YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Bilyeu

lines on the record: 94
first: 2022-05-26
most recent: 2022-05-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“When they're by themselves, but To deny that to be embraced for something like that feels good would be foolish because it really does feel good. And I spent time there feeling sorry for myself for a long time. And when somebody's like, wow, that really does suck. I was like, yeah, man, that feels good to be acknowledged. And so I get it. And I want to acknowledge it too. Like it really is when people have the deck stacked against them, that really sucks. That really sucks. I mean, look, I've spent enough time in the inner cities. There are people with the deck stacked way hard against them.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you are the recipient of legitimate injustice, the world is going to rally to your side and be like, yo, you've been wronged. We celebrate you. We love you. We elevate you. Like this is just so crazy. It should never happen to you. That will feel awesome. And so you've been embraced. And there is a lot of cultural momentum around that. Now, the problem is that when you're by yourself thinking about yourself, you feel disempowered and it does not feel good and you're in a very dark fucking place, which is a big reason why, I think, right now, that people are, I mean, suicide is like, depending on the age groups, like the number one leading cause of death, like teenage boys, I mean, that's nuts. So clearly something going on. So I don't think people will feel good about themselves when they're by themselves if they adopt that value system. But they are getting huge emotional rewards from the crowd. Now, the crowd can't save them again.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I give you the rebut So the rebuttal is that societal energy and momentum really, really matter, and that we are the shout and the echo. So even though if you feel like you are a victim and that life is out of your control and it's stacked against you and there's nothing you can do,”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It. My life is already a reflection of this. It's true and optimistic just to bring it all back around. It is true and optimistic. And so I hope people embrace it. I know that some people don't because they have a value system where they're getting value out of being in a helpless position. And that's heartbreaking because it doesn't feel good. At least it didn't when I was there.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even with personal responsibility. If somebody shows me that taking personal responsibility for my life is worse than if I didn't, I would change. But in every metric I have ever encountered, and including all the people that I've introduced this idea to that have then gone on to do something with it, it has made every single one of their lives better to a person without exception. And so I'm just like, I want people to win so badly. I'm wired to love other people winning almost as much as I love winning myself. When I was six, I threw an Easter egg contest so that my sister would find more eggs than I did because I knew it meant more to her and I just was so happy to see her win. That is innate. I didn't do anything to earn that. I'm not an extra nice person just for whatever reason. I really enjoy seeing other people win. And so, dude, when I'm giving these ideas, I'm like, it will help you. It will help you, you. Like, I'm already doing.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't. And that is the most exciting thing in the world to me that, wait, you're saying that I can get so good at something that at least the vast majority of humanity can't stop me. There will always, of course, unfortunately, I don't yet believe that I am Kobe Bryant in anything that I care about. But that I can get better than the vast majority of humanity at something by dedicating my time and energy to that thing, that is so cool. That is so liberating. It's changed my life. It's given me hope. It got me up off the floor. In every possible way, it has changed my life. It is the thing that I rely on when I'm feeling my most anxious. I'm like, I can get better at this. A word. And then I remember that's right. Like if I put time and energy into this, I can get better. So it's okay if I'm actually not good at this. If people are coming after me and saying, you're stupid, you're seeing this wrong. I'm like, maybe I really am. Like maybe there's really something to learn here.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Personal responsibility is true and wildly optimistic, and it is people's belief system and the value system that they cobble together over a lifetime that will lead them to reject that. And all I can say is reject it at your own peril for the following reason. Personal responsibility is about remembering you can do something and change. And I can sum up personal responsibility in a single quote by Kobe Bryant. Booze don't block dunks. That's personal responsibility. You can get so good at something that no matter how much people hate you, the best athletes in the world were paid millions of dollars and trained to stop Kobe Bryant from scoring. And yet he scored 81 points in a single game. So you can get so good no matter how much people hate you, no matter how much they're training and trying to defeat you.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is I just know people are gonna just really love this section. But I can't help myself. I would lose respect for myself if I didn't say this stuff. I could see myself one day not being on camera anymore. I can't ever see myself saying something that I don't believe to be true. So here it goes. You have to have a belief system that is both true and optimistic.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God. And people were just like, who the fuck does this guy think he is? I'm like, wow. So anyway, you really do. We are raising a generation of people that need to develop incredible mental resilience against that if you want to be able to engage with this incredible gift that is the web and being able to communicate to large groups of people. But it really does require like developing a value system and a belief system that's going to Make you resilient to that because it isn't easy even for me. And I've spent a lot of time building resilience and I'm older. So it's like a lot of the things that probably would have thrown me off in my 20s now don't, but it's a thing for sure.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today's world I've been given a gift, which is social media, which is Web3, which is going to allow me to expand all of this and reach people I never could have dreamed of reaching before, but it comes with the other side, which is you put something out that really is coming from a good place and people still are not loving it. Like my wife and I do this show called Relationship Theory, and I did, when I say even now re-listening to it, I can't believe that at least half of the people that hear it are just infuriated. And it's about like how to develop a good sex relationship with your partner.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Working at Quest, working in the inner cities, you realize, or at least my big revelation, having big brothered for a kid in the inner cities when I was much younger and seeing what it was doing to him and then having a thousand employees that grew up in the inner cities and being like, oh my God, like this is your zip code in most of the developed world, whatever the equivalent of zip code is, is the number one predictor of your future success. And so I was like, there's got to be a way to help people with that. The conclusion I came to is it's this set of ideas that are timeless. They have nothing to do with me, but I have a way of explaining them through how I had to struggle with them. And so maybe I'm able to say it in a way that certain people will hear. And so between writing between being on camera, between the stories that I hope to tell that I can embed these ideas and get them across. And it does, they're in.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Article and people lit me on fire. And I was shocked to my core. I cannot tell you. Dude, when I hit publish on that, I was like, oh my God, people are going to love this. It's going to change so many lives. This is going to be incredible. And then people were not loving it. And so I was like, whoa, okay. So that was extraordinarily eye-opening. But because I really am trying to help. Like this was”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Since we started, since I started being on camera, that has been front of mind. Like you really have to deal with that. And when I first started, so I first stepped in front of the camera like seven years, eight years ago, something like that. And I was like, I'm not sure I really want to do this. And I wrote an article that I thought was, it really was like, Tom, what is the most life-changing thing you've realized that you could offer as an idea to other people and that would change their life. And I wrote this article about how if you get hit, and in fact, I'm going to light myself on fire again because I know how people respond to this, but this is really what I wrote. If you get hit by a drunk driver, it's all your fault. And that's amazing because you could do something about it. You could do something different next time and get a different result. Now, of course, I no longer use the word fault because that just does not lead me anywhere productive.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's able to withstand even moments of unhappiness, and when you have fulfillment, the thing that you believe in that you're fighting for, then it gets easier to push through whatever frustrations, difficulties, the mob coming after you, whatever. If you don't have that and you were just trying to be famous or get approval and it feels like the entire world is piling on you, you just are like, yeah, I'm done with this. So there really has to be something you're fighting for.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Make myself rich or be admired for telling a cool story, I actually want to help people with that story. And I hold myself accountable to that. When you have that cocktail, you're working hard to garner a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself but other people that's fulfillment. So people can say whatever they want. And I know like if I'm actually out there every day doing my best to help people, I'm going to feel good about that. No, I'm not going to feel good about people misunderstanding that. That's still going to suck. But I know what's in my heart. And so if I'm like, no, for real, I'm showing up no matter what people say. I really am showing up to help people, then that will give you the emotional resilience that you need to see yourself through. So fulfillment is...”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, I actually have a as close as you're going to get to a conceptual math equation here. So fulfillment is very simple for me. So, and it has to do with the directives that are embedded in your brain from an evolutionary standpoint. So you must work hard. It's embedded in your brain to acquire skills that matter to you that allow you to elevate yourself and others in service of a goal that's both exciting and honorable. So exciting and honorable means that you're just amped about it. You dig it. So I dig storytelling. Just I do. And I want to help people through storytelling. I do. My life circumstances have led me to that the way that I'm hardwired. I just haven't over an outsized response to stories. And so I'm drawn to that. And because of life experience, I want to use stories to help people. So that's very exciting for me. Now, it's also honorable because I'm not just looking.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell you what they think, and then you let them invest money. Now it gets crazy real fast. And we're already seeing projects implode because the creator was maybe an artist who's already wearing their heart on their sleeve. And it just doesn't work. And they're not able to deal with that. And then the project poof, it goes away. And I don't think that most people had ill intent. Of course, there are people that have ill intent. But I don't think most of them do, but they're just, it's a business and they don't know how to run a business.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's money. You're playing with people's money. And so now it's not fun and games anymore. It's like people are there oftentimes investing more than they should in something. And so it will be bad for them because now something that they otherwise could have enjoyed becomes incredibly stressful. And for the creators, we're going to destroy a lot of creators who are just like, yeah, I'm not. I can't, this isn't fun anymore. Like it was fun, but I've now taken money for this thing. I have obligations. You have to be honest about that. But if like it's not going well, most people are not going to have the tools that they need to grapple with, to work through problems, to improve, to get better. Like it's just going to be really hard. And so when you take the ability for people all over the world to”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you realize that, man, I just want to like connect. I want to put something rad out into the world. But then people kick you in the face and it makes you want to turtle up. And so it's this weird exercise of like, you have to divorce yourself from what other people think, which is powerful if you can do it, but we're the human animal. And so you can't ever, I think, completely detach. We are, as I like to say, we are both a shout and the echo. So we are what we say, do and believe, but we're also what people tell us about the things that we say do and believe and that matters because we're a tribe animal. So yeah, it gets real weird. And then you and I are both into Web3 in a big way. The only thing I know that's going to be more devastating to mental health than Web 2 and social media is Web3. But it's also incredible and it's so life-changing that we have to find a way to mitigate some of the bad. But you're taking all of the things of Web 2.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could also optimize. Here is the brutal thing. Put out a tweet. Like put out a hot take, but something you really believe in, like that really matters to you and you're moved by it and you feel like you're adding something positive to the world. Like put out one of those tweets. It will not be. Universally loved”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Individual to fulfillment, those would be my two things reduce human suffering in yourself and others and elevate your sense of fulfillment in yourself and help other people do the same, like that seems to be the cocktail for the most resilient mental state you could hope for so that even as life goes up and down and you win and lose and people are born and people die, I mean we're all going to go through just unrelenting misery from time to time. It just is And the only way to even all of that out is to pursue those two things. Now once we have that, then you start optimizing for lifestyle and beliefs and your thought patterns and all of that stuff.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And even I can look at somebody's house. If people saw my house and then they hear the following statement, they will laugh, but I can look at someone's house and be like, yo, that's a house, right? So it never ends, right? So it's like if I peeked out and I had the best house in the world, I'd be like, yeah, but Elon Musk just built a rocket that can carry 300 people to Mars. Like, what have I done? So there's always some other thing. So you just, you've got to be psychotically careful about what you allow yourself to value yourself for. Because I value achievement. I think it's extraordinary. I'm very glad that I have that. It makes me strive. It's pushing me to be a better version of myself. But at the same time, I have to be really careful not to let it damage my sense of self, which it will do very rapidly. And I think we have to agree that there is a North Star. And for optimizing a human life, and I will say that which reduces suffering and elevates the...”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, once that's regulated, it doesn't mean that it goes away. I still have anxiety. But when I think I've reduced it by 70% through diet alone. Now, the remaining 30% is still a pain, so you really do want to address it. And for that, I've had to turn to meditation. I've had to insert myself into my ruminating thoughts and be very thoughtful about that. I've had to adjust my belief system so that I'm not afraid of failure. Like there are a lot of things that I've had to do to get myself to that place. But if I could only make one change, it would be that. Now, Living in the social media era is amazing. It's amazing, man, and it's given so much, and I think it's given far more than it takes. But you really have to be careful. Like to give people an idea. I have had a lot of success. I have a lot of the worldly things that people want.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Diet is the biggest problem. I think it's 100%. If you said you can have one change to somebody's life, what change would you make to lower their anxiety 100% their diet?”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are things that are so high in amplitude that it's like, okay, this is really stressing me out But yeah, it always works. I've never been more than 45 minutes away from complete equanimity. And that's going through things that where there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, it's like really, really stressful.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I'll loop on ideas. And if it's a negative idea about myself, I'll loop and loop and loop and loop and loop. And so that's why I said at the beginning, what you allow yourself to repeat is really going to determine the quality of your life. And so I have to really get good at interrupting that. So that's why meditation is the key for me to dealing with anxiety. Like as I can feel it rationing up, it's really my mind ruminating on all the ways that it could go wrong. And so I have to find a way to insert myself to break that rehearsal of failure and instead force myself to focus on rehearsing success, which it's almost silly, but it really does drop my anxiety to next to nothing. But I have to really forcefully insert myself.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that rumination, in fact, I was just talking to a guy that does, he doesn't like the term hypnotherapy, but everybody will understand that idea. So he's really well versed in hypnosis. And he said, people break into three personality types. And the personality type that struggles the most is the personality type that both experiences the world incredibly emotionally, but then has an analytical mind that ruminates on the emotions. And that's where I met. experience the emotional gamut of life and it's incredible. I would never want to not, it's wonderful. Life is a roller coaster of incredible highs and lows and meditation and my belief system allow me to even that out so that I never get too out of whack in any direction.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And finally, I realized there was a component of diet, so I no longer get generalized anxiety. Now I will still get anxious if I'm dealing with something that's really like the steaks are really high and it really matters to me. So I have to, I've had to learn meditation that changed my life in ways that I can't even convey. So that's been really important. But it is, and some of it is going to be just the way that I'm wired. I don't have an addictive personality, but I have an obsessive mind. Now, my obsessive mind has led to my success because I will think about problems all the time. And so I'm actually a really slow thinker, but people give me all this credit because I can talk fast. But I talk fast because I've thought about it obsessively for days, weeks, months, years, depending on what thing we're talking about.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anxiety is really complex. So let's start with diet. The biggest change that I've made to my anxiety was stopping drinking sugar-free monster. Which I love, by the way. Absolutely love them. But there's something, right? There's something in them that causes my microbiome to get out of whack, and I will feel really anxious. So I used to have generalized anxiety disorder. I couldn't even tell you why I felt anxious. I just did all the time”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“no meal big enough, no feast, overwhelming enough that you never need to eat again, no drink so thirst quenching that you don't need to drink again. We get that with like the bodily stuff, no sex so great that you don't want sex again. So why is it that we think that success would be any different? You sold a billion dollar company. You live in a really fancy house. You've got a lot of money. It doesn't work like that. None of that stuff carries any weight with me today. I have to earn my self-respect every day. And so I have to be really careful what I choose to value because that will determine how I feel about myself when I'm by myself, which is ultimately all that matters.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Baked in already, so 50% of you just baked in. And then 50% of you is created really subtly from the time you are a child and you have no idea that you're absorbing and creating these belief systems that are governing your value system, that are governing what you think is worthy of respect, which means if you think that the only thing worthy of respect is tremendous success, then you'll put yourself on that wheel trying to earn your own respect. And then if you don't get it, you'll be in the dumps. And then if you do get it, you're going to realize it didn't matter in the first place because you have these embedded things in your brain. And here's the most insidious. You will get this more than most. There is no amount of success big enough that you can stand in it forever.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't value that stuff. I need to be careful not to value that stuff. That what matters, the thing that you started this off, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. And all the success in the world can't touch that. But you're constructing that in your own mind. You're constructing a value system. You are constructing beliefs. Now, most of the time, you don't realize that you're constructing them. So they're invisible. You just see cool shit and you think, wow, that's cool. You don't realize that in saying, wow, that's cool. You just made a value judgment. You reinforce that in your own mind. And now in some subtle way, you're moving towards that and judging yourself against whether you have that or not. So you have to keep coming back to what's cool is feeling good about myself. What's cool is having a dope marriage. What's cool is getting better. What's cool is sitting at somebody's feet and learning something new. So I have to reinforce that value system because from an evolutionary standpoint, we have all these weird things.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, self awareness is a double-edged sword. I didn't have anyone I was a kid, and I didn't have anxiety. As I have really leaned into developing self-awareness, it's actually made me more anxious. Because I'm hyper aware of what I'm not good at, what I am good at, how I'm being perceived, how I perceive myself, that things matter. Like this is, man, when I really try to shake this off. Thing that I keep coming back to is life has consequences. And building and selling a billion dollar company has consequences like they're amazing. So getting good at something and winning can change your life. And those things are powerful. And so it's like I realized the game I'm playing. I realized the stakes. And so one of the things that I really have to focus on now is like,”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so then it was just like, okay, word. Like, if you're going to just focus on being the learner, then get your sense of pride out of being willing to admit what you're not good at and to sit at somebody else's feet and learn and all of my success is a result of that.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You need to go take remedial jobs and just be the smartest person in the room. Don't worry about making a lot of money. And you really can do that. Life had taught me that I can put myself in a small enough room where people are like, wow, you're so smart. But that is I put myself in bigger rooms that I wasn't the smartest person in the room. And that was really emotionally just brutalizing. So I was like, okay, wait a second. I need to feel good about myself. And if I want to be successful, I'm going to feel bad about myself all the time. I don't know that I'm ready for that. So I was like, well, is there another way? Like, could I value myself for something other than being smart? And would that work? And so that became like the big thing. I'm going to stop valuing myself for being smart and I'm going to start valuing myself for identifying the right answer.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was like, I bet I could. And so I started focusing on, well, what would it take to actually get good at this thing that I want to do? And so that then put me on this journey of just like, and I mean, this is a very long story being crushed down. But the next key realization was I'm fighting for bad ideas because they make me feel smart when other people adopt my ideas, even when I know the idea is bad. And so I was like, whoa, this is a weird thing. So am I really trying to be successful or am I just trying to feel smart? And that's the one thing in my life that is a demarcation point. You can draw a line in the sand of my life and say before that realization you acted one way. And then after that realization, you acted another. This was the first time where I said to myself, no judgment. No one will ever have to know. But what do you really want? Do you want to be successful or do you want to feel smart? Because if you want to feel smart.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really well researched now at the time it was my Einstein moment. So I realized I had a choice. Did I live in a world where brain plasticity was real or did I live in a world where that was just total BS? And it was really hotly debated in the late 90s. So some people were like, yes, it's real. Other people like, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Once you pass a certain age, it's just it. Now the reality is, unfortunately, it does get way harder to make changes as you get older, but it is possible. And so I literally one day just said, I am choosing to believe that I can change. And so Ben, to your point about you need some sort of evidence. And I start reading about brain plasticity. And I'm like, huh, this is very interesting. And then I start teaching. And I realize I actually can make my students' films better. And so then I was like, well, wait a second. If I could make their films better, why couldn't I make my own films better?”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get that funny, I would have to dedicate my entire life to it. And it just wasn't that level of interest to me. So that would be the big difference. But if you could get inside my head, you would hear a very terrifying narrative. So I was super scared that I was too dumb to function at any exciting level in life and that my path was one of inherent limitation that I had all these big dreams and I was never going to go anywhere. And so I was, dude, I was lost. I would just lay on my floor. I'm not kidding. I would lay on the floor of my apartment, unfurnished, by the way, because I couldn't afford to furnish it. And I would just lay there like, what the fuck am I going to do with my life? It was so heart-wrenching. So I was sliding rapidly towards depression. So that was my narrative because I didn't yet have the only belief that mattered. I didn't believe I could get better.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was way I had way more bravado when I was younger I was entirely focused on being funny I thought that was gonna be like my niche in the world because when I was in high school there was nobody funnier than me so I had found that you know sort of like as water bounces around I'd found that okay here it is this is the thing that I'm better at than the people that happen to be around me But then in my 20s, I went to do stand-up comedy like for real and I encountered a guy named Mitch Hedberg and he was so funny that in the middle of the set. So I had gone up and done like open mic, right? And I did it. And that was funny enough. But he comes up. He's the last comedian of the night. And he's so funny that in the middle of the set, I am not kidding you. I actually wondered, can you laugh until you die? Because I can't catch my breath. And so I started to worry that I was going to collapse and die. And so at the end of that, I was like, I'm not going to pursue this because.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Run into somebody better than me. And it was devastating, like really devastating. The breakthrough for me was to accept that I was hopelessly average and that that was still going to allow me to be successful. And so for me, the breakthrough was reading about the brain, like just brain science and understanding brain plasticity. And so once I understood, whoa, like your brain actually can change. So that means that just because I'm not good at something today doesn't mean I can't get good at it tomorrow. And so it was like, well, wait a second. If the average human is actually designed to get better, like that is our fundamental design. Not that I'm special, not that I'm smarter than anybody. But once I realized, oh my God, that is what the DNA of the human animals designed to do is learn and grow from context. Word. So I'm just going to get good at that. So maybe I'm never going to be the best at anything, but I can 100x my abilities in any area.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody who believes it's impossible and encounters the difficulties that success will demand of everybody, they stop 100% of the time. And so by looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, I am a millionaire, I'm a genius, like all this stuff, it may function as some eroding mechanism to those entrenched beliefs that it's never going to happen for you, that would not work for me because there is a part of my brain that just screams, this is bullshit. Like, you know, this is bullshit. So for me, I had to align with what do I believe to be true about humans. I needed to accept that I was average. That was a huge moment for me because I tried to believe I was special and either luck of the draw or the fact that I really am average, I've always been around a substantial number of people that are smarter than me or faster than me or stronger. Like literally everything, every niche I tried to find, I would always”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it actually is bullshit. It just isn't going to get you very far. So if what you're hung up on is you just can't ever fathom that being true, then saying it may begin to form this like, just like it erodes this lack of belief that it's possible. Now my problem is when people think that just saying it out loud is going to make it come true. That for sure isn't true. So your behavior is ultimate, all that matters. So if you make all the right decisions, but you have like you absolutely think that it's impossible for you, but you still do the right things, you will win. The problem is that if you believe that it's never going to happen for you, you won't take the steps. And so when you look at how hard something is and you get part way down that road and you're like, wow, this is really hard. It's making me confront my insecurities. This does not feel good. And I don't believe it's possible anyway, then why would you keep going? And the answer is you wouldn't. And so nobody does.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the how I change that story is so rudimentary that I wish people would take me seriously. So the only belief that matters is that if I put energy and effort into getting better, I actually will get better. And so you can look at anything and say, okay, maybe I suck at this right now, which was the key realization for my life. Okay, I actually am not good. Like my father-in-law wasn't crazy. I really wasn't anywhere useful for his daughter at that time. My mom wasn't crazy. I really was lazy. So she was just picking up on the fact that I was tremendously lazy. She wanted me to be successful, but she was just looking at my behavior. And so I hadn't been misidentified. People just didn't calculate how much I could change. And that I would so grasp onto the ability to change as an emotional life raft. And so the big switch was that I decided to believe that I could get better. And once I made that decision, it aligned my behavior.”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tried to believe I was special, and either luck of the draw or the fact that I really am average, I would always run into somebody better than me. I was sliding rapidly towards depression. The breakthrough for me was to accept that I was hopelessly average and that that was still going to allow me to be successful. I can sum up personal responsibility in a single quote by Kobe Bryant. Booze don't block dunks. The most insidious thing about excuses, you have a valid reason to feel like a victim. But the question is, is that going to serve you moving forward?”
2022-05-26 · The Diary of a CEO · Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT