part of the founding team of what becomes a $1,000,000,000 company and watching her become this powerful. She is a much better natural entrepreneur than I am. Like she actually has instincts even before they were trained. And so watching her blossom was really extraordinary. And so for her, it took it took a hot minute for her to, like reorient. Okay, we're doing something new now, Um whereas for me, it was like it was every step I've taken, even even the from teaching. And then the technology company, which was really about controlling resource, is toe starting the studio. Even though it was to make commercials and instagram content, everything has been a step closer to running a movie studio. So it was it. I often feel like I remember Quest people are like, Oh, man, you know, you've given up on your film dream. That was like, Whoa, I don't think of it like that. Like I'm shooting now more than I've ever shot in my life. I'm just not the director anymore. I'm the executive producer, Um, so that that was pretty easy for me. It's interesting, but that's what I get asked the most. Yeah, interesting. All right, so let's talk about in factory. I've had the unfortunate being in the show. If you're not, maybe we can link to that show notes or something. Um, it was certainly fun to be on. Uh, I think in that show you also acknowledge the long standing sort of Internet relationship that you and I have had. And it was fun to see toe watch you go from the nutrition bar guy because we had a lots of mutual friends to creating content again, and I saw you starting to do it in questions like, Oh, that's cool. They got there like they're inviting people in to teach their employees and in the process there and then it was a full on full on shift. You seem like a very natural content creator. You like toe share until stories, and this is a film school part coming out in you. But what like being able or willing to create content and then creating a business around creating content are sometimes different things? So do you think of impact theory as a pet project that is independent of your wealth and your just creating content? Or do you look at impact? Theory is a business that you're growing with merchandise and, uh, and you know, what's the aspiration of them back there? Yeah, the aspiration of impact theory is toe build the next Disney and nothing short of that, and I think that it will take multiple generations. It will take 70 plus years, and I know that you can't prognosticate especially not in media something that far out but It just gives me something like that gives me something to aim at, and I think that's important. So you know, we'll always be looking for how we shift, and we're already obviously doing it dramatically different than they do being heavily, socially focused. But that's the goal. And why Disney? Because my motivation truly is to, um, eso to answer this question. I started Big Brother Ring when I was 18 for a kid in the inner city and grew up in South Central Los Angeles about as hard as you grow up. And, um, I was supposed to be tutoring him for eight weeks, and it turned into 8.5 years, and it becomes this utterly transformative relationship in my life. And the problem is, I'm too young and stupid to really help him, So all I could ever really do for him was shown that there is a beautiful part of the world like not everywhere. Looks like your back yard looks. And so I would take him to movies in Beverly Hills, and you just try to show him like there's another part of the world, because at the time you know I was poor movies cost the same thing everywhere. So I thought, Well, let's at least go to a nice neighborhood. And so we were do that and I would drive him around showing big houses and look, because I was dreaming that dream. And I was like, You know, there's there's just into the world like there's another way to be But I just couldn't end up helping him. And he was being abused by his adoptive parent, which didn't know at the time, but I into becoming his guardian for a while, and I helped him into Yeah, I mean, that's like a whole thing. So when I say that, it really transformed my life and had a big impact on me Flash forward 15 years later, and now I have 3000 employees. About 1000 of them grew up hard, like Rashaan did, and I'm like, OK, now I understand mindset. And so I know the difference between Russian and I was not that I was smarter than her son. He was so smart. It was that nobody had ever told him Hey, the things you want. Like, for instance, he once told me, want to be a basketball player. I'm like, rat. How much you practicing? Zero. I'm like, Well, then we have a fundamental problem because if you want to be a basketball player, gonna start practicing right now and basketball players play exactly right. And that was, Hey, he was missing that little piece. And so, as I develop my own mindset and then saw it play out business and then saw all these employees and saw how much they reflected for Sean and I was just like Okay, there is a way. But how do you do this at scale? So we all have our particular interest minus scale. So some people, they'll say things like, Man, if I touch one life, that's enough for me. You will never hear me say that because I'd be lying. I want to touch as many lives as humanly possible, measured in the millions, ideally, the billions. That would be amazing. But the only way to do that is to influence where people grow up who their parents are or how their friends think. I can't touch the 1st 2 right cause the way that people build their belief system, and I believe belief system creates your perspective, your perspective is all that matters. So if you have a perspective, says the world's against me, I can't succeed. Then you won't succeed. It is terrifyingly that true. And I thought, But the 3rd 1 the way that your friends think, Yeah, I actually can influence that cause I can influence the cultural subconscious, your media. Now, if I was also influencing music, I'd be a lot happier. So I think that drives a lot of what we perceive is cool and cool drives a lot of what we mimic. What we mimic is what we become. So I do wish that I was in on that. It's not my gift, and it's not what I've pursued. But film also has a massive impact on that. And so that is, you know, the thing that we want to do. So when I asked, OK, has has has been proven out, or is this a pipe dream? Has a movie studio ever really influenced culture and Disney has influenced culture by telling only one kind of story, from 1000 different angles over and over and over, to the point where the brand itself means something. So if I say, I'm gonna go see a Paramount movie or Warner Brothers move. You don't know anything about it. But if I say I'm gonna see a Disney movie, you already know something. So I thought this has. And there this has been done. And there are credible historians who will tell you that Disney helped America get out of the Great Depression. Yeah, I've heard that. It's crazy. Yeah, that's a thesis of I think, Yeah, it's there's, like, that's written on in creativity And you think, Was it creativity? Pixar Reference that maybe even yeah, they talk about it a lot with Disney. And so I just thought, Okay, this It's really enough to be a guiding light and let's see how far we can take it. And we now live in this extraordinary time. Where can talk to reckon to a camera, tell people how to think it will actually change their life like it's nuts, man. Yeah, I think it's really crazy. And I can only imagine the number of people that have come up to you and been like Chase. Thank you so much. You have no idea how much you've impacted my life. It's bonkers. right, and it's so inspiring to be able to hear from them that will make you inspire me. I'm like, you have no idea. You just made my day, you know? So I stopped something. Someone stopped me on the sidewalk in front of us today. Amazing. You're like, What time is it? What kind of world is it where this is happening? And we're just getting started to I feel like So I get it. I get it. What's the, um, Disney is a great like it's It's a great marker out there in front of you. Is it film? Because do you seek to make films? You call that a studio? Is that the model that you I'm curious about? The business model? That was the second part of the two part question that I asked, which was along when it was a while ago. But what's the like? How do you think about your business model on impact? Very because I observer from the outside, it's like they're clearly investing. Is it through merch? Sales? Is that like and do you have like, what's the vision? Because right now there's a there's a 26 year old woman sitting in her bedroom making notes listeningto what it is we're saying right now. Just like I want to do this or her version if you want me to give her a three minute encapsulation of exactly how to do it. Okay, So I'm not one of those guys that I have some secret sauce. I will tell people exactly what I'm doing, so I should be doing courses. But I'm not yet. I want the only way that I could do. Of course, if I really felt like this is so tremendously valuable that I could get up himself. So I don't like selling like to give things that people want, anyway, that they're gonna buy from somebody else is not for me. Make that from them and then they go ham on it. So right now we're essentially advertising is where we make the bulk of our revenue. I do speaking engagements, which pays incredibly well. Um, we do have a thriving merchandise business, and we're now entering the comic business. Now there's not a lot of money to be made in comics 100. My dismay exactly. But it is a traditional feeder into film and television so that ultimately is our goal with that. But brand relations, that's huge. One of the reasons that I wanted to make sure that our brand was always empowering, always uplifting, I'm always really, always true was that I knew that would attract the right brands, that they would want to advertise with us, that we'd actually be able to deliver value to them. So we just have extraordinary brand relations that, I mean generate millions and millions and millions of dollars. So it's crazy. So for the woman at home that is thinking that she really wants to do this, it is very real, and I will tell her right now there's always room for the best. And when I came into this, I was told by very respectable people, people that I respect tremendously, that I shouldn't do it, that I was wasting my time. That basically had been played out, that I was too late. There were so many people so far ahead of me, and I said, You know, that sounds really familiar to when I was trying to get into film school. Sounds really familiar to when we got to the protein bar business and everybody said Guys, this is a declining industry there, 1600 protein bars on the market. It's just never gonna work. And my mantra has become There's always room for the best. So I just had to get better than everybody else, and that was it. And so she just has to get better, Like she's got to create content that people want. That actually changed lives. And so I'll tell you a story that tells me that I'm on the right track walking down a hallway in Vegas and I can picture the kid who's like 25 graduated, had his first jobs, beginning to hate. It wants to make a shift, and that person resonates with me. This was a 51 year old man grabs him by the arm, and before he can start talking, he starts crying. And he's like, Tom, you don't understand. I was losing my business, going through a divorce, and you're the only thing that got me through. And I was like, Whoa, like that is so intense. Like if I let myself think about it now, I would get emotional like it's one of those for you, just like you forget like it's easy for you and I to forget that it's not just the four of us, right? That somewhere in the future, this is hitting somebody and really affecting their life. The right? Yeah, right. Message. 1000%. So it's like, if you're willing to take that moment of inspiration like, Oh, my God, if Tom can do it, I can do it. You can, but you're gonna have to go get good. So figure out. What? What is your brand? What do you stand for? What are you trying to do? What's your why? How are you going to do it? What do you want? To be the best in the world? That and what kind of energy and effort you putting into being extraordinary at that. Who's gonna want to watch it? And to what end? What are they going to do with that information? What advertisers gonna be like? Yo, I need to be on that show like I want my stuff there. Can you get behind it from authentic place that when you do the ad that you like, you need to go see these people because I've used them. They've impacted me or I know that they're going to change you, so go after it, use it That becomes really extraordinary and then creating merchandise, understanding that understanding, margin, understanding how many dollars in revenue you should expect for every employee that you bring in so that you can actually make it profitable. I mean, you really have to look at all this stuff. And I mean, we could do like a micro course on, like how to really break that stuff down, but like, there really is a way to break it down. This if you're creating a podcast a date, you're creating a cable channel back in like 1986. So it's not like it's never been done before, but it's still early. Yeah, and so there's so much opportunity. But you have to think of it like that. You've got to think about what are my revenue streams. You've got to think about how much is the show cost? Can I make enough revenue to cover that? How long can I do it for free and invest and get people to come on? So it's, but we very much think of it like a business ad revenue model, right now is our primary driver. But like I said, we have three or four revenue streams right now. I think that how how important to you was well, given that you had some wealth saved up, I'm guessing that was helpful but not required because its bootstraps stuff before and we living in an era where this camera that is right here, you know, cost $1500 instead of 15,000. And that recorder over there is 400 instead of 40,000. So we're living in a world where things are are more affordable and more accessible. But did you like, I guess I'm gonna step back when we're one more layer when 26 year old woman sitting in her, uh, den right now, or her better desk in her house in her apartment and she's making notes. Is there what? What I find is there is this gap between, like, thinking about something so much and actually taking the first step. I'm just trying to make the case that the equipment and the gear does not step that the information is out there. So you just gave your blueprint on how to do it. What's keeping most people in your experience, what's keeping less people from doing the thing that is very easy to answer? They don't want it badly enough, so people don't understand that you cultivate want. And so there's this, like weird stigma in our culture, about like real intense desire. And people think that love or passion is something that's hiding inside of you. And it's an archaeological dig tongue cover. And so people hear that they turn inward, they find nothing and they think, What's wrong with me? I'm broken. Everybody else is a passion. Look at Tom like he went from, you know, writing to technology toe quest to now impact the really he just he has all these passions. I wasn't born like that. No, it's You're going to decide to pursue something, and you're gonna pursue something that, quite frankly, the beginning is just an area of interest. It's ah, flicker. It's like, Oh, this is interesting. Like the first time my dad brought a camcorder home from work, it wasn't like I'm gonna be a filmmaker. I was like, Well, it's kind of weird and interesting and oh, you put it like big cassette tape. Remember VHS tapes and like, that's kind of interesting. And Oh, look, like I'm feeling my friends being goofy, that's kind of fun. And then it's like, Wait a second, I can actually cut. I can show this and then that. And then, you know, if I put the camera over here, I know people are gonna laugh. I don't know why. I know they're gonna laugh. They're gonna laugh, and then that, like, growing like ha, the more I engage with this them or this interest is turning into a fascination. Then you get fascinated to a point where you like. I just want to do this all the time, having so much fun. It makes me feel alive that you begin to want to gain master. You want to get good at it when a fascination begins to be something that you actually want to gain mastery and you're willing to fight past the boredom. That's when something becomes a passion. Now, when you have a passion, then all of a sudden you really want it. You want to make it come true, but people just don't know how to walk the steps of that process and they don't realize that it's somebody just decided. At one point, I just decided I'm a filmmaker and I just started saying it out loud. I'm a filmmaker and then I decided I'm an entrepreneur and oh, I'm gonna end metabolic disease And I went after these things, and then the beginning, everybody thought I sounded stupid. You know, I lost credibility when I said it, like right now, today, I promise you, when I say I'm gonna build the next Disney, I lose credibility. I don't gain it. But I know 15 years from now when they play this back and they say Woe, he's actually marching down the road just to make it right. He's doing everything he said he would do. It is making progress. It's like so you have to have the vision of toe want it, But people really don't know how to decide. I'm going to pursue this area of interest and I'm going to turn my want into a crushing need and the process is like building a fire. And once you understand that, that it's okay for it to not be easy. It's OK for to take energy. I tell people wanting isn't just building a fire. Turning a want into a need is like trying to build a bonfire with wet logs. Everything about it is hard. It just seems harder than it needs to be The world's fighting against you. People tell you that you're stupid. You're not good at it. It's windy, like just everything is working against you. You feel lazy. You just like I just want to sit and chill fire. Yeah, like or I've got kids. And, like, I don't have the time for this. And I'm broke. I'm living paycheck to paycheck. So there are 1000 very valid reasons to not want something that badly. But until you wanted that badly, you will never pursue it. Spoken? Spoken. All right. We're putting a pause in your entrepreneurial journey. Were to go into your psychological during. You said you stayed psychology a lot. Uh, we talked a lot about sort of the philosophy. Um, when I was on your show, we talked about sort of the philosophy of transformation and personal health and wellness. With that how that internal motivation plays out. You talk about psychology. We've mentioned mindset to me, mindsets, everything. I want to start to connect the plasticity stuff that you mentioned earlier, but that we really didn't cover, and I'm gonna talk about it now. So one of the gaps that I see when we go back to the woman in her in her apartment trying to get from here to there his mindset. So we touched on a little bit. But now connect the neuro plasticity. What's required to change your mind with actually putting the work in and seeing those changes? The floor is yours. Thank you, man. Well, first I have to say I know a good interview when I see one. Well played, my friend. This is a beautiful pathway. So neural plasticity becomes important because people are going Teoh, identify as this woman is when she goes out to be the best, she's gonna realize I'm not the best. And I'm so far from the best. I'm clumsy. Um, let's say that she's really trying toe be in front of a camera. I'm anxious in front of the camera. I can't find my words. I'm not going to speaking in public. Um, none of this feels natural to me, but I'm gonna need to get good at it in order to win. And what people always tell me, though, is to pursue my strength. I don't really feel like I have any strength, certainly not in the area where I want to go. And so what? I want people to understand what I want them to burn into their psyche. What I want my story to be an exemplar of humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. The reason that we are the apex predator is not because we have fantastic laws or strength or speed, and it's because we adapt better than other people. And Darwin is often misquoted as saying it's the strongest of the species that survive. He actually didn't say that. What he said was, it's neither the strongest of the species nor the most intelligent that survives, but rather the most adaptive to change. So humans are insanely good at adapting to their environment. So whether that's, you know, being in the Sahara, whether that's being in the Arctic, you know, caps, it's humans can learn to thrive anywhere, and not just physically but mentally. They can mentally adapt their environment and learn new skills and pursue new things, learn to value different things, and It's really pretty extraordinary. How malleable human belief system is their values, the narrative that they tell themselves and then physiologically the way that the brain responds to thought is almost a little terrifying. And Norman Deutsche's wrote a book called The Brain That Heals Itself, and in the book he talked about how, just by thinking you can literally rewire the brain, it's pretty crazy. And if you've ever seen videos of it, it's not like you can see the dendrites like pull apart and then, like they certain literally looks like wiggling little fingers. And then they find the next connection that's now being used more often. And then they connect. And then you have what's called Mile a nation where fatty tissue wraps around, um, connection points that are used a lot to make sure that the electrical impulses can travel faster so that it actually becomes easier to think thoughts that you think a lot, Which is why, when you do something repetitive, Lee it becomes easier or if you do something ah, lot, a lot, you can go into what they call the default mode where I just drove to work and I literally don't even remember it. That's the default network. You've just done it so many times. You don't need to give the cognitive energy to it. It's just gonna happen automatically. And so what you want to do or get good behaviors, Good beliefs, empowering thoughts to be wired efficiently so that the brain will default to them rapidly. So, for instance, if you have like, I don't know that you can actually get rid of the negative voice in your head. I certainly still have mine. But what I've found is that you can really wire it to be a habit loop trigger into an empowering thought. And so you go, Oh, I'm not good at this yet. And so the the sense of I'm not good enough actually, is the very thing that triggers yet. Oh, yeah, that's right. I have the identity of a learner. I don't value being good at something. I value the pursuit of greatness. So I'm going to go pursue that and oh, yeah, because I value that I actually feel good about myself going after it. I don't feel badly about myself. I don't have any damage to my self esteem as I fumble and I'm super awkward and I'm saying things and people like like, none of that hurts my self esteem because what I value in myself, the very thing that I build my self esteem around is the pursuit. It's the willingness to stare nakedly at my inadequacies to accept I'm not good at it yet to remember that I'm the learner, that the humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. So if I apply myself to this, I do it over and over and over my brain will Meilin ate. The new connections will be made. This will grow easier over time. And if I push myself and I practice and I fight through boredom and I really go after mastery, then I can become the best. But it all comes down to am I willing to put in that work because most people aren't and the work all of that diatribe right there came off of one phrase, which is I'm not good at this, right? And if what, you're if I'm gonna summarize what you're saying if that the saying that I'm not good at this can trigger, you can literally train it, train your brain to trigger all of the thoughts that Tom just said that that is actually the mindset that you're trying to wire, and it's by the 1st 50 times that I'm not good enough comes into your head. You have to then pause and say, No, I need to stop saying that to myself. I'm not good at this yet because I'm alert. You have tow like it's literally like walking. It's put the first time if you've ever had an injury and you broken ankle the first couple of times you put pressure on that ankle, it's really hard and it hurts. And then you have to say, No, I'm not. I'm just gonna put pressure on them and then over time it gets better and easier. It gets faster, and then before you know it, you're saying to yourself all the things that you just said after the negative phrase. I think it's fascinating that we can't take that negative phrase out. Maybe there are people, but I don't really know any. It seems like it seems like it's like sociopaths probably have, right? Yeah, the ability did not think that good point way have some in our culture right now that are dominating. Um uh, Okay, So do you believe then? Well, I mean instead of do you believe clearly you believe this is possible? What are some things that you do too manifest? Besides, just tell people that this is how you have to do it. What do you do when you hear that negative self talk so well, I think that one of lightweight things that are going on that the first couple times you hear that in your voice like what I need to do differently. Well, the first thing is get really good at having phrases in Montrose that you can repeat. So I think that repetition is the most underutilized superpower that we have. And it sounds so dumb that people don't realize that, you know, the what the brain is looking for are things that happen over and over. And it goes, Oh, those air, the repeated things. I'm gonna hardwire those. So the mere act of repetition is exactly what triggers all the things that I just talked about. So, doing things like saying I can learn anything I set my mind to without exception, like even though I know that's a lie like they were clearly limits. Just doesn't do me any good to focus on where the limits are. Like I worry about that if I actually end up running into them. Yeah, but wait a minute. I can fly. This is so boring Men, right? Yeah. So if I get there, yeah, then I really worried. Um, so the phrases that you repeat that are just empowering beliefs, um actually ended up writing them down to give to my employees. I wrote down the 25 beliefs that I had to come to internalize repeat to myself over and over and over to go from the employees with his head down to an entrepreneur that built a $1,000,000, business. Anybody can do it. You have to meet minimum requirements. But if you're watching this, show your you meet minimal crimes, I assure you So, Ben, it just becomes about putting in the reps and doing the work. Eso repetition is one thing, but to go to a slightly different place, I'll say that, um, the really bad news that I have for people is you have to do the hard things because your mind is trying to do the easy things always, always, always. So the only way to really get a hold of your mind is to do hard things to show yourself that you're in control. So there are a few really simple ones. So things you can do every day that are really easy. Um, I'll say not eating certain things is hard, but dirt cheap. It literally costs you nothing to not eat something. Um, and I find that what you don't eat is far more powerful than what you do eat. And so saying to yourself, I have bright lines around food. I'm not gonna eat these. And then when you get to the end of the day and you held to it, the way that you feel about yourself is very powerful. Go to the gym every day. So not only is it gonna have massive physical and psychological benefits, you showed up. You did something that was difficult. You're gonna feel good about that. And then one that I have recently been exploring with and has been transformative is cold exposure. Take a cold shower. So I have I have actual bordering on phobias around cold because so I've dealt with profound anxiety in my life and for whatever reason, the physiological symptoms of cold are exactly the same from use anxiety. So I from a physiological standpoint, I can't tell the difference. Shivering the sense of just being, unlike grounded, not being able to catch my breath. It's like it's horrid. So if I am cold and I have to do something, that's anxiety provoking, then it's like this double whammy, and I really get myself into trouble. So I've had this whole thing in my life about being really paranoid about okay, if I'm doing something I know is gonna provoke anxiety like what's it gonna be like? Like from speaking? I have to wear layers of clothes and make sure you're gonna have hot water there, right? So that I can make sure I'm sipping hot water like I have to be really cautious about it. And so I'd avoided, like, all this talk about cold showers and stuff like it's like kryptonite freak about it. Yeah, I'm a super freak. Keep going. So I, um I have Wim Hof on the show, okay? And you know his story. So hearing like how he's been able to get a hold of his autonomic nervous system through breathing and cold exposure. It was too much for me not want to do it. And so David Goggins and his whole thing of do something every day that sucks. Put those two together. And I'm like, all right, it's the thing I at least want to dio That would definitely suck. And it could potentially allow me to tap into something pretty deep. So I decided I was gonna do this 30 day cold shower challenge, and I got and at first because I have, um I have a lot of discipline. And if I can tie something to my identity than I could do it So the first, like, probably 10 cold showers, I was like, what you got, like, no problem. I'm in it. I would see how far I could push it. I wear a continuous glucose monitor to see how things affect me. And I could take a cold shower for so long that I would get low blood glucose warnings on my machine. So, like I was like, yeah, and then after that sort of war, off the like, you're a stud of it all. I started really having a hard time, and I would get in the shower and be like this sense of like you must get out Like all of this urgency Get out of this cold water. This is crazy. And then every time I'd be like you control that you there is nothing urgent. You could stand in this water for a very long time and nothing bad will happen to you. And instantly I could calm down and realize I'm in control of it. And if you confined things like that every day, whether it's meditation which you and I talked a lot about and learning to get out of that sympathetic nervous system and into the parasympathetic which I would actually start with meditation cause I think if I hadn't learned to do it in meditation, I might have had a hard time doing in the shower where there's so much like just stimulus and, you know, a little bit of mental chaos on water. But when you're if you trained yourself to do it through meditation and then you get in the shower and realize how instantaneously you can get a hold of your mind, calm it down. Then, when the negative voice crops up. You realize I'm in control of that. I can take that voice wherever I want. I can make that a trigger to say, Do act in any way that I want. So what's empowering? And if you do those simple tricks you learn to repeat. You meditate. You start taking cold showers, and you practice getting out of the sympathetic in tow, the rest and digest mode. It's pretty powerful How much control you gain. We talked about the water thing. Yeah, I always freak about. How long have you been doing it? Um, I don't know. We've been talking about for a long time, like five years. Oh, wow. A long time. Yeah. Um and it was super early, you know, again, um thank Farris. I got him into meditation and first got me into cold exposure. Um, and at first it was cold showers. I had had a lot of experience as a younger person in soccer when calls on a soccer scholarship limit development, soccer and ice baths were getting popular then, but it was really about controlling injury and inflammation. Um, and I didn't enjoy the psychology of it is knew that when I had to sit in water up to my waist, I was very unpleasant. And you try to walk after that when your legs, your number, like, What am I doing? But I've had enough exposure to new that to know that I could do it. And then when I started hearing from Tim and others, the psychological benefit, the fat burning benefit, there's just a handful of things. I was like, OK, I'm gonna experiment with this. Start off the showers, you know, take a normal shower and then have a one minute, like just as cold as the shark ago. Okay, cool. But I noticed in that probably enough play four weeks like I'm actually kind of looking forward to it. And it's a way I wake up, I definitely more awake. It's like a cup of coffee in the morning. So I was drinking less coffee, and I generally felt a sense of I wouldn't call it you for you, but I definitely felt like 10% more psyched in the morning that I had before. It was just a little the only thing it was changing. It was my quote like coal exposure. Then I, uh What? We have a house on the beach has been in her house for a long time, you know, generations. And, uh, I share of my parents. And it's on the ocean north, an hour and 1/2 north of Seattle. It's very cold water there in the summer. It's low fifties in this in the winter. Now it's high forties, yo. And so I started maybe 10 years ago. Now, like every time I was up there would get in the water and it it started being a thing. Almost an obsession, such that Now I have a cold plunge at my house. So how cold you keep it? Uh, it's in the fifties naturally, because it it does fluctuate with the air temperature. Yeah, um, put a hot water hot tub and a cold plunge right next to each other so I could go back and forth and game changer it the other day. When enough, Uh uh, for the folks that want my instagram. It was super cold in Seattle's 20 degrees, and I had to break through the ice with a hammer on a bucket, and I was not to be stopped because I have made a deal with myself that I get in this water no matter what, every morning doesn't matter if I have to catch a six. AM flight. I mean that if I'm breaking ice, get in it before my six AM flight that I'm doing that is back. That's the part that you were talking about, just like deciding in your hands. If you do a thing today that makes you feel good, like always have that to fall back. And some people talk about making them in so longer than I more drawn out that it needed to be but out as OSS profound, passionate relationship with it. I still don't. I haven't done the whole, you know, them program. I missed a chance to go sit with women. Tim. Tim, Kevin rose upon a cold mountain somewhere in Europe. Missed that one. But how has it been for you? What's what's what were you at now in your cold exposure universe? So I mean compared to somebody who's been doing it as long as you I'm I'm a neophyte. So I am about 28 showers in now. Okay, Um and it is It is such an extraordinary mind game, and I definitely get what you're saying about. You feel energized like there are times where because I find the warm showers very meditative. So I didn't want to completely give that up, so I would go in and I would do cold for 57 minutes as cold as it will go. And then I would do, Ah, hot shower for five or 10 minutes, and I got out a couple times and I thought, and actually doesn't feel as good as going cold. So the times where I would do, ah, hot shower, I would. Then, before I got out, I would turn it back to cold and stand in the cold until all that sort of warmth from the shower was gone and then get out. It's like, Ah, there it is. You're cheering for us again. They like the cold movies from here. They love the cold exposure. Does that? How long are you in the shower? Now I do every five minutes, like never Lesson five. So I do full cold, and, um, I know it's never less than five has actually set a timer to keep me honest and eso and My whole thing is I don't hesitate. I said in the shower, and I turned out. So it's like I don't like I'm I'm bought in right There is no hesitation. There's no reason, as state, this is happening no matter what on that means something to me. So I step in. Boom. I turn it on and I take a shower like and I have to shower heads. I put them both on, so there's nowhere to escape. You are in cold water, that is it, and I just let it go. Go, go, go, go! And, um, sometimes I'll go longer than five minutes. It depends like if I'm gonna rush or something. But I usually stay in until I could feel like my core body temperatures low and I'm starting to shake and, um and then I'll get out and it is It is amazing, but I will say it's hard every day. It's not like I have been doing it for so long now, and it's not hard anymore. It's like No, no, no, it's hard, and that's what makes it awesome. That's why I feel good about doing it. I'm sort of wondering it's in a place from very comfortable, and I'm not doing it for, you know, 20 minutes. So, like I'm in my cold lunch about three minutes in the morning and full submersion up to your chin in things that have ice chunks floating. Yeah, that's another level of cold, but it's it's I have no declination and desire to do it. I feel like I'm there's probably there's certainly another level. There's the Demoff level, but I'm in. I'm in a good spot, so I think it's fascinating that we're both passion Michael. So if you focus like for if you're not too passionate about cold, just just experiment with the just once or twice, and I think there's something there. You might like it. And if you are passion, my cold puts more notes, and I've got a couple of videos about it out there on the Internet and, uh, them you have an episode with him. I haven't had any ash. Esso sent people there as well that definitely get him on your show. You would enjoy him very much like his head. He's amazing. It was really cool, and researching was intense. I think the part that really hit me Waas. So his wife commits suicide and he's just distraught and he said I was in This is an Amsterdam in the winter, he's walking by a pond and it's frozen over and he said, We just calling him. He had to break through the ice and crawl into the water. And it's like I get that, you know, not with cold, like I've never had it with cold, but like we all have that with something in our life where it's like, I have no idea why I have to do this. But I have to do this and the hearing him tell that story and how it, like, just brought something out of him. And I don't know, man, there was just it really hit me and I thought, I've got to try this. I've gotta, like, see what there is to this, and I'm obsessed with Goggins and the notion that we all meet ourselves in pain like you really see who you are in pain on DSO for people that are thinking about doing this like you're gonna learn something awesome about yourself because today, for some reason today was a great moment to have the show because it really hit me. I wanted out of the shower immediately, and when I remembered that I controlled that that I could shut off that sense of urgency. There was so much like I had agency in my life. Yes. Yeah. Like you feel like so many other things in our lives. Make us feel like we don't have agency. And things were happening to a static. Yeah, or anxiety, right? Stress fear. Like all things feel like their objective things that are the right reaction to what is happening when in reality, you can get control of that like, you can learn to control that. And so is this really powerful way to put myself cause the hard thing about especially anxiety is there's no way to practice your way out of it. Because if you're in a situation that gives you anxiety, chances are there are real stakes, so you can't just be like everybody. I'm just gonna practice real fast. You're You're anxious precisely because it matters. You're in front of a client or, you know you're taking a test or whatever something's going on. It has real weight that if you don't do well, it actually will have a detrimental impact. A cold shower like there's no losing right. You can disappoint yourself and failed to get in the water. But it's an opportunity for you to practice something hard that has massive gains for you on the outside. It's so hard to find stuff like that. That's can we talk about anxiety Person absolutely said. You've dealt with paralysing anxiety and is this eyes the cold water pursuit and realizing that you have agency is that Are you undertaking this specifically to combat that they're still dealing with it? And that's very much part of it, for sure. I do still deal with anxiety, but not even remotely close to when it was at its worst. So here is the downside of not having any entrepreneurial instincts. When I went into business, I was constantly in over my head. I was in a very brutal environment, so I was being told I was an idiot all the time. It was just really, really harsh, and I I just was always nervous, like I was always nervous I was gonna embarrass myself or get made fun of or that I wasn't going to succeed and I was never going to control the resource is and that this is all gonna be for not so There was just like all of this. I'm constantly in over my head. I'm being made fun of. It's like, just hard. And so I started developing like Oh, I'm nervous. How That's weird. I would normally be nervous in this. And then, like, Wow, this nervousness doesn't feel like nervousness anymore. What is this? And I was like, Oh my God, this is anxiety. I never knew what anxiety Waas, and it's like nervousness that spills over into you can't control your breathing anymore and your joy. I can't think straight, and you just feel ungrounded like a little shivery. It's so weird. And so it got so bad after years and years and years, and I wasn't being honest about it. I was trying to completely hide it. I thought my wife would think I was less of a man, so I didn't tell her that I was having anxiety. And then it got so bad we were at her, um, her mom's house, who is one of my favorite people on this planet, and it was like my mom or my mom, my wife, her mom and then, like maybe her brother and sister and just I love these people so much, and she wanted me to tell the stupid little story I remember. The story was I couldn't And I was so nervous to tell the story so anxious that I just, like, ran through the story like a single breath so that I wouldn't like, have to, like, try to breathing, control my breath during the whole thing. And everyone's looking at me like what just happened. But they couldn't fathom because I'm very verbal, so they couldn't fathom that this whole time that they've known me, that I've been getting more and more anxious. And so finally I said to my wife, Look, I haven't wanted to say anything cause I honestly think you're gonna think less of me. I have crippling anxiety and it's been getting worse for years, and I have one to say anything. But now it's such a problem that if I don't address it, I I feel like I'm being robbed of my life now. And she was like, I'm so glad you told me and it was like one of those moments was like Everybody tells you again like I could have been wise, like people like vulnerability, Um And so it's finally vulnerable. And I finally told her, and then she was just like, What can I do? Like, how can I keep you warm, right? Cause I was like, When I get cold on My God, it's the worst. And so she's like, you know, always on the lookout. Like, how do we make sure that your warm like, Do you need a jag? Do you have a jacket? Eso She's just been amazing and just confessing. It made things less because now at least I didn't have the anxiety of Oh, and my wife is going to think less of me. Yeah, she didn't. And she was so supportive. And so then I just started researching like, now that I'm not gonna hide it anymore. I'm gonna like research to figure this out. I'm gonna start practicing things. That's that's why I got the meditation was I needed a way to control my anxiety on DSO that became profound. The cold thing didn't start because of that. If I'm honest, it was when he said that he could control his autonomic nervous system and you know a whole thing about that. You can inject him with an endo toxin. You can shut it down. You can inject him with E. Coli, and he can shut it down under laboratory conditions. That's where I was like Okay, so I was like, I have to do that. And then when I realized Oh, this also helps with anxiety. I was like, OK, now we gotta gotta really go after this is the part just to make sure I understand is the part that you that you just said helps things ideas that you're the boss of your mind. It's more tactical than that. So, yes, that's a part of the whole process. But the real thing is learning to get control of your breath, learning to breathe from your diaphragm. So what's happening when you're going into and this goes back to, If I understand it, I can picture it, and then I could be in to deal with it. So really understanding what's happening physiologically with anxiety was important. So what's happening is you're going into fight or flight mode, so you're in the sympathetic nervous system. So the blood is leaving your extremities. Your blood is leaving your prefrontal cortex, and it's going to other areas of your brain to deal with fighting or running. And so you actually can't think the reason you feel like Oh, God, like I mean, I can't find the words and is because the blood is actually left those regions of your brain. So I started imagining the blood going back to those, and you start to feel like everything's happening so fast. There's just too many points of data coming at you. You like everything's just racing, racing, racing. So learning toe slow your mind down. So that was a big one that you can right now. In this moment, just relax, breathe from your diaphragm. And I was like, Whoa, one, even when I just did that. Right now, I could feel myself calm down. So it's like breathing from your diaphragm, training yourself, learning how to do that because if you're used to breathing from your chest just mechanically, you're not doing the things to get you out of that state. So, realizing I can slow down that I can picture the blood flowing back to my prefrontal cortex that I can breathe from my diaphragm, and I'm sure you know this. But when you go to slow yourself down, it's super weird. Like you actually feel things relaxing realize Whoa! As carrying tension. Tension starts to go away. And that feeling, The things were racing stops and so, like, sort of mechanical bit by bit, you begin to get control of your physiology. And what I tell people is there are hooks into your neurochemistry through your physiology the way that you sit, the posture that you keep, where your breathing from all of that begins to change your neurochemistry begins to change the way that you feel begins to change the allocation of actual blood in your body. And so just beginning to master that mechanistic system, yeah, has been transformed a couple things that come to mind, he said. Like all the jumping around in any Tony Robbins seminar that's literally on attempt to, in very short of my time, rewire your brain, the biochemistry that's happening with your physiology. When you move your body, certain things happen and then more chemicals or different chemicals are available to you, so it's not just like, Hey, we can do this. There's, You know, there's you're making positive associations and releasing a certain sort of chemical. The same thing. I think it would be fascinating if you're listening. You're watching this show right now. Actually. Do what? Tom didn't just take a super deep belly breath. Doesn't matter if you're, you know. Well, may have you running. It might be hard, but like, and just how much more chill you right this second. So I hope I hope no one was actually fighting or flighting that I asked you to do something you didn't need to do. But I think that's a really interesting point that you made. And I felt that too. And you said, just stop for a second. Do a big, nice die from breath. You like. Okay. Yeah. Another thing that was I was thinking about Is this the notion that your brain is not there to keep you happy? Is there to keep you safe? And all these things fighter flight, your neurochemistry, your biology biochemistry is it's controllable by you. But you have to realize that you're in control and just the points that you just made for example, one is a It's like a a que that. Wait a minute. I'm the boss. I can picture where the blood is flowing in my brain and what kind of breath I take. And then when you do that, you have counteracted that, and that's an example of rewiring your brain. And you do that enough times, and then you are essentially the master of your domain. My last question around this little line that we're on here is you have learned and thought and talked a lot about it, and yet you're still managing it. You're still mastering in. Do you feel like there will? Is that is that Well, we always always be trying to master something, and we'll some Is this escaping your grasp? Is this harder than other things that you've done, or is it just the next thing in line that you're taking on? I think it is the hardest thing that I've ever done, and it's the one thing in my life that I I let go for so long that it really became hard wired, and it's been incredibly encouraging to see how much I can begin to unwind it and things that would have had me, like, just I couldn't bear to move towards it because I knew how anxious it would make me. Um that doesn't happen anymore. I can tell stories again. It's wonderful. Um, so there I do feel like I will ultimately be able to conquer it. But I I think that is going to take more skills than I have now. So it's something that I have toe keep pursuing. And that's why when things like cold exposure coming along and I realize that they have applications towards that, I really take advantage of that. I make sure that I stay on top of my meditation, make sure that I stay on top of my mental game, not rehearsing how things could go wrong under the guise of like preparing for the worst case. So I have an exit plan, like I used to always do that. If I knew I was gonna have to speak, I'd always have an exit plan for if I'm getting super anxious, how do I get out of this? And, um, I've realized that doing that made me think, Oh, I'm gonna be anxious when I start speaking, which then made the whole event more anxiety provoking. So now I don't do that anymore. So now I just imagine it going well, going perfectly, I'm gonna be able to impact people that they're gonna be moved and take something away from it. And so by focusing on that, it's like I just don't take the time to think the thoughts that make me anxious. So then I essentially forget to be anxious, which is actually true. And I remember when my anxiety is at its absolute worst. I used to think, I wish someone would like whatever thing they need me to, like, deliver on because because I'm good at speaking. People would be like Tom, Tom, Tom, Tell him. Tell him. And if they caught me off guard and I didn't have time to get anxious about it, I could do it flawlessly, because I would just go into the delivery. But like, for instance, if I knew we had this big meeting and I knew Tom it minutes into this meeting, we're gonna be turning to you and we're gonna introduce you, and then you do your thing. God. While they were introducing me, my anxiety just be building, building, building. And so things like that were really terrible. And I don't struggle with that kind of thing anymore. So it's I've definitely come a long way, but it's still a daily think it tackle just for a second, because I think what I hear and learn about is for the people who are in pursuit of their dreams or want to are stuck or the people who our masters and have been faking it for a long time. Anxiety is a real thing. There's all kinds of drivers in our culture that didn't used to be there, that air there that we're now having to address. You talked about meditation, cold exposure, visualization, any other, just simple things. Diets, huge diet and exercise are massive, and and I would highly encourage people if you have anxiety. While meditation is huge, I think its position number three. So I think first you need to get your diet and your exercise right. I I wish those weren't so important when it comes anxiety, but they really are S o. I have found, and it's gonna be different. Everybody, you have to find your trigger foods. But for me. I found like I'm having a lot of sugar. If I'm having even just a lot of carbohydrates, then I'm gonna be just in a way. Worse position. I have inflammation like crazy. Even my joints hurt. So it's like it gets really easy to tal. Okay, this is potentially problematic. And I'm or likely to be just sort of Ah, high reactive. So it might not even all be anxiety. I'm just more reactive. I'm more likely to be slightly irritable. So, um, I careful on that. You might be talked about caffeine first s. So I don't get an extreme response from caffeine. So I find that, like, I could drink caffeine right before bed and be good, but if I really go crazy, then it gives me that same slightly jittery feeling, and so that triggers that sense of weight. Is this anxiety? I think a lot of people what's worth just injecting here? I think caffeine is a major trigger. Culturally, I call it worried. Worry Juice? Yeah. You know, just like hate. She'll have in the word used. Figure out whatever you have to do to just mitigate your caffeine and taking, and I know people that have just gone to decaf quick completely, or just have one cup first thing in the morning or whatever, and that alone can just be a massive transform into things. So while we're at it, but yeah, back on. And I have heard a lot of people talking about half life of caffeine is longer than it was originally thought to be. So impending your biochemistry, of course. But how fast that can get out and people are stacking it on. And it's ignorantly if you start off the day with caffeine still in your system from the day before and you pile on and do that five days in a row, then you you're peeking out. All right. Um, okay, you talked about, I think exercise and nutrition thing that's super helpful than any other weird, esoteric things around You've got around. No. I mean, you've got things like the neurochemistry of cuddling on somebody that you love Israel. And so, taking moments like that to make sure that you bathe your brain and and just feel good, you know, connection, touch being around people that love and care about you like all that stuff. Mental well being is a real fucking thing. Yeah, like and failing to pay attention to that. Like you said, with caffeine, this stuff just starts to stack, right? It's just a little bit from this. A little bit from that. A little bit from that, and it just all starts to add up, but that's that's my repertoire. All right? I want an end with one things that you had a question that you posed to me at the end of your show. Um, I don't have a question. I pose at the end of my show, but it occurs to me that you have a good answer for the question that you ask at the end of your show. So tell us the question you asked at the end of your show. And what's your answer to that question? Question? I ask every guesses, What's the impact you want to have in the world? And if I can sum it up, like in my sort of heart of hearts? What I'm trying to do is save Rashawn and, you know, unfortunately, it's like that ship has sailed. But when I really think about what I'm doing, it's I know There are people out there right now that are extraordinary human beings there, the next Elon Musk there the next, you know, Einstein. But they're never going to do anything with their life because they don't believe that they can. And the only thing that is stopping them. His mindset. And so my whole thing is, how do you make sure that people at least encounter and empowering mindset? I can't make them, um, you can't make them want it. You can't make them make change. But so many people don't make change simply because they they don't know what an empowering mindset is. They don't know what a growth mindset is. They don't know the power of the word yet, and so they never try because they don't think that their efforts are going to be rewarded. And when people don't think their efforts are going to be rewarded. Rightly, they don't invest time and energy in it. But if they just had that switch and they realized it's not going to be easy. But you really can do anything you set your mind to, and that all of this is a process. Wanting is a process. Passion is a process. Learning is a process. And so if I can reach into the culture and just make that the thing that we all say, it's the thing that we repeat that everybody repeats that, of course, you go and learn that thing, that people don't waste time telling you that you can't do it, that because they just it's such a default in the cultural subconscious that, yeah, you could learn that like the brain is plastic and humans were the ultimate adaptation machine. And the only way that I see to do that is to tell stories that have that message at its core that are entertaining, first and foremost, that you don't even realize that it has a message. It's just all the characters that you love and that you worship. They all have this empowering beliefs, is may all start broken and afraid and alone, and they build themselves and they realize they have that moment of realization where they are all that they need. They just have to put in the effort to become the best. And if I can make that the cultural subconscious and the just assumed heroes narrative that people adopt whether it's through cartoons, movies, comic books with their parents say then I will have done what I'm here to dio so eloquent I was an amazing answer in human such a treat to have you on the show for having me is the best. The coordinates just, uh you want at Tom Bill? You at Tom Bill you and which is B I l e so close. B I l why you you you know, a says that. Say it one more time. Really? Clearly we I l Why e u? I wish it were easier. No, I don't last. That's it. So And this at impact theories that they have their own coordinates. We dio Yeah, it's not nearly as active. So at some bill use where people want to go even for impact. Very stuff. Great. Thanks. Be in the show, but appreciated folks check out Tom stuff and see again probably. Hopefully, maybe tomorrow. No,