Lisa Bilyeu - Co-Founder of Quest Nutrition and Impact Theory | Radical Confidence

So we just live in purgative the mundane where someone asks you how's life. You just say, I'm fine. It's okay Those are massive indicators that you're not actually living in utter fulfillment The purgatory of the mundane is where I'm sure if you look at stats and you found a way to study it like an Exceptional amount of the population lives there and they don't know what they want to do. They don't have a big Company they want to start. They're just like shit I don't think you need a goal to recognize you're in the purgative mundane and think about how you're going to get yourself out A goal to me is in service of your mission. That makes a lot of sense. I love that and so every time that I'm Hushing myself out of my comfort zone. You better believe that imposter syndrome comes flooding back I just did the speaking gig like last week and again I was like I want God. Who do I think I am getting on state and this is you know 10 years into my career? I had their proof that actually betting on ourselves and building a company was going to work I believed in myself that I can keep getting back up So I want anyone starting a new business right now. Just it's your success isn't guaranteed Nothing is but except for actually the struggle. You've got to get back up. That's the key Welcome to success story. I'm your host Scotch Larry. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show since day one and I chose to partner with HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs at the end of the day I'm an entrepreneur a lot of people that listen to this show or entrepreneurs and it's hard and HubSpot creates solutions For entrepreneurs, so it's not as difficult one of the number one problems that all entrepreneurs have is keeping Customers happy. It's one thing to acquire customers keeping them happy boosting customer satisfaction is a whole other Can of worms. 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What's the point of acquiring customers if they all just leave the secrets out HubSpot service hub is a game changer all so you can better connect with the customers and keep them happy visit HubSpot.com Slash service to do more for your customers today Liza, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate you. I appreciate your time. I appreciate The you know the work you've done with Quest. I appreciate the podcast that you put out and the audience you built with Impact and women of impact and I think that when I look at your story and I guess this story is really what led you to write the book radical confidence because really it was you looking at your past lessons and Understanding how to unpack those lessons and sort of teach those to the world. That's really what you embody right now So I'm listening to your story. I listened to a couple podcasts. I read the book and I noticed something very interesting so You had radical confidence and you didn't really you didn't really let anyone else Change your path or or or push you off your path when you were young you wanted to You know pursue film and then you went to the US and you that's where you met Tom and you see and then even like when You were thinking about okay, should I be marrying Tom? I know you had some pushback from your father and You had this radical confidence to sort of keep pushing forward keep pushing forward keep pushing forward But then there's a point in your life. There's like a pivot Where all of a sudden it's like eight years go by and you've realized that you've lost a lot of that radical confidence That you originally had and that really resonated with me because it's not like you Never had confidence You almost fell into something once you achieve the milestone that you set out to achieve and then all of a sudden life pivoted and Bam eight years later How did that happen? Oh? Wow, what a great start to a question. Oh great start. So I Think so many of us end up you do one little thing You do another little thing you make a decision one day Well, it's just a Wednesday on an average, you know in the random February My husband asks me to take care of something. Yeah, I may as well do it and then over time That one little thing turns into another thing turns into another thing and Just being a female being brought up as Greek orthodox There was so much expectation and beliefs that were kind of embedded in me as I was growing up So even though I didn't want to be a stay-hung what a wife which is nothing wrong with that like literally nothing wrong with that Except that wasn't my dream The question is how the hell did I end up getting stuck there? Well growing up my dad told me that my future was going to be a great Greek wife And I was the point of marriage was to get married settle down and have kids I get told that over and over and over again as I'm growing up So the subliminal message messages you end up giving start to shape your belief system So as I get married as I even have all these big movie dreams we end up going up You know maybe we need to earn our own money so we can actually make our own movies So that actually became the start of it right you have a purpose you have a vision and then one day turns into the next And so that goal and that plan was just for a year The word entrepreneurship didn't really exist back then because I'm talking about this is like 2002 So it's just like just for a year. I'm just gonna stay at home I'm gonna support Tom We're gonna go and try and make he's gonna try and make as much money as possible and then we're gonna live out our dreams So that one year turns into another year turns into the third year And what happens is is that I'm using gratitude every step of the way I'm so grateful to be married to a man that loves me as much as he does I'm so grateful to be living in America which was my dream as a kid. I'm so grateful right and fill in the blank Then over time you start to sacrifice for the greater good the greater good to the family the greater good to the kids The greater good to the husband because your belief system carries you to be that good Greek girl at least for me that good Greek girl So as time starts to go by I'm now becoming more and more insecure because I don't know where my life is going So what happens is I start to clutch on to any validation I can get that makes me feel good about myself and that validation actually came from my dad saying that I was a great Greek wife came for my husband saying I was an amazing Greek wife and so now what happened was I was slowly slowly tying my validation To an identity Now the identity of being that good Greek wife wasn't something Wasn't what I wanted but imagine now I don't want to let go of it because the only place that I can actually feel good about Myself is through the people that are telling me that I'm doing a great job So over time as we go from year three to year four to year five to you six I keep saying to myself. I'm gonna make a change when when I have the confidence when my husband is happy when I have the money So all of these little things that were happening to my mind were happening to my self-esteem were happening to my Unfidence starts to really mold itself into being the person that when I get into seven years later I don't feel like I can ever say anything about the fact that I'm unhappy because that gratitude piece that I said that I was doing Earlier now turns into toxic gratitude that voice in my head The cinema god I'm so grateful to have a husband that loves me now every time that whisper comes in saying I see you and happy That gratitude starts knocking that voice that Knocks that voice down and starts to argue with her and says well hang on a minute. How ungrateful are you? You say you're unhappy, but you have a husband that loves you. You have a roof over your head You you know like in the blank. So now I have the guilt I have the shame of who do I think I am speaking up saying that I'm unhappy when I have all these other things that other people don't have and Then again, I had tied my validation so much to my identity that I didn't want to change it So what I say is I ended up being in what I call pergatory of the mundane My life was just mundane enough. I didn't hit rock bottom and it didn't so rock bottom catapult people sometimes into action Right because you're like well, I've got nothing else away guns. Yeah, yeah I didn't have that and so how many of us listening right now don't have that wake-up moment So we just live in Purgatory of the mundane where someone asks you how's life. You just say I'm fine. It's okay Those are massive indicators that you're not loving your life and that you're not actually living in utter fulfillment And so that can be like just the sign because sometimes people don't realize they're living in pergatory of the mundane and I didn't realize that until My husband has a crazy idea to start a protein bar company and that code that like catapulted be into the stratosphere But those eight years when I look back of how do we get start? It just to encompass everything. It's your belief system It's then you make in sacrifices that don't align with who you want to be and what you want in life Then it becomes I Where you're getting your validation form and then tying that to an identity that actually doesn't serve you So you put all of those together. That is exactly how I ended up being stuck for years Do you think that when you start to work with people and to get them out of this this purgatory of the mundane? Do you think that they have to have a goal in mind and why I say that is because The reason why you didn't end up in the in the purgatory of the mundane when you started your career your life You were very ambitious because you had a very specific goal and I'm not saying that you would you need that to just be ambitious. Maybe you just want to push back against your parents and just go conquer the world But I think a goal probably helps to a degree when you start to move yourself out of the purgatory of the mundane Was it West was it the protein bar that was like the wake-up call like now I have a goal now I have a purpose and I want to work towards this or Can you sort of remove yourself from this even if you don't have a defined path because I think The purgatory of the mundane is where I'm sure if you look at stats and you found a way to study it like an Exceptional amount of the population lives there and they don't know what they want to do. They don't have a big Company they want to start. They're just like shit. Well, I don't have a goal. Where do I start? Yeah, so that's very interesting because I don't think you need a goal to recognize you're in the pagotid mundane and think about How you're going to get yourself out a goal to me is in service of your mission Now if you don't know what your mission is because you start been stuck in pagotid the mundane First of all the very first step is owning and admitting that you're stuck With utter grace because that's where some people look that is even a dent to your ego because you don't want to look back As I'm a god I've wasted eight years so in order to suit your emotions right now you actually just blank And I know that I wasn't a waste but for me to really jolt me out of it I had to be very honest. I said yes I did spend eight years not living the life I want number one acknowledge that with compaction but acknowledge it So I think that really becomes the first step then the second step is to your point people may not know what where to go That's where I go. You need to give yourself space and time to be curious Because you don't know what necessarily your mission may be and you won't know until you try a bunch of things So for me, I didn't realize that my mission was to help people until West started and so my husband comes home. He's chasing money, right? We've been which we thought it was only going to be a year it turns into eight years He's profoundly unhappy. I'm profoundly unhappy So I pulled him a sign as it I don't care about money all I can care about is happiness And so what would you do every day to make yourself happy and that became the idea of Starting a protein bar company with his business partners now when they said they wanted to start it They were actually exiting another company and so I said oh help the good Greek wife What do you need and so in that oh help? What do you need? I Started to face my insecurities and my inadequacies every single day because the company grew at 57,000 percent so just to give you an idea that goes from zero to a billion dollars in five years It's a lot so in that crazy growth because our house was up for collateral I had a choice every time I hit a brick wall the old Lisa that felt extremely insecure and just wanted a stroke Her ego would back off. I don't want to take on this challenge because I don't want it to make me feel bad But when your house is up for collateral, it's a real freaking wake-up call So every time I didn't know what I was doing every time that insecurity came up Who do you think you are Lisa the imposter syndrome you stay at home wife for eight years You have no idea what you're doing. I just gave myself a choice you can figure it out or you can lose your house And so every time I face that I chose to figure it out in that process of figuring it out It allowed me to build my skill sets Building my skill sets allowed me to build my competence and as a result It allowed me to feel comfortable about building a business So I didn't know what I was getting into until it started to evolve As I was thrust into it There were little markers along the way that started to really draw my heartstrings And so this is where I talk about the mission right I happen to have stumbled on multiple things that allowed me to realize oh my god I love being able to build a skill set that actually serves people That became my recipe to fulfillment So I realized that though as I was doing it and it came at the end So now these little moments I just paid attention So the little moments were I grew up with a mom that was borderline anorexic And I saw her starve herself for the sake of beauty And when we're building quest we get this letter and the woman says Thank you so much for allowing me I'm anorexic I've been in hospital. I was 55 pounds. It was something crazy She was on her freaking deathbed and she was like in her thirties And she's like Thank you for introducing quest bars because you'd made me allow me to be okay with calories again It well Now I wouldn't have known that that would pull up my heartstrings until it happened What allowed that to happen was I experimented with different things So once that hit me I was like oh my god So are you saying the harder I work the better I build my skill sets The more I can help the anorexic community Yes Wow all right, let me take that on board Then my mom actually became she went from borderline anorexic to morbidly obese in my later years So now as quest is getting harder and harder and I'm facing my inadequacies every single day I start to realize the thing that was propelling me forward Was fighting for my mom was every morning I was going to wake up and say if how can I make quest work because if I can maybe I can help my mom It was mother Teresa that said not everybody will fight for the masses But everybody will fight for the one So who is that one person that you were waking up for every day and I realized that became part of my mission So now coming back to your question Over time these little things that started making me realized that I feel great About the fact that I could be better today and help one more person. I could help my mom So that then became part of my mission So then I started to build out my mission statement Because just like anything you can get distracted in a million different ways So how do I make sure that every time I show up every time I wake up everything that I do all of my energy is always being pointed at a North Star that's like what I call my mission my north star So my north star became the thing that I really cared about So it's the what the how and the who Those are the three key things that I think make up a mission So I became and I wrote out my mission statement that was eventually over years and years and years and years Right because I started to evolve and my mission started to evolve that now I can say it very succinctly It's create content that impacts young girls so they don't have to feel insecure like I did Very fricking succinct the what is creating content the who is helping young women And the why because I had to overcome insecurity and I don't ever want them to Now I've got my mission statement my goal then becomes in service of my mission statement So the mission so the goals are what how much and by when As are you keep setting goals then you keep making a new goal then you set it again But every single time you set a goal it is always in service of that mission So that's why now going all the way back to your question. I don't think you need a goal I actually think that becomes the last piece of the puzzle and Working through your new style what propels you forward then having a goal that serves all of that Then becomes the blueprint to how I think you keep moving forward in life and never get stuck again I absolutely love this um, I need to understand one more thing as well from from your backstory because When I listened to the relationship with your father It seemed well it didn't seem it was very apparent at a certain point in your life a lot of The stress or the inability to make confident decisions stems from His lens at what your life should be. I don't I think you used a different word could have been a frame or whatnot But it's really the other individuals frame of reference. That's the point. So All these other individuals in your life have different frames of reference for what your life should be And it sounds like what you just described with the mission is you slowly move Your attention from another individual's frame of reference to your own mission And that's what enabled you to actually be confident How did you make that migration? Oh, yes I'm curious I find it fascinating because I see this migration because your focus is no longer on what someone else thinks It's on now what you think and care about and believe it, but that's also not easy Yeah, exactly. So these here's what I did as my dad has a frame of reference I just took it as fact that that's what I should believe in as I got older and I started to listen to myself I started to listen to my heart the voice in my head all of these things are Messages that as a woman growing up in a Greek orthodox Family, I didn't ever allow myself to do and so one of the big things was I surrounded myself with people that would push my thinking And my husband was the very first person so on our first date and this wasn't deliberate right kind of stumbled into everything But on our first date he was a curious man and so in in discussion he would ask me so what do you believe in God? And I just wasn't known to ever ask to me that and the truth was my answer was because my dad told me to So here I am 21 years old and I've never even considered why I believe in God And that was I think the very first thing that was like I felt so embarrassed staying that answer out loud and I was like wow I'm embarrassed in saying that out loud why because it's not like it's my own thought I haven't even contemplated it So what else in my life have I just taken this fact and not actually thought through myself So by the time we got to the moment where my husband asks my dad for his blessing to marry me And my dad says no in that moment I had to pause And I had to ask why Instead of just judging my dad I can't believe there he doesn't believe in my mouth just ask my dad why So what I did is still just taken it for fact I became curious And so in hearing his reason he said well you come from different cultures There's no way you being with orthodox and him being you know mixed blooded American that it'll ever work He doesn't get us right he doesn't have um he's not earning enough money in order to support you So he starts laying out all these reasons why my dad doesn't think it can work In that moment I said this is his truth This is his frame of reference based on where he came from So in the game it's sort of judging because I think it's easier to go He's crazy he doesn't get it no no Let me actually just understand why he's saying that Instead of dismissing him because I'm the cut side like I love learning and being a I've got a thirst for knowledge so that it can help me cultivate my own mindset So asking questions with my dad why do you believe this? Well, he came from a tiny village in the mountains of Cyprus contraception didn't exist And so women didn't get an education because they would get married for pregnant immediately So they wouldn't give women the education when there was only five kids Let's say that they could choose from the village So my dad's frame of reference is Well, you're a woman You're going to end up getting married having kids so why you know Oh, sorry, you're going to get married Which means that you need someone that can provide for you because he's old school Women don't go to work men provide So he looks at Tom he sees that he's not earning much money And so he's like he's not going to be able to provide for you Next thing that you're not going to be able to make the marriage work Why does he believe it believe that He's never once in anyone in my family ever married outside my culture So for his perspective He just sees there's no way can work because his frame of reference is he's never seen it possible Now taking all of that for his truth How do I take that and use that in my life All right, actually there's some lessons here Number one maybe is going to be hard with our cultures So let me preempt it Let me actually come up with a gang plan where me and Tom can talk through How this actually could be truth and what are we going to do to combat it So as you can see in me taking the perspectives of somebody else Not now taking it blindly open up those blinders being open and receptive to asking questions Why allowed me to start to concretize my own beliefs and my own thinking That was true to me Not true to my dad my mom my husband and everyone else Once I started to do that It becomes like my favorite move one of my favorite movies is like karate kid wax on wax off Why I then start to practice the skill set of listening to myself And over time as I started to do that Why could I said earlier with any type of skill set If you start to practice and get really good You become competent enough to get to become confident So over time I then became confident in my decision making And to trust my own gut and my own mindset Instead of blindly letting someone else lead me That makes a lot of sense I love that I love that you bridge that gap And and thank you because I think that's probably the biggest issue that people have That is like the massive shift And it's not I want to highlight that it is not like a one and done thing Because I think we always oscillate between other people's frame of reference What do they think about this thing or that thing that impacts me And okay, no I should trust myself And this is actually one of the main points that you make Always betting on yourself And sort of moving towards your north star or your mission But it's never it's never like a one and done And I think that also creeps up on people too I think actually a lot of good life advice people take for If I just figure this out once I'm good And then life creeps up on them again And then they realize they sort of slip into these old routines I'm sure that happens to you all the time And you always have to keep sort of Even the person who wrote the book on A uneratical god but you have to keep reframing What's important and what's not Because we're human at the end of the day Yeah, a thousand percent and that's exactly why I wrote the book Also in like steps and lessons Because as you grow as you change as you evolve New problems and issues are going to arise They're just going to look a little different And so the imposter syndrome that I talk about in the book Is something that I feel in any new arena that I enter And so every time that I'm Hushing myself out of my comfort zone You better believe that imposter syndrome comes Flooding back. I just did the speaking geek like last week And again, I was like, oh my god, who do I think I am getting on stage And this is you know 10 years into my career So I just give myself the grace to know It is exactly like you said it's never one and done And the perfect analogy that I love because I love Like I'm such a visual visual person That I just use the gym All right, Lisa. Well, you've got maybe a little bicep now But if you don't go to the gym If you take two years off If you don't eat well What's going to happen to your muscles They're absolutely going to atrophy Why do we not think that's going to be the same with our mindset Of course it will If you don't keep practicing your confidence If you don't keep practicing your skillsets If you think, oh, I've got this now Over time it will atrophy And so the key though is to give yourself the grace That you may find yourself in the same same somewhat situation Five years from now I don't beat myself up if I fail at business Which I do with the time It's not like I then go back and go well Lisa you should never keep going in business It was you know it was a one hit wonder No, I've got this is amazing What can I learn from this so that I can add it to my toolbox of confidence So that the next time I don't feel confident I can use the tool And so the book really does like one of my I actually wanted to write this as the last chapter And I ended up not but like the last one I just wanted like The title to be rinse and repeat And that was going to be the chapter perfect Exactly because that's how you have to apply it every single day Every single day Now okay so Speak a lot about betting on yourself Betting on yourself definitely becomes easier After you've sort of recorded some significant wins So let's let's approach this concept from somebody Who's betting on themself for the first time Ways you're said than done So contacts would be somebody starting their first business How do you have the courage to bet on yourself And you've never proven that you could Do anything like what you're trying to do So I had said that to my husband That we bet on ourselves not I bet on him When we were taking a new challenge So he was chasing money we wanted to start quest We were putting our house up for for collateral And I said I bet on us And the thing there is I'd go proof I had zero proof That actually betting on ourselves And building the company was going to work But what I did have is I believed on in myself That I can keep getting back up So I want anyone starting a new business right now Just your success isn't guaranteed Nothing is But except for actually the struggle So if you know the struggle is guaranteed As I build my business Are you moving towards something that's meaningful to you That's where the mission comes in And then know That even if you don't succeed How are you going to move forward And you get back up How do you get back up And how do you learn from those mistakes Because if you start today It may take you 10 years It may take you 20 years To be what you consider successful So knowing that How do you keep moving forward You've got to get back up That's the key So I actually have a chapter in my book Called when the beep hits the fan Where goggles I'm not sure if I can swear on this podcast So I did the new care if you want So it's when the shit hits the fan Where goggles The reason why I wrote that chapter Is we so focus on what failure means We think it means something about us We think it means that we're incompetent But actually in my understanding And my interpretation Because I just felt like failure held me back How do I see failure as the best And that can happen to me So when the shit hits the fan Stop worrying about the shit hit in the fan Because it will What are you going to do when it happens How do you get back up And so the perfect story that I love to give Is the one that hit me so hard Because as you're building a company You're going to find these issues So we're building quests It's very early days We just have about enough money To hire a couple of people to run our production So we were manufacturing ourselves So for the longest time That it was us manufacturing our own product We're in like literally rolling pins And we've got knives And we're like, you know, hand feeding The little wrapper bar with the little putt pedal So then we get enough money to hire a couple of people So we're in the offices I'm packaging all the bars I'm shipping them My husband's dealing with marketing And the guy comes in And he's manufacturing And he just looks definitely why And he's like, I'm so sorry I'm so sorry He thinks he's about to get fired And we're like, what happened He's like, I've messed up a batch of bars Now in that moment When you're building a company Every little penny matters And so the batch of bars was like $5,000 Which in that moment I was like, am I about to lose my house Because of this batch of bars And I really not have any experience Not understanding the failure Actually can help you propel you forward I go into absolute panic mode And I start like really panicking And my husband's just like, look Before we just panic Let's go and see what we've got So we walk into the production facility And the guy starts breaking down look I was going to make a peanut butter protein bars And then I was going to do the mixed berry bars And what happened was I'm making the peanut butter I put the peanut butter in The peanut butter protein I put in the sweetener And I accidentally grabbed the The flavoring from the mixed berry bar And put it in with the peanut butter And we're going to come like, oh my god This is terrible Some of my husband's like, let's just try it So we're all like holding our breath So we're holding our nose Like drawing this like weird concoction And then someone's like, ah He's like, he'd be in jail So in that moment We go How can this be the best thing that's ever happened Instead of thinking of it as a mass of failure That our company's about to break How can we use this To propel us forward So we ended up Rapping them in like plain rappers We do a blast out on Facebook Because at the time we're talking about like This is like 2012 Facebook was like on major marketing tool We do a blast out on Facebook And we're like, new bar prototype Exclusive only 200 boxes available People lost their minds The bars sold out like that And so we were like, wow That was kind of an interesting Strat marketing strategy That we didn't actually mean to do Then people get the bars And everybody's raving about them They're like, this is the best Freaking bar I've ever tasted So now you've got people talking about How amazing the bar is The knock on effect of the people That didn't get the bar Now have major phomo about it And they're like, wait, wait, wait Hang on a minute, there was a There's a PB&J bar out there How did I never try it? I want to try it So within like two weeks We designed new rappers We get it out on the market And we've lost new protein bar available PB&J And that bar became on number one Top selling bar at the time And that is how you take out of failures A disaster in your company As you're trying to move towards success And use those failures To propel you forward So that you can eventually Hopefully reach the point of success I just want to take a second And thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot Now HubSpot has an incredible podcast Network, the HubSpot podcast network My show success story is part of it But if you love great podcasts You have to listen To imperfect action Hosted by Steph Taylor She cuts to the chase She dishes out actionable strategies On online marketing Content creation Social media and more Steph is your marketing obsessed friend She's been in the trenches for years She shares what works And what doesn't So you skip that costly trial and error If you crave friendly Educational content that gets results Imperfect action is your new Favorite podcast Check out Imperfect action Wherever you get your podcasts But there's such an important lesson there So just from a psychological perspective That entire event could have sidelined An entrepreneur That wasn't in the right mindset That you could have sabotaged yourself You could have thought this company's over You could have And when you're in such a negative mindset You're not creative And you can't think of options And I really do believe it in the moment Most problems Are really not going to change the course of our life To the point where it's You can't come back from it right So I think it's just That's a little bit of experience It's a little bit of It's a little bit of being around the right people That sort of help you appreciate Whether or not the That situation is as serious as it is Because even the poor guy that made the mistake Look at his reaction versus yours right Two totally different reactions And his reaction would have not been the creative site Probably gone on Facebook tried to market it And saved a couple hundreds of thousands If not Whatever I don't even know Probably a couple thousand bucks in inventory So It is important When you're going to build something I think also Just to understand that that shit will happen It's not like a maybe It's like it will So expect it And understand this is entrepreneurship And you're going to have to deal with it Exactly Yeah That's actually why I love having These conversations about like these shit Hit the fan moments with people that You know Built these massive businesses Because Entrepreneurship is not easy It's not as sexy as a lot of people think it is And I wish people would just Hear more of these stories before they go into it So when this stuff does happen They don't You know Get massively depressed Get stressed out Make bad decisions All the stuff that Can come with entrepreneurship If you don't have that Really great support group around you Yeah Part of that also is now My evolution of changing my identity That I've spoken about before Now I just adopt the identity of the learner And person that can adapt So now imagine I've got that identity I don't It's not like I have an identity of Being the president of impact theory I am the My identity is I can adapt and learn With everything that I do So now you can put me in any environment In any situation In any type of mess Or crap that's happened in your business And as the adapter And the learner I just go in Going cool How can I adapt to this situation How can I learn from this And that's helped me just Keep going With women of impact You interview tons of incredible Successful women, entrepreneurs Just individuals So When you Re-launch Radical confidence You wrote a chapter And it was It's leave the loser Choose yourself So I'm super curious Obviously something prompted this You speak to a lot of women entrepreneurs When you look back At the story most people know about you It's like well She actually had a really Great relationship And she met Tom when she was really young And You know Where is this relationship advice coming from So maybe just walk me through From the people that you spoke Into the women entrepreneurs Maybe your own personal experience Where did this chapter come from Why was it so important enough That you Re-put out a new version of the book Just because of it Yeah In meaning just incredible women Women that I admire I think is just Crazy confident Every single woman that I talk to If they've been in a bad relationship That's the biggest thing That has then to their confidence So you can have an amazing company Successful let's say by all standards People admire you If you have a toxic relationship If you're with somebody that is constantly Putting down your dreams Your ambitions Your visions It starts to erode the person That you want to be And just like if you have that like water That drips on a rock At first it's just slow You don't think it's a big deal It's not like you think you're going to drown Where you're just like It's a little trip What is the harm of a little drip Over time You drip on someone Enough That rock actually starts to change its shape So now imagine You're a female And you're trying to build a business You're working You're really crashing at your mindset You're trying to get your mindset into a confident space And every single time you do that You go home to someone that's belittling you Someone that's purposely trying to manipulate Purpose trying to put you down A healthy relationship Can be the like the wind beneath your wings But an unhealthy relationship Can actually be a weight Around your ankle that pulls you into the deep dark ocean And so that is what I realized In here I am Really trying to empower women Really trying to help people on their path To the confidence And I didn't really acknowledge The fact that I was in a tremendous toxic relationship Before I met Tom And the truth was if I didn't get out of that I wouldn't have built a billion dollar company I wouldn't have built my show Women of impact I wouldn't have had the confidence to get in front of the camera And I definitely wouldn't have ridden my butt And so I actually thought it was I was doing a disservice to people By not addressing the power of a healthy relationship And the power of a toxic relationship And so I break down exactly what had happened How he eroded my confidence How I recognized that actually this was now a toxic dynamic What my participation was in that toxic dynamic So that I never do it again And then once I got out of that relationship The work I did on myself For an entire year before I met Tom Is exactly what allowed me To then have a relationship with my husband Have one of these, you know, for 21 years Marriage And be able to build multiple businesses with him And still have an extremely healthy relationship And when you're talking about business specifically The most successful entrepreneurs I've noticed Are the people that have the most stable home lives Because you now have the security To know that if my husband went out And he tried his hand at business And he failed I would still for a can love him And vice versa If I went out and I failed Time and time and time again Do I come home to somebody That's like it's all right, baby You've got this Keep going I believe in you Or do you come home to someone that's like I told you it will work See That type of toxicity Will literally hold you back From any success that you may dream about Because you don't believe it's possible Because they have eroded your confidence In every way So there's three things in this in this book That you discussed that massively impact women And I think that these are These are ideas and concepts And I don't want to say always problems But they're just very top of mindful women So you mentioned the one Toxic relationships The second you highlighted When you referred to as Tom's wife By some of the influencers That were I guess working with quest And then the third Was the decision whether or not to have kids So I would say that Toxic relationship Being referred to somebody As somebody's wife Maybe it's a little bit of imposter syndrome And really your accomplishments Like just are not being recognized And then figuring out what to do with family planning These are like massive Scyidal pressures So your own experience Some of the incredible women entrepreneurs Founders CEOs you speak to Maybe just some advice Some strategies on On how to in these three specific circumstances Deal with it Work through it Not let it sidetrack your career Not let it suck the happiness and life out of you Because I mean you speak to the best of the best You probably hear this a lot And these issues have come up in different ways With different people Yeah the The imposter syndrome thing Was really strong for me And I still suffered from it And that's the one thing It's still surprising to me Even though I have the imposter syndrome The other Amazing successor women have imposter syndrome It's always like becoming universal So now again I don't be myself up over I give myself the grace But how do I handle it Do I allow Imposter syndrome to hold to me bad Or does it actually encourage me to move forward So there's a couple of things that I'll do Number one is I'm always the learner So if I'm walking to a room Where I feel like I'm an imposter I don't deserve to be here Because there's so many amazing women Instead of saying you're an imposter Say oh this is the room where you get to learn Lisa And I understanding and thinking that I get to learn Allows me to reduce my insecurities Walk in there with more of like a north star if you will And then it doesn't make me feel insecure To talk to these people That I don't think I have the right quote and quote to talk to Because I'm like oh I'm the learner They can teach me something Oh my god You know I haven't you don't you don't say it You reframe it No exactly Perfect way of saying it I do not fight it Um Now when I have that voice in my head That is telling me that I'm no good That I don't deserve it One of the things I do there Is I start to listen to her Why is she saying that So why do you think that I'm going to be terrible in front of the camera You know who do you think you are You're not Oprah Winfrey You're not this person Okay, why do you think I'm going to be bad at it Like just ask the question And my inner critic starts telling me A lot of laundry list Of why they think I'm going to be terrible About getting in front of the camera Well Lisa, your bullied is a kid So now you're just giving someone else an opportunity to bully you You don't know um What you're going to say You don't know your talking points If it's me doing an interview You don't know how to start an interview Me Lisa Okay, so I start writing down Everything that this critic in my head is telling me And then what I say is How do I learn from this So if she says to me Lisa, you're terrible in front of the camera Go cool How do I get good And that now propels me forward How do I get good I keep practicing So now the negative, the critic Has actually now become my coach And so that negative voice I think held so many of us women back I've just reframed the idea I listened to her now instead of trying to block her out And I use it to propel me forward Time and time again And it just got to the point where Too many times I thought I was an imposter And it ended up being an amazing thing That I thought I was an imposter So let me give you an example Someone do you know who Maria Manoonos is Yeah Okay, so Maria Manoonos is amazing I admired her when I was growing up I'm quick orthodox, she's weak She got to be on the red carpet She lives in America So that just growing up I was like I want Maria Manoonos's job And over time as I start to build my own show I hear that she's now on the circuit And she's doing her own podcast And she's doing interviews So part of me is like Oh my god This is my chance to ask Maria And then I was like At least who do you think you are reaching out to Maria She's so busy Right like Or that imposter like You can't ask her You're gonna get a no And so that imposter syndrome led me into predicting What the outcome was going to be The fact that I predicted She would say no will stop her me from asking But now going into the critic The coach I thought Okay, Lisa You don't want to ask her Because you're worried about a no But how do you propel that forward If she says no What are you gonna learn from it And so that's exactly what I did I reached out And she said no Scott So in the moment As she says no I go Well how can I learn from this Okay Step number one Is don't make excuses For the reason she said no Just to suit your ego And what that meant was It was very easy For me to slip into She doesn't know what she's missing Right number one Or well I don't really want her on any way This resonates so much with me Don't they're really Of course Of course I mean when you When you build anything like this You're always You're always trying to get To the next level of guest Right You're trying to get to the next level of person Or even when you're building a business You're like How do I get in touch with the CEO of that company Why aren't they responding to my emails Like it's just a very It's very real When you're when you're ambitious And you're building And you're constantly trying to sort of like Get to the next thing And the next level The next person The next You know Slightly more famous guest Yeah Yeah of course This is what's in my life So you know exactly what I'm reading So the ice you're reaching out Was already nerve-wracking And then you reach out And you get a no So that kind of Emotion soothing moment Where you're like Well it's They don't know what they're missing blah blah blah I get why we do that But it doesn't propel you forward I'm so so go oriented That I go Does this save me yes or no Does this move me towards my goal Or away from my goal If it moves me towards Keep doing it If it moves me away Stop it So I realized And me dismissing This feedback Is not moving me towards my goal So I said Okay Lisa Remove all the excuses Let me actually process it Do I think If Oprah Winfrey reached out To Maria Manoonos Because also the other thing Sorry to just say Is we let oh it's not about me Maybe it's about you And I needed to take off those Blinders so I could learn the lesson So I basically said If Oprah Winfrey reached out to her Do I think she would have said yes Really sure she would have found a time So for me to say it's not about me Is actually false It absolutely is about me Why maybe I'm not good enough yet Maybe I'm not big enough yet Maybe I don't have enough followers Been in the blank But the truth is it is about me And instead of taking that to heart Instead of me Going off and licking my wounds And saying I can't believe it It's like cool Word I love this Now what I'm going to do I'm going to spend the next year Refining my skill set So I can get so damn good Maria can't ignore me And so I went away And I kept waxing on And waxing off Keep being better today Than you were yesterday In cremental steps And so it got to the point Where a year later She actually then asked me And my husband to go on her show And so now I'm on her show I'm like cool Lisa you've been practicing For the last year You're going to be so damn good That when you're on her show She's going to want to come on yours And so now when people say La Think it was Oprah that said Actually luck is when Opportunity meets preparation I had spent that last year Preparing So when the opportunity arose I go on her podcast with my husband I smash it out of the park Then we reach out to her And we ask if she can come on my podcast And she said yes Funny how that works right? Absolutely Here's the plot twist though Scott When I was hanging out with her So we end up like meeting We got to be friends And so one night she's at my house And I'm like all right She probably doesn't know Or remember that she said no to me I'm just going to tell her So I'm just like Do you know that actually you said no to me Like a couple of years before Or a year before that I finally made She's like no No I didn't Lisa's like I'm telling you You said no So she's like Where was it So we start going through the day Of when it was And it turned out That it was the same month So I reach out to ask her to come on my podcast It was the same month She just found out Her mom had a stage 4 Terminal brain panzer And a week before that She had to put She found herself Had to brain tumor So she turned around to her team And said If anyone reaches out I'm not doing any press I'm just going to focus on my health So here I am Reach now that month Now the reason why I love that story Is being the ending so much Is what if I didn't use that No to propel me forward Yeah I made up a story in my head About me not being good enough Which still propelled me forward But what if I'd listen to that What if I listen to omari Doesn't think I'm any good So I shouldn't try I've made up an entire story in my head So how many times do we make up a story in our head Of why we get a no Or why we failed And it doesn't actually help So that became almost just like the final staple In my confidence tool belt Or someone says no Don't make it about me Use it to propel me forward In any way I possibly can And just reframe Retail myself a different story That is going to keep me moving forward But I don't actually know the truth I love this Thank you Thank you That's amazing I know that I know that We covered a lot about the book We covered a lot about You know really Just everything that you've put in Since the first This is the first version of it The last thing I just really wanted to pull out Which I think is very important Because it's something that you Struggled with Thought about Ruminated on I just mentioned it It was the fact that You chose not to have children And this is something that I think Just massively Impacts women And their career trajectory And their ability To build something from scratch Should I have kids Should I not How much time I'm going to have to take off Whatever it is I think we should end with that Lesson or that thought Because I think that would probably be The one thing that As a woman listening to this It's almost a universal societal pressure That they have to deal with at some point Whether or not they have kids or they don't Yeah I didn't even question Whether I thought I was going to have kids or not Because going back to Why I thought I believed in God It was the same thing Like I was told I was going to get married And have kids And so I just assumed It never dawned on me I could actually question it And so in building quests And being thrust into this Crazy fast start up I started to finally feel good about myself I started to build my own confidence Day after day after day And that's when I started to get in To with what I wanted And that's where I started to ask questions Everything about my life and my assumptions And so Kids became a big staple in that And so asking myself Anonymous You said that you want four kids Do you actually want children Like actually allow yourself to ask the question And I didn't have to tell anybody else This was just my internal dialogue That I needed to work through first of all And so the question was Is I actually really wanted kids But I also really wanted to be an entrepreneur And I loved business So I Realistically just took off all my blinds And says what does life look like In multiple options With my multiple options I have ahead of me Number one I can quit Quest and I can go and get pregnant And be a stay at home wife What does an average Wednesday look like In my life if I was to do that And the reason why I say an average Wednesday Is I think so many of us can get Up in an idea An idea of I want to be an entrepreneur Because oh my god The idea of being able to Build my own world And then help people And help my family And give my mom The house she's always dreamed about You can get Alled up in that vision Of what the end goal will look like But the truth is That isn't what life is like Every single day Every single day you're in the mess So I like to paint a pictures On an average Wednesday So what does an average Wednesday look like If I leave quest And I'm a full-time stay at home wife What does my life look like If I decide to do both Because the reality is Someone incredible that I admire so much Is Sarah Blakely She was able to do both She actually has four children She's married to a crazy entrepreneur And she has around billion dollar business So I look at her and go I know it's possible But do I want to Is that an alignment With how I want to live my life On an average Wednesday And the truth is no My personality is I have to go All in I want to freaking rush it In anything that I set my mind to And so for me Zero judgment is I didn't want to juggle into both Then there was the other bucket of I could decide not to have children And go all in on business Okay what does that look like What does an average Wednesday look like there Once I just looked at all of my buckets I just decided The one without kids is the one that fed My vision of what I want in life And how I love to live my life Every single day But that doesn't mean I didn't have to mourn The idea of being a mother I did And that was the last important piece Is I didn't want to pretend No no no I freaking love it in business And screw kids That wasn't true The truth was Is that I wanted children But I just wanted to be in business more So I had to grieve The mother I thought I was going to be And that men Haven't to grieve the idea That I won't be pregnant And she'll baby Growing inside me That was something I was really excited about I also had to grieve the idea That I wasn't going to have a little time running about Which I love the idea of it Have a little girl That I could empower All of these things I had to grieve And then I had to process What if I change my mind Again what I'm doing here I'm breaking it down for you I'm just taking off those blinders And I'm saying all of these are possibilities And realities So how do I make sure I continuously move towards my goals The thing that falls me up On my path to a mission Without judging myself And without regret And so How I then No, no, no, I was going to say I say you give yourself agency To constantly evolve No one has to be stuck With the version of themselves Even they were last week I think it's so powerful Outside the context of Having children, motherhood, whatever Amazing And like anything you do in life There's going to be a trade-off So in fact My husband asked me yesterday On his show Blatantly the first question is What do you think most women should do And I was like I don't think women should do anything But the truth is Biology make sure that we procreate So I think fundamentally Most women Won't feel complete unless they have children Now I'm saying that as a woman That decides not to have children But I don't hush away my biology I accept it And so I accept the fact That I'm going to form moments of Broodiness where I want a child I'm going to accept the fact That they're going to be moments Maybe when I get older That I'm going to regret not having children If that's true What am I going to do about it? I won't beat myself up For having made that choice Because I've done it with my blinders off I know what that looks Makes my future look like And the truth is Is that over time I've realized What I really love Is the feeling of nurturing And I don't need to have my own children In order to nurture And so that's where it became I have other options But I never want to regret Giving my life over To something that doesn't Actually fulfill me up In the now And so that is why I ended up deciding Not to have children I spoke to my husband We had a very lengthy lengthy conversation about it But no matter what you decide Whether you decide to have kids And be in business Whether you decide to not have kids Whether you decide to be the stay at her wife And you actually don't want the business You know There's a trade-off at everything There's a trade-off of your own a relationship And your married to an entrepreneur And the trade-off is Is that I Personally, I love The fact that Tom's ambitious I find it attractive And I find it a turn on But I don't love That I don't get to see him Monday to Friday Except for business But that's the trade-off Of being married to someone That's an entrepreneur that's ambitious I recognize the trade-off I do it with my eyes wide open And then I move I love it Okay Where do you want people to go Connect with you I mean, book is everywhere You get books, Amazon I'm sure Any story you can go buy books What's a social? What's a website? I mean, impact theory Impact theory for women Or women of impact On YouTube Anything else We'll drop it on the show notes But let me know Yeah, Lisa Billy on Instagram I am very much In my IG stories I show literally on a day to day The things that I struggle with I've got massive health issues Problems in my marriage Problems in my business I just give like a real life account of it Because I never want someone to think That problems go away And I'm just a realist And it's like I think the truth is more empowering To tell people what Actually, you know No BS, this is what it takes So my IG story is at least a billion And then I, yeah My podcast women of impact is on YouTube And if you're listening to audio That's where I pour my heart and soul into it Because I feel like It's a place where women can really express Their vulnerabilities And I just empower them though To keep going And so I try to I liken it to like I like to light a fire under someone's ass And so that's really what my show is