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But once you enroll You're in for life and this month you get in for free From rolling in one of those bundles. So that's that's a pretty good promotion now You can find out more information about these or enroll at mind pump media comm Salda Stefano Adam Schaefer and Justin Andrews probably one of my No, I get to say this one was my favorite dude. You guys always get the favorites I did I'm gonna have to this one. I'm gonna jump on the bandwagon here, bro for sure mine I mean there's we've had we've had a lot of guests that I I think Like hit really home with like one of us or whatever But I think he couldn't be more like in our each one of our wheelhouses like from his Entrepreneurship is the business side of him his Neuroscience mind like his Star Wars mind even I know literally like he hit every one of us Yeah, I think me Adam and Justin had a child. We all have like googly eyes. Yeah, we were yeah No, it's um cannot wait to do more. I mean, so we interviewed Tom bill you who is the founder of quest Yeah co-founder of quest quest and I mean founder of Impact there impact there and if you don't know quest nutrition obviously maker of quest bars one of America's great Success stories in business a lot of people don't realize this but that company was one of the fastest growing companies When it first came out valued at one point at over a billion dollars just dominated their segment of the of the fitness supplement food industry and Tom and his partners are why that happened. Yeah, and he talks about that but he also talks about his own personal journey through a Obesity and some of the struggles he went through And his own self-awareness of moving through that process, which I found very fascinating Mm-hmm I found a lot of what he was saying was a lot of what we encounter with clients that we've worked with except Tom is just just so super aware of the whole process And you know he articulated the whole process very well. It's just overall just a fantastic conversation Honest to God one of our absolute favorite interviews You can find more about Tom bill you but just basically looking him up Tom bill you on YouTube Facebook Instagram his last name is spelled B. I L Y E you So here we are here's mine pump talking to Tom bill you I Want to ask you about how you got into quest? I know you have an interesting story a personal story about your own fitness and What got you into this? well It was it was quite the journey so I grew up in a morbidly obese family and Had watched the really destructive power that food can have over people and it's it's it's an amazing drug man And the food industry who I don't think they were sinister But they've done a really good job of understanding brain chemistry and how to manipulate it Through food and so you get the sort of downward spiral that we're in now But you have to back up in terms of how I got into The business side of things so I met the guys who ended up becoming my co-founders in quest nutrition long before we founded quest and I was trying to be a filmmaker They met me and said look you're coming to the world with your hand out and you're never going to be able to control your art like that so If you really want to be an effective director who escapes the pain that so many artists go through where other people they Commission your art and therefore they get a control the direction that it goes You really need to understand business and you need to get access to resources and so they said why don't you come work for us? We're starting this technology company. It was called awareness tech and we need a copywriter And but don't think of yourself like a copywriter like understand that you can have any position that you want in the company You just have to become the right person for the job And so I was just young enough and just dumb enough to take him seriously I dove in and I started learning anything and everything that I could and I you guys see the movie the Matrix Course all right That's my favorite movie and it's my favorite movie because it changed my life and it gave me the Allegory that I needed to understand that I was in control of my own life and that the limitations that I perceived as being external We're actually internal and you know there is no spoon. There is no spoon, right? So yeah, I knew we were gonna hit it off So, you know, I see that I hear this there is no spoon And the other things like when Morpheus says, you know, do you really think that that's air you're breathing? And when he has a sort of epiphany moment of realizing that it he's in a system that isn't controlled by muscular strength And it's controlled by belief and look it doesn't directly translate to the outside world But I began to ask myself questions like what's my version of jacking into the Matrix? Well for me it was reading So in reading especially when I found audible because I can assimilate Auditory information way faster than I can reading like I've tried to speed read I just can't get the I can go fast or I can understand but I can't yet do both So for me it was once I learned about audible and then I could listen to a book at 3x Then it really was like being jacked in the Matrix because I could get the information so much faster And so that was huge for me and then what was my kung fu, right? So if jacking into the Matrix was reading what did I need to be reading about and for me? That really was business in the mind and it was beginning to understand my own mind and so I went super deep on Neuroanatomy like really beginning to understand the brain how it works what it's doing And this was the breakthrough piece of knowledge for me That was your brain is a three pound lump of jelly encased in your skull and it never sees light I Thought wait a second if it never sees light then everything like looking at each other right now, right? This is all our brains best guests based on electrical chemical inputs that it gets and then we construct a Reality now that reality is good enough that we don't bump into a ton of shit And we can navigate our way around the world, but at the end of the day, it's made up It's a total construct hundred percent so now I know okay My brain is lying to me it may have good intentions But it's lying and it's making things up to try to help me get through the world But what are the things that it's doing that are actually counterproductive for me and if I understand them Can I get around them? can I usurp their processes and begin to use them to my advantage and so the gym is I mean just to Really, you know connect with you guys became like this core thing at the center of my being I absolutely hated it I still do not enjoy going to the gym, but it is so powerful Mentally all right, and you guys look you see what it takes to transform your physique You know the amount of energy Discipline dedication over time that it takes to do that and yet the rest of their life is in shambles and They're not able to take those same things that make them so powerful as a physical athlete as a bodybuilder Whatever the case may be, but they don't translate it to business They don't translate it to their profession like somehow some way they're not crossing the chasm between all these profoundly Universal tools that they happen to be applying to the gym and then actually applying them to other areas of their life I always found it fascinating how because it's all connected But I always found it fascinating how you had people who understood The the fitness and health side and they got that they got that part They understood food they understood how food affects them they understood how to eat To feed their bodies understand how to be active and take care of themselves And then the challenges they had with business and personal relationships and then on the flip side You found people who were excellent in business excellent with personal relationships I had many clients like this could not figure out the fitness side And you realize it's all kind of the same Process it's all the same, you know Understanding how to utilize these things to get you know what you want And why were some of them come easy to us and others are so extremely challenging and why other people have the reverse I always found that absolutely fascinating. You've made that connection right now You said why we have that why you've got the fit people who don't understand How old are you at this point Tom? When is this happening for you? Well, so I really got on my journey of We'll call it building my mind in my early 20s I read a book called the power of myth by Joseph Campbell and and you know I mean look film school is all about psychology So at the end of the day you're there you're trying to learn like one of the coolest things They teach you about in film school is the way that anatomy is either working for you or against you Because if you think of when you're a director you're really trying to orchestrate people's emotions So if you're gonna do that you really do have to understand neurochemistry You really do have to understand the way things like attenuation happen and that there's a muscle in your ear That actually turns down the volume So if you're in the presence of loud noises it begins to tighten you can hear less So if you want to make a loud noise again You'd first have to drop the sound to zero and then hit them with something so that the muscle in the ear relaxes So it really got me thinking about okay as somebody trying to orchestrate these emotions through narrative through storytelling One you have to just understand humans on a psychological level so that your narrative is You know importing something that's really gonna resonate with them But then you have to do it in a way that their physical body is going to allow them to perceive And so that was the beginning but then when I read the power of myth not long after that So call it 22 23 that book really changed my life and is probably the sort of seminal demarcation point in my my own education because what and it is the reason that I founded impact theory because the book basically says this you can look all throughout time in history and the way that we Transmit ideology is through mythology So we tell these stories people actually believe the stories are true right so think about the craziest mythology you've ever heard At one point people believed them to be accurate Historical tales so they believe that these stories are true They transmit this really powerful ideology which tells us how to live and in understanding how to live We're able to make sense of ourselves and our position in society and all that and Joseph Campbell's pitch is People now know that the myths aren't real and because they know they're not real They're not taking in the lessons because they're not taking in the lessons. The mythology is not real. There's no Transitional moments profoundly marked through ritual So back in the day you can imagine there was no 40 year old living with his parents that just didn't happen Right why because at 13 they literally drug you away from your mother They took you out into the woods and they circumcised you without any sort of anesthetic They just take a sharp rock and they they cut that shit off right and it was like okay Well, you know now you know you're an adult like you went through something so there was a ritual always right like a hundred percent They would take you out They kick your teeth in or like there were societies where they would make you jump off a platform now with a bungee cord Just like a vine vine they still do them They still there's still those cultures that do that exactly or they put the hooks in your flesh And they lift you up like some crazy shit, but you knew I'm a man, right? There's no mistake about it and So his pitch in the book is because we don't go through these transformational demarcation moments where you know now you're a fundamentally different human being you just get like this arrested adolescence and People aren't continuing to evolve and I found that utterly fascinating So when I got married I actually went through a ritualistic scarification because I wanted to remind myself I'm a different human being the day before I get married and the day after I get married and that began my obsession with mythology What's a ritualistic? What do you mean by scarification? You actually had something cut into your skin or something? I got a tattoo I just think It sounded way tougher when you said it like that No, I mean that's what a lot of people get tattoos because of that. There's a lot of you know That's that's a huge. I mean the way you you presented it. That's exactly what it is I know many people you say what's that tattoo for? Oh, that's when my child was born or this is represents when my Friend passed away. You hear quite a bit of that, you know from people who do that. Is this now all before? You get into was this process before you started really? Yeah, are you still heavy at this point? Yeah, so at that point I had actually learned how to lose weight But not intelligently so I was at this point the Mike and Ron the guys who became my partners referred to it was my pencil neck phase So I had lost the fat, but I like didn't I had no concept of muscle So and then end up going back into a cycle of learning how to put a muscle, but I'm using a seafood diet So I end up getting really fat like fatter than I'd ever been in my whole life That's a whole another side of the journey, but so yeah, this was sort of okay I know I don't want to die of obesity And I'm I'm very good at reducing my calories So I just use that strategy right so if you reduce your calories enough like you're gonna lose fat It's just a reality you reduce them too much. You're also gonna lose muscle mass, especially if you're not working out So I live that reality as well But yeah at that point where I'm when I'm reading the power of myth. That's where I'm at I'm so I had a question like so Have you heard of hero with a thousand faces? Yes, Joseph Campbell, right? So like I just reminiscent of Lucas's whole kind of story along with that Like how he kind of became a filmmaker and all that do you do you feel like a kind of kinship with that? Deeply and more profoundly than I think I'd be able to explain with this crude language. So truly man give it Connecting right now, right? You should know that Justin is Star Wars nerd just shit. I am literally as he said I am wearing a Star Wars necklace right now I have a lightsaber right behind me full respect so Joseph Campbell actually worked with Lucas on creating the mythology around the film and that's one of the reasons that I think it's held up so well Mm-hmm is it was really Campbell asking himself a fundamental question How do we make the power of the mythology accessible to a modern audience? Because he was like I know they're gonna watch it and they're gonna know it's not a real story So if it's not a real story is there a way to transcend that and still, you know Get people to understand the ideas because it's the ideas that are important and the barrier just happens to be sort of modern cynicism quite frankly of like, you know, it's just entertainment So right we we dismiss it by saying it's a popcorn munching movie And I'm just like hell bent to let people know like hiding in today's Biggest popcorn munching movies is some of the most important and powerful ideology you will ever encounter just like Hey, if you really want to be successful a business you're asked needs to wake up and get in the gym Why because you will learn a fundamental truth about the way that the human body works if you lift a weight today You'll be able to lift more weight tomorrow and more and more and more you have to do it, right? Obviously, there's a whole bunch to it But like you're gonna go through the mental gyrations of I don't want to pick up the weight All right, I get it dumbass But if you do it you're gonna get this result now focus on the result and show up prove something to yourself earn Credibility with yourself like these are all the things that go into becoming a great leader and somebody who's effective at business If you go in and lift every day and you're not getting stronger and you're gaining fat The world is telling you something very clear You are doing the wrong thing right because your goal is to get lean and add muscle will look at the results You getting that yes or no No, okay We're doing the wrong thing and people in the gym like they get it and they'll be so results oriented like I'm getting the result That I want cool. I'm doing this is the right thing. I'm gonna do more of it, but in the business world They don't hold themselves that same standard. It's so weird, but there's this thing the gym that will give you Literally exactly what you need to understand like how all of this stuff works to be data driven to look at this stuff to be a learner To not be arrogant But when it's the body and it's so easy to see and understand whether you're getting the results like people can check their ego But they just in business they get trapped, you know, I think the problem is is that people think it's so separate You know, I have I've been personal I was first became a personal trainer about 20 years ago and I had a lot of success working with early on with kids Teenagers 13 14 15 years old and parents would start bringing me kid They're their kids who needed to get in shape or whatever But then they kept keeping their kids with me because they did better in school They would do better at home. They weren't acting, you know, acting out or rebelling as much and one of the one of the reasons for that was as I made those connections for the kids So for example, I'd have a kid would come in and the mom would tell me Hey, you know, here's this stuff about his weight. He needs to lose weight. Whatever and then I'd ask him Well, how's this school? How is he at home and they would kind of relationship with friends? Yeah, and they would look at me kind of funny about that I'd say well, that's real important Then when I would train them and we do push-ups for example and let's say today We did five and the next time we did and we did six and I would make those connections with them And I tell the kid look You see how you put in some work and how you got better and it's so clear right with fitness It's so clear. It's so easy like it's very tangible. You did you did six today You're better. You are not the same person today as you were last week You are literally a stronger person. You are a different better version of yourself of yourself And then these kids would and I would make those connections with other things and lo and behold They would start succeeding in other aspects of life I think people sometimes were so good at separating things like oh, I'm really good at this But it's not it's actually the same process as you're saying. It's the same learning process the good thing about fitness It's it's very chat tangible. It's very clear It's not as you know esoteric is let's say relationships and and stuff like that So at this point, you're you know, you're you're you're learning these things about neurobiology You're learning these things about your own psychology. You're doing it sounds like a lot of self-examining and You're making connections now to your own You know obesity your own relationships of food this must have been a very Difficult transformative time because the first thing you said when we started talking was you came from a morbidly obese Family so this was this was how you grew up. This was your life. This is what you knew How difficult was it for you? Talk about some of the struggles with the beginning Yeah, how hard was it to look at that and examine it? Yeah Well, the the hard part is feeling like it shouldn't be that way, right? So like I should be able to eat a bag of cookies and be lean Like I look at these people that can do it and it just pisses me off It's like so I remember being really frustrated because just to give you an idea of how ignorant I was to nutrition in the beginning So I buy like those big tubs of red vine licorice because they're fat free bro, so And I'm eating it and I'm like I'm not losing weight like what is going on I'm not eating like hamburgers and stuff and I remember my roommates girlfriend at the time was like I Think sugar turns to fat if you don't burn it and I was like what like that doesn't even make sense Like you're too crazy, right? Like how on earth would sugar turn to fat like that just didn't make sense to me So end up getting married and I feel like I'm being really good on my diet I'm not eating the things that they tell you to stay away from I'm not eating steak largely because I couldn't afford it But I'm having those snack well cookies which again are fat free So like people are telling me don't eat fat not eating fat totally don't fuck with it Not realizing that what they're replacing it with is carbohydrate, but I don't even understand that there's Macronutrients like I don't even know that's a concept at the time So, you know, I'm eating less than I've ever eaten and I'm getting heavy again And so I'm like what is going on? So I'm simultaneously starving and getting fat which is like the frustration point now Are you internalizing this at this point because by the way you represent a large what you're talking about represents a large percentage of American population at this point. Are you internalizing it and saying to yourself like it's just just the way it is It's my genes. I'm not lucky, you know, some people can do this and they obviously I'm doing what I'm supposed to and it's not working So something's wrong with me. Is that the process that's going through? Are you battling that at all at this point? I'm battling that it seems unfair, right? So because so many people in my family suffer exactly the same I didn't feel like well, I'm the only one It just seemed like this is dumb like why can some people eat what they want? And so there's like this voice and you had to just gets pissed so and it's totally irrational, right? So you can waste time focused on that which at the time I did and so I was just angry and I remember when I first went low-carb, right? So meet these guys who good at business and like incredible shape and they're like dude You got to stop with the carbohydrates and so I was like, okay cool like I'm gonna try it and I take carbohydrates out of my diet and I feel terrible and I remember saying to my wife I was so angry I said to her if I eat a cookie right now, I'll feel like a million bucks and The thing was it was true, right? So I hadn't broken my addiction to burning sugar glucose So because I was still a sugar burner if I had eaten the cookie the headache would have gone away Now I would have taken myself back again And I would never get through and finally move over into a ketogenic state and actually start burning fat But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know there was something on the other side of that so it was just like this frustration of The solution to my problem and this is where people get hung up the solution to my problem Which is that my neurochemistry is in a bad place right now So I don't feel good and the solution is a cookie and because it's true people stop there They eat the cookie they feel better They never realized that with enough grit and discipline on the other side of this is it is a physical transformation Where I'm not gonna live in this state. I need to get through this purgatory that I'm going through I need to get on the other side and and luckily I was at that point of beginning to surround myself between my wife who's just always been an incredible influence and My business partners Mike and Ron I Was surrounding myself with people who were like hey there is something on the other side of this Well, it's amazing that you made that connection powerful because I mean You know one of the best cures for a hangover is another drink You know one of the best cures for you know drug withdrawal is to use that drug again And you made that connection, you know between the two and most people don't most people would say well This is not for me. I got to eat that cookie or whatever and it's just the way I am This it sounds like a very intense period of just self Examination of kind of awareness And now at this point you're going low carbohydrate. You're starting to kind of get things Where are you going now from here? Well, so that I mean this is you know, my physical transformation is really like 15 years in the making So there's sort of a lot of phases the the first is learning to lose fat sort of clumsily But also losing a lot of muscle mass and then it was going low carb and understanding like macronutrients and how to do all of that then it was actually being able to add on muscle but Getting into like a bigger rexia phase where I was so terrified of like missing a potential like percentage of anabolic, you know Effect that I just eat eat eat eat and I hated eating at that phase and you could never have convinced me of that when I was a Kid, but like you're just you're pounding so much like chicken breast eggs Just anything that you can get that's like a protein source down your stomach and and that you've got like calorie goals and shit Right, so like I have to eat this amount and so by the end of it I was doing shots shots of olive oil just to get like enough calories. You ever done a shot of olive oil. Well, I'm Italian Okay, so we'll remove you from the equation. It's nasty. It is so horrifying So I got to the point where I had to mix I couldn't do the olive oil straight I just couldn't do it and so I started putting it in diet Mountain Dew and shooting it that way Oh, it got so nasty that by the end of it. I couldn't drink Mountain Dew for like three years It just reminded me of that like olive oil taste I'm loving the story right now. You are literally going step-by-step through the Process of awareness the process of awareness with nutrition, but you're such an intelligent guy That you're able to talk about mental notes. Yes. This is fan. This is amazing You know how many people listening right now are just Well, not a lot of people not a lot of people have this ability to to reflect on yourself Is this from a mentor? Are you are you reading something right now? I also that's helping you with this because I feel like I didn't get this until like my mid-20s where I started to really Self-reflect and it no longer. We're looking at everything else around me. It was always about what can I do? What can I do or what can I do better work? How can I push myself? Where where are you getting this information that's it's driving you to continue to dive deeper into yourself? So it really comes from a promise that I had made to myself when I was a kid and there were two things that I told myself I will make these things happen and one was growing up in a morbidly obese family. I said I will have six-pack abs I had no idea how I was gonna pull it off But like I was obsessed with Bruce Lee and he used to say the abdomen is the window to the soul And so I had I'm gonna have six-pack abs So come hell or high water and then the other was growing up in a family that sort of teetered between white color and blue color I was gonna get rich and So the two driving factors in my life really there were three there three things that really pushed me one I want to get six-pack abs to I want to get rich and three I really really come alive when I'm creating So like that artistic expression so the reason that I was so obsessed with film I mean I grew up in the 80s right so in the 80s if you really wanted to get rich you got in film man Like film was like that was the thing That's how people thought of the way they think of entrepreneurs today like they were thinking I want to be an actor I want to be a director like those are the people that really made the money And that's why Hollywood became Beverly Hills became like that center of Projected wealth if you wanted to show that somebody was wealthy they were in Beverly Hills They were in the film industry So that just spoke to me because it was like artistic expression. I absolutely loved it And this is right when camcorders are coming on the scene So it's like my dad could borrow one from work sometimes and so we got to play around with it So, you know that collision it's like Bill Gates growing up in the era where computers were first coming available where he lived in his I guess high school happened to have one of the first computers So it's like this confluence of what's going on in technology with where you happen to be So my dad happened to have access to this camcorder Which made me fall in love with directing and being behind the camera which tied with my desire to be wealthy So it's like all these things had to do with being results oriented, right? Like you can look I remember getting one of those. This is another thing. So the very first step that I took towards getting six pack abs was a late night Infomercial about the same called the ab flex I think and it was like this weird-looking device that you'd press down in your And and they were just like showing the guy whose abs are just crazy shredded, right? And I'm like, oh my god Like I'm gonna get it. Yes. Like I'm I'm about this. So and this at this point. I'm like dirt poor I'm living with like three people in a one-bedroom. I mean, it's crazy, right? But I get the you know scrounge of money together for my 60 bucks Whatever I get the same so great and I start doing it and I'm like, I really feel the burn My abs are super sore the next day, but I'm like, I don't see my abs And so like I'm literally confused and I'm like, I don't see my abs I don't know what's going on and somebody said, you know, I think part of the promise is like you have a layer of fat Your abs like some bullshit. Yeah, I was like, but then Working if that's true, then I need to lose fat. I don't need to gain muscle like I don't understand So it was like this whole like all these things like sugar turns into fat And I have this layer of fat over the muscle and if I don't get rid of the fat I won't actually see the muscle so it's like it's all starting to formulate in my mind And I'm thinking okay I'm results oriented. I want to get the six pack abs I need to go where and I don't have the clarity of thought to say I need to go with the data is leading me I mean, that's like today's wording applied back then, but it was like I need to change something because I'm not getting the results That I want and so being relentlessly focused on knowing what I wanted like goals Understanding what my goals are may be one of my superpowers, right? So I knew what I wanted and because I knew what I wanted I could work backwards Okay So if you know this machine isn't giving it to me because my abs are hiding under fat and eating licorice isn't working for me Because sugar somehow magically is turning into fat Then I'm starting to understand the changes that I need to make hmm and then the real transformation happened when There's so much information and this is really pre-internet. There's so much information in books. It's all conflicting You listen to two experts. They both disagree with each other. They're fighting over it It's like who the hell do you listen to so I decided my strategy was gonna be to find somebody who had already done it Because I knew whatever they were gonna tell me had at least worked once and that at least I had decent strategy, right? So the Ron who ended up becoming my business partner at quest was that guy, right? So super intelligent great shape and I just said you tell me what to do and I'll do it and There were he was the guy that convinced me to do shots of olive oil So not every word out of his mouth back then was exactly great But it at least having one person consistently sort of assessing. Where are we? What changes do we need to make? And and being willing to listen to feedback that got me in that loop where okay I at least knew how to put on muscle. He was very he helped me put on muscle learning how to then maintain the muscle and lose Fat excuse me that became like a whole another journey And the one more story if I may be so indulgent do it indulge away was and this was awesome So I had been working out. I was working out two plus hours a day six days a week I mean I was just like in a demon phase and I had added so much muscle mass I was so excited and so proud of myself It was so transformative like you know that that year right that first year We just change your physique and my physique was radically different I was so much stronger than like I had ever been it was absolutely awesome I'm so excited and I was about to see somebody I hadn't seen in like two years And so I put my Titus t-shirt on like this is gonna be amazing. I look so good in this shirt She is gonna flip out and so my wife and I go and we meet her and she doesn't say a word My son of a baby my physique is so different. You can't she's a imagine So I'm like, how could she not say a word? So I say to my wife like what the fuck Like she didn't say anything and my wife with all the love in her heart looks at me and says Maybe she just thought you'd gotten fat. Oh And I was like, oh What like is that where I'm at like is my physique so messed up and so distorted that it you could really mistake me for just being fat And she was like, yeah, like you've put on the muscle. It's rad It's so exciting and for people to understand physique they get that under the fat You've got a lot of muscle and if they see you deadlift at the time for me This was a lot. I was deadlifting almost 400 pounds. Like I was super stoked on that And she was like but for people that don't understand physique It may just look like you're fat. And so in that instant, I could see myself the way it really was Right because before that I'd become so my optically focused on like certain things like how bigger my biceps Do they stretch my shirt, you know, like the how where my quads my certain to get separation You know, like all the shit that like you really get obsessive about And then all of a sudden I could just see I was smooth. I was round. I had a gut I had massive love handles, which is like my Achilles heel And in that moment I took the before pictures and then just went on what ended up being like a two-year grind To drop like about 60 pounds And then like truly for the first time having like six pack abs you you're you went you such an incredible process It's like oh god so many people have to be able to connect to the store on so many levels You take one addiction and it moves to another and it moves to another and you're moving along a path And throughout that entire, you know process You're getting clearer, but you're still not clear. So you're still seeing yourself Through an interesting filter whether it be some people see themselves and say my god, I'm too skinny Other people see them and say what the hell are you talking about? Or vice versa. My god. I'm so fat. You know any times I've had clients female clients come into me Um, you know in middle age and say oh god, you know, here's a here's a picture of me 10 years ago I want to look like this again. Yeah, and I'll always ask them How did you think you looked back then and they'll be like, oh, I thought I was so fat But I was crazy and I'm trying to help them realize like you do realize that we're dealing Yeah, we're dealing with yes, there are some fitness goals, but there's also the Distorted, you know view of yourself and you're seeing things through a filter and we started this conversation by saying Your brain is literally creating your reality. Nothing you see, you know, we're not seeing what's outside our heads We're seeing what's inside our inside our heads and that's part of it now along this process How do you deal because here's the thing? You're going through a lot. You went through what a lot of people go through the difference is You continue going through it. You kept pushing you kept Growing you kept self, uh, you know more self realization more growth How did you deal with self doubt because you had to have it some of some of these points and we'll get into business also But there's got to be points where you're just like this is this fuck. I just want to quit This is not working for me. Like how did you what made you keep going? What gave you that tenacity? Really comes down to an understanding of the mind, you know, so what you were talking about So parallel and all of this stuff. I'm like relentlessly researching the brain at at truly an anatomical level like trying to understand Um, not just the cascade of chemicals But like that there are regions of your brain that they're designed to process x y and z Like let's talk about what what are called split brain patients So there's this area of tissue between the left and right hemisphere called the corpus callosum And it allows the two hemispheres to talk now what most people don't realize is what it's doing is one hemisphere Is telling the other to shut up So once you cut that and they do it for people with intractable seizures To try and isolate the seizures amazing studies by the way if you're really into like behavior and psychology They've done some amazing studies on people with this particular procedure And fascinating fascinating stuff. Yeah, it's crazy. My favorite one along that line is you Create a split brain patient and all of a sudden one half of the brain is deeply religious And the other half of the brain is is an utter aggressive atheist. Oh my god in in the same brain Okay, now think about that for a second. That's fucking nuts. It's like a m night shaman movie. I just watched Really, I'm actually intrigued. What's the what's it called split? I haven't seen it. Oh, that's that's yeah That's who did that. I didn't know that's who did that move. Yeah. Wow. Oh, that's right He's got like 34 personalities a bunch of personalities. Oh, which is that's like a whole another intriguing area Anyway, so So, yeah, and it just what really freaks me out about that is that's when you begin to realize like the voices in your head are real And there is a negative voice in your head and that negative voice from an evolutionary perspective That's the other thing I look at everything from the perspective of how did this weird trait help us survive at some point At some point it it almost certainly conferred an advantage now Some things admittedly just sort of hitchhike and they come along as as sort of a byproduct of something else But I find it really instructive to say how did this serve me at one point in history And the voice in your head that's trying to keep you safe The one that's telling you not to like overstep your position to make sure that you fit in in the group Like when getting ostracized from the group meant certain death Like it was pretty important not to step on too many toes not to piss people off to really understand Sort of where you are in the hierarchy to make sure that you were trying to mate with the appropriate level female You know like all these things that sort of tell you know your place and stick in it This is why public speaking is always one of the number one Fears people have that public that social you know being ostracized in front of people My god people would rather swim with alligators than you know Do something embarrassing in front of a million people it's uh what you're talking about them It's very very fascinating. Yeah, and that that one is incredible and that study came out I was like I can't believe this is real that people people are less afraid Of being in the casket than they are to be the one giving the eulogy That's crazy. That's like great people are less afraid of dying than they are of speaking at a funeral Yeah, well what people don't realize doesn't make any rational sense What people what people don't realize is the way evolution works, right? Is that you have to survive to pass on your genes? So It's what it's the better safe than sorry You know rule it like it's it trumps everything when it comes to evolution So the light so if I look around if I think that there's something around the corner Um because I might be afraid that there's something around the corner It's much better, especially from evolutionary standpoint It's going to be beneficial for me to assume that something dangerous is around the corner versus not assume because just in case there is I'm going to survive and so we are these these massive anxiety fear ridden, you know, uh not logical We think we're logical, but we're not uh thinking You know creatures and you when you examine it from an objective point of view It really is mind-blowing like I'll give you an example if if we took You know 500 random people and asked them hey, uh You know, is it safer for kids to play outside today than it was when you were a kid growing up? Almost all of them will say yeah, absolutely. It's it's actually not true It's far safer today than it was, you know 30 years ago. That's what you meant to say you messed it up Oh, did I mess it up? Yeah, you said yeah, you said that people would say people would say that it was safer back then than it is today They they oh they they would they would think it's safer. That's what they would sorry They would think it's safer back then than it is today, but it's false It's far safer today than it was back then and the reason why they think that it's just You know, you know because of tv because of social media some kid gets kidnapped somewhere in the country Oh my god, it feels like it's happening all over the place and so we're we're better safe than sorry I'm gonna think it's I'm gonna think the bad That's that's where I'm gonna go naturally and that goes with taking chances with anything business or relationships or my god It's just it's just one of those things That molds our behavior so much so Learning that stuff is uh fascinating. So you're learning this stuff and it's literally driving you To be more tenacious with your own Goals and growth just understanding that are you influencing your family at this point? Like are they really paying attention to your process and are they supportive or? um in the beginning they were um curious at best and So my mother who by the way has always been my biggest cheerleader She just always always supported me but and she admitted this not too long ago Once I'd been very successful and everything and she could sort of come out of the closet Um, she she just quietly assumed I was gonna fail And I remember like when I was um approaching college I almost chickened out and I was there was me and one other guy from my entire graduating class that left the state Everybody else either didn't go to college or went to the same two colleges And so at the last minute I was like god, I don't know that I want to do this And you know, I could just go to that same school to all my friends are gonna go to and my mom put the hammer down And she was like absolutely not you were going to I ended up going to usc You're going to usc You're gonna follow your dreams and then literally every day after that. She's been trying to get me back And so I'm like finally one day this was probably about five years ago I was like mom What the hell like you were the one that kicked me out you I would have I was trying to stay at home And you literally kicked me out and she said Yeah, because I just always assumed you were gonna fail And it was the way she like she said it with love in her heart like there was no malice She just thought you have to at least try to chase your dreams But I've seen you you haven't shown any signs of promise. You're super fucking lazy, which by the way was entirely true And so I just thought well at least you'll never say what if you'll have tried it It wouldn't have worked out you'll come home like you'll have a nice life You know, I mean for my mom she's still to this day lives like In a car five minutes from where she grew up So it's like that's and by the way the stat on how many people do that is so crazy I can't remember the exact number, but it's got to be well over 50 of people End up within five miles where they grew up crazy nuts. Yeah So I believe it she just assumed, you know that I was going to be coming back home But I don't because the one thing that nobody accounted for was this sense of being goal oriented Like I know what I want and so I'm just driven enough to get there So yes while I'm lazy if I look at laziness like this is real in my life I am I am profoundly lazy But I look at laziness and I say is it going to move me towards my goals? Yes or no no, well, then I can't indulge in it So and this goes back to why I had to study the brain and understand that you've got these voices in your head for a reason They don't serve you necessarily in a modern context. So while you have emotions while you have negative voices Choosing to listen to them is where you have your power. You can either listen or ignore them Now my thing is sometimes I actually listen So like I'll wake up in the morning and be thinking Oh, you really fucked up that business decision or you know what? Yesterday, you just did not train hard enough and secretly in your heart, you know, that's true And most people are like, Tom, what do you do to like silence the voice? And I'm like, I don't silence the voice I don't even try to silence the voice because that motherfucker's the only one telling me the hard truth And I want to know like I may ignore them because it may be counterproductive to see myself as less And in fact, I should probably work really hard to see myself as more because it's going to give me more confidence It's going to let me move forward But the moment I become blind and I can't see where I'm messing up or I'm not kicking myself And in my own ass like that's why you plateau and then the young hungry upstart comes and kicks your ass Like how did quest come in and just take the world by storm because we were just hungrier than everybody else We wanted it We were willing to do crazy shit to make it happen And it's like the day you think you've arrived the day you think you figured it out that you're doing it All right. I promise you you're dead. I want to know what that crazy shit is. Yeah, let's talk about that How did so so how did it start? How did you start with quest because you're you met these two guys these friends of yours You you're fascinating with film. You're losing weight. You're figuring that process out How did we get quest? Yeah, so quest was born out of misery and for eight and a half years I chase money Like in a way that you just can't imagine and it got to the point where my wife was like This just isn't sustainable and probably for about six and a half years other than christmas time We just didn't take vacations. We didn't go anywhere. We didn't do anything I was working seven days a week That doesn't mean there weren't times here and there and stuff But I mean it was it was overwhelming for six and a half years where I felt compelled if I was awake I either needed to be working out or working which is fine because that's actually my strategy now But now I have slipped in one caveat that I have to love what I do every day whether or not I'm failing So at the time I was just chasing money So I'm using this all-in strategy no days off like full till grind it out to make it happen And in all of that we're building this technology company. It is a fine company. It's okay We make a decent product, but no one's thinking like hey, there's a customer out there that really needs us How are we helping them with this? We weren't thinking about that We were thinking how do we be clever marketers to get our conversion rate up higher? so it was all about you know conversion rates and landing pages and cpc seo like That was my day. That's all that I thought about. I never thought about the customer I never thought about is this good for them. Is this are they going to love me for this? Are they going to want to tell God? Don't you feel like so many companies do that though? I feel like that's so so popular the vast majority right because they're focused on money now Here's why people are focused on money. It's the same reason people will always Always be focused on money Just as they will always be way more motivated by how they look Than by how they perform. Okay, that's it There's some truth bombs for you. Why? Because that is the human condition, right? If you tell someone hey, if you eat like this and you exercise You're going to look the way you look now, which you're deeply unsatisfied with by the way and you have deep insecurities around But you're gonna live for a hundred years People won't do it But if you say baby girl, you're asking gonna look so good, right? If you do this they'll fucking jump on it because that's the real they want to walk down the street and have somebody go God damn like you look good That's immediate visceral transformation of their neurochemistry, right? The distant thought of living longer just doesn't impact in a drug like way the way it does When somebody looks at you like I remember this true story. My wife is standing next to me So I promise you this is true a woman. This is what I shredded This woman jumped in the pool from the other side in vegas swam across Crawled up out of the pool walked over looked at my wife and said can I pet your husband's abs? Now think about in that moment how most awesome feeling ever when that happens Everybody deserves that at least one time in their life Dude like honestly the day that the we had an obscene amount of money click over into our bank account Wasn't quite as good. Like that's just honesty, right? Like that was so fucking cool to have like to be like I made this I did this. This is hard work. This is discipline and I have Gotten this woman who was attractive by the way to swim over to ask my wife permission to pet my abs Like that's that's just that's motivating. I want to live forever Like that's a real thing for me But even I am well aware that I am more motivated by looking good than that so true So that's just the the truth of the human condition once you understand sort of the the truths of The way that things are and so to bring it around to money One of the things that is just always always always going to be powerful for people is money because money is real Money does things now. Here's the catch the things you think money does are not the things that it actually does So people think hey, I look at this rich guy and I think oh my god. He's so amazing like I idolize him. I want to be him like that is so cool And they think when they have money they'll feel about themselves the way they feel about that guy But they won't and the way that you feel about yourself will not be changed by anything other than the Your willingness to suffer and build a better life and to be disciplined and prove things to yourself Like that will change your vision of yourself But having money will not But Having money solves money problems and having money facilitates Amazing things bill gates is going to cure malaria and he's going to do it because he has access to billions of dollars, right? So you can do profound fundamental earth shattering changes with money money is worth the quest But great wordplay there But if you're not careful it really will erode your soul and you'll be living the nightmare of money can't buy happiness And so that's where we were and we were building awareness technologies I was making amy's Pitons compared to what we ended up doing at quest But I was making more money than I'd ever made in my life And I was completely miserable because I was just chasing money all day And so I went into my partners and I said I had gone from copywriter, right? So that's where they started me I'd worked my way to a 10 owner in the company chief marketing officer And um, so I said guys, I'm I'm quitting. I'm giving back your equity I don't if I leave and don't cross the finish line. I don't think I should get anything for that so, you know best of luck And um, they I left and thought that was it and I'm you know, leaving this all behind me And I'm gonna go pursue something that makes me feel alive Did you know what you were going to pursue or did you just say I don't want to do this? I got a search No, I knew what I was going to pursue. Yeah, so it was it was a rudimentary form of impact theory So it was going to be creative base. It was going to be sort of um leveraging comic books to build movies that really pass ideology and we've gotten a lot smarter about it since then So good thing I didn't do it, you know 10 years ago when this was all happening Because now is is the time and I'll we can get to that later, but so Do that I'm literally pulling into my driveway at my house and they call me and they say the now famous words We could do this without you, but we don't want to and that allowed me to reconnect to something other than the money And it let me reconnect to the brotherhood and why we had been friends and why, you know Those had been on the one hand just the most beautiful eight and a half years of my life Of having these guys that I felt like I was going to battle with every day and just loved it and had Grown and learned so much and was so grateful to them to being such amazing mentors And so we said, all right, they said, you know, we feel the same. We don't feel alive We think we could be doing something better So let's set a revenue goal and if we don't hit it in the next it was like six months Then we'll sell the company. So six months. We didn't hit it began the sales process by the time it all wraps up it's like two years after that day that I quit and In that process we begin thinking, okay, well, what's going to be the next thing And for three very different reasons it ends up being quest nutrition for me It was I grew up in a morbidly obese family I was watching people that I love very much eat themselves to death And I just knew that the answer to helping them be happy was to get them out of the negative Self-body image because it was so eroding their self-esteem and their confidence They're just never going to be happy when they feel that negatively about their own body So and the only way to do that was to make food that they chose based on taste and it happened to be good for them So that was my goal and then my partner ron Really really is the nutritional genius the guy is just like on another planet And I mean this sincerely he is in my opinion the steve jobs of nutrition Like what he's able to see like how far out into the future He can see the way that he understands human metabolism is is unreal And is he has dedicated himself the way that I've dedicated myself to learning the brain He has dedicated himself to learning about metabolism like at the deepest level and seeing connections between What we eat and cancer and he's To watch him get taken so seriously by like the highest level cancer researchers in the world and he's not saying he's correct but just that Like you may be having insights here that that nobody else is having like and i'm aware of what's going on around the globe So it's just really really fascinating and then our third partner um Is just a logistical genius and so When ron the and this was the crazy thing that we were willing to do that other people weren't willing to do Was when we formulated our bar and then tried to go to market and get somebody else to manufacture for us because we had no intention of making it um Every contract manufacturer out there said this bar is awesome like from a taste profile from a nutritional profile it's great, but it can't be made and We didn't believe them which was a mistake because they were right by the way But there was one caveat to that and this like if anybody out there remembers anything I say today remember this part of the story They were right that the quest protein bar could not be made On the equipment that existed So you've got two choices. You can either change your product to fit the equipment or create the equipment There you go Or you create the equipment and so we were the first company you just gave me the chills We were the first company that said we're going to change the equipment, right? So we got into the game of being our own manufacturer, which everyone thought we were crazy and actually engineering our own equipment and working with people to change things so we knew we couldn't buy anything off the shelf We had to make modifications But we were willing to do it and like that subtle shift in mindset of Realizing that there is still a door open when people say it can't be made like going back to the matrix That's their limitation. That's not mine Now, did you know you were crazy or did you go into it saying now we could do this and now looking back? Oh, holy shit. What were we thinking man? Yeah, we thought oh, we got this con like this Great, you know what I mean? Like oh, we just need the grit to to get through it and then we went from it took like eight people Like six hours to make 1200 bars by hand with rolling pins and handheld knives Ceiling them three at a time with like this little sealer that you had to step on and it was crazy To it taking more people more time to make fewer bars on the industrial equipment and we were like, oh, Dear god and now we've you know just spent virtually all the money that we got from the sale of the last company On this equipment like what do we do now? And so that was when mike was like, I think I can re-engineer this And that that was the real inflection point and he was right. He's an Iowa farm boy I mean just like absolutely amazing story of wax on wax off like his whole life He's learning to make shit to fix things in the farm thinking I'm in business now Like I wasted my youth only to find himself like looking at it Grabs a sawzall and a blowtorch and cuts the stuff apart puts it back together and it works And then was able to work with engineers to design new equipment that would allow us to scale I was just incredible and while it was while it was happening. We're like, this is this is special Like what's happening right now special what at so how long is this process now you start making these bars Are you starting to sell them like how long of a period of time before you're like, holy shit? It's actually this is kicking ass it took about 18 months to formulate um because you can make something that you can eat and is delicious, but um Making that shelf stable is like a whole another ball game So we actually considered doing a marketing campaign called the first bar that rots Because what we wanted people understand is like it is very smart. This is actually real, right? We're not putting preservatives in it There's no sugar. There's nothing because binding the water is your problem Which I never would have known going into this So your enemy when you're making something shelf stable is water And you've got to find ways to bind that water to trap it inside another molecule so that it can't interact with anything Especially mold right because that's what ends up happening. Whatever bacteria is in the that's present there It has the environment to grow and it does and now you've got problems So you've got to find a way to bind the water and we worked with some amazing people to help us figure that out But that all took about 18 months. Um as soon as we launched our strategy was to give it away. So um We had we had an early internet model. Yeah I mean, I don't that's totally the internet model very very successful And this was back in so we originally started conceiving of the company in 2009. So in 2009 Um, I had been really impacted. It wasn't called social media at the time But I was being impacted by what was happening with this idea I think it was kevin kelly told to me via tim ferris about this notion of a thousand true fans, right? Like find your thousand true fans. You can see what's going on at facebook Everyone thought facebook was just a distraction for businesses and i'm looking at it and going it's it's just a megaphone Right, so it gives people a chance within minutes of an interaction with your company to say something nice Like what a powerful way to find those thousand true fans and to give them a reason to say something nice So we went we said our goal now is it's no longer about selling. It's about evangelizing customers It's about delivering value at every conceivable touch point the product customer support everything like we're just going to bend over Backwards we're going to create community. This is going to be all about building community on this uh this facebook thing And so we just now it is so self-evident everybody's building community and social marketing and all that back then We didn't even have words for it, right? We were just like we want to deliver value We want to celebrate transformation. We want to build a community. It's what we were calling mirror marketing We want them to see themselves not the products So it was like it was just really a transformation and that's why between Actually making this product that was totally a paradigm shift and tasted like it had sugar But didn't and you know we had all our own equipment So we were able to make something nobody else was able to make And then marketing in just a totally new way being really early on the social movement That's how we blew up and we end up growing in manufacturing. Think about that for a second in manufacturing. We grew by 57 Thousand percent fucking crazy in three years So you did this through facebook and giving it giving away lots of product and having people try it Yeah, writing to people literally I think lane norton was actually one of our one of the early people that we wrote to But it was him and a bunch of people like that that we knew would understand the product And that they would flip it over look at it and go i call bullshit This is going to be disgusting and they eat it and go wow This is amazing. It tastes great and its macro nutrient profile is just unparalleled Wow, so uh because you guys were named Weren't you named one of the fastest growing companies? At one point yeah ink magazine 2014. We were the second fastest growing company in america now How long has uh from inception till now how long has quest been around now? I think we're edging up on six and a half years six and a half years How big is the company can I ask? Yeah, it's um, we don't disclose numbers, but it's it's big It was validated over a billion dollars Holy shit in a very short period of time. Wow. I mean that is a meteoric rise Now it in here's a thing that how many employees now Um, I can't give you an accurate count as of today because i'm i'm not i'm in a founder role now with the company I'm not there on a day-to-day basis, but at last count when I was there it was 1400 Now and a lot of people are gonna hear wow, you know six years so fast Like but this is really the beginning of this whole process was way before that obviously all the stories you told us from You know From what you did before it sounds like it all contributed to you know the formulating You know getting this product on the on the market putting together having the courage to Create your own machinery to make it all that stuff I mean it's a long it's a very long process and I want people to know that like it isn't just start When quest was invented it started way before that no question and this goes back to you know It really got me thinking about this when we started talking about it is you've got to put something that you love doing like the question I asked myself is what would I Love doing every day even if I were failing right because you can love just about anything when you're winning right? Because then everything's easy. It's effortless. There's huge reward But what do you love enough to do it even when it's really hard and you're losing right that you just Believe in it And so that was the the big paradigm shift for us was that and so it was stuff that we were already doing and thinking about And so for everybody listening if you know if you want to start a business like start from there So what are those things you're interested in that you really like you just believe in it's an obsession You do it when it's free like it's just it captures your imagination and makes you feel alive Find a way to build a business around that What do you see now with it because well before you go transits I want to get into uh impact theory a little bit because Well before we got on the mics You started to share a little bit about that and your your your vision and and how that came to be and I see a lot of our audience that are big mind pump fans are going to see a lot of parallels with that and what we're doing Um, you know, I I didn't really realize that a lot of people or that anybody else really saw this I mean, I believe like just like what you said earlier that you know It's going to change social media and having your own platform and the podcast and the youtube channels and things This will become necessary for all businesses in the future and you'll get gobbled up if you don't Explain impact theory and how that evolved and how that's connected all this and in your vision with that Yeah, for sure. So, um, just like back in 2009 It was very clear that the social media was going to change everything and that some people just were never going to embrace it And they'll they'll finally sort of do it when their arm is being twisted at the end But the problem is when you get a big company and you get a big change like that They just Culturally they can't make the adjustment There's too many people to try to get on board and get excited about it Which is why and this is sad to me because it does not need to be this way And people just need to understand you're fighting against the natural human inclination Towards becoming an expert and when people are an expert they fight to defend that status I totally I don't ever want to be called an expert Why because then my ideas will calcify into dogma and I'm not learning anymore. I'm not staying fresh So like student for so refreshing to hear you have to and and here's it is a survival mechanism It's not me trying to be cool like that shit is just you want to stay relevant You want to stay capable because you're always from from a commerce perspective and commerce rules a day for a reason We can go into all that but we'll not for now From a commerce perspective, you're always going backwards. You're always going downstream. It is always to the young always Okay, they will always be the most dominant economic force Once you understand it and the reason just really simply is because people have the propensity to calcify into dogma If I buy crest I buy crest forever There's nothing you need to do to me other than make it available where I shop You don't have to advertise. You don't have to market nothing But young people they don't have that established yet. The world is so dynamic. They're discovering things for the first time They're totally malleable So advertisers marketers business people always need to be looking backwards But the problem is they're not escaping their own mind They've calcified into dogma the way that they market is the way that they market and snapchat Like what the fuck is that that could never be like usable for business Look dumbass like the 12 year old grew up with it So now it's a part like of how they interact with their friends, right? Just goes public This is like the world that you live in whether you want to or not So you better figure it out and find a way to internalize it Because to what we were talking about before we started rolling like the world has changed Okay, it's it's already happened now. Most of you have been shot and you don't realize that you're dying That's the reality and What i'm trying to do impact theory is to acknowledge that the gun went off and I don't want to be hit by the bullet and the bullet looks like this Everyone is beginning to understand now millennials It's but it's just like stock tips by the time it reaches the general public by the time the general public is aware Of something in the stock market the opportunity is gone. You've already missed the boat of millennials. Okay Start thinking about gen z What gen z gen z right now? I think they're 19 to 20 at the upper edge and then going down to five years old Okay, gen z is who you need to start thinking about and they have grown up 100 percent with social media They don't know they don't know a world without social media So grandpa you can tell stories about the world that didn't have social media and how it was like some better more pure time Or you can accept that it is the reality And that's given them a mental framework where transparency is as it should be And the days of companies trying to keep things from you trying to position and spin like that shits that is disco And so like when you look at the number of people that voted for trump that were millennial or younger It's like zero right so because because of the sense of spin and like they're just it's so Anathema to them like like they can't even begin to bear it So understanding that as a business person you must become transparent the reason I had no desire to step out front When I was doing I had I had had by the time I stepped out front I had had 13 years as a business person never once made any attempt to be visible when we started Quest everyone was like dude the company needs a face like you should step out and do it And I'm like no i'm not interested in that whatsoever And then I began to realize the shots been fired like whether I want to or not there needs to be a level of transparency So we started building the studio inside of quest which ended up being called inside quest We had the show inside quest which was all originally just about trying to pay forward What I had done to my own mind to the employees but then realized okay This is actually an awesome opportunity to be transparent to show the world who we really are behind the scenes So they can feel good about it because wealth creation in like a Cloistered hidden way like freaks people there's actually a line in a rap song. Oh god. I wish I could remember it It's something like um money out front no problem Money in your pocket you got drama It's something like that where it's like if you're trying to amass resources and hide it and not show the world What you're doing with it people are going to get weird like that's a truth of today, right? You can argue whether it should be or shouldn't be doesn't matter That's a truth But you can amass all the wealth you want if you show people look how I use it, right? Nobody's hating on bill gates dude's worth billions of dollars But he's out trying to cure malaria. Who's going to hate on that, right? The real in fact realism is so important like if you ask people You know, uh, does the faceless CEO of walmart? Do you think he deserves his salary? Everybody like no that guy's paid way too much and you ask him. Hey, do you think Beyonce earns all of her money? Oh, absolutely I think they know her because she's so much more transparent, you know, I had an interesting you're talking about You know generation z which for some reason I was unfamiliar with The terminate, you know the terminology to describe them, but I have two kids and I had an interesting Situation or a paradigm shattering moment Because I've just moved into a new place. I just ordered, you know or set up, uh, you know tv So I have like dishnet work or whatever and my kids watch Approximately zero percent of it. They watch youtube. I literally am wasting. I don't 150 bucks a month on You know cable tv or whatever and my kids could give a shit they watch YouTube and I'm looking at these youtube channels that are, uh, you know Dedicated to kids. There's a fucking channel. No joke. I'm not making this up and people with kids know exactly what I'm talking about There's a channel where there's a kid that opens up toys This is their videotaping them opening up toys and putting them together and they have like 30 million views They're getting more views on these stupid, you know, kid opening up a little, you know, toy and putting it together and playing with it Then mainstream tv is getting and I'm like it's blowing my mind And watching other kids play video games But it makes a lot of sense because when you're growing up you used to watch like your your friends older brother Like master all these levels that you're trying to accomplish and stuff. So it's like this whole Like uh channels is derived around like but all all these buffers like all these gatekeepers to information are gone Like there's no middle man anymore It's like they just want to know you and you were talking about, you know Knowing about what you're doing with your money like the more transparent you are first of all You can try to not be transparent today. Well, this is why this is why we're mind pump raw truth, too This was a part of our motivator was providing the raw truth in the fitness industry because You being in the industry also have to know it's probably one of the most polluted industries when it comes to bullshit That's out there so much propaganda. I mean it's crazy. Oh, so much of the information is just it's just false. So um, so impact theory Your what is the goal with it? What are you looking to do with it? So to make it really succinct. So I was explaining at the top of the show Jacking into the matrix my version of that is reading. So I'm reading to assimilate all this information and then my kung fu is business so Understanding like that through line. I'm literally thinking in movie terms Okay, so hiding in movies hiding in pop culture are like all this amazing ideology If you understand how to put it to use in your life The matrix and its ideology and the power of myth and you know, a lot of these things that I read Took me from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car That was a real story to being a self-made multimillionaire. Okay building a billion dollar brand So what I want people to understand is is the information is there. You're just not taking it seriously And so we're living in this fascinating time where you can create traditional narrative, right? So look at what disney's doing they're buying all the Culturally relevant intellectual property from marvel studios pics are star wars all of it All the things that resonate they're just buying up And the reason that they're buying that up is they understand one fundamental truth to make that ideology echo people buy merchandise So what we're trying to do is create the next generation of entrepreneurs, right? So how the matrix influenced me but give me the ideology that I put to use Um, we're trying to create the next generation of entrepreneurs and help those companies come into existence and make the world a better place by Creating traditional narrative because I'm a huge believer that you shouldn't try to change behavior You should try to leverage it. So I know that people watch these movies I know that people are going to eat this content up whether I want them to or not And then they're going to buy merchandising and I want them to surround themselves with stories And ideas through merchandising like I'm wearing a star wars necklace right now Because it reminds me of the ethos of jet eyes. I have Batman t-shirts superman t-shirts iron man t-shirts all things that I use because when I look in the mirror I want bruce wane staring back at me, right? I want to be reminded of the mindset And so that to me is really powerful and because I have a social platform where I can go and explain this stuff in super plain english Then it's like people actually now will have access to that information in the way that they used to before mythology began to lose all of its steam So that's our goal. We want to incubate companies and incubate content creators to put a super fine Give an example how you do this though right now like I when I is it happening already on your youtube channel on the podcast Like how is it how do you do that? So we have a three phase approach which you can read about at impact theory.com phase one is build the community That's just absolutely crucial and it's got to be measured in the millions and if you guys saw My big fat greek wedding in that the mother says the father may be the head of the family, but I'm the neck And the community will always be the head you do not get to tell the internet what to do, right? That's like super famous So you don't get to tell the crowd what to do what to think they're going to tell you but you can point them at anything you want And there's a great quote actually about the media the media is terrible at telling you what to think But they're amazing at telling you what to think about And once you tell someone what to think about you've already won half the battle because you've got their focus on something Focus changes everything if you follow me socially at tombillio You're going to see like I have an obsession with focus Like what you put your focus on is going to determine your life a hundred percent Because merely focusing on something makes it more important once it's more important you assign causality to it Read the book persuasion by Robert Cialdini this notion of causality from just importance implied by focus Ooh Very interesting and that's one of the ways that the media manipulates people. So anyway, that's that's what we're trying to do I'll give you an example of what we're doing right now. Um, that's sort of the perfect example So we have this talk show Like you guys you I'm able to attract thought leaders in a certain niche One of those niches happens to be the brain because I'm so focused on that and I think it's so so relevant No matter what you're trying to do in your life The most famous neuroscientist on the planet right now is a guy named vs rama chandron He wrote the book called phantoms in the brain Absolutely Astonishing book that just details some of the stuff like severing the corpus colosum and what happens Um, he came on the show did the interview with him and after the interview he realizes like whoa You've done your homework. You actually understand this stuff. Um, I have a research assistant Who's building a company called neuro valens and you guys are gonna love this I can't believe I didn't bring the sub sooner So they have a device could be total bullshit full disclaimer and you guys will smell the rat in this one Just as I do but they have a device that is FDA approved believe it or not for claims regarding weight loss Because it stimulates the vestibular nerve Now their whole theory is the vagus nerve people stimulated it to death They've done like every study that you can do on stimulating the vagus nerve And but nobody's really looked at the vestibular nerve Now the vestibular nerve is you can sort of guess from the name is meant to track balance motion movement, right? Their hypothesis goes like this. There's nothing in the body that counts calories So what's deciding whether to upgrade or down regulate your uh metabolism and the um vestibular nerve communicates directly with the hypothalamus Which is in charge of your of regulating um metabolism So their guess is like an iphone tracks movement That the vestibular nerve is tracking movement and sending a signal to the hypothalamus saying we're moving a lot Therefore it would probably be a bad idea to store fat And in doing that what they found is by stimulating it that they notice a Reduction in the amount of stored body fat and they're beginning to do studies now watching with um Forget the name of the the thing you put on your face that tracks what indirect Uh Calumetric reading out of god. I'm brutalizing it Lane Norton right now is rolling over because I'm killing this so bad, but um it it's detecting I think the hydrogen levels in your breath which tells you how rapidly you're oxidizing fat That's the rough ballpark idea for all the scientists in the house. They know how badly I got that wrong but that's the directional thing and um and what they're seeing is that you're As you're wearing the device the it does seem to up regulate and even continues to up regulate After you take it off now. I go into this with a level of skepticism. You can't imagine Um, so but anyway, that's that's how the cycle works, right? If this is real Let's just pretend for a second that it is and it has like a 20 to 30 ability to increase up regulate your breakthrough Right would be absolutely amazing shattering And if you're really thinking about it and you go wait a second The only other thing that I know is that tied to movement motion exercise is depression and anxiety If that's true and that's where they're taking their studies now. It would literally be the trifecta. It would be Make you happier make you lose weight Make you feel more energy give you better, you know more You know better cocktail of hormones and chemicals and all that stuff. Yeah, I mean it would just be nuts so the social aspect of the show introduced us to um a company that we believe if it's real and we're very much in the process of finding out if they're real If it's real is just an important company that's going to be making the world a better place that we want to be involved in So now as we build this community, we can point the community over to that and say we need your help Is this real? um The way that we're positioning it doesn't make sense We want you to be ambassadors for it if you've used it and it's added value to your life Like tell people about it. So that's one way and then that one we would build social content around but The mindset to be successful like for those entrepreneurs to actually have the grit determination and stuff to see it through You've got it. You're going to be pulling that inspiration from somewhere We believe that you pull that inspiration from images and pop culture as well as social content And if you look at the research that's being done and like whether instagram accounts are total bullshit Motivational ones or if they actually do something actually do something. It's pretty interesting Again, they talk about it in that book persuasion that you can get people to be better at sales Just by surrounding them with motivational posters because it primes them if you guys know the priming effects of like Get people to say a number from their social security number if it happens to be a high number They're like five times more likely to pay more for something than they would if the number was low So random, but that's how priming works Um great sales tactic by the way if you say to like you guys have if you have something That's expensive and your product offering saves. There's no way we could charge you $10,000 for this and then all of a sudden They're super open to 150 bucks. There's actually a there's actually a very a riddle that you can do that demonstrates priming where you tell someone to say the word most Three times in a row quickly and then you ask them what do you put in a toaster and they'll say toast And no you put bread in a toaster, right? And there's a few riddles like that where you prime somebody and it just demonstrates right away very very Important understanding for sales. We did sales training for a long time and we talked On and about how to prime people to get them to kind of look where you want Yeah, it's crazy. So when you look at so you're looking at content creators. Are you looking for people who are just under the radar? youtube podcast You know all the kind of the new, you know media type people and people who are making an impact and you're going in and saying Hey We think you've got something awesome. We want to take it to the next level and then you know because that's not scalable so what we want to do is It is very clear to me and i'm one of those guys man I'll tell anybody my secrets my strategy all that because I think the only thing that matters is execution And I just don't think people can out execute. So anybody that wants to prove me wrong and out execute me Here's what you're gonna do You're gonna build a community that's number one step two You've got to have a technological component of this because what you need to be looking for is virality Okay out there in the world right now like you guys are saying you have people from Nigeria I think was one of the countries you're talking about right so right now in Nigeria There's a kid who's got the next amazing idea for either a business or a piece of content You know, he's the next George Lucas thinking to star wars got this whole amazing universe It's going to impact. It's going to be awesome But i'm never going to meet the guy and there's also a thousand other people in Nigeria with terrible ideas And I don't have to wade through those So what you do is you build the community you put the layer of technology where you're gamifying the community's experience So they are rewarded in a way that's meaningful to them Which can be as simple as a leaderboard that they've read the most number of scripts that they've earned the most number of badges This is how like do you guys play video games? Yes. I'm a total video game freak And video games like that industry more than any other industry and you talked about twitch earlier, right? Getting people to watch other people play video games. What like that is so crazy But they've done such a good job of gamifying that experience. So by sitting in the stream I earn like some reward from your stream, which can actually be spent on stuff. So Doing that gamifying that experience. So they're incentivized to do the things I want them to do right there the head they get to tell me but I get to point them So I point them in a direction. They're they're rewarded for doing that by moving up the leaderboard getting points getting swag Getting, you know, whatever trips. Jesus. Who knows like if they've done enough. I'll send them to the, you know, tony robbins summit in his private Fiji island, which is real by the way. He actually has his own resort. Just if we could all take a sec All of us are huge So you do that that's the technology piece and then what you look for is virality So something's gonna pop right? Oh my god, this story from this kid in Nigeria pop Now, how do I know this is gonna work because 10 years ago Zuda comics tried this was the digital offshoot of dc comics But if they were too early and they were predatory So they came. Oh, I really feel bad for them. So like from a company perspective They said, oh, it doesn't work But as the outsider i'm watching it going no, no, no, you you did it too early and did it wrong If you change these two subtle things like this will crush Why because that's look at Kickstarter that that's how the world works now Like you put up your idea and you see what idea do people respond to are they respond to that one? Awesome, let's get behind this one and now by the time you get behind it It's already got all this momentum behind it because people are already aware of it And then you tell the community guys because of you Right giving them that sense of Um causality they're able to actually impact this company because of you guys We're now getting behind this and we're working as a business behind the scenes to build partnerships So that when we get something that pops and goes viral we take it immediately to the studio that's going to execute on it And I am a huge believer in comics One I think it's just uh an amazing medium and then two it gives you the ability to do grand scale stuff for dirt cheap You could draw someone in a living room for the same price you can draw an apocalyptic battle, right? So comics is just a great way to rapidly get ideas out of the world. There's two comics right now Um, god, do I want to name them? Probably not there are two comics right now That we're in high level talks with the studios that own them to get the rights So and our pitch goes like this give me non-exclusive Merchandising rights and the ability to make even if you won't let me do canon stories Give me the ability to think of star wars, right? There's canon stories that like if someone dies in a canon story, then they're really dead But if in their fan fiction over here and even if it sells like 50 million copies and somebody dies Eh, you can still say that that wasn't canon, right? So there's this this notion of the universe of so there's the universe of star wars and not everything is is canon So give me the non-exclusive merchandising rights and the ability to make either canon or non canon I don't care which stories in that universe in comics only now what i'm going to do and watch me I'm going to revitalize your brand so we go after ones that we think are intellectually incredibly important to the world that we live in today And but they're undervalued for whatever reason by the people that own the rights So let us do that will revitalize the brand and our goal is we're going to be so fucking good And we're going to crush it and we're going to tell these stories And some of them are going to go viral and our community is going to be so ferocious about it And we're going to be reinforcing the ideology remember that's all I care about the ideology to make people more empowered Right because at the end of the day, I'm trying to create companies Okay, I'm trying to create companies that actually change the world because I think that's the ultimate expression of mindset You get to a mindset place and you're now able to build something that affects the world So secretly even though people can understand The like they get it when I say we're going to be bigger than disney in the same time frame They can repeat that they can latch on to it But the secret is actually i'm only doing this to create the next generation of empowered people I happen to believe empowered people express themselves as entrepreneurs So even if they're not the owner of the company, they're entrepreneurial minded They're working in a company that's mission-based blah blah blah So um We're trying to get that ideology across through that entity to reinforce that ideology to make it echo as I think of it You need to reinforce it with merchandising now understanding that from a beautiful place Is to see why disney does what they do maybe from i'll just give them they do it from a beautiful place too Fine i have no problem with that But they they know their business is merchandising and that the reason you make the movies Is to sell merchandise 100% so once you get that then because here's the thing that that Is going to make me be successful other people or not For 15 years I went on the sabbatical of learning business And i've only now come back to my love for narrative right so and in that sabbatical I learned how narrative Actually works to build a business and to become a marketing vehicle, but forget the marketing vehicle How do you rally people in your own company? How do you get them focused and pointed in the same direction? It's always going to be ideology. It's something to believe in it's the mission of your company It's the value system of your company. It's the ability to spread that value system within your company Which is brutally hard by the way But those are like understanding that that potency and how to do it and then ultimately how to monetize it That's the game and we're just in a new world of um of of being media company How big is your boner over there dude? I know I know he's speaking right to me. Yeah, I know. I know he is over there It sounds a lot of that is very similar to the way that I think and approach everything too and like, you know I would love to I'm actually going through a process right now with kickstart and everything else So everything you're talking about is is very much, you know on the forefront of like how I think and how I Want to like really include this community aspect and have that feedback and that's going to drive My business and my core values, you know out into the world So along with the mine pump obviously being the the megaphone and like our message and and really like impacting the world From how we see it and how you know the the root of really why we do this Why we do why we want to educate people how to find their own path for fitness How to how to sort of navigate through all the bullshit like this is like this is really like You know something that that we think about constantly and we're always reiterating So it sounds like you're using the the internet model of really finding That talent whereas in the past it was like you had your scouts They would look out and they'd look for things and but you're using that community model Which of course has the dual benefit of now you've got your you're driven, you know People who want to promote it almost like that garage band, you know type feel like oh I knew you know we really want to support this band because we were the first ones to listen to them and You know Kind of an older model business, which is really I guess it is older model gosh It's it's been around now for a while American Idol was really good about that like they put on a tv show They showed you know the process of this person came from nowhere They're doing this competition now they win and it was like instant sales because everybody watching felt so connected to That new singer versus just introducing this new performer who you've never heard and you know Is the music good or not? I mean at that point kind of doesn't matter You're you're behind them you feel connected to them and it sounds like you've got kind of some of those Uh those components kind of tied into what you're doing Um, so your role now with with quest uh is You're now more of a consultant. You're no longer You know the working or directly running the company like as you were before Yeah, the easiest way for me to sum up what I do is i'm the chief evangelist So I so believe in the company and really think that they're just going to keep crushing it And I think they will become one of the biggest and most important food companies on the planet But I don't have any day-to-day involvement with the company at my time is totally taken up with impact theory I I agree. I think what quest has done has been incredible and I've seen some shifts and changes in the fitness industry over the last I don't know 10 years, but more You know more even more recent maybe even the last five years that I've seen bigger changes Faster changes than I saw in the previous, you know 20 and 30 One of the biggest things I've heard from people Who are going to these fitness conventions is You know, they're coming back and they're telling me man there's a lot of supplement companies that are now going the Natural route the no artificial sweetener route Whereas five years ago you would go to like the Arnold classic the olympia. You you saw none of that It was all like, you know, the the the best chemical formulation and the most Advanced looking stuff now. It's kind of like it's merging with that that natural wellness Kind of side. Do you see that for yourself? Do you see that that being the kind of the future of you know Supplements and food in the in the fitness industry If if you'll let me add near term to future. Yes, it is the near term future I think the only thing that will work in a sustainable way is what's real So um, some things that are purely natural are not necessarily Metabolically advantageous So I think those things will go by the wayside, but I think that Yeah, like if you look at what's going to be the most effective from a metabolic standpoint It's it's going to be the things that you know are closest to real whole food I mean that's our our message back at quest when I was there anyway was um If you called in and said, hey, I want to you know, get healthy What should I be eating the answer was chicken breast and broccoli and we're not incentivized to say that Because we don't sell chicken breast or broccoli. It's just that that's the truth, right and eat whole food whenever you can So we knew when our products fit in it was when you want something to taste like a dessert when you need something It has a high level of convenience So that's you know, that's really the the game But you're going to see a lot of stuff happen in the natural world that just doesn't serve people metabolically And certainly the hardcore athletes at the core of the scene They're going to migrate to what's really working and as our ability to assess what's happening at a cellular level increases Then I think we're really going to start to tune into like what really is the home run here Yeah, because a lot of the the troubles I see with companies when they get very big is they become this big ship That's very hard to steer. It's like tom said earlier to become very dogmatic You know, which is the opposite of you guys believe so I mean, I think quest is going to continue to thrive It's pretty exciting to watch the you were just eating keto cups. Yeah, I mean that's I mean that was a pretty quick and you're working with you're you guys working with doctor De Agostino, correct? Yeah, Dominic de Agostino and uh, peter atia really came in and do you guys know peter atia? Oh, he's so amazing. Like have you guys had him on now? We all god. You got to get him on like that, dude is Unbelievable. He's he's really really cool. If you like Dom, you're gonna like him a lot and um, They came in this was god. This is like three or four years ago now And they said basically you guys have a fundamental misunderstanding of fat and fat is critical And if you're not eating fat because like at that time I intentionally tried to exist in a state of rabbit starvation So if you guys know the stories about trappers in the west back in the day during the winter They would eat rabbits and starve to death And the reason that that would happen is the rabbits themselves were so lean that they weren't getting enough fat to just maintain cellular integrity and so they would die and That had to be the most surreal experience ever because you're eating but not understanding the important role of fat in central Right, so they you know, they were biting the dust so that um I was trying to like sort of always be on that edge because I find for me That I was able to maintain like nice hard muscle mass And get lean lean lean But what I wasn't noticing was all the inflammation in my body was actually due To not having enough fat and possibly if you're really gonna let me get crazy having too much protein in my body And now i'll say that's not crazy. We talk about that. We talk about that all the time It's great to hear you say that and here's the thing like if I if I could speak for myself and make sure everybody Understands I do not represent quest nutrition right now. I am talking purely from my own experience um I struggled with inflammation for 15 years and I used to have to ice my wrists every night for 15 years to the point where My right thumb was numb down the back of it and I had like these weird little burn marks on my wrists Where the ice touched, you know, because of the bony parts of your wrist Uh, just get an unusual amount of of the pressure and I just thought well It is what it is what I have to do. I couldn't press heavy like I had to avoid all of that um Dom and peter a tia come in tell us we're totally misunderstanding fat that it has Possibly got to couch all this language possibly has implications in um, anti-cancer properties And so I was like well if it really does have anti-cancer properties and and the theory goes Like this that basically cancer cells share a trait. They are damaged in such a way that they can no longer burn Ketones as a fuel source. They can only burn glucose and if that's true then you could You're in a position where if you rob the body dieterrally of Glucose that you should be able to kill the cancer cells by essentially starving them to death That's the theory heard that and thought okay I'm going to start doing something every year where I do a three-day fast And then I'd lead into about three weeks of four to one Uh ratio ketogenic diet meaning for every combined gram of protein carbohydrate that I eat I'm gonna eat four grams of fat and I tried it. It was total fucking misery I cannot tell you how much I hated it and I had keto flu It was a nightmare you keto flu is like a low-grade flu. You feel like 10 pounds of ass It sucked so badly And so I was just like oh man these guys are crazy. I can't do this but midway through I realized Huh my wrists feel perfect And they haven't felt this good in 15 years like this is crazy and I was so blown away by it I said well, I'm never going back to rabbit starvation because The way that I felt it was I've never had food feel like a drug before it felt like a drug It was that impactful It was that binary night and day one moment my wrists hurt and have this pain where I have to ice And the next minute they feel not better They feel perfect. And so I was like wow, this is weird. So I stay high fat for another year I think this is amazing wrist pain is gone Just incredible and then in that period. I'm actually learning how to do ketogenics right And realizing that there's if you're gonna go four to one like you've got to be supplementing And you know, there's just things you have to do to avoid the keto flu And so then I go through a phase where I'm two to one for nine months And I've never cognitively I've never felt better and it totally changes your relationship to hunger Because your body switches from dietary fat to body fat instantly So you don't go through the performance degradation that you would if you're you know eating protein because protein can be turned into glucose So uh, gluconeogenesis, I'm assuming your audience knows all about this. So I will belabor the point But once I dropped my protein and took my fat up that was just a whole another world And so like I said for nine months, I was living at a state always north of point five Not always every now and then I would you know go crazy on a weekend or something But for the most part not I mean it's really rare. I was at point five millimolars or above on Keytones present in the bloodstream is using a precision extra and ketone strips to check it So I mean this wasn't like piss strips or anything. This was like legit testing my blood multiple times a day Um, never felt better. It was awesome, but I found it hard to maintain my muscle mass So I've now switched and I do um roughly four days a week Of high protein and three days a week Um ketogenic and and it's been amazing very similar to how how I eat and I had inflammatory issues as well And you know protein. I'm so glad you said that about protein protein in fitness because we know it builds muscle directly, right? Oh amino acids build muscle therefore more protein means more muscle because that's the rationale that we use And it's become like this macro this this magic Macro nutrient where you just can't eat too much of it. Um, and I've I've encountered More than enough uh clients that I've worked with where Protein takes too high and they just get inflamed and feel shitty and we bring it down and wow They feel amazing and they're building more muscle. Oh, we predict a future backlash on that for sure Oh, you're starting to see a little bit You're starting to see a little bit of that future backlash when it comes to You know too much of protein intake because there's still people in the in our industry Who advocate ridiculous levels of of protein like two grams per pound of body weight And you know, I've got 150 pound female clients who are like, oh I'm eating 300 grams of protein a day and they're they're wondering why they take a shit once a week, you know And it's like well, maybe you should cut your your protein and take down a little bit So so you guys are now or quest is now having some of these keto keto type You know bars and supplements and you're starting to see other companies start to kind of copy that a little bit Was that a hard thing to convince everybody to do was like, hey, we're going to go this direction Or was everybody still open-minded like hey No, so first of all Ron who's really the just nutritional guide of the company is is Never dogmatic and awesome really like he'll he'll switch on the dime And because we've all worked with him long enough to really really have faith in what he's doing and know that he's He's gonna look at the science right? He's gonna look at the data And if the data is there, he's gonna keep doing it if the data is not there He's not beautiful and and he'll go all in on something So, you know, he was like, hey, I'm gonna be doing a keto experiment anybody that wants to join me join And then we talk openly and I was telling everybody like this sucked. I hated it But my risk, you know, and so you just everyone's talking through like what do we experience you were finding over time We've abandoned things that just don't seem true And then we've doubled down on unpopular things because we're looking at the data and it's just true So and that's been, you know, that's that's something that you can count on like that's just that is the way this guy's mind works And and everyone there has so much faith in him because he's just you know You earn credibility and you earn it over time and he's he's earned that credibility internally over time where God he would he would people would have to suspect brain damage or drug use to not be like, all right It sounds crazy now, but I'm sure you know in the end it'll prove out or he'll abandon it if it stops seeming real Now to bring things full circle a little bit with you and your own personal fitness You had commented how you hate working out in the gym Still how you don't like it. Are you finding now your own personal relationship with Exercise and nutrition are you finding that still has you know ways to progress and you're still finding that you're getting I hate to use the word better But you know advancing or progressing in terms of your own understanding of your connection to things like exercise and nutrition Yeah, definitely and it you know when people ask me about my morning routine, it's like It is one of the most important parts of my morning routine it is the first thing I do it is the thing I prioritize the only thing I prioritize over the gym asleep And that's it. So um to me you got to start the day that way Not only the stuff we talked about earlier earning credibility with yourself and learning things about yourself and what's possible But if you guys have read spark by john radie Just understanding the mind-body connection and it's real and you know Science is acknowledging now you have a second brain that lives in your digestive tract I mean it's just it's real and I think that every day more science is going to come out We're going to start learning about the microbiome more and we're going to realize like all this stuff is so tied to well-being That if you're not paying attention to what you eat and exercising you're missing out on optimizing human performance And even though i'm not an athlete like that's just not the game that I play As a mental athlete, which I very much consider myself I know that I have to get my body right and if you look at some of the you guys know about e-gaming e-sports sorry, oh they punch me in the mouth called e-sports Um that those guys have strength and conditioning coaches that come in and teach these guys about diet and exercise And it's like that's going to be the next big thing because they're looking I mean their world is judged in milliseconds So to optimize for that like the first one that started working the body I'm sure just started handing people their ass and then it spread like wildfire Um through the industry and now it's just standard the top teams all have strength and conditioning coaches Wow, that is crazy So you what do you like about or what form of exercise do you find you like the most or how are you making? Yeah, do you typically lean to a certain modality or yeah for sure? So I like weights so let's just start with that and now do you like waste or do you hate at the least? Um, I hate at the least is fair that's that's much closer to the truth But there are things about it that I do like like there's something manly about being able to say I can lift that right And so on the the times where I really need that boost you put on some death metal And you think about like you feel the fucking calluses in your hands you go. Yeah, I've earned these right And uh, you just get after it and there is something about that. There's there's just no substitute for what that does to your mind Yeah, I think the next what you'll find in your evolution with exercise is because you're you're moving right? I mean, I swear to god you're moving like textbook along The the path that I always try and get clients to move through and that always successfully because Not everybody has that same, uh, I guess that mental discipline Yeah, mental discipline or or drive or ability to self to be aware of self aware And the next because it's it can be and it can last for a long time to be motivated by With exercise by the results that can last a long time But it doesn't always last forever most times it doesn't in fact You'll find people kind of stopping and starting or falling off the wagon getting on the wagon The next evolution seems to be what I've seen the most and what I tend to try to uh, you know To to motivate people to get into is where you find that you start to enjoy the process Once you start to enjoy the process of exercise and stop you stop worrying so much about the results The results become a side effect of what you're doing and then it becomes so much so effortless And you start to exercise according to how your body wants to work out and it starts to change and the ultimate goal Is intuitive eating and intuitive training. I mean that's the ultimate goal for all of us It's the ultimate awareness is not having to track not having to stress and it is it's uh intuitive Yeah, I mean personally my workouts have changed so much because I was so my own body image issues Revolved around being too skinny not being strong enough And so my workouts reflected that and I was very goal driven And result driven in terms of my strength and muscle mass and how much I can lift and how big I can get And if you look at my workouts now They're so different. I still lift weights. I love lifting weights But it's different because now I'm enjoying the process and I'm not so focused on the results And the side effect is it of it is I'm more mobile. I'm still strong I look better and it's almost shocking to me that that could happen Not focusing on just those things and the process is so much I hate to use word healthier, but it really is on a mental spiritual. Yeah, definitely under rewarding much more rewarding um What what one piece of advice could because we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the show a lot of People in fitness who are trying to build their business in particular What's what what are some some pieces of advice you can give them? That can kind of help them, you know get through some of their trials and tribulations Yeah, I have one and and this is man Take this advice to heart and really listen to this Do and believe That which moves you towards your goals period Do and believe right most people think that there is some objective truth that they need to be a slave to And it's just not true So people if you have a negative image of yourself And you have that rule in mind then you need to self-assess and go does thinking that i'm dumb ugly fat lazy Whatever does it serve me if it does then i'm going to double down on the belief But if it doesn't and things that make you a lesser version of yourself almost never serve you then you've By definition you have to abandon that and so many people spend time obsessing over the things that are bad about them That are negative about them that they never stop to think like what does that do Like if you know that there's a truth to neurons that fire together wire together Then when you look at your image and you think oh, you're dumb. You're fat. You're lazy Then literally you begin to associate yourself with those things and those will hard wire in your brain And now that becomes true now. Why did it become true? It became true because you thought it over and over and over So what happens if you took something else and you said i'm powerful I am capable of executing at the highest level I can take a meeting with any human being on the planet and persuade them to see something my way That I can assess value that I can grow and learn and develop now you start repeating those things They will become true not because either is empirically true They become true because you obsess obsessively focus on them So once you give up focusing on this negative voice and you start even though you're going to feel Like an asshole in the beginning you start telling yourself this empowering stuff All of a sudden you'll be able to do it and the reason we were as successful at quest as we were is because Henry Ford is right Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're probably right Exactly. Yeah, once you understand that like that it that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy It was neither one is true. You believe in one it becomes true And that's why to me the matrix is the ultimate metaphor So right now there's people that are out there that you could do something with your life But you won't because you listen to the negative voice And you're just convinced that because something like let's take um abuse you were abused and so You think that makes you a lesser person because you think it makes you a lesser person It does but there are other people out there that overcome the most horrific shit that you can imagine read um man's search for meaning by victor frankl like if you if you're ever doing cardio And you're feeling weak read man's search for meaning. Okay. This is a neuro scientist that went who was in like four different um concentration camps ends up finally in Auschwitz And he said i'm looking around at everyone here and you can tell when they're gonna die Because they give up and he said the moment they give up, you know three days later They're dead So he said the reason that people make it or don't make it had nothing to do with like genetics and being strong It had everything to do with whether they found meaning to live for And once they had meaning to live for then they had something that they were going to fight through That to me tells you right there. It is about the power of the mind and people like they just They don't they don't lock into it. I'm so glad you said that because uh, what I what I realized a long time ago was it's not just about Saying those things to yourself like I am powerful. I will succeed. I will not give up It's about practicing it constantly because it's like training your fucking body Like if I want to learn how to run better, I can't just practice it once I got a hard hard wire that new recruitment pattern into my muscles and the same thing goes for your brain You have to create that pattern reinforce that pattern. It takes practice So just doing it once 10 times 100 times is not enough You have to do it over and over and over and over again And it becomes a pattern in the brain and they're they're actually finding that this is probably one of the reasons Why I don't know if you're familiar with some of the new research on Uh psychedelics and how they're using it in therapy and they're finding that they'll give someone Oh, yeah, they'll give someone you know mdma and You know one or two sessions is equivalent to like a year's worth of therapy and they're thinking well How is this even possible? Well the substance did something to the brain that allowed it to make these connections Uh much quicker and stronger because of the altered state of consciousness Then if the person was in their normal state of consciousness Um very very fascinating stuff and you're so obviously into this kind of stuff. Oh, I I'm utterly fascinated. So I'm a total um Chicken and I have not done any psychedelics, but so you guys had Stephen Kotler on his co-author jamie wheel I try to get him to talk about it, but he he stayed away from it. All right, dude Get jamie wheel on your show he he pulled me aside before we started recording. He said tom I have zero fucks left to give so he said you can ask me anything you want like we'll go in on it And so he and he is so eloquent. So you're hearing this guy at like just the height of Being able to articulate a scent a sentiment in like a really elevated way Talking about like getting totally fucked up a burning man, right? And so he's really able like I've never done anything like that and afterwards I was like god Do I need to try micro dosing like like that? He really makes it sound amazing. You need you need to try Especially a cerebral guy like you for sure. I have to say like I'm having a hard time shaking the idea You guys are reading stealing fire right now, right? Yeah, so um that book is Amazing and reading that you can't not at least think like god I kind of have to try this like at least once I knew I was so mad that I couldn't get Kotler to talk about it man I want I wanted to dive into it with him I wanted to get get jamie because it so there are certain people that um They can talk about a subject like that and you think god, you're you're really making this sound worse Like think of mma, right? There's certain people you talk to them about mma. Like do you guys know for us a hobby? No, I don't know you must get him on your show. Oh my god. Okay, so he's gsp's trainer He is the modern day bruce. He's unbelievable now you hear him talk. He's amazing You hear him talk about mma and you think How could I have gone my whole life without being like a practitioner at the most like sort of monkish philosophical level Like this is the center of the intellectual universe. That's literally what it's like talking to him about And then there's other people where you're like, yeah, you sound like you're gonna stab somebody in the bar You know what I mean? So it's like so totally different engine of the spectrum jamie is like that with drugs There are some people that can talk about psychedelics and you want to distance yourself because they sound like a scary hippie Who took way too much acid and then there's jamie who's like he's very intellectually He's gonna talk to you about breakthroughs. He's gonna talk to you about what the studies are showing of helping people get past trauma He's gonna talk about the neurological wiring pattern and why it's important and how There's the thing he calls the cosmological perspective And he says for us to understand who we are We first must understand who the other is for us to understand like compassion for the other We have to step beyond us and them to Getting to like a nationwide level where now everybody in your in-group you can have empathy for but then that's still defined By the other nation or whatever and to really understand that you need that pale blue dot moment of Getting into the cosmos and looking back in the earth and understanding how the things that we're sort of saying are differences between us are really Minor like when you think that we're on this floating rock in the middle of nowhere and the Perspective that it gives you is what he thinks is gonna unify everybody So he can talk about that or he can talk about as this is his quote tripping your balls off In uh in burning man And so, you know, he can talk about it all and and really is sort of shamanistic in his way to come back with what you should take away from it and how It can be empowering knowledge and information and and I mean you reading the books you understand that it's not just about drugs Right, it's about there are three ways to get into ecstasy as they call it The first way is meditative or mystical states The next one is flow which you could get into through an extreme sport or something like that And then the third one is psychedelics and he says it's it all comes down to your access to time And your willingness to risk he said if you have 30 years and you're really risk averse Then you should meditate because you can get to the same place But it takes that long to get that good at meditating And so if you need something if you've just gotten out of the iraqi war and you don't want to live another day Then you need mdma and you need it today, right? And they've seen that a single dose of mdma with um a professional that can do the talk therapy through it That you can have Like permanent lasting effects and that's what's crazy Is it they'll follow up with them six months later a year later and the the breakthrough persists And so hearing that man, let me tell you if I was really struggling with something I would do it in a heartbeat and the only reason I don't is and look don't become dogmatic, right? So I hear my own voice, but um, I'm the guy who doesn't do drugs and because I have that story Like I don't I'm like god Do I really want to give that story up? But if it's as powerful as people are making it sound it it may be well No, the brain the the brain images actually show changes in the brain But without you know, and I don't want to sound like a commercial Uh psychedelics and these substances are selling a commercial for ls But our fitness and health podcast. Hold on a second. Hey kids psychedelics are what here's what they are Very powerful tools and very powerful tools can be used like anything if we're good for bad Uh, you you know, this is why I think the future of psychedelic use is going to be I think it's going to be legalized But with uh licensed therapists and professionals I don't think if you've ever done never done a drug like that You should go drop acid and you're going to come at it and be like that was fucking great I had a great time a lot of you were going to come at it and be like that was the most terrifying Period of my life and now I have PTSD as a result of it. This that that's also a reality So they're just very very Powerful powerful tools and I think we should study them and look into them And I think being dogmatic one way or the other because there's also the dogma of These drugs will change the world and make everybody peaceful if we could just spray mdma on the whole world Every nobody would go to war and we'd be all in it. That's also a bullshit. Have you have you hung out with uh Aubrey marquess at all on it? I haven't but people bring him up to me a lot. So something tells me I need to Yeah, it'd be worth having him on the show. He's very interesting. Yeah. Yeah just from the business side talking about this I mean he's done ayahuasca. I think like 17 times or something like that Like he calls himself the spiritual warrior or the spiritual. What is he the warrior poet warrior poet warrior poet? Yeah, yeah, well, um, I know you got to go man. It's been a freaking blast 100% 100% we're gonna do this again for sure. We have to do this. Yeah, absolutely love having you on here Listen, if you like mine pump leave us a five star rating review on itunes If we like you review and we pick it you'll get a free mine pump t-shirt also Check us out on youtube. We put up a new video every single day Mind pump tv and you can also find us on instagram at mine pump Radio you can find me at mine pump sal adam at mine pump adam and justin and mine pump justin Thank you for listening to mine pump If your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance Check out our discounted rgb super bundle at mine pump media dot com The rgb super bundle includes maps anabolic Maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by sal adam and justin To systematically transform the way your body looks feels and performs With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos The rgb super bundle is like having sal adam and justin as your own personal trainers But at a fraction of the price the rgb super bundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mine pump media dot com If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on itunes And by introducing mine pump to your friends and family We thank you for your support and until next time. 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