We’re doing a reboot of one of our absolute favorite episodes - our very first!

After surveying our listeners, we realized that many of our newer listeners had never heard some of our early episodes. To us, these early conversations are essential. Not only do we constantly reference the lessons we learned therein, but they really set the stage for the next year and a half of Q&A.

The Awesome Office Show is all about leading people, creating culture, and inspiring Awesome for companies of all shapes and sizes. So for the show’s very first guest, we went with someone who embodies the spirit of that mission; someone who has personally interviewed more than 1,200 candidates; someone whose passion for people and development permeates everything he does, and who has cultivated a culture of growth that helped transformed his company into the second fastest growing private company in America.

We’re talking about Quest Nutrition co-founder and Impact Theory founder Tom Bilyeu

Tom, along with his two partners, has completely reinvented the nutrition bar category in a periods of just a few years, and redefined what it means to snack healthy by creating healthy treats that taste like they’re bad for you, but actually are not.

Having grown up in Tacoma, Washington in a family that struggled with obesity, Tom felt a personal drive to segue into the health and fitness industry and help his loved ones and others like them revolutionize their relationship with food.  As it would turn out, this new focus on something deeply personal and passion-based led him and his two partners to found Quest.

We expected Tom to drop some magic on our first episode, and he certainly didn’t disappoint.

One of the most fascinating things we learned about Tom is that he credits much of his success to a concerted effort to rethink — or even unlearn — the lessons of the past, including the fixed mindset and so-called “slave mentality” that plagued him early on in his career.

Tom had so much good stuff for us that we decided to give this conversation two episodes. So join us as we delve into the mind of Quest Nutrition’s Tom Bilyeu.

Key Takeaways

• Tom discusses the “slave mentality” he held early in his career, and how he was able to recognize and break out of it.
• Tom explains why it’s so important for leaders to be vulnerable, and why you shouldn’t confuse vulnerability with weakness.
• Tom walks us through the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset, and explains why adopting a growth mindset has made all the difference in his life, his career, and his company.
• Tom takes us through his belief in the importance of disciplined practice, and how he tricks his brain into working through moments of boredom or frustration.

• Tom explains what he means when he says his job is to “free you from the matrix.”
• Tom describes the utility in listening to criticism no matter who its from, and how the adoption of a growth mindset led him to that conclusion.
• Tom describes the importance of culture, and why he made it an actual part of his job description.
• Tom talks about why he ditched the standard mission statement for Quest in favor of his “25 bullet points that every human being needs to know in order to achieve every dream they’ve ever head.”

Links & Recommended Reading

• QuestNutrition.com
• InsideQuest.com
• Tom Bilyeu on Twitter
• The Quest Nutrition Belief System (25 Bullet Points)
• Mindset by Carol Dweck