Mike Zeller - Entrepreneur, Mentor & Author | How To Find Your Genius

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Well, Scott, excited to be here. And man, I think when I think about my entrepreneurial journey, I would say it really began in college where I was waiting tables at a restaurant. I was like, man, I don't want to just work a normal job. I want to own a restaurant someday, and I'm going to have a BMW by the time I'm 30 and make $100,000 a year by the time I'm 30. And sure enough, I did all those things, except I got an Audi instead of a BMW, but I like my Audi pretty, pretty great. But man, I think I knew I was meant to create my own path. At the end of the day, I remember being in the mortgage business and just hating going to the office and hating being directed by a manager. So some of us, we know pretty early on, I think.

It's funny, I actually thought about getting into mortgages at one point because I'm originally from Toronto and like everybody and their mother is like either a real estate agent or a mortgage broker. And it's actually, that's actually a very entrepreneurial career as well, right? Right? It's not like that's not entrepreneurial. You eat what you kill with that business. So anyway, so you're doing mortgages. Where did you, where did you go from there? Where did you want to start helping people, working with other entrepreneurs, helping them build their businesses, all the things that you're currently like working in now? How did that evolve over time?

Yeah, so I was selling real estate and investing in real estate, building my own little real estate empire. And that's where I went after the mortgage career as I joined, you know, just started creating wealth through real estate. And I remember doing positive affirmations or incantations, as Tony Robbins called them, through Tony Robbins' Personal Power 2. And I did them for the first time. I remember writing down the 7th one and it said, "I mentor and lead some of the brightest and best people in the world." I knew that I was meant to do that, but at the time I was just investing in real estate, building my own little real estate empire, selling a little bit of real estate. And, but I was like, I'm supposed to do this at some point. I didn't know how I would get there. But sure enough, 4 or 5 years later, I had started at that point 5 or 6 different businesses and I was doing like $30 million a year in my businesses. And I felt like I was called to start mentoring because I had people reaching out to me every week saying, Mike, can I get 30 minutes? Mike, can we grab coffee? Can we grab lunch? Can we do this? And I was spending like half my time mentoring people pro bono.

Well, you just dove into real estate. You started building other businesses. Obviously, probably a lot of lessons learned there that you could teach over to other entrepreneurs. What do you think, to sum up what you do in a sentence, like what do you think the value is that you bring to entrepreneurs that when you go into a conversation, they are looking to solve X and you bring Y to the table.

So, the next conversation after our podcast interview is with a former Ivy League graduate that is looking for a career change. And what I end up doing more often than not is I help entrepreneurs and high achievers step away from the lanes that they suck. And step into the lanes that they're an absolute genius by getting the greatest clarity they've ever had about who they are, what on earth they're meant to do, and how to monetize their genius, their brilliance, and their passion.

That's what I do. Why do you think that so many people— and I always sort of bring it back to like, let's pull out lessons from your own journey. You figured this out. You were self-aware enough to know what you like to do and what you weren't, you know, you didn't love doing and you just pursued passions and you failed and you tried and you succeeded and whatever. That's great. But why do you think so many people have an issue figuring out what makes them happy, what they're a genius at, what they should be, what they're, you know, put on earth to do when they just, they can't see it for themselves and they just end up sticking in a job their whole career. Not that's a bad thing or maybe a job they hate or they end up being an entrepreneur and building a job that they also hate because they accidentally did that as an entrepreneur. And they aren't living their best life?

Yeah, so two things come to mind. First, imposter syndrome sneaks its ugly face in, and so we all doubt our genius. We all doubt our gifting, our calling at some point. And then secondly, when we're on the inside of a bottle, it's hard to read the label. So that's why we need coaches. That's why we need people that are smart thoughtful and supportive of our dreams and vision to give us feedback. So, I found, hey, man, most of the clues for your genius are also littered about your life. They're all over and they're mainly in 4 main quadrants, but no one's organized and synthesized them so that you can interpret and understand the data. I understand.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's what you do. That's what you do. So, okay. So this is what I want to do for this show. I want to, first of all, I even mentioned we were chatting before, like one of the shows you did with JLD Entrepreneurs on Fire, it was titled 4 Lessons from Losing $1 Million. So first I want to understand how did you lose $1 million? Tell me that story. Then I want to understand those 4 lessons. And then I want to go into those, I think those 4 traits, I think you mentioned 4 traits that are core to finding out how you can basically be, live, be in your, I think you call it the zone of genius is the best way to put it. That's, that's what you speak about when you do podcasts or in your book as well. So, let's, let's go through that story because I think that story is interesting and that's going to bring out a lot of perspective for people that now understand how you can help people through losing a million bucks. You probably learned a thing or two.

So, I definitely learned a thing or two. Well, first, my genius, what my gifting was, also has a shadow side, right? All of our, all of us, when we have a genius, we have a drawback of that genius. So what am I really freaking great at? If I go through the wealth dynamics, I'm a creator. Like, so I'll give you a little backdrop. 4 key quadrants that indicate clues about your genius. First, your unique talents. I have people go through 5 different personality tests. Second, your key relationships. The relationships of the people that bring you life versus the people that bring you death. The hotbeds, the clusters of relationships that you naturally have. You know, it's not accident that I have all these relationships in the entrepreneurial and author space. Like, I looked at my life pathway and I was like, why do I have all these bestselling authors as friends? And I haven't written a single book yet. That was a clue. Third thing, your defining life moments. Those moments where things went really wrong. Those moments where you had whispers in your soul, whispers of like, oh, you felt alive, you felt connected, you felt inspired. And then the fourth thing, your values and passions. So there's clues in those four main quadrants. So rewind, my genius, I'm really great at galvanizing momentum, driving progress, growing things. Getting things off the ground. I'm a high-risk taker. I can improvise and think on my feet pretty quick and move fast. Drawbacks, I'm not so good at managing details and operations and the legal administrative side. So, when, as a business grows in scale and complexity, if I don't have the right operating partners, I'm going to suffer. And I did, right? And I thought I had the right operating partners at different points. At the end, I really didn't, and that was a handcuff for me. And if I stayed, you know, all of us can play out of position for a bit. I can go over here and do my accounting for a little bit. I can go over here and, you know, if you look at athletes, athletes can play out of position for a little bit. Dennis Rodman can, you know, when he was with the Bulls, he could play and he'd go down low and score if he needed to. But he wasn't really good at it and you wouldn't want him down there long-term. So if you play out a position too long, you just get frustrated and unhappy. When you— the science actually shows that when you're playing to your strengths, your tendency to step into this psychological concept called flow, it actually more than doubles. So if I'm in my strengths, I'm more likely to step into flow. If I step into flow, that's where work becomes play. That's where I'm just unconsciously great. So, I did all these things, then I grew these businesses, but they got beyond my ability to manage and I didn't have the right managing partners in place. And then that's when the cracks started forming one by one by one. One business falls, cracks start forming. This cash cow business, my real estate business was my cash cow. I was working 5 to 10 hours a week in that business, making a nice multiple of 6 figures in profit. Boom, that falls apart. Had domino effects in my other baby businesses. Some of those businesses were baby businesses. And, and I really— then I had a real estate investment go bad, my first and only one that went bad out of like a dozen. But it went really bad. Like, it cost me $250,000, and then I lost like a couple hundred grand, and then my agency, a couple hundred thousand dollars, and my men's clothing line all, all combined. Um, I just, I went through a season where 7 out of 10 things didn't work when I was used to 6 out of 10.

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It's working.

And you think that this is because you were not at the time aware of what that unique talent was in your life, and you tried to play outside your comfort— you tried to play outside that zone. It didn't work out. You didn't have the right operational partners. So going forward, this is, this is obviously what we have to solve for, right? Like, this is one of the things that we have to solve for. Um, And then extrapolating on that point, okay, so we, we know that it's important to figure out like your unique talents so that you know what you're good at, you know what you're not good at, but how do you effectively find those people to backfill and to take over the things that you're not good at? Because you thought you were setting yourself up, but obviously it didn't work out so well. So how do you find those A-players that you could, really help you.

Yeah. So now in my hiring process, like, I think I've got one of the best recruiting processes of A-players I've ever seen. And I, you know, our mutual friend Natasha, you know, is asking, hey Mike, how do you attract these, these A-players? Your team is in sync. I love your team. And I'm grateful for my team, but I also am very intentional about creating space for them to play to their genius. And because of that, they're more fulfilled, they're more alive, they're more excited about their brand and about what we're doing. And so, I start from the beginning. I intentionally design the job ad to speak to the strengths I need in that role. So, if I'm writing, for example, a job ad for someone that's really detail-oriented and really administratively gifted, because I'm not so administratively gifted, then I need to have the language and have the thought patterns and even look at some of the personality tests and what will indicate that they are gifted in this way. And then give them a little micro test. I give micro tests typically before I hire someone to see how good they are at that. Do they actually follow through? Are they men or women of their word? Do they show up on time? Do they complete things on time? And, and, and then also, like, when I have— it's almost like I have— it's almost like I'm in the Special Forces and I have those seeing night goggles where I can see things that others can't see because I can see patterns. I can see people's strengths, especially once I know certain data details. Now it's almost like patterns pop like popcorn for me. And so, as I'm building this next chapter of my entrepreneurial career, man, like I'm building my next, what I think will be a $100 million-plus business. And I'm looking at the team and making sure I got the A players. You know, A players, they need to be led, not managed. And they'll show their colors if you know how to evaluate and test. And I bat about 70%. And then when I help others optimize their hiring process and both— the first thing is figure out what your genius is as the business owner and then design the business, design the people you bring on around your strengths and weaknesses.

After you— and I want to go through like sort of each of these 4 key areas because I think they all have merit to just sort of like dive a little bit deeper into them. So, you've established your A-players, you have a process, a test. You let them, you know, you, you lead them, you don't manage them. You give them a little bit of, uh, control over how they're gonna execute and that's sort of how you get the best out of them.

Um, actually a lot of control generally.

A lot of control. So you're, you're really, this is why it's so important to figure out the process, um, when you're bringing people in because once they're in, then you let them like do their best work on their own. Um, the second, the second component, if you wanna add more, that's fine. But the second component I wanted to touch on is key relationships. So how do you build these key relationships? How do you foster these key relationships? How do you— what is the point of having these relationships in respect to zone of genius? Is it a mentor relationship? Is it a business relationship, peer relationship that they're going to open doors for you and get you in front of the right people? What does— what do you mean by key relationships?

So there's a lot of different things that it can mean. So in fact, tomorrow I'm teaching a workshop and I'm going to be doing monthly workshops on the Dream 100. And I've bought the domain dream100list.com. You— have you heard of, uh, Dream 100 List from like Chet Holmes and Russell Brunson?

Yeah, I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so you think of a couple things in key relationships. Um, first, who brings you life versus who brings you death? Second, where do I already have a natural, like, just unusual amount of relationships? Like, I, I'm friends with the author that sold more books than anyone else in the world history, Mark Victor Hansen. So I'm friends with that guy, right? I'm friends with 30 other bestselling authors that have, you know, sold millions of copies of books. That— how do I get friends with these guys? I don't even have a book out. I have one book out now. So like, that's a little weird. And I love being around those guys more than I love being around the guys in the real estate industry. I was in, I was driven. I felt I lit up. I felt inspired by being around those types of people. So that was a clue. And then if I look at the next layer strategically, how do I build great key relationships? All right, where do I want to go? I know where I want to go. I want to establish myself as America's top entrepreneur mentor. But before that, I want to establish myself as America's number one expert at helping high achievers find their deepest area of genius. So now I'm looking at, all right, who influences, who already has an audience of my ideal 4% client, the people that I most want to reach? Oh, Russell Brunson, John Lee Dumas, you know, etc., etc. We go through the Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Craig Ballantine. I just got booked for his podcast today. So you like, you, you go through that that list of like, oh, these are the people that I really want to be around. And they serve, they already have an audience of hundreds of thousands or millions of email subscribers. And then now I'm going to build that relationship with those people on my Dream 100.

And then, so that's actually, I wanted to just reiterate a point you made. So there's a lot of tactical things that these relationships these Dream 100 will give you in your aspirations wherever you want to take your business or otherwise. But I think that the one thing that you mentioned that is potentially, I don't want it to be overlooked, is that they give you energy. These are the people that give you energy. That is like so undervalued. I think it's, that's so important because you said like, listen, being in a room full of, you know, multimillion and potentially billion-dollar real estate developers is not a bad room to be in. By any means. They're gonna get you in a lot of doors. They're gonna get you, they're gonna make you probably very successful if you build that network out. But if it's not giving you energy, it doesn't matter. It's not, it's not what you're meant to do. And that's actually very, very telling. That's something that I think a lot of people should take into account when they start to look for the next thing, the next job, whatever. Is it giving you energy or is it like, it feels like a weight on you? And if it feels like a weight, that's not it.

Yeah. That your body doesn't lie. You know, think of why does the FBI do a lie detector test on your body, not on your words? You can lie through your mouth all day. It's only 7% of communication. But lying through your body, it's really freaking hard. Your body will tell you who you want to spend time with. And anyway, so yeah, there's clues right there that also it points you to your destiny, points you to your calling, points you to your purpose, points you even to your pathway to profit. Might not, it's not gonna be a smooth ride to get to your full pathway to profit, but it's there.

The next point, defining life experiences. How do you know which life experiences you should place value on? And the reason I, so when I think about this point, what I think about is I had a negative experience, I learned from it, or I have a negative experience and now I never wanna experience that again. Are there certain life experiences that, um, can, can benefit, or are some just like net, net negative? When you, when you say defining life experiences that can contribute to your success, what do you, what do you want people to look for?

Great question, Scott. Uh, I see why you're such a good interviewer.

Um, so I just ask things that I think of, like, that I, I would find interesting. I just want to, like, you know, double down and, and pull it out because Defining life experiences could mean so many things, and there's sometimes when I see a negative life experience that technically could be a positive because it's taught you something that can contribute to your success in the future, and you wouldn't have had that perspective if you didn't have that negative experience.

So yeah, yeah, exactly. So I, I don't think any experiences in life are wasted. Napoleon Hill is famous for saying behind every setback is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity. So if I look, you know, losing $1 million, I'm like, all right, well, that's going to set the stage for me to make $10 million or make $100 million because of the life lessons I learned from that. And I— but the thing that we have to do with hard life experiences, and not every life experience is hard, but is, is look at a seed. When you think of that quote, what do you have to do with the seed? Let's say I've got a walnut. I have to crack that seed open. I have to bury that seed in the ground. I have to give it water and sunlight and fertilizer and good soil and make sure that it's not choked out by weeds. So you have to apply a lot of intentionality with the seeds of your failures, with the seeds of your mistakes, with the seeds of your setbacks. Most people think, oh, it's just going to automatically come to me. No, you have to heal. You have to reflect. You have to ask questions. What did I screw up in? What opportunities does this present? What valuable lessons does it give? One of my favorite stories, Thomas Watson Sr., in the middle of the Great Depression, founder of IBM. This senior sales executive comes to him and he had just lost a million-dollar deal for IBM, which is a lot of money in the middle, in 1933, I think it was. And he comes and hands in his resignation to Thomas Watson Sr. And Tom says, son, I'm not letting you resign. And he's like, what? Like, I just paid a million dollars for your education. Get back out there.

He didn't want to.

Why? He's already lost the money. Yeah.

Why did you learn something out of this?

You're never gonna do it again. Yeah. He's like, you know what? Versus he would go to another company and use that education for that other company's benefit. So that's the first thing. And then if I look at defining life experiences, Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite examples. All right. So he, he's born with asthma. You know the story. So he's born with asthma.

I don't know this story. No, I knew the last story. I didn't know this story though.

Yeah. So he, he's born with asthma and he's like, you know what? I don't want to be a weakling. His dad, his family used to think he was going to be a weakling. And this is before they had advanced treatments. You know, it's like 1800s, late 1800s. He decides, hey, I'm not going to let this hold me back. Starts training outdoors, like weightlifting, working out before they had real weights, you know, he's lifting bricks or whatever he's lifting, and riding horses, you know, that was a big workout. And he built— he overcame asthma through that. Then eventually, and that also helped him fall in love with the outdoors and with woods and hunting. All right, then 22 years old, his wife dies after giving birth to their first daughter. 24 hours later, his mom dies in the same house. So he's distraught, just forlorn, right? And he does— he's incapable of raising an infant daughter when he's suffering with such deep grief. So he hands off his daughter to his aunt and goes out to South Dakota, North Dakota, and lives in the wilderness, retreats into place of solace for like 6 months. Hunts, lives, you know, with the settlers and different things and lives with nature. Kills animal after animal. He was a great hunter. And all right, let's rewind. Comes back to New York, is in a much better mind space, cleared his head, eventually runs for office again, eventually becomes police chief of New York City, cleans up the corruption because he had saw his dad was a big proponent against corruption in New York City, in New York in general, and fought against corruption. So that seed was planted. Then eventually, obviously, he gets elected or becomes president when the president that he was elected with— he was vice president— the president he was with dies. I forgot the name of the president that died. And then he was elected for a second term. While he was in office, guess what he does? He preserves more national parks, more of America's greatest nature parks, than any other president, or really all the rest of presidents combined. Secondly, um, he also sets up our anti-monopoly laws. He had enough courage and gumption to take on, you know, Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, break up these massive companies that would make some of the monopolies of today look like you know, peanuts, and he breaks them up. He takes them on. He takes on anti-corruption because he had had practice. His life experiences pointed to both of those things.

Amazing. I never knew that story. So that is— and, and I don't know if you can say with 100% certainty he did that purposefully, but it is an incredible example of how your life experiences, especially if you're very self-aware of your life experiences and, and understanding what these life experiences can add on to your personality and your proficiency, like just being aware of that is just huge. So I don't know if he was or not, but it shows you what you can do if you do sort of take these and let them build onto who you are as a professional and a person and let them, even if negative, like there's always a positive out of it.

100%. And the thing is we can all connect, you know, Steve Jobs said, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can connect the dots looking backwards. But if I connect the dots, if I do a better job than most at connecting the dots looking backwards, I'm actually going to see some of the future dots. I may not see— I'm not going to see all the dots. But that all those, like, if I look at my life, I loved reading growing up. I love— one of my inspirational figures is a guy named Peter Drucker. He wrote 38 books up until the time he was like 98 and then passed away. So, I have him as an inspirational figure of like writing great business books. So, I want to be like Peter. I want to— if I look at my passions for business, certain things around sustainability, those were clues that my mom infused in my value set. How I lead people, my dad was always very strong in emphasizing respecting others and creating space for others and being kind and thoughtful. So now I do that as a boss and as a leader.

A quick break from this podcast to recommend another podcast that you have to check out. It's called The Product Boss, is hosted by Jacqueline and Mina. It's part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. If you have a physical product, this podcast is hyper-tailored to you. It's gonna help you take your business to the next level. In a recent episode, for example, they spoke about the power of TikTok for product businesses and how to use it to drive sales. And as somebody who is a little new to TikTok, I really learned some great tips for creating content that actually converts viewers into customers. They have a workshop-style format that makes it really easy to follow along to take your business to the next level. So if you sell physical products, subscribe to The Product Boss wherever you get your podcast to unlock social media marketing and business strategies that create your dream business and then your dream life. That Sort of dovetails quite nicely into the fourth point, which is values and passion. So is values and passions just being self-aware enough to understand how your talents, your relationships, your life experiences all have such an impact on who you are, and then living those and, and, and championing those and evangelizing those values and passions in literally every interaction you have and everything you do and every business you start? Like, what is, what is values and passions?

Yeah, so it's a couple things. The value side, if you look at, hey, what do I stand for? What do I stand against? Like, I, I don't— I, I've made the mistake before of having potential partners, business partners that I was exploring that were a little more ego-driven. And, you know, I have a healthy ego, but I'm not ego as in dominate Mike is, you know, my poop doesn't stink type deal. And I want humility, I want devoted devotion to the greater good, I want contribution, uh, innovation, um, uh, that I believe business exists first to serve the world and make it a better place, but profit is necessary but secondary for sustainability. So that's one of our values, um, that it also culturally, customer-client experience, we want to thoughtfully anticipate our client's potential challenges. And so then I will stand against things that are like selfish ego, just purely ego-driven. And I'll stand for some of these things of human potential. Like one of our core elements of our mission is unleash human potential. And so, everything I do is oriented towards that in some way. So, that becomes a filter. Your values become a filter of like who do you let in, who do you let out, who do you protect yourself from. And then, the passions are like, "Hey, what am I insatiably curious about? What could I study all day long? Who could I spend time with more and more? Like who am I not going to get bored?" being around. Like I used to think, "I don't want to be around bankers. I don't want to be— for the most part, I don't want to be around lawyers and real estate investors." I like real estate. If you're a real estate investor but you have something else, then 100%, I'm game. But I have 4 or 5 friends that have $100 million real estate portfolios. I'd rather go spend time with a bestselling author friend.

Interesting. Yeah. So, it's all about— again, it comes back to also what gives you energy. So, all these areas, they— these are not mutually exclusive. They all basically create just a really healthy, strong persona that you are self-aware of, that you can sort of take into. And that sort of brings me to my next question. How do you build a business knowing your zone of genius that is built on these 4 key areas? Because that must be the best. That's why they hire you, right? It is. It is.

You're right. And, but it also, look at people who do extraordinary things, what's in common with them? They put themselves in extraordinarily right positions. Are you a sports fan?

Yeah, yeah, it depends which sport though. Like, I'm more hockey than, uh, than football, but I, I don't mind the Steelers. They're okay. They haven't won. My hockey team— well, none of my hockey teams have won in a long time because I'm Canadian, so it doesn't matter. True.

Yeah, you guys have had a suffering route. But, um, but the Toronto Raptors, you mentioned earlier, from Toronto, right? Well, A few years ago, they won the NBA championship. So, how did they win the NBA championship? Kawhi Leonard. He was in the right position, right time. Warriors get injured. Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant go down. They're hobbled. Extraordinary results come from people putting themselves in extraordinarily right opportunities with a group. So, if you look in business, Richard Branson. Hits the timing right. Amazon hits the timing right with riding the wave of the internet. They were the, you know, they want to be, they just want to sell books initially. Now, Bezos had a bigger vision, but we've, at the time, people were afraid of buying things online when Amazon started. Now, we're like, "No big deal. Buy whatever you want online." So, you have to think, "Am I riding the right wave?" Some of us have been riding, I realized I was riding some waves that were dying. Like, I was in a socially-minded car dealership. That was a dinosaur industry. If you look at the diffusion of innovations, what is it? A laggard business? Is it, you know, late majority? Is it about to go out of business? Or the industry is about to be majorly disrupted? Do I want to be a— do I want to be the disrupted, or do I want to be the disruptor? So now, you know, part of the reason I'm in the thought leader space Hey, that's an early-stage venture still, and there's a lot of innovation, a lot of opportunities within that. Um, uh, biohacking. I'm launching a new biohacking venture because that industry is going to go from a $12 billion industry to a $54 billion industry from 2019 to 2027. So I'm jumping into that space, and I'm doing it in a way that I'm aligned with my genius. I get to create I get to architect the business and I get to put people in their zones of genius and attract people that I'm attracting a dream team. I know I'm not a great operating partner, so this time I'm not freaking starting the business without a great operating partner.

No, you— so I love this. So what the last thing I wanted to touch on, and I think it's just interesting because you mentioned, you mentioned a good point, like, so you know what your zone of genius is, you, you want to be, you know, like you have certain industries that you can disrupt. So that you're, you're not, you don't want, you wanna be disruptor, not disrupted. And that's sort of where you position yourself. One thing that you've spoke about before is a $10,000 per hour activity. So my question, I think that's an interesting point because just even like just saying it just sounds like funny, just like a, a funny sentence. So it's somebody who wants to, somebody who wants to start a non-service-based business. Cause I can understand as a coach, if you want to be a coach, this makes a lot of sense. You're trying to, up your billables and you have to create more value. And these are, and there's things you can do to up your value when you position yourself to your customers. But this is more like a mindset I find than just like a truly $10,000 per hour activity. So what does that actually mean for somebody who is, somebody who wants to start a dog walking business, somebody who wants to start a software or a SaaS business? What does that actually mean and how do you find that?

So most of us come from a middle-class mindset. What's a middle-class mindset? Hey, if you want a job done right, do it yourself, right? That's, that's middle-class mindset. Billionaire mindset: if you want a job done right, what do you— what's a billionaire do, Scott?

Pay someone else to do it. Find the best person to do it for you. Yeah, exactly.

Find the best person. To do it for you because the billionaire knows that what the biggest amount of value that he creates is smart decisions, strategic decisions. Bezos, Jeff Bezos, I listen to this great podcast series about Amazon versus Walmart, and on it it said, um, said that Bezos has one goal every day: to make two smart strategic decisions. So that's his goal. He's not trying to do things, he's trying to decide things. So $10,000 per hour activities, they are not the doing of things. Even the very best attorneys in the world maybe get $500 to $1,000 an hour for billable hours. So your, your income is capped there. Me, when I was in real estate, I calculated that my average hour If I was setting up the deal and would spend 1 hour with a potential client, get them on board as a client, hand them off to one of my junior agents to, to work with them and close the deal, that was a $5,000 an hour activity is what I would average. But that's still limited, right? $10,000 an hour activities are massive strategic positioning, offer decisions, leadership decisions. Sometimes it's who you hire. Who you bring on as a partner. It's your offer. If you craft an irresistible offer that goes gangbusters, cool thing about business, you know, if I hit in baseball, I played college baseball. If I hit a grand slam, the most runs I can score is 4. In business, if I hit a grand slam, I can score 1,000 runs from that. Right now, I might, you know, craft an offer this is where maturity comes into play too. I got to know that 9 out of 10 offers are probably going to strike out or not do that great. But if I get to that 10th offer and I keep learning and kicking butt, man, I could do— I could hit a massive home run and get that $10,000 an hour activity. So $10,000 an hour activities are usually longer-term strategic elements than the, the short-term ones.

So I, I'm glad that I clarified that. So it's, it's nothing to do with how you, of course, it's great to increase your own value if you wanna bring, you know, value to the world. But it is, I love that Bezos analogy. Make, make 1, 2, whatever, however many super strategic decisions that'll move the needle. And then the aggregate of that over 5 years, 10 years, Well, it could be a $100,000 per hour activity. At that point, there's no limit. There's no limit on that.

Yeah. And so, let's think about it like this too. I have friends that charge $25,000, $50,000 for a speech. So, they step on stage for an hour, that's $25,000 an hour. But how did they get to that $25,000 an hour activity? Oh, they had to write a book or they had to do these other business things. Now, writing a book, do they have to write every single word and design the COVID and proofread and all that? No, they can outsource that to $20, $50, $100 an hour type team members. But then that book positions them to get a $25,000 an hour activity.

Understood. It makes sense. If you like, so if you had like imparting words of wisdom, it could be from your book because what I want to do, I want to do a couple of rapid fire at the end, just pull out some insights and imparting words of wisdom for young entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs from your book or just, you know, from your life experience, what would those final thoughts be if somebody wants to start their own business, move, you know, upskill, new job, new promotion, just level up in life?

Yeah. So, in my book, Genius Within, I broke down a lot of these things that we've been talking about, including the $10,000 an hour activities. And when you have— know your genius where you're one of the best in the world at, Like, man, you know, Michael Jordan putting his name on Jordan sneakers, that did really well.

It didn't do bad at all.

I'm wearing Jordans still because his name, right? And the brand is great. So, you figure out your zone of genius, you leverage your zone of genius, be very, very intentional about it. Most of us don't have enough clarity about our zone of genius. That's why it's the first domino to fall. You got 5 C's, and the first C is clarity. If you get more clarity, guess what? You're going to show up with more confidence. If I show up with more confidence, guess what I'm going to show up with? Also more courage. And because of the greater courage that I show up with, I'm also going to lead and, and make decisions and act with greater conviction. And then when I have greater conviction, my commitment level is going to rise. But the first domino to fall, the first C, is clarity. That's why Socrates said, to know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. So you want to be a great leader and want to build a great business? Know yourself. Know yourself better than anyone else, because then you can put yourself in extraordinarily right positions. So go back to another guy, one of the oldest guys I've ever talked to, but still bright and brilliant. D. Hawk. Do you know who D. Hawk is?

I actually don't know who— you mentioned a couple that I know. I know Drucker, but I don't know who D. Hawk is.

Yeah, most people don't know him, but, but most have used one of his products. Do you have a Visa card?

I do.

All right, so he's the creator of Visa.

Really?

Founder of Visa. Yeah, so I talked to him last year. He was 98 years old at the time. He founded a little company called Visa, as in Visa credit cards, and, um, after he retired and sold his equity in Visa, he started writing for Harvard and writing for all these other publications about leadership. And one of the things he found over and over and over again with the very best leaders in the world, they did something that ordinary leaders did not do, which was they focused more than 50% of their leadership energy on leading themselves. So we think of, oh, where's my best leadership energy? Leading others, leading up. Leading down, leading sideways. Nope. Leading myself. Emotional leadership. Putting myself in emotional self-management, you know, self-management. Studying myself, putting myself in the right position, leading my company in the right way, having that self-reflective moments. That's what the best people in the world do. Tom Brady goes to Tampa Bay, wins the Super Bowl first year with no Training camp, COVID pandemic, new team, new playbook, everything's going wrong. And they suffer. He, he screws up a couple times in a public way and can't get in sync, right? But then they have a bye week last year. The bye week, he gets everybody right, and he had enough determination, enough confidence, enough self-leadership that he's like, We'll figure this out, guys. We will. And they did. So self-leadership.

Very good. If people want to get more of this book, if they want to connect with you, where do they go?

You can go to thegeniuswithin— it's geniuswithinbook.com. I've got a free copy there, guys. Just have to pay the shipping and handling, or you can get it on Amazon. I will also have an Audible version very, very soon. And then you can also get a 6 Steps to Finding Your Genius guide. Just text the word geniusu to 474747.

And that's where Granola is a success story partner. Now, here's something I used to do after every single meeting. Sit down for about 15 minutes trying to reconstruct what just happened, who said what, what we actually decided, what I'm supposed to follow up on before next week. And when you're running calls all day and you have podcast guests and you have client check-ins and you have team syncs that adds up fast. You either spend half the meeting furiously typing and you miss the actual conversation, or you're present in the meeting but then you're scrambling after. Neither is a good option. Granola completely changed that for me. It's an AI-powered notepad that works through your device's audio, so there's no bots joining your call, no awkward setup, nothing weird. It just runs quietly in the background while you take your rough notes like normal, and when the meeting is over, you get clean, structured What was decided? Who owns what? What's next? Now, the first time I saw the output, I genuinely thought, this is what my notes should look like. You get to actually be present in your meetings and you still walk away with everything documented. Try Granola for free for 3 months at granola.ai/success. That's granola.ai/success. Get your time back. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, if you like the show, you need to check out the Hustle Daily Show. It's hosted by Juliet Bennett Ryla, Rob Littrist, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. They break down the wildest stories in business and tech, everything from billion-dollar industries hiding in plain sight to the real impact AI is having on jobs right now. It's quick, it's smart, it's never boring, and it's daily. Listen to the Hustle Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Priori is a Success Story partner. Now, how many times have you set a goal, you've been fired up for a week, and then you've completely fallen off? That's not a discipline problem. it's a systems problem. That's why I use Priori. It is a goal setting and habit tracking app built on neuroscience, backed by Harvard research, and inspired by Atomic Habits. You set your priorities and Priori breaks them into small daily steps built right into your schedule. So instead of feeling overwhelmed, you just follow the plan. It gamifies everything— streaks, check-ins, small wins that build momentum. And 78% of users succeed after years of failing at the same goal. Over 12,000 people use it. They have a 4.7-star rating. It's free to download. Check it out at priori.life or search Priori in the App Store or Google Play. That's priori.life.

Or we'll start— and of course on my Instagram I have a link, and we'll add Jazz too.

Okay, cool. Um, and most important question: are you doing your own Audible?

I am, yes. Yes, good. Well, because most people want the author to actually read it, and so that's why I don't necessarily like to read it as much. But yeah.

Um, all right, let's do a couple rapid fire, uh, just to close, close this out. So biggest challenge that you've had in your personal or professional life, what was that? Had you overcome it?

Shame. Shame of failure. I'm a Type 3 on the Enneagram, man. When all that stuff hit in 2018, 2019, dude, I wanted to be the, the, the dog with the tail between his legs, the ostrich with the head in the sand. And I was at times. There was moments where I was just I wanted to hide. I was embarrassed. I was frustrated. I was sad. I was despairing, all the juicy stuff there. But battling through that, that's where I went really deep on— I was like, I got to fill my tank. I got to fill my tank. And I know this is going to be a seed that becomes a setup, a setback that becomes a setup, a setback that prepares me for my comeback. And so, but I had to really train myself and overcome those fears and traumas. And I also had to create an alter ego. Like I had, I called my shameful self Weak Ass Willie. And then I called my badass self Magic Mike because I had a client nickname me Magic Mike because I was creating magic in her life. So I had to redo that whole identity.

If you had to choose one person, although there's been many, but one person who's had the biggest impact on your life. Who was that person? What did they teach you?

Hmm, living-wise, I would say Tony Robbins. I mean, besides parents, of course, but Tony Robbins. I spent 1,447 hours with Tony going to his Platinum Partners, other mastermind experiences. The dude is a gem. I think he's a saint. He's a force for good. Um, no one more impactful in my opinion than Tony and inspiring and imprinting upon me belief.

It's funny, you know that program that you mentioned from Tony Robbins? Everybody who, um, I can't remember the name of the program you just mentioned at the beginning, but everybody who I know, yes, anybody who's taken that program has said that's been the single most impactful, powerful thing they've ever done in their life. Like, that's like what just like changed the course of their life. So something to be said for that. He's been doing this for a while too, so he's, yeah, he's been doing it for a minute. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

Your favorite source to learn or grow, a book, podcast, something you'd recommend that you, that you like.

I love mastermind experiences are my favorite. That's why I host my own masterminds. I think there's nothing faster for growing because you grow in identity when you're around a select group of 15 to 20 other high achievers. And you see that, hey, I'm learning from them, I can do just as good as them, but also the collaboration and the synergy, it opens up your, like, your tribe. When your tribe lifts and rises, guess what? Your identity rises by default. One of the things I ask my mastermind members in my symposium mastermind, which is for the successful thought leader, what I ask is Hey, what does my environment have to look like for success as I define it to be inevitable? Because if you design your environment so that you're automatically going to rise, that you cannot sink, you'll eventually get to where you want to go.

I love that. Very good. That's, that's a good recommendation. No one's ever said that. They always, they always default to a book or podcast, which is not a bad thing, but yeah, I know people listen to podcasts too. Yeah, I know, I know you do. I just, I appreciate that. That's good. Um, if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would it be?

Invest in a mastermind, being a part of a high-level mastermind sooner, because, you know, I was reading books and doing seminars and online courses and all that, but it wasn't until I got real relationships and that my identity and my belief barriers were shattered. Like when I was in Tony Robbins Platinum Partner, the first 2 days I was there, I was like the youngest guy. I squeaked in on my credit cards. It's a $100,000 a year program. And I'm like, I don't belong here because of the guys, you know, second guy I had dinner with, he had just sold his business for $110 million. And then, but by the end of that week and by the end of that first year, I was like, yeah, I do belong here. They're no smarter than me. I can figure this out. They just, they just use their genius to, at a higher point of leverage.

Can I, I, I don't, I didn't want to go down this road too much, but I think it's important because you, you mentioned masterminds twice and I have one final question for you. But I think for the mastermind point, um, I see value in it, obviously with people that haven't gone into it yet, there's always apprehension towards paid pay-to-play kind of programs and whatnot. So question is, how do you figure out what is actually gonna help you versus what is smoke and mirrors and BS? Because I feel like there's too much of that out there. So what's your process of figuring out what's— Tony Robbins is a big name. I mean, that's a big— but other ones aren't so big.

Sure. I think you gotta test, you know, no, Hey, know the leader ideally, or connect, do an interview with him. Just as they're interviewing you, you interview them. Secondly, look at the real testimonials and real results. Thirdly, do you resonate? Do their values intersect with yours? Do they seem like they are supportive and they believe in you? What's the risk factor as well? Do they have a guarantee? Like how often add a guarantee. I have a basic guarantee, but I'll add additional guarantees if I feel like, hey, I can truly help this person, but they're on the fence and they just need a little extra risk removal. I'll take on the risk, you know, I'll say, hey, hey, if we go through this and you don't, you know, do XYZ— like one of my favorite stories, Kristen Boss, she came to me, she was a $100,000 a year hairstylist in a tough, tough spot in her life because she had all these home repairs. Her husband was in between jobs and all that. But she's like, she actually had applied for my mastermind back in April, I think it was, and it's October. So she had said, I can't afford it at the point. Well, I launched a low-ticket, like $2,500 program. She's like, Mike, I can, that would take up like the last amount on my credit card. I was like, all right. She's like, I can't do it unless— if you really think I will get results, I will do it, but you got to promise me that you'll get results, that I'll get results. I was like, Kristen, you'll get results if you do the things we ask, but you got to do them. Like, you can't just, you know, absorb knowledge. And sure enough, she did them, and she did them and then some. Like I said, hey, you got to do 10 discovery calls with who you think your ideal client is so you get intimacy with them. And you get your 4% client. Well, she does the 25 discovery calls. That program is in October and November. It's a 6-week program. By the end of it in December, she does $28,000 a year in her first full month. Really, she was still a hair salon, so she's doing it 20 hours a week. Then January, February, same thing, $28,000, $25,000, $26,000, whatever. I think in March she did $40,000 for the first time. June, she did $60,000. By the end of the year, she did over $1 million. She tripled what I thought she could earn. Actually, I was like, I think you can do $360,000 because she ended up joining one of my masterminds too. And I had guaranteed her that I would initially on that first investment, I said, hey, I'll give you your money back if you don't get basically 10x return, but you have to do the exercises. And so, You know, I'd say I bat about 75-80%. I don't nail it for everyone. And but sometimes there's some, you know, there's 3 seasons that many of us are in. We're either in the seed planting season, we're in a growth season, or we're in the harvest season. The massive external results come in the harvest season. Like, she was in a growth season, but she was pretty close to harvest season. I just needed to fine-tune a few of the things that she needed an irresistible offer for ideal client or zone of genius need to be dialed in, which we did all those things. So, that's my 2 cents. And I'd say also, don't operate from scarcity. I mean, 80% of the investments I've made in myself, I've invested over $500,000, they paid off, 80% of them, but that's still 20%. Hasn't paid off, but that's still a learning lesson. And, and so that's my two cents is like, man, the wealthy have a different embrace of failure and mistakes. They don't see like Sarah Blakely's dad used to ask her when she was a kid, hey, what did you fail at today? She had a different interpretation of failure. So go for it. I think in life, more often than not, our biggest mistakes are not going for it.

Agreed. Agreed.

Good.

And last question, what does success mean to you?

Being aligned to my purpose, impacting and serving and unleashing people's God-given potential, and going for it, not playing small, like playing full out. Not sure how to tackle your taxes? Are you sweating the small print?

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