The Psychology Of Money | Tom Bilyeu

Summary

Podcast Summary: Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

Episode: The Psychology Of Money | Tom Bilyeu

Date: April 22, 2026
Guest: Tom Bilyeu (Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Quest Nutrition, Founder of Impact Theory)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Michael Gervais interviews Tom Bilyeu about the psychology of money, how economic systems shape society, and how individuals can master their financial mindset. The discussion also covers the relationship between money, beliefs, and societal structures, the role of technology (specifically AI), and strategies for smart investing in an increasingly complex and volatile economic landscape. Tom shares actionable insights for both personal development and leadership with a focus on practical, first-principle thinking.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of Tom’s Financial Philosophy

• Tom recounts how engaging with crypto forced him to ask fundamental questions like "What is money?"—and led to a complete reframing of his worldview about economics.
• He explains his journey: from aspiring filmmaker, to entrepreneurial ventures, to founding Quest Nutrition, and eventually dedicating himself to “helping people understand money”.

"Mindset was my primary thing, but COVID hit and I thought my former employees would be destroyed financially. That made me realize: I didn’t even understand money—I knew how to make it, not how it really works." (05:44)

2. What is Money?

• Money is described as an abstraction layer: a way to store and transfer the value of one’s time and skill across society.
• The conversation covers the historical necessity of money as a medium of exchange versus the limitations of barter, using the example of specialization and the dangers of harsh environments like early American colonies.

"Money is a way that we all capture the value of our time... Skills have utility. So when people say time is money, they mean you’re trading time and skill for something other people value." (07:57)

3. The Economic System and Inequality

• Tom posits that the modern economic system is maliciously designed to create inequality:
  • Inflation is positioned as “theft”—intentionally eroding purchasing power and disproportionately benefiting those able to own assets.
  • 10% of Americans own 93% of all assets, creating a K-shaped recovery and deepening inequality.

"We have an economic system designed through malice to abuse us... The system was designed so only people educated enough to buy assets would get rich off the back of inflation." (13:16)

"Inflation is theft. It’s not a law of nature. It’s the cause and effect of having a central bank." (29:21)

4. Frames of Reference and Mindset

• Tom breaks down how beliefs, values, and biology form the “frame of reference” through which people perceive the world.
• Success and mastery depend on breaking out of your habitual frame and mapping “cause and effect” accurately.

"Your beliefs are a choice. It feels otherwise, but you interpret the world through a narrow perceptual window." (24:47)

5. Asset Classes and Investment

• Owning assets, especially stocks and homes, is identified as crucial to beating inflation.
• Tom is critical of relying solely on real estate, suggesting a diversified approach (stocks, bonds, gold, crypto, etc.) and not seeing your house as your primary asset.

"A house is the only asset most people understand intuitively. It’s not the best hedge against inflation, but it’s the only one most end up using." (32:31)

6. Crypto, Bitcoin, and Asset Volatility

• Crypto is framed as a “lifeboat” in a malfunctioning system, but not the system itself.
• Bitcoin’s volatility is likened to a tech stock—an asset untied to a central authority and thus potentially deflationary and resistant to manipulation.

"If you think of Bitcoin as a tech stock, you’ll understand it in the right way. Volatility is a feature right now." (37:01)

7. First Principles of Diversification

• Tom advises allocating investments across multiple asset “forces” rather than concentrating risk (e.g., not just tech stocks).
• The Ray Dalio “all-weather portfolio” is referenced as an ideal but Tom admits not being that sophisticated due to time constraints.

"Spread across 12 to 15 economic forces. Buying tech stocks in seven different ways is not diversification." (41:01)

8. Money Beliefs and Growth Mindset

• Acting “as if” positive beliefs are true (e.g., neuroplasticity) has high utility regardless of their literal truth.

"Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. It’s super high utility to act as if it’s true." (48:52)

9. Tom’s Personal Vision & Motivation

• Love is Tom’s highest value, with his marriage as the principal commitment.
• Professionally, he feels driven by the challenge itself (“mountain climber” mindset) and a desire to help both adults (via content/teaching) and especially children (through stories that impart the message: if you put in effort, you improve).

"I am a mountain climber... Facing the rock and doing the hard work is the very thing that I love." (52:38)

10. On Parenting & Child Development

• Parents should focus on intentionally imparting values/beliefs, ensuring kids have boundaries, and are exposed to real human experiences rather than just screens.
• The “age of imprint” (11-15) is the best time to make a positive impact on a child’s arrival at belief in self-improvement.

"We are not born with values and beliefs. We are given those by our parents." (57:17)

11. Love, Leadership, and Use of AI

• Show people you love them in their own “love language” (words, quality time, etc.).
• Tom’s leadership style: leads by example, outworks anyone, but knows his tendency is to “do” versus “facilitate”.
• On AI: Should be used as a learning/study partner, not a substitute for critical thinking or skill-building. Teams should integrate AI to extend capacity and experiment faster, but always with human oversight.

"If you use AI to just tell you what to do, it turns you into a pair of hands and you don’t get anywhere. If you use it as a study partner, you can learn outrageously fast." (35:35, 64:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• "Are you playing the game or being played by it?" — Dr. Michael Gervais (00:10)
• "Inflation is theft. It’s not a natural order of things... It’s the cause and effect of having a central bank." — Tom Bilyeu (29:21)
• "10% of Americans own 93% of the assets." — Tom Bilyeu (30:22)
• "Every society that tries to make everyone cross the finish line at the same time has had to kill people to do it." — Tom Bilyeu (21:21)
• "Your beliefs are a choice. It feels otherwise, but you interpret the world through a narrow perceptual window." — Tom Bilyeu (24:47)
• "A house is the only asset that the average person understands intuitively. It’s an expensive way to avoid inflation." — Tom Bilyeu (32:42)
• "Everything is a Ponzi scheme." — Tom Bilyeu (43:31)
• "My dominant emotion is excitement. I can get people excited and I lead by example." — Tom Bilyeu (61:58)
• "If you use AI as the world’s greatest study partner to actually learn how something works, I am scandalized at how much faster I’m able to move in every aspect of my life because of AI." — Tom Bilyeu (35:35)
• "Don’t be on a team. Don’t be left, don’t be right, don’t be Democrat, don’t be Republican. Think about cause and effect." — Tom Bilyeu (72:51)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:50 — Introduction & Tom’s initial thoughts on money/crypto
• 05:44 — Tom’s shift from entrepreneurship to financial education
• 07:57 — What is money? (Tom’s breakdown)
• 13:16–14:38 — Systemic inequality and inflation as theft
• 20:00–21:38 — The distinction between beliefs and values
• 29:21–32:00 — The mechanics of inflation and asset ownership
• 32:31–36:56 — The role of housing and the limits of the American Dream
• 37:42–41:35 — Diversifying assets and why "everything is a Ponzi"
• 48:52 — Utility of beliefs over their literal truth
• 52:38 — Tom’s driving vision: love, mountain climbing, helping kids
• 57:17–60:00 — Parenting advice: beliefs/values, discipline, the role of screens
• 64:27 — AI as a tool vs. substitute for thinking
• 67:20–72:08 — How Tom would use AI across a company/team

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Actionable Takeaways

• Understand cause and effect: Map your beliefs and values rigorously to outcomes.
• Invest for the long-term: Diversification across uncorrelated assets is crucial; don’t chase “get rich quick”.
• Use AI to expand, not replace, your capacity: Leverage AI as a tool for critical thinking and pattern recognition, not a crutch.
• Parent for resilience and adaptability: Instill useful beliefs, values, and boundaries; be aware of the developmental impact of technology.
• Lead by example: Outwork, inspire, and stay excited, but be mindful of the need to scale leadership beyond just personal drive.
• Don’t default to tribal politics: Vote and act based on root causes and evidence—not team affiliation.

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Closing

This episode delivers a confrontational perspective on economic systems but grounds its critique in action and personal responsibility—challenging listeners to question their assumptions, diversify their investments, harness technology for growth, and focus on utility rather than dogma.

Find Tom Bilyeu on YouTube: @tombilyeu (Monday/Wednesday/Friday live)

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

When you interface with crypto, you end up at the question, what is money? Never did I expect that to change the course of my life. And it's maddening how few people actually understand it, which is exactly why people are manipulated by the system.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Are you playing the game or being played by it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

The system was designed so that only the people educated enough to buy assets would not only escape the negative effects of inflation, they would get rich off the back of it. There's a way better way to beat inflation than a house. It's very difficult to master in it

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

is welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais.

[Tom Bilyeu]

A high performance psychologist named Michael Gervais, who Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks, famous for his work

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos project.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Olympic athletes depend on something more than

[Podcast Announcer]

just training and talent.

[Tom Bilyeu]

They have to stay mentally tough.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Today's guest is Tom Bilton, entrepreneur, co founder of Quest Nutrition and founder of the YouTube channel Impact Theory, who's built a massive following by challenging how we think about money, power and the systems shaping our lives.

[Tom Bilyeu]

If you are wondering why we're living in a populist moment, it is 100%, not mostly, it is 100% tied to the fact that we have an economic system designed through malice to abuse us. Now we start getting into the dark territory of up until now, it's been sunshine and rainbows. Mike.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

We explore why and how people feel financially stuck, how the wealthy think about using money and how embracing technologies like AI is essential for us to get ahead.

[Tom Bilyeu]

This is where people go wrong. If you're using AI to just tell me what to do and you let it turn you into a pair of hands, you don't get anywhere. If, on the other hand, you use it as the world's greatest study partner to actually learn how something works, I am scandalized at how much faster I'm able to move in every aspect of my life because of AI.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Tom Bilyu. Tom, it's been a while.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's been a minute.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

It's been congratulations on what you've been building and what you've done and your deep understanding of new tech, of the economic situation that, you know, we're in right now and using it from a. Or speaking from a political standpoint as well.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like it's been a wild ride, I'll say that.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

But you're way out in front.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm way out on a limb, yeah.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Is that what it feels like to

[Tom Bilyeu]

you in a fun way? Yeah, it does. It's high consequence. People really care. Really care. Meaning if you say something they don't like, there are going to be consequences where whether that is as simple as an unsubscribe or a negative comment or it's people like really having beef. My political commentary will spill over into my wife's subscriptions where they will leave because of something I said. It's wild. So it's one where I think about that a lot as a video game developer, which is like my primary identity, which is very surprising, I think to most people. I think about that like do in a modern context, do people want to hear Walt Disney talk about politics? And I think the answer is no. So it's fascinating that I just can't stay quiet. This moment feels too consequential.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Is that why you are out on a limb to use your language about your point of view about politics and economics and AI?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'll speedrun how this happened because I never thought that this would be what I would talk about. So you and I met. Mindset was my primary thing for the first several years.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

On the heels of a successful exit and a build and exit with Quest Nutrition.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So if people don't know that story, to speedrun it really quickly. I go to film school. Think I'm going to graduate, get the three picture deal. I do not. I have no idea how to break into the film industry. I'm looking around, this is the late 90s, so there's no YouTube, there's no cell phones with cameras. So just seemed impossible. And I met these two successful entrepreneurs, said, look man, you're coming to the world with your hand out. If you want to control the art, you have to control the resources. So you should get into business and get rich. And I was like, yeah, that's really smart. Let's do that. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it worked to build Quest. Well, so Quest ends up being the final company that actually works. There were unfortunately others. So yeah, together as a trio. We had started a software company together and we exited that to start Quest. Long story there, but Quest ends up being successful. So that's the one where when I exit that I'm like, I can actually build this studio now. And so that's what I've been doing. Quest ends up being successful. So that's the one where when I exit that I'm like, I can actually build this studio now. And so that's what I've been doing now for almost a decade, which is wild. We're coming up on our 10th year, so it's. Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Congratulations.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thank you, man. Thank you. It's very exciting.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I really appreciated when we met, your intensity, your clarity, the systems that you work from. And I've been watching what you've been building and I'm really fascinated by the courage that you're demonstrating in a polarized world. To speak what you think is important to say, and whether I agree or disagree is immaterial. What is, I think most focused in this conversation for me is how, how are you organizing your life to lead from the front in a high stakes, consequential environment. And that for me is something I think we can all learn from. So can you speed run that piece of why to use your language, why you are out on a limb and speaking that way right now.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So Covid hits and I had recently left Quest and so thought that the thousand of my 3,000 former employees that grew up hard in the inner cities, I thought they're going to get completely destroyed by this, they're going to lose their jobs and this is going to be brutal. They just don't know anything about money. And so I thought, okay, let me start making financial content for people, them and people like them to try to help through Covid. And I didn't understand money. That's what I came to realize. No, I knew how to make it. I didn't know how to invest it. I didn't even know how it worked. And that was the most eye opening thing to me ever was I start with like, okay, how to like save, balance your checkbook kind of stuff, like really basic finance 101. And at the same time you're having this massive like Wall street bets moment where it was like the Gamestop era. Crypto's like exploding. And so I start learning about that and realizing you end up at a question. Like when you interface with crypto, you end up at the question, what is money? And never did I expect that to change the course of my life. But that makes me realize, oh, the world doesn't work the way that I thought it did, that we actually are being manipulated by a group of elite bankers. It's wild, it sounds so conspiratorial, but it's so basic and so straightforward and I can now explain it to anybody how it works. And it's maddening how few people actually understand it, which is exactly why people are manipulated by the system. And so I'm like, whoa, I set out to help people in, like, a really simple way, only to end up like Matlock, like, realizing, wait, like, these are all just lies on top of lies, like, what is happening? And so through all of that, I became somewhat enraged about the way that money is treated and the way that it's effectively stolen from people. So I wanted to do something that would help. And so now I just base everything on cause and effect, and I try to map out cause and effect.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, Okay. I mean, if there was number of gems per minute, I mean, you just. You just kicked off a bunch of them in that con, in that opening salo. So can you do this? Can you just explain money to your best ability?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Okay. So money is a way that we all capture the value of our time. Now, that's a very judgmental word, and some people are going to feel very attacked by that. But the reality is skills have utility, which is a theme of my life. That's probably what I should have written on your bathroom wall. Skills have utility.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You didn't leave your phone number.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I didn't leave my phone number. I'll go back. You don't read a book to say that you read it. You read a book because it has a piece of information that you can deploy in your life, and it lets you do something other people can't do. So when people say time is money, what they mean is the only way to get money is to. At some point, you're trading time for it. So you do a thing that somebody else values and they give you money for it. Now, if you get very good, you can put your money to work and you effectively break the time for money equation. But almost nobody but a rich kid starts there where you start. And even that kid is going to have to master how money works if he wants to invest it well, otherwise it's other people doing it for him. So if you think of time as an opportunity for you to capture your energy in a form that you can carry with you across time that other people will accept as a method of exchange so that I don't have to create a beaver pelt in order to get a hamburger, right? It's like that would be a barter system every society ever realizes very quickly. It's super cumbersome. And I don't really know how many hamburgers this is worth. And maybe I know how many hamburgers it's worth. But I don't know how many pieces of lumber it's worth. So why don't we create an abstraction layer? And that abstraction layer is money, but it's effectively you going, oh, I'm really good at making beaver pelts. People really want beaver pelts. So I'm going to spend an hour of my time making a beaver pelt and I can make this abstraction layer we call money. I can make a knowable amount of it for doing that. Now, in a modern context, we all go to an office and we do a thing and we're paid $50 an hour or a hundred dollars an hour, whatever. And that's us trading time for that abstraction layer where somebody says, with your skill set in this context, an hour of your time is worth this thing. Now we can stop there, but I'll put one more piece on it and say if all of that sounded crazy to you, go watch a season of the TV show alone. And you will understand why we have come up with mediums of exchange always and forever. Because when you're by yourself, you effectively starve to death every time you're going to lose that game. So what people do very quickly is they go, ah, I need other people. And then they go, and I need to specialize. I'm going to be the one that fishes. You go build the hut. And this is exactly how you survive a winter. Which tends to be why societies that came from a punishing environment tend to be the most successful. Because they've just reinforced, reinforced that level of specialization, cooperation, goal oriented, thinking about the change of the season. So you're planning ahead, all that stuff, which, irony of ironies, all of this became clear to me when I started programming what's known as a survival crafting open world video game. You start to realize, oh my gosh, there's just all these incentives and simple rule sets that create all this emergent behavior. So humans have emergent behavior based on the fact that it's hard to stay alive. And one of those is money. The ultimate modern example is the US 80% of the people that came to the US like in the colony days, died in the first winter. So you can imagine the 20% that survive. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, WAIT.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

80%.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's a specific colony, but yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Oh, okay. So just to make sure, I'm understanding is that people that came to the US that left their home of origin came here and died because it was so harsh here.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. Long before we had 13 colonies, we had people, I think it was Jamestown, we had A whole bunch of people just dying the first winter they arrived in whatever the colony was, let's say Jamestown for now. But if there's a historian in the chat on the east coast, the Thames river used to freeze, just to give you an idea of how much colder it used to be. So, A, there's that, and B, when there's no heaters, there's no building that you don't build. Suddenly the -20 is a lot more brutal.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You know, that 80%, I'm thinking, makes more sense to me when you think about the travel here, how harsh those conditions were, that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But it really. Now, what percentage died in transit? I wouldn't be able to say, but it was. The pretty big echoing refrain is that first winter is just brutal.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. Okay. All right. So now I've got the kind of the historical context of how you're viewing money and understanding it. Bring us into the modern understanding of the economy and how money works, you know, real time in this system.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

And I know you're not going to escape this conversation without crypto, which is,

[Tom Bilyeu]

again, I want pretty minor part of the story. So. Really for you. Yeah. Like, okay, if we want to talk about the Titanic at some point, I'm probably going to talk about the lifeboats. Crypto is just a lifeboat for a system designed to abuse you.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

All right, let's stay there for a minute. Because that's the first principle that you're working from.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Which is grim.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It is grim. And if you are wondering why we're living in a populist moment, that's why. It is 100%, not mostly, it is 100% tied to the fact that we have an economic system designed through malice to abuse us.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. All right. You don't strike me as somebody that fits the profile of a conspiracist.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I definitely don't.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You don't strike me as somebody that fits the profile to be a pessimist.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Definitely not.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I have not met a pessimist that is world's best or world leading. They are fundamentally, in my experience of them, I'm sure there's some that are out there. But my experience of world's best, world leading are fundamentally optimistic. They can see something and it's compelling. And they believe that if they could just organize their life and their teams and be great teammates together and resources, that that beautiful future could take place. Let's apply. Why else would we apply so much energy towards, you know, trying to create something new or different? So. But when I hear this statement that a System is designed through malice to abuse. I go, oh, it's grim, it's dark. Is that pessimistic? No, it's not quite pessimistic. So what, where does this come from for you?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Mapping cause and effect. So we here are going to be the things where I'll either lose your audience or they're going to be like, oh, I get how this guy's mind works. So the way that I think is very straightforward. We all get trapped by a frame of reference. Your frame of reference is made of your beliefs, your values and your biology. And because the human animal is not designed at a sensor's standpoint to interact with the world as it actually is. We are designed to interact with gross simplifications that it creates tremendous blind spots. So my entire worldview is that you have to get outside of your frame of reference or your whole life will be you trying to interact with things. But you're always just off because you're dealing with your perception of the world instead of the world as it actually is. That's where most people, they spend their whole life. There they're completely stuck because they simply can't see what's actually happening.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, there is a movie. Don't look up.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Is that, is that, is that kind of capturing?

[Tom Bilyeu]

They are all stuck in a frame of reference that doesn't jump to mind. The one that jumps to mind is the Matrix.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, where the Matrix is like, okay, if you realize that you're in a matrix, you suddenly realize that you can bend certain rules. Now you were always in the Matrix. You always had that ability. You just didn't realize the true nature of the structure of that world. And in failing to understand it as a simulation, you failed to take advantage of the simulation.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I'm imagining red and blue pill. Which pill do you choose?

[Tom Bilyeu]

The red, of course.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay. Just as a frame of reference. All right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. The blue pill puts you back to sleep.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So the red pill is like, let's go.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The red pill promises only the truth. And that's. It makes me very sad. That red pill as an idea has been co opted. It was always meant in the movie to just be. Cause he even says as he goes to take the red pill, he says, remember All I'm offering is the truth, and that gave me the chills. Oh, I love that movie so much. So, yes, if you interface with the truth, it can sometimes be deeply uncomfortable, but at least it's high utility.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

If you and I could speak right to the listener and viewer, I would say above all else, making a fundamental commitment to be radically honest with yourself and others. I don't know of a higher leverage point to take to create the life that you would like to live. And so do you co sign that idea or do you say. Yeah, you do you co sign that idea? Yeah. All right, so frame of reference. And again, that was beliefs, biology, and one other thing you said values. Oh, so frames a reference. It's values.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Different than beliefs.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay. Separate values from beliefs.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So beliefs are what you believe to be true about the world. Values are how you believe the world ought to be.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So are there a couple values that are really important to you to align with? And are there a couple values that you're like. Not that one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, so I don't have anti values, but when I encounter one that I dislike, I certainly know it when I see it. So fairness, I would have to also parse.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

To where do you mean everybody is invited to the starting line at the same time. Everyone has the same, like, height of hurdle and all of that before them. Yeah, that's fair. Love it. Do you mean that we all cross the finish line at the same time? Because that it requires violence. And this is where I go from metaphor to having a very aggressive reaction to that because people allow themselves to live these values in the abstract, online, to, you know, be a part of the chattering classes, as they call us.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

What does that mean, chattering classes?

[Tom Bilyeu]

You talk a lot, but you never interface with real life. And so that's where I go. Oh, yeah, that's where I go crazy is these are people that are woefully ignorant of history. And every civilization ever that has tried to make sure that everybody crosses the finish line at the same time has had to kill people to do it.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

What the hell does that mean?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Look at Mouse China, look at Stalin, look at Lenin.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

But these are not. These are not. They do not believe in that first principle.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, they do.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

No, no. For everybody else, but not them.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, that's how they live it in practice. But in reality, the thing that they're actually marching on, saying to fall behind the banner of it's always equity. It is equal outcomes that you cannot have this level of inequality. That's what Scares me about this moment. Because anybody saying you can't have this level of inequality is correct. We have now gone into toxic inequality because of a monetary system that is designed through malice to abuse you. We have created something that is intolerable, and now we're confusing the intolerable with a fundamental thing that you must have. So take water. If you don't have water, you die. But if I keep shoving water down your throat, you will also die. So imagine I'm shoving water down somebody's throat, just over and over and over, and they're about to die, and somebody goes, water is bad. We've got to stop people from drinking water. You're like, you're taking the wrong lesson here. The lesson is don't force feed people water, right? So this is actually about a biological process. Make sure that they're not dehydrated. That's the real thing. She's not a catchy bumper sticker. So you need inequality, because inequality is. All right, everybody, this is gonna be really hard to accomplish this thing. You wanna innovate. You wanna make the world a better place? It's gonna be very hard. You're gonna get. You're gonna run into every element of chaos you can imagine. Your likelihood of failure is through the roof. But if you can pull it off, then there's glory and outsized rewards on the other side of that. And if you're mad at God for setting humans up to want that, don't be mad at me. I'm not the one that set it up like that. But that's how it is. And so if you want a society to innovate and you can just look at right now in the world, what society innovates the most by an order of magnitude? The US. So we have a system where people can get unequally wealthy. Now, for reasons I've already stated, we've broken that system, and now we're creating a problem. But if even. Look at China. For decades, they were starving tens of millions of people. I don't think anybody argues the number 45 million. Some people push that all the way to 100 million. So imagine your society starved 45 million people to death because you didn't want anybody to have more than somebody else. And then when that leader finally dies, Mao, the person that comes in to take over, Deng Xiaoping finally says, listen, getting rich is awesome. And so we want people to be able to get wealthy. And it was through the willingness to allow unequal outcomes that pulled over 100 million people out of Poverty.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Let's go back to this, this idea that you need to break from your framework, your reference points, to be able to see the world differently and to grow. Okay, let me go back to map.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Cause and effect.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

That's the cause and effect.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

All right. So the cause is the way you see the world is based on your beliefs, biology and values. Yep. Correct. And the effect of that is the operating the way you operate in the world. And you're saying if you want to operate differently, examine your beliefs, examine your, understand your biology, and re. Establish an alignment with your values.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. So those are your three leverage points if you're trying to form a new frame of reference.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

For most people, your 50% of your biology is malleable. 50 is not. So that one people tend to get very strange about. So it's probably easier to just accept you do have a nature. And now let's focus on the other two, your beliefs and your values. If I can just get people far enough to say your beliefs are a choice. I know they don't feel like it. It feels like a simple recognition of what is true. But going back to the biology part, you are designed to only see 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is an absolute fraction of a fraction of a fraction. So what are the odds that you only seeing that tiny little sliver, actually understand how the world is cool? It's basically zero. So if we can agree you can't even interface with the real world, then your beliefs suddenly become interpretations. And I will certainly give you that you have a bunch of interpretations of the world that you shorthand to truths. And I'm just saying we don't even know fundamental physics, so we don't understand the real world. And if we did, by the way, the closer we get, the more technology unlocks to us. So the whole atomic age was about taking one step closer to actually understanding fundamental physics. But if I can get everyone to agree we don't understand fundamental physics, we certainly can't interface with the vast majority of the universe. Therefore our perceptions are likely to be wrong. So then I would say the thing that you should be predicating your beliefs on is I think that when I take this action, it will yield this outcome. If it does, 100% of the time, you're pretty close to what is actually true. Certainly in terms of utility, if it isn't always the same, you're missing something.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Inputs and outputs, cause and effect.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that takes us back to where this all started, which is we live in A deterministic universe. If I can get people to drop a dime on that, then it's like, cool. This is all predetermined now. Most people hate that. But you live in a rules based universe. If you do this, you will get this outcome. Not most of the time, every time.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Just to be clear. Deterministic. What is your language? One more time. We live in a deterministic society or universe.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Universe, like literal universe.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

And so you are aligning with like Sapolsky very aggressively. You are a student of or.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I probably wouldn't go that far. But yes, I think Sapolsky is right. He wrote a book called Determined. Anybody that's holding out hope that this is not a deterministic universe, read that book first. It is the first principle I really hope everybody works from because suddenly the world will make a lot of sense and will become exceptionally navigable. And I think, I really think unless somebody is a true like mystic that they believe that they may believe that there's still room for free will within a rules based universe. Fine. I'm not going to spend any, any time on that.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, I didn't want to either.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But somebody going, for instance, you would never be like to an athlete, you know, I know I have them over there, they're training weights and they're eating really well. But you, I want to run an experiment where you're going to eat either nothing or milkshakes and man, best of luck. Because there's no rules, it's not deterministic. So lifting weights may or may not add muscle, may or may not make you stronger. Who knows? It's not deterministic. No cause and effect here. So it's like once you say it like that, people go, of course.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Exactly.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So that's all I'm saying. And that cause and effect goes everywhere, including your money.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

A system designed through malice for abuse.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Who designed the system and bankers in 1913? I don't remember their names, but those names are knowable.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Bankers in 1913. Correct. Designed an economic system that is correct.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Which we now call modern monetary theory. But it started in 1913 when they tricked the legislature to creating a central bank which previously America had been opposed to. We did it once, put a time limit on it. At the end of the time limit, we eradicated it and did not bring it back. And then in 1913 they found the magical sequence of words to convince the legislature to pass the Federal Reserve act, which is neither federal nor are there reserves.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So that's the malice they designed.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, the malice is far more distressing than that. That was the lie.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Keep going. What's the malice?

[Tom Bilyeu]

The malice is that you create a system where I can steal money. And this is, this is provocative, but it is also true. Inflation is theft. It is not a natural order of things. It's not like a law of nature. It is the cause and effect of having a central bank which is able to print money out of thin air. It is not tied to anything. And because by this is where the term fiat comes from, which just means by decree. So by fiat, the government says there's now more money. The problem is you have to make money in accordance with an equal amount of new things to buy. Otherwise it becomes inflationary. When you inflate the money supply, you steal people's purchasing power. Now, the difference between money and purchasing power is all they needed to create the system that we have. Now, if people understood you might as well say they stole your money, because that's how it feels. So the reason that things get too expensive is because your purchasing power is being knowingly stolen from you via inflation. Now you should be asking, why would somebody want to do that? Because they understand a part of the game that you don't understand, which is that if somebody is inflating your money supply, all you have to do to get wealthy is buy assets that meet certain qualifications. But if you buy those assets, then the more the money supply is inflated, the wealthier you become. Now, the next question you should ask is, well, how many people own those assets, Tom? And the answer is 10% of Americans own 93% of the assets. So if you want to know why we have a K shaped economy, it is because the system was designed to make it possible to inflate the money supply so that we could deficit spend, so that only the people that were educated enough to buy assets would escape, not only escape the negative effects of inflation, they would get rich off the back of it. And this is why the stock market is screaming higher and higher every year. And since 2020, it's been on an absolute rocket ship. And why, when you tell the average American, hey, but don't worry, The S&P 500 is at 50k, they're just like, what are you talking about? Like, this is irrelevant to my life. I don't even know what you mean by that. Because they're living in a world where they take their time, they trade it for money, and that money is going down in value, literally, not figuratively, literally every day.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

That's the K shape.

[Tom Bilyeu]

The, the downward people that own assets are on the top. And 2025 is one of the best years of their life. And then the people on the bottom side of the K are people that don't own assets. It really is that simple.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I'm going to ask you what the assets are that 10% own 93% of in a second. However, Professor Scott Galloway, I love the clarity of his thinking. And he said, he said something to the effects of in the last three years, if you own a home and own stocks, Happy days. Champagne and cocaine or something like that, like, it's a party time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I do not use cocaine and I do not like champagne, just to be clear. But it was a, it was a fun statement for him to say, like, and those are the two assets, home. And on the stock market, there's a

[Tom Bilyeu]

lot more than that. So the reason that homes matter so much and the reason that everybody should be very angry about what's happening with homes right now is that a house is the only asset that the average person understands intuitively. It's an expensive way to avoid inflation, but it helps you avoid inflation. And for a very long time, that was a great way to play the game. Now it's like you basically had a class of people get into houses and then they became a voting bloc. That was what's known as NIMBYism. Not in my backyard. So housing is somebody else's problem. Don't do anything that negatively affects the value of my house. And once you do that, you're basically saying, don't build. And once you say don't build, you're saying that this house becomes an asset class where the people that have one, it will go up in value, but nobody else is going to be able to get on the property ladder. So Gen Xers sort of got the last little bit of that. And by Millennials, it was game over.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Meaning millennials are not able to get in.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Not on mass. It's the whole idea of the American dream where you go and you work hard and you buy a house and all that.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

It's just.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's out of reach. Now. The great irony is there's a way better way to beat inflation than a house. It's just people don't understand it intuitively. It's very difficult to master. In it is the casino known as the stock market.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

So if you understand it as a casino, you're in a much better position. But there are games that you can play in the casino. We're on a long enough timeline, at least over the last, call it 100 plus years, you're all but guaranteed to win on a long enough timeline, you've got to be holding for 20, 30 years. But I don't think in the last hundred plus years there's ever been a period of 20 years where you would come out behind if you had a very diversified basket of stocks.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Unless you were needing to withdraw your assets in 2008, that's a totally different story.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that's why it's best thought of as a casino. And you've got to always have a long term time horizon.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay? And so the 10% that own the 93% of assets, you're speaking of those two basic assets, which is a home and the stock market, there's a better

[Tom Bilyeu]

way to understand it. So that would be you need an asset that can't easily be inflated. And that's why people fight against more housing, because that's inflating the housing supply. That's why it's better if people don't think of their house as like the asset that they're going to use to retire. You want to make sure that people can afford a house, get into a house to build their nest, to own something, to be invested in the neighborhood, all of that stuff. Incredibly positive things. You don't necessarily want them going and this is going to be how I'm going to retire. This is what I'm going to leave to my kids. Because you do want to be able to let the market decide. And so if you go to places like Houston, where it's been deregulated, housing prices are pretty flat. And so that's not one where people are just like, you know, watching their housing, their house price, pump, pump, pump. So. And that's a way better position for the community than what we're doing now. So you. That's where we get into Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is a potential asset that can't be inflated. So there's whatever 21 million. I can never remember it's 21 or 22. But whatever the number is deflated, though. It not only can. It is deflated right now. So yeah, if somebody loses something, then it. That's gone forever.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Unless they can find it.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

But well, well, unless it rebuilds again.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, you can't do that. There's no way. Like if you sent a Bitcoin there, there are void addresses. So it is like throwing it into a volcano. If you do that, it really is gone forever.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Oh, no, I don't mean that. Yeah, I mean what we're watching right now is the devalue of bitcoin.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's not deflation. So, no, no, no, you have to strip. So this is one of those. I hate that economics is just complicated enough that when people try to wrap their head around it, they just go, eh, I don't want to think about it. It is interesting really fast though, because I need to explain to people. You have to separate two things and then I'll be quiet and you can ask whatever you want. But there's two important ideas. Prices going up or down is not inflation or deflation.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Inflation or deflation is adding more to the thing or taking something away.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Thank you. Good clarity. Great clarity. There's a. It's not deflated, but there's a lower value.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's volatile.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, it's volatile.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Stock market's volatile. Crypto is very volatile. If you think of Bitcoin as a tech stock, you'll understand it in the right way.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You think of crypto as a tech stock, okay. Which is a vault. It's volatile.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Volatility is currently part of what people want in Bitcoin. Once you understand that, it's like, welcome to the, you know, maybe not quite PhD level class. But it. We're now we're not in 101 or 201 or even 401. At this point. We're, we're getting a master's degree at minimum.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Why have you studied economy at this level?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I was literally trying to help people during COVID that I thought were going to lose their jobs. I didn't understand money printing. As I tried to figure out money printing and inflation, I started understanding how things actually worked. And it made me incredibly angry. As somebody who. I've gotten wealthy. So all of the anger, like I'm the guy who, like Scott Galloway, for the last three years, I've just gotten wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. It's crazy. And yet I'm watching society destabilize. And so I'm like, can we all agree this is a really dumb game to play? And so I don't know how else to like, I want to scream and shake people and get people to understand. Also, as a student of history, oh my goodness, you start realizing just how badly socialism and communism go. Like, I won't even trouble your people with it, but I will read books at night, like as I'm falling asleep. And I cannot read books about certain periods of time almost always tied to socialism or communism, because when those societies break, they break so bad. They're stories that I hesitate to tell people. So, yeah, anyway, so I had to come to understand it because it has utility. So first of all, by understanding investing, I've made myself fantastically wealthy. I was already wealthy, but it's, it's almost ridiculous how once you understand investing, in the good times, you're making a ton of money. Now in the bad times, you can lose a ton, like in the blink of an eye. So you really have to be thoughtful to understand you don't see the future clearly to diversify. I don't over index on anything, yada yada.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Well, let's do basic application of, of your principles, which is how are not exactly what stocks are you buying, but how are you allocating your pot of wealth?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I allocate it as a paranoid man who is convinced he is not an investing genius, that he is just trying to get as close to how the world actually works as possible. So how does the world work? One, the future almost always surprises us. Number two, the stock market almost always follows the path of maximum pain. And so you start putting together things like that and you realize, okay, I need to spread across 12 to 15 economic forces. So buying tech stocks in seven different ways is not diversification because the economic force that you're up against is anything that could disrupt Tech. The second tech gets disrupted now you're in trouble.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Which, which it is disrupted right now.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, aggressively.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yep. So the AI bubble, if you will,

[Tom Bilyeu]

the, well AI is disrupting traditional technology and then AI itself is almost certainly going to follow in the footsteps of the Internet and there will be a bubble bursting where things just don't happen quite as fast as people expect them to. Not that it's not going to happen, just doesn't quite happen as fast. So the stock markets will tank, that will just completely evaporate some of what might otherwise be good companies, but poof, they're gone because they were using too much debt. And then anybody.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

All the big seven are like. Or not all of them, but at least five of the big seven are highly leveraged going into the next phase of their growth.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. Like there is so much leverage in the system it's insane.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. Okay, so, so 12 to 15 levers if you will. And how you're, you're, you're diversifying your how.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now I'm not saying that that's where I'm at because I'm not that sophisticated nor am I going to spend that much time on it. Ray Dalio is the king of this. He calls it the all weather strategy. But you're going to be in US stock markets, broadly ETFs, you're going to be international, broadly ETFs. You're going to be in developed, undeveloped. You're going to be stocks, bonds, gold, silver, crypto. Like that's how you start getting across everything.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Do you have somebody that you work with? Are you making these choices?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I do, but they do what I tell them to do.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So now listen, I'll heed anybody's advice that's thinking about this hard because I am convinced I'm wrong about a great number of things and I can't tell which things I'm wrong about. So I always want people to give me disconfirming evidence, but I see it as my responsibility. I'm not just like, tell me where to put my money.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, that's where I am actually.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's tough not to be. You have to spend so much time on.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So if you have a thousand coins, how many coins do you put in bitcoin?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well that's going to be person dependent. So everybody should invest based on a thesis. So I have a strong thesis about bitcoin. So it's one of my, might still be my largest single holding but it's still like I don't keep deploying into it. I Over a couple of years I dollar cost averaged in and then said, this is the amount that I'm going to have in that.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You're not chasing the low. Right. You're not buying against it right now. You do think it's going to go up?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I do think it's going to go up, but I think it's going to go up slowly over time. I don't think it's this, it's going to hit a million dollars in the next 12 months like that. How do you, how do you argue

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

that it's not a Ponzi scheme?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, everything is a Ponzi scheme.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You, you are so provocative.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But here's the thing. So remember you're talking to Captain cause and effect.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I'm just saying, I'm not saying these things to be provocative. Everybody else is living in a frame of reference that is lying to them and they're perfectly like happy to be there. And I'm just saying make contact with reality. So there's a guy named Peter Schiff. I love him to death and he's very smart and I'm sure a lot of people made a lot of money with him and I have him on the show whenever I can get him. But the way that he talks as if gold's value is derived from its industrial use is hilarious. Gold's value is derived by whether or not people think it is the flight to safety, period. End of story. What made it spike recently? I mean it went up like crazy. We didn't start using it in industrial stuff. It was all of a sudden people were like, oh, wait a second. Central banks are buying this because they don't believe in the dollar anymore. So the dollar based on debt money printing in the central bank we talked about are doing dumb things. So now that's going down. People are losing faith. Gold starts going up because the central banks start buying. It has nothing to do with industrial, has only to do with what belief. People believe it's safer than the dollar, so they start going into it. Once you understand the entire casino of the stock market is just predicated on people's beliefs. Now that's provocative and people hate it when I say it, but that really is true.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. So I think, I think what's important from an action standpoint or a go do standpoint is like I'm hearing everything you're saying but maybe unclear what the right question is to ask you about what do I do with this information now. Right. And we haven't really gotten into your sophistication in AI to build businesses and to kind of move with speed into the next chapter of life. But yeah, what, what do I do with this information?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, you have to decide are you going to invest your money or not? If you're going to invest your money, then you've got to start paying attention to how do I spread across economic forces.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I think 90% of our community is invested.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Perfect. So if 90% of your community is the 10%, then it just becomes dollar cost average in all the time. Never stop. Always be focused on the long term. Make sure you are ridiculously diversified. You are going to stop yourself from having massive wins so that you can stop yourself from having massive losses.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So let's go back to like, I think this is what most people are in our community are considering. How much do I keep in cash?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I would keep at a minimum six months so that you don't have to make any adjustments to your lifestyle. If you can do a year, even better. I do three years. So I have three years of cash on hand so I don't have to change my lifestyle one iota. So that if something bad happens and I'm like, yo, this might be longer than three years, then I can cut my lifestyle and extend five years, six years, 10 years, whatever.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So yeah, that is, I would be very thoughtful about that.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. And then allocate the rest across real estate, bitcoin and the stock market.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. I maybe have a slightly different take on real estate than most people, but yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You own your home though.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I do, but if I could not, I probably would not. I just wouldn't have bought it in the. If I understood money, if I understood California and I understood money at the time that I did it. At the time I thought like everybody else like, oh my God, this is the best investment ever. And then I realized that California is on a suicide mission and they make me deeply uncomfortable from a. What their long term plans are. So yeah, that now we start getting into the dark territory. So up until now it's been sunshine and rainbows, Mike.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So yeah. But it starts getting weird when you look at where we go as a society from here.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Okay, what about a car?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't care about cars. So I have a car for emergencies, but I Uber everywhere. I try to be super efficient with my time.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

That's right. Yeah. I think that's where you are with it. What are some of the beliefs that you hold now or even have shared that you think you could be wrong with?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think I could be wrong about Anything. So I, I look for the utility of a belief. So always know where you're headed and then ask yourself, does the things that I believe currently, do they move me towards that or away from that? So for instance, I, when I was younger, I was convinced that life was like you got dealt a hand of cards and you just had to play them the best you could. And that was really demoralizing for me. And there was like this idea being talked about that people weren't really convinced was real, but they were saying, hey, the brain might be plastic and maybe you can get better at something. This is what I did right on your bathroom wall. And I thought, okay, why don't I act as if that's true even if it's not and let me see if it has utility. And that changed my behavior so profoundly that I was like, even if this, I'm just lying to myself, this lie is so high utility that I'm going to keep doing it. Now, it turned out to be true, of course, but, and you say that's

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

the, that is the circular experience for people that believe in free will. It's really has a high utility.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, yeah, well said.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Stay with it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. It's super high utility to act as if it's true.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Finding Mastery is brought to you by our flagship mindset training course, Finding your best. Anytime you feel the pull to reset, to zoom out, to refocus and ask, am I moving toward the person I want to become? It helps to remember this lasting change comes from training. Not resolutions, not short term sprints, but deliberate practice of the skills that shape how we show up in work, in relationships, and in the moments of great intensity as well. That's what finding your best is all about. It's a science backed framework for training your mind. And it's the same set of tools that we've taught to Olympic athletes, top executives, elite military teams and artists at the peak of their craft. In this course, you'll learn the foundational psychological skills to be your very best, full stop. And the best part is you can start anytime. To get started, head to findingmastery.com course and use the code mastery to get $50 off your registration. Again, go to findingmastery.com course use the Code Mastery. Because your future isn't shaped by what you intend, it is shaped by what you train. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AG1. Spring is. It's just a natural time to reset. You know, the days are getting longer, at least for the northern hemisphere. And there's just an energy in the air that shifts. There's a kind of pull to simplify for me to recalibrate what's working, what isn't. And one area I come back to regularly is my daily routine. It's not about overhauling it, but it is about scrubbing the material of it to really making sense of why I'm doing what I'm doing. So I look at it all and I re examine it. AG1. It's been one of those foundations for me for over a decade now. I'm still using it. I like what they're doing. What I appreciate most is how much it simplifies the equation. One scoop covers a lot of ground. They've got some multivitamins in there. And more than anything, it's the pre and probiotics that I appreciate that they've done. It's all in one glass of water. So if you're taking a bunch of supplements, you don't have that pill fatigue that so many people talk about. I'm traveling a lot right now for our corporate clients and that means shifting time zones and schedules. That's when consistency really helps. The AG1 travel packs, they've been a game changer for me. I throw a few in my bag and I don't have to think twice about it. I'm giving my body what it needs to keep showing up for work, for the people I care about. For the long game, really. Visit drinkag1.com Finding Mastery to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 free in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. That's a $72 value for free. Again, that's drinkag1.com FindingMastery what is your vision of a compelling future?

[Tom Bilyeu]

What are you working towards specifically or philosophically?

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

No, like in your life. Like you're, you're. You have high agency that you believe that you're going to choose how you're going to design this life. Even though you, you operate in a deterministic approach, which has me a little confused. But you. I'm happy to talk about it. Yeah, no, that's okay. You, you, you have high self efficacy. Efficacy for a word, for a felt sense of power. I choose and when I choose with efficacy, I think I can make a difference. So you have both those. You have a motor, so you are motivated by something. You have systems and structures to help you be efficient with that motor. It sounds like, and feels like you have the ability to Lead others and to be a good teammate so you're not on an island of yourself. And I could go on and on, but I don't understand, like, why, like, what is the vision that you're working towards that is so compelling that you're putting all of the velocity into your life the way that you are?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, two things. So the most important thing to understand about me is I believe that love is the greatest gift that we get to experience. So my marriage is my highest priority. That is the thing that I invest most earnestly into within that context. I am a mountain climber. So I'm not trying to reach a peak or hit some accomplishment and be like, oh, there, I did it. Um, I'm always just thinking, I know I like the act of climbing the mountain, so I could stop, turn around, look at the view. But that's not what motivates me. Facing the rock and doing the hard work is the very thing that I love. But it only works if you're specifically trying to get to somewhere on the mountain. The great irony, right? Cause I don't care whether I get there, but I have to be driving towards that thing. I'm motivated by two things. One is, you could lump them all together in that. I want to help people. I want to have honorable goals, so. And I want to help people around really meaningful problems. So I'm motivated to help adults, which is what I do with my YouTube content, my podcast, and my university, impact theory university. And then I want to help kids, which, ironically, is my primary driver. It's the thing I'm least known for. It's the thing that I have worked the hardest to find a path to in a rapidly changing media landscape. The video.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Is that why the video? Yeah, for sure, for sure. And you don't have kids.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't have kids, no. The great irony.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. And. And you are deeply invested in creating something of value for children.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. Because so here I never thought that I would end up making something for kids. I'm not somebody that was always like, oh, I've always just find myself drawn to children's entertainment. In fact, I say it was the opposite.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

It's funny because when I was at your house, your studio, you. You had a lot of fun young artwork, pop culture artwork.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Right.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Like, so there is that youthful. I don't get it from you. I don't. Like, if you and I were walking down the street and I was, hey, Tom, I don't get, like, this youthful. You know, I get like, a pretty serious, like, hey, listen, the system is designed a certain way. You better get yourself together, you know, like there's an intensity, rock climb, sliming intensity about you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

But you have a unique vantage point based on how you've designed your life, that you are not a parent. And so you're seeing the. You are viewing the child relationship from an outside in not having one yourself. Yep. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong, but you're not parenting. You want to give too many. What are parents doing well and not well that you uniquely can see from your vantage point?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, so I would say the vantage point that I'm seeing it from is probably less as an outsider and more just going back to this idea of cause and effect. So the reason that I found myself drawn to children's entertainment was because I tried to have the impact that I wanted to have on the world via adults. And I just found that while they can change, most do not. And so that got me obsessed with when are we at our most malleable? And so found that with my talent and the things that I'm interested in that led me to what's known as the age of imprint, which is obviously less than like early, early childhood. Gabor Mate gave me a very distressing look at life. And he said, what happens to you up until the age of three is more important in terms of who you will become than every day after that combined. And I was just mortified to my core, but that I'm just not drawn to that age group in terms of entertainment and things, which is what I. I interface with the world through entertainment. And so that got me focused on the age of imprint, which is 11 to 15 is where you start pushing away from your parents, where you turn to culture. And I thought, oh, cool, I can intercept people there. There's only one idea that I'm trying to get across, I mean, as a primary driver, and that is if you put. It's what I call the only belief that matters. If you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will get better. And so I want to drive that message home to kids via entertainment. And for reasons that are just like super weird quirks of my own personality that manifesting through storytelling.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, okay. Very cool, man. Look, I. I really appreciate the clarity of your thinking. The first principle base. Thank you. And we've covered a lot of. Of a lot of land here. If there's one or two things that you could point to as a. As a summary wrap up here. If we knew what you knew, how would we Parent better.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So this is where we were headed down briefly, that your kids are having a biological experience. Their brains work in a certain way. You need to figure out exactly how the brain develops and understand, like with gentle parenting, which is like the crazy. As a non parent from the outside, you guys look crazy. That's just not the way the human mind works. And so like anything, kids are going to test to find the boundaries. If there are no boundaries, then they're adrift at sea. We are not born with values and beliefs. We are given those values and beliefs by our parents. And so you need to say, okay, what beliefs and values will serve them well in the future? What's going to help them develop strong self esteem? What is going to help them function well with others? Like some very core basic questions. And then you have to do the ridiculously hard work. And by the way, thank you all for doing that hard work. Somebody needs to have kids and raise them well. That's incredibly important. And, and truly, truly, Mike, I mean this seriously. When I meet parents, I thank them for their service. I am truly grateful that people have kids and that they raise kids. I think it's wonderful. I think it's the surest path to meaning and purpose. I think it's high risk to not have kids from. You'll seek that sense of meaning and purpose. And if you're not very good at identifying other ways in your life to get that, it's, it's going to be tough. So anyway, with that all said, so you're, they're going to need to be certain things that you're doing to instill those beliefs, to instill those values, to give them discipline, to understand. Like for instance, if you put a kid in front of an iPad, that, that you're doing that at a time where their brain is forming. So their brain is now forming in a world where you interface with a screen and all of those different things they would otherwise be doing. Those neurons either just don't get developed or they get pruned. And the ones for the device get, you know, myelinated and become the primary driver. There are some studies coming out from Jonathan Haidt that show there's very distressing stuff around social media. There's other studies now coming out showing that kids that are sitting in front of iPads have less gray matter in their brains, which is the myelin. And so they're not out like learning a broader variety of tasks, which they probably should be. And so going through the lens of biology. And so like, why is it this is one of the most fascinating studies. Why is it that if you put a monkey in a cage with no real monkeys, but a metal monkey that has food and then a fur covered monkey that has no food, why it will cling to the fur covered monkey, run over, grab food from the wire monkey and run back to the fur covered monkey? Okay, both of them are fake. To me, that's like a love thing. We just have this instinct to want to be in close proximity to our parents when we're young, to want to be loved and reassured and that that's going to have this huge impact on our attachment styles and things like that. So for me, that is one of the big things that I would try to keep in mind in the, in the chaos and the battle of all that. I totally understand how difficult of a job this is, but just reminding myself that, that, you know, the formative memories matter a lot. Time with mom and dad matter a lot. Giving them attention matters a lot. Just from a brain formation standpoint, okay,

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

what is the best practice that you have for giving love or sharing love?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think about identifying that person's love language. That my goal is for them to feel at a like nervous system level that I love them, that I support them. And that means showing it in a way that they understand. So not like, for me, words of affirmation are massive. So if my wife gives me words of affirmation, I feel seen, feel recognized. If she shows appreciation like I'm feeling good for her, it's quality time. So I need to engage with her in an activity that she loves, that she feels like, wow, you really did that thing for me. Me. Now she likes to hear words of affirmation and I like the quality time. But she could give me all the time in the world if she's not verbally expressing that, hey, you did that thing. I was very impressed and I'm very grateful. That means the world to me. I'm not going to get there. Now, I could say all the things in the world to her, but if I'm not just sitting down and being with her, it's not going to sink in.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

And what's the best practice you have for leading?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, so this is where I will confess that I think I have one superpower when it comes to leading, and that is I will outwork anybody. And my dominant emotion is excitement. So I can get people excited and I lead by example. However, I think some of the greatest leaders, they really see themselves as a facilitator. I don't see myself As a facilitator, I am frustrated by the need to facilitate. I want to do. I want to be the guy swinging the sword and that people will fall in and fight with me because I am good at swinging my sword, because I train so very hard, because I show them respect for fighting alongside me. That's awesome and I'm very grateful. But I do tend to want to isolate and just do my thing. And I think that's terrible for scaling leadership. So I'm well aware of my foibles.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Are you a rule follower or rule breaker?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm a rule follower who's learned that you have to occasionally break the rules.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. I normally wouldn't ask this, but I think you actually are a rule finder. Like, you want to understand the rules. Mm. Right. More than a follower of that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I'd really like. I'd push it even beyond rules and say, unless you're talking about the rules of the simulation, which I secretly think we live in, that then yes, the rules. I want to know how does the world work at, like, the most fundamental, inviolable way in the world that we're

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

in right now with AI? You, I mean, you are. You are speaking from real experience and you are teaching on how to use AI for personal development. Business development for sure. One of the things I want to. I just want to get your take on impact theory is really about searching for quote, unquote, I think small T, maybe big T, truth. Like, you're trying. You're. You're designing it to get down underneath of what's really happening, to help people do the same in their life. And then AI will prop up that it has the answer, but it hallucinates. It is in. Some of them are designed to please and give you an answer, even though it's.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's coded by man. That's the thing that should really freak you out.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

How are you helping or how are you discerning yourself between the information that AI is presenting and how you're using it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think the most important thing is to get down to understanding the sequence of cause and effect on any given issue. So don't take its word for it. Right. If you look at people that use AI, they're saying that they can see a decline in, like, brain activity. And so it's like if you're using AI to just tell me what to do and you let it turn you into a pair of hands, you don't get anywhere. If, on the other hand, you use it as the world's greatest study Partner to actually learn how something works now, it's like unbelievable. I am scandalized at how much faster I'm able to move in, in every aspect of my life because of AI. But I'm trying to learn the thing.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, I, I think I'm, it's pretty clear I am using AI a lot. I think it's a, I'm on the train. Can you maybe point to how you, if you were to set up. But I'm also really concerned about the, the lack of accuracy that it's, it's presenting with. Okay, can. If you were to start Quest again, you had a massive exit, super successful on lots of fronts. If you were to start any company, Quest is just a fun way to think about it. How would you use AI to get it up and going? Or if you're mid stride and your company's doing pretty well, how would you insert AI? Go either direction or maybe both. Okay, I want to take a quick minute here to talk about Finding Mastery. If you are leading a team right now, you already know that strategy, execution, priorities, accountability, those matter. And what I've seen time and time again is that organizations don't rise or fall to the plan alone. Of course not. They rise and fall to the internal conditions of the people that are carrying the plan. That's the inner game that I'm pointing to. And the teams that invest in their psychological skills, they're the ones that are best prepared to navigate dynamic environments like the one we're all living in right now. At Finding Mastery, we help leaders and teams build the mindsets and psychological skills that support sustainable high performance. And we do it inside the rhythm of business and not as one more thing, but as a practical way to operate when pressure is real and the stakes are high. We have partnered with teams at Microsoft and Salesforce, LinkedIn, New York, Life, Maersk, Adidas, AIT, Waymo, and so many more. Helping leaders lead through change, strengthen culture, and perform more consistently in high stress and high stakes environments. And you're not just getting me, you're getting a whole team that includes high performance psychologists, performance strategists, and Olympians who know how to bring this work to life. So if you want to really unlock the edges of your team's potential, Simply go to findingmastery.com inner game to learn more. Again, that's findingmastery.com innergame let's keep pushing. Let's keep exploring.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. So right now, the state of AI is such that you use it to extend human capabilities. So everybody at Quest, almost regardless of what your role is, would be given access to AI and say, okay, whatever you're spending a lot of your time on, whatever the hard thing is, work with AI to see if you can do it a better way. The number of things you can improve on a production line are insane. So like even a production line worker spending 30 minutes or an hour a week, like, if you're really going to be stingy about it, like, even that is likely to move them forward. If you're in the marketing department, the sales department, if you're trying to figure out, like, what should the. What's the right way to negotiate this deal with a retailer? It's like, oh my God, like that stuff would have been so much easier with AI because AI knows in your industry what is standard. Like, even just knowing that, you know, saves you 30 phone calls trying to find the guy that's sort of in an area that's a little bit tangential to what you're doing. And they can sort of give you a ballpark of what it's probably going to be. Right? Because you go from like, I have no idea, like, I don't know what this is to an AI will be like, this is standard in that industry. This is standard in this industry, in this state. It's unbelievable.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Pre AI, I was on your podcast and you had a team, you had a full media outfit. You've had great success there. Does your media team look different based with AI?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

And so have you changed the number of people on your team?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yes.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

So I'm imagining you've gone down or down. How are you using it and how might our team here be better by using something.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's all going to come down to what the specific thing is that you're trying to do. But everything exists in what I call the physics of progress. So the physics of progress. I call it that because there is nothing else. Like everybody that's ever been successful has used this. Whether they call it that or not. It is the scientific method recontextualized for business. And you go, I know where I'm trying to get to. There's an obstacle in my way. I'm going to come up with my best guess hypothesis on how I overcome that obstacle. And I'm probably going to come up with a bunch of things. I'm going to prioritize those. I'm going to say, by doing this, I expect to impact this key performance indicator by exactly this much. You then run the test and then you see, what did I actually get? And Then you get a little bit smarter because you think about why it either worked, didn't work, work better than you thought, worse than you thought, whatever, and you try again. What we do is we. We feed all of that into an AI and we just say, here are however many data points are relevant to that test that we just ran. And then we say, okay, we run three of these a day or whatever. If it's, you know, Instagram posts, TikTok, YouTube videos, whatever, you give them all the relevant data, you tell them what you're doing, you show them the video, or at least give them a breakdown of what it is. If. If they're blind to the actual imagery, you start doing pattern recognition, you start asking it to suggest tests, you show it your competitors, you feed them as much information on what's working on your competitors as you can, and it will start giving you a. Just an absolute host of incredible things that are worthwhile testing. And so now you start to understand, like, what are the patterns that we're seeing in the data? What are the things that the algorithm actually cares about? And then that LLM is also aware of all the commentary that's happening in the world, all of the experts that are posting YouTube videos and blog posts and, you know, LinkedIn posts, whatever, about your topic. And so it will go, all right, here's best practices. This is what most people are doing. This is what this competitor is almost certainly doing. There'll be things that they're blind to for sure, but, like, the. The analysis is insane. And so you can't just. This is where people go wrong. It's oftentimes going to give you trash. And you can't just go, oh, AI is bad. You go, okay, hold on a second. That doesn't make any sense to me. This is why it's important that you understand. You're building a mental model, the cause and effect of how this thing works. So the AI gives you a bad answer, and then you go, that's a terrible answer. It's terrible for this reason. Why'd you say that? Or, you know, what are you thinking? Justify your point. And it will very often go, you're actually right. Thank you for pushing me. And then it will click into just like a deeper tool, because it's often choosing them automatically. It'll click into a deeper tool, do more research, and it'll come back and say, either. No, I'm sorry, I still disagree with you. You're incorrect about that, Tom. You don't have this fact. Here's what the data actually shows or it'll come back and say you were right. Thank you. You pushed me. Here's this thing. You were wrong about that part, but actually, I think the real answer makes your argument even stronger. You're going to get some variant of that. And if you treat it the way you're treating it, like a thought partner and you're not just taking what answers it gives you, you're not just turned into a pair of hands, but you're really using it as a tool to understand.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

You don't have AI employees, yet you're employees are using AI as a tool.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Correct?

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Correct.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. Right now, I don't think there's anything truly autonomous that doesn't have significant enough risks that it's not worth it, man.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I'll tell you, I wish I had your expertise as a partner in finding mastery because you have such a wealth of a broad range of clarity, first principles, and the big motor to put them into action. Thank you for coming in.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for having me, man.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. Thank you for. For being out on the edge, being on a limb. And today I don't think you've said anything that was like, wildly dangerous. You know, we didn't talk politics. We did not talk. Yeah. Well, just leave us with one thought that will stir people in a way to get them thinking a little bit about your point of view on politics.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Don't be on a team. Don't be left, don't be right, don't be Democrat, don't be Republican. Think about cause and effect. The economy works in a knowable way. Who is doing the things that are better for the economy and who is doing things that are guaranteed to be problems even though they sound good? And if you vote based on that, we'll be in a better situation.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

There you go. Where can we find you?

[Tom Bilyeu]

At Tombilleu on YouTube.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

That's the best place for sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That. That is where I am the most active. Join me live subscribe to my YouTube channel Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

How are you doing?

[Tom Bilyeu]

But we're.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

I'm. I'm in awe.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's a lot.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah, I'm in awe. Like, you stand up three days a week. A daily live show.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, it. That one is both my joy because it is very fun to do and it is an extraordinary amount of energy to prep for all the episodes. So you've gotta. You gotta really be in the thick of it.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Yeah. Well done, man.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thank you. All right.

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

Appreciate it. Thank you, Tom.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Thanks for having me.

[Podcast Announcer]

Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by super bowl champion and one of the most respected leaders in NFL history, Andrew Whitworth. In this conversation he shares what it takes to lead in high pressure environments, how to unlock potential in others, and why, even at the highest level, self doubt and mental health are part of the journey. He also opens up about identity, fatherhood, and what happens when the thing you do no longer defines who you are. Join us Wednesday, April 29th at 9am Pacific only on Finding Mastery

[Tom Bilyeu]

all right,

[Dr. Michael Gervais]

thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community and if you're enjoying the show, the easiest, no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or Follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Hunch over to findingmastery.com newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously and the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those [e-mail] and remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and so social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional, so seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.