How To Go From Scrounging Your Couch For Gas Money To INC 5000

In my Mental Model Mastermind(MMM) Series, I crystallise mental models from successful entrepreneurs, innovators and shakers — extracting out their essence that makes them tick, and how you can apply their principles to improve your odds of greatness.

Tom Bilyeu grew up in a morbidly obese family in Tacoma, Washington.

At 22, he was so poor he had to scrounge through his mom’s couch for loose change just to pay gas money.

Growing up, he was never the smartest nor the most athletic person in the room. His family had zero entrepreneurial background.

But despite all odds, he became the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, the second-fastest growing private company in North America (INC 5000, 2014).

He hosts Impact Theory, a motivational mindset show that has garnered over 750,000 followers within a year of ignition, featuring admirable speakers like Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin and David Goggins.

Here’s 2 core mental models that have made him the man he is today.

1) Not playing the game of money, not success, but neurochemistry

Above all notions of success, fame, wealth that has plagued modern society, one thing stays the same — the finite set of emotional responses we have to them.

Feelings of transient pleasure, long-term fulfillment, pangs of guilt, depths of sadness, bristling with irritation, being green with envy.

These are all feelings we experience on an on-going basis, and it’s rare to experience things outside of this spectrum unless you go into altered states.

Despite knowing most of the possible feelings we can have (and want), the elusiveness of being unable to control when to feel what has led the human species to perform all sorts of things, from empowering pursuits to drugs just to feel better about ourselves.

And this is the game Tom plays — the game of tinkering neural pathways, mastering bodily responses and external feedback loops to craft a lifestyle of quality emotions he experiences on an ongoing basis.

Imagine a black box between all the stimuli, both external and internal and the emotions they trigger within you.

Tom has consciously operated so much in that box he is has grasped mastery over the ways of the mind, how it works and where blind spots are.

This is what has provided him with immeasurable grit, mental strength by attaching the right emotions to what he focuses on, which in turn work for him months, years after he has re-wired them into place.

This fundamental process birthed and sustained concepts like Anti-Fragile and Bright Lines that Tom heavily preaches.

Anti-Fragile

In business, it is inevitable that ego trips us up. From fiery criticism that our work sucks, a complaint from someone smarter, or even waking up one day and finding your work had 0 views — there’s a ton of things that trigger our ego and put us in fight-or-flight or scarcity mode.

For most people, these events by default generate negative emotions like anxiety and fear, breeding an inclination for inaction, to not repeat the same activity again.

Problem is, the business can’t run if you close shop the moment your ego gets tripped. Work still has to be done. Happy clients still have to be served. Employees have to be managed.

The key to business-building is to still grind it out despite feeling like anything but.

However, this takes willpower and we all have a limited supply each day. How can we leverage on getting ego-tripped to make it work for us rather than against?

One solution is to build an anti-fragile ego — one where what the more it gets hit, the stronger it becomes (rather than weaker).

Ego serves to protect us but very rarely does it directly lead to success.

Operating ego-first often leads us down a barrage of self-regret and shame.

Successful people like Tom have learned to tune down their ego the moments it gets triggered.

However for most people, their ego is built with weak foundations, meaning they get easily triggered by whatever they focus on, and easily descend to negative emotions since it’s so easy to trip their ego.

These are the people who check Facebook every 10 minutes to see what people say about them (or don’t say about them).

She said **** about me? Well she’s equally **********.

In essence, they operate too much in fight-or-flight, as their identity was not built on a strong foundation to withstand the harsh truths of business building.

The core issue is usually insecurity, some lack of self-worth.

The process to switch this around is to switch what your ego focuses on, and focusing on welcoming events that will always happen, rather than events that are hard to avoid.

Instead of feeling inferior by being the dumbest person in the room, learn to feel empowered as you have access to bright minds you can learn from.

Rather than building your ego around avoiding them to feel good about yourself, build your neural pathways to leverage on the EXACT same event to push you forward, rather than trip you.

It is too easy to meet someone smarter than you. Let’s say you are extremely smart, someone who has an IQ of 130 (98% percentile), there are still 152,000,000 people in the world “smarter” than you, and based on the six degrees of separation, EACH ONE of these people are linked to you by a string of 7 of fewer acquaintances.

Instead of feeling stinging feedback from a business partner or colleague, learn to feel stronger as you can bounce back with a stronger skill set.

Instead of fluctuating between feeling extremely happy and sad when you see results (or the lack thereof), focus on seeing the systems and processes that led to the creation of the results, whether or not that individual articles, or product are actually successful.

From the Pareto Principle, 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the products suite. 80% of the views come from 20% of the content.

Sometimes more than 80%, but the key is getting to that place where you have the law of large numbers to work the 80% in your favor.

There are hundreds of thousands of blogs, Youtube channels out there that have 1–2 posts, precisely due to people getting their ego tripped at some point from focusing on the clicks, likes and shares, rather than the content-building process of research, synthesis and production.

Tom’s Impact Theory is proof that he has mastered this concept, building it out to over 750,000 followers and amassing strong partnerships and joint ventures in the process.

Bright Lines

A bright-line rule is a clearly defined rule or standard composed of objective factors, which leaves little or no room for varying interpretation.

These are statements that have brainless “yes” or “no” answers.

“Getting up earlier every morning.” is not a bright-line.

“Getting up and out of bed, stepping on the floor, ass off the bed within 10 minutes of waking up every morning.” is a bright line.

No wishy-washy. No two-ways. No haggling. Either yes or no.

In other words, they are self-imposed boundaries that you do not cross no matter what circumstances.

Here’s why it is important:

Every morning, you wake up with a limited source of willpower. Your battery is at full charge.

Every thought and action you take whittles that energy bar bit by bit.

Every single thought and action.

Brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, commuting to work, checking your phone, going through email…

Each of these takes up energy to decide and complete.

If you are not prudent, you will end up spending most of our precious energy on things that don’t matter.

By night time is when our battery is at its lowest, that’s when we charge and recover for another fresh batch of willpower.

Night time is also when temptations, addictions and excuses sneak into play.

That bag of chips lying in the kitchen. That endless feed on Facebook. That ping that you just received a new email…

…I worked hard today, should I reward myself with a snack! Oh, did someone talk about me on Facebook? What about that work email I just received?

All these small distractions that we could easily hold off in the morning, loom large when our battery hits the red zone.

This is where bright lines seal the deal.

You set them when at full charge, and they pre-determine a decision you will make when you are in the red.

No food after 11pm. If I’m hungry I’ll get 1 sweet and that’s it.

No Facebook and emails right before I sleep.

By having a stance on it already before the stress of decision-making comes onto you, you effectively sidestep the trap of falling wayward at your weakest.

The good news is that over time, repeated bright lines get so ingrained they feel effortless, they become habits you live out without needing to enforce them.

Remember how difficult it was to brush your teeth?

Says no one ever.

Since young we have be taught to brush our teeth, to the extent we can easily do it today with our eyes closed.

Tom knows the lazy part of him reigns control the moment he wakes up, which is why he pre-empts that moment right out of slumber to get up within 10 minutes, even before he has moment of deciding when to get up.

This saves his willpower for more important decisions he has to make later.

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”

Warren Buffet

2) Taking pride in the process, not the result

Tom understands the process that produces value-creating business activities is way more important than any one singular result.

“that’s what success is going to demand of you…if you are really going to tap into the human ability to grow, to adapt, to become capable of the extraordinary, to doing something to change people’s life, you’ve got to fall in love with the process of busting your ass for something you believe in…”

Tom Bilyeu

In The Millionaire Fastlane By MJ DeMarco, he describes how the difference between events and process fools entrepreneurs into poor execution.

Events are one-off moments that are usually sexy and attention-grabbing.

That IPO. That 6-figure milestone. That highly-ranked job title. That launch of the first product. That highly-acclaimed award. The photograph with that famous person.

They are what people focus on, what steals the headlines. The realm of awards, success, massive results condensed into 1 moment.

Giant rewards in events are what usually attracts entrepreneurs into the game in the first place.

However, what the media won’t sell, and what most people don’t understand is that events are by-products of processes and systems.

Successful businesses tend to have well-defined processes that are heavily executed upon.

Take MacDonalds for example.

They have dominated the fast food industry worldwide, yet no one would tell you they have the best burgers.

When most restaurant owners focus on the realm of events:
- How can I make the best burger today?
- How can I get a Michelin Star and get more customers?

MacDonalds’ focus is in the realm of processes:
- How can I build a process that produces acceptable burgers at scale?
- How can I build a process to franchise our business to expand to other regions, and just by being in the vicinity get more customers?

Granted, not everyone wants a worldwide restaurant business, but I’m sure everyone would want worldwide profits.

Also, notice how whichever part of the world you are at, MacDonalds still looks and tastes the same?

This is because MacDonalds has detailed processes and systems to run their operations despite language and culture barriers.

With some imagination, I would expect their manual to contain:

Step 1: Pull 5kg of fries out of freezer into fridge at 9.30am daily.
Step 2: Pour 2 cans of X brand oil into frying machine. Heat to 90°C boiling.
Step 3: Pour 5kg of thawed fries into frying machine, heat for 30minutes.
Step 4: Scoop up fries into drying area. Cool for 15minutes using our timer.
Step 5: Serve 3 portions in the loading area labeled “Fries”.

Notice how idiot-proof and step-by-step a process is?

Processes are what keeps you going after the initial passion has died down, what keeps the business running, what cuts through emotional uncertainty to quantifiable action.

Tom has built a system of processes in Impact Theory to churn out content every single day to keep their pool of 750,000 followers engaged, which is not a walk in a park.

For example, here is an approach I would imagine he takes to build out Impact Quotes, a neurochemical cocktail of business and mindset advice that I rank among the top actionable motivational videos on Youtube.

Step 1: Identify which limiting belief or problem audience is facing.
Step 2: Research 2 quotes from famous people.
Step 3: Weave Tom’s answer to (1) between the quotes, using their analogies.
Step 4: Write a script, edit and make succinct.
Step 5: Memorise. Practice.
Step 6: Enter recording studio. Psych up mentally to high energy.
Step 7: Start recording. Shoot until satisfied. Produce 1 snippet.
Step 8: Repeat (1–7) until 10 snippets are shot.
Step 9: Send to video producer for post-production, edits and music.
Step 10: Ship on Youtube, cut snippet and share on Facebook.

While there might be gaps, the point here is to be able to identify processes of the system that builds the outputs, and let process run the business.

If Tom woke up one day and did an Impact Quotes Video just based on an event (because he felt like it that day), he would not have created as many videos of high quality at his rate of one a day, which is incredible given all the other stuff he does.

This is his secret sauce to out-executing the competition in the long run.

Combining the 2 Mental Models

Because Tom understands to take pride in the process, he then plays the game of neurochemistry by rewarding himself when he executes on the processes (practising his script in front of the camera) rather than the event (seeing how many views, likes and comments he got).

When you can clearly identify the processes use to run your business, and build the habits needed to run those processes until they run you, you can then start executing over the long run and hit the compound effect, where you get exponentially rewarded for the same work you do.

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Image Source: Tom Bilyeu