Tom Bilyeu: From Broke & Sleeping On The Floor To A $1 Billion Business!

Man, we're going in a real dark place. I've never talked about this stuff out loud. (static noise) The American entrepreneur, broadcaster, Tom Bilyeu. I'm about to ruin that fucking good mood. (static noise) 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, "Boos 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 gonna serve you moving forward?

When I reflect on how many people in our society are feeling anxious these days, is there something we are just fundamentally doing wrong about the way that we're living our lives?

Yes.

And what is that?

I would lose respect for myself if I didn't say this, so here it goes.

So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO, USA Edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (instrumental music) The story you tell yourself about yourself is the single most important thing you're going to craft.

Facts.

I was watching a compilation of things you'd said upstairs before I came downstairs, and that really stuck out to me because when I think about the T- the Tom Bilyeu story that I know, it's the question that I find so repeatedly, uh, fascinating is how a man went from what you told me in our last conversation, um, many years ago, you were someone that was kinda counted out by seemingly by your mother, by yourself, and other people around you, your current wife's father, to this guy that I see as the antithesis of that. How did you ch- what did or how did you change that self-story?

Well, the how I changed 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'm, 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, like 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, the big switch was that I decided to believe that I could get better. And once I made that decision, it aligned my behaviors with skill acquisition, and that's all life is. Acquire skills.