Lisa Belyeu's $1 BILLION Success of Quest Nutrition E65

This episode explores Lisa Belyeu's journey from being a stay-at-home wife to co-founding Quest Nutrition, a company that reached a valuation of $1 billion.

1. Shift from profit-driven to passion-driven: Transitioning from chasing money to following passion and authenticity can lead to substantial business success and personal fulfillment.
2. Importance of aligning personal values with business: Lisa emphasizes the need for business decisions to reflect personal values and life goals, not just financial objectives.
3. Role of resilience and adaptability in entrepreneurship: The journey underscores continuous learning, adapting, and overcoming personal and professional obstacles.
4. Impact of entrepreneurship on personal relationships: The story reflects on how business challenges can strain or strengthen personal relationships, depending on the shared values and support mechanisms.
5. Necessity of content creation for impact: Transitioning into media and content creation was crucial for scaling their mission to influence and empower beyond the initial product.

1: Introduction

Lisa Belyeu is introduced as the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, highlighting her journey from housewife to entrepreneur. Dan Fleischman: "Welcome to this special edition of The Money Mondays."

2: Background and the Turning Point

Lisa discusses her traditional upbringing and the pivotal conversation that redirected their lives toward entrepreneurship. Lisa Belyeu: "I told my husband that something has to change, that we need to stop chasing money."

3: Building Quest Nutrition

This chapter dives into the specifics of developing Quest, from idea conception to scaling the business. Lisa Belyeu: "It started with homemade protein bars and evolved into a billion-dollar business."

4: Challenges and Growth

Discusses the challenges faced in scaling the business and Lisa’s personal growth from handling production to leading media efforts. Lisa Belyeu: "Every time I faced a hurdle, I just asked myself, how do I get past it?"

5: Strategic Decisions

Covers strategic business decisions, including selling part of Quest and focusing on fulfilling content creation through Impact Theory. Lisa Belyeu: "We sold a small portion of the company, but our focus was never just on the exit."

1. Pursue authenticity: Align business initiatives with personal values and passion for meaningful success.
2. Communicate openly in partnerships: Whether in business or personal life, open communication about goals and challenges is crucial.
3. Embrace learning and adaptability: Continuously seek knowledge and be adaptable to overcome business challenges.
4. Focus on impact beyond profits: Consider how your business can positively impact the community or sector it serves.
5. Prepare for emotional challenges: Entrepreneurship can be an emotional journey; prepare to manage stress and maintain resilience.

Lisa Bilyeu is co-founder of the billion-dollar company Quest Nutrition and co-founder and President of Impact Theory. She is the host of Women of Impact, a show featuring women who have overcome incredible hardship to achieve massive success. Her mission is to empower all women to become the heroes of their own lives. Outside of her professional endeavors, Lisa is an avid advocate for personal growth and wellness. Through her work and personal journey, Lisa continues to inspire and motivate people around the world to pursue their passions and make a positive impact on society.

People

Lisa Belyeu, Tom Belyeu

Companies

Quest Nutrition, Impact Theory

Books

None

Content Warnings:

None

Lisa Bilyeu

I told my husband that something has to change, that we need to stop chasing money, and we need to actually start chasing our authenticness and our drive and our passion. And that ended up leading to us building quest nutrition, which became a billion dollar company within five years.

Dan Fleischmann

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the money Mondays. I am sitting in a driveway up in the fancy hills of Los Angeles right this second with a dear guest. I'm excited to bring to you because we're going to be able to cover all the topics. As you guys know, we cover three main topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.

She has built up a huge company. She's written books. She's gotten podcasts. I don't know where to even start. There's so many things going on.

She's a keynote speaker all over the planet. It's gonna take me, like, seven minutes to do this intro because Lisa Billew is here. If you are anywhere in the planet right now, please give a warm round of applause to Lisa. Thank you so much, Dan Fleischmann. I'm so excited to be here, dude.

I mean, the motorhome makes it easy, right? It does. Otherwise, it would take me, like, a year to book you. Cause you are so busy all the time with all these different ventures. Give us the quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Lisa Bilyeu

Ah. All right. Two minute bio is. I was brought up greek orthodox. My parents told me growing up that I would end up being a stay at home wife with kids, even though that wasn't my dream.

That's absolutely what happened. And so I married the love of my life and ended up being a stay at home wife for eight years. And that isn't a problem if it's something that you love. That wasn't what I loved. And so I was stuck in a place that didn't fulfill milk, didn't make me happy.

And so I told my husband that something has to change, that we need to stop chasing money, and we need to actually start chasing our authenticness and our drive and our passion. And that ended up leading to us building quest nutrition, which became a billion dollar company within five years. And now we run impact theory, and I have my own show, women of impact. And collectively, we've had over half a billion views. Whoa.

Dan Fleischmann

Okay, let's break some of that down. My job. Let's break some of that down. Okay, so tell us, when was the turning point? You're like, you know what?

I want to focus from stay at home mom to, I'm going to be an executive. I'm going to work with you and get my hands dirty. Bam. And we're going to build this company. Yeah, I just stumbled into it, so I didn't speak up.

Lisa Bilyeu

I didn't say that I was unhappy to Tom, because I thought I was taught that be a people pleaser, always give yourself over to the family and sacrifice in sake of the family. And so I was just doing that for eight years. And over time, Tom was chasing money because he wanted. We wanted to make movies. That was actually the goal.

I had a film degree, he had a film degree. We'd made movies. We both hated being in Hollywood because, yeah, movies are very expensive and Hollywood isn't very nice. Like, that's the truth. There's some people that are amazing.

There's other people that just want to step on you. So here we are, living in LA, thinking that we're achieving our dream by working in movies. And it didn't give us the sensation we thought it would and the fulfillment, because people just verbally abuse you. I had a matchbox thrown at me by an actor. True freaking story.

So here I am in LA, the dream. We've got this going on, and we end up not enjoying it. And so Tom's like, okay, baby, let's earn our money and let's actually, whoever controls the resources can control the art form. So let's go out and make money. Shouldn't take that long.

Uh huh. So at the time, it was, well, that shouldn't take that long. We had a game plan. So as a couple, how do we do this together? And the game plan was at the time, Steve Jobs had just done an interview where he said that he would wear black sweaters or tank tops or t shirts and jeans.

So he never had to think about what he was going to wear because he's only got a certain amount of brain capacity to make decisions in a day, and he didn't want to waste it on something that doesn't matter. So Tom and I read that article and we said, okay, if this is true, how do we come together and use this to strengthen us? So Tom was like, okay, I'll go out and work. I'll be an entrepreneur. That word didn't exist back then.

This is like 2004. So he was like, I'll go out and earn the money and you do the other half, which is do all the decision making outside the business. I was like, I can do that. So at the time, the plan felt like we were combined, we were on the journey together. Now, sadly, what ends up happening over time?

If you're just chasing money, you are led by the money, not by the passion, not by the heart, not by what actually fills you up. And so, over time, Tom ended up chasing the money. He became more and more unhappy. I started sacrificing more and more because I was like, well, I've committed to this. I can't change my mind.

That's how we ended up at eight years. At the eight year mark, Tom was coming home saying, don't ask me about work. He didn't want to talk about anything. And so that became the point where I'm like, my relationship with my husband is way more important than money, is way more important than success. So in that moment, I just pulled him aside, and I was like, babe, we.

I don't care about money. I care about your happiness. What does being happy look like? And that actually changed our way of thinking. And then that led to, well, what are we passionate about?

What is important to us? And then that led to him having a family who's clinically obese. I grew up with a family. My mum was borderline anorexic and then morbidly obese, all within years. So having seen that, it's like I can wake up every day fighting for my mom.

Every day I find something that's difficult. I can use my mom as that guiding light. And so he then came home one day and was like, all right, I want to start a protein bar company. Him and his business partners, they were all having protein bars. I was making them at home.

The wives also were making them at home. So that became the reason why it was something we all needed, right? So if you're talking about how to make money, what is the thing that's missing in your life? If you would buy it, at least that's. You've got one sale, so that's where to start.

So, with a protein bar, it was like, we need this. We're on the go. We're working really hard, or he's working really hard. We need an on the go protein bar. So then our.

Why was our family? So this became, let's pivot from making money to actually living a life of fulfillment. And that's where quest started. Now, my mindset at the time was, I'm a good greek wife, so I'm going to support my husband and babe, what do you need? Oh, you need me to help make you bars?

I can make bars. You need me to help, you know, ship them I can do that. It started small. So there was eight of us. For 8 hours, we'd make 2000 bars.

We had rolling pins. We had literally knives. Flash forward to five years later, the company grows at 57,000%, and we go from zero to a billion dollars in five years. Now, in that timeframe, I go from being a stay at home wife, not actually knowing what I'm doing to running our entire media department. What happened in that gap?

I learned skills. So we had a goal, we had a vision. We've got this protein bar. And I was like, okay, what do we need? And every time I faced not knowing something, every time I faced a hurdle, the old Lisa just would have been like, well, you don't know.

Soothe your ego, walk away. But this time, when we started the company, Tom said, babe, our house is going to be on the line. So if I don't learn how to overcome this hurdle, if I don't learn how to knock down this barrier, what happens? We lose our house. That becomes very real very quickly.

And so all the excuses I used. Oh, sorry. All the excuses I used to use about the fact that, well, you don't know that you're not good at that. Your house doesn't care if you're not good at it or not. Your house just cares if you save it or not.

And so every hurdle I faced, I just asked myself, how do I get past it? How do I get past it? In that learning, that was how we ended up building and building and building. And my own journey from unconfident, very insecure, to who you see now is that journey is not knowing something and then figuring it the f out. So along the way, you have a company that's worth 100 million, then there's 300 million, then it's 500 million.

Dan Fleischmann

What about selling then? Well, it's worth 700 million. Maybe we should sell then. Now it's worth $874 million. Should we sell here?

How do you decide? Were you waiting for the magical billion dollar range number? Was it just, we're working, and then finally someone came to us like, you know what? Here's a huge check in the billion dollar range. Or would you ever consider, like, let's just skip it.

Let's not take it and go to 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion, et cetera. Yeah. The exit wasn't the plan, so we had no intention of exiting because we were on our own mission. Every day that I turn up, I can help someone. And so the money was very real, though, right?

Lisa Bilyeu

Because at the time, what's crazy you probably know this, no matter how much your company is evaluated for, you don't have that in the bank. So the house I said we put up for collateral when we started the company was still the house we were living in when the company was worth a billion dollars. So in that moment, let's face it, especially when it's food, you're one person away from dying from your bar because they ate something that they shouldn't, or something was in the bar or whatever that you don't necessarily control. Actually, you should control through health and safety, but that's how finicky the food industry can be. One person dies from the bar, your company shuts down.

So for us, it was like, okay, sustainability. Let's sell a small portion of the company that just gets us the comforts that we've always wanted. But the end goal was never an exit. What ended up happening was, as quest grew and it was doing so well, someone like my mom said that she still couldn't lose the weight. Now here I am.

She's clinically obese. At this point, success is around, you know, everyone's. The company's very successful. And I try to, let's face it, throw money at the problem. I was like, mom, I'll buy you a private chef.

I'll buy you a trainer. Like, what do you need? And her response kept being, I'm too old. I can't. That's when I realized quest bars were amazing for people who had already decided that they were good enough to pick up a quest bar instead of a Snickers bar.

But someone like my mom, who didn't have the confidence to walk into the gym in the first place, who didn't believe she was good enough to pick up a quest bar instead of a Snickers bar, how do I help someone like her? It's the mind. It's the fact that she doesn't believe it that is stopping her from getting started. So that's when Tom and I both were just like, we're missing a piece of the puzzle here. We say we want to help people, but actually we're bsing if we ignore the mind.

So we just called ourselves on our own crap, and it's like, all right, if you actually want to help the world and you actually want to help people, you cannot ignore this fundamental thing that you have to help people with the mind. So that was where we started in content, going back to the fact that we were both in film school, so we knew content very well, so we ended up starting a studio within quest. So I built up our shipping department. I'm literally go from we start quest. I'm taking literally, like, walking to the post office with a couple of little boxes in my hand to a week later, I've got, like, a bag.

I've got, like, a bag over my shoulder to, like, a month later, the mailman saying, hey, you should probably put something on a pallet. I've no idea what a palette is. So I go and Google, what's a palette? So every time we were growing, right, that was what I was doing. Just realized over time that I was competent, but I hated it.

And that was, again, I was stuck again. And so I had to ask myself, what would you do if you could love it every day? Create content. Okay, great. We just established that the mind is super powerful.

How do I create content within quest? So we started one of Tom's shows, and at the time, it was called Inside Quest, and that was actually the first start to us creating content. And then over time, as the company started to grow, Tom and I started to very much believe that the mind was such the powerful catalyst to someone's change, and our business partners didn't necessarily agree. And so what's the point of success if you're not leading the life that actually fulfills you? And so that's where we decided, okay, we're just, we're going to leave our shares in the company, but we will walk away.

And if the company does well and sells, then amazing. Otherwise, we're just going to be on our path of fulfillment. And. Sorry. The one little thing that I left out is because we were so worried that if someone dies on a quest bar, everything goes to dust.

Obviously, God doesn't forbid. I don't want to be responsible for that. But that was where we realized, you have to sell a small piece. And so what we did is we sold a very small piece of the company, and that, I mean, changed our lives overnight. That was just so many zeros that it just changed our lives.

But once we had our comforts, it was like, okay, you've got the lovely house and the car. It's like we just, we knew that we had to be true to our purpose and fulfillment, and that was content creation. And so that's where we took the studio. We spun it off into impact theory. So I'm gonna ask you an emotional question that people always have this goal.

Dan Fleischmann

Like, when I get to 100,000, I'm gonna make it. When I get to 500,000, that's it. I hit a million dollars in sales, right? And the goal post always moves. Tell me about the morning after.

So all those fancy zeros come in. Let's call it a money Monday, right? Money Monday. You get all these fancy zeros wired in your account. You click refresh and you're like, whoa.

Went from x to holy smokes. Right? Huge amount comes in. What happens the next morning? I'm going to tell you what happened the minute after.

Lisa Bilyeu

So minute Monday morning, we should call this. So we literally are in. We're like, we've got like this makeshift garage gym in our garage. And so we're kind of working out. We have made the deal.

Papers are signed. But as you know, unless the money hits your account, God forbid, COVID. Right? Like anything could happen. So we didn't celebrate.

We didn't tell a soul. No one knew we were selling that part portion of the company. And so we hear it's gonna hit your bank account today. It's gonna hit your bank account today. So we don't know what time.

So Tom and I in our makeshift gym and every so often he's like, alright, baby, you ready? Yeah, dude. It was exactly like that. We're like, refresh, refresh, push up, refresh. You know, squat.

Refresh. And it became that. It was refreshed. 1 minute your life's normal, the next minute your life changes forever. In that moment, I took a selfie.

I was like, babe, let's just take a selfie because, oh, my God, we can't believe this has happened. Took a selfie. We got up and we got ready for work and we went back to quest that same day. Didn't tell a soul. I called my family.

I was like, all right, dad. So, you know that company you didn't necessarily believe in, well, we just got a shit ton of zeros now attached to it. But we went back to work because the number wasn't our north star in the end. Originally it was, but when we started quest, it was about helping people. And so as Tom gets up, literally refreshed, he gets up and I was like, babe, where are you going?

He goes, I'm going back to work. We still got work today. And I was like, hell, yeah. I just got changed. And we just went.

Now, that night we were gonna celebrate. So he was like, babe, what do you want to do to celebrate? So I was like, I've always wanted a Cartier. Like something jewelry cartier. And so we go to Cartier and, you know, I'm just like that young girl in me that can't believe it is still real.

And so I'm walking around going, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm not paying this money. I'm not paying this money. Jesus Christ. I had no idea this, us, is the answer to that. In that moment, right?

But Tom was the one that was like, no, babe, you really, like, we've worked hard. We need to celebrate. But then he was like, where do you want to go for dinner? And I was like, I want to go to the cheesecake factory. He's like, you can go anywhere.

Anywhere. And you want to go. I was like, yeah. And he's like, why? And I was like, because I like their food.

And I remember going to the cheesecake factory as we were building quests, counting the dollars, right. Having to split the meal. Yeah. Choosing the chicken over the shrimp, because I can't afford the shrimp. That's real.

So when you can go from counting the pennies of whether you get the trink, the shrimp, or the chicken, to then be able to go and go, I'm gonna get the shrimp today. That was a moment of pride for me because I'd sacrificed so much in that momentary, where a lot of people will fall in that momentary minute of making a decision that isn't good for their future self. I didn't do that. I had so many hard moments, and actually, I'd love to share a story with you. It was like one of the hardest moments.

This is what trapped me, and I think traps a lot of. I'm gonna speak for women I don't know about guys, so I'd actually love to hear your thoughts. But not fitting in, not being part of the clan, not being part of my friends, and being able to go and hang was really hard for me. And my auntie was getting married in England, and so she invites me to the wedding. It's family.

Of course I'm gonna go, but we didn't have much money, and we're starting quest. So I go, okay, I've just got enough pennies to fly to the UK to go to the wedding, but I don't have enough money. In fact, I didn't want to spend the money because we're putting it into the company. I didn't want to buy a new dress, but I knew every woman there was going to be kitted out. Stylish.

Exactly. Dress shoes. People were getting their hair professionally done. And I go into my closet and I pull out a dress from the back that was like seven years old that I've worn to every christening every wedding for the last seven years. And so I was, like, telling myself in that moment, but you're doing it because you're building this company.

You're doing it because you're building this company. And I knew that I would get in emotional, so I had to coach myself. Flash forward, go to England. It's the day of the wedding. I put the dress on.

I'm trying to coach myself, like, hey, don't worry, don't worry. You've got this. Remember quest? And I walk out and I'm with all these women, and one of them turned around and goes, oh, that old dress again, like a knife in my heart. And they twisted it three times.

That's how painful it felt. Now, imagine I'm already sensitive. So in that moment, I just break into tears. And I'm not a crier. I'm not a cry at all.

And so everyone's like, what the hell was wrong with Lisa? And I realized it was my weakness. It was. I didn't want to feel like I was the odd one out when all these women are looking beautiful and looking sexy and I feel like I'm wearing an old rag. In that moment, I reminded myself, though, I said, Lisa, don't you dare.

You promised yourself, you and your husband promised that you would work hard in service of building this company, in service of helping people. Don't you. You dare, bulk, because you want to feel good in this one moment that is fleeting. This one moment of feeling good is fleeting. Don't you dare make a decision that's going to impact you a year from now.

And I made myself a promise. I said, when you eventually, when quest is successful, because, remember, at this point, there's no sign that quest is going to be successful. It's not like we were already on, like we were just getting started. So I just said, when quest is successful, I will treat myself to the most freaking amazing dress ever. And you're going to deserve it, Lisa.

Now, flash forward. We announce the second fastest growing company of North America. We get invited to their event, red carpet. And on that day, I bought myself a Gucci dress that I had fitted, and I wore red bottom shoes, the Louboutins. And in that moment, I gave myself the pat on the back that I promised myself I would give.

And I still live to that motto today. To never do a momentary sacrifice, sorry. To do a momentary sacrifice for future gains is exactly how I live my life. And I have to self soothe every time to recalibrate myself because it's not easy, but hopefully, that story is a perfect example of why you should never give in to your momentary emotion. Wow.

Dan Fleischmann

So I have a. I don't want to say, I don't know the word for it. A pretty twisted version of when that happens. So I have this thing about ego where I could be talking to a billionaire, and then someone. A bird poops on my head.

I clean it off, and I don't flinch. I have no emotion to it. Same situation. We're at our event, and tom and lisa are there, and I'm talking to them, and someone spills a drink on the floor. I promise you, without a shadow of a doubt, I will be the first one to clean it up in front of everyone.

Even though it's my event. There's actually a tv show coming out May 3 in one of the episodes. It happens, and they're tricking me to see if I get upset. And I don't know. There's hidden camera.

Lisa Bilyeu

Oh, my God. And I clean the floor, and a lady walks in, and she's a huge venture capitalist, and I didn't know that she is. She's like, why are you cleaning on the floor? I was like, I spilled the water, so I need to clean it. She's like, yeah, but there's a secretary that could do it.

Dan Fleischmann

And I looked her dead in the face. I said, I spilled the water, so I'm cleaning it. And I say that because here's the twisted part, is that everyone I'm talking about that saw me is going to die, and they're not going to be at my funeral. There's going to be such a small amount of people by my hospital bed. So I care about a wife, a mother, a father, a brother.

I don't care about the 500 people at my elevator nights. I care about them in theory, right? But I don't care if I get pooped on. I don't care if I clamp down on the floor. I don't care about messing up in front of them.

I don't care about the microphone breaking, any of it. Cause we're all gonna die. And that moment is never, like you said, a fleeting moment is never gonna matter in the grand scheme of things. I love that. I don't think it's twisted at all.

Lisa Bilyeu

I think we need to celebrate that type of thinking. I just interviewed a different death doula. Do you know what a death doula is? You didn't expect me to say that? It's basically somebody who they call on if you've just had bad news that you've got cancer and you're dying, or if you're on your deathbed and they're old, and so you're helping the family accept the fact that this person's passing away.

And I had you on my show because it's like you've seen, you've stared at death every day. Interesting. And you hear the stories of what people regret, what people wish they had done, but there's no turning back. So now imagine we do like that insight where we can take with us that we don't have to wait till we're dead to have those insights. And so one of the things we were talking about is regrets and the order of regrets.

I'm trying to remember. I don't have them exactly, but it's something like the order of regrets is usually number one, is around relationships. It's either I wish I'd left sooner or I'd wish I'd taken that chance. It's usually one of those. Then it's career and education.

I wish I hadn't studied x, Y, and z, or I wish I had finished college. And so, thinking through what people's regrets are, money is a huge one where people have the regrets around money. I spent money where I shouldn't. I didn't appreciate money, or I chased money and didn't actually focus on fulfillment. And so thinking through those, I think, is super important.

And so I actually applaud you for thinking about the deathbed because it makes you act now instead of waiting until it's too late. All right, so let's go into the next two topics. On the investing side. Someone is finally making money out there. Okay.

Dan Fleischmann

Very small percentage of humans in history are going to do a billion dollar exit, right? Or a company that big, but they make a million dollars or 500,000 or 2 million. These are all big numbers, life changing numbers, especially the way you grew up. I grew up. My mom was making 24 grand a year for a family of four.

So to me, hearing a million dollars and still saying it to this day, I still, like, you know, even no matter how many companies I'm up to, it's like, crazy to me. I still don't buy stuff. Right. Anyways, so in that moment, you start to make some real money. How do you decide what to invest into yourself, but then also, outside of your own business, invest into other people's companies, real estate, or other things that are out there.

And options, because you have to have all these options, how do you decide what to invest into? Yeah. So that is something actually I'm learning and growing still now. I was brought up in a world where my dad came from nothing. I mean, his toilet was a hole in the floor in the mountains of Cyprus.

Lisa Bilyeu

Like, that's how he came from nothing. And so for him, a big thing was buy property. It was the thing that was guaranteed, or for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, it's like property's always going to keep going up. So if you invest now. So I had that mentality.

Now the problem is when, if you have that mentality 30, 40 years later and the economy isn't the same or the world has changed, what do you do? So Tom and I were all about buying property until LA is property tax were insane. And then they kept adding to the properties as they kept adding, and they did the. What was it like? What was it?

The luxury tax. Yeah. So now you start to have to rethink the idea of what you thought was safety. And a beautiful net to fall on may no longer be that net. And so we.

I'm always re looking, but the truth is that this is a. Where Tom really does a lot of it. And to be honest, I actually like that he does a lot of the investing. We talk through everything, but he is the one that loves it, so I just don't love it. So that's the truth.

But the big thing is, we definitely invest in ourselves. And that was the key right from the beginning, where it's like, okay, Cuesta's really big. We've bought the house, we bought the cars. We treated our family like the dream of how you could always do that. And then a lot of people were like, oh, you're going to give to charity?

And things like that. And Tom and I sat down and it's like, I think charities are super important, but I'm just as much of a control freak that I want to know exactly where my money's going. And I don't just want to give money to charity and not actually be involved in being able to help, but I think that that's super important and can be valuable. But for us, it was, let's reinvest in ourselves. So a big part of what we do is we then build impact theory, and we pour a ton of our money into building that.

And we've got different divisions of the company, so we've actually got a video game division, we've got a comic book division, we've got the content that most people know us for, but we've got all these other things that we're doing behind the scenes and all of that costs a lot of money. Now, the great and the bad thing is Tom and I were really good at building money. We're not very good at saving money or investing money. And so that's where then, Tom has pivoted and is doing a lot more investments. He can talk very eloquently about crypto versus gold versus all of that sort of thing.

I am not as educated as on it. So when he comes to me and we discuss it, it's very much like, I need you to teach me why you think that this is right, and then we can collectively together see if that's the right answer. But we've really aligned of what we're doing with our money. And a lot of people ask me on relationships, like, how do you have a great relationship? It's like, we know our value system, and so understanding, if you're with someone and your value system is, I'm going to make money so I can take care of my family, and your partner's value system is, I want to make a lot of money so that I can spend it all gambling and travel the world.

Okay, well, you are going to have a lot of collisions, because your values do not align. But for Tom and I, our values in we want to die. Like, actually. Like, my last breath on my deathbed, and I spend the last penny. Like, that's how I actually want to live.

Because we don't have children, and I don't plan to just give it away while I'm dead. That doesn't help me. And so that's kind of. I know it wasn't as concrete as maybe that your audience would love to hear. Bill Perkins wrote a book called die with nothing.

Dan Fleischmann

Oh, right. Is that the title of it? Well, I'm definitely reading that book. Tarzan was just at his house yesterday, and I think it's called die with nothing or die with zero. That's what it is.

Die with zero. Yeah, because I can't take it with me. We don't have children. I have godsons, so there's that. But otherwise, Tom and I, when we said, when we started quest and then went from quest to impact theory, it was no bullshit.

Lisa Bilyeu

How do you actually impact the world on a global scale? And that means that we're using our money to help facilitate that. And that was just a decision we made. Obviously, we're. We've got them in, like, stocks and bonds and things like that as well.

Dan Fleischmann

But so what is impact theory? What is actual business? So we have different divisions, but as a whole company. It is. How do you impact people on the scale or to scale?

Lisa Bilyeu

And so our YouTube channels are really more for adults to help adults work through their mindset and all the problems that are happening. Our comic books are to help the younger generation, because in all the research that we've done, the age of imprint, where people get shaped the most for the rest of their lives, is between eleven and 14 years old. So if. Or 15. So if, you know, that's when people are mostly shaped in that time frame.

If you want to make true global change, like no bullshit, actually change the world for good, you got to get them young. You've got to get their impact on their mindset when they're young. How do you do that? I can't control who your parents are. I can't control where you go to school.

But maybe, just maybe, I can impact culture enough for you to care about it. So that's what quest did, right? We impacted culture. We became cool. So the culture took a hold.

Then everyone wanted to have a quest bar because that was the in thing to do. What do you do with kids? What are kids doing? They watch movies, they play video games, they read comic books, and they watch television and music, but we don't have any music. Neither of us have a music bone in our body.

Okay. Knowing that, that's where we go. Cool. So we're taking all our money, our revenue that we make from our shows, we then funnel that into building the video game, which is what kids are now playing most of the time, which is crazy. And then just from a business, if you think about money, a studio, movies, television, maybe a couple of billion dollars, we could build it a video game.

You're talking trillions of dollars in the video game industry. So we go into it saying, we know our mission, but how do we actually build scale and make money with it? Because that's who we are to our core. And so video games became the thing that we are rotating around. But in order not just to lose all of our money that we made from quests, we have a business model where things feed into it.

And then now, to just be way more succinct in all of those words, think of it as a pyramid or a funnel. In fact, a funnel. So people come in through the video games because they're playing. They love it. Oh, my God.

This is great. Who is impact theory? Let me dive deeper. Maybe you read a comic book or the parents of the child who's reading the comic book, because what's impact theory? So you dig deeper, then you come across.

That's like the entertainment, if you will. Then you come across our YouTube channels, right? Because if you've gone from entertainment and you want to dive a bit deeper, it's really going to be the YouTube channels. They're talkative, they're very heady, they're very educational, but it's still conversational. But if you've watched those videos and you're like, I'm now.

I really want to learn. Now. The next thing that we then have is our university, and that's where we've got our coaching, and that's where for anyone that wants to deep dive, to actually do the deep fricking work, that's our university. So what we've done is we've tried to build a funnel that can take anyone from anywhere in their life and bring them into our ecosystem to then echo. It always needs to be echoing empowerment.

Dan Fleischmann

So all this going on, how do you make time to do your own podcast? Oh, so I just bake that in as part of the strategy. And so it's okay. I don't want to say every day, but probably at least once a week, I go through what our initiatives are and what's in order of priority, because sometimes things change and a priority will change. So right now, I'm promoting my book so that slightly goes higher on my priority list, and my calendar dictates.

Lisa Bilyeu

And so I look at my calendar, I know how many hours I'm willing to work. Tom's willing to work a lot more than me, but I have health issues, and so I'm just. That isn't the life that I want. So I go, cool. I'm willing to work, let's say, 80 hours a week.

Okay. In those 80 hours, where does my time go? Here's my audio priority. And that then dictates what goes on my calendar. And so I'm always very emotionally sober with that because a lot of times, like, oh, but I want to do this.

Nope. What does your priorities dictate? And then I just keep going back to my priority list. Tell us about this radical confidence. Radical confidence.

This was one of these things that. So sweet. I had no intention of being an author. I'm gonna be honest. I wasn't on my list of things that I wanted to do.

And somebody approached me, my literary agent, and said, I really want to, you know, think you should write a book. And I go back to my. My audio priority. Okay, well, what am I trying to achieve? And does this book actually help me towards my goals, yes or no?

Because I I can get swept up in the excitement of, but everyone wants you to ride a bow. If everyone wants me to, then I will. And now you're not doing anything for you, and you're not actually aligned in your goal. You know how people say, like, oh, I'm working towards my goal, and you're like, well, how are you doing? They're like, well, you know, yeah, I'm working towards it.

And you're like, well, what's your goal? And it's like, well, my goal is empowerment. What does that mean? And so for me and Tom, we very much stated we want to empower people on a global scale to the point where if they come into contact with anything, impact theory does, they are better for it. They have a tool or a tactic they can use in their real world lives to better their life.

Okay? It's very clear, and it's all wrapped around content because that's where my heart is. So the book became the collision of, this is my vision, this is my goal, this is my mission. This is what I'm trying to achieve. This is what I love doing.

Now put them all together. Now, does it make sense for me to write a book? And the answer was yes. So I'm always reassessing and assessing just decisions that I make based on the goal. And then, obviously, hopefully, then the revenue and the money comes with that goal.

And so for the book, this was a re release. I released my book two years ago, and the biggest thing was people kept saying to me, Lisa, how do you have your confidence? And I'm like, who are they talking to? Dan, if you heard how bad the voice in my head is of the fact that I don't feel like I'm good enough, the fact that I don't feel, you know, coming to your event and speaking on stage like I still get imposter syndrome. All of that is real, but I don't let any of that stop me.

And I think that's what people see. And so what I realized was people see think of it as confidence, but it's not. Confidence is the byproduct of taking action, and they see me taking action. And so that's why I felt it was so important to write a book that can lay out the stepping stones in what it takes to go after something. When you think you're going to fail, when you know you're going to fail, when you don't even have the skill sets to tackle it, how the hell do you keep showing up so many people say, I'll do it when I have the confidence.

But what if you never get the confidence? Are you just never going to get started? That didn't sit well with me. So I wrote the book with the tactics and tips on making sure that people, no matter where you are in your career, in your life, that you always have the ability to get up once more. And so that's really what the book is about.

Dan Fleischmann

Last question. Please explain women of impact and why it's so important for our society.

Lisa Bilyeu

When I started this show, everyone turned to me and was like, oh, you're gonna do a business show, right? Because we just sold quests. Everyone thought of that, you know, put me in that bucket. And the truth was, I said that wasn't the thing I struggled with the most. Building the business itself was hard, was a lot of work, but it wasn't the hardest thing.

The hardest thing for me was keeping my emotions in check, not doing those momentary satisfactions for long term gains. That was really the hardest thing that I found, is how do I keep emotionally sobering up so that I can keep going with business, that I can grow? And so when I started my show, I was like, what are all the things that I really feel like women struggle with? That's what I want to talk about. And the thing is the confidence.

And I was like, okay, well, what are the things that dent women's confidence? And so I started to list out all the things that I felt really hold women back. And so I didn't want to teach. I just wanted to open up the conversation and have experts and people on to have an honest space where we can really talk about the things that hold women back. And so that's anywhere from relationships, from toxic people, narcissists, things like that, all the way to, I'll interview therapists to the death doula, right, the regrets thing.

And so I'm always listening to my audience. I think that's super important. I read the comments, I reply, and I want to hear what people are struggling with. And if women say that they're struggling with something, I turn around and go, how can I help? How can I be a facilitator in this problem?

And that's where my show started. And it's just evolved over time because the messaging, the world has changed. People's needs have changed. And I pride myself in being a facilitator to do the hard interviews, do the things that, you know, people don't want to talk about, because that's really what's going to change. Now back to the off question.

Not enough women have been given the space to be honest about our struggles. It's doing much better now. And men like you and men like my husband are being such beautiful facilitators. And, you know, you're like, I see you with your woman as well. How much you support us.

Think about, we never had that growing up. Our mothers never had that growing up. And so we have to change an entire belief system of generations in order for the younger generation to be able to grow up with a growth mindset. And so it's going to take time. It's going to take attacking people from all angles, different ages.

And so that's why I said the book, the YouTube channel, the podcast, meeting people where they are, so that ultimately, hopefully, over time, you can create a long lasting impact in any area that someone's looking to build. And so, yeah, I love having the uncomfortable conversations, the things women don't want to talk about but need to talk about hormones, aging and come from it, from. This is the most beautiful thing, and we need to elevate each other. All right, ladies and gentlemen, make sure to check out Lisa Bilyeu across all social media platforms. Check out her book, Radical Confidence.

Dan Fleischmann

I'm sure it's on Amazon, everywhere else you can check it out. I'm sure it's up there in her bio somewhere on social media. But it's important to have these discussions. As you guys know, we haven't run any ads here. It's been over a year now, and I don't want ads.

If I can avoid it, I'm going to keep avoiding it as much as I can because I want to keep this a free flowing conversation for around 40 minutes with you guys. But when you hear this, it's to have those discussions with your friends, family and followers. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money, and I think it's crazy to not talk about it because it's reality. When you talk about healthy traveling and your family and taking care of the people around you, from children to parents and grandparents, everybody between money is involved. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It is not the root of all evil. It's a functional tool that you need in your daily life, from cars, rent, loans, paying for food and everything in between. It involves money, and there's nothing shy about it. And I want you guys to be able to have these discussions. So when you hear podcasts like this, when you can watch what Lisa's doing with impact theory, her podcast, women of impact her book rock credible confidence, all the things that are going on in her world.

It's important for us to have these discussions, listen to people that have lived it, been through it, and we will see you guys next Monday. Women need to speak about money. Exactly. Period.

Lisa Bilyeu

Period.

Dan Fleischmann

Period.