Mike Handcock: Self-Discovery in Business

If you have to get up in the morning 4 days in a row at like 4 o'clock to work on a project that you're working on and you still feel inspired to do it, then I think it's a good suffering. I think you're okay. I'm not a fan of the 5 AM Club and, you know, all that sort of stuff. I believe in getting, you know, a really good night's sleep, so I'm not advocating getting up early. But, you know, we travel a lot, and for some reason All the darn flights that we seem to book on leave at 6:30 in the morning. We've got one coming next Friday, it leaves 6:30 in the morning. We're gonna have to get up at 3 o'clock for that flight. So when you get up, when you're on a tour, like we do a lot of tours where we might be in 7 countries in 14 days or something like that, and when we're constantly getting up early and we look at each other and we go, and we're happy, then we know it's a good suffering.

This is The Chris Project. Where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is Mike Hancock of Circle of Excellence Group. Mike, welcome to the show.

Christian, it's great to be here and hello to everybody listening.

So before we started recording, you were telling me about that funny accent that you have and your journey. So why don't you tell us a brief synopsis of who Mike Hancock is?

Well, I was born in Australia, but I lived in New Zealand for most of my life, apart from some time where I lived in America, LA, and the last 10 years I've been living in Cape Town, South Africa. And I'm an only child to a solo mother, and I came home and found her dead when I was 15. And I had no aunties, no uncles, no grandparents, no brothers, no sisters. The list goes on and on and on. So literally, I left that home, went and stayed with my best friend and his parents for the last 2 years of high school. And on the day that I got my results, his father said, did you pass? And I went, yeah, just. And he said, okay, great, be out in 2 weeks. So that's where my world started.

Wow. Okay, let's unpack that a bit. Do you mind sharing why your mother was dead? Did she commit suicide? Was— did someone kill her? Did she overdose?

What? None of the above. She was misdiagnosed, which led me on a lifelong journey of having very little trust in the medical field. So she had pains in her chest. I was 15 years old. We called the doctor. He came around and he said, "No, nothing to worry about. She has a hiatus hernia." And so we tucked her into bed, he left. And those were in the days when the doctor came around, not that it did any good. And the next day I went to my sports training and I came home from that, it was a Sunday morning and, you know, she'd passed away, had a second heart attack and boom, gone. High stress, smoker.

I mean, that's like symptom 101 for a heart attack is chest pains. That's crazy.

Yeah, but you know, common sense isn't that common, right?

Unfortunately, yes, yes. We won't dive into the medical industry because we'll probably be talking about that for the entire time. Okay, so 17, graduated high school, barely, living in your friend's house, and dad says you got 2 weeks. What, where is your head?

My head was, I was really shocked, but Looking back at it, I think honestly, Christian, it was probably one of the greatest decisions somebody made for me in my life because I could have easily hung around there. I didn't get the opportunity to go to university at that stage like all my friends did. I had to get a job, so I got a job and I was out of there within 2 weeks. I had my own apartment and then I literally had to stand on my own 2 feet. And I think that that's been one of the things that. But in my life, I've always stood on my own two feet and I think there's a lot of people when times get tough, they go, "Oh, that's okay, I'll go lean on my dad or I'll ask my uncle for a few bucks because I'm a bit short this month." So none of those things were ever available to me. So right from that time when I literally turned 18, I think a couple of days before he said, "See you later," I literally from then had to stand on my own two feet, which I think was actually a great thing. I did go to university. I went in my 30s, but that was a different story.

Yeah, that's hard as a parent. My 24-year-old graduated a few weeks ago and is at home looking for a job. And, you know, as a parent— and of course his mother is much more sympathetic to his cause than I am— I can see where it's stifling to him, and I can see where he's struggling with this failure to launch. That safety net can't help but detract from his efforts, and that's a real hard place to be as a parent. But to your point, you know, when you don't have anything else, you rely on yourself and you figure it out. And, you know, some people don't figure it out right, you know, um, they don't have that foundation to be able to stand on their two leg— on two legs. But I think most people put in that situation can find their way. Where was your father in this?

They divorced when I was about 5 years old. He was an alcoholic and a wife beater, and I didn't see him. I saw him at the funeral, actually came to see if there was any money left for him, but when he found out there wasn't, so he disappeared. And, and I saw him later, actually when I was 30, the next time, but I never had a relationship in any—

so to date, no relationship?

No, he passed away 10 years ago and I saw him about 3 weeks before his passing. But I never had a relationship. I used to laugh with my business partner at the time saying I could go to Mumbai and get in a tuk-tuk and have a really robust conversation and I can't get a word out of my own father. And I probably met him 6 times in my adult life, but it was just You know, we, you know, he was probably, uh, instrumental in bringing me to life, but apart from that, we just had nothing to say to each other. Yeah.

So you exit, you get a job, get your own place, make it happen. What happens between there and, and in the '30s where you went back to university?

I became a professional musician. And came and lived in your wonderful country for a while and, and toured there and had a great time in the start of the '90s. And, you know, did okay. And then I was offered, uh, when the band broke up due to, you know, differences, musical differences, which is what they all say, I was offered a job in New Zealand and I moved to New Zealand. And at that point, and That was in financial services and I rose through the rank and by the time I was in my late 30s, I was general manager sales and marketing for the biggest financial services company in New Zealand running about 4,500 sales agents, brokers, advisors, call them what you want depending on what country you're in. And that was the point where I really said, I used to look around the boardroom table, Christian, I used to have to go to the board meeting once a week in Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand. And I used to look around the table and I thought, none of these people want to be here. They're all just going through the motions, trying to cover their butts and hope that their bonuses get paid. And we're all getting paid lots of money, you know, we're at the top of a major corporate. So I decided that it was my time to get out and Once I made that decision, took me about 18 months to position myself so I could get out and become an entrepreneur and take my life into my own hands.

And you were how old at that point?

39.

I find that situation fascinating because your story is not unique in that people get to that point in their life and their career and they walk away. And I find that fascinating because at 27 when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I could see that if I stayed on my career track, I would get to the point where I was too comfortable to leave. And I'm surprised that I had that much insight at 27, but I also didn't have a lot to risk, right? Like, I mean, I had two young children, but I didn't have a net worth. I didn't have that long of a career. So it wasn't like I was giving up this huge salary and had a lot of risk on the table, but you, at the point where you're making a lot of money and are secure, being able to walk away from that, where was your head there?

Well, you're right. And I think it comes down to your own value systems as a human being. So my life was very comfortable. I'd sort of got to the point in corporate where I realized I didn't actually have to do anything except about once a month some decision came where I had to go left or right and I had to choose the right way to go. And if I did, everything was good for probably another month because that's, that's how it goes at that level. Apart from that, I could sort of shunt things around and make other people do things. And we were going through an IPO, an initial public offering, listing on the, on the share market at that stage, and my marketing manager came to me and we were going through some retrenchments and he said to me, he was 55, he said, "I can't lose my job, I've got kids in university and I just need the money, please Mike." He was literally in tears, he was frantic and I thought to myself when he left, 'cause he actually was awesome, we would've never got rid of him, I thought, I never want to be that person when I'm 55 years old, so I need to take control of my life and I need to do what I'm passionate about and I've long since lost my passion for the corporate nature of things. I need to go and find out what I love. I need to go and make a difference in my way and I need to, you know, I have a saying Christian that's, you know, when they bury you at 70, 80, 90 years old, they don't bury you with your Mercedes-Benz, they don't bury you with your beach house that you got, or your wad of cash that you've got in Fort Knox, you get buried with your memories. So I decided at that point that my life was going to be about creating exceptional memories.

Okay, I'm going to put a pin in this and I'm going to come back to it, but we skipped over your, your music. So what was your instrument of choice?

Uh, guitar player. I'm never too far away from a guitar. There's one there, you know. So, um, I'm surrounded by them at all times. I still play. That one's heavy, it's 10 kgs, but, um, so it's not easy to pick up from the side. But yeah, I can play piano and a few other things as well, but I'm mainly a guitar player and songwriter.

But you were the guitarist, were you the front man or no?

No, my voice was average and still is, so I can do front man, but we had a singer, so singers always want to be front man. If a guitar player gets in front of them, they sort of kick them in the back of the leg. Yes.

Okay, so what was the band's name?

The band was called Charlie Brown, and, and unlike the cartoon character, was C-H-A-R-L-E-Y, and then Brown had an E on the end so that we wouldn't get sued. And we got the concept— the drummer came up with the concept from Cheap Trick, which was— Cheap Trick was this really sort of unusual band that looked a bit dumb But actually they were a really good band that was, you know, pretty hard rock at the time. So we sort of copied that genre. So we were like a heavy band, but we had this light image. And I'm pleased to say that, you know, we've still got a following in some countries like Argentina and Germany and Cyprus are the three that come to mind straight away. And I'm actually writing with the guys at the moment for the first Charlie Brown album, which will release next year in about 15 years. So that's a lot of fun.

Well, I'm gonna go listen to it, and you answered my question, is the band gonna get back together? So perfect. All right, so back—

I'm very keen to do that.

Yeah, so, so back to your leaving. See if I can recapture my question and my thought because I'm wandering here. You mentioned a passion. What was your passion at that point?

My passion was that I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people achieve some of their dreams. And so I left and I started a building company and I built a lot of houses. I didn't know anything about building houses, honestly. It was like a nightmare, but I'm a good visionary.

So this was in the States?

No, this was, this was in New Zealand. So I put together this building company. I designed a whole range of houses. I put a show home together. And we had people coming through the show home and they bought houses. In fact, in the first year I had it, we sold 28 homes, which is quite a lot for a new builder. Most of them are lucky to sell 3 or 4. And so then we had to build them. That was a whole other story. But from there, I just realized that business was— there's too many components in it. So I started a property seminar business where I literally sold property through seminars.. And we built the properties in the second year and had other people build properties. And then that led me into the professional speaking world and led me to write books. And now we're about 14 or 15 books later. And, you know, I've spoken over 3,000 times in more than 50 countries. So, and it's still for me today, every day is about helping people to play a bigger game than they ever believed possible that they could play.

That's fascinating. So, so what about home building tied into that passion for you?

I loved that people could realize their dreams, and when they got the keys to their new home and it was everything that they wanted, that literally I designed it. And I literally did design them on CAD and then give them to an architect, but most of the time they just polished them up and did the engineering on them. I was pretty good with it. So I learned it myself. I just learned it by hacking the software. But so there was no real, there was no learning involved or anything like that. And all of those homes are still standing today, you know, and everything went really well from that aspect. But the basis of it was, you know, your home is your biggest investment. And it gets to a point, and you know, we weren't really building first homes or anything like that. We were building people's dream homes, the ones that they've saved at that stage $1 million for. So it's a long time ago now, but, you know, $1 million doesn't buy you much of a house, but back then it bought you a lot of a house. So, so that was really about what it was about.

You haven't been to Oklahoma. $1 million can still buy a lot in house. So you mentioned a business partner. Was that in the building business?

No, it was in the speaking business. You know, we built a brand that is now Circle of Excellence Group that you mentioned before, but this was the initial few years and I had this partner for about 8 or 9 years and he's Canadian-based. He was based in Singapore then, he's back in Toronto now and you know, we were just complementary in our skills and our networks really. And we built a business that was seminar-based to help entrepreneurs primarily and help business leaders. And so these days it's, it's a lot more than that, but fundamentally these days we still help conscious leaders, entrepreneurs to play a bigger game and have much more impact. And we do that through a range of programs and retreats and all sorts of different ways, but But yeah, that's where the partner came from. And then we just got to a natural point where we went our different ways. And these days my wife and I run the company together. She's better at it than me, so I take my direction from her. And yeah, that's how it works.

How did you end up in South Africa?

My wife's South African. I had a brand, which I still have. In fact, I'm judging it on Saturday, in fact. But I had a brand called Entrepreneur X Factor and it was a competition where we found the entrepreneurs with the most X factor. And when we originally started it in 2012, it was a live event and we went from country to country. I think in 2012, 2013, 2013 was our biggest lot of trips. We did 26 countries where we went and ran these events and looked for entrepreneurs. So people would come and they would pitch their business and there was the judges and the audience voted It was a whole lot of fun and good stuff.

Was this pre-Shark Tank, I guess?

No, I was actually, it was around the same time because I was a judge on Dragon's Den in Singapore.

Okay.

But that was after I had Entrepreneur X-Factor. And so my wife came to the event in Johannesburg, as it was at the time in South Africa, as an attendee and she cleaned it up. She won. And that's how we met. And as they say, the rest is history. There's an amazing love story there, but that's maybe for another time.

I love that. I love that story. Who doesn't love a good love story? Okay, so working with entrepreneurs and trying to, I'm gonna use my words 'cause I can't remember exactly your words, but do more, be more. What do you see being the key common limiting factor or factors that you run into with entrepreneurs?

It's really not a lot of things. So I think there's the big two for me are they don't know who they are, and I'll explain that one in a second. And the second one is they don't believe they're any good. So the first one is really about most people tend to know what they are. So if you go to a networking function and you say to somebody, "Hi, who are you?" They'll say, "Oh, I'm an accountant." You'll go, "No, that's what you do for a living. Who are you?" And they'll go, "Oh, well, I'm a mother with two children." You go, "No, that's your family situation. Who are you?" And then they just stare at you blankly like you're from another planet. So the biggest reason I think entrepreneurs don't get to the level which they really want to is that they think it's not about what goes on inside themselves. They think it's about what happens externally. It's not at all. It's all about what happens internally. And so my tip for any budding entrepreneur out there is the more you can study yourself and get to understand how you work and what pushes your buttons, what your values are, what your boundaries are, all of those sort of things, the better equipped you'll be to be a better entrepreneur. So just before we got on the live call, Christian, you told me about a particular client that you had, how his business was successful, but he really wanted out of it because it wasn't working for him personally. And that's because he never investigated who he was when he started this.

Yes.

So he did something that he thought, oh well, there's a gap in the market there, I'm trained for this, I can make money doing this, and I think I can do well. Well, I'm into it. And he goes into it and there he might be 5, 10, 15, 20 years later where he's going, this feels like a boat anchor around my neck and I have to drag my sorry ass to work every single day. And I would say probably 70% of entrepreneurs and self-employed people are in that space.

This episode is sponsored by The Rupp Group Coaching and Consulting. If you are interested in implementing some of these suggestions that you've been hearing about, or in general you feel like there's parts of your mental game or actually your implementation strategy that you feel is lacking and you'd love the opportunity to actually start to build yourself into the person that can create the success that you're looking for, please reach out vis-à-vis the link in the show notes to grab a free consultation with us to see if we can help elevate your mental or your business game. Thank you very much.

Yeah, and then if you're successful, you probably feel guilty feeling that way. Like, you know, you've achieved success where so many other people have not. Who are you to be complaining about this situation, right?

Absolutely. And I was like that in my building business. Like, as I said to you, we sold 28 homes in the first year. Most people sell 3, 4, 5 if they're successful, maybe a dozen, right? So we did really well, but then I had to build them, and I realized in the— that second 6 months to 18 months, I don't like this business, right? I have to deal with contractors, and everybody's asking for money all the time. Everybody's always broke, and I look at my bank account and one day I've got $1 million in it and the next day I've got $10,000 because I've had to pay them all. You know, I don't want to do this. This is— I don't want to have this level of— I won't call it abuse, but this level of feeling like I've got to look after everybody because they can't look after themselves. And so I realized at that point, I got to a point where I was going, I really hate this business. And the business partner that I had later on was actually my coach at that time. And he said to me, "Mike, nobody's gonna buy a business that you hate." And I thought, "He's right, I've gotta reframe this." So I reframed it. I was trying to sell the business for about maybe 4 or 5 months. I didn't have one person interested. And then I reframed it to, "Actually, this is a really good business, but it's just not right for me." And the minute I did that, I changed the energy around it., and I got a great offer and I was able to sell the business and move on into what I really wanted to do, which is what I'm still doing.

I love that story. I had a similar experience. I had— I knew when I started the business that I wanted to help people, and that was my motivation for a long time. But it got to the point where I hated the business. Like it was a— it was a daily frustration. And my brother was my partner at the time. I said, "I'm going to go start a software company and leave you in charge." I said, "I don't know if this software company is going to succeed, but if it fails, I can tell you what I'm not going to do, and that's come back and run this company." Fast forward 2 years, the software company as a business model was working, but I had I'd screwed up on the premise. But so, so it was working and it was making money, but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. In the meantime, my brother had the company. I'm not going to put this on my brother, but, but while he was in charge, the company had begun shrinking and not making money. And so I had a— we had a third party, uh, partner at the time. And so it was really kind of like, I have to come back in. And I said, well, we got to do things differently because I'm not doing them the way we did them before. I had no idea what different was, but I'm like, I'm not going to go back to the way it was. And we implemented, uh, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, at that time, started working with a third-party implementer. We had tried to implement EOS prior and had not had success. So we decided to bring in someone and pay them to help us implement it. And over the course of 2 to 3 years, realized that what had to change fundamentally was me. And I did. I went through a lot of personal growth, a lot of work with my business coach, And along the way, I regained my passion because my frustrations with the business weren't about the business, they were essentially about me. And so when you say knowing yourself, that really resonates with me because I started asking those questions that you mentioned, like, why do I feel the way I feel? Why am I acting the way I'm acting? I think the natural reaction of most people in the situation where they're not happy with their circumstances or not happy with the way they feel, they start looking externally, right? Which is what I did. And so they say, well, you know, it's because of my wife or my business partner or the industry I'm in or whatever. And you can always find answers there. And they're not the the problem, they're just symptoms. And now I can say 8 years on after coming back in, the business is fundamentally different, I am fundamentally different, and I am enjoying it, I am working less, and I'm making more money. And right, but all of it started with me. And I wish I had the insight that you had earlier.

I wish I had it earlier as well.

Everybody's journey is different. I mean, I actually beat myself up about that. That was like, why didn't you figure this out earlier? Why? You know, like, you know, but, you know, again, everybody's journey is different. It doesn't matter how long it took you to get there. You got there.

Absolutely. I think, well, the important thing is that you are there. And I think the important message for any listener is if what you're doing is not fun, you have to change it. You have to. And it's so interesting. I've got this client, and when I took him and his wife on in 2019, they had this business. It doesn't matter what sort of business it was, but it was a bricks-and-mortar type business. And I really liked them. And then we got into the business and I looked at it, and this was in our first meeting after taking them on. And I said, guys, now I've looked through this, can I be honest with you? They said, yeah. I said, I think you're wasting this time. This business sucks. And they go, what do you mean? I said, I think if you keep operating like this, you're going to dig yourselves a big hole. And they said, we're already in a big hole. That's why we got you. And I said to them, right, I don't think this is savable. That was on a Friday. On a Monday, they contacted me and said, can we meet up? And we said— I said yes. I got on a Zoom with them. I was in Belgium at the time, and I can still remember I'm sitting in the lobby of the hotel on Zoom, and they said, we liquidated our business over the weekend and we fired everybody.

Holy shit.

Wow. And now those two people today are so happy They've got a brand new big house. He's got a high-flying corporate job. She's got another business that she loves that's doing really well. And they were heading into a big dark hole and they weren't having fun. And I didn't tell them, "Get out of this business now." I did tell them it wasn't working. I didn't expect them to take such drastic action. But that meeting that we had was sometime around the start of December and they told me later on, It was that advice that got them to say, we need to tell everybody prior to Christmas that this is going to happen, because if we leave it anymore, we're just not going to be able to do it. We're not going to feel it. And because they did it, they saved themselves from probably bankruptcy. Actually, they would have been bankrupt.

Yeah, yeah. But, but to your point, in that situation, they were not happy because the business was not working. But it can happen when the business is profitable and, and you're successful, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Right. I think it may be easier to see it when it's, it's not working, but I think a lot of people, to your point you made a while ago, they get into business without knowing why they're getting into business. And I interviewed on, on my other podcast the author Todd Henry, uh, the author of Accidental Creative and several others, but his most recent book is The Brave Habit. And he was talking about the Greek word for passion. I don't remember the Greek word, but the Greek word that we translate as passion actually means suffering in Greek.

Yes. Yeah, of course. The Passion of the Christ. Didn't Mel Gibson make that film, right?

Yeah, exactly. I never understood that until I understood that meaning of the word. But his point was that if you have a passion, you have to be willing to suffer for it. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to suffer, right? But it means that you, you care enough about it that you're willing to suffer. So how do you know as an entrepreneur, that your suffering is a good suffering as opposed to, um, a non-productive suffering?

That's a good question. I think— let me answer it like this: if you have to get up in the morning 4 days in a row at like 4 o'clock to work on a project that you're working on and you still feel inspired to do it, then I think it's a good suffering. I think you're okay. I'm not a fan of the 5 AM club and, you know, all that sort of stuff. I believe in getting, you know, a really good night's sleep, so I'm not advocating getting up early. But, you know, we travel a lot, and for some reason all the darn flights that we seem to book on leave at 6:30 in the morning. We've got one coming next Friday, it leaves 6:30 in the morning. We're gonna have to get up at 3 o'clock for that flight. So when you get up, when you're on a tour, like we do a lot of tours where we might be in 7 countries in 14 days or something like that, and when we're constantly getting up early and we look at each other and we go, and we're happy, then we know it's a good suffering. If we were dragging our butts out of bed and going like, oh, just give me another 5 minutes all the time, then it's starting to sour. And one of my old friends who died a couple of years ago, he had a saying that, which I really liked, and his saying is, "When it stops being fun, stop it, find something else." And I think—

Sounds simple, right?

It is simple. You know, it's like, we have some funny sayings in our business, like everybody wants to go networking. I say, "I hate networking." For number one, I don't wanna be caught in a net, and number two, I don't like the word work in it. I'd rather go to a playground, right? So that way I can just hang out with my friends, so, and do things that are cool and fun. So it's about the way in which you look at things. And, and I think this brings up another topic. I'm not sure if you want to explore it, but I'll throw it out there. If you're not bringing your essence, the things that are deep within you that you love, into what you're doing in your business or career, then chances are it's not going to be as much fun for you. So for instance, I'm a musician, so we use a lot of music at our events. I write a lot of that music, so— and we don't tell anybody, it's just there. And I like it when they come up and say, oh, that's a good playlist, uh, can I have it? And I go, well, it's all my own stuff, you know, and things like that. So it's a way of bringing your own essence in. If you're a good cook, cook for your clients. If you love gardening, give some of your clients some plants that you've grown or something like that. You know, it's that type of thing that makes your business more fun and really allows you to live out some of your dreams and passions in your business.

I love that, and I just had an inspiration from you telling me that. We have an event that we're gonna do in October, and I'm gonna make a, couple of briskets for them because I love cooking briskets. And you know, when you cook a brisket, uh, you better have a lot of people to feed. So I don't get opportunity to make briskets that often. So I love that. I think, yes, I would like to discuss that because I don't think you can do that. You can't bring yourself and your essence into the, the endeavor, the business, whatever if you don't know what it is. Absolutely right. And that's where I think I fell short. I had an idea of what I was about and my essence, but I had to go much deeper. Like, I only had a surface level of understanding about my passion, but when I dug, dug deeper and deeper and deeper and really really understood it, I'm like, "Oh, okay. That's not exactly what I thought it was," right? So for me, very briefly, my motivation for wanting to help people in finances was my family story where we had a family business in the oil field service business and went bankrupt when I was about 16. That sucks. And the, the, the thing that was traumatic about it was— so surface level, the, the, the, the, my motivation was, I know, I know that my family situation didn't have to end that way. Like, there, there, there was mismanagement of the finances. Yes, there were industry, uh, things that affected it, but like, I knew that I didn't know specifically how I, I would have done it differently, but even at a, at an age at university, I knew, well, it didn't have to end that way. And that's my motivation. I want to help people with their finances because it doesn't have to end that way. But when I got deeper into it, I realized the finances weren't the traumatic thing to me. The traumatic part was that my family because they were all involved in it, dispersed and all went, you know, to the four corners. And I lost that family, like that connection of being together. But when I went deeper still, I realized that why that was so traumatic to me was because my parents were divorced when I was 2 and I was taken from my mother at 3 to go live with my father. And so I had this underlying separation anxiety that was still unresolved from a pre-speech time when my brain was developing. And that insight actually led to the situation I was in at the time with my brother as my partner. I had known for 3 years that he and I were not equally yoked and I needed to get rid of him, but I couldn't get rid of him. And I didn't even know why. But at that point, I realized, you're afraid to lose him as your brother. And fortunately, as I was working this out, he came to the conclusion that he needed to leave. So I never actually fired him, but we did part ways and our relationship has been totally fine. But that's the kind of work we're talking about here, is going deeper than just the surface level of what you say your passion is.

Absolutely. I mean, so many people, Christian, can't communicate with their spouse or their children because they can't communicate with themselves. You know, it's the old story of, you know, You know, go, go to a mirror, have a good look in a mirror, and decide, is this the person that your 5-year-old self would have been proud that you grow up as? Can you? You know, most people can't look in a mirror and admire themselves. You know, I've got a wonderful wife, we've got an amazing love story, we've been together for 11 years now. And I got to a point in my life where I'd I'm never gonna find the right person. And she got up to a point in her life where she said, God, just leave me being a career girl because there's no guy out there for me. And we were lucky enough to find each other in the world even though we lived 12,000 kilometers apart at the time. But that got sorted. But my point is that the only reason that we were able to find each other, we realized since then is because we both got to a point in our lives where we were fully accepting and happy and comfortable in who we were. So I don't want to put this this way because it might not come off right, but we had to fall in love with ourselves first before we could allow love in. And absolutely, and it's the same way for an entrepreneur. Like, you know, if there's somebody listening there and and things aren't going the way you thought they should be going at this point in your life, it's probably because you haven't done the work on yourself to understand yourself so that you can love yourself and accept yourself. Because when you do, doors seem to magically open. It's the weirdest, craziest thing. And, you know, good luck putting that in the Law of Attraction. But, you know, they don't tell you that you literally have to You can't just say, oh, I accept myself and I'm good. You actually have to live it and feel it and breathe it. And when you do, doors open and the right people seem to step in, whether it be a relationship, a business partner, a big client, whomever. And to give illustration to that, when Lundy, my wife, and I got together, she was running a consulting business, very successful, and she realized that we would never see each other, so She said to all of her consulting clients, and they were major corporates, people like Thomson Reuters, the airlines, and things like that, she said, look, I'm in love now, so I'm no longer going to be able to consult with you at your premises. So I'm giving you all a camera, because at those stages laptops didn't have cameras in them, so she bought them all Logitech cameras. We're now going to consult online, and because my lifestyle it's getting more expensive because I have to travel, I'm doubling my fees to you. Now, you would think that the most ridiculous thing would happen, everybody would leave. 40% of them did leave. 60% of them stayed, which meant her income went up 20% and she got all of her time back. But then on top of that, one of the clients who did stay was actually her biggest client. And she thought, this client is too needy. And doesn't suit my value system. So she, in a very nice way, fired that client. And that client alone, I mean, she was a sole trader, but at that time that client alone was more than $10,000 US a month for that one client, right? And so it was a large chunk of income. And then I remember her saying, I'm not sure if I've done the right thing. I said, yeah, yeah, you've done the right thing. Thing. Well, it wasn't 2 days later that somebody was referred to her who ended up spending more money with her, who was actually a really good client. Now, you can't make those things happen. This is about how your energy is showing up in the world and what's attracted to you and what isn't. And it's far-reaching.

Yeah. And I, I think as you were talking, I was thinking that without loving yourself and without knowing yourself, as I said a while ago, you start to look for those things other places, right? So you look at— look for them in your spouse or your children or, or your other relationships. But one of the most insidious ones is the business. One of my colleagues who's working on his doctorate of psychiatry, he exited his business, made stupid money, and decided to go back to school and get his doctorate in psychiatry. And he made the comment, entrepreneurs don't have very good coping skills. And he used that clinical term. And I'm like, no, you know, you're, you're 100% right. And I, and I said, I'll go a step further. A lot of them use their business as their coping mechanism because they control so many of the variables. They basically set it up to fill that need that they have in themselves without ever really looking at that need.

100% agree with you. It's, um, it's almost like that that's where they extend and live out their fantasies.

Yes, 100%, 100%. And it's, and it's a scary place to be because if that business is successful and it's giving you that, you don't have any reason to stop doing it. You don't have anybody to check you on it. That puts you in a dangerous place.

Yeah, absolutely, and especially if it's not making a profit. And I think everybody here can associate with the parking inspector. I mean, most of those parking inspectors, they didn't do well at school, they weren't the quarterback, they haven't got a good relationship at home, but boy, when they get to work, they're gonna nail your ass. With that ticket, and they're going to show you that you've parked in the wrong spot, and they're going to talk to you and point their finger at you like this because it's— they're living out their fantasy of being in control. They're in control of you because they have that notebook where they slap that ticket on your car. But we're all, as entrepreneurs, living out those fantasies in our own business as well, and they can become very destructive if your business is not set up in a way that prospers for you. And they can become more destructive. I agree. If your business becomes ultimately incredibly prosperous as well, because then you can probably— then you think you've arrived and then you've got— then you've got new money and new money is dangerous.

I can think of an entrepreneur here in Oklahoma City that has been wildly successful and along the way he's lost his wife. And, and the reality is, is that he's really just kind of an asshole And the money just amplifies that behavior. I mean, it doesn't— right, Mike? I feel like we could talk for hours, but unfortunately we can't. How do, uh, how do listeners find you and learn more about what you do?

There's two simple ways for you guys at home to connect with me. One is LinkedIn, so just go to LinkedIn and type in Mike Hancock, H-A-N-D-C-O-K. And you'll find me, I'm pretty recognizable there. You'll see Circle of Excellence in the banner coming up. So that's one way. And the other way is if you're an entrepreneur, just go head on over to circleofexcellence.biz, B-I-Z, you can check us out there. And on the homepage, there's a really nice assessment that you can do that'll point out which parts of your business you need to focus on on next that aren't working as well for you as they may, should be. And it'll be really helpful for anybody listening to this. Christian, thank you so much for today, and it's been really lovely, and I've enjoyed talking with you immensely and also hearing your stories as well. And I think you're doing a great job.

Well, thank you, and thank you for your inspiration. Uh, listeners will have the links in our show notes, uh, if you you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If not, shoot us a message and we'll find somebody other than Mike to talk next time. Uh, until then, remember, you are not alone.

Thank you for listening to The Chris Project. You are important. Your work is important. Do not give up.