Why Expert Coaching is the Key to Your Success!

So you have these different personas, and you look at high performers, you know, Superman, Clark Kent, different persona. Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce. Kobe Bryant, Black Mamba. Actually, so Kobe Bryant develops this persona, Black Mamba, that helps sharpen how he shows up on the court.

Mike, it's so good to have you on the show. I've really been looking forward to this because selfishly I get to have more time with you, uh, as a friend. And, uh, you know, we've worked together earlier this year. Um, you coached me, we had like 90 days of working together, and I got to spend some time with you up in Nashville. And it was— it's been a great experience, and I feel like I had a lot of breakthroughs working with you. So I'm excited to bring you on to share with my audience, uh, some of what you do. So glad to have you, man.

Well, Graham, likewise, dude. Selfishly, I always love hanging with you as well, and it's, it's a joy, man. You're, you're You're a light and you're a creative genius and a gift to the world. And so it's going to be a ton of fun to dive in, man.

Oh, well, I'll send you $100 after this for saying all that. Thank you so much for obliging.

If your wife's mad at you, just shoot me her number and I'll remind her you're a gift to the world.

So yeah, what a great service. Can we do this like on retainer? I think that would be very useful. See, babe, I'm awesome. So Here's what I wanna start real quick, just a little bit of context for the audience with us, because I reached out to you, no, I was connected to you through Kristen Boss. I think she connected us. And I was looking for another coach. And specifically, I felt like I, the one way I described it to my wife was I feel like I just need someone to talk to, to like untangle some stuff in my head. It wasn't like a specific, I need help launching this product, or I need, it wasn't very pinpointed. And Kristen's like, I know the perfect guy. So she connected us. We, we jumped on a call together, and I, to be honest, didn't know much about what you did. I looked you up and I was like, well, he's worked with some really cool people. Um, I trust Kristen's opinion, and, and that's why referrals are so powerful, right? Because you trust one person and they recommend. But, um, man, you took me in some powerful directions. We did some work together regarding NLP and all that stuff we can unpack that, uh, I had never experienced before. And I learned things that were new for me and new about me. And I'm still unpacking some of that even after our official time has ended. And I almost feel like half of the time when I was working with you, I was like, what am I doing? I didn't fully understand the work we were doing in the moment, but it is becoming more evident as time passes. So it was just a wonderful experience. And I will just say, man, you are one of those people that the moment we got together, let's say for the VIP session in Nashville, You just like, you showed so much class and you loved on me so well and thoughtful touches and just like, you're the whole, you're the real deal. You're not just like, hey, I'm coming down from the mountain as the guru in this area, I'm gonna help you with this. You immediately became my friend and I think that's one of the things I loved about you. And you know, I've had a lot of coaches over the years, usually they're all incredible people, but not everyone kind of feels like a friend from day one. So just, I love everything about you, man. I love how you roll.

Dude, thanks, brother. And likewise, you know what, I see a lot of people that I end up working with, they're, they're stuck in some way and they can't pinpoint it. And so I kind of think of myself a bit like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, where he sees these formulas and just boom, he sees they're popping in their mind. Well, I see patterns, patterns of thought, patterns of behavior, patterns that are also going to self-actualize. Because when we When we are speaking and acting in a way today, it projects into tomorrow, projects into next week, projects into next month and next year. And I like to say our words today are boomerang tomorrow. You know, those words come back and they smack you in the face, the patterns, the beliefs, the identity, the energy. So to rewire our destiny, we often have to do that deep psychological makeup rewiring, which for me, I think it comes down to rewiring your identity, rewiring those beliefs that support that identity, and then thinking of how do I rewire the energy. So sometimes I think we can become emotionally constipated. How do I rewire that stuck energy so that it fuels whatever I want to create in the world? Because energy is the fuel. And Einstein and Tesla also talked about how the energy of the future, or the medicine of the future, is energy. And we're just now starting to understand it. There's so much I don't understand, so much that some of these, uh, astrophysicists still don't understand about energy. But, you know, if you tackle all three of those, you can rewire your whole psychological makeup.

So let's start with, like, what do you see? Let's, let's talk to entrepreneurs or anybody who's trying to achieve something in the world, because humans are humans.

Yeah.

What are the What are the blocks? Where are people getting stuck? And they think it's maybe it's an information problem or I just need a strategy problem. Where do you come in and help people when, and what is the problem they're actually facing like inside their head that they don't even know about? Like I didn't know I had some of these blocks.

Yeah, I think all of us were made up of what I would call programming. And programming is this unique mix of your worldview, your beliefs, the patterns that were almost seared in you as a child or as a young adult, as an entrepreneur, as a husband, wife, whatever. And then also the beliefs, the traumas, the societal norms that you've unconsciously accepted. Also the meaning that you've accepted about who you are, what you're capable of, and who you can become. Because unconsciously we make agreements all the time. And a lot of our agreements that we made, oh, this is what I'm capable of, someone told us when we were like 8 years old on the baseball field.

Yeah.

Wow. And self-worth, someone told us by their actions or inaction. And so we have to, you know, at the end of the day, our programming is not our fault, but by the time you're an adult, it is your responsibility. So taking ownership of, I gotta own reprogramming myself. Yeah, sure, I got suffered abuse, I suffered some things that were unfortunate, but I gotta rewire myself if I'm going to achieve the highest levels. And you look at a Tom Brady, LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, etc., Tony Robbins, John Gordon, you know, anyone in our space, if they've accomplished extraordinary things, you'll notice they have incredible, an incredibly strong identity, that then they got the beliefs to support that identity, and then their actions and their energy are positive momentum towards positive energy towards those beliefs and that identity. John Gordon knows he's gonna write another best-selling book. You know on your next book, your identity is strong enough, with Rebel, hey, you're gonna hit the list with the next one.

Yeah.

And then after you hit it, then the third one, you're gonna be like, I got this. Yeah. You know? And as long as you— so, I mean, yeah.

So tell me, like, cuz you're right. Like when we first started to talk, it was identity. That was the first thing you wanted to talk about. So explain from your perspective, why does identity precede everything else? Like why do we have to go with, wait, what do you mean my identity? Who am I? Who I think I am, what do I say? Why is that the most important thing and it affects everything else?

Yeah, I wrote in my book, The Genius Within, that your identity precedes your destiny. And when you think of your identity, so one of my favorite examples, and I think it was the first book I had you read as well, and David perceived him as king. So there's that verse in Chronicles where David had already been proclaimed the next king of Israel, but he hadn't accepted it. He didn't receive and agree with it yet. So it hadn't actually become part of his identity. It was part of his potential identity. When he accepted it, it says in Chronicles, "And David perceived he was king." When that shifted, then he received, accepted, and became, and was willing to step into that. So, it's almost like our identity is our self-label of who we are, what we're worth, and identity can be our how much money we're worth. Like, oh, I'm worth $100,000 a year, or I'm worth $1 million a year, or I'm worth $20 an hour, right? So rewiring, learning how, and there's also usually a gap. I was sitting with another entrepreneur that coaches a lot of female CEOs yesterday, and I was doing some rewiring on her while we were, it was a coffee meeting, but I was like, all right, let's see some limiting patterns here. And we worked through some of them and she, her language patterns, one of the things she was saying is also, it's hard. She said it's hard like 3 or 4 times within a 5-minute span. And I was like, Tiffany, let's observe your language because this story belief, it has to be hard, also reflects an identity. That it can't be downhill, it can't be smooth, it can't be in flow and creating and building and all that. And then you're going to be projecting that energy of struggle and Protestant work ethic and toxic hustle. And even though she's teaching women on how it can be easy and like, it doesn't have to be this toxic hustle culture, but her language patterns didn't support that identity and didn't support those beliefs. So then we started reframing it.

That's so powerful. It's interesting. Two things that come to mind for me. One, I don't know if you— do you know Cliff Ravenscraft?

Yeah, yeah, I know of him.

He was— yeah, yeah, he was the podcast answer man. Like, that was his thing years ago. He got like Michael Hyatt into podcasting. He got Amy Porterfield into podcasting. It's kind of wild. But he got into mindset coaching years later. But it, um, he, he shares the story of how when he was helping people with podcasts back in the day, like, he was like the guy to help you launch a podcast. It's like 17 years ago and nobody was podcasting or knew how to do it. He did freelance services for people and he had a client. He tells this story. He had a client who had a problem with his podcast setup. Cliff jumped on a call and within 2 minutes, like he charged by the hour, whatever, I might have been $50 an hour, $100 an hour, whatever it was. Within 2 minutes he solved the problem. He knew exactly what it was because this is what he's been doing for a decade.

Yeah.

And, uh, the guy was ecstatic and he said, great, send me the invoice. And Cliff never sent him the invoice for that, that hour of service. Cause he's like, it was only 3 minutes. Like he, and he never got paid for it. But he tells the story of how he believed for so long that if you spend a lot of time on something, you should be rewarded for it. And really we're learning, right? It's the opposite. Like if, if he could solve your problem in 3 minutes, it should charge 10x because now you have your whole hour back that you can go do whatever else. But it was a limiting belief of I am only worth the time I put into something. It was just similar to maybe Tiffany's like, it has to be hard or it has to, Yeah. Put in a lot of time and, and I know a lot of people struggle with that. So I think about that, like that's more of a money story and your identity related to money, which we did some work on, which was interesting. Uh, but then when you mentioned like my new book, like Rebel, it was interesting how with this book, I'm, and after working with you, I've been very intentional to apply some of the stuff we learned about visualization, watching my language, and Instead of like hoping I hit the New York Times or whatever the list would be, it's— I imagine what kind of person is a New York Times bestselling author? And I, I am that person. I am right. I am writing a book worthy of the list, even though I know it's an editorial list. And some people say, you know, it's not really about the best book. None of it's about— it's all bestselling. It's just, it's not really about best book. Uh, as Robert Kiyosaki pointed out with Rich Dad Poor Dad, he's like, it's not the best writing book, it's bestselling. It doesn't have to be a good book. Um, but I'm writing a book worthy of the list. I'm, I'm, and I imagine like the books being in every store and stacks of them in the airport bookstores. And, and I imagine, and I imagine it so much so that like it makes sense that I would write a New York Times bestselling book. And I have to almost assume that identity, which is then informing kind of how I show up and like, well, what would a person who's gonna launch a book that way do to make sure they move enough units, get enough press that the the team at the New York Times cares, 'cause they don't care how many units you move if they don't care about you or think, you know. And so it's just been an interesting process of like, you know what, I am a New York Times bestselling author. That's an identity I'm assuming, and I'm gonna speak around that, use language around that, and my actions are gonna come from that, I believe.

Yeah, 100%. And that's spot on, and that reflects, you know, how you shifted your identity in the last 6 months in the process of writing this book, process of us working together, you working with Rory and John and other guys. Where you committed, which also, as you commit, then you commit to growing into that identity, right? And, and then your story changes. The internal story. The most important story is the internal story, because then that is what is projected outwards, and also that is what we tolerate in life.

Wow.

Right? It's determined by our internal story. You get what you tolerate in life, right? So You shifted your internal story and you, like you said, in shifting from hope to what's it, what's it have to be like to be, what would, who would I have to be to write a best-selling book? And becoming, and then you see it's actually just a process. It's a process of becoming.

Yeah.

No different from, hey, if I want to drive down to Tampa and hang out with Graham, there's a process. I gotta boom, boom, boom, follow the roadmap.

So what do you think, where do you think people get stuck the most though? Like when they— because that's the problem, right, is when you're telling somebody this, that they obviously are stuck in some ways. How do you get someone to start the process of— it's not just, just think differently. Like you really believe that there's NLP, which you can explain if you want to, neuro-linguistic programming, if I have it correctly. Like there is literally grooves in our brain. Yeah. That are so well-worn, it's hard to think differently. So you have some things that you do to help rewire. Like, what does that rewiring look like? Because I loved how when we worked together, it wasn't just, well, Graham, stop thinking that. Think these different thoughts. It was a little more, it was more care involved of like, there's a reason why you think these thoughts. We have to kind of undo some of the damage first before we can create the new thoughts. Tell me about that.

Yeah, so Einstein, you know he was hit by a taxi Doing a thought experiment.

Poor guy. I just literally picture a picture of Einstein getting smacked by a taxi, and I don't know why. Sorry, I laughed. Sorry, Albert.

No, it's— but he was lost in his thoughts, and what he was doing— well, he was doing something magical though. So he was being lost in these thoughts. He solved the theory of relativity. Part of, part of how he solved the theory of relativity and won his Nobel Prize, was he'd be walking down the road doing these crazy thought experiments. In one of the thought experiments, he would see himself riding a light wave. So he's riding this light wave, so he's observing himself from a different perspective, and this light wave goes around like Mars or Saturn, and it bends because the gravitational pull has a pull on light. And he was like, all right, so that's— so something clicked. Where he saw that this is the formula for E mc². And it was because he saw himself from a different perspective. So like when we did the alter ego exercise, which Todd Herman popularized in his book Alter Ego, but I, I was doing it before his book ever came out because it's taught in NLP. So in NLP, we're teaching these different— you have different parts of yourself that make up yourself. Um, and this is also in Internal Family Systems from Dr. Richard Schwartz. And so you have these different personas and you look at high performers, you know, Superman, Clark Kent, different persona. Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce, Kobe Bryant, Black Mamba. Actually, so Kobe Bryant develops this persona, Black Mamba, that helps sharpen how he shows up on the court. But it's what happens is, so these neurogrooves that we have, it's kind of like the highway of the United States, right? It's already there, and to build a whole new highway, you have to tear down neighborhoods, tear down forests, swamplands, whatever. Uh, but you know, if you could just have a whole like fresh landscape to build something new and you have more creative freedom— so that's where you shift into tapping back into Einstein, who's obsessed with the power of imagination. So our brains don't know the, the difference between a reality and a very like if we're physically experiencing something, like the free throw shooter experiment. Yeah, where they—

so wild.

Yeah, versus just visualizing, intensely visualizing something. So then when we do an alter ego exercise like we did with you, then we shift you into this other state of you're connecting with a different part of you and then seeing those settings and experiences. Like, I remember we worked on like Grateful Graham and some other aspects, right? And And so you show up differently and relate differently to yourself and others, whether it's in business, whether it's in your marriage or family or whatever. And you, when you shift into that persona, it's like it's easier instead of just trying really hard. Trying really hard, if you're programmed a certain way, trying really hard isn't going to get it done. Yeah. You, because your brain, you know, by the time you're 25, most of your neural patterns are pretty, pretty firmly set unless you do radical things like, you know, move to a whole new country, learn a whole new language, create a radical upheaval in your life, or do like, you know, different psychedelic medicines that double your neuroplasticity. You are pretty wired for the way you're shown up. But if you create these alter egos, now you have freedom. My goal is to create internal empowerment for leaders to lead and guide their life and recognize that they are above even the person that's shown up today.