240 - Embracing Change: Lessons from a Serial Entrepreneur on Growth and Innovation with Lithium Rhino's Michael Mcdonald

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Michael McDonald, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder and CEO of Well, I think a number of companies, but the, the latest company is called Lithium Rhino, found at lithiumrhino.com, and it is a company that allows people to get rid of their lead acid batteries in their golf carts and replace them with a product that you guys create, which is a lithium-ion-based battery.

Yes, true. It's extremely similar technology to electric cars like Tesla. I guess the golf cart market caught on a little bit late because they're still selling carts today with lead acid batteries. But yeah, we've created a kit that allows just about any common golf cart owner to take out their 6 or 8 lead acid batteries and put in just one Lithium Rhino battery.

And I guess it's a DIY, so it can't be very difficult.

Yeah, we created it, but it started just outta necessity for myself. And that's, I think, why it's become sort of my baby, my favorite sort of one of my ventures, because I'm literally teaching people like myself to transform their golf cart and get rid of the lead acids like I had to do about a year and a half ago after replacing my lead acids for the third time in about 5 years. And it's expensive. It's $1,200, $1,500 every time with the lead acids. So I looked for a better solution and when I found it, the light bulb went out that I wanted to share this and make it more accessible to the common golf cart, starting with my buddies and then my neighbors. And then, you know, wait a second, this is more people need to know about this. And that's how Lithium Rhino was born.

You're a serial entrepreneur. I think this is the 4th company you've started.

Yes. Yes, it is. I started in 2012. I created a nighttime metabolic enhancer and it was called Z-Burn. And at the time it was, there was no other nighttime sort of diet aids out there. I was always into fitness. And that was another thing that came out of nowhere. I had read The 4-Hour Workweek with Tim Ferriss. I probably read that book 20 times that year. I was young. I was 30, about to get married and ready to try something. And that's when Z-Burn was born. And not only a year later, we were in 2,200 GNCs nationwide.

That company still going?

Yeah, yeah. The same product, the same bottle, the same label. It's that thing that you created a long time ago. And when you created it, you're like, yeah, this is great. And then years and years later, you're looking at it like, man, that thing looks like a dinosaur. We need to freshen that up. Like, you're almost like ashamed of it. But it's never been changed. People still love it. There's been people that have been taking it for 12 years and I don't change it. And yeah, it's still up and rolling.

Wow. So you're making money on that. Then you got out of, you got out of fitness. What was the next venture?

Yeah, after that we did, I did a couple more supplement brands. I grew that brand. I got into clean, all natural supplements. That was called Fit Farm USA and that's still around. Did a nighttime keto product that was really successful, stuck with the nighttime theme. Couple years ago, we launched a golf lifestyle brand just because I was really passionate about golf that I have a partner in, and it's called One Under Golf. And our motto there is live one under. That was my first step into, okay, let's create something that has a little bit of a purpose to it. And not only providing quality golf products for maybe a good price, but giving back to the community. We partnered with the Harold Varner III Foundation.. And he basically provides money to underprivileged athletes, gets them equipment, stuff like that. So we supported that, started donating to that. And that was, you know, the first time sort of the, the light bulb went off for me where it's okay, it's not just about a business, just about a company. It's okay, maybe we can help some other people. Maybe we can get inspired that way. And when Lithium Rhino started, I went right after that as well, because I found out the harmful effects of lead acid batteries. Horrible stories. There's an editorial column from Yale University. It's called Editorial 360, I believe. And they wrote some things as I was doing research about in third world countries, these factories and people that live next to the factories actually getting sick from the lead that they're taking out. Just even living next to one of these factories one of the mothers was getting her baby sick from the milk because she was breathing in the fumes. The lead acids are really harmful, and our battery, uh, is 99% recyclable. It has no harmful metals in it. It lasts 12 years. So every time you put a Lithium Rhino, we're basically removing 20 lead acids from ever having to enter the market. And we also have partnered with various environmental sort of efforts and we give a portion of each sale towards that. Again, another sort of purpose from a company, from a business, not just trying to grow and profit and all those things are important, but having the purpose and just really limiting lead acids has propelled us, um, to off to a really good start.

So what is it that gets you excited to get up in the morning and go to work?

Yeah, I'll tell you. The most enjoyable part of this whole thing is that I'm selling to myself. I'm basically selling to guys that have golf carts. A lot of them like golf. When you enjoy golf cart living, it's like Harley-Davidson owners. They, they all give that symbol or whatever. They're enjoying the ride. And I'm not comparing a golf cart to a Harley. That's much cooler. But when, when you're in a golf course community, you're riding with your kids, families. It becomes that sort of experience. And when you own a cart, you're like, "Oh yeah, I want that." And lead-acids, they take away that, the joy of golf cart ownership. They really do. If you don't water 'em and take care of 'em, they might only last a year and a half. You can only drive 3 miles down the road. You gotta charge it.

Wow.

So the kids are like, "Can we go for a ride? Can we go for a ride? I don't know if we can make it there." And with the lithium, you can ride up to 40 miles on a charge. You can go all day. You could stop at your buddies', you could play golf, you could take the kids to the pool. So speaking to people that need to make that change, guys that are like in my community that are my buddies, and I've actually become friends with my customers, several of my customers, they have my direct number. We text, we plan on golfing together. I have a guy in Phoenix I talk to every other day. He calls me and he's just a great guy and he loves his battery and he's retired and He's installed 2 of these and his friends and his neighbors, it's become a community effort. So aside from the environmental value, just the happy customers, the people that are like, "Man, I can drive 40 miles now. I can golf 3 rounds without charging." And just hearing those things is definitely what's made this really important to me.

So Lithium Rhino, there's a rhino story in there. Tell us about that.

Yeah. There's a little bit of a rhino story. One is that, To be honest, I found that there's a lot of successful brands that have animals in their name. Okay. And when I first was thinking of our branding, etc., that was one thing that popped into my head was this thing's unstoppable. It can ride 40 miles, it needs zero maintenance, it's durable, it's a powerhouse. Unstoppable Power is what came to my mind. And I was thinking, what animal has that unstoppable power. And so rhino came to my mind. And again, I started doing research on that and I found these, these poachers were unfortunately killing rhinos for their horns and that's still happening today. And I read a story about an infant rhino that was left for dead basically. And this company, Save a Rhino Foundation, found the baby and with donations, they take it to to a, basically like a camp, and they grow it until it's big enough to protect itself and they release it into the wild. So right off the bat, just before we even launched, I made a donation and I adopted a rhino, a baby rhino named Rocky, and made him our mascot on the page, which is just really cool. It's heartbreaking to read those stories. That's, I guess I'm becoming sappier in my old age for these sort of things.

And I want to reframe that.

Yeah.

I think what you're talking about is an important message because I went through the same transition and that is chasing money does not create meaning in life.

Yeah.

What creates meaning in life is serving others and, or serving the environment or doing something altruistic.

Yeah.

With your time and your money.

Yeah.

And there are so many CEOs who are miserable because they don't have any meaning in their life other than the almighty buck.

Yeah.

And I went through that transition myself. I was a very successful civil trial lawyer, 22 years of experience, and I left it all to become a peacemaker.

Yeah.

And I don't make the kind of money that I made as a trial lawyer, but I help more people in a week than I, 22 years as a trial lawyer.

And I would assume the enjoyment, value you're getting out of helping others and connecting with others, it makes up for—

yeah, I guess it's not about being sappy, it's about giving back.

Yeah.

And yeah, you're right, when you learn how to give back, that is where the satisfaction comes from. The money supports it.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's it. You have it.

Yeah. So, uh, don't ever apologize for the good work that you do.

Thank you. Thank you.

What I want to do is highlight, that's why I have this show. I can, yeah, I can say, look, here's a guy who's a 4-time serial entrepreneur. He's in his 40s and now he's gotten to the point where he can start giving back and he's working in his 1 Under Golf company, giving to the foundation, helping the underprivileged kids get into sports. In his Lithium Rhino, he's given money back to save rhinos. Come on. This is what it's really all about.

I think it takes, I think it takes a certain amount of longevity in leadership role or in, in running a business and in maturity in general. Let's face it. I have kids now. They're 11. And you start to think more bigger picture and you start to want to help more. You start to want some, leave something behind and to give back, so to speak. It's not going to happen to probably a 20-year-old that they're just going to be like, I'm going to start helping people. They could learn from people like you, maybe someday someone like me. It's a process. I, I get it. And I, I think everyone can understand that the more leaders like you and what I'm trying to do, and many others out there that are blazing a path of this, that this is the way to do it. I think we'll start to get younger leaders that, that do it as well.

Exactly. So I'm curious, Michael, what is it that's unique about you that you bring to the table that has made all of this so successful?

The hardest part for me is the actual, the managing and the running of the business because my mind constantly wants to create another idea, bring it to market. And since the beginning, I always enjoyed going from concept to market, right? This is an idea. Okay. Can it work? Is anyone else doing it? It starts this whole wheels turning. And that inspires me sometimes. When I started Lithium Rhino and I was designing it, I'd get up at 5 in the morning, just Boom. Oh wow. What? I gotta do this. I gotta do this. The ideas are running and the creative, and I guess people call it visionary things, artistic. Those things really are my staples. That's what I'm really good at. And managing the business and the accounting and the, and those sorts of things, that's where I need help. And that's where I need worker bees or freelancers or my wife.

Those are the things best left delegated.

Yes. And it, but it makes sense too. It's, it wouldn't make sense for me to do those things. I'm not good at those things. It, it would be distracting for me. It frustrates me to try to do those things. And then there's some people that they love organizing. My wife's fantastic at organizing things and spreadsheets and doing those that, that I, those drive me crazy. I need, I don't like walls and there's plenty of people that do. There's plenty of people that don't want to think about creative things. They like structure and they want to get those things done. That's the important part. I think if you wanted to talk about leadership, it's, it's finding the right person that wants to do those things that you don't want to do or aren't good at.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Just about everybody I interview here says that one of the most, one of the most important leadership functions is hiring the right people for the right job. Yeah. And hiring people who are smarter than you and better than you at what you do, and then letting them go.

Yeah.

Leaving them.

Yeah.

Leave them alone with them.

Yeah, exactly.

You have some more creative ideas you're putting in the pot?

Yeah, ironically, so I just got back from China. I was in Shenzhen, China for almost 8 days visiting my factory. Obviously there's no lithium batteries made in the USA. Everything comes from overseas, but China gets a bad rap. And the reason China gets a bad rap for cheap products is because there's a lot of business owners. That search for the cheapest product they could find in China for the most profit, and they bring it here and it's cheap. Okay. And what I did with Lithium Rhino was I searched for the most expensive manufacturer and the manufacturer who not only wanted to reduce carbon footprint, solar energy, those sort of things that were important to me, but also that was customer experience and quality check, check, check, check again, so that we can have longer warranties. We have an 8-year warranty on our battery. It's one of the longest in the industry. And that comes from sourcing raw materials that have been checked and check them again. There's a test at every phase. It gets tested twice before it's released. And there's a price for that. And yeah, you make less margin, but what I saw in China was a very unique experience to begin with, but I saw diligence. It's a culture shock. I've never— it's my first time there. And Shenzhen, China is an amazing city. It's all electric. So if you could imagine being in a busy area of New York City, it's probably not that crowded, a busy city and it being quiet because it's all electric, almost eerie. So there's people walking everywhere. There's scooters whipping by you. There's even buses. But they're electric. So the bus is going by you, even the bus is quiet. So you could hear birds chirping even though there's traffic buzzing around you. I mean, really cool. There's no guns allowed there. I'm not advocating yes to have it or not to have it, but the crime rate is very low there. It was a very clean city and the experience was eye-opening. There's not a ton of English speaking there. You fly into Hong Kong.

You had an interpreter with you?

Yeah. Yeah. My sales engineer was with me most of the time and she speaks good English. You find people that speak broken English, definitely as you get closer to Hong Kong. And then in Hong Kong, it was owned by the British for a very long time. Totally different Hong Kong. They have like 1980s cabs that are diesel riding around. They keep it vintage like that. Have you been, have you been to Hong Kong?

Only through the airport.

Okay. Yeah. So Hong Kong. You actually have to go through customs to get into Shenzhen. Almost, it's almost like going into Canada from US. Um, even though it's still China, mainland China versus Hong Kong are like very different cities. But yeah, in general, it was a really unique experience. Some of the food was very interesting, different than Chinese food here, but it was an eye-opening experience. I'm really glad I went and I'll definitely go back.

So let's pivot to listing a little bit. I'm, I teach, I teach in believe the foundational skill of life is listening. And what is interesting to me is that we're never taught how to listen.

Yeah.

We are ordered to listen as children.

Yeah.

But we're never taught how to listen. So if we get good at it, it's only by luck more than anything else. Tell me about listening in your life.

I, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a learned, it's a learned art, right? And I struggle with it still. I would think anyone who says that they couldn't become a better listener is probably fibbing to themselves. There's always room for improvement, but listening is one of those, one of those things that it's not often taught. I thought it was interesting when I read some of the things that you've done in the past, visiting the women's prison and testing things out there. That was really interesting. So it's certainly a topic that has a lot of room for expansion as far as teaching knowledge, right? Same way a lot of people don't know that they could get rid of their lead acid batteries for a lithium battery. You gotta— you have to show them that you can do this now and you could do it by yourself. The same way goes for you, that there's a huge— there's a huge marketplace for that because I think in general people lack the art of listening.

How important have you found listening to be in all of the different startups that you've been involved in?

I don't want to underestimate, obviously sales in general is a lot of listening. The best salespeople are listening to what the customer is saying and addressing those pain points. So you have to be a good listener if you're a good salesperson, I believe. But, you know, some of my early companies were all built around the 4-hour workweek and minimal employees and automation. And so as I've grown through my businesses and had to have now Lithium Rhino more than ever employees, my wife is a big part of the company. And so that's a whole other level of trying to listen with the person you love, but also work with that person so that, you know, that's something I struggle with and I admit that I struggle with it. So I think it's, I think it's very important to learn that.

Yeah. Business couples. That have both an intimate personal relationship and they're in business together face particular challenges in listening.

Yeah.

Because there you have to be able to listen at all levels all the time.

Yeah.

If you don't have the skills to do that, it can lead to some pretty rough spots along the way. The good news is mastering the skills to do that is not difficult, nor does it take a long time. You just need to know what the skills are. That's what I do.

Yeah. I think it's great.

Where do you see yourself going in the next 5 or 10 years?

Yeah, I think that's a great—

your kids are in college. That'd be 10 years from now, right? 21.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Coming to the end of college and they're out of the house. Now what?

Yeah. I think it's pretty hard to see that far ahead, to be honest with you. I, when I started my first company, let's say I was just having kids and it's it's really hard to go 10 years ahead. I think if you look back, you'll be like, wow, where am I now versus the 10 years? But 5 years ahead, 10 years ahead, yeah, that kid's done with college. And I think that, that's a whole sort of new question of where you want to be and what you want to be doing. I know I'll probably be doing something else from my history. I'll continue to create and I'll continue to innovate. I think forever. I don't think I'll ever retire. I think I'll continue to do things, but you probably look at some companies or ventures and you say, okay, is this exitable? Would you enjoy that lifestyle of exiting, maybe lump sum exiting? But I don't think I could sit still that long not to do something else. Maybe it would continue to be more purposeful, right? Because at that point, if you can create something lucrative enough and you decide you want to sell and move on, and let's say you're at a very comfortable stage at that point, probably what you're going to create next is either share knowledge that you've learned or some wisdom or create something that has even more purpose to do, do things that you'll, that will fill, fill you in deeper ways than your pockets.

So what would you tell yourself 12 years ago, knowing what you know now?

Oh man, you know, that you, that, that the person you'll be 10 years from now is entirely different than the person you are today.

Yeah.

That there's no way around it. And I think talking from you, I could see the similarities. You're going to continue to grow and evolve and learn. And if you are going to continue to grow and evolve and learn every day, then You're gonna be different a year from now than you were today.

Right. Maybe that's the message.

Yeah.

Look, growing and learning is what life is all about. So embrace it.

100%. Yeah. Never stop learning. Yeah.

Don't mean you stop learning when you start dying.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Absolutely. All right. One more question. I'll let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Michael, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Oh my goodness. Wow. That's a tough one. Never would know. Yikes.

I'll tell you, I can reveal you would never know that I'm a jazz violinist unless I told you that.

No, I would not know you were a jazz violinist. Although you do look like you could play an instrument.

You over there on the corner right there.

There's a Ah, I see the case.

Yeah. Yeah. That case, let's see, that's my Slovakian violin. And then over here I've got my 1792 Italian. And then over there is my electric, which I really have over here.

So, ah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, no, I don't know. That's a really, that's a really challenging question to answer.

Give me something from—

Yeah, I'm hardcore into fitness. I, I, I almost can't go on my day unless I start with a workout.

You look like you're pretty buff.

Oh, thanks. Thank you. But I just think for me, I started at a young age and I think that it's built into me now at this point that my brain literally won't do what I want it to do unless I at least get 20 minutes of some sort of exercise, physical sort of muscle pump. Yeah, I guess that's a, it's not as an exciting fun fact as yours, but that's all I could come up with right now.

Well, I mean, I do strength training once a week. I do Pilates twice a week and I walk 3 miles every day.

Yeah. It's important. Definitely.

Critical.

Yeah.

Michael, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a really enjoyable talking with you.

Yes. I've had a blast. Uh, thank you for having me, Doug. You're welcome.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, Would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.