Courage, Confidence, and The Least Likely Way To Make Money, With Michael Mogill

The most successful people, the largest firms, the ones that are like literally the 40, 50, 60, 70 million dollar firms, Roland, I kid you not. They're the ones who sit there and take the most notes. They ask the most questions you want to know in quotes. The least successful, the smaller firms in that room, they're the ones that sit back, they're the ones that don't take notes. They're the ones that have answers to all the questions. They've already read that book. They've already done that. And it's just interesting for me to see it from the other side.

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Welcome to the show. This is Darren Clark, the producer and we thank you for tuning in as always. Today Roland talks with Michael Mogul. He's the founder and CEO of Crisp Video Group, as well as a sort art of speaker, author and investor. Roland and Michael talk about what he believes are the keys to his success. And, and it's a great episode. So let's dive in. But not before I've asked you to make sure you hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts. So thanks again and let's get started.

Hey, everybody, Roland Frazier here with another episode of Business Lunch. And I'm very happy today to have my guest, Michael Mogul from Crisp Video. Michael, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

How are you doing today?

You know, it's all things Considered. Very well. It, it's interesting times when you're asked these questions, right, because you say great, phenomenal. People are like, really? At a time like this. But I would say that from the perspective of gratitude, there's so many things that when we look at a world where there's a lot going wrong, there's a lot of things also going right in our organizations, in our families, our teams and so on. So I would say from that standpoint, things are great.

I think that we should always have the permission from the rest of the world for it to be okay to be doing great no matter how bad things are. Right. It's not like there's only this much greatness. And when it runs out, like if I take more of the doing great than other people have less, it's hey, let's make the best of every situation, which you obviously have done. And I want to talk about a little bit.

When I see someone who's doing really well and is succeeding in any period of time, in any period of history, to me that's inspiring. I look at it from the standpoint of like, wow, like, even look at Tesla, for example, right? At a time like this, and so many people were shorting Tesla and so on, to see them succeeding, I think that's a wonderful thing that's good for everyone to see any business leaders succeed.

I agree. And it's, you know, for much to the chagrin of those who are not happy about that. It helps the economy, it helps the people that work for those companies. It puts jobs together. I mean, there's a lot of good that comes from that. So screw those people that don't want.

To see people doing well.

I say, and I'm happy that you're doing well.

Thank you.

That said, let's talk about what you're doing well at. Will you give kind of a little who I am right now and what's going on, and then we'll kind of delve into the background of it all.

Okay. Well, so I run a company called Crisp Video, and I guess the video at this point is a bit of a misnomer, but we are a law firm growth company, so we specialize and focus on working with law firms in the legal industry nationally, so all across the country. And we do everything from create content for them, so creating video content for the web and even traditionally TV and so on, to actually marketing and placing that content, to now working with them on a coaching capacity to where we're helping them with everything in terms of hiring, culture, processes, systems, those aspects of business development. And it's interesting, I imagine someone listening to this and was like, why couldn't he just stay in his lane with the videos?

Right?

He started in 2012, and I've been hearing this since 2012. Even when we started the marketing, they're like, why didn't you stick to the videos? And we introduced the coaching, and they're like, you know, stay in your lane. There's, you know, it's as if the only people that can enter, you know, almost like a vertical are ones that just go into that net, do it as an extension of something else. Right. So for us, it was always very natural. So we realized very early on, you create a great video, but if the client wasn't able to really place it or get eyes on it from their ideal clients, then it wasn't really as valuable to them. So we say, okay, well, let's become great marketers and let's help place this content. And then we realized, let's say you get really good at marketing and you drive tons of leads and the phone's ringing. But you don't know how to answer the phones, right? So there's an intake problem or the people that you have in that organization are not aligned, the culture's a mess. Would that not also impact the return from the marketing? So for us it was just a natural extension of one to the next.

So wait a minute, you're telling me.

That you have the audacity to create.

Something that satisfies a need and then you see additional needs and you satisfy those needs too? What the heck, man?

It's a crazy concept, right? That's always what it was interesting about it is that we were never the first to any of this stuff. We were not the first company that was producing legal videos, doing legal marketing, or even legal coaching. There's usually a large array of companies that are already doing whatever that area of business is. Where I think the differentiator was that I didn't see someone that was either addressing a certain segment of the market or that was doing it really, really well. I think that, you know, when there's not as. So I think competition is good, but when there's not enough of it within a particular lane, if you will, that people grow complacent and that the standard of what is excellent or good enough is not high enough. So if you come in and do something really, really well, one other companies in that space are going to get really upset at you, right? They're not going to like what you're doing to their business and their livelihood if They've coasted for 20 years, changing nothing. But it's really good for consumers and it's good for clients.

I couldn't agree more. So how did you get started in your entrepreneurial journey? What was kind of the, the early mogul. Moguling.

It's always like a childhood story, right? So if you go back to the childhood. So my, my family and I, we immigrated from Eastern Europe and when I was four years old, it was like my parents, my grandparents, my brother and I and they came here with basically $500 to their name. They didn't speak the language. And you know, it's of course America is the land of opportunity and you have almost like that common immigrant story. But it, you know, my, my parents, my dad was an engineer, my mom was a nurse. But when they came here they had to start over. So my dad is a mechanic and my mom's a hairdresser. And when we grew up poor, everything from like low income housing and so on. But I will say the advantage that I had was My parents were very supportive. They invested a lot in our education. They valued education, all those things, and I guess being entrepreneurial at an early age. I remember I was 13 years old and this is, it's almost. I used to joke that I think I was born like five years too late, you know, or like, you know, or 10 years too late because this is when the dot com boom has taken off and, and I'm creating websites. So literally at 13 years old, my mom is letting my clients in quotes in the front door of our home and I'm designing websites for them, for tutoring companies and so on. And that wasn't like a traditional thing for a 13 year old to do if you dial it back. Even prior to that, I'm getting in trouble in class because it's the trading of baseball cards and pogs, if anyone remembers those things. So I would trade those. The school, the elementary school at the time viewed that as gambling. So my parents, my immigrant parents are called in and you know, they're like, why? You know, anytime you're brought in, it's almost like, what have you done? Like, this is an embarrassment. Like, you know, keep it together, right? Just. Why would be called in for this?

I got it. Now I have to ask, because I used to actually sell pogs. We ran television commercials and the whole deal during the big POG craze. Do you know what POG stands for and what the origin of those things was?

No. I would love to know.

It makes absolutely no sense. But POG stands for pineapple, orange guava. Because those little pogs were under the caps that were on pineapple originally. Pineapple, orange guava drinks. And people just started collecting them. It took off and it was really funny. So I just happened to know that random bit of trivia because we sold so many of those things during that time. That's so funny. Okay, so you were a POG trading website building rebel. And then what did you do?

Well, so the options that I had, you come from an immigrant family. It's. You basically have doctor, lawyer, you know, you scroll down, it's like ISIS and then entrepreneur, right? So like those are your, those are your choices. And so when I went to school, I was a biology major. I was pre med. I took the mcat, I got into med school. And it, you know, I spent about, I think it was like 100 hours shadowing surgeons and physicians and so on. And being entrepreneurial, I did not like what I was seeing. Like, I.

Now, did you see opportunities then as well? Because obviously you had already been an entrepreneur for some time.

So I. This is something I'm looking backwards, I guess it's all necessary, if you will. But it's almost like I put that entrepreneurship hat on pause for a minute to go down this traditional route that a lot of people around me were like, this is the way to go. Right? Like medical school, become a doctor. This is the safe path. And I understand now having a child of my own. I get that. So I basically, even after I got in, the first thing I did was I put in for a deferral because I was like, look, I'm not sure this is the route I want to go. Lucky for me, this is 2008, the recession hits and here I am, honors graduate that got accepted to med school. I am washing dishes at a dive bar. Okay. This is the only place that would hire me because they didn't actually care about where you went to school. Jobs were not as plentiful. And I'm lost meaning that I know that I don't want to go to medical school, but at the same time, I don't know what else I want to do. So fortunately, I went from washing dishes at this dive bar to. To washing lab equipment at the cdc. Right. And I had a unique opportunity there. From there over a year, I was able to. There was another opportunity, ironically, designing websites at the CDC for CDC.gov and doing like section 508 compliance and the accessibility because it was a government mandate that all documents had to be made accessible for screen readers and the blind. And when I was there, I remember, so of course that's a 9 to 5. I remember showing up at 7am because I didn't want to show up, sit in traffic. And I remember leaving at 7pm because I also didn't want to sit in traffic. And what I would do is I would. I would go through a new like, development book every single week. So, like web development. I learned PHP, JavaScript, I even started learning, like I studied for a CSCS, like in sports medicine.

Yeah.

Because I was like, look, what do I do? Do I go get an mba? Do I do what have you? And then I'll shorten the story because I'll condense the rest of it. But I bought a camera. I remember, like a photography camera. And I figured this would be a nice lifetime skill to learn because I was like, who? You know, photography is great. Like, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful to have that type of skill set to just take great pictures? And you know, with me, hobbies almost become Obsessions. So if I'm going to do it, it's like it can't just be something I do casually. I've got to make almost like a career or business out of it. And I had an opportunity to take pictures for a friend of mine that I went to high school with. He was working as a bartender at a nightclub. I started taking pictures. So I'd work at the CDC basically from that 7 to 7, and then from that 8pm to 3am every night, pretty much during the week, weekends included, I'd be taking pictures at this nightclub. And then I saw something and I'm like, well, I can't be in two venues at once. And I can't. So I brought on another photographer and another photographer. And over the next four years we had 90% of the market share in Atlanta of all the bars and restaurants and event venues in Live Nation. And then we, you know, we integrated video and so on. But I very quickly realized that I was sitting at the wrong table. So like, meaning that 90% of the people in my industry wouldn't wake up till noon. About 50% of the venues our clients would turn over every year. So they literally just go out of business when it rained. Like if it was, if the weather outside wasn't good on a Friday night, that was, you know, it was our fault. Right? So I just, I realized that here we are with 90% of the market share in our city and like what we were doing so well when it came down to revenue and profitability, it was literally I would sit in a three hour meeting with a venue owner over $50 and I was like, you know what, we could be doing something else. We could sit at another table and let's say any more competitive strategic business. So at the time I looked at the one corporate client we worked with, which was the W hotels, and I was like, well, let's start a video company around just corporate clients, corporate video clients and just work with them. And you know, that's how Chris Boerlee was born, basically. Think back into this. Everything was about like doing something, getting off the ground quickly. Because I remember TechCrunch, the first time ever they came to Atlanta, somebody reached out to me and they're like, would you be willing to just film this event TechCrunch for free, but they'll give you a booth. And Chris did not exist. We didn't have a logo, we didn't have a website, nothing. I didn't have any employees. And I was like, sure. I got this call on Thursday, the TechCrunch event, I think was on a Tuesday, Thursday, Tuesday. We had a logo, a website. I didn't have a team and I just called up some of my friends to work this booth and we produced this video for TechCrunch that this is where we got, I think, a bit lucky. We branded it all about TechCrunch. We used their brand guidelines, we made it all about them. And they featured us on the front page of TechCrunch with that video, which is great when the company's starting because we weren't marketing, you know, we weren't promoting us. We were just saying, let's just do something really great for them. And, you know, we worked with different businesses and brands, everything from Coca Cola and Verizon and so on, like the kind of that corporate route. But we didn't really make, in my view, much progress, at least exponential progress, until we started to really niche down. And, you know, early on I was told, don't start a video company. You won't be able to compete with the agencies or with TV. There's no future in online video. This is 2012. But even then, when we were working with these big brands and so on, I saw that, well, there's a lot of decision makers, things move very slowly. And it's the small businesses that I felt we can make the greatest impact for. So randomly a law firm, she reaches out to us, has no online presence. We create a video for her and then a series of videos, her business explodes. We did it for another firm and then another firm. And I look at the legal industry, which I'm not a lawyer, I knew nothing about, and I saw right off the bat that not a whole, like literally not a whole lot of change in the past 20 years as far as legal advertising is concerned. The things that I saw were true, was that there was an abundance of supply in terms of, like law firms competing. They were super competitive. At the same time, there wasn't a whole lot of trust and goodwill from consumers towards lawyers. Like they weren't well regarded, like doctors. And, you know, being as competitive as it was, this industry was largely commoditized. So there were very few firms at the top in any market that would get the bulk of the cases. And then if you were a solo or a small firm, even if you were the best lawyer, but you weren't the best marketer, you would be at a tremendous disadvantage. It was not a level playing field. So I looked at what we did and I said, well, we're pretty good at this. Decommoditization side of, like, actually humanizing businesses and brands and like, articulate, you know, telling their stories and so on. So maybe there's something here. And as we started to niche down and dialing into legal, the business doubled every single year for seven years straight.

That's awesome. That's really cool. What a great story. So it sounds like you started broad with the video. Like lots of different, just kind of whatever comes which is. Makes sense. Like when you're just getting into something, you have no idea, and then you. You really focus down into the legal area. And then you broadened again, but broadened within the niche of law to do other services because you saw that there was an opportunity and they all related directly to what you're doing. It's not like you said, I'm going to get into 3D modeling of accident renderings and things like that, right?

Well, yes, and I would also say that so what we do today, I wanted to do back in 2012, but I did not feel that we had done enough to establish enough credibility. And quite frankly, we hadn't. And also so, like, you know, to help other business owners and to help them kind of navigate the various business challenges, to me is, you know, as someone who went through a tremendous amount of sacrifice and suffering, you know, that did not know the cause and effect behind decisions, didn't know why, like a person would work out versus one that would not work out, you know, what would get the phone ringing more versus less. Like that just did not understand that. And I think this is what creates a lot of stress amongst business owners to where they just don't know. Like, you can't differentiate a good decision from a bad decision because they don't see the matrix.

Right.

They don't understand, like, the, like the operational aspect tying in to client experience and then also tying into the culture and the leadership aspect and getting the right people in the right seats and scorecards and all these different things. But when you learn those things, not only did my life improve tremendously. So I started Kris, ironically, just as my family came over here with $500. I started crisp with $500 to my name. And I'm hearing for years, like, can you give this up and just go back to med school? It wasn't actually until recently that my parents were like, okay, we're fine with this. You're legit. Yeah, if you want. If you have immigrant parents and you want them to accept you, just write a book, you know, and like that, then they'll, you know, they'll be like, okay, you know, you wrote a book. So, you know, throughout that entire process, I will say that, like, it's when you kind of see the Matrix and we're all still learning, I'm still learning and so on. But it just becomes a lot more enjoyable when you understand the cause and effect behind various decisions.

Right.

And when you. When you don't, it is, I think, one of the greatest, like, almost like miseries that you can have because, like, the business is down and you don't know why. Yeah, that's a scary place to be.

Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

So if you were going to do.

This again today, knowing what you know now and not wanting to do legal because there's this behemoth called Crisp that's like, totally owns that market, what would.

You do in terms of industry or how would I approach?

Let's say that. Let's say you got 500 bucks now, but you've got all the knowledge that you have now. You don't have the contacts, but you've got the knowledge.

What, what.

What do you think you would do?

Well, I mean, right off the bat, and I look back at this because there's, like, some lessons it took us way too long to learn.

Right.

I would very much focus on the people first and getting the right people around me and then documenting everything that we were doing from the onset. Right. So, like, it's. It's not. Let's. Let's document the processes after. You know, we have 50, 80 people in the organization. We're all, you know, working with a thousand clients. Right. It's like, let's do that from the onset so you can build it to scale. And. But I think the biggest thing for me is just that my mindset towards, like, how I approach all this stuff altogether, I have some regrets is looking back and just not being willing to place bigger bets sooner. So I give the analogy of, like, sitting around on a blackjack table and you're gambling at $5 chips, right? And at best, maybe you'll get up to 30 or $50, but you're never leaving that table with a thousand dollars. And the longer the people postpone that, the more, like, you know, they kind of limit themselves from accomplishing those great leaps. So, $500 today. What's so interesting about this question is I don't look at it as what would I do with the 500? I would look at it with you give me zero today. I think the thing that no one can ever take away from you, which is Kind of the value of learning all these lessons is just the, it's almost like the courage that you gain and the confidence you gain through like results that you've driven before. So in knowing, okay, now there's a network of people that you can reach out to, you've developed relationships with that it's not even about the 500. It's like on any given day, if necessary, there's someone that you could reach out to where if you needed capital, you could get some capital. Right. Which was not the case in 2012 because I say that I bootstrapped the business, but it was not necessary by choice. It was the fact that there was not a bank on this earth that was willing to give a loan to someone starting a service based business in 2012. And you know, really no, like, I guess not a whole lot of business experience period. Right. They're willing to do it now. But yeah, that was a blessing then. So I guess the main thing is just that knowing what I know today, I think that this journey that's taken eight years to where we are now, I could probably do now in probably three maybe.

And the primary reason is, the primary.

Reason is just now, I guess having confidence in our ability to find and hire the right people from a, you know, a process standpoint of being able to put those in place. Also an understanding of just. I would go into another niche, I would go into another niche market. I wouldn't try to be the, you know, the company for everyone. I would have skipped the whole like Coke, Verizon, you know, Red Bull, all that stuff and just gone very narrow. And then I'd also look at, okay, the clients we're going to work with, what are their clients investing in them. Because I think that's a big pitfall where if, let's say you go into an industry, I'll just give like dental as an example. You know, the average patient value of dentists say over, over the course of a year is like a thousand dollars.

Right.

So they're going to be limited in the amount that they can invest in marketing compared to, let's say a law firm where they can have an average client value of, you know, six or seven figures and then they collect a fee that's a third of that. So that then expands their ability to invest in their business, in their team and in their marketing. Super smart. I always look at like, who are the clients of our clients to make sure that that makes sense and if, if our clients are also miserable. So I'm just continuing to Use dentists as an analogy, like the dentists in most dental practices. Like, that person is also the person who's working every single patient. Right. It's like it's almost as if their office manager, the person who does not own the practice, is really the one running the practice. And they are so tied into the business that they are the primary producer of that business that if they get sick or you take them out of it, this is why many of them are just generally not happy. Right, right. So I would be very, very careful about the industry that we select and the clients that we work with for that very reason.

Right off the bat, think that you'll expand outside of law.

You know, I get asked this. So the. I believe so I'm the type of person where I want to continue to grow and grow and grow and grow because to me, it's just an exciting journey to just see the different levels of managing a larger team and, you know, helping more clients and just be the capabilities that gains us. So, like being able to host a conference and all these things. But my answer to that, which I get asked a lot, is that I think that that makes sense once there's a level of saturation already established where the growth rate essentially slows. Like, if we were not growing 200% year over year, I would say absolutely, it does make sense to expand elsewhere. But while we are as hard as it is to say no at times, it's just that the power of focus is so amazing because we've been offered opportunities and everything in automotive and, you know, orthodontics and dentistry and all these things that we could do because there's always the random dentist or the optometrist or the plastic surgeon or whoever that reaches out and says, will you guys shoot a video for me? And the answer back in 2012, 13 was like, yes. I mean, we do a video for anybody.

Does it pay? Does it pay? Yes, we will.

I love the people talking about, like the principles and like the, you know, the privilege and luxury that they say that they would have when you have no money coming in and you have like, you know, an office to pay or team members and you have payroll due, you know, at that point. Yes, to everything I remember. I mean, just give you an example. We had a client back in the early years where it was the secretary of a high powered CEO. He could never make it to his son's soccer games. So they wanted us to come out and film his son playing soccer so his dad could watch him later. And I'm like, okay. But I didn't realize how strange that would be at the time because we sent one of our team members to film a young child. Right. Playing soccer, which was a little weird. Right, Right. But now as I look back to that, having a child of my own, I'm like, what a failure that would be to have to hire somebody to film my kid so I could watch it later. Because I couldn't do that.

Yeah, yeah, it really would. You mentioned confidence and courage. What do you think the difference is between those two?

Yeah, well, so courage, in my view, is one of those things where it's just, you know, it's being terrified but doing it anyway. So it's an example being, you know, when we launched the client referral program for the first time, I think it was in 2017, people were giving away like Amazon gift cards and, you know, Apple gift cards. And we said, tesla, right? We're gonna give away the $77,000 Tesla. That is a courage move. Because I'm clearing out my savings account. I have no idea what the outcome will be. I hope people will. I hope it'll work, but I have absolutely no idea. And I'm just saying, all right, let's just do it. To me. So courage is not like storming in the face of battle. It's being terrified and doing it anyway. And courage you could do at any business level, at any resource level. It's just pulling the trigger and writing the check or making the commitment or whatever it is. And I actually think, ironically, courage is the biggest separator of people at different levels of revenue and different levels of just business achievement. You know, we have multiple coaching programs at different levels, and then there's the firms that are under a million, and then there's the firms that are seven and eight figures. And if you were to really say, what is the difference between these two? And it is one group is just has more courage or they, you know, they've been willing to employ more courage and place those bigger bets. They're not always, you know, they're not necessarily smarter people. They're not harder working people. Like, you know, people are smart and hard working, you know, especially those in law degrees. But the one who's willing to invest in hiring five team members at the exact same time versus the one that deliberates on that decision for a year straight, you know, who do you think makes more progress faster? The other thing on confidence. So I always look at the interplay between confidence and ego. So ego, to me is one of those things where it's like you pound your chest, but at night, when you go to sleep every night, you know, I was talking to my wife about this the other day. I was like, I just believe that everybody knows themselves. So no matter how great you tell yourself that you are, how successful you are, or whatever it is at night when you go to sleep, you know, whether, like, you are a person of value, who is doing, you know, who's actually making an impact, making a difference, you know, you sleep well at night, or maybe you don't, But I think the only way to gain confidence is with results. It is the only way. It's the. I think anything else is ego. And some of the most successful people that I meet have some of the greatest amount of humility. And our coaching programs is an example. This is because you learn so much from the other side. Yeah, the most successful people, the largest firms, the ones that are like, literally the 40, 50, 60, 70, $70 million firms. Roland, I kid you not. They're the ones who sit there and take the most notes. They ask the most questions, you want to know in quotes. The least successful, the smaller firms in that room, they're the ones that sit back. They're the ones that don't take notes. They're the ones that have answers to all the questions. They've already read that book. They've already done that. And it's just interesting for me to see it from the other side.

Yeah, it is, really. Over the last five or so years, and even in traveling a lot, it's become clear that the things that last for centuries, the things that are legacies, are built with shocking amounts of detail. We were in Russia at a church, and it was a church where that was built to honor one of the czar's fathers who was assassinated on the spot where it was built. I think it's the Church of the Holy Blood or something like that. And it was because he was assassinated in 1824 or something like that. The thing is 1824 meters high. And it's all of this symbolism that went into it. So is it magical that they did that? Does that what makes it great that it was, you know, it was this number of meters high or whatever it was for the year that he died? No, it was that the thought that was put into it was so great that that meant that that thought went into every detail, even the ones that didn't correspond to some, you know, something kind of gimmicky like that. And you see that over and over. Exactly what you said. The People that are the most successful are the most dedicated, and they're thinking through every single little aspect of it, and that's what makes all the difference. Like you do at your events and when you're creating the things that, you know that serve your people, it's really funny. I'm wondering, though, if you were whispering in the ear of you back in. That was, what, 11 years ago or 12 years ago, 2008. If you were whispering in your ear when you said at the time that you didn't have the confidence at that time or you didn't think that you had the credibility to go out, would you whisper something different about confidence or courage to that. That version of yourself?

You know, so. So I always wonder, it's like, do we become the people we are without going on the necessary path that we have to go through? Right? Because, like, maybe if I did that, I'd be, you know, I'd be in a different place today. It's like, if you don't skip those Thanksgiving dinners and those Christmas, you know, and you're sitting in the office on those nights and, you know, when everybody around you is basically leaving you and saying that, like, this is a waste of time, time. You should give it up. Like, do you. Do you harden yourself in a way that's necessary, I think that withstand, you know, greater adversities down the line. So I don't know, but I would say if I'm talking to my younger self, you know, let's say pre. Pre Crisp and before starting the business, the best thing. And I've been giving this a lot of thought recently. It just, you know, we launched the podcast and I started speaking to so many of, like, just successful industry thought leaders and like, legal and outside of legal. And the prevailing trait that I saw in all of them was that they knew themselves. Like, knowing thyself. So, like, meaning that if you know who you are, it's like all you do is focus on aligning yourself in a role that's in alignment with your strengths, and that's it. And I would have told my younger self that rather than trying to be, you know, all these other things are being good at strengthening weaknesses, for example, to just lean in on your strength and then surround yourself with people who are good at all these other things. And it's just when I say know thyself, it's not everyone, you know, if you don't want to build a ginormous company and, you know, just all these things, you don't have to. I've actually It's. There's no nobility in doing something that is not in alignment with who you are and what you want to do. You can set yourself up for, you know, just a life of misery almost, if you're not doing that. But I will say that when. When you do know yourself. So, like, for example, if you put me at Home Depot, I'm, like, terrible, like, building things and like, you know, maps and 3D and everything. I am a below average employee at Home Depot. Like, that same Michael, even today, you put me here at Crisp, and you're running an eight figure business. And that, to me is so amazing in the sense of, like, if people could just focus on putting themselves in the right role. So maybe it's entrepreneur, maybe it's not. Maybe you're the cfo or maybe it's the COO or whatever it is, and you could just live a much happier, fulfilling life. So, I mean, it's just being very clear on knowing yourself. I think you go through this process of whether it's. You give yourself multiple assessments. Like, we've done things like print and Colby and Wonderlic. I'm like, I love these things. The more that I can learn about myself and how I operate, the more introspective that I can be. And then reflecting back on past experiences and seeing, okay, this worked really well. Or this, you know, I was in my unique ability, or I was not in my unique ability. And just leaning into that completely.

Yeah, that's really, really cool. What are some of your. So you read quite a bit. What are some of your favorite books that gave you big breakthroughs in thinking or contributed to big breakthroughs in thinking that maybe people haven't heard of? And I know that's a tough question. So if you need to think about it for a minute, that's okay. And if you can't think about it, it's totally cool. Because that is a very tough question.

Yeah. You know, one that keeps coming to mind recently, because I think I've given this recommendation like two dozen times in the last, like, three months is Give and Take by Adam Grant. And it's this whole concept about, like, why helping others drives our success. And I remember in my early days, you know, when, you know, when you're broke and you're poor and someone's talking about, well, just help others win and, you know, all these things and just give.

Easier to say when you don't need to eat.

I was like, this sounds like something rich people say, right? You know what? I did not realize at that Time it took me many years to learn was that actually it's how rich people get rich, right? When you can focus. So. So if you're focusing on how do I make money? I've generally found that that's like the least likely way to make money. If you're focusing on how can I help other people succeed and how do I help somebody else make money, you know, or whatever their, you know, the impact is that you're making, and you do that enough time, not only do you create stability and security for yourself from the standpoint of, you know, I told our team, like, even as Covid first hit, I was like, look, if we are helping our clients grow and succeed, like, if you're helping them make money, you know, you don't have to worry about job security. You don't have to worry about your place in the market. Like, there's always a place for someone who's helping somebody else succeed. So it's always from that standpoint of. And that's where every, you know, every value extension of everything that we do comes from is of, how do we help them succeed at a greater level? How do we help make an impact at a greater level? And I didn't realize how important it would be to really understand that and internalize that. I think sometimes when you tell someone something, it's not the same as showing it and experiencing it. So it's the same thing as, like, you know, people of course, believe that. I'll just give an example like that, you know, there's exchanges of currency of, you know, 100 million plus. But if somebody showed you a check for $100 million, that's different, right? It's like, you know, it exists, but if you see one right in front of your eyes, it's different. And this actually shaped my childhood early on. So somehow in the first grade, I still don't know how my parents did this. This is like a testament to how they just made things happen. I was able to go to a private school. There's this Jewish private school. And we had a total of, I think, 20 people in our entire, like, school. And this is a school that now it's like tens of thousands of dollars each, you know, each year to even attend. But I was the sponsored child, right? So I was the one that they're like, look, the teachers and the students made that very clear to me, you know, and you're in first and second grade. That's like, you know, they made very clear. They all lived in mansions. And I was the one that was being driving an hour. My parents would drive an hour and a half to school. But as tough as that was, and they make fun of my parents and their accents and everything, and, like, you know, it's tough. As a young kid, the best thing that ever happened with that is when I would go to my friend's house, when my parents would drop me off, and I would see someone living in this mansion with a fountain and a gate and all these things. And as a young kid, you're like, okay, this is possible. Like, I didn't even know this existed, but now I see it. And that, to me, was very inspiring. And I figured, okay, well, they did it. You know, there's a way, right? So that was a very powerful experience for me to have at an early age.

That's really, really cool. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out and visit with us. If people want to connect with you or Chris for any of the cool stuff that you're doing, what are the best ways for them to do that?

Yeah, so you can go to the website, crisp video.com. i also started this thing where we give the phone number out. The team made me the shirt so I would never forget what my number was. So it texts me and I actually respond. It's like a community number, but for.

The people that are listening but not watching. Let's read that shirt to them.

404-531-7691. You can shoot me a text and I'll respond. And if it's anything relating to anything we've discussed, I'm more than happy to chat. In a way, I will say that I've gotten pretty. I joke with the team that I'm like, I'm kind of useless around here, which is, like, my proudest, you know, accomplishment ever. Absolutely took so many years. Meaning that I joke that I pretty much don't do anything every day. So I have meetings with people about things they're going to do. Right. But that's like my whole day. Like, I'm literally. Or I'll do, like, a podcast growing, like we're doing now. And that's just. It's kind of funny to me. Like, that to me, doesn't feel like work when I'm meeting with somebody about something they're gonna do.

It's kind of nice.

Awesome.

And what about social or podcasts or anything like that? I think you've got some more stuff like that. You want to share that.

So there's a book and a podcast by the same name. It's called the Game Changing Attorney. That book is on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and then the podcast is on itunes and Spotify. So the podcast, which I'm super excited about, am I allowed to promote a podcast on a podcast?

Of course, yeah.

I appreciate that. But this is basically me interviewing market leaders. Even though it's called Game Changing Attorney, we feature guests like Chris Voss and Hal Elrod and Gino Wickman and so on. So it's been, you know, you don't have to be a lawyer to listen to the podcast, just as you don't have to be a lawyer to listen to the book. But I would recommend that this is on the note of like, really niching down is that when I wrote the book and I worked with scribe and Tucker and his team, the book, even though it's called the Game Changing Attorney, could be called the Game Changing Marketer, the Game changing orthodontist, the game changing anything. And you could do a find and replace. But I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that if you are going to be focusing in on a particular industry, then rather than trying to be all things for all people and, you know, all businesses across America, I believe you can make a lot more progress if you focus specifically on the industry or vertical that you're in.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, again, thank you so much for hanging out here today and always promote your podcast on a podcast, by the way, because the people who are listening or watching podcasts are the most likely to want to consume that kind of material. And so we want them to connect with you because we wouldn't have you here if we didn't want them to connect with you. Right.

Well, thank you for having me. It's a huge honor. I know some of the guests that have been on this thing, so I'm just, I'm humbled to even be invited to speak on this thing.

Awesome. Well, thank you again and I really appreciate it. And everybody definitely check out all of Mike's great stuff.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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