Hey everyone, welcome to the PiaTia drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life.
If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at piaotiamd.com. In this episode, I interview my friend, Tom Billu. Tom is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition. Many of you have undoubtedly heard of this.
They make, obviously, Quest Bar is a number of other products, but I think Quest Bar is sort of what put them on the map and keeps them on the map. Tom is one of three co-founders, and I know two of the three quite well, including Tom. He's also the host of something called Impact Theory, which we spent quite a bit of time talking about. I knew a lot less about Impact Theory and his work there than I knew about Quest.
Now, his mission in creating this was to create this sort of idea of what he calls an empowering, media-based platform for accelerating mission-based businesses. Tom is incredibly driven, and I think that comes across in this discussion. I've sometimes been accused of being a little too hyper, but when I'm around Tom, I actually sort of feel like I'm on Quailoods or something, given how much he's just sort of salivating and just so passionately jumping out of his seat to basically tell you about something that is generally really interesting and really, really helpful. He's just a completely driven mission guy.
I learned a lot about Tom on this episode that I didn't know. I've known Tom for probably five years, maybe six years, but one thing I didn't know was that in the history of Quest, he basically interviewed virtually every person that was hired, and this is a behemoth company. I'm not just saying that he was interviewing people who were applying for jobs in the C-suite. I was applying for a job on the production line.
Tom wanted to interview, and he would always ask people the same sorts of questions, and it was one question in particular that he asked everybody. I was actually kind of surprised by the answer. But in this sense, his time at Quest became a little bit of a laboratory for what he ended up doing later on, and really what he's doing today and where I think he's going. So in this episode, we're going to talk a lot about Tom's history with dieting and how he changed his views on fat and fasting, and he had quite a radical transformation there.
His Quest for immortality, which if you've ever heard me talk on the subject, I'm not convinced that that's desirable or plausible, but I certainly love hearing about others talk about it. His background and what led to the co-founding of Quest, probably one of my favorite stories because it really speaks to following your bliss versus following the dollars, which I think many great entrepreneurs will tell you is their secret. What he described as a growth versus fixed mindset, I think this is a really important concept, and I think it is worth paying attention to that. Why he would interview everyone, he talked to or hired at Quest, and again, I was surprised by that.
That was a completely new fact. We talk about why he started Impact Theory, and we talk about what fulfillment means to Tom. Now you'll be able to find out a lot more information about Tom and some of the things that we talk about on the show inside the show notes, which will be at peteratiamd.com forward slash podcast. So without further delay, here is my discussion with my friend, Tom Billy.
Yes. I'm a pleasure inviting me to your lovely place. My pleasure, man. I've wanted to get you on my show forever.
I know I feel like a real kind of jerk because you've been asking me for so long and I've been saying, yep, yep. And then I pulled the bait and switch and got you on my ride. That's good. I promise you, if you still want me, I'm yours.
Oh, it's in a heartbeat. It would be amazing. Well, just before we started, I met your wife for the very first time, which I'm shocked by. I still can't believe we've known each other this long and you've never met my wife.
That's what prompted me to remember that it was about five years ago that Dom, Degasino, and I came up to meet with, I think at the time, just you and Ron. The first meeting I think was even with just Ron. I remember coming back and he was like, oh, we're into fat now. And I was like, that just seems crazy because at the point I was truly, truly rabbit starvation and had had massive success with it.
And I did that because I was legitimately fat phobic. I was one of those dumbasses that was like, what's fat? And obviously it makes you fat. But that was me like, I already had a nutrition company at that point.
That's the crazy part. So when I came back and I remember where I was and he was like, oh, yeah, we met with this guy at Peter Rata, and Degasino, and they really made me believe in fat. And I just like, whoa, like what a strange new world I've walked into. And then it ended up changing my life.
It's interesting because I've heard Ron say that many times. I've never heard you say what you just said, but I've seen video clips of Ron talking about this. And I can't believe that the meeting that Dom and I had with you guys could have had such an impact on a company that was already on quite a trajectory. Yeah.
When you seek out disconfirming evidence, like when you actually want to know how you're wrong and you meet somebody that is really a smart and be just so well educated on a particular topic, it's like a fireworks moment. You long for those things because it's like, look, my suboptimal life has gotten me this far. Like I've already achieved all of this living like a fool in some way that I'm as of yet unaware of. If I can become aware of that thing and then make different choices, then kind of my life be different.
So the reason that it had such a big effect is because that's how we look at the world. It's like, I want to know how I'm wrong. I want to know in what ways I'm suboptimal. And so you guys coming in and making such a compelling case for fat, I ended up trying it really soon after you guys came because the thing for me, and I'm actually super curious to get your beat on where this is still, but at the time you guys are saying, look, there might be some anti-cancer properties.
And so I'm obsessed, dude. I don't know if we've ever talked about this. I'm obsessed legitimately with living forever. And what's the video?
I want to live forever by not dying, not by having my works go on. So I really, truly want to live forever. That's something that's captured my imagination since I was a little kid. So when you guys were talking about anti-cancer properties, I said, all right, I got to give this a shot.
And I did it and I hated it in ways you can't imagine. I was doing a four to one. I was in therapeutic range. So my ketone bodies were north of three and my glucose levels were like low 60s, if I remember right.
And I felt so sick, like it was crazy. And I was warned, hey, there's a saying called the keto flu. So when it was happening, I was like, well, hey, found it. And I just thought, I just need to get through, you know, I forget how long I was saying therapeutic, but let's call it five days.
I'm saying that therapeutic range for five days. It's total misery, but like I can gut it out. And I made it through and I was like, I'm never doing that again. It was so miserable.
But in that time, I went from chronic wrist pain. I'd been icing my wrist up to two times a day every day for 15 years. And I had like these little burn patches on my wrist from where the ice hatch, because I was just icing so frequently. It was crazy.
And I was like to just get to the day, but I'd lost all this way, dude. So I was 230 pounds. I go on a rabbit starvation diet, which I'll define as ultra high protein, probably north of 80% of my calories per protein. And then just as little fat and as little carbohydrate as I could possibly intake.
So I was doing basically a lot of steamed chicken breast with nothing but salt on it. And that was it. And I would eat basically, I don't know, I would probably, I would also lay between 1200 and 1500 calories a day. And I did this for roughly two years.
And I went from 230 to about 170 and lost 60 pounds. And it was pure and sandy. And I looked so good, dude. I was shredded best optical shape of my life.
And I just wanted this there. My abs all day was amazing. So I'm walking into this whole fat thing with that, right? Like 50 cents said I came into the game humble.
Can't nobody tell me shit now. It's like when I got lean, I was like, I've got this figured out. Like there's nothing left. And I just, I thought I had it dialed in, knew what to do and never once did it occur to me that that was making my wrist 10 times worse.
And so when you guys came in and said, hey, anti-cancer properties, I do it. I hate it. But in the middle of all that, I realized my wrist don't feel better. They feel perfect.
And I remember coming into work going, this is the worst experience in my life. It is so unpleasurable to be in therapeutic range ketosis, not knowing how to supplement. But guys, it is like a drug like effect on my wrist. This is crazy.
And it's just eating. So I said, I'm never taking fat out of my diet again. I was like, there clearly was something to sell membranes, anti-inflammatory. Like there were all kinds of things about the importance of fat that I just wasn't appreciating.
And now I'm experiencing it. So from that moment, whatever that was back in 2013, I've been now some variation of high fat low carb or true ketogenic. And when you were at 2.30, that was a relatively fit 2.30? I was working out hard.
I was strong as an ox. I would have had no stamina. I wasn't doing any cardio. It was purely about strength.
So it wouldn't be something that would impress me today. And when I see pictures of myself back then, I'm a little grossed out because it's like, I got so myopically focused on getting bigger that I didn't realize how much of it was fat and really went through a bit of big reccia during that phase where it was literally if I saw food I ate it. I never wanted to miss out on anything conceivably anabolic. I was all about it.
And then I'd put a similar amount of obsession to losing the fat. And so then I lost a ton of muscle. And so it wasn't nearly as wrong anymore. But I looked awesome.
So I went from thinking only about strength to thinking only about aesthetics. And now I think about performance. And it's just changed everything. So you said something a second ago, which is pretty interesting and I'll pose to you thought experiment.
So you said you want to live forever. Now, what if I said to you, Tom, it is your lucky day because once in my life I get to bestow on one individual immortality and I offer it to you here right now. Would you take it? Yes, without question.
All right. But you're married. Lovely wife. You have wonderful friends.
Definitely. And they're all going to die. That's right. Would you still want to live forever knowing that everyone you know is going to die?
Definitively. And that to me is such a psychological trap that you of all people, you have kids. So if I granted you your children, not your spouse, just your kids, would you want to do it? It's a very interesting question because so the short answer is I don't know the answer.
I'm not convinced it's achievable. So I don't put a lot of time in thinking about something that I don't think is achievable. Though maybe you'll talk me into thinking it is achievable. I take a little bit of a job scene approach on this, which is there is something reasonable about death in that it's just closing the loop on the carbon cycle and it forces a little bit of urgency.
There's a sense of you have to get something done. Now, that said, I hate the thought of saying goodbye to life. I mean, I hate the thought of so I'm 45. Let's assume I've got 50 more years left on this planet.
I know how fast the last 30 went by like I remember being 15 like it was yesterday. And I know that the next 30 and the next 40 will feel quicker because they will occupy a smaller percentage of my relative timeline. So I realized that very soon I will die. So when I think of it that way, I think I just want one more year, one more year, one more year, but do I really want it to be a mortality?
Would I ever want to bury my children when they were old? No, you won't want to bury your children. So that and this is the legacy fallacy trap for me. So people talk a lot about legacy.
So I've decided not to have kids, right? So people are like, oh my God, but what about when you're older and on your deathbed, you're going to work so much. When you think I wish I spent my time differently. And the answer is of course, of course, every time you change your phase in life, your point of reference is now that phase.
And so on your deathbed, you will instinctively see your life completely differently. But my thing is why do you live your life the way that you did? Because in that phase of your life, that was the only way to live that made sense. So even if you're acting at a fear, you're in the middle of the fear, so if you're making sense, so everything that you're doing has a logical movement to it.
And so to live your life out of sync with where you're at in that moment, to try to hit a target, which is to feel good on your deathbed, to me is crazy. Because what that presupposes is that all along, your experience of life was awesome because you were living for that moment on your deathbed. My thing is optimize for the moment you're in now. I'll optimize for my deathbed when I'm on my deathbed and I will try to do all the things that make being on a deathbed as acceptable as possible, or maybe even as beautiful as possible to suddenly recognize the imminent death that is upon me.
And the transience becomes the beautiful thing that I've railed against for so long. But I know that I will have the frame of mind to find the beauty in it. I won't spend a lot of time lashing myself for all, oh, God, I wish I'd done that differently or now with this frame of mind. I can see things so clearly.
I should have had kids, but right now in this moment, I fucking love my life. And so this morning, after two hours of sleep, I couldn't fall back asleep because I'm so fucking excited to get up and keep working on a project. Now I forced myself to go to bed because I knew that after two hours, midday, I'm just going to crash. But that's the level of excitement I have for the things that I'm doing that I call it work.
So if you can build that into your life, then you're going to be okay. And here's how I think of kids. I want kids, dude. I really want kids.
Would you take one of mine? If they're amazing. Absolutely. So you've got to pass a lot of the hearts of I would.
The only thing I want more than I want kids is to not have kids. So it isn't one is undesirable and the other desirable. It is that they are two very desirable things and by a slim margin one wins out. So what I think people need to focus on is construct your life around things, give you energy and feel you enjoy like a deep sense of fulfillment.
That's why I think a lot of people actually made the right decision to have kids to me from the outside seem like pretty instant biological fulfillment. You have a kid and there's a feeling that you get about having that child. You just can't manufacture any other way. And that's beautiful.
And for people that either just want that kind of fulfillment or don't find fulfillment in anything else, kids seem like a really good plan. But for me, I just found that I could build fulfillment into doing other things and it was incredibly gratifying. And I had big brothers for a long time and that informed a lot of my decisions about the realities of the day to day of having a kid. It's amazing, but it's such a time consuming endeavor.
Yeah, sometimes I realize I don't remember what it was like not to have kids. I think it's great when people articulate that, hey, not everybody has to do this thing. It's interesting that it's almost something people have to opt out of instead of opt into. It's sort of become a default thing.
If you don't have kids, people are looking at you're like, why don't you have kids? I think I understand what you're saying for sure. Now going back to the other question about immortality. So you obviously have a great sense of urgency and purpose about what you do.
And again, I don't want to spend too much time on theoretical fun questions, but do you worry that if you knew you could live forever, some of that urgency would go away? Not even a little bit. So there's a book I read, dude, read this book. It's called Einstein's Dreams.
And in that book, it's a bunch of short stories that explore the nature of time. And one of the explorations is a planet where everyone lives forever and the world just breaks into two camps naturally. You've got people that do nothing because there's always time to do it tomorrow. There's no sense of urgency whatsoever.
And you have this other camp of people that do everything because they know I can actually stack all of these passions on each other. And that sequentially one by one, I can get extraordinary at everything I've ever wanted to be extraordinary about. And when I read this as like a 12 year old, I was like, oh my God, that is so me. Like I knew to the like visceral core of my being that that's how I would be given that opportunity.
And then I was given that opportunity, at least in the financial sphere of, you know, hey, what would I do if I never had to work again? What would my life look like? Would I be one of those people that just buys an island, retires of my ties or would I really go hard? And to me, the answer was so evident.
Like when I finally had the money, the resources to do whatever I wanted knowing I would never have to work again ever, even if I lived for 200 years, I started moving faster because now I can do more of the things that I wanted to. I can delegate more. I could solve some problems just by throwing money at it. And so did I earn that state of being, which I like to think I earn all of the things about myself that I value, but maybe I didn't earn it.
And maybe that's why it 12. It resonated so hard with me was just I'm not one of those guys that's like, oh man, I don't know what I want from life. And there's nothing I'm passionate about. Like there's so many things I'm passionate about, let alone just really interested in, let alone fascinated by.
So for me, the battle is eternally, I don't have enough time. And encountering things that you really love doing that really, really truly, you're just excited and it doesn't matter. Like I'll give you an example. So impact three, my new company, we're a narrative company.
We tell stories. And one of the stories that we're about to put out is a comic book. I'm so into writing this book and to telling this story. And the world cup is on.
And the team that I support because America in qualified is England. They were playing today. And the game's going. Everybody here is having a great time.
And I stepped out to go work on the comic. And so I'm choosing between these two things, both which filmed me with joy and passion and was so much fun. And I thought this is a good sign. When the thing that's technically work that is moving me towards a business objective is so much fun that I actually find myself pulling away from this truly just a celebration in a game to go work on that thing.
So structuring my life around things like that make it very easy for me to say definitively if I could live forever, I would live forever. Now it wasn't always Rosie, right? I mean, I think I've heard a little bit about how Quest got started and what you guys were doing before and how you guys all knew each other. But what were you doing before Quest and what brought you Ron and Mike together?
Yeah, depends on how far back you go. So I went to USC from school, was studying film that was going to be my shtick. And I cheated all the way through high school. I believe that was smart, but I didn't really have anything to back that up.
My own mother when I left for college, she finally admitted this years later. My mother called she just quietly assumed I was going to fail because I didn't show any signs of like being the guy. I promised myself I went to college. I would never cheat again because I thought this I'm studying now what I actually care about.
I'm taking on tens of thousands of debt. It just doesn't make sense to cheat. So literally as an incoming freshman, I said, air F, sink or swim, I'm going to do all my own work and it's just going to be what it's going to be because I need to actually learn this. And so go there.
My SATs are at 990. I took it twice. So like you can imagine I'm like barely getting into school. The film school wanted a 1300.
I didn't have it. I go to the admissions committee. I say look, SAT just tells us how you're supposed to do in school. So if you apply as an incoming junior, we're just going to look at your transcripts and we don't care about your SAT.
So I thought, okay, cool. For the next two years, I have to get good grades. So I didn't date. I didn't drink.
I didn't party. Nothing. Man, dude. All I did was work and I got extraordinary grades.
And I think probably about the time that I applied for film school again, I had to fork my nose. I mean, it's just absolutely murdering it. I remember not cheating nothing. Just all of me fucking hard-ass work.
And I get into film school and I start crushing it and I'm doing great. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm the man. Like I am so talented. I'm crazy.
And my dad's telling me I'm talented. I get to film school and I'm just proving it. Everyone's like, you're never going to get into film school. I got in and only four people in your entire class get to direct a senior thesis film.
And I was chosen. And I was like, dude, this is my life. I'm going to graduate with a three-picture deal. I'm going to be the next deal.
This is insane. Like it's all working exactly as I planned. And then my senior thesis film, I fucked up so badly that I stole the master because it was that embarrassing. And people were cutting clips of my film together into these joke reels to make fun of it, to make fun of me.
And it was emotionally devastating because I realized the truth. I'm not saying this to be humble. The truth was I didn't have talent. And that film made it abundantly clear.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was in way over my head and finally this film was just elaborate enough to expose that I actually didn't know how to tell a story. And that was crushing because I had a fixed mindset. So I believe that you're either naturally talented or you're not.
To me, filming came like singing. Either you can sing it or you can't. And all the training in the world is only going to refine whatever talent you already have. So I was like, wow, well, I guess this is it.
I'm not talented. I crash and burn. I am now flirting with depression. I've graduated.
My parents aren't helping me financially. I'm taking remedial jobs. The period of my life I called the King of the Media Jobs period where I would only interview for jobs that I thought I would be smarter than the person interviewing me because I needed to feel smart. And I just believe my talent and intelligence were fixed traits and life is about making the most of them.
So I never wanted to be in a situation that made me feel badly about myself. And so that puts you in stupid places. So I'm a college graduate selling video games retail. That was my life.
And then I got a phone call and somebody was like, hey, should come teach filmmaking to me and need some people to help. And I went and taught and through teaching. I'm truncating the story that there's a lot of suffering in this part that I'm skipping over. But I end up teaching filmmaking and realized, well, I'm actually able to help make their films better.
And then make their films better. Why can't I learn and make my own films better? And so that became the seeds that would ultimately grow into a growth mindset. But at the time I had those words, I had some Tony Robbins, I was clinging to that for dear life.
And the thing that really changed my life was, I don't know if you remember this, this would have been back in like 99 people really debating brain plasticity. And one side was like, it's total bullshit. Your brain done, capped out 12 or 13, somewhere around there. It starts a pruning process after that.
You're not going to learn anything major new. I was like, oh, God, that would be dire. And then the other side was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, guys, I'm telling you the brain is plastic. You can learn anything at any age.
And then I started reading and reading about the brain, and I started reading about the brain, and I started reading about the brain, and I started reading about the brain to try to understand how it could change, what I needed to do, what the process of getting better at something, with a neurological process of that was, what are synaptic connections, how does the myelination process work. And all of that stuff filled me with so much excitement that I could change. So okay, I suck today. I don't have to suck tomorrow.
I can just pour myself into this and get better and push and work. And so that's what I started doing right about that time. I encountered these two bodybuilder, meat head guys. And of course immediately write them off as like, oh, bodybuilders are dumb.
And then they opened their mouths and I was like, Jesus, these guys are smart, man. And they were like, look, we're starting a new technology company and we need a copywriter. And I was like, well, you know, hey, that sounds amazing because their pitch to me was, dude, look, you're coming to the film industry with your handout. You need to get rich, control the resources, and then you can make films the way you want to make.
And I'm, you know, whatever, 23, 24. And so I'm like, that sounds amazing. Let's do that. And so they thought it would take about 18 months.
I was going to go help them build this technology company. They were going to sell it. And then I would have the money I needed to make films. And of course it doesn't play out that way.
And I go into first an amazing period where I'm learning to be an entrepreneur in a startup environment in an ultra grueling, like, hey, don't be a fucking idiot. Get it done. Kind of move faster like that kind of doggy dog environment. But I ended up thriving in that and really getting strong, which is I needed to toughen up.
I'm just going to be really honest. And it was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. I believed I could change and grow. And I met guys that helped me to a high-ass standard and pushed themselves and wanted to grow and get better and they knew a lot about business.
And so they just brought me into this pressure cooker environment and made a very similar offer to dozens of people. And they said, look, this is a startup. You know, any job in the company you want, you just have to become the right person for the job. So I went hard, hard, and just fought and clawed my way up.
And ultimately was the only one who left standing. And what did that company do specifically? Awareness Technologies made data loss prevention software. So if you had a company, and this is all timing, right?
So this is early 2000s. So it was like, you have a company and your worried, your employees are taking HIPAA data out because you're health care or you're worried that they're taking customer data out because the credit cards are still sort of the wild, wild west at this point. And people could just pop in USB and take it out or they could email it out. So we made software that would allow you to say, OK, if it has this type of information, credit card data, whatever, flag it and don't let the attachment leave, not via USB port, not via email or whatever.
And I assume you're talking about Ron and Mike. So you guys exit this company when? So that we started wrapping up around 2009. So in 2010, we launched Quest 2009.
We bring on a new CEO who bought the company and it was sort of a staggered exit. So he and I, the new CEO and I didn't see eye to eye. He didn't think I was very good at marketing and I thought he just didn't understand marketing. So I said, look, I'm going to go start our next company, which we actually offered him a percentage in because we didn't want him to sweat us working on it in the background.
And he turned it down. Whoops. And so he goes on this firing binge, fires a bunch of people and I said, you know, I think there's one more person we need to fire. And he's like, who's that?
And I said, me. And he was like, OK, why? And I said, I don't we don't see eye to eye. You think marketing is spreadsheets.
I think it's storytelling. So we've got this new company that we told you about and I want to go be the first full time employee. And so I was respectful and phased myself out and made sure that they were, you know, standing. But I'm he agreed to let me go and let me out of my contracts.
Mike and Ron stayed behind on contract for again, it was staggered. But for a year, I was operationally on my own building the company up. And that's how I exited that. And then they finally exited.
I was like a year later for I think Ron came first and another six months. And Mike was there. What was the impetus for starting Quest? What entry were you guys scratching?
So I can only speak for myself on this one. And I'll say that when we were building awareness technologies in the beginning, it was learning so much about being an entrepreneur. It was insanely empowering. And it was just giving to me, giving to me, giving to me.
And then I sort of was hating what I was doing so much that whatever knowledge I was gaining, I was still being eroded. And I used to tell my wife, it's chipping away at me. Like I'm just not having fun. Like this is so miserable.
And so it was taking more energy than it was giving. So I was getting drained every day. I never wanted to talk to my wife about what I did. So I come home and she'd be like, what we up to today?
And I'm like, I don't want to talk about it. Like I just didn't want to think about it anymore. It was just soul sucking because I didn't care about the product. There was no us in the product.
Like we were just trying to make something. We used to joke. It was a company that was born to be sold in slavery. Like we just wanted to get rid of it.
Like from the jump. It was never something that we believed. And we actually did VC pitches where we said, don't worry, you guys can get rid of us. We don't care.
We don't have an ego about this. Like this and I quote this company was meant to be sold in this slavery. We actually said those words multiple times, not realizing to a VC. That makes you sound like an asshole who just wants to get out of the company.
I'm not going to trust you with my money wisely. So just couldn't get it for a long time. Couldn't get any money raised. So anyway, it's robbing for me.
And by this point, they've given me 10% ownership in the company. The company is worth like 22 million at its height. So I'm like, I'm a multi-millionaire on paper. And I'm just like, I'm so unhappy.
I'm living the cliche of money camp by happiness. So I go to my wife and I said, look, I know I promised that I would make you rich and I'm going to, but I'm going to need to go backwards for a minute so we can go forward. And I said, I need to do something that makes me feel alive. Like I just can't keep doing this.
It's so miserable. And so she was like, yeah, I haven't seen this unhappy in a long time. Like do whatever you need to do. So I'm going to quit.
And now in the story, it sounds kind of cool because of how it ends up working out. But at the time, I was ashamed because I was like, I just can't do this anymore. I'm so unhappy. And I had told them anything within my code of ethics, I will do to build this company period.
And I realized it's just not true. Like when it's stealing my life from me, it wasn't worth it anymore. So I went in, I said, guys, here's your equity back. I'm knocking across the finish line.
I don't want to get anything for this. You could sell the company tomorrow for a billion dollars. You will never hear from me of sound mind and body. I am walking away from this and I'm leaving you in the lurch.
And that's exactly how it feels to me. And so they were stunned and taken aback and I drove home and I'm literally pulling into the driveway. I'm on the phone with my wife. I did it the hard part.
The two guys who I love, they are my brothers and I just said, I'm leaving and the phone rings and it's them. And I'm like, hold on a second. Let me take this and I click over and they're like, come out to dinner with us. I go out to dinner and they're like, look, you caught us by surprise.
The reality is we could do this without you, but we don't want to. And that let me connect to something other than the money up until that point. It had just been like, we're doing this for the money for the money. I'm going to make money.
I'm going to make it rich. I'm going to make movies. And then it was the thing I really care about this. I care about the brotherhood.
I care about the camaraderie. I want to build something of value. I want to build something I'm passionate about. We care about something we're passionate about, something that the mother Theresa Quater at least has attributed to her.
No one will act for the many, but people will act for the one. So I was like, I can show up every day thinking about my mom and my sister, who are morbidly obese. And they're going to die far too soon if we can't solve this problem. Because Ron was like a nutritional freak at this point.
And he was just into it and he'd help me transform my physique. This is like in the middle of me losing all the weight. And I think I got it figured out. And I thought, whoa, with what he knows about human metabolism and nutrition and my passion for marketing.
And I've got this whole new vision that's going to leverage this thing that's is now called social media, but wasn't called that back then. And I just saw this vision fucking your boy Tim Ferris, who I read his book and he introduced me to Kevin Kelly's notion of a thousand true fans. So I became obsessed with this notion of a thousand true fans. I'm going to find a thousand true fans and a stop reading email.
Thank you again, Timothy Ferris, but that one. I haven't read email in any meaningful way since that book. And so I was like, I'm going to go off. I'm going to mark this way.
I pulled Mike and Ron into a conference from my game. This whole pitch. It's easier to explain the way I'd say it. Now these weren't the words I was using back then because we didn't have these words, but guys look, social media is going to change everything.
It's going to allow people to build community. All it is is a megaphone. If you give people a reason to say something good, they'll say something good. And if you give them a reason to say something bad, they will say something bad.
But if we can build a company around value creation, about building community, not trying to hawk product, actually bring these people together, help them, because most of them want to lose weight, help them lose weight, make the mission of our company to end metabolic disease. Like all of a sudden, we can really do something. People know who we are as people. I was obsessed with that.
I was like, I want to be me today. I would say I want to be authentic back then. I was just like, I want our personalities to shine through. I want people to know who we are.
Companies shouldn't be in the space of organizations. It should be real people and you should really feel them in the copy on the website in the content that they put out. And I know how to tell stories, let us tell stories to these guys. So we started building just a totally different infrastructure than any company out there.
We made our own content studio. We were creating all of our own content. We were essentially telling stories. What is the brand mean?
What should it mean to you? And that ended up because we were so early in the game of social media. We just exploded. Yeah, it's kind of amazing.
And I remember the first time we met, which I guess would have been 2013. So you guys were certainly you would see a quest bar here and there in a store, but nothing like you do today, of course. But I really remember you explaining this at the time and me sort of not getting it, which was and I don't even remember back then, like what were your main social media channels? Was it mostly Facebook?
Was Instagram around? I don't remember. Didn't even exist. I remember that came out.
Wow. So this was all through Facebook, all through Facebook, a little bit of Twitter. And then probably year two Instagram started to be a thing. And then we started putting more and more resources and then Instagram exploded.
And Instagram really carried a lot away in the fitness community because it's so visual. So that was a huge win for us. When did you realize that this thing could work? This thing being questioned?
Well, I knew it could work from the jump for what I wanted, which was I wanted to love what I was doing every day. I wanted to feel like I was sort of going to battle a righteous battle with my two brothers who I care deeply about. And thought they had just amazing skills that would just be incredibly valuable in what we were doing. And I felt ready as a marketer.
I felt like I understood something that nobody else understood. I felt that we could move fast and I felt that we could serve our customer well. And that was it. And I believe because we always talked, we were a food company.
We didn't look at it as a supplement company or a bar company. We were a food company and we were going to end metabolic disease. We wanted to make meaningful contributions to the world of how food is made, source process understood, eaten, like all of it. And even just looking at the kinds of imagery we were putting out there, we went so against veins and chains.
Right. So the bodybuilding industry up until that point was literally guys with massive muscles, huge veins, wearing chains. And that was everywhere, everywhere had that image. And we thought, oh man, we're going to focus on food.
I became obsessed with this certain color blue, which I thought was appeal to men, appeal to women. It was like this beautiful, optimistic, creative color. I did all this research on what blue means to people and how it hits the retina. And literally it became like an actual stress point because it was hard to get the right color.
But then it becomes this iconic color. The whole industry starts copying it. It was bananas. But like going contract, like I heard, I don't remember where I heard this, but I said, if you really want to be successful, you have to be a contrarian and you have to be right.
And we were a contrarian and we were right. And so because of that, it's just everything with nuts. And so looking at everything differently and building a company that we were excited about taking care of customers, it was just, yeah, it was crazy. And you've been now doing impact theory for two years?
Just under, yeah. So talking about that transition and tell me a little about what impact theory is. I mean, I think I have some idea, but my guess is I'm probably missing a few of the details and also the understanding of when you decided, hey, it's time to go do this other thing full time. Because this was obviously a passion for you always.
Yeah. So to understand impact theory, you have to understand Rashawn Jackson. And when I was in college and desperately trying to get good grades, I had a teacher offer extra credit to go tutor inner city kids. And so I said, yes.
And they, of course, give you the most problematic kids you can imagine. So they gave me this young, probably drug and alcohol impacted hyperactive kid who was hyperactive on a level I'd never seen. The kid was bouncing off the walls. All over the place was crazy.
And my job is getting to do his homework. And so for the first hour, he would cry and scream and freak out and like run around and get in fights and just go nuts. And then when I would say, all right, hours up, I got to go, then he would become so sweet and sloppy and he would cry and just beg me to stay and help him. And so like a sucker, I would say, so he gave me for two hours.
And so around like week four, week five, I realized this kid's trolling me. Like he knows he gets an extra hour if he ignores me for the first hour and then a sweet and sweetness and light, the second hour. So S.R. is getting really annoying for me because I've got so much work to do.
And on week six, you're supposed to tell him only coming for two more weeks because it's an eight week program. So week six, I tell this kid only coming for two more weeks just so you know, and he flipped out. He went into nuclear is eight at this point and just goes bananas. And he was really small because he was on riddle in or something.
And so it's not a disservice. It's just tiny, tiny for his age. And he went up and just slug this kid who was like, no joke, three times the size. I just never seen like pent up rage like that.
And I was like, wow, I finally get him under control. I came back and I'm like, is this because I said I was only coming for two more weeks? And he says through sobbing hysterical tears. Yes.
So I said, look, because now I'm fed up with the whole just like drama routine. And I said, if and only if you do your homework, the moment I get here, as long as I live in Los Angeles, I will keep coming and helping you with your homework. And so he agreed and that turned into an eight and a half year relationship. And I ended up becoming far more than just a tutor and he becomes an integral part of my life.
And I his and I didn't know it at the time. He was being abused at home and he ends up getting taken away by the police and he makes me the guardian of the court. And I have to help him through the court system and into foster care. I mean, like that's how intertwined our lives became.
And then I'm young and poor at this point and they move him farther and farther away. And I never really felt like I was able to help him because I was so young and stupid. And the only thing I really knew how to do was to show him that there's a life he never sees. So I would take him to see movies in Beverly Hills because I was like movies cost the same, but I can at least take him to a beautiful neighborhood.
That left a really lasting mark on me and my personality and it planted a seed. And then flash forward 10, 15 years later, I'm at Quest, I know 1400 employees and about 1000 of them grew up hard, just like this kid, Rishan. And I realized I have an opportunity to help make their lives better. But how?
And so we start thinking of the same called Quest University and it was meant to be making protein bars as your tuition, but really learn the things you need to learn to go and have a better life. And so I write the 25 bullet points, which are the 25 things I had to do to my mind to go from laying on my unfinished apartment floor, flirting with depression, not knowing how I was going to do anything with my life. And we totally had to control hopeless and lost to building a billion dollar brand. I knew exactly what I had to do, the changes in beliefs, the thought patterns, everything that I had to do.
And so I started giving that to people and trying to help them. And people would come to me and like, these are thugs, dude, like tattoos up the neck, teardrop tattoos, grown men coming to me in tears. You care more about my success than my own mother. I hope in my future for the first time ever, like people moving up, one guy comes off the line and ends up working in our tech departments, I show them how to like learn tech on the side.
I mean, just crazy, like so many stories like that, absolutely extraordinary. And I was like, when I'm at my most honest, I love helping with the body, but when I'm at my most honest, helping with the mind is what I'm meant to do. And so I thought, we're doing all of this for the employees. Let's create a show.
We'll call it Inside Quest. And I'll interview because what I feared and I remember when I did it, I said my big fear in writing these 25 things down. They hung in the wall. It was like a whole thing.
My fear in writing them down is that you'll memorize them, but you won't live by them. And so I wanted to bring other successful people in that I knew just because they're universal laws of success. I knew it would say roughly the same thing over and over and over. And these guys would say, OK, it's not just that.
It's all these people that are saying the same thing. And so that became really important. And so I'm pouring myself into making that great in an effort to really do something amazing for the employees. And then at this time, we ended up having just the incredible financial windfall at a personal level that we'd all fantasize about since the day we got into business.
And I realized all of a sudden, you know, we're in a very fortunate position where the three of us have the financial where we don't always have to agree on everything. We don't always have to move in the same direction. The company would be very stable now without me. They didn't necessarily run a mic didn't necessarily have my level of excitement for doing the mind.
And our consumer base was asking, why the hell is the protein bar guy talking about mindset? So it was a total brand disconnect. And I looked at it and thought, given enough years, I can get people to change the way that they think about this brand. But my partner is going to want to share in that horrific cost as I shift the brand to fit what I want to do.
And it didn't seem like a fair thing to drag them through. So, you know, I said, look, this is something that is important enough to me that I have to do it in my life. So we agreed to part ways at that point and build things the way that we see fit. And so I took the studio that we had built inside of Quest and spun it out into a standalone company.
That's now in fact, theory. We create both what I call nonfiction content, stuff like this, interview shows and then fiction content. So we've got our first comic book coming out that we hope to turn into film or TV. So how much of what you learned in film school figures into what you do today?
A lot, a lot. So film school is psychology with and put the camera here for best results. Once you understand that, that your job is really to take the audience on an emotional and ideological ride that at the end, they're entertained, but at least from my perspective, also enriched. And look, most films don't worry about the second part.
That's an obsession of mine. But when I think about the things that really shaped my life, it's the stories I tell myself about myself. And it's the stories that I identify with and make the dominant metaphors in my life. Joseph Campbell said, if you want to change the world, change the metaphor.
So I've lost the visions of what can be impacted through art. I heard a quote the other day, though, that is very sobering and definitely keeps me thinking about ways to really impact people. And he said, if 300 years of Shakespeare hasn't stopped genocide, then what hope does art really have? And I think that's a fair point.
But I think that we're living through a time today where you can marry the nonfiction, the direct, the explanatory with the metaphorical. Because I think the big problem is that the belief in the metaphors dropped out. And Joseph Campbell again talks about this and says, part of the reason that you get these stunted adolescence is because there's no ritual driven by belief that the ritual has deep meaning. So people aren't different from childhood to adulthood without those transitional rituals.
And the same with divorce. And he said, I think it'd be part of the divorce rate is that people don't have these transitional rituals. And so I took that really seriously. And when I got married, I went through ritualistic scarification because I wanted to be a different man the day before my wedding and the day after.
And I can't tell you how many times that's really like reminded me. Going through something painful that was difficult made me think of myself as different and begin telling myself a different story that I'm married now. So say more about that. What did you do exactly?
When I put it into normal terms, it won't sound as cool, but I got a tattoo. Now for me, tattoos were not something I wanted. I don't like tattoos. I don't have to think for tattoos.
I had exactly one and that was the one that I got as a ritualistic scarification. I was deathly afraid of needles at the time. Deathly afraid. So for me, it was facing my biggest fear doing something that was painful with this thing that held some sort of mythical like element of terror in my life.
To give you an idea, I was one of those guys that when I had injections in my wrist at one point, I was fainted. And I wasn't even looking because the thought of a needle penetrating my skin freaked me out that much. So that's where I was when I got the tattoo was just it was the scariest thing I could think of within the realm of reality, right? I didn't go swimming with great white sharks.
Okay, that obviously would be far more terrifying. But within the like the plausible realm of this isn't potentially actually dangerous. It was the worst thing I could think of. And so doing that, having to face that fear, having to do that ended up being really important for me transitioning out of being single to being married.
I've heard you talk before about money and it's something that I've certainly asked a number of my patients, one of the privileges of medicine. I think there were several, but one of them I think is that you form relationships with people where you can ask very intimate questions and sometimes they're not just about their health. It's about their happiness. And even though my patient population is quite small, given the affluence of some of my patients, I've had interesting discussions with people about how wealth does and doesn't impact their lives.
So I guess even though you're not my patient, I'll ask you basically the same sort of question, which is, did you feel different the day after your liquidity event? No. And that's the weirdest part. Here's exactly what it was for me.
And I think this is near universal when I looked when I was poor and all through my childhood, I looked at people that had money and I had adoration for them. It just seemed so cool. And I thought that in some way they were better than me or certainly in a better place than me and that made them in some ways better, certainly more desirable to be like that. And so looking at them, you meet them with a bit of reverence.
And so in the back of your mind somewhere is the notion that when I get money, I will have that adoration for myself. And I will have that sense of reverence for myself. And you think that somehow all the insecurities that you have will be washed out by that reverence and adoration. And it's not.
And you realize that you feel exactly the same the next day. And the easiest way I can explain it is to say that it's like losing your virginity. Before I lost mine, I legitimately thought colors would be brighter. I would just be somehow a fundamentally different person.
And then I had sex and I was like, oh, that was rad. I loved it, but I'm not a different person. And that was exactly how I felt with money. It was rad, dude.
Money is better than people think. It's more powerful than people think to be certain. But it's not at all the people who have been told. It's not going to impact how you feel about yourself.
It is merely going to extend your capabilities. You'll suddenly be able to facilitate things you wouldn't be able to facilitate. Money is essentially inert, right? There's a bit of heat energy to a dollar bill that you could release by burning it.
But short of that, the money in and of itself is inert. But it can facilitate things. Now, if you have a clear vision of what you want to facilitate and it's a problem that can be addressed with money, something money becomes insanely powerful. And if you really want to think about how powerful money is, think about how much of your own life is determined by what you get paid to do.
Now imagine controlling that money. And you realize that you're able to aim incredibly intelligent, capable people. That problem is you want solved. It's not necessarily the problem they want solved.
So that gets really, really interesting. And then if you can help them fall in love with what they're doing, if you can give them a supportive environment, if you can make sure they know that we're all equals here. We have different roles, but we're all equally important, that their voice is desired, that they're there because you want to hear from them. Then it's like, holy hell, I know I only get their attention because I'm willing to pay them.
But now that I have their attention and can create this ecosystem, this environment for them to thrive in, we can do some pretty extraordinary things. It seems like one's motivation around money can change because certainly I'm guessing when you were young or when you were, let's say right out of college, right, you're sort of at a low point, it sounds like we didn't go too much into it. Although that's the kind of stuff I enjoy talking about. It's the pain and the humiliation of that experience.
And at that moment, my guess is you would have thought, give me a bunch of money and my problems go away. And maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the sense that at that moment you would have realized that that wasn't true and at best that money would have given you the opportunity to go back and do what you loved. And those are different things, right? Very.
Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, back then I was chasing money all out because I thought it would solve all of my problems. And I thought it would make me cool as hell. I just thought it would be so cool, dude.
I'm going to be the man. I want a fast car. I want a Lamborghini. I want the every blingy thing that you can imagine.
I wanted it all. And I fantasized about it. And whenever I thought about money, the only thing I thought about was what it could buy me. That was it.
And how cool people were going to think I was. How cool I would think myself. Yeah, that was the nature of money to me. Who do you consider a role model in people who have taken great wealth and put it to maximum impact?
Elon Musk. No question. He's probably one of the few people that legitimately makes me feel badly about myself and makes me sweat when I think about like, oh, could I really do that? Like I like to think I can do anything Peter, but spinning that many place at one time yikes.
I don't know that I process raw data fast enough. That's the gods honest truth. And so let's consider one of those things, which is SpaceX. It used to be an engineer.
So I'm pretty impressed by the key load to dollar ratio of payload. Sometimes I still can't believe it's happened. I mean, what they've done. Have you ever been to see a launch?
No. I have not. I have a couple of friends who have. I'd love to.