We all want to feel confident about
the things we do in life, right? Well,
sometimes that is easier said than done.
Author Lisa Billiou shared with Amity
how she works on quieting that inner
negative voice and her new book radical
confidence tend no BS lessons on
becoming the hero of your own life.
I really did write radical confidence
because everyone was asking me how I
went from being stuck for eight years,
not living the life that I truly wanted to.
Then building multiple companies and
being who the person I am today.
And everyone's like, Lisa.
I need your confidence, like please
teach me about confidence and amity.
Like seriously,
I'm like who are they talking to?
Because if you heard how negative
the voice in my head is,
how often it tells me I'm no good?
You know, I'm I shouldn't start
anything because I'm going to fail.
Then you wouldn't think that I had.
Confidence,
so I really did stop and say what are
the things that people are actually
seeing that they perceive to be
confident and what I realized was
it was actually radical confidence.
It's the fact that I am scared completely.
I am at utterly inadequate sometimes
on to taking on new challenges,
but what they see is that I do it anyway,
that I take the action and that to
me is what radical confidence is.
I love that. Thank you for
having that bravery to share that
vulnerability on those negative voices.
How do you shut them up?
Ohh go I try to for so many years
everyone was like you need to speak
nicely to yourself. Shut her up,
you know you shouldn't be mean and I really,
really tried and I couldn't.
And so now I just started beating myself
up over the fact that I couldn't even
shut down the negative voice, right?
So that kind of stubble.
Well, it became became this double whammy.
So I'm such a person.
Or I'm so goal oriented and I'm
like if this doesn't serve me,
how do I pivot?
And so I recognize that the negative
voice was kind of like my kryptonite,
and so if it was my kryptonite.
How can I see it as my superpower?
How can I pivot this idea in this
notion to actually serve what I'm
trying to do and what I realized was?
What if instead of it being
the mean girl in my head,
what if it was my best friend?
What would that look like?
And So what I did is I just played the
game of like what does a best friend do?
A best friend is honest with you.
A best friend tells you the hard things
even when you don't want to hear it.
So I realize actually the negative
voice in my head is telling me not to do
things because it's trying to protect me.
It's telling me don't do that.
And say you're gonna fail and
because I'm here to protect you,
I don't want you to fail because I
don't want you to embarrass yourself.
So, OK,
bestie,
what it's trying to warn me is that
I might fail and that's the message.
So what I ended up doing is taking
the message and using it as a way
to motivate me and move me forward.
I literally took the voice in my head.
That was my critic and she became my coach.
I love that. And is that how you
moved toward that radical confidence?
Absolutely. So it was like,
oh, you're scared?
What are you scared of that
you're not going to be prepared?
OK Lisa, think get prepared so this
one fear that would hold me back.
I took the message.
I then took it into an action step,
move forward, get prepared,
do XYZ and that was exactly
what allowed me to just keep
propelling forward and not let
my emotions of the fear of
failure actually hold me back.
I think that's genius.
OK so I I'm going to start treating
the the negative voices like the best
friend the overcautious best friend.
But what would you say to someone
who needs to find radical confidence?
What if they don't even know it yet?
So I think so many people say to me I
really want confidence and the very next
thing I say is what you're focusing on.
You want to feel good about something,
but instead of focusing on that,
what do you want confidence for
because the confidence becomes
the byproduct of taking action.
So instead of focusing on that focus
on the gold, so most people say, well,
I won't confidence so I can, you know,
change careers or I won't confidence,
so I can tell my partner.
I'm not happy in this relationship or I
want confidence to tell my parents this
thing that I've been studying for three
years and an hour in college there.
I actually don't want to do anymore and
I want to be a stand up comic, right?
It's always the confidence to do
something so that's really the first
case that I just urge people to see
what that goal is and now it becomes.
That's the focus.
And if you can then come up with a game
plan to start taking action over time,
those action pieces start making
you competent.
And over time,
it's the competence that gains
you confidence.
OK and and you mentioned that you
were the CEO of several companies.
You co-founded Quest nutrition.
I've eaten many a quest far in my day.
Did you? How did you gain that
competence to great that confidence?
What was the experience like
in finding that company?
So yeah, when you're growing at 57,000%,
it left me options to either run
and hide or to figure it out.
And so I went from shipping
bars of my living room.
Your one day we're growing at 57,000%,
so before I knew it,
we have a I'm shipping out of a garage.
Next thing you know,
we've got our first facility.
Next thing you know I've got
10,000 square feet of shipping and
we're shipping out $80 million of
inventory every step of the way go.
I've no idea what I was doing.
I had been a stay at home
wife for eight years.
I was putting clothes out
and cooking for my husband.
I was a very traditional Greek wife,
so just to give people context
of where I started from.
So every time as we were growing and I
was being the good Greek wife at the time.
Supporting my husband and
I faced an obstacle.
Like for instance the UPS guy saying to me,
you know what you can actually ship a lot
more boxes if you put them on a pallet,
well, amity.
I had no idea what a pallet was,
so I was so in those moments
I'm like I can feel the fear.
I can feel inadequate and not move forward,
or I can actually go and figure it out.
I'm already feeling more confident.