In this exclusive Lisa Bilyeu interview, we dive into her journey from co-founding Quest Nutrition to founding Impact Theory Studios and writing the best‑selling book Radical Confidence. Lisa shares the mindset shifts, authentic leadership strategies, and no‑BS lessons that helped her empower millions—and redefine what it means to build a billion‑dollar confidence brand.

She didn’t wait for confidence—she built it. In Radical Confidence, Lisa Bilyeu shares how she went from a stay-at-home wife to a billion-dollar entrepreneur by rewriting the rules, silencing self-doubt, and stepping into her full power. This is the story of how she became the ultimate BADASS. 

Lisa Bilyeu is not your typical success story. She didn’t start out as a powerhouse entrepreneur, media mogul, or fierce advocate for women’s empowerment. Instead, she spent eight years as a stay-at-home wife, conditioned to believe that her dreams didn’t matter—that her worth was tied to being a good wife, keeping a clean home, and supporting her husband. But deep inside, she knew she was made for more.

That fire led her to co-found Quest Nutrition, a company that skyrocketed to a billion-dollar valuation in just five years. It wasn’t luck—it was relentless determination, a refusal to accept mediocrity, and what she now calls Radical Confidence—the title of her bestselling book that teaches women how to take action before they feel ready.

Today, Lisa is the co-founder of Impact Theory, a media empire dedicated to empowering people to break through limitations and build the lives they truly want. She’s also the host of the wildly successful YouTube show, Women of Impact, where she interviews game-changing women who are redefining success, leadership, and personal power.

In this exclusive cover story, Lisa gets raw and real about overcoming self-doubt, building confidence from the ground up, and unapologetically creating a life on her terms. From battling limiting beliefs to navigating marriage without children, she’s rewriting the narrative for women everywhere. This is the story of how she became the ultimate badass.

Your journey from a traditional Greek Orthodox upbringing to becoming a billion-dollar entrepreneur is anything but conventional. Can you take us back to the early years—what beliefs shaped you, and what was the moment you realized you wanted more?

I grew up Greek Orthodox in London. Every moment my grandparents or father had the opportunity to reinforce that I would be a stay-at-home wife and dictate the life I would live, they seized it. I remember falling off my bike once, crying as my leg bled, and my grandmother came running over—nurturing the wound, being sweet and kind, just like a grandmother does.

She said, “Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay by the time you get married.” Now, imagine what that does to an impressionable eight-year-old. My grandmother—the wise woman I looked up to—was telling me that the pain I felt would go away when I got married. And that was the message I received over and over again. So, no wonder many of us women grew up believing that a man was going to come along and save us from whatever position or situation we were in.

Even when I felt like something didn’t sit right—when I had my own dreams—the conditioning was already there. I’m not saying my grandmother intended to be detrimental to me, but it did condition me. It conditioned me to the point that when I met my husband, even though I had big dreams to make movies—I went to film school, I wanted to be the first female director to win an Academy Award, I was waking up at 3 a.m. to watch the Oscars—Los Angeles was the dream.

Now, imagine being told repeatedly, “This dream of yours doesn’t matter. This dream of yours won’t come true. Your purpose in life is to be a wife and a mother.” The conflict between what I wanted and what my belief system had ingrained in me came to a head when I got married. And what ended up overpowering me was the belief system—because of the voice in my head.

That voice is what keeps most of us trapped. You have a moment where you think, “I don’t like this. I don’t like cooking and cleaning for my husband.” But then the voice starts to creep in: “But this is what you’re supposed to do. You’re not good at anything else.” And that voice is what held me back for so long.

At what point did you realize that the voice in your head wasn’t guiding you—it was holding you back? How did you begin to break free from that conditioning?

The tricky thing is, I think it started early, but I didn’t recognize it at the time. I thought it was just part of being a woman. I believed the voice in my head was always right, keeping me on the straight and narrow. Then I realized—hang on—she’s not always right. The voice in my head was becoming detrimental to my dreams. The question was, how do you navigate that?

That voice was mean to me. It told me, “You’re no good. You’re not pretty. You don’t have any value. You’re not good enough.” But then I became a housewife, and I started getting praised for it. In that moment, when I wasn’t receiving validation from anywhere else, I thought, “Well, people are telling me I’m amazing at doing this. The voice in my head is telling me I’m not good, so I better hold on to being a housewife. Otherwise, where will I get my validation from?”

It wasn’t until I had to work on the voice in my head that I was able to change how I showed up, how I spoke, my actions—and ultimately, my life. The first step is identifying: What is that voice saying?

Talk a little bit about the duality of being a wife and feeling like you were made for more.

The first step is identifying what you want. One thing we do a lot is believe that our feelings are true, and we move toward our emotions. Instead, we should ask ourselves, “What is the dream that I have, and how do I get there with tiny little steps?” Because initially, everything is going to be about feeling. I feel trapped. I feel like I don’t want to clean and cook. Okay—but that doesn’t tell me what I do want in life. That doesn’t give me a compass to move in the right direction.

For me, I had to identify what I wanted to work toward and then ask, “Why on earth am I not working toward it?” That’s how I figured out, “Okay, I don’t enjoy cooking and cleaning. I want to empower myself. I want to try a bunch of things.”This is where I think people get confused about passion. People say, “I don’t know my passion. I don’t know my purpose.”That’s because they haven’t tried 132 different things. You have to keep trying.

I didn’t know what to try. I was stuck. It just so happened that my husband came home one day—we were miserable, chasing money, neither of us happy—I was a stay-at-home wife, and he was chasing money. Then he had an idea for a protein bar. He and his business partners’ wives were making handmade protein bars at home.

I was making them, too. And then they were like, “You know what? This is something we could do every day and fight for every day.” My mom was borderline anorexic when I was growing up. My husband’s family was morbidly obese. So we understood the struggle, and we knew we could show up every day to fight for our families to get healthy.

What I didn’t realize was that the company would grow at 57,000%. Now, what that does is take you from zero to a billion dollars in five years. So I started by knowing, “I’m not happy. I want to make a change.” That had to be number one. I had to acknowledge it. Then I got thrust into a startup that was growing rapidly. For me, that fast-growing startup revealed something else: I loved the path of knowledge. The knowledge that could be used to help people.

Once I realized that I loved building my self-esteem, my confidence, and my skill set to help people, that became my path. In this case, it was building Quest Nutrition—a company with a protein bar that was going to help people. But you have to figure out what your path is. Like I said, I happened to be in a circumstance that revealed mine. But the truth is, not many people find themselves in such a situation. So just go out and try things.

I’d suggest writing a list of all the things your younger self dreamt about doing. List them all. Is it playing an instrument? Learning another language? Volunteering? Making content? Being a nurse? Being a rapper? If I weren’t doing what I do now, I would be a rapper. I freaking love R&B and rap. So, what are the things you love doing? Write them all down, and then start identifying which one you’re going to dedicate your life to. Usually, it involves someone else. Someone you’re willing to fight for—your purpose, the thing that gets you out of bed. The thing that, if you don’t show up, you feel the impact of not showing up.

Let’s dive into the journey of building Quest Nutrition.

I grew up with my mom borderline anorexic. As an adult, she became morbidly obese. Every day, I felt insecure. Here I was, building Quest Nutrition, trying to find my purpose, figuring out why I was doing this. I didn’t want to be a stay-at-home wife. Who dreams about making a protein bar? That wasn’t my dream. But I reminded myself of my “why”.

“Lisa, if you wake up today and get out of bed, if you overcome the insecurity or the incompetence that’s making you doubt yourself, if you push through—you can save your mom.” Now, every single day, that became my reality. You have to root yourself so deeply in your why that whenever times get tough, whenever you hit a brick wall, whenever you fall to your knees, you can get back up.

Mother Teresa said, “Not everyone will fight for the masses, but you better believe people are willing to fight for the one.”So the question I have, after you’ve done the work, tested different things, and realized that your life isn’t serving you, is: Who are you willing to fight for? Who is that person in your head? It could be you. You could be willing to fight for the younger version of yourself. But if that’s the case, how do you use that as empowerment to get back up?

Because even though, thankfully, Quest was extremely successful, success isn’t guaranteed. Anything new you try isn’t guaranteed. So you better love the journey.

Did you have a pivotal moment when you realized you were on the journey of success?

No. And I’m going to be very transparent—because everyone tries to make their story sound great. “Oh, I had this moment and then I realized…” No. Every day, I was just trying not to be incompetent. Every day, I was trying not to fail. I was trying not to embarrass myself.

So you can imagine—every day, the more I focused on myself, the more I realized what the business needed, the more I realized what skill sets I needed to help the company grow. I was so internal—so focused on my inner self, my abilities, and how I kept showing up—I couldn’t even be so audacious as to think that the company would be this big.

Looking back, was that focus and drive what made you guys so famous and successful?

From a mindset standpoint—absolutely. There’s this cheesy saying, but I truly believed it back in the day:

If you believe you can, you can. If you believe you can’t, you won’t even try.

That false belief was an amazing superpower. But why did the company succeed? That’s multifaceted. I could go into the business strategy, but the truth is—you have to look at yourself first. How do you show up every day? What mindset do you have? What skill sets are you growing? Can you hear the hard truth? Can you stare nakedly at your inadequacies and be honest about what you’re bad at—so you can improve?

These are the things you need to focus on first before you can even think about building a company or executing a strategy. Because think about it—if I put a strategy in place but I’m not competent enough to execute it, I won’t even start. So I had to tell myself:

“Lisa, what needs to be done?” I had to look at what I was good at—and what I wasn’t. I couldn’t hide. And then I had to say, “What is the strategy? And what do I have to do to be able to pull it off?”

Were there key things you didn’t think were going to work that surprised you?

Oh my God, so many things. I was a perfectionist. Growing up, I was taught that as a woman, I had to be perfect. I had to be the perfect wife. The perfect partner. So I tried to show up perfect in every way.

What I realized through my entrepreneurial journey was—it’s the failures that are the gems. The biggest teaching moments. But before, I thought failures meant I was a failure. I thought failure meant I was no good. That I should give up. It felt like confirmation of the voice in my head telling me, “You’re not good enough.”

That’s what I thought failure was. There was an epic failure at the beginning of Quest, and I thought, “Oh, we’re done for.” But it ended up teaching me one of the best lessons of my life.

It was early days. There were about six of us, hand-making the bars. We had this machine we were trying to figure out, and we were in one tiny room—true startup days. We were in Compton, in this tiny little factory. And finally, we got enough money to hire two people to make the bars for us so I could focus on shipping, and my husband could focus on marketing.

We hired this guy, and we just trusted him. Each batch was $5,000. Now, when you’re starting up, $5,000 can be make-or-break. At the time, we had mixed berry bars and peanut butter bars. We had these systems where we would make them over and over and over again.

One day, the guy comes in looking ghostly white. He’s like, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ve messed up.”Inexperienced, panicked, perfectionist Lisa immediately thinks, “Oh my God, our business is about to fail. It’s about to crumble. What have you just done?” My husband, on the other hand, says, “Let’s just see what we’ve got. Before we panic, let’s see the circumstances.”

So we walk in, and the guy starts explaining. He was making the peanut butter bar, adding in the ingredients—protein powder, peanut butter, everything right—but then he accidentally grabbed the flavoring for the mixed berry bars because that was the next batch he was going to make. So he puts most of the ingredients in the peanut butter mix and then adds the wrong flavoring. He tells us, “We have to trash this because it’s wrong.”

But my husband says, “Let’s just try it.” So we all take a bite. Someone yells out, “Huh, it kinda tastes like PB&J.” Now, being British, I had no idea what PB&J was. So I’m like, “What is that?” And they’re like, “Well, it’s peanut butter and jelly. You smash it together, and it’s a flavor.”

We’re sitting there, trying it, and our marketing guy turns around and says, “How do we use this as an opportunity?”What we ended up doing was getting plain silver wrappers, packaging them ourselves, and putting them in a blank box. Then, we went on Facebook—because at the time, no one was really using Facebook as a marketing tool, but we were—and blasted out, “Hey guys, we’ve got a limited edition prototype of a PB&J bar. Get them while they last.”

We sold out in two hours.

Now, not only had we not lost the money, but what we didn’t predict was that people would love it. Customers who bought it started posting photos on Facebook saying, “Oh my God, this is the best thing ever.” And the people who missed out got major FOMO.

Before we knew it, within two weeks, we had designed wrappers, shot product photos, printed boxes, and launched into full production. And within a month, it became our biggest-selling protein bar.

That PB&J bar story stayed with me. We started Quest in 2010, and this was probably 2011, maybe 2012—over 12 years ago. And I still remember it like it was yesterday. Why? Because every time I fail now, I don’t make it about me. I don’t make it about my incompetence. I don’t mean that I’m no good or that I should quit. Instead, I ask myself one simple question: “What am I going to learn from this?”

The fact that I have developed the ability—over time—to keep getting back up is my superpower. Some people don’t know how to get back up, and they stay down, licking their wounds for years. And look, I say this with compassion because I understand that feeling. But I just don’t allow myself to stay in that space. That lesson—learning that failure wasn’t the end, but rather a stepping stone—was one of the most important moments in my entrepreneurial journey.

Currently in your journey, do you track your progress?

Absolutely. Every time I write a goal, I ask myself: “Does this goal serve my mission?” Because if it doesn’t, I won’t pursue it.

You have to start with your mission. What is your mission? For me, my mission is to help young girls feel good about themselves because I didn’t. That’s it. That’s my North Star. Once you have your mission, your goals should align with it. So if my goal is, “I want to create a YouTube channel that helps women,” I then break it down further:

• What is the strategy I’m going to execute to grow my YouTube channel?

• What skill sets do I currently lack that are holding me back from executing that strategy?

• What emotions, fears, or triggers are getting in my way?

Then, I look at myself honestly. I write down my triggers. I write down the things that don’t serve me. And then I ask myself, “Lisa, how are you now going to work through this trigger?” I don’t try to tackle everything at once—I take it one trigger at a time. I create a process, test it out, and if that process isn’t working, I tweak it and try again.

Through this process of changing and evolving, I often realize things I never expected. But I do it in a systematic way.

For example, one of my biggest triggers growing up was my appearance. I was teased, bullied, and called ugly. Even as an adult, I had a deep-rooted fear of being judged for how I looked. And here I was, wanting to start a YouTube channel.

Now, think about that—if I hated how I looked and sounded, how was I supposed to get in front of a camera? My trigger was that I didn’t want to feel ugly. My wound was that I didn’t want to be bullied for my looks. But I had to ask myself: “Is this belief serving me? Or is it holding me back?”

And it really is that simple. It’s either serving me or it’s not. I could have a thousand people tell me, “Lisa, you’re beautiful, you’ll be fine,” but if I didn’t believe it, I wasn’t going to take action.

So I broke it down:

• If I refuse to get in front of the camera, I will never achieve my goal.

• If I never achieve my goal, I won’t live my mission.

• So, how do I work through this fear?

I came up with a stepping-stone process. I didn’t start by filming myself and posting it online. That would have been too much, too soon. Instead, I started by recording a two-minute video of myself on my phone, just talking to the camera. I didn’t show it to anyone. The next week, I watched the video. And instead of tearing myself down, I tried to have compassion for myself. I looked for small ways I could improve.

Over time, I trained myself to see improvement instead of flaws. I motivated myself instead of criticizing myself. I started treating that inner voice as a friend rather than an enemy.

That’s what most people don’t realize—the voice in your head isn’t there to hurt you. It’s there to protect you. When my inner voice told me, “Lisa, you’re not good in front of the camera,” I had a choice. I could take that as an insult and shrink back in fear, or I could take it as a loving challenge. “Okay, if I’m not good in front of the camera, what do I need to do to get better?” That small shift changed everything.

How can women learn your systems?

I have my book, Radical Confidence that breaks down these systems and I have a course, but honestly, the book is the best place to start. It’s a step-by-step guide—full of strategies, mixed with my personal stories—that you can rinse and repeat.

No matter what you’re going after—whether it’s leaving a corporate job, starting a business, or even deciding to stay home and raise a family—this book is about how to change your life when you’re unhappy and take action to create the results you want.

Tell us about being a successful woman who’s married but chooses not to have children.

Being Greek Orthodox, I always thought I would have four children. When I married my husband, I told him I wanted four kids. He even got christened Greek Orthodox because that’s how serious my religion, my culture, and my family’s expectations were.

For the first eight years of our marriage, I was a stay-at-home wife. I was unhappy. I wasn’t living my dream. I told you earlier that I wanted to make movies—that I dreamed of being in Hollywood. And here I was, in Los Angeles, in Hollywood—but not doing what I had always wanted to do.

Then we started Quest, and for the first time in my life, I felt alive. I finally understood what people meant when they said, “I found myself.” I had found my passion.

Now, the question became: How would children impact that? The problem with making a decision based on other people’s opinions is that they’re not the ones who have to live your life. So I had to take a step back and ask myself, “What would my reality actually look like?”

I played out three different scenarios:

1. I quit my job and have kids. I wake up, kiss my husband goodbye, take the kids to school, and spend my day as a full-time mom.
2. I have both—I keep working at Quest and have kids. My mornings are frantic. I rush to get the kids ready, I juggle work, but then my kid gets sick, and I have to leave an important meeting.
3. I don’t have children, and I go all-in on my business. My day is mine. I dedicate myself fully to my mission.

Once I painted those pictures, I had clarity. It was my decision—no one else’s. And when people told me, “Oh, Lisa, you’d love having kids,” or “You’d be such a great mom,” I went back to my reality. I had made my decision based on truth, not emotion. And once I made that decision, my husband and I had deep conversations about how to navigate it together.

More and more women are speaking out about their decision not to have kids, but when I first started talking about it, I got so much pushback—especially from my Greek community. It was hard. But here’s what I realized: If I lived my life based on what my parents wanted, or what society expected, and then one day they were gone—what would I be left with?

So I made my choice. And I’ve never regretted it.

The hard thing, if I can be very transparent, is that when I first started speaking about not having children, not many women were openly discussing it. I received a lot of pushback, especially from my Greek community. It was incredibly difficult for me to voice my truth, but I knew this was my life. And the reality is, if nature takes its course, my parents will pass away before me. If I spent my life making decisions based on their desires rather than my own, who would be to blame?

I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. So, God forbid, if one day my parents were gone and I found myself looking back at my life, would I have regrets? Would I say, “I wish I had chosen differently”? That was the deciding factor for me. I refused to live in regret. I refused to make a decision based on external pressure rather than my own truth.

The interesting shift I’ve noticed in the last few years is that as more women are speaking out about their choice not to have children, I’ve also seen a new form of judgment emerge—this time against women who do choose to stay home and raise families. And honestly, that is just as heartbreaking as what I experienced.

I always say: What life do you want? What is getting in your way? And how do you ensure that nothing stops you from living that life? That applies to both women who want to be entrepreneurs and women who want to be full-time mothers. The key is to shut out external noise and honor your personal truth.

For example, let’s say you’re a woman who has built a business, gone to college, and taken on debt because you were committed to being the breadwinner. You’re celebrated for being a powerhouse, a “badass boss.” But then, deep down, you start hearing that little voice saying, “I actually want to stay home and raise my children.” That voice is your truth, yet now you’re afraid of judgment from other women—women who tell you that leaving your career behind is a waste.

That’s why I focus so much on the goal—not the labels, not the opinions of others, but the ultimate goal of living the life that feels most aligned for you. Judgment—whether it comes from family, society, or even other women—should never be the thing that stops you from making a decision that fulfills you.

The hard thing, if I can be very transparent, is that when I first started speaking about not having children, not many women were openly discussing it. I received a lot of pushback, especially from my Greek community. It was incredibly difficult for me to voice my truth, but I knew this was my life. And the reality is, if nature takes its course, my parents will pass away before me. If I spent my life making decisions based on their desires rather than my own, who would be to blame?

I’m an adult. I make my own decisions. So, God forbid, if one day my parents were gone and I found myself looking back at my life, would I have regrets? Would I say, “I wish I had chosen differently”? That was the deciding factor for me. I refused to live in regret. I refused to make a decision based on external pressure rather than my own truth.

The interesting shift I’ve noticed in the last few years is that as more women are speaking out about their choice not to have children, I’ve also seen a new form of judgment emerge—this time against women who do choose to stay home and raise families. And honestly, that is just as heartbreaking as what I experienced.

I always say: What life do you want? What is getting in your way? And how do you ensure that nothing stops you from living that life? That applies to both women who want to be entrepreneurs and women who want to be full-time mothers. The key is to shut out external noise and honor your personal truth.

For example, let’s say you’re a woman who has built a business, gone to college, and taken on debt because you were committed to being the breadwinner. You’re celebrated for being a powerhouse, a “badass boss.” But then, deep down, you start hearing that little voice saying, “I actually want to stay home and raise my children.” That voice is your truth, yet now you’re afraid of judgment from other women—women who tell you that leaving your career behind is a waste.

That’s why I focus so much on the goal—not the labels, not the opinions of others, but the ultimate goal of living the life that feels most aligned for you. Judgment—whether it comes from family, society, or even other women—should never be the thing that stops you from making a decision that fulfills you.

What tips do you have for women to get back to the basics of who they are?

I actually think about this a little differently. Instead of focusing on “getting back” to who I was, I focus on my evolution. And I say this very deliberately because I never want to return to the old version of me. That past version of Lisa? She was insecure, easily triggered, and emotionally reactive.

I don’t want to go back—I want to evolve forward.

There’s always going to be something I need to work on. The strategies and techniques that worked for me in my 20s don’t work for me now as I enter perimenopause. What worked for me a decade ago doesn’t serve me anymore. So I constantly ask myself:

• How do I evolve again?

• How do I refine the skill sets I’ve developed?

• What do I need to do differently in this phase of my life?

Let’s talk about perimenopause, wellness, and women’s health. You have been an advocate in this department for years now, what inspired you to dive deeper here?

I think women don’t pay enough attention to their health—not because they don’t care, but because society often teaches us to focus on how we look rather than how we feel.

If you tell a woman, “Do this, and you’ll lose weight.” She listens.
If you tell her, “Do this, and your skin will glow.” She listens.
If you tell her, “Do this, and your hair will be shinier.” She listens.

But if I say, “For the next six months, you need to focus on your internal health to feel better.” That’s a harder sell. But that’s exactly what’s missing from most conversations around women’s confidence and wellness.

Here’s a simple example: Have you ever been sleep-deprived and starving? How do you feel in those moments? Irritable. Impatient. You might snap at people. Your mood is completely different than if you were well-rested and nourished. So, if lack of sleep and food can impact your behavior so significantly, why wouldn’t hormonal shifts do the same?

When we’re ovulating, we don’t feel the same as when we’re not. When our estrogen levels drop, we don’t feel the same as when they’re balanced. Yet, for some reason, women expect themselves to show up the same way every day, even when our bodies are going through massive biochemical shifts.

For me, I track my sleep with an Oura Ring. I geek out over biohacking. But even if you’re not into tracking, simply being mindful of your body’s signals is a game-changer. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating well? Are you listening to your body’s needs? These foundational habits directly affect how you show up in every area of life.

When women enter perimenopause, estrogen plummets. And when estrogen plummets, we don’t feel like ourselves. That’s why so many women in their 40s and 50s start feeling lost. And because no one talks about it, we start wondering: Am I going crazy?

No, you’re not crazy. You’re experiencing a hormonal shift. Here’s a terrifying statistic: The highest rate of suicide among women happens during perimenopause and menopause. One in five women quits their job during this phase of life. Why? Because they’re experiencing brain fog, memory loss, and mood swings—and they don’t know why.

Imagine this: You’re a businesswoman, you’ve spent your life climbing the corporate ladder, you’ve put in the hours, you’ve earned your place at the table. Then one day, you’re giving a presentation, and you completely forget what you were saying. The confidence you spent decades building suddenly vanishes. And instead of understanding that this is a biological shift, you start doubting yourself. You start retreating. You start pulling back. That’s why so many women quit their jobs during perimenopause. And do you know what else skyrockets during this time? Divorce rates.

Take my own relationship as an example. My husband and I have been together for 25 years. I’ve always been Lisa—I’ve been growing, improving, working on myself. But then suddenly, in my 40s, I started reacting differently. My emotions felt out of control. I’d snap at my husband over things that never used to bother me. And he’d look at me, completely confused, saying, “Why are you being so mean to me?” Now, imagine if I hadn’t done the research. Imagine if I didn’t understand that my changing hormones were affecting my emotions. I would have blamed him. I would have thought something was wrong with our relationship.

But instead, because I knew what was happening, I could step back and say, “Lisa, you’re in perimenopause.” That awareness allowed me to course correct. It allowed me to ask, “What am I going to do differently?” Because I refuse to let any phase of my life dictate my happiness or my success.

The key takeaway? You are not crazy. You are not alone. And the more you understand what’s happening to your body, the more control you have over how you respond. I refuse to use perimenopause as an excuse to stop showing up in my business or in my relationship. Yes, my body is changing. Yes, I feel different. But instead of sitting in frustration, I ask myself, “What am I going to do differently?”

I’ve completely changed my morning routine. I used to have a structured workout regimen—I’d wake up, hit the gym, and feel like a badass. But then, as my body started changing, I realized something: I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. What used to make me feel strong started to feel like an obligation. That was my first red flag.

So I made a shift. Now, instead of going straight to the gym, I start my mornings outside with my two puppies. I take my coffee, sit in my backyard, and just watch them play. No phone. No distractions. Just me, nature, and a quiet moment before I dive into the day. After that, I grab a fresh cup of coffee and then head to the gym. This small change helped me align my mornings with what actually felt good for me in this phase of my life.

Are there moments where you’ll decide to shift again?

Absolutely. When you do deep self-reflection and develop self-awareness, you start recognizing emotional flags before they become full-blown problems. I’ve been doing this work for 15 years now, so I know when something feels out of alignment. For example, if I wake up and realize, “I’m dreading Monday,” I take that as a sign. If I’ve built a life and a business around my passion, why on earth would I be dreading Monday? That’s a huge red flag for me.

Most women ignore those little signals. They brush them off. They push through. And then, years later, they reach a breaking point. I refuse to let that happen. Instead of ignoring those feelings, I check in with myself immediately. I identify what’s causing the misalignment and course-correct before it turns into burnout or resentment.

What are the key principles that make your relationship such a beautiful sanctuary?

There are two major things that I believe are absolutely non-negotiable in a successful relationship:

• You both have to have a growth mindset.

• You have to have strong communication.

Let’s start with the first one. A growth mindset means you are both willing to evolve. You’re both willing to have difficult conversations. You’re both willing to acknowledge where you’re wrong and make changes. If you’re with a partner who refuses to grow, who shuts down every time you bring up an issue, who gets defensive instead of being open—that’s like talking to a brick wall. No amount of communication can fix a relationship where one person refuses to grow.

That’s why I actually used to think communication was the number one most important factor in a relationship. But then, after hearing feedback from so many women, I realized something: Communication only works if both people are actually willing to hear each other. For example, when my husband and I started dating, I was so excited to introduce him to my family. My Greek family is loud. We talk over each other. We shout. That’s just how we communicate.

So after our first family dinner, I turned to him, all excited, and asked, “Wasn’t that amazing?” And he just stared at me and said, “They were so disrespectful.” I was shocked. What?! My family loved him. How could he say that? But from his perspective, interrupting and shouting meant a lack of respect. That’s how he was raised. He came from a family where you waited for people to finish speaking. So what I saw as warmth and enthusiasm, he saw as chaos and disrespect. This is where most couples would start fighting. One person would say, “You don’t understand my family.” The other would say, “Well, your family is rude.” And suddenly, a simple difference in communication styles becomes a major source of conflict.

But instead of fighting, we got curious. We asked, “What does this behavior mean to you? What does it represent?” And from there, we started building our own communication dictionary. We literally created a list of words and phrases that meant something specific to us so that we could always be on the same page.

For example, in our relationship, the word “important” holds major weight. If either of us says, “I need to talk to you, it’s important,” that means you drop everything. I don’t care if he’s in a meeting with the President of the United States—if I say, “It’s important,” he stops what he’s doing.

But here’s the key—we only use that word sparingly. I might say it once or twice a year. That way, when I do say it, he knows I’m serious. He doesn’t question it. He doesn’t make me explain. He just shows up. That’s the level of clarity and intentionality we’ve built into our communication. And that’s why our relationship works.

What would your 12-year-old self be most proud of if she could see you now?

You’re going to make me emotional. *pauses* I think she’d be proud that I never stopped—even when I didn’t feel good enough. Do you know who Elle MacPherson is? She was one of the most famous supermodels of my generation. They literally called her “The Body.” And guess what? I had her on my show, Women of Impact. During our interview, she turned to me and said, “But you’re so beautiful.” I wanted to burst into tears.

Because my 12-year-old self—the girl who was bullied, the girl who felt ugly, the girl who looked at women like Elle and wished she looked like them—was finally being seen. Now, I’m not saying we should rely on external validation. But at that moment, I let myself receive it. I let myself honor how far I’d come.

What does a typical day 10 years into your future look like?

That would put me at 55. By then, I will have finished menopause, and my life will have evolved again. One thing I never want to do is wake up 10 years from now and realize I’ve been living out of habit rather than passion. That’s why every single quarter, I ask myself:

• Do I still love what I’m doing?

• Do I still want to run a YouTube channel?

• Do I still want to be a business owner?

• Do I still want to work with my husband?

These are hard questions to ask. But they are necessary because I refuse to drift through life. I refuse to wake up one day and realize I’m just going through the motions.

Based on what I know about myself now, I want my future to include the biggest female-led YouTube channel in the world that helps women. A channel that truly helps women transform their lives. That’s my mission. That’s what I’m working toward. My legacy won’t just be about me. I’m creating content that will live beyond me. I’m writing books, developing superhero stories for young girls, and designing resources that will help future generations of women step into their power. Because that—impacting women, lifting them up, helping them break through their limitations—that’s the legacy I want to leave behind. 

Any last words that you want women to take away from your journey?

Keep showing up. I wrote my book to help women live the life they truly want. So if there’s one thing I want you to remember, it’s this: Don’t you dare dismiss yourself. Don’t dismiss your dreams. Don’t dismiss what your heart is asking for. You get one life. And you don’t get it back. So make damn sure that when you reach the end, you can look back and say, “I lived the best years of my life exactly the way I wanted.”

Further Reading & Resources

Lisa’s Official Site: lisabilyeu.com

Impact Theory Media Hub: impacttheory.com

Listen on Apple Podcasts: Women of Impact

Watch on YouTube: Women of Impact Channel

Follow on Instagram: @lisabilyeu

Lisa on Jasmine Star’s Blog: jasminestar.com