Lisa Bilyeu
Appearances
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
what you're gonna hear start learning and growing inevitably something will happen no one succeeds alone you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it i'm on this journey with me
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Yeah, it's so true. I go to like, is it still moving me towards your goal? Yes or no. So actually there's two parts. Is it still moving you towards your goal? And is this still fulfilling? Because those things sometimes, right? It's like, well, no, we get a, you know, especially in entrepreneurial world these days, it's like, you know, be on your grind, hustle, hustle, work hard, move forward.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
And so the question is, yes, work hard, but are you working smart? And are you working in the right direction? It's like, think of, you know, I love analogies. So just thinking about going in the car and it's like, you want to drive to New York, right? But you actually take the wrong freeway and you keep going and you're just like, But I'm on this freeway now.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
It will eventually get me to New York. But do you want it to take 10 times longer? What if you now realize, actually, I don't want to go to New York anyway? We're like having these assessments of, am I still on the right path? Do I still want to go to New York? All these assessments, just because you're one year in, doesn't mean that you shouldn't. In fact, that's when you should.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
I wish I did that. In eight years, I didn't do that even once. Me and my husband, we play this game called no bullshit. What would it take? And so the no bullshit, what would it take to X, Y, and Z? So let's say your goal is to build a company and you're like, okay, no bullshit. What would it take? It would take me. seven years to make a hundred thousand dollars.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
And in that path, I will have to give up on spending Saturdays with my partner and I can no longer get my hair done. Like that's what no bullshit. What would it take me to get to your goal? Actually refine, where are you going? No bullshit. What is it going to take to get you there? And then are you willing to do it? Because that's the thing, right?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Like for you with your C-suite, if you're just like, I want to run this company, Great. Now you've got the goal. You know what you want to do. How do you get that? Okay. Well, I need to fill this position. I need to work my way up the ladder. Okay, great. What skill sets are you going to build to work your way up the ladder?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
Now, when you're in the process each year, you need to assess, are you having fun? Is it a life you still want? You have to replay the no bullshit. What would it take? Because now your goal still may be, I want to be to the top, but you know what? I actually really want to have a partner. And I've given up dating for four years. And the truth is, this may not be the life I want anymore.
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
I want to date. I want to go out there. Okay, so now maybe you've assessed your goal of running the company may not align with your day-to-day. And now you better reassess, does your goal still match the life you want? And I think that to your point of how do you make sure you're not wasting your years is the reassessment of is your goal still your goal?
Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#503 Radical Self-Confidence + A Different Take on Perfectionism; Best of Lisa Bilyeu, Katherine Morgan Schafler, and Tania Lester
And are your acts on a day to day filling your heart? Because if it's not, do you actually want to get to your goal in the first place?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I was like, I love freaking rap music. These guys like rap music. On a busy day, instead of cracking the whip, if you will, and just yelling and being like, work harder, work more. I'm just going to connect with them. And so I went out to the store. I bought these big speakers. I put them in our shipping facility.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And every time we had these big orders and we were on a clock because you've got these big trucks coming to pick up the orders, I would blast the music and I'd be like, all right, guys, who can rap faster than me? Now, what I would do is when I would use rap as the analogy, right, because we would have to wrap pallets with plastic and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, what they don't realize is by the time I hired them, what they didn't realize is that I used to do their job. So they saw me as this woman that's working in the office that doesn't have any idea about what they're doing. And what I realized was I needed to show them that I knew what it was like. I needed to show them that I knew how hard you had to work in this department.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I had to make it fun. No one wants to just work hard. So I would do these competitions. And with Blast Tupac, I would have these rapping competitions where I would make people try to see who could beat me with rapping these big palettes. And I'm quite speedy. So like we would rap while rapping to Tupac. So you're doing the double entendre, right? You're rapping and you're rapping.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And at the end, if someone beat me, I would give them free quest bars. Now, what that did, multiple things. That number one showed the team that nothing was ever beneath me. I was willing to do exactly what they were willing to do. It showed them that I wasn't stuffy, that I actually had something in common with them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And that was the fact that we appreciated rap music for the lyrics, the meaning behind it, et cetera. And it showed them that I was willing to be a teammate, that when things get hard, I was willing absolutely to roll up my sleeves and jump in with them. Now, over time, That absolutely commanded respect.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
That wasn't something I learned in a book and that wasn't something that anyone could teach me. It was just me stabbing in the dark, trying a bunch of things and then realizing the thing that worked for me and connected me to my team.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, I know that was a really long story, but I take that and I echo that type of thing in everything I do, whether that's building my YouTube channel, whether that's building impact theory, that idea of as a leader, you need to show by example, you need to be a part of it, people need to have fun. And now I use laughter as a metric in my company to know how my team is emotionally.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So that's really a big lesson that I learned in that whole scenario.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And that EQ that you mentioned is really coming from the fact that I had terrible EQ is how I used to see it. I would take everything personally. Everything was emotional and everything was based on emotion. Well, I feel this, so it must be true.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And what I realized is every time I match my feelings and emotions to the goals I'm trying to get to, I realized that a lot of the time my emotions were actually getting in the way. because I would take things personally. And that's where I started to go, okay, this doesn't serve me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And what I understand about emotions is the fact that if I don't eat for, let's say, 10 hours, I know I'm gonna get moody. I'm gonna get agitated. If we all know as humans, we all act like that, Why do we not think that emotions are going to be driven by multiple sources? So when I get overwhelmed or let's say I make a decision from an emotional standpoint, well, what if I'm tired?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
What if I have eaten sugar that day? What if I just had an argument with my husband? Do I think that that decision is going to be done with clarity? No. All the things that I've just gone through are going to fog my decision making. And I just call myself on that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Instead of trying to hide it, instead of trying to be embarrassed by it, I just say, right now, I'm really irritable, so I can't make any decisions. I need to go and eat. I need to sleep. I need my nine hours. What are the things that are going to allow me to have what I call emotional sobriety? And emotional sobriety is when you are not allowing your emotions to make a decision.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, it's not that I don't think emotions are important. I actually think emotions are very important because they're going to be signals to tell you something that you may be ignoring. If you're irritable, okay, well, what are you ignoring? Don't ignore the feeling. Actually address, why am I feeling like that? The problem is, I think, then people, they don't do that work.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so they take their feelings as facts. And I'm very aware that my feelings are not facts. So now when I approach a situation, I address why I'm feeling a certain way, but I then try to see the scenario for what it is instead of how I feel. And if people still aren't with me, here's the perfect analogy. Have you drunk an alcohol before, Ilana? Of course. Okay.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So what do you like if you had one shot of vodka?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Okay, there you go. So what I was going to say is the shot number one, I get giggly. Shot number two, I'm very loud. Shot number three, I'm dancing on the table and kissing the security on the way out of the club. I just know that with every shot of vodka, I am going to have a response that in a way that doesn't actually align with who I really am.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
If we can all agree there, then why can we not just say the same as for emotions? If you have a shot of frustration, if you have a shot of anger, if you have a shot of upset or a shot of disrespect, if you have too many shots of that, what's going to happen? You're going to respond in a way that isn't accurate to who you really are. If we can just agree I just then say, when have I had my shots?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And if I've already had my one shot of anger, then you can't make business decisions. If I've had two shots, I better freaking walk away. I don't beat myself up over feeling it and I don't pretend it doesn't exist. In knowing all of that, now I know in moments where I'm bringing emotion to the table and I can't have this discussion. In fact, this just happened like a week ago with my husband.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
He said something that triggered me. I realized I was triggered. And I said, look, I know you didn't mean to trigger me right now. I'm having an emotional response. I don't think it's healthy if we keep talking. Let me walk away and I'll come back once I'm emotionally sober. And I actually said those words. It's not like I pretended to say those words. I actually said those words.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And what my husband did, he was like, all right, thank you for being honest. Thank you for just not storming off, being moody, pretending like a lot of us do. Like, no, I'm not upset. What do you mean? Right? It's like, everyone can tell that you're upset. So
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
That is how I handle emotions in moments where I don't feel good enough, emotional moments where I don't feel like I can really bring my all. I just admit it. I know what to do about it. And then I'm always acting in accordance. And the last piece that I want to make sure everyone hears, I do all of this without shame and guilt.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yeah. So here's the thing about this. There's going to be two things. There's going to be one thing where people are going to throw hate and it's really not going to bother you. Probably the reason why it won't bother you is because you don't feel it. It's not true to you. So if someone says, oh my God, Lisa, I hate that you're five foot one. It's all right. I hate that I'm 5'1".
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I can't do anything about that. I just brush it off. But if someone says, you're so ugly, that hurts and stings in a very different way. Why? Because I've never beaten myself up or felt badly about being short. I very much beaten myself up and felt badly about myself, about my looks. So
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
When someone comes at you, when it's something that doesn't trigger you, you're going to let it roll off your back. You're not going to think about it. The ones that really do hurt are the ones that actually hit home. And now you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do about it? So there's a couple of things that I did.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So to get started, because that's always the hard thing, how do I actually get started? So Imagine I get bullied for my looks. I get teased. I get called big nose, all of the things. I used to have a unibrow. I never had a boyfriend. If you were the Disney character, right, and you're going to write the most ugly young girl, that was how I felt. So you take that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Thank you. That's very kind. But look, everyone has a belief system, right? And when you're told over and over and over and over the same thing and it becomes a wound, you really do believe it. So here I am as an adult, not feeling good, not feeling like I'm pretty or anything like that. And so I really wanted to start a podcast because I really wanted to help women.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I go to start the podcast and I say to my husband, I'm just going to do it on Zoom. I'm going to do it with my friends and I'm just going to do it on Zoom and it's just going to be audio only. Now, my husband, being the person that says we promised we would be with each other, is he called me on my own BS, basically. And he said, hang on a minute. We have a set. We have six cameras.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And we have an entire team that can film this for you. Why on earth would you not get in front of the camera? Now, in that moment, I realized the truth was it was a conflict between my mission and my ego. And I had to be honest about it because my mission is to help women. Do I think that if I could go video and audio, that I'm going to reach more women than just audio? The answer is yes.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Okay, if I know that is true, why do I not want to get on camera? It's my ego. I don't want to be bullied. I don't want to be made fun of. I don't know if I can cope. I don't know if I can handle it, right? All the things that are going through my head. As soon as I just put them out, the reality of what is more important, Lisa, your mission or your ego, then there was nowhere to hide.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yeah. So I was brought up Greek Orthodox and a big part of my upbringing was being taught that as a Greek woman, that my goal in life was to get married and have kids and be an amazing mother. And even when you're a kid and you have all these crazy dreams, I wanted to come to America, I wanted to win an Academy Award.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, I like to do that. I like to not hide anywhere because that's where the reality always comes through. So once I realized that I had to make a decision, I let go of any judgment. That's the second piece. is that if I chose ego, no one's got a right to say that's right or wrong. I have to do what is right for me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I have to do what makes me feel good when I go to bed at night because no one's around except for me and my thoughts. So if I can't be proud of myself, it doesn't matter what other people think. So just remember, guys, when you're asking yourself these questions, what's more important, it doesn't matter what other people think.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
What actually matters is what you think because it's not like it's wrong. for me to choose my ego. It's not wrong. Wrong according to who? So once I was allowed to remove the judgment of it as well, and I was like, oh, which one is actually the thing that you're going to be proud of when you go to bed at night? And I knew. It had to be getting in front of the camera.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It had to be my mission was more important. And so now that just gave me the decision making. The decision was, I now have to get in front of the camera. That doesn't eliminate the fear. It doesn't eliminate the ego taking a dent. Like it doesn't eliminate any of that. But it allowed me to just make the decision. And now I wasn't second guessing myself.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And then that piece then allowed me to start moving forward and get in front of the camera. And that was how I ended up taking the leap is I had zero confidence. I didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't like I thought it was going to work. It wasn't like I had confidence in myself to be a big YouTube channel or anything like that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It was just I had to stare nakedly at the decisions I was making, take the freaking blinders off and be confident, at least in the decision I was making. Not confident that one's going to succeed or one's a better option. Just confident in the decision I was making for myself and blocking out all the noise and blocking out what other people thought. So now you can imagine I'm on camera.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I see these hate comments in my YouTube channel. Because I've so tied myself to why I get on camera in the first place, you can imagine now when someone throws hate at me, I say, does this matter more than you helping women? Does this bad comment matter more than your mission? And every single time I ask myself the question, I'm like, no, this freaking comment doesn't matter.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So that's the first step. Now, the second step is what do you do to respond? Do you ignore it or do you respond to it? I happen to have a massive empathy in my body. I don't know where it comes from, but every time I see hate, I'm like, wow, what's happened to that person where they're so cruel towards me and they don't know me?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So then it comes the empathy piece where I'm like, wow, how much hate have they had to get in their life to think that it's okay to come on my YouTube page or my Instagram page and be that cruel? Wow, they must have gone through some hard crap for them to say this. So that's the second piece is the empathy. Then the last piece is sometimes I ignore them because I'm like, it won't serve me or them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Over time, every single day, it becomes the dripping effect that ends up changing who you are. Now, I liken it to, have you ever seen a water drop on a stone? over time, it just starts to change its shape, right? You have this rock and the water drips and over time it ends up molding. I think of that as your belief system. So you have a belief system.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Sometimes I will respond. And I used to respond with... This is actually very spiteful, right? Like I would highlight the cruelty that was behind the comment. And then I realized, you know, all that's doing is actually making them feel worse. I'm not actually helping the scenario. So now my response, and I did this two days ago, in fact,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
My response is, it probably took you two minutes to write this hateful comment. Can you imagine all the good you could do in the world if you took that two minutes and told someone in your life that you loved them? Could you imagine what a world we would live in if we did that? And within two minutes, they deleted their comment.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, I hope that they deleted it because I actually got through to them because that's my goal. I'm not looking to make anyone feel badly. But the truth is that if I can greet that type of negativity with grace, what world could we live in? And that's really now where you're finding me, where how can I greet hate with love? And every time I see the hate, I show love. What would that look like?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And it's an experiment. I don't know. You may find me in a year being like, that experiment failed. Everyone just met me with more hate. But again, I'm going to keep repeating, I want to reach my goal. And so every time I'm just willing to try different strategies, I'm willing to try different techniques in order to get there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So in a year, if I realize why that didn't do anything, I may try a different technique with the haters. And that will be my next step. But I won't give up because I'm so dedicated to the goal.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yeah, exactly. And the thing that used to hold me back from reaching my confidence is my emotions. So there's no surprise there. One of the big things that is important is making sure that I'm so aligned with my mission and that I'm always reminded me of what my mission is, that I never allow my emotions to take lead.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Because often we may do things that make us feel good in the moment, but end up derailing us from our actual mission and goal. So instead of saying, my mission is to help people, that's so non-tangible. What does that actually mean? How do you show up every day knowing if you're working towards your mission or not? So I have these two parts of me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I have the emotional side of my brain and I have the very mathematical science side. So every time I try to get out the emotion, I need to put a mathematical equation in to know that I'm working towards it. Now, what do I mean by that? A mission to me becomes a mathematical somewhat of a sentence, a framework. It needs to have the what, the why, and the who.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
This allows me to know exactly where my North Star is. Because sometimes you can get derailed. So know your North Star. Write a mission statement, again, that creates the who, the what, and then the why. So my mission statement is to create content that impacts women, to help them with their mindsets. They never have to rebuild or unwire the negative mindset I've had to. Who? Women.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So if you were to ask me at any point, Lisa, will you come and speak in front of a thousand men? I go, does that fit my mission statement? No, because there isn't a woman in the audience. So while I really want to help men, and I think it's super freaking important, my specific mission of why I show up every day is to help the woman. Okay. The what? Create content. Why?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Each day, that drip of water is draining on you. And then over time, you end up doing something or being something that you'd never dreamt of. That was exactly what happened to me. I grew up with orthodoxy. I end up in America, married to a man of my dreams, having these big audacious dreams.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Because I went to film school. I love creating content. So if you want to know how I'm going to be able to show up every day and fight for my mission, it's doing the thing that I love. Now you can imagine, Lisa, can you come on a fishing trip with me and talk to my daughter, my daughter's cousin or my daughter's friend's cousin?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I'll be like, all right, well, let me go back to my mission statement. Creating content, this isn't content creation. And I would just break down, okay, it's a woman, but it's not content creation. So actually that isn't where my energy should go. And so I'm able to say no with respect and politeness, but I know that's not my North Star. And then why?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
To help women unwire the negative mindset that I've had to do. So now when you ask, when Leap Academy reaches out and says, Lisa, will you come on? Of course, I'm going to say yes, because I look at my mission statement and it fits perfectly. But if you were to ask me to create content that helps women paint their nails...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Again, it fits two, but it doesn't fit that third one, which is actually to help women unwire the negative mindset. So you can see where there's all these different opportunities potentially that could derail me because I love nails. Oh my God, yes, I want to teach women nails. It would derail me from my mission. Oh my God, yes, I really want to help men. It would derail me from my mission.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yes, I want to help women so much that I'm willing to do a one-on-one for five hours. No, it would derail me from my mission. So that's why the mission statement is so damn important is because every time my emotions get in the way, I just go back to my mission. Does this align? Yes or no. Okay, so hopefully people understand the mission.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, the last piece that I'd love to say, though, Ilana, is make sure you check in every single year. I would advise every quarter that your mission actually still aligns with the life you want. Because often I think what we do is we'll go to college, right? We tell our friends. We may actually make a massive change. We may sell our house, move state. and say, this is what I want to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And then three years later, I'm freaking miserable. And now I no longer want to do it. But I'm too embarrassed or I'm too ashamed to tell people that now actually I want a different life. So what we end up doing is we somewhat kind of half dip into our mission. We don't actually take it seriously. We're not really committed anymore because we don't actually enjoy it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And then we wonder why we've never gotten to our goal or to our mission. It's that reason. So every quarter, I ask myself, do I still want to help women? Do I still care to pour my heart and energy into actually helping women? That's something that we should be able to ask ourselves without feeling guilty about. I ask myself, do I still want to be in a partnership with my husband?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
But how on earth did I end up for eight years being a stay-at-home wife, taking care of my husband, which was the thing that I didn't want to do? It's not that it's bad. There's anything wrong with being a stay-at-home wife. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it wasn't what I wanted. And I asked myself, how the hell
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Do I still want to run a business with him? Now, remember, I've been in business with my husband since 2010, since we started Quest. But I still make sure that I ask myself that because I never want to get trapped again. And I think that so many of us get trapped in making that leap because we don't want to upset people. We've already told people that we've poured our heart and soul into it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so we don't want to make that change. And we put off taking that leap for years and years and years.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was definitely one of the big pivots in my life and completely changed how I thought. So my husband was interviewing her when we were still at Quest and I was executive producer of the show. Flash forward, Quest was growing so quickly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I moved from the shipping department to the media department because I wanted to use my film degree for actually something that, because I love content, going back to that. So I build a studio, I build a set. My husband's a host. The show's called Inside Quest and he has this motivational speaker. Now she's literally, I mean, there's a room full of maybe a hundred people and
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Every person's in tears, like crying that she's just moved us all to our core. So I'm sitting at the back of the room and I'm like, wow, this woman's amazing. I'm like, I could never be as good. Like, wow, she's just amazing, right? So literally in real time, as I'm thinking, I could never do that. She's so amazing. She goes and says, don't make me extraordinary to let yourself out off the hook.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
if I had such big dreams and I went to college and I knew what I wanted in life how the hell do I end up doing something for eight years that I despise and when I look back it is absolutely the drip that ended up happening on the rock that became who I was so my dad tells me every single day that I'm going to be a great Greek wife my grandmother tells me if I'm running on the streets and I fall
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I was like, oh, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm saying she's so good that there's no way I could do that. That's literally, you're letting yourself off the hook because you project that someone's got some magical spell on them that you don't. And what it does is it gives you the excuse to not even get started. It gives you the excuse to not even try.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, I think what's so important is to never compare your beginning with someone else's middle or end. And that's what we do. One of my favorite movies of all time. Did you ever see Karate Kid? Of course. Love it. The whole wax on, wax off is literally the analogy of practice, practice, practice. So that when you eventually get in the ring and someone goes to crane kick you, you're prepared.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So what is your version of practice? When you are about to get started on something, you don't think about the fact that that person has put in all the practice. So if I was to look at you and be like, oh my God, she's such a great podcast host. I could never be as good as that. No, of course you can't if you don't get started. If you go, I've put in a thousand hours. I've put in 10,000 hours.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
In all honesty, how do you have the audacity to think that you're going to be better than me when I've put in 10,000 hours and you haven't even put in one? Put in the reps, homie. It's a blessing. And when you're in that position, you can con yourself because of your ego.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
But when you're in the advanced position, you can look back and be like, of course, you're not going to be as good because you haven't done the work. So if we can just start there, if we can say, I haven't done the work, what does the work look like? How many hours do I need to put in? And then the last thing is never comparing yourself to the other person.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Because Ilana, it may have taken you by your fourth interview, you may have been like, oh my God, this woman has it down. She's so great at questions. It may take me a hundred interviews. Now imagine if I paint my future on what you've done. Now after episode 10, if I'm not as good as you, I'm beating myself up. versus saying, what is the thing that is going to allow me to get to my mission?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And if that means I have to put in 100 hours and that 10 times more than Alana, then cool, I've got to put in 100 hours. You maybe have a skill set that I don't. So maybe I'm starting behind the eight ball. Let's say you played the flute or the clarinet. when you were a kid and I didn't, and now I wanna learn how to play the piano.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
All right, well, you're ahead of me because you know how to read sheet music. So I go, even if she's never played the piano, she knows sheet music and I still have to learn the sheet music. So there's so much complexity to how someone got where they are. And I get the natural inclination to make them extraordinary because sometimes you don't actually want to do what it takes to get there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And that's where I talk about in the book, playing the game, no BS, what would it take? No BS, what would it take for me to have a podcast as big as Ilana's? Like actually play the game. Maybe, in fact, Ilana, how long do you spend on the podcast, Leap Academy? Roughly how many hours a week?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Okay, perfect. So let's say you do 50, 20. So you're probably doing around 70, 80 hours a week, which is absolutely insane. To your point, you don't have time to go to the beach. Okay. So now let's say someone's sitting here and they're listening to this podcast and they're like, I want to have a podcast like Ilana's. I want to be able to monetize it. I want to be as big.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
She literally, the message she would tell me is she would pick me up off the floor, wipe off the blood and say, oh, it's okay, you're going to be fine by the time you get married. The messaging that that's doing, right, this Greek woman to this little susceptible Lisa that's telling me that don't worry, no matter what bad things happen in your life, the goal is to get married.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I want to be the number one or number two in education. Amazing. Now play the game. No BS. What would it actually take for me to be as big as Ilana? Because you can't just expect that to happen. So that's where I go into get detailed. No BS. What would it take? You can't go to the beach. You can't go on that vacation. You can't say yes to those dates.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
If you've got kids, maybe you can't go to every parent-teacher meeting. That is the realities of showing up like Ilana. That's the reality of having something like Leap Academy. So when someone's sitting at home right now saying, I want a podcast, how do I get it? I'm not even going to get started because I'm not as good as Ilana. That's the one excuse.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
The second excuse is that I don't have the time or I can't. Well, if you put in 70 to 80 hours and you played no BS, what would it take? And you have to say no to those beach vacations and you have to say no to those outings and you have to say no and no and no and no. Now you can see how you end up getting as good as Alana, but you have to put in the reps.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And if you're not willing to do the reps, of course you're not going to be as good as them. But don't trick yourself in thinking it's because you don't have the capability.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Or not work hard and just accept that they're never going to be as potentially as big as you, which again is okay. But don't be yourself out and then in 10 years say, I can't believe I'm not as big as Leap Academy. Well, no. You're not as big as Leap Academy because you chose those moments where Ilana's off working. You chose to Netflix and chill. But that's okay because it's your decision.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Just don't trick yourself into saying it's not my decision. I wish, I wish, I wish.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Being Greek Orthodox, it wasn't even in my brain or thought process to realize I had a choice whether I wanted kids or not. Now, that may seem crazy now, but I was born in 79, so that I'm 45 years old. So it was at a point where I was like, of course, I'm going to have kids. It didn't even dawn on me that I could ask myself, did I want children?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, as Quest started to grow and as I started to just help out, that was like what I was, I'm just going to help out. I'm the good Greek wife, remember? I'm just helping my husband out, not realizing we would grow so quickly. So I'm like, I'm helping out. And then every day I was like, wow, I really love this. Yesterday, I had no idea how to do X, Y, and Z. Today, I figured it out.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Once you get married, life will be fine. So there's no surprise that I ended up living a life that didn't serve me, living a life that wasn't mine, but living a life that absolutely was the path that my parents created. Now, the question is, how the hell do you get out of that? Most people end up living their lives in that space.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Wow, I didn't realize I could do that. And yet I managed to figure it out. I had such low self-esteem that every day I was doing something and figuring something out, I started to build pride. And that pride made me realize that I could maybe be unstoppable. And I actually said that, huh, maybe you could just keep going. keep going.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Maybe you can keep figuring things out and you're not as dumb as you thought you were. So that's an insight into me. When I was a kid, I used to think that I was dumb because I was the artist in the family and I wasn't getting A's, I was getting C's. So the narrative I taught myself growing up was that I was the dumb one in the family.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So by the time Quest started to grow and I started to realize, wow, hang on a minute. I've had this idea that I was really stupid, but I've kind of figured this stuff out. Maybe I'm not as stupid as I thought I was. I was finding the validation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And that validation piece that I said that I was getting from being the stay-at-home wife, I realized I could now build my validation and being the person that didn't know something one day and could figure it out the next. Now, that idea was so enticing to me. Because imagine now, I fail. Oh, well, if I fail, what did I learn? Oh, great. I'm more powerful for it. Brilliant.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now I validated myself through the failure. which is insane in and of itself. So I was like, this is fascinating. I wanted to keep going. And that was where I just paused and I said, but Lisa, you're about to have kids. And I was like, well, hang on a minute. Do I actually want kids? And that's where the idea came from. So the way that I processed it is I just are very honest.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
What does life actually look like in every possibility? So I just started writing out what are the possibilities? Number one, I quit my job and And I'm a stay-at-home wife. That's a possibility. Number two is that I keep working and I still have babies. That's a possibility because I know women that have done it. Number three is that I decide not to have kids and I just keep working. All right.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Those feel like three very possible buckets. Now what I do is I take an average Wednesday because Alana, we can all trick ourselves into thinking something's going to be amazing, right? We can trick ourselves into be like, oh my God, I really want to have a million subscribers on YouTube like Lisa. Well, let me tell you what a million subscribers come with. Demands. You have to keep serving.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So the idea and the reality are very different because you can... paint a beautiful picture. But let's face it, every time you paint a beautiful picture, it never looks like that. So instead of me saying, I could very much get carried away with the excitement of having children. That is true. The idea of feeling like I've got a baby grown inside of me, I could...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
get emotional just thinking about it. The idea of having a little Tom with his ears and he's running around and he's like Tom Jr. the fourth is what we're going to call him because Tom was the third. I love that idea. So I could for sure convince myself why having kids is amazing. But what happens on an average Wednesday? That's what I really want to focus on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Not on the convincing of how magical it will be. What does your average everyday life actually look like? So now let's paint what an average Wednesday looks like in each of these buckets that I just painted for you. So an average Wednesday of me having both, right? Having kids and running a business. All right, I'm waking up. Let's say the kid is six. I'm waking up at 3 a.m.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Most people end up living their lives for the greater good of other people, especially once you've started. Once you're in it, you're like, well, I can't upset so-and-so. I can't say this. I can't change my mind. I can't let this person down. I can't, I can't, I can't. That's one part. The other part is you put off your own dreams because you're living in service of other people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I'm helping them with their fever. I'm running them to the doctor at 7 a.m. because I've got to get to work by 9 a.m. I'm at work at 9 a.m., but my kid is crying because they want their mommy and I've left them with a nanny. Okay, then I feel really guilty. And so I'm trying to struggle to get home, but I have this big presentation. That's what a freaking average Wednesday looks like. Oh, yeah.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It's true. Oh, there you go. So I just ask myself with no judgment, is that the life I want? Not anyone else. Does Lisa Bilyeu enjoy that idea of that life? And the answer is no. That feels like freaking chaos to me. I don't function well in chaos. So it actually doesn't sound like a life that I want, an average Wednesday that isn't appealing to me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
You know, when everyone like dreads the week, I don't want to be the person that's just dreading living. I want to enjoy my average Wednesday like I do a Saturday. So I said, that isn't the life I want. Great, now at least I know. So then I went down to the next bucket. What does it look like if I gave up work and dedicated my life to my children? And that's a very possible option.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so I laid out what an average Wednesday looks like. Okay, well, my husband has been very honest and told me he's very ambitious. He's told me he's not coming home at 6 or 7 p.m. at night. So the reality is I'm somewhat of a single mom Monday to Friday. Now, I'm the type of person that appreciates my husband just telling me. I don't want to find out after I've had the child.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So he's like, peace out, you're on your own. No, thank you. So he's told me this. And so again, not pretending what it would be like to have a child, the actual realities of what it's like to have a child with my husband. And that would be, I'm a single mother from Monday to Friday. Number one. Number two, I'm no longer involved in his daily life, which is building the business. Do I want that?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Am I going to be resentful towards the child? For now, I'm not with my husband doing the thing that actually makes me feel good about myself. I will ask myself all of these questions and then I will go to the final bucket. And that is what if I don't have children? What would it be like on an average Wednesday right now? I would be doing the same.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
But what will it look like on an average Wednesday when I'm 80 years old? Maybe my husband's passed away and now I don't have children and I don't have a husband. Will I be okay? And I'm just honest. Once I'm able to be that honest with myself, I'm not pulling the wool over my eyes and I know exactly what I'm getting into.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so any decision that I end up making, I know that in 2, 3, 5, 10 years, I won't have regrets because I've looked at the situation with the utter reality of what it actually is. And now I would say I made the best decision with the knowledge that I have. So that was how I ended up saying, I love my life. I love working. I love building these businesses with my husband. Why would I change that?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, the final piece is listening to other people. A lot of the times, and when we make a decision and what we feel, we're like, we want to block everyone out. Don't persuade me. I don't want to hear you. Now, why are we so worried that they're going to persuade us? But if they persuade us, aren't they actually then showing us something else that we haven't seen?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I think if my decision cannot withstand people's disagreements, people's rebuttals, then maybe I wasn't strong in my conviction in the first place. So what I then did is I allowed to listen to people to say why they think I'm crazy, to make the decision that I don't want children. So number one was my dad. Oh, who are you going to leave your money to? That was his thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So what you end up doing is you say, I will do that when? I will go for my dream once my husband is happy. I will go for that dream job once my kids are in college. I will fill in the blank, do that when something else happens. Now, what you're doing is you're using an excuse, but that excuse feels real. And that's where it gets complicated.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It's like, dad, I don't live in the ancient times. A, I think if I've actually spent every last penny on like my dying bed and I'm taking my last breath and then I'm writing the last check, that's a life well lived. Then he would say, who's going to take care of you when you're older? And I thought, okay, that's actually a very valid thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I cannot ignore that parents do turn to their children to have that support system when they're elderly. What am I going to do? I better build a great friendship circle. I better have people around me that I've poured my heart and soul into. And just because I haven't given birth myself doesn't mean that they're not going to be around. And then the last piece is your legacy.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
People always say, yeah, but what about your legacy? I had to then just ask, what the hell does that mean? People throw around phrases and you kind of repeat the phrases, but you don't actually ask yourself what that actually means, right? So I'm like, what does it actually mean to have a legacy? And I perceive the word legacy as being something that you are remembered even after death. Great.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
If that's true, Do I need to birth my own children to have a legacy? And the answer is no. So that, I know it was a lot and I know that was a really long explanation, but that's how I make decisions. And that was exactly how I ended up deciding I don't want children and I just want to keep helping other women in the world.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I think the truth is that I felt like I was alone. When I was making the decision to not have children, especially, and I don't know where your listeners are from, but when you're brought up in a very heavily cultural background, like being Greek Orthodox, that's a heavy thing. And so for me, making that decision to not have kids was unheard of.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
In fact, marrying someone out of my religion was unheard of. Did you see the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding? No. I did not.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It's exactly the same. So I found that the pressure, marrying someone in my culture was already pressure as it was. Marrying my husband and him asking my dad for his blessing to marry me. And my dad said no. And And I still married him was one really freaking hard because I was daddy's girl.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So how do you make a decision against the person in your life that is probably one of the most important humans, which was my dad, and then go against his wishes and How did I navigate that? So that was one of the big things where I was like, okay, unfortunately, going back to asking yourself the hard question, what does my life look like when I'm 50? What does my life look like when I'm 60?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Because in those moments where you're self-soothing yourself and you're telling yourself, don't worry, you're doing it for the greater good. That can be wonderful, right? You're doing it for your kids. That's a beautiful feeling. You're doing this for the family. That's a beautiful feeling. The problem is, is that the excuse ends up getting in the way of you actually living out your dream.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And if nature takes its course, while it's heartbreaking to think, my dad is going to die before me. If my dad dies before me, that means he's not going to maybe be around when I turn 50. Okay. If I turn 50 and my dad's not around and I've not married the man of my dreams, who do I have to blame? I can't blame my dad.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So do I want to get to 50, not have my dad around and have made the decision on my love life that was to please him and not me? No. So that was how I was able to make the decision. Again, I listened to my dad's opinions because I think there's some validity in what he was saying because he was like, it won't work. Dad, why won't it work?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Because two cultures that don't understand each other can never work. Okay. My dad actually had a point. He actually waved a flag that while other people may either try to push out because they don't want to hear negativity or ignore, I was like, what if this is true? And so what I did is, if it was true, then me and Tom have to sit down before we get married and talk through our culture.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And that means what is important to me. If we have kids, I want them to learn Greek. If we have children, I want them to get christened Greek Orthodox. And here were all the things that were important to me. And so Tom then said the same thing. And so we were able to align on the cultural differences that I don't think we would have if my dad hadn't said it won't work.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It's very comfortable to stay where you are. But the handcuffs is the thing that keeps you there that allows you to never leave.
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Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I take the negativity as actually a lesson and a warning sign of what I can do differently. So going back to your question, knowing that I've already upset my dad once by marrying a guy that he didn't want me to marry was hard. Now I moved to America, which is another thing is like, against your culture. You don't move that far away from your family.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
In fact, my dad bought the house opposite him when I was nine years old. And he said, when you get married, you live in this house. That's, I mean, you're laughing probably because you know exactly the same thing, right?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Exactly the same. So when I think about the pressures that we get from other people, when I think about the decisions we make because we don't want to make the hard decisions, we don't want to defend ourselves and we don't want to upset people, we end up doing things that don't align with the life that we want.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And because I had done that for eight years and I made a promise to myself that I would never go back there again, I think when it got to the point where I was making a decision with children, I just said to myself, Lisa, it's your life. And if you can listen to other people and be gracious in your decisions, but make sure that it's not negotiable.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I'm not telling people so that I can negotiate whether I'm going to have children or not. I'm telling people to inform them. And if they have advice and an opinion, I'm going to listen. But this isn't a negotiation. And so I went in there knowing this wasn't a negotiation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It was my life to live, that God forbid something happens to these people around me, my dad or anything else, the people who are telling me, well, you should have kids. I know that when I go to bed at the end of the day, I can be at peace with the decision I've made because I've done it because I've wanted to, not because other people have influenced me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I've accepted the backlash that would come with it. And the backlash originally that came with it, especially being a Greek woman, was you're selfish. I even had a comment that I screenshot and saved. I wish I had it with me. The comment, you want to talk about bad comments? Someone said, Lisa, your husband is pretending that it's okay you don't have children.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I ask anyone listening right now, if you want to get shaken awake, ask yourself this question. What if the when never happens? So if you say, I'm going to do this when my husband is happy, what if he's never happy? I'm going to do this when I've got enough money in the bank. What if you never have enough money in the bank? What if that when never happens?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
When you turn 50 and you're old and wrinkly, he's going to leave you for a younger woman and have children. So now in that moment, you can convince yourself that that person is right. You can convince yourself that they have the right to shame you. No one has the right. And I won't allow it. And that is in my control. I won't allow it to shame me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so in that moment, I just took the comment and I said to my husband, I just want to make sure this isn't true. And he just looked at me and he's like, of course it's not true. I was like, all right, great. Thanks, babe. Love you. Bye. But like going back to like always checking in on people, maybe my husband has made the decision, right? Or has changed his mind.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
When we decided not to have children, he was very okay with it. But if he wants children now, we've created a space to have that honesty where he can come to me and say, look, I know you're 45. I know you probably can't bear children anymore, but I want kids. Would you consider adopting? Would you consider fostering?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
There's always space for us to say to each other the hard thing and ask each other the hard questions, but it's always in service of trying to get to the answer that feels right for you. So at the end of the day, hopefully the description, the breakdown of how I handle children, people can use for children or anything in their lives. But don't you dare let other people make a decision for you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I'm not religious, so I don't necessarily believe in an afterlife. Now, look, I know other people do, and there's zero problem with that. But I just go, okay, I believe my life on earth is finite. So if my life is finite, what the hell am I doing with the 24 hours I have right now? Am I living it in service of someone else, or am I living it in service of myself?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
What's interesting is, is that the somewhat truth but cop-out answer is I wouldn't share anything because I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't experienced it. Now, I need that to be true. And the reason why I need it to be true is I tell myself that the next time something goes wrong, I'm just like, oh, this happened for a reason. You're going to learn from it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So every time something bad happens, I need it to be true that I'm going to get better for it. So if I go back and I try to soothe the Lisa, then I'm kind of eliminating the belief system that I have today. So I want to make sure that I'm never given a fake answer, which is why I give all of that caveat.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
If I could still learn the lessons that I've learned and assume that that doesn't go away, I would go back to the old Lisa and I would say, you've got your own back. You've got your own back. Because I spent so many years looking for people to have my back. I was looking to be saved metaphorically and actually.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And every time I was looking to my dad, I was looking to my mom, I was looking to friends, I was looking to co-workers, I was looking to my husband. And you had said it earlier, I've had massive gut issues. And one of the biggest realizations was I got married very young. Me and my husband are very much intertwined and I love him and we trust each other, but I would turn to him for everything.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Are you okay with living in the means of where you are now? Are you happy doing that job? Are you happy doing that activity? Are you happy or are you just putting off your dream? Because you think eventually one day that excuse will go away, which spoiler alert, it never will.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And so what ended up happening was I didn't build my own backbone. And so it got to a day where my gut was so bad, I couldn't even stand up. I was having excruciating pains. I was 20 pounds lighter than I was now. And I was in the middle of a photo shoot and I'm getting these pains where I could barely breathe. So of course, being a woman, you don't want to make a fuss. This is what I told myself.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I just politely excused myself. I run upstairs. And the pain is so bad, I actually fall to the floor. Now, in that moment, I have my husband to lean on. So I've got my phone next to me. We have a rule that we're allowed to call each other and we're allowed to ignore each other. I can ignore the first call. I can ignore the second call.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
But if one of us calls the other person for the third time, it means I don't care what you're doing. You could be interviewing the president of the United States. If I call you three times in a row, you drop everything and you answer. That's our code. Great. So imagine I'm on the floor. I'm taking a breath. I'm trying to call him. Hey, I need your help. He doesn't answer.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I call again the second time. He doesn't answer. But the third time I'm like, oh, he's going to answer. We've got the deal. He doesn't answer. So here I am thinking that my safety net, my savior is going to be here to help me. And he's not. Now, in that moment, I'd already built a billion dollar company at that point. But in that moment, I kept turning to other people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And in that moment, I said, oh, no one's coming to save you, Lisa. The person you thought was coming to save you, he's not here. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stay on this cold bathroom floor? Or are you going to freaking get back up and know that you get to save your own life? And in that moment, I was like, well, I guess I've got to get up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And I physically got up and I physically went back downstairs. I emotionally sobered up. I got myself back together. I took some deep breaths. I had a glass of water. I went back downstairs and I finished the photo shoot. Now, that story happened in 2000, I want to say 2016, 2017. I remember that story like it was yesterday. Why? Because I remind myself, no one's coming to save you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
You are the hero of your own life. Get the F up. And that's the story that every time I fall metaphorically, every time I fail, I tell myself over and over. And that's the lesson I wish every single person could know because no one's coming to save you. And that's the best news ever. Why? Because now you can stop waiting. Now you can actually do something about it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
You can get back up and you can take action. And that is so empowering.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And here's the reality. I'm not always happy. You know, there are moments where I'm like, I'm stressed, I'm frustrated, I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out. I mean, even on this interview, there were two moments where I forgot what I was saying and I'm going through perimenopause right now. And so part of that is I actually have brain fog and you're seeing me in real time handle having brain fog.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And the reality is just like everything else, I have to be honest about it. I have to give myself the grace and then I have to figure out ways around it. So thank you for having me and thank you for saying that. But I want people to know that even in being happy, it takes action. It takes work. I put my hair in a certain way. I wear my Wonder Woman jewelry. I love women.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So coming on and seeing you and talking to you is so energizing. All of this is absolutely deliberate. to make sure that I show up in the way that I want to show up. None of it's by accident. It's not like I have a happy bone that I'm always, you know, like most of the time I'm actually stressed, but I just make fun of myself and I try to be lighthearted about it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Oh, thank you for having me on. It was such a joy to speak to you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Yeah, I mean, I think it came from the idea of being a people pleaser, making everybody else happy. That's number one. Number two, I think it came from using gratitude as a piece to get through. And then what I realized over time is that gratitude of being grateful that I've got a husband that loves me. I'm grateful that I've got a roof over my head.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
All these things that I was grateful for, I had to recognize, turned into toxic gratitude. And what that meant was the thing that helped me in the first year or two, like, all right, you're a housewife, you're not quite happy, but you know, I'm really grateful that I have a husband that loves me, right? That feels good.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
That second year, the third year, the fourth year, when you get to like year six, where you're using that same gratitude piece, it starts to become toxic. So now imagine my dreams and my desires are getting louder inside my head. They start off like a whisper, like, are you happy? And then they start getting louder and louder and louder.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
As that voice starts getting louder and louder, I ask myself, okay, is this gratitude that is making me feel better? Actually, it's the thing now that's holding me down. So when that voice gets louder, like, Lisa, you're not happy. That gratitude turns into, well, how ungratefully you... after year seven, after year eight. You want another life?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
You want to go out and work when other women don't even have to work and you don't have to? How ungrateful are you? And what I realized was that gratitude piece was now actually keeping me stuck. It was creating the guilt and the shame for me to even want to speak up. So that's a big piece. I had to address the gratitude.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
The second big, big piece that I don't think we talk about enough is the validation we get from people pleasing. It's easy to blame other people. I people please because I was brought up to do it. But the truth is, I feel good about people pleasing. Let's just take the extreme, Mother Teresa. She helped so many people. Are you telling me now Mother Teresa didn't get validation from helping people?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Of course she did. If she didn't get validation, she wouldn't have done it. So I go, okay, I'm getting validation from being the good Greek wife. I'm getting actual validation from being the woman that's willing to do the hard thing for her husband. And I'm scared to let go. And so what I call this in my book is the velvet handcuffs. It's going back to your comfortability of what you said before.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So if Quest doesn't work, my house goes away. In all honesty, how the hell do you have the audacity to think that you're going to be better than me when I've put in 10,000 hours and you haven't even put in one? You chose to Netflix and chill. But that's okay because it's your decision. Just don't trick yourself into saying it's not my decision. I wish, I wish, I wish. I love working.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
It's very comfortable to stay where you are. That's the velvet. That's the velvet around your wrist. It's like it's comfortable. It's soft. It feels familiar. But the handcuffs is the thing that keeps you there that allows you to never leave. So when I think about the reason why I didn't change and why I spent eight years, eight years, look at a human. Go from a baby to eight years old.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
That's a long time. How on earth did I not speak up for eight years? It's because I was so afraid and I was so insecure about getting my validation from somewhere that I was afraid to let go of the one thing that I knew people were priding me on. And that was being a good Greek wife. So what I had to acknowledge in that moment is that the people pleasing was on me. It wasn't on anybody else.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And it was on me to find a different place of where I could get the validation from so I no longer sought it out from somewhere that actually made me unhappy. Once I then addressed that, I put an action plan in to take the leap and make a different change in my life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I think I'm very goal oriented and I get out of my own way. And what I mean by that is if I feel insecure about something, if I'm an emotional about something, if that doesn't serve my goal, I just tell myself that I cannot use that to influence how I show up. So let's take a real world example. Quest has grown at 57,000%.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So that takes you from, in three years, you go to the second fastest growing company in North America. In five years, we go from zero to a billion dollar company. So that's how fast we were growing. Now, remember, I've just said that I was a stay-at-home wife for eight years. So I was a boss of two dogs. That was it. That was my experience. Two little chihuahuas.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So now we grow so rapidly, we start to build our manufacturing. And because I was the one that was shipping bars from my living room floor, I was just walking to the post office, mailing one box here and there. When you're grown at 57,000%, what that looks like is one day you're shipping from your living room floor, a couple of bars. And then within two years, I've got 10,000 square feet.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I've got 40 employees working just in my department alone. And half of those employees have criminal records. an ex-convict. Now we started our business in Compton and my husband used to work in the inner cities and big brother. And one of the things that we always said is we don't care where you come from. You may be have made mistakes in your past.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
What we actually care about is who do you want to be? And are you willing to show up today and fight to be that person? That's what I care about. If you've robbed a car in your teenage years because you had bad guidance, that in and of itself shouldn't be punishment for the rest of your life. So Tom and I really did open up the doors to say, who wants to come in? Now, look, it's a beautiful idea.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I love building these businesses with my husband. Why would I change that? Do I need to birth my own children to have a legacy? And the answer is no. i'm not telling people so that i can negotiate whether i'm going to have children or not and i've accepted the backlash that would come with it when i go to bed at the end of the day i can be at peace with the decision i've made because
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
But when it comes to reality, you have a five foot one British chick trying to command respect with some guys who are six foot five, ex-convicts with tats all around their neck and a teardrop on their cheek. Now, if no one knows what a teardrop on the cheek means, go just search it on Google. I would just leave it at that. It means that you have paid your dues in a very heinous way.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Now, when I say that, you can imagine the imposter syndrome. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. So here I am trying to take the leap from being a housewife to an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what I was doing. Now, there was a couple of elements here that I'd like to break down of how I just kept going.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Number one was back in the day, before we started Quest, fear was the thing that stopped me from taking action. I don't want my husband to judge me that I don't want to take care of his clothes or his food anymore, so I'm not going to speak out loud that I'm unhappy. That's fear preventing you from taking action. When we started Quest, we put our house up for collateral.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So if Quest doesn't work, my house goes away. So that fear that once upon a time would hold me back from taking action actually propelled me forward to take action. So every moment that I found myself not knowing what I was doing, I said to myself, Lisa, you have a choice. You can do what you used to do, which was run and hide, or you can save your house. Which one do you want?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
And every time the fear of losing my house came into effect, I said, well, you better figure it out. So that became the motto I would use that you've got to better figure it out. Now, there's multiple ways to figure it out. The problem is if you just blindly listen to somebody, you're going to find yourself not succeeding.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Even if you're listening to this podcast right now, you'd be like, all right, Lisa said to do this. I did this and it didn't work. Well, I guess I'm no good. No, you have to find out the thing that actually works for you, which means you have to try a bunch of stuff. You may have to try 50 things to find that one thing that actually serves you and your goal. And I'm speaking from experience.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So I started trying to figure out how do I get these ex-convicts, these really big dudes, how do I command respect with them? So I went in reading all the books. I read the Sheryl Sandberg book, Lean In. I read all the leadership books. And I went in trying to be like Sheryl Sandberg. And I was like, all right, well, Sheryl said to do this. So this is what I'm going to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
Didn't work at all, Ilana. What a surprise, right? You're dealing with different people in a corporate world with people that come from, let's say college, is very different than working in manufacturing and talking to a human that doesn't care about your degree. They just care about your interaction with them. So I tried a bunch of things, nothing worked.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
So eventually I just said, okay, I know I still have to reach a goal. I have to command respect with the team. Otherwise I'm never going to succeed. We're not gonna be able to ship these bars out in time. So I said, what do I know? Forget about all the lessons that I'm reading. What's in my heart? And in my heart was they were guys who loved hip hop. I'm a freaking hip hop fan.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Lisa Bilyeu: Radical Confidence, My Journey From Housewife to Billion-Dollar Boss | E55
I grew up in the 90s. I wasn't listening to pop music. I was listening to Tupac, Biggie. I wanted to be a rapper. If I really could in another life, Ilana, I would be a rapper. So in saying that, I was like, hang on, this is something that's really genuine. I freaking love Tupac so much that I know half of his music. I probably know 90% of the lyrics because I've learned them so much.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 7 Transformative Lessons to Build Confidence And Real Self Worth (Ft. Kobe Bryant & Kendall Jenner)
Yeah, I think most people actually have the misinterpretation of what confidence actually is. Because they usually, and I was culprit of this when I was a stay-at-home wife for eight years, I thought I needed it to get started. And I thought I needed the confidence to live out my dreams, to actually go towards my goals, and I was waiting to have the confidence.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 7 Transformative Lessons to Build Confidence And Real Self Worth (Ft. Kobe Bryant & Kendall Jenner)
And that I think is a complete misconception is what actually is holding so many of us back from trying anything. And what I realized was in my own journey, I actually just need to take action. I needed to go into something very insecure, not knowing what I was doing, practicing, practicing, practicing, you know, wax on wax off my favorite movie, Karate Kid.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 7 Transformative Lessons to Build Confidence And Real Self Worth (Ft. Kobe Bryant & Kendall Jenner)
and get so damn good that I build the competence to then lead to confidence. So the truth is the confidence is the byproduct of taking action. And a lot of us don't think of it like that. We think it's going to be the magic bullet that's going to get us to actually take that action at the beginning. And so that's where I actually reshaped and how I rethought of the word confidence.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 7 Transformative Lessons to Build Confidence And Real Self Worth (Ft. Kobe Bryant & Kendall Jenner)
And then also for me, confidence is like a muscle. Thank you. Thank you.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 7 Transformative Lessons to Build Confidence And Real Self Worth (Ft. Kobe Bryant & Kendall Jenner)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.