Why Reinventing Yourself Is A Good Thing | Capability Amplifier

Hi, this is Dan Sullivan and I'm here with Mike Koenigs and this is our next episode of Capability Amplifier. Mike, today I'm going to really put the spotlight on you and a current major, major life transformation that you're making, which is in a very clear cut way, you're leaving behind a whole past of your life and you're moving on to a multiplier future. In one of the recent episodes, I talked about the fact that it seemed to me like you were finishing stage one of your life and you were starting stage two. But the interesting thing is that what you're doing in stage two is helping other people sum up. Special people, you know, people that you've really screened and qualified and checked out, but you're actually allowing them to do the same thing that you are doing for yourself right now. And I find it a very interesting thing is that you're using your internal model to help people with their internal model. And you've got this feedback loop between how you're transforming yourself and then you're helping other people transform. But in watching how they're transforming, you're actually transforming yourself even more.

Well, I'll tell you what this comes down to is this is probably my fifth major reinvention. That's the truth. But many of you have watched me say, holy cow. This is probably the most significant because I have cast aside everything. I've literally liquidated every part of my business. I went through a major life transformation. In some ways, I'm in life 3.0 because some of this is a post cancer life. So I became super committed to my health and wellbeing. A lot of people know me have said, holy cow. You look like you've reversed aging by 10 or 15, maybe even 20 years. And that just came down to really designing life from scratch. That means renegotiating my marriage even of 18 years. I re fell in love with my wife, really looking closely at my son. And I have a rule, a lesson which I made a declaration, a public declaration at my last big event, last three big events where I said, moving forward, my goal is to only work with people I love on businesses I love or can fall in love with that I feel represent life transformational ideas, technologies and approaches. So the areas of focus that I look at are food and beverage. I love that category. I'm an early stage investor in bulletproof coffee medicine and medical technology. I'm alive because of functional medicine and actually pulling together and looking at and examining and implementing every part of advanced medicine. I can AI. Big fan of that. I've got some clients in the AI space. I'm still always a big fan of marketing and technology. And then what I call reinventors or those who are focused on transformational technology. And you're a good friend of Peter Diamandis. Anything that's in the abundance or abundance 360 that world. I've got a few clients in that space who are looking at transformational exponential technologies that are true multipliers. So we can get more into these categories. But the net net is I'm in the best physical shape of my life, the best blood work ever, and we share very similar networks. It just comes down to narrow, deep relationships. Where in the past I've had 57,000 customers through my past businesses, now I'm happy with 10 to 25 that I can focus on because I believe I can get greater multiples in terms of transformation than single shallow relationships. I'd rather go deep and narrow with people who really understand amplification and multiplication.

Yeah. Well, first of all, the fact that you use the word reinvention. If I didn't know you at all, Micah tells me three things. One is that you're probably an entrepreneur because entrepreneurs are the most courageous people in the world in this respect. They are so confident about their capabilities that they're willing to hit the marketplace head on and not have all sorts of buffers between them and the marketplace. And therefore, as an entrepreneur, you're always doing a dance with what the marketplace wants to pay for. You know, so that's the biggest thing. The other thing is that I know you're an American because the fundamental DNA of America is reinvention. I just read a French philosopher who throughout his life was very negative about America. And he came and spent six months, traveled from New York to LA and back again. And he said, America has one capability deep in its fundamental structure. It likes people, if they're really successful, to fail to see if they can reinvent themselves. And he says the greatest pleasure in America is to see somebody who has really early success and then falls flat and then reinvents themselves. And that's the most admired characteristic in American culture, is reinvention. And. And the third thing is it tells me that you're significantly add.

Well, I will own that.

And from one to the other, I totally appreciate this. You know, I made sure I had my Adderall this morning before I felt confident to spend an hour with you, Mike.

Well, thanks. I'll tell you what. First of all, I take the add compliment as a compliment because what it represents to me is a fast moving mind that can exist outside of time and make connections with past, present, examine velocities and as we said in a previous episode, being able to really see a future and understand who is necessary to get there and what has to happen with courage and confidence. And not all ADD based people ever get past the first stage, which is how to cope and live inside the world of wrote education and understand that they do not have a disease or a disorder. But in fact it is a beautiful gift.

Yeah. And I think that's becoming more and more talked about within the context that you just provided. Mike, Ned Hallowell, who I know really well, major add, long time, whole life, personally add, also dyslexic and you know, Ned talks about this openly and Daniel Amen, who has the Amen Clinic, that's where I went to be diagnosed. It's a capability that's either really great or really bad. It's kind of like a binary capability. If you don't come to grips with it, it's almost like the worst existence on the planet. If you do come to grips with it, it's one of the great advantageous ways to operate in the 21st century. But talk about now. One of the questions I have, and I mentioned this previously when you were asking me all sorts of questions about how I approach relationships, you talked about five reinventions. This was the fifth one. What were the first four? Because I think everybody is keenly interested. We have a lot of entrepreneurs listening to our series here. Mike and I find that entrepreneurs are always fascinated about the growth stages of other entrepreneurs. It's one of the favorite topics and especially if it involves failure, they've transformed failure. That's one of the things that entrepreneurs love the most. So let's talk about the jumps that took place in stage one and then we'll talk about your stage two. Because first of all, there's going to be people listening to this who want, if they pass the test, to be one of your transform customers out in the marketplace.

You got it. And maybe to frame this up and make it relevant to the listener, something I didn't really realize, but it stems from a great statement that Deepak Chopra said years ago, my wife used to work for him. And he said, vivian, we all write the book we need to read. And my observation is we all make the product we want to buy and our best customers buy themselves when they see you through a mirror. And your objective as an entrepreneur, especially if you're in a service advisory, coaching, consulting business is to be as transparent and as honest as possible in such a way that someone is attracted to and sees all the different aspects of you in a very authentic way. That's what great marketing is. And even Apple, which you could say as an institution, still represents the characteristics of Steve Jobs and his highest ideals and his values. So what I've learned over time is my best and most successful clients, customers are very much me and they want to experience some of the things that I visibly talk about and share. I hope that doesn't sound like I'm ego pumping at all, but it's like that's part of the attractions. They want to replicate the success. And you said earlier about what America likes is reinvention, especially after a failure. It is the classic hero's journey. It is the Christ myth, what is called that which is just the resurrection and the rise of the Phoenix. So having said that, I'll answer the question which I wrote down what I think the significant jumps were. So growing up, I grew up in a very small, poor environment and I didn't have a lot of resources. I was disabled from an educational perspective, D student at best. But when I got out, I taught myself how to program when I was younger. And I teamed up with a filmmaker and his brother and we started a company called Digital Cafe, which turned out to be one of the very first digital marketing agencies in the world. And we combined filmmaking with video game creation and we wound up getting clients like 20th Century Fox, Sony. We worked with a couple of music companies and worked with David Bowie's group and a guy named Todd Rundgren, John Tesh, who was big at the time, and a variety of others. And we produced screensavers and video games, one that shipped in 6 million boxes of breakfast cereal. And I ended up doing like the voices for them. But we were just like total crazy entrepreneurs developing cheap movies from our little place in Minneapolis. And we eventually got acquired by a publicly traded company that was owned by the Interpublic Group. So we had a very visible public exit after 10 years. So what that taught me was I learned a lot about business marketing, working with big corporations, all the politics and also cash flow, because that business cost me my first wife. And also I really struggled with chaos and money management, all kinds of skills. So we'll call that exit number one, but big jump number one.

Yes, let's just get the lineup because then we can go back. Because what I'm already seeing is things that, you know, are absolutely true. About yourself going back decades that you're now bringing to bear on an entirely new focus for the future. So I'm taking careful note of what you're telling me. And then if we see all the reinventions together, then we'll see there's kind of like a symphony of different capabilities and strategies that you've acquired from stage one that can now be really, really directed towards helping other people do what you've already done for yourself.

Very good. Well, so the next one is I produced a feature film that eventually got distributed by Warner Brothers. And while that was happening, I had a friend with a record company and started performing. I play a weird instrument called the didgeridoo, which is an Australian wind instrument that you have to circular breathe in it, which means you have a continuous tone and it's that thing that goes.

Anyway, I ended up being featured on an IMAX movie. So that process taught me a lot of raising money. We raised money. We did a feature film in Minneapolis that got distributed in Hollywood and it made its way. We did a couple limited theatrical runs and ended up being on cable channels and stuff. For anyone who looks it up, it's a movie called Bill's Gun Shop. I'll call that number two. And then from there I ventured into SEO, a search engine optimization. And, and I started figuring out how to hack search engines. And one thing I did leave out is growing up I didn't have any money and in order to learn how to program, I basically stole a lot of software. I learned how to remove copy protection and I got involved with and I learned the entire underground hacking pirate community and became good friends with people who moved around a lot of software, I couldn't afford it. So this is how I learned. I didn't distribute for money or do anything that would be considered unethical from that point of view. But it's sort of like I learned, I learned every way around how to hack systems and that helped me figure out how to hack all the early search engines. So before there was a Google and there was Yahoo, there were dozens of different search engines and I figured out how to produce 50,000 web pages per minute in order to own and dominate every visible keyword that was known. And I got hired by big corporations to promote their stuff and, and that later helped me learn how to write copy, marketing copy and start creating information products. So I ended up producing a product with a well known publicist. Her name is Arielle ford. She represented 11 New York Times number one best selling authors. And I learned about Publishing. And I also produced a product called the Internet Infomercial Toolkit, which was way before YouTube, two years before YouTube, that talked about basically deconstructed and hacked the television infomercial and how to use video to sell products online. So we'll call that the information product SEO chapter of life, which is hacking the early, early Internet. So that's number three. Go ahead. You're going to say something.

Yeah, well, the thing is that I can tell you it's easier for me to have an overview of this than it is for you to have an overview because I kind of get the top of the trees, I don't have to see all the undergrowth. But when I met you, you were between three and four. I think you were between three and four.

That is exactly right. Yeah, I was just going to hit number four here.

Yeah. So go ahead.

Okay. Number four was I took all that knowledge, I applied my programming knowledge and developed two software platforms. One was called Traffic Geyser, the other one was Instant Customer. So Traffic Geyser basically took all my experience with video marketing, combined it with search engine optimization. And it was a platform that would distribute videos all over the Internet, all over every possible site source, boost your search engine rankings. And it was an automated continuity based business that produced millions of dollars in revenue. And I also did information products. Instant Customer was the first platform that did integrated mobile text marketing with voicemail, lead capture, pages, automated email, all that kind of stuff all in one place. And again, I ended up selling that to a publicly traded company. So we'll call that number four Number five. There's actually six steps. I'll make these fast. Number five was cancer. That was my big wake up call that stopped everything. And I learned, bottom line was I was the cog in everything I was doing. I was running myself ragged and living a toxic lifestyle. And I learned very quickly that my doctor said to me, if you don't take care of this right now, you'll be dead in six months. I went through a year's worth of treatments and I basically lived in a hospital bed for about probably seven months, either at home or in the hospital. And I couldn't do anything. But I started writing books and I ended up writing a book. I had less than an hour of strength a day. And that turned into the sixth step, which was my next company after I sold Trafficizer, Instant Customer, after I had cancer, was you everywhere now where that business helped people build platforms. So again, it's kind of like hacking media, writing books. We help now over 1800 people write, publish, promote, become best selling authors, learn how to speak and sell. So we had a product called Speak and Profit. We had one called Create and Profit where we taught people how to digitize their knowledge and create products. Also consult and Profit, which is how to really learn how to monetize your knowledge and your wisdom. So it's a platform that again, I loved it, it was awesome. But I reached a point where it's like it was a grind. It turned into a business that required a lot of people, a lot of complications. And that's when I realized I think I can impact a lot more people by impacting fewer people more deeply. So that's the six. So now give me your overview. Because you've got this genius ability to synthesize things that I can't see.

Well, you know, the word focus really means to start with a large field of vision and keep zeroing in step by step until you're just looking at the single most important factor. And if I start with the first stage that you talked about, you know, where you were just scrambling, actually, I mean, we all have a scramble stage. That's what I've noticed about all entrepreneurs, where you dive into a pool where the water's over your head and basically what you're doing, you're learning how to tread, you're learning how to keep your head sufficiently above water that you can maintain the oxygen supply. You're really kind of ignorant, you make tons of mistakes. And what I notice, and you know, we could spend hours just going through the stages of what you acquired. But there's two growths that I notice is a continual understanding of who mechanics is. You know, what's happening is that every jump you made, you were more successful, you were more capable. But what was also true is that you were far more conscious and confident about who exactly you were and who exactly you weren't in relationship to the marketplace. And I think I find the cancer one interesting because oftentimes the biggest catalyst for growth in an individual is not actually in the entrepreneurial realm or the business realm. It's actually in the personal realm. I mean, I had a cancer operation two years ago and I found that my enthusiasm for every kind of testing, exercise therapy has gone up by 10 times. And my awareness, really, I mean, the cancer memo is an impactful memo when you get the memo from cancer.

So yeah, change or die.

Yeah. I just want you to know that I've kind of zeroed in on you and I'm wondering if we can, can transfer you Someplace else pretty quick. And I don't want to make the transfer. But the other thing is that the story you tell has got a thousand lessons to it. It's got a thousand refocusing. What I'd like you to talk about. We've got about seven minutes. If you had to pick the five biggest capabilities that have come out of. What's that? Go back the total years for those six stages. Mike, what's the total number of. Well, it starts in high school. Really. So what's the total number of years there?

Okay, well, I think if we go back some 52 right now. So let's call it 34ish years from time I left high school. But a lot of the characteristics started when I was very young. Because the truth was, in order to survive school, I figured out how to hack everything. I became an expert at figuring out how to shortcut everything and never play by the rules.

Can you talk about hack? Because the word came up specifically in relationship to the digital world. But talk about hack in the general sense. Dave Asprey, our friend Dave Asprey is an amazing hacker of an amazing number of things. So talk about hacker in that context.

Yeah, I think the best way of defining it is if you remember there was a story about how Captain Kirk passed his test when he went through and became an officer. He walked in and reprogrammed the testing computer, which was designed to fail no matter what. You couldn't win. So he reprogrammed it so he could win it. So what I did is whether it was in school, I figured out how to win and pass without having to do the work. When I started writing code, more specifically, when I started learning how to program, I had to get my hands on software that was copy protected. And I learned how to deconstruct it and remove the copy protection so it would run on any computer I wanted. That's actually how I got my first job, writing video games. And then I figured out how to hack by. I ended up kind of social engineering, meaning I contacted a lot of people, acquired a lot of code. And when I started writing code, I started using modules that other people had written so I could get stuff done faster. That was a new idea at the time. So it was using other people's libraries, deconstructing other people's work to get there. So it's kind of what the Chinese have done for a long time. They basically hacked the system they steal. At the time, I felt I was ethically doing it. And then that's what I Did with search engines. When I started hacking search engines, instead of figuring out how can I write a whole bunch of words that are meaningful to search engines, I thought, how can I create 50,000 web pages that I can send to the websites? Because I figured out a backdoor way of getting my stuff seen, so my stuff got seen no matter what. And I could flood the search engines with a lot of information to own them. And this is before search engine spam existed. You know, it was before the term spam existed. It was completely legitimate and ethical at the time because no one had considered it. The same is true with what trafficizer was. You know, I've hacked marketing, so I always stayed a little bit ahead.

The book writing, how you write books, how you get them on the bestseller list, how you get promoted, everything.

Yep, that's right.

That's very useful for me. So I'm going to flip right here in our final minutes of this podcast. You're now going out in the marketplace. You're identifying extraordinary individuals who are ready to finish stage one of their life and to do a whole new stage. I did five or six before, but I'll start with three. What are the three things that you bring to the table that someone wanting to transform their life can totally count on you for? Mike, in other words, I've got three capabilities. We're talking about capability amplifier here in the podcast series. What are the three things that you can count on me? Absolutely. Whereby if you count on me in these three ways, your capabilities will amplify out into the marketplace.

Yep. So when I'm working with people, the three things that I'm really fast at doing is figuring out what your greatest value is as a human being, not a human doing or a human knowing and being able to create a story that you feel good about. So you get paid for who you are versus what you do or what you know. As I like to say, when I'm working with someone, I compose a symphony of the next chapter of your life and business, usually in a day. And people physiologically walk out feeling different with clarity and confidence as far as what to do, how to do it, and how to get there. So I'll call that number one. The second one is I am really, really good at looking at an existing business and a market and helping you get paid three to five times more for what you do by packaging an experience or an outcome or a result instead of what I call a line item thinking. So you get paid and people are attracted to you and an outcome and a story they feel like a hero in a journey through your product and service instead of buying a line item. So they're competitive. And the third is learning about your marketplace, extending that into a much more valuable market. In other words, where you're dancing right now might be low end. How to make you a premium brand. Communicate your value to that premium brand through a story that attracts them and makes them want to work with you and buy from you. And I can learn how to speak your voice and speak to that audience in a way that you can take what I give you and be able to repeat it the next day and go out and close deals very effectively. And then all the stuff that revolves around that to increase your value in the marketplace with books and services and technology and marketing. But it's those three key things I'd say.

Okay, so let me ask you a final question to wrap up here. Your ability to say what you just said over the last three or four minutes was the first 34 years worth it?

Can I say no?

That's genius, Dan. So I think so. You know? Yeah.

I mean, there's 100,000 hours of experience that just got to say, still within three or four minutes.

That's funny. Okay, I have to wrap this up with one very short story that only takes seconds that illustrates it. I worked with a guy who's got $100 million insurance company. We met, and he had been trying to get his foot in the door with a certain company to close a deal. I did a series of exercises. I've got like, 25 little strategies, and I implemented like, three with them. He walked out 48 hours later, closed an $80 million deal that has become a $300 million deal. And now he's saying by 2020, he expects he'll triple his business's revenue again. That's an edge case, of course, but that's the kind of thing that really lights me up, especially when it's a meaningful company that's doing transformational stuff. It's not about the money, but money is a way of keeping score. So that does light me up in a big way. It's nice to hear those stories.

Yeah. Well, first of all, as a coach of entrepreneurs going back 45 years, this was just pure pleasure on my part to listen to the stages, you know, because, you know, and I've got lots of failures and reinventions in my past, too. But on the one hand, it's very admirable that we did it, but on the other hand, we can't prevent ourselves from doing it and you got to have both of those. You got to be an admirable obsessive to do this sort of stuff.

It's interesting as I was listening to you, it is a form like doing this podcast with you is jazz for sure. The nature of Dan Sullivan is no preparation. We're going to improvise and compose a song as jazz musicians. And that's essentially what being a great entrepreneur is, which is reacting and responding to the marketplace and trying your best to add some scientific principles and wisdom and mixing that all in all in real time. And you have an opportunity to reinvent and rewrite the rules of who you are and how you're going to behave all the time. And that's what I love about this. So of course I agree with you completely. We meet that way. But also I love the notion of composition and co creation. That's what makes this so fun.

Yeah. One of the future episodes I want to share, and you probably know it, but the greatest jazz album that has ever hit the market. It's the best selling jazz album of all time. It was put together in two days of studio time with no rehearsals before him. This is Kind of Blue and it's just one of the great entrepreneurial creative improv projects in the history of the world. So we'll look forward to that on the future because it shows you that if you're cooperating with the right people, creating with the right people, you can create magic without very much preparation. You depend upon the preparation of their lives to come together in a very short period of focused transformation. So it's a great story.

I agree.

Anyway, this was joyful. I really loved both. You know, we did two episodes today and both of them were real treat. So thanks a lot, Mike. And we'll do this very soon and many times into the future.

Right on. Well, I think the very last thing we should do is make sure we send people to Capability Amplifier to give us feedback. There's a place where you can leave feedback and also ask questions. So if there's something specific you want to talk to Dan or I about, ask a question that you'd like us to.