← The Everyday Millionaire and Mindset Matters Podcast
The Everyday Millionaire and Mindset Matters Podcast
TEDM – Mike Koenigs – Innovation, Reinvention and Building a Life That Works For You! (Episode 226)
01:40:52
Loading summary
Transcript115 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign hi there and welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast. My name is Patrick Francie and I am your host. And I want to begin by saying thank you for listening. On this show I am having conversations with seemingly ordinary individuals who have achieved some amazing and extraordinary results in both their life and business. My intention is to inspire and help you learn and grow by having my guests share their journey from of how they face and overcome their challenges, but also how they celebrate their many wins. And now let's get on with this show and have a conversation with today's guest. My guest today is someone who's been ahead of the curve his entire career. Mike Koenig is a serial entrepreneur with five successful exits under his belt. He's a 19 time best best selling author and a dynamic speaker who's lit up stages from Tony Robbins, mit, eo, and even far more than all of that. Now you may know him from his contribution to Forbes, to Entrepreneur or Fast Company, or even from his role as a judge on Entrepreneur.com's hit show Elevator Pitch. But Mike's real genius is in helping entrepreneurs build lifestyles that are compatible. They're high impact businesses. From high ticket offers to laser focused personal brand. Now he's worked with major brands like Sony, BMW, AT&T and 3M. And even more than that, recently he's become the go to strategist for recently exited founders who are launching their next act. Kind of like me actually. And now Mike's at the leading edge of what's next. Teaching top professionals how to effectively leverage AI tools to accelerate growth, to scale creativity and stay competitive in a rapidly changing world. This is an absolute amazing conversation about innovation, reinvention and building a life that actually works for you, not just your business. Listen in. Enjoy. Mike Koenigs, welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast. Thanks for joining me.
- [02:15]
B
Good to be here my friend.
- [02:17]
A
So you've got such a diverse background. It was like where do I start with you? But what's in my world right now and in most people, I want to say most people, many people's world. And I want to preface a couple things. I do a lot of speaking and I'm often in rooms of 100 to 500 let's say. But one of the questions I ask is who's using AI in their day to day life, like using it beyond just as a Google search. I'm shocked that I'm going to say on a good event like maybe 20%, maybe it's more likely 10% of the audience raises their hand and says I use It, I joke, I go, how many are still trying to figure out how to spell AI? That's how new it is and how intimidating it is to some people. So you're got some expertise in AI. And so where do we start in terms of what is. Do you see in the world of AI? Do you see what are the opportunities for professionals? Let's start there and kind of, let's unpack it from there, you know, is given that we may not be techies.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah. Well, I'll begin by saying I speak on AI at least twice a month in front of large audiences. I was just in Montreal this weekend speaking in front of an audience of 100. Before that, I was in front of 3,000 young people, high school kids, and I've spoken at the UN and recently, just 60 days as of right now. And here's what I tell everyone. First of all, the most important thing about AI is that frameworks create freedom. And most people will say, I'm so busy running my business, I don't have time to learn AI. So there's a few secrets to adopting it and using it. And then I'm going to directly answer your question about the who. First of all, know that if you have an action button on your phone, if you have one of the more recent iPhones, I set mine up, so you just push the button and it launches ChatGPT. And I talk to it all the time. So, for example, I got a notice not long ago that my number one, my integrator in my business, my chief of staff, was going to leave. And she gave me two weeks. Not because either one of us did anything wrong. She just had family things going on, a few other things. So I had to find a replacement really fast. We had a huge bucket of business ahead of us. So I, I talked to ChatGPT and I said, my number one has told me to leave. Here's everything she does, here's what I love about what she does. And if I were to get someone new, here's some additional skills I'd love to have. Make a want ad for me that is unique and engaging, that will make that person raise their hands and apply. Oh, within five minutes, I had a really good ad. Within 20, it was polished. I posted it. I got four applicants. I hired the first one 48 hours later, who is a rock star of epic proportions. And then I got a second one, and her response was unicorn reporting for duty. Because the, the ad was really written for a very specialized person. So the, the, the key of the. To this Is AI can do, if you think about it, in order of the. We call it the Mac method. Mac, which is mentor me, teach me how to do this. You don't have to know how to use AI, just tell IT to tell you how to do it or do it for you, and then do it for me as an assistant. And the third is now critique and improve it. So the hardest thing that most people are finding who are not using it or are intimidated or not getting the results is we've spent our lives giving up our agency to bureaucracies, higher powers, getting a diploma or waiting for something, and you don't have to wait for anything anymore. And AI can help you get there. But to ask questions and have IT ask you clarifying questions is really hard for most human brains.
- [06:29]
A
So in the AI world, and you hit on something that I think what people need to understand around AI is that it is so adaptable to who you are, what your needs are, your personality, your tonality, and it. So I started using ChatGPT quite extensively a couple of years ago, and I think about now, you know, people have said, well, you should try this platform and you should try that platform. You know, ChatGPT, there's an early adopter advantage that I don't want to leave ChatGPT, it knows me, it knows me intimately. It understands my kind of how I work, what I expect from it. I've got all my settings in the background. Like, I use it extensively, and the time it saves is unbelievable. What do you think is in the way of people? Is it just, I don't have time to learn it? Is it the intimidation? Because it's not that difficult to learn. You know, a couple hours, you can gain some real expertise in AI. From my perspective, commands and understanding the prompts that you're going to use make all the difference in the world. We can share a little bit about that, but what do you think is the primary thing that. Is it. Because in my world, it's talked about in your world, I mean, that's what you're all about right now. And I don't want to say all of that. I mean, it's a big part of what you're doing, what's in people's way.
- [07:48]
B
Okay, so I'm going to answer your first question to dive into this one because it'll make some clarity. Most of my time is focused on helping business owner founders with AI who really want to create more revenue, get their time back, and be able to do it with fewer people. It doesn't mean they want to get rid of anyone. They just want their people to be three to five times more effective. So the solution that I present is a four step one. I call it the four quadrants of AI, which is number one, have AI give you superpowers. That means multiply your productivity and give your time back with fewer people. That means if you're using AI properly, you can ask it a question, have it help you, and I'll give you what's known as a meta prompt in a moment that will help you allow AI to figure this out for you. Okay, the second, I promise I'm going to answer your question, but sometimes I like using stories to get there.
- [08:52]
A
It's all good. I love this, it's great.
- [08:54]
B
The second is your one person marketing team. So that's how you grow your brand, your reach and attention with high value, engaging content in your voice. Here's the challenge we all have is how do we collapse the speed of trust? If someone isn't going to buy from you, it's because they don't trust you yet they don't know like and trust you. The next is we're all fighting for relevance and relevance goes away fast and it's hard to build. So how much authority do you have? How trustworthy are you? How often do you speak? And then beyond that it is you've got to constantly find new effective ways to gain attention. So one problem with AI is it generates so much crap the human brain can't absorb more. There is a limited amount of attention everyone has, and so now you have to get attention faster, accelerate the speed of trust and maintain your relevance. So that's a really important mindset shift. The third is how do you increase your opportunities and income from a business point of view? How do you attract better customers who pay you more and do it over and over again? And I always say that's because you want to have a category of one brand. Elevating your value and making money is really about trading value and time and if you can do it faster and better and cheaper, you are going to win. And then the fourth is how do you automate that? This will lead us to the tool side, which is we all want systems that work 247 predicting what we need before we meet it. So from there I can tell you a couple of the tools I use that help this beyond chatgpt without losing what you already have.
- [10:42]
A
Please.
- [10:45]
B
This podcast is sponsored by Handwritten. When's the last time your business sent a truly personal note to your clients at Handwritten. We've revolutionized outreach by using real pen and ink written by robots to deliver a thorough, authentic handwritten notes at scale. Whether you're saying thank you, sharing special offers or prospecting new leads, Handwritten turns thoughtful gestures into loyal customers. Visit handwritten.com that's H A N-W R Y T-T-E-N.com and see how we can help businesses like yours stand out. Handwritten with a y.com your words in pen and ink. Okay, so I think of ChatGPT is a Swiss army knife. It is my number one first go to the but however is the next one I use all the time is something called genspark. Genspark. For example, I can feed in a prompt and say and like let's do a real life example. Now I know one of your websites is R e I n canada.com rain cam though.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah?
- [11:56]
B
Yep. And you're in the business of teaching people how to invest in real estate the right way, correct?
- [12:04]
A
That's correct.
- [12:05]
B
Okay, who's your perfect customer? Who do you want to find more of?
- [12:09]
A
Anybody who's interested in creating a financial future, investing in real estate, who has a long term vision for what they're trying to create and see real estate as an opportunity to do that.
- [12:21]
B
Great. Now I would assume you would agree with me that one of the hardest things to do is just go out and market one on one and have to do a whole bunch of paid ads and go out and do mass marketing versus if you can get on or in someone's platform, someone who already owns relationships and trust so they can bless you and say, man, you have got to meet this Patrick guy, he knows this stuff. If you ever get a chance to work with him, do it right. So someone else's audience and then out there, there might be an influencer who influences owners of audiences. Okay. And on the outside level, an ambassador. So for example, I've spoken like anytime I speak for Tony Robbins, it's like getting blessed by the pope. The influencers listen to Tony, the audience owners listen to Tony. And I get a lot of calls every time I make an appearance. So for you, if you could get in front of 10 great groups, who might they be or what kind of groups own? Your perfect customer already own the trust.
- [13:33]
A
Yeah, well, you know, certainly some financial advisors are in that if they're not all about them. So if they're really client focused and they say, well, you know, building and having some real estate in your portfolio makes sense. And you know, if you're really if they can be focused on their client, that is a really great audience. Mortgage brokers, influential realtors who are investor focused are often great to get on. I've got gigs coming up where in fact I'm on stage for somebody who's hosting real estate investor events. But they are a large brokerage. They're going to put four or five hundred people in a room and I'll be there because part of my own background, by the way, Mike, is as much as I talk about investing in real estate how tos my real kind of quirkiness is I love the economic fundamentals and the analysis. So I'm a bit of an armchair economist. I've been doing that for 25 years where I look at the data that we look into the future of where real estate is going. So as much as Canada is experiencing a downturn, having meltdowns in Toronto and Vancouver condo market, I mean we were literally warning people against that too plus years ago. So that's based on the economic fundamentals that drive real estate. So that's part of what our gig is. And so brokers, mortgage brokers, realtors with large brokerages are great. And then anybody who's hosting events where they're actually teaching that, great.
- [14:56]
B
So everything you described right now we can capture that. I always run a tool called Otter AI in the background that captures every conversation I have going on. And just with a prompt like that, we could go over to. And this will. I'm going to describe this for your listeners and anyone who's watching it could see it. But what you can easily do is Here we go, Everyday Millionaire. Let's see. Here we go. And I'm going to show. Can you see a screen that says genspark on it right now?
- [15:31]
A
Yeah, let me just bring that into the picture. There we go.
- [15:34]
B
All right. So for folks at home who are listening, I brought up a tool. It's called genspark AI. This is my go to secondary website for all things. And in here I'm going to put in a prompt. But this allows you to create slides. So for example, I could feed it a link to a video and say now turn this video into a slide deck. I use it. It'll transcribe videos and make entire manuals. I can say I want you to grab this video, transcribe it for me and turn it into a manual written in my voice about me and for me so I can learn it real fast. It's got a capability to make videos so we can make videos on the Fly. We can do audios, deep research, etc. But one of my favorite capabilities is AI sheets. Now, I'm going to put in this prompt and then I'll describe what's going on for people listening. But I'd say, hi, my name is Patrick Franci from reincanada.com and I am an expert in real estate investing, and I have the ability to talk to large audiences about where real estate investing is going and work with financial advisors, wealth managers, and other audiences that are interested in alternative investments. And I want to find 50 stages or audiences to speak in front of, go out and find my perfect audience and identify the founder and owner of those groups, the size of their audiences, and when those events are happening, and research them in detail. Then give me their contact information and three bullet points, points that I can pitch them on to put me on their stage. That was a long prompt. I know that. Okay, but there we go. And so what this will do is go out, it's going to start doing deep research and finding audiences that fit that, and build a spreadsheet for you with their contact information in it and even write the outbound email in your voice with the reasons they should have you on their stage. All right, that was a deep dive, but this is the kind of thing most people like. If you had to find and hire an expert who had the capabilities of doing that and then identify them and then write outbound emails, how much time and how much money do you think that would take?
- [18:13]
A
Gosh, I have no benchmark. A lot.
- [18:17]
B
Yeah. Most of the time you need someone really smart who's really good at this kind of thing. And we just made it up on the fly by talking to AI. And I know we went really deep, really fast. But this is why AI is changing the entire workplace. It's why it's so important to bring in a culture and a mindset and also let your teams know that, look, I don't want to replace you with AI. I would love to give you the skills and the capabilities way beyond what you currently know how to do and help you get to be a better person who can spend your time and your unique ability, your own superpower and be more effective. That's going to help you for the rest of your life. But if you create a culture of that, that I think is the future of education and business.
- [19:07]
A
Well, I think you make such a great point. I mean, there's a couple things we can talk about, but what you just said lands for me in a really interesting way, because right now the whole conversation is about people worried about losing their job and being replaced. And I'm sure there's some degree of truth, well, probably a large degree of truth to that. So you have to be paying attention. But having said that, when you consider that most people, if they really embrace it, it becomes the opportunity for them to be more efficient, to use their horsepower, their brain power in a more effective way. Not doing the minutiae. I mean what you just did is an important. So you just did the search. And so if somebody's doing that, they're putting time and energy into it all great. This heavy lifting is done for you so that you can actually take maybe some skills that you have and elevate them where you get to really focus on and get out of the minutia. That's how I look at it. And I look at how much time I save, how much better it. It really takes my talent and kind of supersizes it. I'm not an AI guy that abandoned stuff, I'm writing stuff. And I would like to talk to you about the book side of things. That's a different conversation because a lot of people are writing books, they say write this book and then it comes out as AI. It reads as AI. It's like you don't talk like that. Nobody thinks like that. Get off it. Right. So my point is, is that that's how I see it within an office. So when you have a culture that is not about being worried about being replaced, but actually taking their talents and, and then expanding on those talents and using their efficiency, that's what I'm hearing you say. Is that a fairly accurate statement, a.
- [20:40]
B
Great synthesis and, and I'm going to supersize that. Let me plus what you just said. Another big idea that I try to communicate with people is there's a bunch of different AIs. Again, ChatGPT should be generally speaking your go to AI for most things. It does a lot of stuff really well and every week it gets better. Claude for example, writes really good copy. Genspark is really good for writing manuals, creating slide decks, being able to summarize information, doing deep research and making really good looking documents. It also can make videos and audios. It's like a one stop shop. It's also a Chinese tool and some people are like, well I don't want to work with stuff that comes out of China because they don't trust copyrights and trademarks and property. But some of these tools are so good and they're different. You Know, it's just a different tool for a different task. So. And with regards to writing a book, it just goes to show, like, AI is better now at asking clarifying questions. So you tell it to do something, and it'll ask you five or six questions to help refine. Because most people aren't good. They don't have the lives they want because they don't ask good questions. And Tony Robbins has a great saying, the quality of your life is dependent on the quality of the questions you ask. Now, what AI is doing now is it asks really good, refining questions so it can give you better output. But also when you start doing a little work, you realize, well, the reason why the book that it wrote for you is so crappy is because you didn't teach the AI how to write like you speak or write the way you talk. So you can ask AI if you, you know, ask me a series of 10 questions that I can interview myself on, then I want you to create a writing style guide in my voice based upon how I respond to those questions. So teach me how to. Teach me how to teach you how to do something better.
- [22:37]
A
It's crazy. It is crazy when you put those questions in there. And it actually almost does a kind of a personality assessment, character assessment of you. When you get through those questions that it asks you, it's fascinating.
- [22:50]
B
I love it. Now, I promised you, so I'll give you two other really big nuggets, and one of them is, I call it TLC as your meta coach. And I've got a couple of examples that I'll. I'll. I'll show and demonstrate with, and I'll say them for people who are listening right now. Again, what I love to do is use AI to teach people how to have more intimate, deep, meaningful human relationships. Which sounds like, what the hell are you talking about? Right? So, for example, when you say AI is a meta coach, what you could do is this is a really easy prompt you can put into ChatGPT if you're using it right now, and just say, take everything you know about me and describe me in just one word, and I challenge you. If you're by your chatgpt, I'd be curious if you popped it in, because it'll come back and give it to you really quickly. I'd be curious what it would say about you. Now, I put mine in, and the word it came back with was relentless.
- [23:59]
A
Okay, I'm worried. Yeah, my ego may not like what I hear. Okay, so what was the question again?
- [24:06]
B
Yeah, take Everything you know about me and describe me in just one word. And while you're doing this, the reason this works so well is the more you use ChatGPT, the more you're training it. It's building a body of knowledge and wisdom. It's paying attention to what you, what kind of questions you ask, how you react, how you respond, what you look for, what's important to you, how you write and what your values are.
- [24:31]
A
So relentless.
- [24:32]
B
You got it too.
- [24:34]
A
Relentless. That's what I got.
- [24:35]
B
Well, birds of a feather.
- [24:38]
A
It's interesting, Mike, is that the training of it is so important. So I've been. I'm writing, I'm into my writing. My first book, by the way, and one of the reasons I didn't want to write a book years ago, about eight years ago, nine years ago, I didn't think I had a book in me, number one. Number two, what do I know? And long story short, that's one of the reasons I started this Everyday Millionaire podcast. And I thought it was. Was easier than writing a book and I didn't have to update it all the time. So that's a different story. The point is, is that I started and we're, my wife and I are very much into personal professional development and the coaching and that. So I'm sharing this kind of story because what I came to in the personal development space, which I played in for many years in coaching individuals and business owners, investors, etc, is I came up with a program and or a thought process that when I was trying to define what it is I do that might be different or a different way to describe what I do so that I'm not playing in the same space as everybody else, although I am. What's my differentiation? And Peter Krohn, actually, if you've come across Peter Krohn, he calls himself the Mind Architect. And I went, that's a cool handle, right? I love it. We have a Mindset Matters podcast, but mindset is so overused and I just, I'm not a big fan of it, although we still have it, I'm in the process of changing it. So a little bit long winded. This is about you, not me. But I wanted to share because it applies to AI and that is that I started and I came to a program or a terminology that I call mind shui, which is Feng shui for the mind. Clear the clutter of your mind to understand and get the flow of energy going. So we use Feng shui for our space. And I went, it was an accident. It was a word that popped out of my head. Anyways, I started writing about that and I said to the AI because I'm writing newsletters et cetera, I said review my writing through the eyes of a world class publisher and editor. Do not patronize or placate me. That simple prompt changed everything because it had drawn up so much I didn't even realize how much content I had created over the years that it had access to. And I mean it was giving me ideas. Well, why don't you draw from this? You know, this is one of the, this works perfectly in this phrase that you use and like it was phenomenal. And as I've gotten into the prompts around that it is really understanding. So you know, it comes to relentless and I go well I don't, that's I think is accurate but given what I spent two years working in chat GPT in all areas of my business, that's what it came up with. I mean that's a cool prompt.
- [27:29]
B
It, it really is. So I'll give you, I'll give you an a couple more ideas and by the way, our research project finished. So we'll call, we'll come back to that. For anyone who's like you said, the.
- [27:41]
A
Word that prompted me, I think that's actually the tangent I was going to go off quickly is research. So I wanted to say, you know, I say okay, I want to be world class in the programs that Stephanie and I launch within the mine shui way. And that's kind of terminology, how you think, how you operate, updating operating system, all that. So I said to ChatGPT research the concept of mine shui and the mine shui way as compared to Peter Crone, Tony Robbins, Joe Dispenza, you know, where does it fit in the quality and the context of that level of personal professional development space? It did a ton of research came back, gave me all the confidence in the world to say no, I'm going to move forward with this. It's. It was an awkward word to me at first, mine shui. But now it's like we get into our language, we connect our brain to our tongues. The next thing you know we're speaking it and talking about it. So that was a lot of AI research and time spent in the background of. But it's, I mean it saved me hundreds of hours and was I think pretty, pretty accurate. I continually test it. Anyways, I went off on a tangent but I wanted to share that I think people would be appreciated.
- [28:53]
B
Yes. And I'm a Huge fan of books.
- [28:56]
A
And you wrote what, 20 books?
- [28:59]
B
19. And then I had a company called Publish and Profit. So I wrote one of the first books and created the first product systems and trainings to teach people how to self publish on Amazon. And before that I was involved in the publishing business too. It's a long story, but we helped almost 2000 business owners and founders write, publish, promote, become best selling authors with that program. It still has got a big tail to this day. And so we'll come back to that. But I want to introduce another big idea that causes the light bulbs to go on in most people's minds. And it's the idea of multiple geniuses. So imagine this. So you had your research project. Now if you, you had, I'm going to synthesize what you said, which was effectively I did this research on mind Shui, had it give me a whole bunch of ideas, gave it some other people and how to compare their wisdom, their knowledge, their systems to mine. And you got a whole bunch of ideas. And it saved you potentially hundreds of hours synthesizing all this together. Now if you have to pay someone, you know, you'd have to get probably like a MBA class researcher to do that research. Normally it would take weeks of time. And a really good researcher can cost upwards of 5,000 bucks a week easy. Okay, and hundreds of hours, it's easy to look at that and say, what's $15,000 research job? But imagine if you had eight of the same people doing the same kind of research and they all independently went in a separate room. So you get eight or 10 PhD level geniuses, you give them a task, say go away, get this thing done. And then come back to me and report to me. And then you'd say to them, now I want you all to work together and synthesize your best stuff into one great report. You know, that could be $150,000 project. It could take weeks or months of time. But here's how to do it with AI. And this again is a really important mindset. It's the multiple geniuses and what I call monkey pick, good banana philosophy. So what I do is whenever I have a problem, I'll put it first into ChatGPT, and then I'll put the same prompt into Claude. And then I'll put the same prompt into genspark, which is another really good AI. And then I'll go over to Elon Musk's Grok Grok. I'll pop it into Perplexity. Then I have another AI I Use called Manus M A N U S which is a super agent, another one called Minimax, another super agent and then Gemini and another one called Abacus and another one called Kimi. And I know that's a lot, but I'm just going to illustrate the point. Same prompt, and I just open up separate tabs, paste it in, hit enter. Okay. All these things go to town and anywhere from 30 seconds later to with some of the more complex ones like Manus, it does really deep, complex research. It might take 20 minutes. And I look at them and this is where monkey pick good banana come in. Because you don't have to be an expert on anything, but you can tell generally if something is of it or if it's a good report or not. The top three. And I'll copy the results and I'll paste it into multiple GPTs. I can take all the results, synthesize them and I'll say I want you to fact check all this information and then synthesize the best ideas and the best results. So it's two tiers. So you can effectively do the work of 10 geniuses that would cost you $150,000 in a month of time in about a half an hour and get this incredible synthesis of good stuff. Because overwhelm is the enemy of done. But AI can simplify and it can fact check itself.
- [32:54]
A
It's interesting. So you gave me some great ideas, but you're back to relentless and efficient and effectiveness. So I back tested chatgpt against Grok and Manus and it came back basically the same results. Copy pasted it all together, basically did what you did because I wanted to back test it because we can't take it for gospel. Although you can give certain prompts to Chat GPT or any, I think GPT that actually makes sure that it's double checking itself. But again, we have to trust that we still have to use our own. We have to discern the information that we're getting. And that's, I think, a key part of it as well.
- [33:33]
B
Totally. Yep. All of that is absolutely true.
- [33:37]
A
Something else you said, I want to, and I want to pick it apart a little bit, is that, you know, you said that all took half an hour and I'm looking at it going, and when you said that, I'm going, who cares if it took you four hours, if it took you the whole day to figure that all out just to do it? Like, who cares like if you put six hours, eight hours into just what you described and you're a professional at it. You've practiced, you've done all the things that you've done to get there. And I look at it and I go, okay, can I give up eight, an eight hour day to save hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time? And my answer to that is of course I can. So it's worth my time to put in. That's, I think that's an important kind of marker to use.
- [34:21]
B
But the key, there's three big ideas here that again, once you recognize this number one, what you just described as a time machine, AI is a time machine. Being able to get a week or a month's worth of work done inside of 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes at a higher quality than really smart humans is truly a great capability amplifier and a superpower. And then being able to teach teams how to do that for you, that is by definition a time machine. And the next one is that oftentimes now you can get everything done faster than you could communicate and articulate a vision to a human and delegate it. And then you'd still have to wait. And there's a high probability they misunderstood you because they didn't understand the full context, get back to you with a wrong result, hours, days or weeks later. So faster than delegation is I think, another important distinction here. And back to this notion of agency where as humans we've been told, well, go look that up or ask someone, or wait until, or, or, or no longer do you have to wait. So this notion of certification and traditional education and learning linearly is suddenly obsolete and humanity's mindset hasn't caught up to that possibility. It takes a little while to pull and get your agency back and say now you are in total control. And I think we have a responsibility to our fellow man to show them the way because it's, you know, when we think about the disruption this will have on white collar jobs, there's no question it's going to happen on blue collar jobs. I'm working with a client right now who is building systems that in what's known as the trades, the blue collar work where they can put on a pair of augmented reality glasses, look at something and the manuals show them and tell them what to do in real time. So it used to take months or years of training and certification. Now they can put someone on the job the first day and they are functional and useful and accurate.
- [36:44]
A
The efficiencies that AI is bringing. And when you, you've had a similar experience, I mean in the world that we live in and work in. AI is just part of our life now. Far more yours than mine, even, although I use it daily. What do you think is in the way of people adopting it? Do you think there's a tipping point where it's because right now it seems like everybody's using AI, but my own kind of anecdotal research is that that's not the case at all. What's your research show?
- [37:14]
B
Yeah, so I know you. At the very beginning of this, you said I'd go into a group and I ask how many people are using it and raise their hands. Now in the groups I'm in. So I regularly speak at groups like Abundance, 360 Tony Robbins Communities, YPO, EO Strategic Coach, if you're familiar with that. Genius Network.
- [37:37]
A
Yeah. Dan Sullivan.
- [37:38]
B
Yes, I do a podcast with Dan Sullivan. And in those groups right now, I'd say the adoption rate. And I asked this question at the front of every one of my speeches. I say, raise your hand if you're using ChatGPT or I say not using it. Okay. And at this point it might be like 10 to 15% of a room, depending it's relatively low. A year ago it was probably 60%. Two years ago it was 80%. So at least amongst business owners, it's more. But I spoke in front of an audience of several thousand high school students, and I'd say 85% of the room raised their hand and didn't. And part of it is because these were high performers. They were at a educational congress, so These are like 4.0 kids. But they were afraid that they'd be cheating. And they also are terrified of what ChatGPT is going to do. I, I, my interpretation is they're afraid. Their identities are so caught up in, I'm the smart one and I don't need it that that's going to get in the way of, you know, there's a whole bunch of kids who cheat and most kids cheat now using ChatGPT. But anyway, the, the, the stats, the way they break down is it's in my rooms, it's usually about 10 to 15%, not 60% are using it a lot. And then around 20% would consider themselves advanced users and using it all the time. It's like integral their businesses now.
- [39:17]
A
It's amazing what it will do. It is really crazy in that and something that you said is cheating. I know when I first started it, using it for some of my writing, I'm going, am I cheating? Is this considered what am I doing, but I also realized that at the end of the day, the input that I've got is I'm writing and then it's doing the editing. It's punctuation, checking spelling, maybe some sentence structure. My experience with writing a couple of forwards for authors that I know was working with their editors back old school ways just to write a, you know, 400 word forward for their book. I think it took a week back and forth and tweak this, do that. I don't like this, do that. I'm going, are you kidding me? And so it was emails back and forth. It was at least a week, it might have even been two because of timing and all the rest of it. And now that stuff takes minutes to do and it polishes it, it still speaks in my tone, it uses words that I use. I'm, I'm then getting it. I what my process is, is to download it into a word document, re edit it, change the language. So it really is my stuff always. But it does feel a little bit like cheating. What? How do we get over that? Or do we get over that? Is it just get here to get over it?
- [40:33]
B
I'll give you an interesting use case. So I was speaking in Hawaii a couple weeks ago and it was a financial conference and there were a whole bunch of investors in the room, but there's also a wife of one of the investors who is a school teacher. And she said, I'm terrified as a teacher of what this is doing to my classes and my kids and they're cheating. And I said, well, what if we reframed how we use it and what we do with it? So I brought her up on stage and I pulled out my, my iPhone turned on ChatGPT and I said, if it's okay with you, I'm going to interview you right now, I'm going to ask you some questions. And I said, first of all, what kind of teacher are you? What's the age group? And I just walked her through this little exercise and she said, well, I teach geography and world culture. And I said, well, let's do this right now, let's create a curriculum. And then I used Jen Spark on stage. So I took this little script, this output, and I said, imagine if we taught your kids how to create their own curriculum based on what you want them to learn. And each one of them would create an animation in a mini movie teaching the other kids how to learn this material, and then ran a competition with the kids on who would vote on who created the most Entertaining, engaging content and videos. And I demonstrated this live on stage and we ended up making Muppet style animations that taught geography and music. And it happened in real time. And you know, the audience was like, holy cow. And she was like, holy cow. Because you can't stop a tool. I mean, when I grew up, using a calculator was cheating. Using a typewriter was cheating. We had to do everything longhanded. And then using a word processor was cheating. Using a computer was cheating. And you know, at some point someone who saw the first car said, that's cheating. You know, you have to use horses. I want to keep my job replacing horseshoes. It's like, well, you better become a mechanic and change car shoes, that is tires. Getting into an argument with technology and movement and change never ends well. And history proves that. So I think the distinction is the first time around, people might use it for cheating and a shortcut until you figure out how to integrate it into the learning experience. And how do humans, how does all life in the universe get better? It competes. It's constantly pushing the upper limits and the capacity that humans had tens of thousands of years ago. What changed is our ability to communicate with language and pass on history, tradition and skills and capabilities. But there were gaps of tens of thousands of years where literally nothing happened. Stories and symbology and myth and effective communication and how it moved is what changed civilization. Humans haven't changed that much. And we still have the same amount of absorption capability of information and a certain amount of attention. That hasn't changed, but we can communicate a lot more through memes and symbols. And now with light speed powered Internet.
- [44:08]
A
When we look at our evolution as humans, as society globally, we think about steam engine, we look at the printing press, we look at the Internet. You know, those are totally game changers. It changed the world. I mean it was. These were big things then. Today we look at AI. Do you see AI as that level of game changer with who we are as a human race? Do you see it that way?
- [44:35]
B
Yeah, here's a, here's a way to frame it. Right now, whoever has the most cheap energy advances the fastest. Coal and oil despite. Doesn't matter which political spectrum you're at. There are very few renewables that actually work 24, 7 and can store power. I've had solar on my house now for 20 years. I bought the original Tesla Roadster and I had no electric bill, no gas bill. And this is starting in 2008, 2009 and I had the original Roadster. I was into this, and I bought.
- [45:12]
A
The first model up to early adopter.
- [45:14]
B
Totally. And for a while I was going. Before the Tesla Roadster came out, I was convinced I was going to build my own electric car. That's how convinced I was. It was going to be the thing. However, when I sat down and the sales pitch for the Tesla Roadster was sit down and floor it. And when you go 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds, you're like, yeah, I'm going to buy this thing. I don't care what it costs. So the, the key to this right now is what AI is enabling humans to do. Because Elon said this not long ago. The AI models have absorbed all of human knowledge, wisdom, and information that's available. And, and what's happening now is the AIs are creating synthetic data, which basically means it's looking into the future and figuring it, figuring out things out things that we don't know how to solve, and creating data to train itself. Which sounds kind of crazy, but a, a metaphoric example of how this is being used is right now. If you, if you created a drug and want to do a drug test, you go to the FDA in the United States and it take you years, and you'd have to do all kinds of tests and levels of tests. It's going to cost you millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars to do. And then years later, you can finally re, you know, put your drug out there. And what's possible now is to create a synthetic human, synthetic DNA, and make a million of them and run those tests. And soon it could probably run all the tests inside of a couple of hours and do the equivalent of 10 years of research in, let's say, 10 hours. And it won't be subject to, let's say, some researcher who accidentally doesn't wash their hands after they use the restroom. Right. Or something like that.
- [47:01]
A
Right.
- [47:01]
B
It's like, yeah, stuff can get thrown off and that's going to be done to figure out how to solve some power issues. Fusion, more communications, disease, elimination. We are going to move as a race at such a quantum pace. Now, will that come at a cost? Absolutely. Do I think AI is a false God? Absolutely. Do I think social media is super dangerous, especially for children? It's as bad as heroin. Okay. There is a dark side to this, but I'm an optimist. I'm a delusional optimist, but I'd rather look on the bright side and say, can we educate faster? Can we become wealthier? Can we create More opportunity. And I also believe that entrepreneurship is an international language of peace and prosperity. The more kids that speak it, the better for the planet. There's less to fight about.
- [47:56]
A
So, Mike, I want to start to shift gears a little bit, and this has been a great conversation. I mean, we could spend the whole podcast talking about this. I want to talk more about you and how you're wired because you've written 20 books or you're onto your 20th book, you've done many business ventures, you continue to do multiple ventures. What keeps you in that space of reinventing, building out new. I mean, at some point, you know, do you have. Is it a financial goal? Is it because you, you know, financially you've built businesses, you've done well, you talk in hundreds of millions. But what drives you to keep doing this when you don't really have to financially? And why. Why do you get something going, kind of sell it, kick it to the curb, whatever you do, and move on to what's next? Like, how are. What's your thought process behind that? And what is that just a character trait? What is it for you?
- [48:56]
B
Well, the honest answer is terror and fear of loss, irrelevance and running out and not having enough. I grew up. My father was one of eight children, grew up on a immigrant farm in Iowa, German ancestry. His grandparents came over after World War I, and he was very poor. And my mother grew up very poor. My wife. My wife's parents were Holocaust survivors, and my wife grew up in Spanish Harlem, which basically, it's in Manhattan, but it's the slum part. And she was beaten and molested as a child and ended up doing humanitarian work. And so I think. And tying my wife into this will make some sense. I started my first business, started working full time the day I turned 16 and started. I taught myself how to code when I was 14 because I didn't want to be poor, and I hated it. I hated being cold. I grew up in Minnesota, and I hated being poor, and I was not good at school. I'm a kinesthetic learner, which means I have to do and I have to move. So sitting in a chair is very incompatible with me, and I'm very unemployable. So with that, what I figured out how to do early is I learned how to code, and I learned how to write video games. I learned how to solve a lot of problems with computers, and everyone needed it. And then when online marketing came around, I taught myself out of copyright, and I also figured out how to hack the Search engines, which turned into one of my first companies, Trafficizer. Next one was I figured out how to hack the mobile carriers to create two way interactive mobile text marketing. So I'm to blame for. I had a couple patents in that space, sold those companies. And then I figured out how to effectively hack Amazon Publishing to rapidly write and publish books. And you know, everything I've done has kind of been a hack and a shortcut because I wasn't a scientist, have severe adhd. So everything I do happens in sprints. I create a prod, a product that I, that solves my problem and then I figured out how to market and sell it. And that is a, you know, everyone wants to know how to do what I did. So I turn into an educator. So I think what, what really happens is I get interested and curious in a new emerging technology. I master something unique about it that has market appeal, productize it, sell it until I'm bored. Usually the business outgrows me and when it outgrows me, I sell it. And then I kind of stumble onto the next thing. And so AI, I stumbled into that and it clicked and I'm like, I can do this for the rest of my life. And created seven products in six months. And then it goes through. But in the meantime, there's a ton of failures. I killed five of those seven products because they started consuming all my time. And then there's one other threat of this. I had cancer. I was diagnosed with cancer, stage three colorectal cancer, 13 years ago. It just about killed me and I realized the value of time and health and I spent a lot of time in the longevity space now. So again, curiosity combined with my own pains and my own fears and so could I quit working? Yes. But I love building and making things and I love collaborating with founders. I just love making, making stuff.
- [52:34]
A
It's so cool. You know, it's you, when you go back to your story, you know, coming, being raised in the family, with the family background, you know, there's a choice that, you know, we make mentally, consciously, subconsciously, is that that becomes the reason that you don't succeed or it becomes the reason that you do. It's an interesting dynamic, isn't it?
- [52:57]
B
Yeah, it's either it's one kind of an addiction or another one.
- [53:00]
A
Yeah. Isn't that true? So in all of this, as you're going along, do you have a team that kind of is consistent with you, that had been with you for a while that says, okay, I know Mike, oh gosh, Mike's onto this and I got, we got to have his back and you've got a team that's got your back. Are you in that kind of world at that stage of what you've done with your business? Mike?
- [53:20]
B
Yeah. So I've built and sold five major companies and lots of little businesses and hundreds of products. I turned 60 next April. So I've got connections that go back over 40 years. My EA has been with me 17 and I have a lot of relationships that go back 20 years who are very integral to my life right now. My core team is 12 and that's dedicated to the AI side of the business. And then what we call the Superpower accelerator where we create and launch businesses and brands in a week. I've built a kind of an unusual process that's sprint oriented where we can work with a founder who sold their company and wants to create their next act or they want to upgrade the business they have or they recognize and realize that having a strong personal brand, what I call a founder brand, will elevate and multiply the value of everything they touch for the rest of their lives. So that's my kind of long winded way of answering your question, is when you do stuff like this, you find people you resonate with. And what I do requires collaboration. I find zero joy in doing it by myself, for myself. If it's not with someone I deeply care about, it doesn't have purpose and meaning.
- [54:52]
A
That's such an interesting point you're making. Is so within the real estate investment network and we, Stephanie, my wife and I own different businesses and we do different things. But real estate investment network for the past, let's say 15 years at least has been my kind of primary focus. And we were traveling across, back and forth across the country at a membership based business community, all the rest of it. When Covid came along, Pandemic locks us down. I had to make the decision do I want to continue pushing the live event. We were doing 60, generally about 60 events a year and it's eventually my.
- [55:30]
B
Friend, it almost killed me.
- [55:31]
A
So yeah, yeah. And it's in your logistics and team and your so many moving parts and the cost and you know, it got to the point where I'm going no, I'm done with this. You know, I, I turns, I turned 67 in July 2025 and I was going, you know, so even so five years ago when I stopped doing that event, that live event. But here's the long winded, that's a bit of a long winded background but here I am today and my team is international and it is remote. And I am working primarily by myself or, and, or with my wife in terms of direct energy in a space. Now I'm talking to people all the time and I certainly get out and I do speaking and I do events, but I need to do that for that interaction with people. But when you're talking and when we're even in this conversation, we've been discussing AI that's a pretty lonely world. Like you can get into the AI part of it and it's just like you've got a partner that you're working with that isn't there physically. And the concept of remote work has taken on a whole new life over the past five years. Seems to be trending back to what it was. Seems to be. I think it depends the business, I guess. And we're starting to see some of the bigger companies going, no, you're coming back to the office. And they're drawing lines in the sand. Whether it's four days a week, five days a week, they're making those. What are you seeing in your world and how do you kind of overcome that? I mean, do you have an office with a team and all the rest of it?
- [57:08]
B
Yeah. So it's really interesting question. And the. About five years ago, so right before the lockdown, I was doing the very similar thing. I had an event driven model on the road all the time, doing events, doing my own events, having to fill them up and what I call the dancing bear business. And I had started doing that again after I had cancer. And the first time around it almost killed me. You know, it was the stress of all that stuff where I, you know, I was bleeding out my butt one day. That's basically how I found out I had colorectal cancer.
- [57:40]
A
I do want to talk about that. So I'm just going to put a pin in that. We'll come back to that.
- [57:44]
B
Not a good place to get it. And the treatment is not fun. When I sold everything and I started doing the super power accelerator, the way I changed up the model is I have a place on the beach in La Jolla, California. So we have three prime, three residents, one in La Jolla on the beach. I'm a water guy. We now have a place in an hour north of Cabo in Mexico. So on the Pacific side it's called Todo Santos. And then we also have, it's beautiful there, breathtaking. And then we have another one in Malaga, Spain. And I have some, some of my team Members are in Spain, so we're very international. And we are also, because of my wife's heritage, we are inheriting Croatian citizenship. So we'll soon be EU citizens. My goal has been to be a world citizen and the way I do my work. So for example, tomorrow I have a client coming in, staying at the beach, and I charge $50,000 for one day, one on one. That's the right now price. Every, every quarter I increase the prices and they come to me and they stay and we solve big problems. So we get AI working. My team and I will build campaigns, we'll create entire marketing programs, stuff that takes most people months or never to get done. And then when I do our three day sprint, it's a $200,000 investment, but we do the work of what would normally take six months. So again, it's time compression with these unique tools. And my goal, after I sold my last office, which it was a huge warehouse in San Diego, it had seven sets, huge production studio. We created a lot of content out of there. One day I walked in and I'm like, I am done. So now the space I'm in, I work in a studio which I built into my home. It's a seven camera, automated switched system. And when my clients are working with me, we work at the beach. And then we come up to my home studio when we produce content on the road. I've got a portable studio and my clients come to me, they stay with me. And I've turned this into a lifestyle business that I love that'll attract people who also want the lifestyle business. So the answer to your question is I think we're in a point where you can design a business around your unique ability and your superpower and the lifestyle you wish to live. I am an ocean guy. I don't like elevation. Chemotherapy messed up some my joints and so elevation and cold hurts my body. I just don't like it. So I avoid it. And I love being in a completely different culture. And my vision is, you know, how do I create a worldwide network of entrepreneurs who speak a common language of entrepreneurship? And so the answer is, the world is now my office. I wish to do business with people in every culture and every language enhanced with AI. And that inspires me to create the lifestyle and also be able to, you know, the, the, all the homes are an extension of the business. So there's benefits to that as well. As a Canadian, you know, you can, you have certain advantages to living outside of the mothership from a tax perspective that just Again, it's, how do you dream into creating this amazing vision and then attract people who are also attracted to that same kind of experience or vision?
- [61:25]
A
I love that. And, you know, it's so true. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna just kind of pick your brain a little bit. Mike, is that when you consider what you're doing and what you've just described, there's a lot of risk in that. There's a lot of, you know, creativity. What drives. I don't even know if what drives you is the right question. This goes back to the thought process behind it. So there's a. There's risk involved in doing all that you've talked about. There's a lot of risk. But, yeah. So how do you deal with the risk? The mental noise, if you will, that says this is too risky. You know, maybe you. The hidden beliefs of, you're not enough, you're not worthy, whatever the stories are. What is it that you do that gets you to that degree of getting stuff done and accomplishment? You're working with clients, and I know you're not. You're doing a different kind of coaching. But I'm sure some of that professional development mental stuff always shows up.
- [62:32]
B
It's all inner work, all this stuff. I mean, marketing is creating a new identity, either for yourself or something else, and it has to be for yourself along with it. So it's deep personal work and letting go of attachments and things that you believed are true that simply aren't. It's just that we can make something new that you can live into. So a big part of our work is crafting and creating an identity that is authentically you, that you can perform inside of. So I'm going to answer your question about the risk, but I'm going to take it away by saying, I have people come to me and they say, well, here's what I'm imagining. I'll say, well, what if it could be this, this and this? They're like, well, that'd even be better. All right, great. Let's make it right now. So we'll create a book based on the character, the identity, who made that book? We'll create new products and services in that new character. It is you. It's authentically you, but it's your better future self. And then we manufacture all the content that helps the world see you that way. It forces you to live inside that identity in integrity and authenticity. And so, you know, for me, you know, full disclosure, like, this past year, I lost both of my Parents, and I was very close to them. And I said my goodbyes early in my life. I got clear on they were going to die someday. But I wasn't prepared for the grief. And it put me in. It really spiraled me. I was genuinely depressed. Depressed and. And I didn't know how to deal with it. And anxious. I couldn't sleep and just plagued with sad. And I felt like I was losing my edge and. And I was open with my team. You know, I'm just like, God, I'm going through a dark time right now. And I just didn't know how to really deal with it other than keep on working and stay inside a purpose. But, man, I. I hated being alone in my own head at night. And so I think that the real answer is I created my next identity. I just knew that this dark space would eventually go away. Cancer taught me the same thing. Like, when you're getting chemotherapy and radiation and getting out of surgery, everything hurts. And, like, I felt like I was crapping broken glass and lava for months. It was horrible waking up. I was waking up in a pile of my own hair every day. But I also decided to turn it into a story. And I wrote my first book with less than an hour of strength a day. And then I turned that into a product about how to write a book in a month. You know, it was like, how can I turn my pain into a product and use and create an A hero's journey story that's relatable and relevant and emotional, that someone else will feel into and say, man, I recognize that journey. I recognize that pain, and I want what you have. And then I've been teaching other people how to do the same thing. It's a replicable model. It is the classic hero's journey. It's the Christ myth. It's every single great story ever told in every major religion. And I just remind myself I'm just playing a part in a movie.
- [66:01]
A
So good. There's a. You know, the context that you provide, I think, which is so important. And, you know, all the memes and quotes that are out there, you know, we read them and we go, oh, that's really cool. But behind that is real meaning, if you take some time to think about it. So this becomes what you just described, I think, and I don't want to minimize what you just described so eloquently, by the way, is that it really is the question of who do you need to become to achieve the goal and understanding that. Can you do that within your values? Can you question your values. Can you live a life being authentic, in integrity, in alignment with your values, in other words? And that's the push, though I think it's interesting that we can say that and we could define it, but it sounds like you're taking it to a whole new level. It's like you're asking AI, you're prompting AI, but then you take it to a whole new level in terms of, okay, I'm going to work with these individuals. This is who you need to become. But let's really unpack. Who is the person that is going to be that achieves that goal? And we start working on you that then achieves the goal. So I don't know if I'm articulating it. It's just that that's kind of my takeaway. Some of my takeaway of what you just described. It really is intentional. You didn't come out of the chute this way. You didn't come from the lucky sperm club. You literally went on your journey and at some point you said, I have to be who I am today isn't going to achieve the results that I see that I want to achieve in the future. So I have to redefine and be really clear on who I need to be and then start putting those corrections in, if we use the term correction. But I need to make those changes.
- [67:47]
B
I'm going to just reflect on something that I experienced while I was listening to you, which is I grew up in a town of 763 people to parents who were born. First of all, I had very, very kind parents. And I'm the oldest of four. And I get along really well with my siblings. And I had a big Catholic family that I grew up with. And then I married into a Jewish family. And I love Judaic tradition. I'm totally not religious at all. I'm incompatible with religious operating systems. It doesn't make any sense to me. But I honor the symbolism and the tools they provide and the framework to keep a society reasonably civil when they're not all killing each other because of whose God's wrong or right. But having said that, where I grew up and in the educational systems I was in, I felt stupid. I wasn't good at anything. I wasn't big enough to be good at sports. I had such terrible adhd. I was the kid who, during Little League, I'd be put in left field and I'd be out there catching moths with my glove while the ball rolled by. I was that kid, all right. And I Felt I knew I wasn't stupid, but I wasn't school smart at all. And something inside of me, I was completely consumed with information. Like I would read a hundred magazines, I'd go to a bookstore, and I would read five or ten magazines after school. And then my dad had a barbershop. So then I'd walk to my dad's barbershop and he'd take me home. So my happy place was absorbing Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, electronics magazines, computer magazines, and anything I get my hands on. And I couldn't afford the magazines of the books, but it was okay to browse. But from there I learned enough. And then my dad taught me at least to say please and thank you and shake someone's hand and look at them in the eyes when you'd meet them. And you know, and my dad said, yeah, Mike's really interested in computers. And someone said, hey, well can you figure out how to turn this one on? We just got them, you know. And then can you teach my secretary how to use it? Like, yeah, I think I can do that. I didn't know how to do it. I just figured it out. So I think getting back to like, I stumbled into what I've become for sure. And there have been tons of broken things along the way. But I think the central theme here is it had everything had to do with new technology, something I was passionate about, someone else's problem, they needed solving that created value and I could do it over and over again and then eventually productize it. And I don't know if that answers your question, but at least kind of gets to the fundamental operating system, the core operating system there, which know the reputation I generally have as Mike can figure out just about anything and show you how to do it and articulate it in a way that you get it fast and you can do it too.
- [70:58]
A
Are you a goal setter?
- [71:01]
B
Nope. No, I don't, I don't have goals. I, I, I, I don't keep lists worth a damn. I forget I for literally I'll get go. From the time I walk to my, my bedroom, out to the kitchen, I've forgotten what I was going to do. But when I sit down, I have a list of problems that need solving and I try to figure out a better, faster way of doing it and automating it and showing someone else how to do it so I don't have to do it anymore.
- [71:24]
A
So does that show up as you have a vision for what that outcome would be? And I'm not talking about goal. I'M talking about, do you work more from. Here's a broader vision that I want.
- [71:34]
B
Sure. I'll give you a couple examples. So, you know, my wife is, she's been doing humanitarian and philanthropic work on the ground for 20 years. She'd be like, yeah, we gotta raise a million dollars. And I'd be like, well, I got an event coming up. Let's figure out how to include fundraising into that. So I'll design. And right now I've got an AI event coming up. And so I have a deadline and I got to have people in it who are paying money. I better have my offers straight. I got to make it really fun. And, and I act as though my reputation is on the line every time I do something. So I am well going to get it done right and make sure my team understands what my quality control standards are. And you know, you have to articulate that as, as marketing and sales page and messaging. Now what I just described to you is basically how it works. I'm be. I'm either driven by fear, deadlines, like a sense of loss, which is, holy crap, if this event goes badly, it's going to cost me about a quarter million out of pocket, or I could generate a million dollars in revenue. And, and I'd rather it does the former. Right. And, and then I figure out like, how to make it amazing in experience, profitable, and also tie in some sort of give back. And this is another Tony Robbins thing. When I worked with him years ago, he sat me down. I was working at his house, actually set up his first studio while I was working on some products with him. And he sat me down and said, you know, Mike, 80% of what I do is entertainment, 20% of its content. And I hated him for a moment because I just didn't understand it. And he said, how do you think I can get people to sit in a chair for 16 or 17 hours a day for six or seven days straight? And I was like, what a freaking genius. So I think the inside of all this, if you're going to be relevant and get attention, you better be a damn good entertainer too.
- [73:45]
A
But you have to be able to articulate the story as well. So when you consider, when you look back in your history, you're a speaker. And I know the first time I stepped on stage many years ago, just how difficult that was for me, how intimidating it was. Were you that individual that was relatively comfortable right out of the gate or did like, I had a lot of stage fright. I was really, you know, people are judging Me, I'm like, God, I'm going to screw it up, blah, blah, blah. But how was it for you? Are you one of those individuals? Because I see people and I've had experiences of people that have never been on stage before. They get up and they just crush it. They do great, they're comfortable, they have no problem sharing their story in public. What was your kind of journey in that space? Just out of curiosity? Sure.
- [74:33]
B
Well, I'm going to tell you a middle part of the story and then I'm going to give you the beginning. I had a product for a while when I created Publish and Profit. The next product we created was Speak and Profit, how to speak and sell. And then we created a product called Create and Profit. Publish and Profit. Yeah, Speak and Profit, Create and Profit how to create your own information products, sell them online and then consultant profit. It's coaching, consulting, advising, because that was a natural thing. And then I did something called the Celebrity Bootcamp where we'd teach people how to be on camera and it was a three day sprint where you'd walk in and we'd create a sizzle reel for you. I had seven sets, so it looked like two television studios, a stage, a white suite, something that looked boundless, a living room set. So we basically coach people on how to be on TV so they could go out and get on tv and we'd broadcast a show with all these people, each one giving away their book that they had previously written in one of our programs. And they spoke on stage, which was recorded doing their little 10 minute speech. So I got to media train hundreds of people and to this day when I make products with them, we spend a half a day in my studio doing a show. So I put them on my podcast. After they've got a product that we put created on a new brand and a new identity, we, and then we create a masterclass. So they basically create their program or product or whatever is going to be like a high converting webinar. They're all performing in character with these new tools we make for them. And this is my long winded way of answering your question, which is there's two secrets to not being uncomfortable on stage. One is it's not about you, it's about them. And if it's, if you're nervous, it's because you're being selfish and self centered. It has nothing to do with you. It's are you a messenger to deliver a transformation to people you can generally care about. And if you put yourself in that mindset, Boom. And on camera or anywhere else, what I do is I'd have people bring photos of the people or person they love the most, or their cat or their dog, I don't care. Stick that sticker underneath the camera and speak to them, speak to one person as though they love them so much. And that taught intimacy and focusing on one. Anytime someone says, hey you guys on stage, I'm like, you idiot. First of all, women aren't guys. Secondly, it's not you guys. There's only one person in that room and their name is you. Hi, I'm here with you today. I'm here to transform your life with something that and open up with a freaking hard ass car crash story about something that makes you cry every time you tell it. The first to open up their hearts are always the first to win. And so going back then to the first time I spoke, first of all, I was really passionate about what I was speaking about was how to do Internet video back before there was a YouTube. And I turned, turn that into a product because I wanted to figure out how to sell stuff on the Internet with video. And I reached out to some at the time of the best infomercial producers in the world, including Joe Sugarman who did blue blocker sunglasses. Sold a billion dollars with sunglasses with long format. And he gave me all of his scripts in his wisdom for free. He let me license them. And then I had five of the top infomercial producers teaching me their tips and their secrets. Never charged me a dime. They were just fascinated with someone because they were really interested in learning how to do Internet infomercials. They didn't know anything about the Internet, but they knew tv. So I taught them the Internet. And so I had stories to tell. And when I told stories that I loved talking about and my learning journey and how they could use this to improve their life, it got easy because it was about them. And so I'd say at this point, probably media trained 500 people and I can get anyone comfortable in 15 minutes. That doesn't mean they're going to be good. It doesn't mean they're not going to sweat and maybe get, not get shaky, but at least they're going to get into a different mindset and a different identity and a different state that allows them to overcome the self centeredness and this fear of judgment and banishment that is the real driving force behind it.
- [78:55]
A
So good. Over the years we've had so many people on our stage and some of them were great, but I mean we were Bringing experts in a specific kind of. In the world of real estate, you know, the how tos. And they were. Their business was the how to. Their business wasn't speaking. They weren't professional speakers. They just knew a lot of things about real estate. And so when you'd bring, I don't know, a builder or an electrician even, that's going to talk to you about your building and how to inspect it. Right. So, like really granular occasions where we had those speakers on, they were nervous. They're not professional speakers. They've rarely been on stage. And but one of the. I. They were nervous and they would share and I would give them a little bit of coaching. But one of the things that I shared with them that seemed to be really impactful is I said, you know, when you're facing the audience and when you're going on stage, I want you to ask yourself this question. What do I want my audience to do after hearing me speak that they wouldn't have done before hearing me speak? Or what do I want them to do tomorrow after hearing me speak?
- [80:00]
B
That's a great question.
- [80:01]
A
Right. Because it takes everything and puts it on the, like, this is about you. And here's what I, you know, like, it shifts their brain so that it's about the audience and not about them. So I share that with you because it was really impactful that just one single question seemed to shift people that were going on stage that didn't have a lot of experience.
- [80:19]
B
Oh, that's a paper. So here's. Here's what I was thinking about while you were saying that. So I think that is the fundamental core question to ask. Absolutely. What's the takeaway and what do I want them to do next? Like, when we build, we basically create keynote presentations and decks and we're building brands and new businesses. I say if you got the story nailed and you can articulate a great story that has emotional impact and gets people to raise their market, to raise their hands and say, I want to buy that, that is a beautiful tool. So what really helps is if the speaker has a beautiful deck that looks like it belongs in a magazine or on a television show or in a movie, and also has their origin story embedded in it, the sense of pride and comfort and fear goes away. So in marketing talk, it's packaging, positioning, and messaging. And one of the things that in my most recent fourth book, which is called you'd Next Act, I created a framework called the 6Ms. And very briefly, it's mindset. So what are Your non negotiable core beliefs and values that are hard yeses and hard nos. If you don't believe this with me, we can't work together. And my product and my service doesn't work for you. Like Steve Jobs was a master at communicating the fact that Apple was for creative people, okay, and make a dent in the universe. 10,000 songs in your pocket, living into this vision and this dream and this feeling when you held one of those products, which was a piece of art, a bicycle for your mind was what he talked about, the Apple ii. So then the second is market. Who do you want to be a hero to? Okay? Who are you going to deliver a transformation to? That's a very different way than saying your customer. The third is your model. It's your brand promise, it's what you deliver, it's how you make money. But it's what they receive. And it's not just the physicality, it's the feelings. What is, again, what is the transformation when they, when they exchange their time, energy, money into your product? The fourth is the message, which are what are the transformational stories you need to tell that causes them to join your movement to invest in your product? The fifth is media, which is or medium long format podcasts, like we're doing right now, I believe are responsible for the winning last election in the United States. Okay? When hate him or love him, Donald Trump's son Barron said, you gotta get on Joe Rogan. He's like, who's Joe Rogan? And the rest is history. He turned a bunch of non voters, which are young, frustrated, angry men, into voters who never historically would. Now was it all of them? No. But there's a whole story behind that. And I believe it's like one side was scared and one side dug in and could talk for two hours at a time. And then the sixth are the multipliers. These are the strategies, techniques that you know, whether it's referrals or paid ads or, or whatever little techniques, you know, your funnels and, and that kind of thing, those are the multipliers. So anyway, the 6ms. Mindset, market model, message media multiplier. If those questions are answered within the framing and scope that I described, the answer shows up. And that also creates that amazing identity, a self identity that is authentic and real and congruent with who you really are. That's how you break through and stay focused and stay excited and constantly step into a better future version of yourself.
- [84:14]
A
You know what you just said there, I mean there's so many takeaways in this whole conversation. But what you just said there is I think, the game changer for anybody who really is committed to being successful. And that is defining yourself in the most truest way, the most authentic way so that you can just be yourself and still produce results. Attract the people that align with you. And so it isn't about generating all of the time personality and you're always leading with this performer self, but you're different when you're at home. And it's like, can you just be who you are and be comfortable with it, knowing that there are tweaks that you're going to have to make? You know, I often share, when I met my wife 35 years ago and we started dating, you know, she used to question sometimes how I occurred. I was a little rough around the edges. She actually, and I use it jokingly, tongue in cheek, you know, she would joke and say, you're my favorite Neanderthal. And that was just to say that I was just not evolved. Like I was a guy, I was, you know, believed a man's man and all the stories that go with that. But one day she said to me, when she said, and she would question me and I'd go, it's just the way I am. And I've shared this story many times, which is it's just the way I am. And she one day, in frustration, she goes, you know, it's a choice, right? And I went, what? And I go, what do you mean? And she goes, it's a choice. You're not, it's not the way you are, it's the way you're choosing to be. For whatever reason you're choosing to be that way. Make a different choice. And believe it or not, that was a fork in the road. As simplistic and simple and obvious as it seems today. Back then it was profound. And that was an actual fork in the road moment for me that took me on a whole different journey of who I was as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a brother, you know, all of it. And now in my own world, I'm always saying, how do I up level my game? How do I be a better version of myself? But even that seems to be like, oh, everybody's looking to be a better version of themselves. So I don't know how else to phrase it without minimizing it, but it's.
- [86:19]
B
So important, it's beautiful. And so I married up as well. And so here's the way I frame it. First of all, with very few Exceptions. Men are rotten animals and they don't learn until they're somewhere between 25 and 50 and sometimes never. And when you learn something like that, which is it is a choice. So ignorance is forgivable. Stupid isn't. Stupid is when you do it anyway. And I'm glad you took the road less stupid. Right, which is less stupid. Allow her to see the better version of you and get your ego out of the way long enough to realize that that block has been preventing you from, from being your higher, better self. And look, I was just telling my wife yesterday, we're driving to a concert and we have a 23 year old who's come a long way in the past couple of years and boy, it's like anyone who's got kids knows what I'm talking about. And I said, I'm 59 years old and I'm just freaking figuring out how to operate this piece of machinery, both my brain and my body, and how important ritual and regularity is to be a functioning being and how blind and oblivious I've been operating for most of my life.
- [87:45]
A
So interesting, isn't it? I'm going to go off on a change, shift gears again. I want to go back to something that we have in common. So you struggled well, you went through chemo and radiation for colon cancer. And so I have had two sisters pass away from colon cancer. Now, it started as colon cancer, they went through surgery, did a whole bunch of stuff, and then it, then it ended up they both passed from, actually from brain cancer. And so the story I share with that is that it's so important because colon cancer is the most curable, should you catch it early. Right. And so we, you know, colonoscopies, people, you know, they joke about them and the whole thing. So I was, I've always been pretty health conscious. I train, I've always been or been that way most of my life. The point of this story is my sister phoned me when she was diagnosed with cancer. She was a nurse, by the way, and she said, patrick, you have to go and get a colonoscopy. And I was about 45 at the time, and I was pretty cocky. You know, I'm fit, you know, body fat's probably 10%, I run, I work out, blah, blah, blah. A little bit arrogant in that space. And I go, no, I'm good. And she goes, no, you need to do this, trust me. So I go for an annual physical. It's the only time I go, I'm healthy. Like, I'm just always Healthy and have been all my life. I go to my doctor and I say, can we schedule me for a colonoscopy? He goes, yeah, okay. He says, yeah, you did one five years ago. You're clean. We'll do it. So long story short, they do a colonoscopy. I'm still coming out of the drug thing. And the guy says, innumerable polyps. You're going to have to remove your colon. And he walks away. That was his bedside manner. He was just the technician. I went, what? I wasn't even awake. Stephanie had. Hell happened so fast, she wasn't even there for my coming out of anesthesia. Long story short, it turns out that it was. It's a. What they call fap, Familial adenopodous polyposis, which is a genetic predisposition for this. So I had multiple polyps, all very small, all very early. A year later, I had 95% of my colon removed. Good news is I don't have a bag. I don't have to have any of that stuff. And we can live our lives pretty normal, without a colonial. Here's where I want to go with this. And this is. I want your insights in this. Number one. I want to share this message. People get a fricking colonoscopy if you're 50 years old. Just get it done.
- [90:24]
B
45.
- [90:24]
A
Yeah, there you go. But here's the thing. In my arrogance, and this was such a huge shift for me, of empathy and compassion, and that was, this is how we think, so we can. Somebody was looking at Mike and going, yeah, well, he could have done this, and I would have done that, and he should do this. And there's lots of shoulds and couldas and why didn't he? And there's a judgment there, right, of how I would do it. How we look at these things through healthy eyes immediately shifts when the doctor says, you got this, and we have to deal with this, and it's serious. It's potentially life threatening. I was absolutely blown away. I had two sisters, different times, a couple of years apart. But the point is, I related to them, but I didn't understand it. And I had. In my own world. Well, I'm healthy, I train, I eat better than they do. Like, all the kind of ego that goes on in our brains. When he delivered that message to me, it was a month. Like, I was a mess. Like, I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, what's my daughter gonna do? What's my wife gonna do? How are they gonna. My businesses oh, my gosh. Like, it was. It was a mental gymnastics every single day to finally get through it, take the edge off it. But it totally changed how I then judged others. And now when I see somebody going through what they're going through, I have nothing but empathy, compassion. And I do my best to understand and support it. That's needed. So I wanted to share that because I think it's an important message. How was it for you? Because here you are, relatively healthy guy, I'm assuming.
- [92:06]
B
Yeah, I'm in the best shape of my life right now, actually, so. And at the time, it was more like I had a toxic lifestyle. I was on the road nonstop, drinking quite a bit of alcohol and just eating crap food and not watching it. It just wasn't balanced. So as I mentioned earlier, one day I was bleeding out my butt, and I thought it was bleeding hemorrhoids. That's why I didn't get into it. My wife turns to me and she goes, if you have blood coming out of your butt, it means only one thing. You have cancer. Go and get that thing fixed. And she had previously worked. She had a pretty strong background in medical. She worked in medical marketing and worked for Deepak Chopra for years and just had a lot of exposure to a lot of integrative docs and stuff. And bottom line, went in for my colonoscopy. The guy comes out and just says, look, buddy, I don't need the biopsy to tell you what you got. You got a 3 1/2 centimeter, 5 1/2 centimeter tumor above your rectum. If you don't get that thing carved out, you're a dead man in six months. So here's. Here's the. Here's the number of an oncologist, here's the number of a surgeon. Make an appointment this weekend. And then from there, I went through surgery. They did resection also. I have half a colon, half a rectum. Mentally, I was okay. I just felt like, man, I'm not going to die. I'm going to be all right. But my oncologist said to me, who I just saw two days ago, by the way, so 13 years later, love the guy. Dr. Banerjee is. He just said, I own your ass, literally and figuratively, for the next year or two, just stop everything you're doing. It's going to be hard. And I'm running a company and we're going through some struggles. I got at the time probably like 40 employees. I mean, it was not a good situation. But fortunately, I had A good friend who covered for me and took over the business in with the little time I had, I was became very effective. But you know, after surgery I went on, came out which just destroys you. You feel like you're walking around with a mouthful of pennies all the time. And then when once I got into radiation I went to Duke and I had 34 treatments. So I'm getting chemo and radiation simultaneously and it is rough, man.
- [94:21]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [94:23]
B
And but fortunately I had great care. And what is another way I productize my cancer? So while I was going through it and after I got out I started getting calls. How did you survive? My, you know, my brother in law, my so and so has colorectal cancer. Can you talk to him? Can you talk to him? And I always said yes. But it got to the point I was doing 20 calls a week from people in my network. So what I did is I just wrote down everything that I learned, every question I ever answered. I ended up writing a book called Cancerpreneur which I give away. And you know, I became, I basically wrote the book in a week. I published it, made it a bestseller and it became a featured book at one of my publish and profit events. So again I usually productize my pain but in the meantime I became hyper efficient. But like you, it opens up your heart and turns you into an empath when you really go through this, especially when you meet a child who has a port scar and you know, when an innocent goes through that level of pain and anguish and it is really hard to describe to a non survivor what that experience is. And it also emboldened me with people who you know, say well you know, I've got this problem and I'm like modern medicine is great for one thing, dealing with a freaking disaster. Let them fix it and then do all your integrative stuff. But they're like, well I'm going to try an alternative solution instead. I'm going to do coffee enemas. And I'm like, well you're stupid and you're going to be dead soon.
- [96:02]
A
That's stupid.
- [96:03]
B
And never listen to non doctors. And I'm, I'm pretty verbal about it. And I have a lot of dead friends who are stupid because they didn't listen. Especially after they watched me go through my crap and they just couldn't get it through their damn head that they're not special and not nuking it immediately is stupid.
- [96:23]
A
I agree. But we've shared this message and I think it's such an important message and that's why, you know, this was a perfect opportunity to hopefully don't get scoped.
- [96:33]
B
They give you a great drug.
- [96:35]
A
It's called propofol. Exactly.
- [96:37]
B
Michael Jackson drug.
- [96:41]
A
So, Mike, we could be on this podcast for another couple hours, but I do have to wind it down. I do appreciate your time. Your insight's been fascinating. As I wind down, I kind of get into what we would call rapid fire questions that I jokingly say is never rapid fire, but we go through some, have some fun questions and try not to go down too many rabbit holes. So if you're up for that, let's go and play that game.
- [97:06]
B
Yeah, go for it.
- [97:08]
A
Android or Apple?
- [97:10]
B
Androids are for knuckle draggers.
- [97:13]
A
Okay. Okay. So I'll take that as Apple. Good one.
- [97:16]
B
IPhone. If I see a green bubble, I'm so hard on it. I'd be like, if I see a green bubble, I don't want to do business with you.
- [97:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you could. I picked up on some of that just in the fact that, you know, you're a Tesla guy, so, you know, that. That was easy. So music are you. Have you got a favorite tune, a favorite genre of music that you like to listen to, man?
- [97:40]
B
So on my playlist, I'll be listening to Dave Brubeck all the time. I love classic jazz. I love the Police, Sting, Led Zeppelin. Last night I went and saw Beck playing with the San Diego Symphony. He was extraordinary.
- [97:54]
A
Oh, my gosh. So great. Good for you.
- [97:57]
B
So I love most music and I like old school rap. I grew up on country western. My dad is a great musician and I'm a hack musician. I like world music. I play the didgeridoo. Grew up playing tuba and the bass guitar. So I like marching band. I like. I like gospel. I'm good with everything, pretty much.
- [98:19]
A
Awesome. Favorite movie?
- [98:21]
B
One show up for many, many years. Dune.
- [98:27]
A
Oh, that would make sense. Yeah. You're a tech guy, so those would be. That would be kind of in your wheelhouse. Yeah. Cool. Favorite swear word? Fuck, yeah. Good for you. That's one of my favorite too. And I have. Sometimes I have guests that go, nah, you know, I don't really swear. How do you communicate anyways? Always fun. If God exists, what do you want to have him say when you or her say when you get to the gates?
- [99:00]
B
I've already met God. I've had a couple. Couple indies. And did you love as much as you needed to? Were you present?
- [99:14]
A
Yeah. Love that. And what are you grateful for today, Mike?
- [99:20]
B
Oh, my God. I have the most amazing wife. I've been married going on 25 years. I have a 23 year old son and I come from an amazing family. So it is deep, meaningful, authentic connections.
- [99:38]
A
I yeah, I'm on that page too. You know, I've been married 35 actually been together 35, married 30. I've lost 29 coming up to 30. I'd be a bit careful. I've daughtered two grandchildren which just spent a week with us. So grateful for that. And I'm always grateful for my guests. And you know Mike, in the context of the everyday millionaire, I often say seemingly ordinary who have achieved extraordinary results and certainly when you shared your story of your background and I mean how seemingly ordinarily extraordinary you are, the work that you've done, you've been an awesome guest and so generous with what you've shared today. I appreciate you. I am so grateful for having had the opportunity to have this conversation with you today. So thank you very much, Mike.
- [100:28]
B
Oh, it's a total pleasure. First of all, you are a fantastic interviewer. I enjoyed myself and I enjoyed the connection we had and just who you show up as as well. So congratulations on just being a great conversationalist and someone who listens and synthesizes exceptionally well.
- [100:46]
A
Thank you. And we're going to put a bunch of links in the description for so if you followed this along and hopefully you have, we are going to put some links to Mike's books and some of what he's got going on. So please take advantage of that and check out those links. And Mike, thanks again.
- [101:03]
B
Total pleasure. Thanks for having me.
- [101:06]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you found value in the podcast, please take the time to rate and review and share with others. Share with your friends as it is my goal to always improve and to provide the highest value for you, the listener. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions you'd like answered, please email me@ceoaincanada.com that's ceorincanada.com I look forward to hearing from you. And until next time, Patrick O.