Health
Lisa Bilyeu: Why People Are Trapped in Lives They Hate
In this episode, Lisa Bilyeu shares her journey from insecurity to resilience, revealing how her past experiences shaped her drive to succeed and the lessons learned along the way. She discusses the i...
Lisa Bilyeu: Why People Are Trapped in Lives They Hate
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Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
I said that being a good girl.
Speaker B
Held you back, because I'd been taught my whole life that you strive to be a good girl. I was bullied for my looks. I must have been maybe 10 years old. And a guy patted me on the head and said, little girls don't speak until spoken to. For me, when I was getting in front of the camera, I literally didn't want to do a podcast. Ken. I said to my husband, I was like, I just want to do audio. And he looked at me and he's like, but I thought you said you wanted to help women. I had to ask myself, what was more my mission or my ego?
Speaker A
Wow. Lisa B. Helped build Quest Nutrition into a billion dollar empire. But her story isn't just about business. It's about courage, reinvention, and the fight to live a life that's bigger than anyone else's expectations.
Speaker B
I realized that my ability to get back up was my superpower. In essence, when you're in business, you lit. It literally feels like you're taking punches to the face. And every day you ask yourself, is the blood and the bleeding worth it? Yes, it is. If.
Speaker A
Lysa, if you were going to pick just one word, and I know this is not really fair, but it's fun. If you're gonna pick just one word to describe you as a professional, what word would you choose?
Speaker B
Resilient. Is that kind of. Yeah. I wasn't sure what you were looking.
Speaker A
For, but resilient, there's no right or wrong answer. It's a fun way to get to know somebody. And you, you know, you've. You've got a body of work, and when you think about yourself, okay, I am this resilient. You know, that's who I am. And I find that to be interesting. Where do you think that came from? Why did that word pop immediately to the top of your mind?
Speaker B
I think because people may look at my story or look at my past and think, well, you have the confidence to execute on that. And the truth is, I didn't have any confidence. I was completely insecure. And so my resilience actually came from utter insecurity, because I realized that my insecurity was holding me back time and time again. And every time I would stop at a roadblock, it was purely because it was easier to self soothe and not try than to try and fail. And when I realized it was holding me back from life, from my goals, from my dreams, I realized that that didn't serve me. So instead of thinking about my emotions and how I would feel if I actually fell, I actually said, well, what could it look like if I prided myself on growth, if I prided myself on being one day than I was yesterday? And so in that focus of what can I do today, just today, to be one incremental step better, it started to build resilience. Where then I didn't actually. It's not. I didn't care. But every time I would fall to my knees, metaphorically and physically, I realized that my ability to get back up was my superpower in essence. And instead of facing why did I fall on the floor, I look at how can I get back up? And it's the resilience that has allowed me to take. I love metaphors. So take punches to the face. When you're in business, you. It literally feels like you're taking punches to the face. And every day you ask yourself, is the blood and the bleeding worth it? And so for me, over time I started to realize, yes, it is. If you can find a place where you can feel good about yourself and proud of yourself every time you fall. So the word resilience really has been an echo of my past. But now here's the. If I can play devil's advocate for a second, my resilience has also been my downfall. And what I mean by that is I became so resilient in I can do anything that I started to ignore my body. I started to ignore the signs that I was getting. I was just breaking physically and I just pushed myself and I ignored myself over and over again. And 10 years down the line, when you're building quests and you're growing at 57,000% and your body is screaming, you have to slow down, you have to take a break. The resilience allowed me not to listen to it. And so what ended up happening, which is the mess that becomes a story of, I think of anyone's success, is the truth is I don't think I would have been successful if I wasn't as resilient. But yet that led to the downfall of the crash and burn that was my health. And so about 15 years ago, I just one day took a swig of champagne because we were celebrating, actually selling Quest, and my gut just completely fell apart. And the only way I can explain it is for almost a year, I couldn't eat any. Anything. I was 20 pounds lighter than I am now. And I can go on with the story, but, like, that is just a very quick glimpse into how something you can be proud of can actually also Be your kryptonite. And that has been kind of the evolution I've been working through. And even in me saying resilience has made me realize I haven't quite gotten to the other side of it yet. And that's actually where I'm trying to get to.
Speaker A
Okay, I'm actually so glad because I wanted to talk about confidence and then you we've just jumped into so much. So I'm going to go right back in and we're going to dig a little bit from what you just shared, because I think it's a perfect setup. I want to stay where we just left off, and then we'll dive back into the confidence piece in your story. How are you taking what has now developed into a superpower of resilience and how are you now making sure? Because you had a physical crash. So I love that you shared transparently that I'm still trying to figure that out. So I think it'd be great for us to hear. What are you doing tactically? How are you aware of. Okay, I'm so mentally tough that I've got to be careful to actually be aware enough that I'm not taking care of me. How do you now regulate. And that may not be the best word, but you see where I'm going. I think we can learn from you.
Speaker B
Yeah, I think regulate is actually the perfect word. And I think it's all starts with doing the foundation work of no bs. Who are you really like? Actually, fundamentally, I think we try to pretend like I'm the type of person, but who are you really? Once I started to realize that I became resilient out of insecurity, and I realized that became detrimental to my health, I started to understand where that led. So I said, okay, instead of beating yourself up pretending it doesn't exist, just be honest. Lisa, you're insecure and you show up thinking that you have to put in 14, 18 hours a day in order to make sure that you feel good about yourself. That's step number one. That becomes a problem. How else can I feel good about myself when I'm not putting in 14 hours? So I just start from there. It's like, what are the things I can do today that I can be proud of myself that aren't tied to how many hours I put into work? Okay, I can be proud that I handled this meeting that was very difficult. I actually handled it really well. I empowered the team and they still moved forward. Okay, I can feel good about that. So it's somewhat unwirring. Who you are and how you show up every day. The other thing is, it's incremental steps every single day of being in tune with your body. When we were building quest because we were growing so quickly, I didn't pause, I didn't pause, I didn't give myself time to actually say, hey, this sign that your body's saying you're tired, what does that actually mean? So because I have that drive and that passion and I can move a thousand miles an hour, I go, okay, this is who you naturally are, but this is who you're trying to become. What are the things I need to unwire? What are the habits I need to change? And what does that actually look like? I'm very tactical. I don't like kind of staying in my emotions. So what I mean is, every single morning now, I now spend 30 minutes being present. Ken, you couldn't have told me to do that when we were building quests? I would have thought that was really woo woo, quote unquote. And so who's got time for that, right? Like it was just grind, grind, grind. But now I go, look, all I'm asking of you, Lisa, is to take 30 minutes every morning and assess how you're feeling. The second step is what I need based on that feeling. So literally today I could pull up my phone and show you. This morning I literally text my husband and I said, said, hey babe, I need more cuddles today.
Speaker A
Wow. So I was the question that revealed that I, I would love for you, if you're comfortable, to share some of the questions you asked yourself this morning that yielded that answer.
Speaker B
Okay. So it was with no judgment, giving yourself total grace to be a total mess. And what I mean by that is I woke up this morning, I'm 46 years old, so just, I'm going through perimenopause. So for instance, this morning I spent 30 minutes and I was like, I feel irritable. Like, I feel like I'm just. All the things that happened yesterday that I was able to emotionally self soothe over. I woke up this morning and they were, they were really bothering me. Okay, well, hang on. I just woke up. If something's bothering me, what's the chemicals in my body that I woke up so irritated. Let me just note that down. I'm irritable. Not sure why. I'm not going to judge myself. I'm not going to say you shouldn't. I'm just going to say you're irritable. Next thing is, I'm really tired. So I was like, why am I tired? So I take full ownership. I have an aura ring. I have a glucose monitor on because I have to figure out how I can get eight or nine hours sleep and still wake up tired. I have to take that ownership in understanding myself. I can't look outwards. I can't look to a doctor. I can't listen to a podcast and work through. I have to actually self assess. That meant I had to take ownership, which meant I started to somewhat biohack myself and say, hang on a minute. If I'm getting eight and a half hours sleep, like my aura ring says, I shouldn't be waking up exhausted. What is happening to my body? I realized my glucose was plummeting in the middle of the night. Okay, well, maybe me waking up tired is an echo of me not having a very smooth night's sleep. What has to be true for me to get a smooth night's sleep? Okay, maybe I have to eat sweet potatoes before I go to bed. It now creates an action. So I do the self assessment. Yes, the analysis and then the action step that needs to be taken. So going back to your question about this morning, when I realized I was just irritable, I knew as soon as I saw my husband, I was going to probably say something that was going to be irritable. And who wants to have that type of relationship with your partner where they're always waking up in a bad mood? I don't. So it's my job to make sure that I am self soothing, looking at myself and showing up the best way I can be. So I don't want to wake up and just snap at my husband. So I assessed you're irritable. What's the antidote to irritability? It is someone being really sweet and caring about you. At least for me, yes. It is being received with warmth, with no judgment, and with just arms wide open in the sense of however you are today, baby, I got you. So I realized I needed the antidote. And the antidote I realized in that moment was to ask my husband for more cuddles. Now, I don't ask him that often, and I don't necessarily. Sometimes it's not cuddles. Sometimes it's like, hey, I need 30 minutes and I need you to counsel me on this problem. But in that moment, it was emotional. And so that was the last part of my assessment and that this is the action. And literally just before I came on this podcast, I grabbed my glass of water and as I was grabbing my glass of water. My husband came up behind me and he just hugged me as I was pouring my water. So yeah, that's kind of just a bit of an assessment of how I really look at myself every single day.
Speaker A
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Speaker B
The sale of the company was a billion dollars.
Speaker A
A billion dollars.
Speaker B
As you know, it's never a billion dollars in your pocket when you're in California and you got invest a few investors.
Speaker A
But that is correct. How does a massive financial windfall change you?
Speaker B
Okay, this is one of the biggest things I'm very grateful for. You know, I told you about my gut issues and I wasn't able to stand up for five minutes at a time. I mean, I couldn't eat for over a year. I'm still struggling with it. Now, you know that happened on the day we sold Quest and we're celebrating. So you can imagine we're building Quest and it's rough. I'm in a hair net. People are like, you studied film. What the hell are you doing with this protein bar company with a hair net on? So you can imagine on Easter Sunday, I'm measuring freaking product. I was like, this isn't what I thought my life was going to be like. So me and my husband would take drives around Beverly Hills and dream when your bank account changes. So we have these Rumors, right, that we're about to sell this company. My husband does all this thing because he was the one behind it all and he's like, babe, I think we sold it. Now, as you probably know, Ken, there's a big difference between saying you sold it, someone signing a paper and the money hitting your account. So. So for us, it was like, okay, we built this company. My mum lost £120. I mean, like, it was like the dream come true. It was just beautiful. Everything we had planned was coming into fruition, but it was because we had the passion and the drive. And Tom has his phone out and we're working out in our gym in our garage at the time, and he's just pressing refresh, Refresh.
Speaker A
Yes. Waiting for it to hit refresh.
Speaker B
Waiting for your, like tiny, like three digits to turn into a lot of digits. So it's refresh, refresh, refresh. Eventually refresh. And our lives change forever, like you said. Now what do we do? I took a selfie, so I still have that selfie now of us smiling like, oh, my God, I can't believe this happened. So we took the selfie and then you know what we did after that, Ken? We got up, we got changed, and we went back to work. I didn't tell. I told my mum, I told my dad and that was it. Why? Because we cared about what we were doing. We actually cared about helping people. So when we had decided to quit chasing money after the eight years and we said, we need to do something we actually care about, okay, let's do this protein bar company because we really care about saving our mum's lives. Like, if we didn't do this, we would tell ourselves if we didn't do this protein bar, our mothers would die early. And so that every day, you better believe getting up every day. So my mom went from borderline anorexic to morbidly obese. And I was like, if I don't do something, she's going to die early. So every day, every day it isn't. Obviously it was fun with the houses and we were doing the tour, but ultimately the thing that actually pushed me to learn the skills to get over my insecurity, to help build the company, to get to where it was, was all because I wanted to save my mum. So now my, my, my bank account changes, that didn't change that idea. And that feeling of why we started questing in the first place didn't change. And because we so embedded our identity and we are building this company to see Save lives. The money hit. Our town was amazing. But then we just went back to work. So no one knew the the employees. No one knew that our lives had just changed. We didn't go buy a different car. My husband asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate. And I said two things. I want to go to Cartier because, yes, I do wear jewelry. It feels right.
Speaker A
It feels right.
Speaker B
Yeah, it does. And then number two, I want to eat at the Cheesecake Factory because I love their food. And he's like, babe, you can eat anywhere you want to go to the Cheesecake. I was like, yeah, I love their food. Why would I want to go anywhere else?
Speaker A
If I don't ask this question, I should be fired from my own show. What is your go to cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory?
Speaker B
When I could eat. Unfortunately, I can't eat them anymore. But when I get cake, I figured Adam's peanut butter Fudge cup ripple.
Speaker A
I knew I liked you for some reason.
Speaker B
Is that yours?
Speaker A
I am anything. Peanut butter. Literally anything. Peanut butter.
Speaker B
Anything.
Speaker A
Reese's Cup. I'm in. I mean, I just can't resist it. Wow.
Speaker B
So. And then, so, so from that day, we then bought the house, and then my gut erupted. So that was kind of the two things that made me realize, like, look, money's fantastic. I don't want to pretend I get to go shopping and enjoying myself, but I put zero value in it. I mean, our house almost burnt down because of the LA fires, and I don't know if you know, but houses in LA can't get insurance, so you're only like 50 insured. So my house is about to burn down, and I'm like, oh, what are we gonna do? Like, as long as I've got my wedding album, as long as I've got my puppies, and as long as I got my artwork, like, it is what it. So that's just now how I live my life. And it has been such a 180 from when I was younger because I thought money would give me the validation I would. I really wanted. And then the last piece is. I think you look many people. I used to look at either famous people or wealthy people. I would admire them so much that I thought if I was. That I would feel the admiration from other people and then I would feel good about myself. But. But the truth is, is that it's still you. No matter where you go in life, it's still you. So if you're not working every day to feel good about yourself, like, when you Go to bed at night. What is your mindset telling you? Are you proud of yourself or are you being yourself up? That's what matters to me at least. And that is what I have focused on ever since I started on this journey of growth, and it has led me where I am now.
Speaker A
I want to go back. You've mentioned multiple times about insecurity. We see this pop up online. It's such a hot button phrase, imposter syndrome, which is just good old fashion. Doubt if you are comfortable sharing. I just know that that narrative that you've shared a little bit with us started somewhere in the past, if you'd be willing. What was the seed of that insecurity that you fought for so long?
Speaker B
If I had to look back, it was. I was young, bullied, teased for my looks. I wore a head brace. Now, kids don't have to wear these, but. But I am a bit old, so I had the head brace that went all the way around the head.
Speaker A
I remember those.
Speaker B
You remember those, right? I had. I had the unibrow. So, look, growing up, I was bullied for my looks. I'm also mildly dyslexic, and my older brother and sister are whip it smart at math. I'm a creative, so you give me something to draw, I will draw it like, you know, like nobody's business. I. I can literally draw something that looks like a photocopy. But my favorite. But my family, no one appreciated it back then. It was like, who cares about the arts? There's no money in arts. So the thing I was good at was getting dismissed. The thing I was bad at was getting very highlighted within my family dynamic. And then the last thing is I was brought up Greek Orthodox. So even though my dad really wanted me to get an education and maybe become a lawyer, it was the pattern of get an education up until you find a man to get married. Then you leave your work or your education, and then you have kids. So growing up, I was very much told as a woman, as Greek Orthodox, my goal was to become a great housewife. And that was my goal. And now when you think about it, it's little subliminal messages that you get over time. So my grandmother, for instance, I remember it to this day, I must have been, like 8 years old, and I'm running in the street, and I fall and I scrape my leg. My grandmother comes over in a very thick Greek accent and says, oh, don't worry, you're gonna be okay by the time you get married. Now, the message I just kept Getting was marriage was the end of the life. That was the pinnacle. It's okay. You're gonna be better by the time you get married. Don't worry. So when I think about, over time having insecurity where I was bullied for my look, so I didn't have any, you know, self esteem over there. I didn't have any self esteem over my creativity because that wasn't appreciated. And then I was told that my value was only gonna be tied to another man. So you can understand, as I started to get older, I was just seeking and searching for somebody to give me the validation I. I really wanted. Now in my growth and my aging, I finally realized you have to validate yourself. And that became the wor. Like the eye opening thing for me, where then I started to go down a path of what does validating yourself actually look like? And again, going back to action steps. What do I have to do every single day so that over time I can then have the ability to value myself? So that really became the realization that you don't value yourself. The realization of where it stems from and where it comes from, and then the belief that you can absolutely change the way you see yourself if you're willing to do the hard work. Yeah.
Speaker A
Oh, that's a masterclass that you could develop a keynote on just that, on how to develop confidence. In fact, I'll put you on the spot. If you were taking that story and your story and you were going to deliver a keynote on something tactical to build confidence. I know you can handle this. Give us a couple of quick bursts so people can go, okay, I'm taking notes. Lisa said I need to do this to build confidence. What's the answer?
Speaker B
All right, amazing. Number one is realizing confidence is the byproduct of taking action. It's not the other way around. So confidence comes from competence. So when you look at what you want to get get confident at, because it is something specific. What do you want to get confident at? I want to get confident to step in front of the camera. Okay. Now you know you have to step in front of the camera over and over and over and over and over again in order to build the competence so that you can feel good about yourself and have the confidence. Great. Now you know your goal. So set a goal. What are you trying to get confident at? Then write out the steps in order for you to take to get there. So let's say people just like, oh, it's easy for you to say, no, no, I petrified to get in front of the camera. So who you see today is literally wax on, wax off, Karate Kid over and over again for five years now. What did that actually look like? Write out an actual game plan that you can stick to on the daily. So number one would be, let's say it's taken stepping in front of the camera. Number one, it's, you just have to press record. You don't have to post it, you don't have to do anything with it. You just have to press record. Record. Okay, now maybe press record 10 times, press record a hundred times, write it out, how many times you're going to record something without ever posting it, and just practice on a specific skill on that recording. So for instance, for me, when I was getting in front of the camera, I literally didn't want to do a podcast. Ken. I said to my husband, I was like, I just want to do audio. And he's like, why would you do audio? We have an entire studio here because he had his show at the time. So he's like, we have the whole studio. We've got producers, directors, editors. We've got six cameras set up. And you want to do a podcast on Zoom with your friends. And I said yes. And he looked at me and he's like, but I thought you said you wanted to help women. In that moment, Ken, I had to ask myself, what was more important, my mission or my ego? So now, going back to the keynote, what am I going to tell people? Is you ask yourself the goal, what are you trying to get to? And without filter, you have to ask yourself what's more important, your mission or your ego? Because my mission was to help women, My ego is getting in the way of me getting in front of a camera to spread my message. So you can see it very was black and white. I am not getting in front of the camera because I don't feel good about myself. That's fine. Like, I don't force people to make a decision. If your ego is more important to you than your mission, you should admit it. And now you can have a happy life. But just like with me, it didn't sit well. I couldn't feel good about myself when I would go to bed at night knowing that I put myself this ego in front of helping another woman. So once I realized that, you can imagine pressing record on that camera wasn't an option for me. It was like I made a decision. I knew what I had to get to, so pressing record wasn't an option. But I was a mess. I mumbled I didn't know how to start an interview. I didn't know how to end an interview. So what's the next step? Once you take that first step of trying something and you're bad and you fail, self assess without blinders. So I said, lisa, you don't know how to start an interview. Great. How should I start an interview? It made me the student. So I went from trying to impress people, trying to feel like I was great, and, you know, not sure if I should put my ego or like, actually put it out there for other people. I just found motivation and encouragement in saying, you were terrible today, Lisa. Like, I actually felt good saying, you're terrible today, but you know what? Tomorrow you can get better. And if you do that enough, like I said, wax on, wax off, you end up getting good. So I kind of went all over the place a little there, but the goal let me just be a little more succinct and find, like, kind of wrapping that all together. Number one is identifying the goal that you want confidence in. Number two is the steps you need to do to get there. Number three, have absolute transparent assessment of where you really are. Don't BS yourself. And then over time, start to refine that skill so that you can get better and better. And it may take you a year, it may take you five years, it may take you 10 years. But if you are so tied to that idea of what you're trying to get to the goal, that the goal ends up not really mattering, to be honest, it's really the path that I can be proud of myself that I said last year I didn't have the confidence to do X, Y and Z. And here I am today doing it.
Speaker A
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Speaker B
Yeah, Such a great question. Because I think it was really hard for me to say I didn't want to be a good girl because I'd been taught my whole life that you strive to be a good girl. So I remember, I mean, again, I must have been maybe 10 years old and a guy patted me on the head and said, little girls don't speak until spoken to. Oh, yeah, he actually said that.
Speaker A
What a horrible thing to lay on a child, much less a girl.
Speaker B
Now imagine, what's that saying? You shouldn't speak up. Your voice, your thoughts don't matter. But that is what being a good girl meant. You be quiet, you say yes. And so over time, I started to realize being that person actually was a thing holding me back from my dreams, my desires, and my vision of what my life should look like. And so I didn't want to say no to my husband when we were talking about me being a stay at home wife. So I ended up being a stay at home wife for eight years. I wanted to be a good girl. I don't want to tell my husband that I was unhappy. I didn't want to seem ungrateful because here I was, a stay at home wife. I didn't have to work. My husband was going out working every day, and I'm going to be ungrateful and tell him I want more. That's the good girl in you. That's the good girl that doesn't speak up, doesn't voice what they actually want. Now, the most amazing thing is once I finally did speak up, it was the catalyst and the complete change to my whole life. But we so want to be respected. We want to be liked. It's in our nature. I very much believe in evolution. And so the whole point is that us women were that were meant to be in A village while the men were going out and hunting. And so a woman, part of her role was to make peace with the group because you didn't want to be isolated, you didn't want to be pushed out because you would end up being eaten by, you know, saber tooth tiger. So as a woman, it is embedded in us. So I do the difference between, okay, this isn't something that as a woman, I should stop doing because I want to be a kind person, I want to be nurturing, I want to be a lovely human being, but I don't want to be a nice girl in detriment to my self esteem and how I show up every day. So understanding where it comes from, from a. From an evolution standpoint is very helpful. Number two, understanding where it came from for me. So identifying the guy patting me on the head and etc. Understanding what that results into. Eight years profoundly unhappy, where you don't feel like you could tell your husband that you're unhappy. Once I realized all of that, I then finally realized this isn't working for me. And so the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So I started to realize, lisa, this is on you. This doesn't mean go out and be cruel to people. This doesn't mean that you have to be mean or that you have to do the opposite. But it does mean that I have to start looking at my behavior and being honest about where it's led me and in the same time, be then honest about what behavior I need to change and what I need to do in order to have a different life. And so that became. Became, you know what? I have to set boundaries. I never set boundaries before because I wanted to be nice. Okay, what boundaries are you going to set? How do you set them? How do you do it with respect? So I go, cool. Right now I'm in the season of learning boundaries. And so I go deep. I'll do a month of diving into podcasts and books and getting guests on my show to talk about boundaries. Then I'll practice the boundary. Then I'll get good at the boundary, then I'll move on to the next skill. So then the next skill, right, being the nice girl is the ability to say, well, I guess saying no is somewhat of a boundary, but it's about not getting pushed around, having, let's say, the education to be able to articulate your position without getting emotional. That was very important to me because I didn't want to be the person that was just lashing out and Being emotional over something. So I realized, okay, me being the nice girl was almost just shutting down my emotion. It wasn't allowing my emotion to vent. That isn't good. How do I allow my emotion out without being triggered? Okay, that means I have to do work on triggers. Let me spend the next month doing work on triggers. Then I have to do another month of looking into conversations. How do I talk to somebody without getting triggered? So I'm reading books, I'm, you know, listening to podcasts, and I'm practicing, practicing, practicing. I never expect perfection from myself. I just say life is a game of incremental growth and improvement. So what am I working on right now? What am I working to improve? And so the whole nice girl thing really was over a year of just really, like pulling car. All the little habits and things that I would do that I realized were actually being detrimental. Now if anyone's listening and they don't even realize what behaviors they do, I would just say spend the next month doing an inventory list. That's it. So every day, write out something that you did that didn't actually feel right or that you did for somebody else and start to take inventory. Because every so often, I think we. Again, I've said this quite a few times in this interview. We have blinders on. We don't want to, like, trigger ourselves or we don't want to make ourselves feel badly so we don't actually look at the thing. But just write out every day with no judgment. In fact, say, I love myself so much that I'm willing to do the hard work. And so once you do that, you definitely start to notice a pattern of how you show up every day in someone else's life. And so then it's okay, I show up like this. I need to change this. How do I change it? Learn it, move on.
Speaker A
Yeah, just real time observations to our audience. You can't love yourself like you just said, until you know yourself. You really got to know yourself before you love yourself. That's why I'm always talking about, you know, self awareness is a superpower, and you've just illustrated that so beautifully. Beyond hosting this show, I co host the Ramsey show, formerly the Dave Ramsey Show. Massive show, you know, And I remember we took a call one day and it was a stay at home mom. And you did that for eight years. You weren't a mother, but stay at home wife. And she was wrestling with this mom guilt around. I love being a mom. I run the house. I'm the CEO of the house. But I have a degree and we're trying to pay off debt and I feel guilt because I know I could go work, work and make more money and thus speed up the process. And that was the gist of the call. And I remember saying to her, hey, no shame in your game. Like if that's what you're really called to do and that's your jam, it's the greatest job in the world. So don't look down on yourself. Don't, you know, whatever. And so I'm reading the comments. Well, there was such an unbelievable amount of tension in the comment section, Lisa, of stay at home women going, yeah, and I always feel this and I feel this and people guilt us and blah, blah, blah. And then I saw a few comments of people who are working moms ago. Yeah, but some of us have to work and, you know, we don't have that freedom. And we saw some tension develop. Now why is there so much tension on both sides of the aisle?
Speaker B
I think because somebody else's actions are a reflection of you, you or you start to see your own actions in somebody else. So there are people, let's say, who desperately want to be at home with their kids and they feel like they have to work. And so they look at what mothers who are staying home with, I hate to say it, but with jealousy. And it's like, I would love to do that. And then you have other women who would love to be in the workforce but they have to stay home with their kids because childcare is actually even more expensive. So you have these people, as far as I can see, on different sides where, where someone else's decisions either makes you feel proud of your decision or guilty for your decision. And if it's guilt, it starts to trigger you. The only self protective mechanism you can do when you start to get triggered is defend. And so everyone then starts to either defend their position or point the fingers at each other. Now this is something, Ken, that I have seen in female community since I started my show Women of Impact. And I do believe that this is a very big problem. So the way that I come at it is, is I have decided not to have children. But I think children in somebody's life can be the most magical thing ever. And so to be honest, I don't care if you have kids, I don't care if you don't have kids. I don't care if you're a working mum or that you're not a working mum. What I actually care about is do you have the confidence to Stand up and say what life you want and then live it. That's it. And the problem that is, I'm finding, is everyone starts to trigger each other. And where I come from is just because I've chosen not to have children doesn't mean I'm going to go out and encourage other women to have kids. What I'm going to do is go out and tell someone else, do you want kids? Yes or no? Then you should do that. You shouldn't let other people's judgment, shame, guilt, all these things that come with making decisions, you shouldn't let that dictate your actions. And I think we do. I think we let guilt, shame, fear, insecurity, dictate how we show up and what we do every day. And because of that, we don't feel secure in our decisions. So if right now, because I've done the work, if someone came at me and was like, well, Lisa, you don't have kids and you don't. Okay, like, I. It wouldn't bother me, Ken. It wouldn't bother me because I have confidence and security in the decision that I made. Now, here's the tricky thing is I have such compassion for every woman out there. It bothers me, Ken. Furiously bothers me that women attack each other. It's like. Like we don't have enough problems out there. You're going to go after a woman for deciding to have kids and stay at home or the opposite. You're going to have the audacity to go after a woman for making a decision that was right for her. Isn't the problem with the world that us women are not supporting each other in whatever decision we make? So, as you can see, I do get rattled up over this, Ken, because I do feel like we are making things worse, not better. We are making for women, making women feel worse about our decisions, not better. I get women that come and attack me for being selfish, not having kids. Now, when someone does that. Going back to your question, Ken, when someone attacks me, I used to get upset. I used to think, oh, my God, am I selfish? And I would start to, like, spiral. Now you know what I do do? Every time someone comes at me, I go, wow, what happened in your life that led you to that belief? And I, because I studied movies filmmaking in college, I have a movie mindset. So I kind of talk in scripts. So I'm like, if I was writing a script about this character who doesn't know me, but they feel like they can come to me and say I'm selfish for not having a child. If I had to write that script, script, why would that person do it? Because they have that belief. Maybe they've made a decision in their lives that they didn't question and now they see someone else questioning things and they have maybe resentment for the decision they made. Maybe they have resentment for other people that are thinking outside the box because they know freedom is out there, but they're not living it. So I literally, and over time, as I start to kind of say, okay, what would have to be true for them to be like that? I start to then build empathy for them. And then I just go, man, I feel really bad for them that they think that not having killed children is a selfish act. What else do they think is selfish where they're not actually treating themselves well. And now I actually feel bad for them thinking that they're not doing any self care because self care is so important. That if they think that I'm caring for myself as a bad thing, that shows to me an unhealthy mindset that they are living on a daily basis. So I end up having just compassion and empathy for the person and the way they see the world.
Speaker A
I want to go back. We talked about this at the start of our conversation. So I'm going to go back to. Because you gave us a bit of a highlight of how intense you were in the business. So you and your husband, you're going all in on this and you were so resilient, you didn't listen to your body. So we heard that. I want to go next step on health. Cause I know you're serious about your health and you've dealt with a lot of health issues, which is inspiring. What is your take from your experience on traditional versus holistic? Cause I think we're beginning to see, at least I see online and that's not a complete. So I wanna throw that out with an asterisk. We see on social media a growing distrust of traditional medicine. And I think that's related to Covid. Wherever you were on that issue. Doesn't matter. But I think we saw distrust really from the general public about traditional medicine. Medicine. What's your take on traditional versus holistic based on your journey?
Speaker B
Yeah. So going back, I used to think holistic was very woo woo. And I was like, if the doctor isn't prescribing it, then it doesn't make sense. When I started to have gut issues and people like, oh, I think it might be stress. I was like, what do you mean? It's my tummy not in my head. So I had 0 under. This is way before, like, the gut brain connection thing. I. So I dismissed everything. I was like, they have no idea what they're talking about. I was very confident in knowing what I was. I was talking about, and I was just dismiss everything. Over time, what I started to realize is that there's. There's so many things we don't know about the human body. To even pretend you do is very naive. So I started to change the way that I thought about my body, about medicine and holistic medicine. And for almost a year, when I felt like my gut had erupted, that actually felt like what? What? It was like I couldn't stand up for more than five minutes at a time. Time. Like, literally my gut had protruded out to here. Like it was really. My hair was falling out because I couldn't eat. I mean, it was very bad. And this is at the top right before we sold Quest. So now imagine you want to talk about identity shame. We were like the biggest nutrition company in the world, and I couldn't even eat our own products. So I was embarrassed. So it was a lot to kind of deal with in that scen. In that scene sufficiently in the time. But for a year, I was like, okay, go to the best doctors, Lisa. And the best doctors, quote, unquote, were the people in Beverly Hills that charge you a fortune, that have photos of famous people on the wall. That's what I thought. So I would go to these doctors, and I blindly would listen to them. I wouldn't ask myself, does this make sense? Does this feel right? I literally gave. I used the language. I gave my power over to a doctor because I thought a doctor knew better about my body than I did. Now, look, there is some truth to that. A doctor knows way more about a brain structure than I do. Like, there's many things, but they would tell me things to do this, do that. So for instance, as I was doing, they're like, oh, you need antibiotics over time. Antibiotics, antibiotics. Never once, Ken, did I ask why. Then the doctor at one point says, you know what? You probably shouldn't take this many antibiotics. I never asked why. So after that first year where I just wasn't healing, I said, well, Lisa, the problem is your. You're. You're looking outside yourself for the answer. And everything in my life, from my marriage to everything that I've done, has all become successful because I look internally, not externally. So I said, okay, what would that look like if I did that with my health as well? That would mean that every time a doctor says something, let's sit with the idea. Okay, well, a doctor told me to eat raw vegetables. I was like, no, that sounds like that actually wouldn't be good for myself. So I'm starting to now listen to my body, body. So I started to realize over time, doctors are humans. They have a degree. They're probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Sometimes they're gonna do something that is better for them that it is for you. It is what it is.
Speaker A
It's true. It's true.
Speaker B
And it's like some people can hate on it. I just, it's not where I want to put my energy. I just go, I understand why. So now what does that actually mean? Like I play a game. No bs. Bs what to do now, Right? So no bs. Now that you know you can't take a doctor's advice as completely truth, what am I going to do about it? So that's when I started to do actually a journal. So I started to journal my health and started to listen to my body. So I was like, huh, interesting. I always have gut issues whenever we're filming. There was a pattern there. That was when I was like, can stress really bother the gut? Maybe it can. So that's where it was like my I the, the intellectual part of me that tries to think through everything then realize you can't think through this. You have to start to listen. Once I started to listen, it started to show the patterns. Once I started to see the patterns, I was like, oh, maybe there is something into this like woo woo stuff. So let me give it a shot. So then I started yoga. I was like, look again, very tactical. Write out a bunch of a list of all the things you're going to try and you're going to listen to your body on. So acupuncture. I did that like cupping thing where it sucks the suction. I did yoga, the soft yoga. I did cryo freezing. I mean literally, I just did.
Speaker A
I don't want to interrupt you, your rhythm, but what did you experience with acupuncture? Because I've done it recently and I thought it was phenomenal. Did it help you?
Speaker B
What was interesting is I tried to think my way through everything. So as I'm lying on the bed, I'm like, do I feel it any different? Do I feel any different? And then I realized, Lisa, you're doing it all wrong. Like you shouldn't be doing that. So I just lent into it. Like I try to give myself over to Things to see if it works. So at first, I wasn't quite sure if it was more of a placebo effect. But to be honest, I don't really care if something's a placebo effect, as long as it gets to me, to my goal, who cares?
Speaker A
I'm with you on that.
Speaker B
The problem was Ken. One day I probably had maybe 20. The guy puts one in my gut, like, on my. On my. In my digestion. And I spoke up and I was like, it's a bit painful. He goes, no, no, just lean into it. Now, going back to my personality. Oh, I can lean into it. I. I would like. Yeah. I'm like, oh, you want to challenge me? All right, let's get. I will bear the pain. And I literally beared the pain for, like, 15 minutes once he took all the needles out. Out. And he's like, all right, goodbye. That night, I had to rush to the hospital. So what I think ended up happening is, again, I was trying to understand my body. I think, just like anything, your body has ptsd. And my body was so delicate around my gut that my body just went into protect mode. It was like something foreign is stabbing us in the car. Oh, my God. We've experienced this before. So. And so for two days, I couldn't move. So after that, I got very scared about acupuncture. So that's kind of my story on acupuncture.
Speaker A
You and Tom launched a company, obviously wildly successful, exited. Did you guys deal with comparison and maybe competition between the two of you? Because we're married, but we're also essentially co founders, and we got a. This thing has now taken off and the success was crazy. Wild world. We're talking billion. That people don't. There are not many people in this world experience that word. Did you guys deal with that? And if you did, how did you keep going through it to where you can stand today, A successful marriage of over two decades.
Speaker B
In all honesty, I struggled. He didn't. So because I was so insecure, my husband is whip it smart. So when you're next to someone, that's whip it smart and you're dyslexic, like, I am still mildly dyslexic, and I didn't have the business acumen that he had. So because I was a stay at home wife for eight years. So imagine for those eight years, I was a stay at home wife. My husband goes out into business, we both would be miserable. We say, what the hell are we doing? We're chasing money. We shouldn't be Chasing money. We should be actually doing something that we care about. A protein bar was the answer to that. Because my mum was morbidly obese. His mum was morbidly obese. So we knew we could show up every single day to help our mum mums. So that became our mission to help our mums. That was like us building the protein bar so they could eat it, so they could lose weight. So we every day would start would show up to try and build this company. But my husband already had eight years over me in business. So I come into it, I'm helping this startup not knowing how big it was going to get. I'm like, oh, I'll just ship some bars for my living room floor. And then like two weeks later, I'm like, oh, we've got a few more orders. Okay, fine, I'll just ship from. And it just kept going and going and going. So my insecurity actually got highlighted the more the company was growing because I was like, I don't have to do that. Like, I can ship bars on my living room floor, but I have no idea how to do X, Y and Z. Then I realized my husband does know how to do it. So the insecurity in me is like, I'm not a valuable business partner if I can't match him. Apples to apples. Over time, what I started to realize is I'm looking at it all wrong. If you're trying to be exactly like your partner, one of you is obsolete elite. So I actually realized, going back to my superpower. Oh, actually I'm great at this thing that my husband's terrible at. And so instead of trying to match him to be as good as he is, actually I have this thing that I'm amazing at, and he's terrible. So I'm great at, like, I call myself MacGyver. So did you ever see MacGyver back in the day?
Speaker A
Oh, classic show.
Speaker B
Okay, so we're building Quest Nutrition. We have no idea what we do doing. We've got this machine. We have no idea how to even work the machine. Bars are coming off. We can't afford enough people to catch the bars. So I literally build with my own bare hands a slide with, like, a little pool in the bottom for the bars to land softly. So I just. Someone would come to me with a problem and I would figure out how to build something to fix it.
Speaker A
That was your creative artist coming alive to solve.
Speaker B
That's so true. So true. And actually put those two together. Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker A
Oh, yeah, it's the artist in you.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Because if you could, I think you said early on that you could trace a picture or you could freehand a picture almost as good as a picture. And I think that was your brain creatively solving.
Speaker B
That's so really interesting.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Thank you for that.
Speaker A
That's. That's innovation. So you're really an innovator.
Speaker B
That's true. I definitely. Yeah. Because I go to what's the goal? And how am I going to get. Get there? So the bars falling off this machine, I was like, what's the goal? Bars can't fall off because then they'll crash. Okay, well, instead of fall off, what if they slide off? Okay, how do I get a slide? Well, you've got cardboard, you got tape. Build a slide. So I just like, what's the problem? What do I have to do? How do I do it? And then you do it.
Speaker A
Okay, back on track. Because I got a few things I want to get from you, but relationship wise. So you identified that. Okay. My insecurities. And, and, and how have you got. How did you guys grow together?
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
In that time to where you guys became a terrific partnership.
Speaker B
So as, as I started to realize, trying to compete with my husband doesn't make sense. I'm so proud of him. I admire him, and why would I try to be him? So I started to realize my own skills. What I was good at, that was number one. Number two is we both decided that our relationship. Relationship in our marriage is worth more than any business we ever do and start. And so we have code words that we use with each other if we start to feel like business is coming first. And if one of us says it, we have action steps of what have to be taken. If I say it, that's good. So for instance, if I say to my husband, baby, it's important we hang out tonight, he knows no matter what he's doing, he lit. He won't even say, but, babe, I'm about to interview you. Donald Trump or whoever, like, it could be. He would be like, you said the word important. I will be there. So we have these things where we know that I don't have to persuade him. I don't have to explain. Like, I'm feeling distant. I can just say, I need to spend time with you tonight. And I never abuse it. And I think that's important. Neither of us ever abuse that word important. We probably say it once or twice a year at maximum. So you can imagine when someone says it, you pay attention. So that was another Key thing for us in our marriage that we'd always have put our relationship before our business. I never tried to compete. We had titles. So he was a c. He was the president of Quest Nutrition. I was the head of our media department. Well, shipping and then media. So I go in a hierarchy of business. You got the president, and then you got the head of the studio. The president tells the head of the studio what to do. So just because he's my husband, just because I own the company, do I think. Think that I shouldn't act like the head of the studio? No, that didn't. That didn't sit well with me. I was like, I don't care that I own the company. I have respect for myself and admiration for myself that I've gotten to the point where I believe I deserve this title. But this title comes with conditions. This conditions are the studio belongs to Quest Nutrition because we were making commercials. We were doing YouTube. So that's. You know, my background was film, but I still had to take orders ultimately from my husband. And we had to have a conversation of, do we agree on this? Yes. Okay. What language are we going to use? One of the things was, if I disagree with him, I have the space to disagree and say out loud, why. But if he, as the head of the company, still thinks that we should do it his way, he will say, I've heard you out. I'm still doing it my way. Right. Those are keywords. Now, the last piece, so that we never build contempt or resentment, is I say back to him, I disagree, but commit. Key words. I disagree, but commit. Because, again, going back to goals, if he makes a decision that I don't agree with, let's be honest about human nature, you kind of go, I want to see that he's wrong. Like, I just want to show you like, I'm right. You don't mean to, but part of your ego is wrapped up in your opinion. So, again, I just realized it, Ken, and I was like, well, me wanting him to fail because he didn't do my idea. Does that help our goal or hurt our goal? It hurts it. So I was like, well, that doesn't make sense. So I need him to know that even though I disagree, voice my opinion. Very important. I'm no longer the nice girl, but I will commit in being dedicated to helping get the result we both want, even if it's not a path I agree with. With. So those are a few little things where we're just like, we have to remove the emotion from the tactical. We have to, I have to look at how I show up and compare myself to my husband. The hours was also another thing. He works, no joke, 90 hours a week. Even today, I don't want to work that much. I used to feel guilty and then he would come and when you work with your partner, there's a fine line between a relationship and business. And I realized that I was feeling guilty when he was working and I wasn't. And I also started to resent him interrupting my personal time when he was still in work mode.
Speaker A
You and Tom talk a lot about marriage. A lot of marriage content on your channels. You guys have really made it work. If we were going to do the world's largest marriage seminar for single people. Okay, so they've. Yes, it's the Lisa, it's your moment. Tom's done his part, he said his part. But now it's this question to all the singles in the world. What advice would you give singles to be able to figure out if someone they're dating is truly great marriage potential for them? What would you say?
Speaker B
I would say you'd have to look at how they handle conflict and disagreements because if they're able to self assess, if they're able to then take your opinion and discuss it and be able to communicate with you and from that communication able to change your behavior in order to work together, I think that can be a massive sign that it can be a beautiful relationship for me. I always think about this, if I wasn't married to Tom, how would I date? Like I actually think about that.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
And the truth is if you don't have a growth mindset, forget it. I'm not even interested. Because it isn't about out who you re like specifically are right now in this second. I mean obviously that has to do with it but ultimately if you're going to be with someone for a long time, you will change and they will change, guaranteed. No, like just anyone try to argue me with on that one. I will stand my ground. So you will always keep changing. They will keep changing. If you plan to be partners for the rest of your life, then you can't just judge them and look at them at who they are now. You have to look at who they are, they how they're going to handle things as you change and evolve and as they change and evolve. So if my husband married me because he cared about being with a woman that was going to be a stay at home wife and kids, you can imagine our marriage never would have lasted because me going to him Saying, baby, I love you more than life itself, but I no longer want to cook for you. I no longer want to clean for you, and I don't want to have children. You can imagine if he wasn't able to understand my growth, my evolution, if I wasn't able to communicate that with him, he could have turned around and said, no, you've. You've broken our agreement. You said you wanted kids. Now, again, no judgment. I understand people. That's important to people. But I'm just saying that has been a massive thing that has allowed me and Tom to be able to evolve over the 25 years we've been together. So if you're single and you're looking for someone to spend the rest of your life with, it isn't just about who they are now. It is about how they're willing to handle scenarios as you change and evolve over a time.
Speaker A
Such a good word, friends. I hope you heard that there was a missional result behind Lisa's work, Tom's work, to where they went right back to work after an unbelievable transaction. And by the way, now what they're doing is still all about transformation. You're really driven by transformation, and I applaud you for that. You continue to help people. Well, to my friends watching and listening, you know, if you're new to the show, I wrap up every conversation was something that I actually took away from my conversation and something I'm going to challenge myself to do and issue the challenge to you. And it was early on, as Lisa was sharing her story, I wrote down here in my notes, I need to be better at taking care of me before I take care of business, whatever business is. But we're professionals who want to get better, move up, and lead well. And I need to do a better job of. Of being aware of where I am hurting or lacking or going too hard, too fast. You all can fill in the blank. Take care of me before I take care of business. So my challenge to you is take care of you before you take care of business. Because there is great mission and purpose in what you're doing. And if you begin to falter, then the very purpose and mission that you long for, that you bleed for, that you is soul deep, is going to fall short. What a great word. Lisa. You're so fantastic. You're more than Wonder Woman. I think you're a force of nature. And I so enjoyed this conversation so much that I took away from it. I know our audience did as well. So on behalf of our audience and my team, here at front row seat. Thank you. We're better for hanging out with you today.
Speaker B
Thank you so much for having me. This has been so wonderful.