Lisa Bilyeu
speaker
1,143 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 20 Dec
Lisa Bilyeu’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
It was my life to live, that God forbid something happens to these people around me, my dad or anything else, the people who are telling me, well, you should have kids. I know that when I go to bed at the end of the day, I can be at peace with the decision I've made because I've done it because I've wanted to, not because other people have influenced me.
And I've accepted the backlash that would come with it. And the backlash originally that came with it, especially being a Greek woman, was you're selfish. I even had a comment that I screenshot and saved. I wish I had it with me. The comment, you want to talk about bad comments? Someone said, Lisa, your husband is pretending that it's okay you don't have children.
When you turn 50 and you're old and wrinkly, he's going to leave you for a younger woman and have children. So now in that moment, you can convince yourself that that person is right. You can convince yourself that they have the right to shame you. No one has the right. And I won't allow it. And that is in my control. I won't allow it to shame me.
And so in that moment, I just took the comment and I said to my husband, I just want to make sure this isn't true. And he just looked at me and he's like, of course it's not true. I was like, all right, great. Thanks, babe. Love you. Bye. But like going back to like always checking in on people, maybe my husband has made the decision, right? Or has changed his mind.
When we decided not to have children, he was very okay with it. But if he wants children now, we've created a space to have that honesty where he can come to me and say, look, I know you're 45. I know you probably can't bear children anymore, but I want kids. Would you consider adopting? Would you consider fostering?
There's always space for us to say to each other the hard thing and ask each other the hard questions, but it's always in service of trying to get to the answer that feels right for you. So at the end of the day, hopefully the description, the breakdown of how I handle children, people can use for children or anything in their lives. But don't you dare let other people make a decision for you.
I'm not religious, so I don't necessarily believe in an afterlife. Now, look, I know other people do, and there's zero problem with that. But I just go, okay, I believe my life on earth is finite. So if my life is finite, what the hell am I doing with the 24 hours I have right now? Am I living it in service of someone else, or am I living it in service of myself?
What's interesting is, is that the somewhat truth but cop-out answer is I wouldn't share anything because I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't experienced it. Now, I need that to be true. And the reason why I need it to be true is I tell myself that the next time something goes wrong, I'm just like, oh, this happened for a reason. You're going to learn from it.
So every time something bad happens, I need it to be true that I'm going to get better for it. So if I go back and I try to soothe the Lisa, then I'm kind of eliminating the belief system that I have today. So I want to make sure that I'm never given a fake answer, which is why I give all of that caveat.
If I could still learn the lessons that I've learned and assume that that doesn't go away, I would go back to the old Lisa and I would say, you've got your own back. You've got your own back. Because I spent so many years looking for people to have my back. I was looking to be saved metaphorically and actually.
And every time I was looking to my dad, I was looking to my mom, I was looking to friends, I was looking to co-workers, I was looking to my husband. And you had said it earlier, I've had massive gut issues. And one of the biggest realizations was I got married very young. Me and my husband are very much intertwined and I love him and we trust each other, but I would turn to him for everything.
And so what ended up happening was I didn't build my own backbone. And so it got to a day where my gut was so bad, I couldn't even stand up. I was having excruciating pains. I was 20 pounds lighter than I was now. And I was in the middle of a photo shoot and I'm getting these pains where I could barely breathe. So of course, being a woman, you don't want to make a fuss. This is what I told myself.
So I just politely excused myself. I run upstairs. And the pain is so bad, I actually fall to the floor. Now, in that moment, I have my husband to lean on. So I've got my phone next to me. We have a rule that we're allowed to call each other and we're allowed to ignore each other. I can ignore the first call. I can ignore the second call.
But if one of us calls the other person for the third time, it means I don't care what you're doing. You could be interviewing the president of the United States. If I call you three times in a row, you drop everything and you answer. That's our code. Great. So imagine I'm on the floor. I'm taking a breath. I'm trying to call him. Hey, I need your help. He doesn't answer.
I call again the second time. He doesn't answer. But the third time I'm like, oh, he's going to answer. We've got the deal. He doesn't answer. So here I am thinking that my safety net, my savior is going to be here to help me. And he's not. Now, in that moment, I'd already built a billion dollar company at that point. But in that moment, I kept turning to other people.
And in that moment, I said, oh, no one's coming to save you, Lisa. The person you thought was coming to save you, he's not here. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stay on this cold bathroom floor? Or are you going to freaking get back up and know that you get to save your own life? And in that moment, I was like, well, I guess I've got to get up.
And I physically got up and I physically went back downstairs. I emotionally sobered up. I got myself back together. I took some deep breaths. I had a glass of water. I went back downstairs and I finished the photo shoot. Now, that story happened in 2000, I want to say 2016, 2017. I remember that story like it was yesterday. Why? Because I remind myself, no one's coming to save you.
You are the hero of your own life. Get the F up. And that's the story that every time I fall metaphorically, every time I fail, I tell myself over and over. And that's the lesson I wish every single person could know because no one's coming to save you. And that's the best news ever. Why? Because now you can stop waiting. Now you can actually do something about it.
You can get back up and you can take action. And that is so empowering.
And here's the reality. I'm not always happy. You know, there are moments where I'm like, I'm stressed, I'm frustrated, I'm overwhelmed, I'm burnt out. I mean, even on this interview, there were two moments where I forgot what I was saying and I'm going through perimenopause right now. And so part of that is I actually have brain fog and you're seeing me in real time handle having brain fog.
Showing 1121–1140 of 1,143 · page 57 of 58
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