023: Helping Others Achieve the Next Level of Success with Mike Young

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned high performance coach. When odds are stacked against us, how do we shift and create everything from nothing? How do we level up when we aren't feeling it yet or we've had a big setback? On this podcast, I'll be talking to some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on this planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than they ever dreamed possible. Leveling up and creating everything from nothing. As a successful entrepreneur in 2008, Mike was living the dream. He had the house, the cars, and the ego that went along with it all. In an instant, his world was shattered. Mike lost his company, his income, and his confidence. Mike had to shift. He had to learn how to level up and be able to create everything from nothing. Today, with a new outlook on accountability, mindset in life, Mike Young focuses out helping some of the most popular personal brands stand out. Today. I'm so excited because I've got Mike Young here who is the makeover master. He is the one that has helped so many brands rebrand and create their image online, which helps them drive new business, create a new Persona, whatever it is that they want. And why I wanted Mike here is he had his ego bruised years ago when the housing market collapsed, and we're going to dive into that. Thanks for joining us, Mike. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

So, Mike, people see you online now and they see these brands that you work with and they think, oh, my gosh, this guy has it so together. He's so successful. But I know it wasn't always like that. Can you give us a glimpse to what it was like before? Like, what was your life like before this happened?

Yeah, I guess I'll go back almost 11 years. I ran a mortgage company and we had grown it from the ground up. I started with five business partners and we had six people, six partners, and we had six assistants that we started with. We grew it over a couple years to 250 employees and 10 offices, and the housing crisis in the US got the better of us. I knew it was going the wrong way for me, and I was miserable. I mean, I was just. I was at the point where I was getting a couple hundred emails a day. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. My son was one year old at the time, and I just had this feeling like I'm not living the life I want. I was lucky enough that my wife, when I came home one night and I said, I'm not doing what I want to be doing. I think I want to quit. And she in her own elegant way said, just quit.

Now, was this before the collapse of the market or was this during? Was this right before? Was this like.

No, I was during. I was, I was, I had, I had blind success from 1998 to 2003. I figured I could do it better. I wanted to create my company in a better way and have, you know, more income, more freedom, you know, all these wonderful things that you think the entrepreneurial journey is going to provide, which is like I wanted to be able to work for myself and who I wanted and set my own rules. And I created my own nightmare in a way is I created the opposite. I created a system where I was at the office all the time. I was tied to too many things. And so it was just this recognition that I needed something to change, even though I didn't know what it was. And literally two weeks later I quit. I was in my home office, I was sitting there and I was like, what do I do next? I literally quit the company. I got bought out for a dollar. I was lucky that I had partners that let me out. Just so it wasn't. The company had not collapsed yet. About eight months later they did a sale of the company to a bigger company, which was essentially a fire sale. They were just keeping the company alive by doing that sale. But I was sitting in my office like, okay, what am I going to do next? I naively thought this is going to be easy. I already built a multimillion dollar company to 10 offices and 250 employees. I can just do it again on my own. And that was not true.

So let me back up a little bit because you actually said a few things that I picked up as pearls that I don't even know if you recognize this. But you know, the more I talk to successful entrepreneurs, especially ones that have had mass failures and then rebuilt again, I hear this theme of the first time they built before the failure, that they were focused on working for self and more income. Like that was the driver and that there's this theme of when we just focus on the what's in it for us? Not the like, what's the bigger purpose to this? That it's like things just sort of align to create this issue. Which is interesting because the business you're in now is not about just working for myself and making more money. I mean, ultimately you get those things, but it's a different purpose.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that you always hear, you hear these like memes or you see them on Facebook or whatever you see, like, oh, if you have a big enough why, you can find out anyhow. And they all seem like BS a little bit until you recognize that they're true. Until you go through the process. And when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I didn't know what I was going to do. At first I had attached my meaning, my deeper inner purpose to I'm going to show my kid at the time, I'm going to show my kid, I now have two kids, but I'm going to show them what it looks like to watch their dad go after their dreams. Like watch me go after my dream life. And in my mind if I quit, it was showing my kids it was okay to settle. It was okay to get a bank job and a 401k loan and be in a cube and be miserable just for the paycheck. And that was unacceptable to me. That was like my deeper inner purpose. And then it led me through this process of creating over 50 brands. And it was really this discovering process for me. Like I was trying to discover who I was. I spent over a couple hundred thousand dollars on online courses and I was learning marketing and advertising. And what I didn't realize at the time was that it was a very creative way that I was masking my own self confidence issues and my own mindset issues.

What do you mean? What do you mean by that?

When the mortgage company went down and I felt like a failure, I felt like I was ashamed of how it went down. I felt like I let employees down, I felt like I let investors down. My first entrepreneurial experience, I tried to start a non profit financial literacy program for high school students and we took on investor money and we immediately ran that into the ground within five months. Um, it just did not work. And so I had a second instance right away where a business failure in my mind and it created massive self doubt for me. It created insecurity and self confidence issues and limiting beliefs. And I was, I was refusing to put myself back out on the dance floor again because God forbid if I did that I might fail again.

Yeah.

And I think it's healthy because I could have gone down the path of like taking heroin or something. Right. But I went down the path of consuming knowledge. I went down like I read, you know, thousands of books I on, on self development and marketing, advertising and funnels and all this stuff that people hear about. I took online courses, I went to events and it was only years later that the recognition of that was just me hiding, putting myself back out into the marketplace. It was me literally. It was creatively masking. I learned a bunch of stuff, but I wasn't putting myself back out there again. I wasn't helping people the way I wanted people. And that was like the light bulb going off for me when everything began to change.

Okay, so I have a bunch of questions now about this. So first of all, for those of you listening, especially if you did not get affected by the housing market, if they're young and they don't remember, it was traumatic for a lot of people. And in that time, what you were doing, what I was doing, we were also affected by it. And it really crushed a lot of egos. So in that moment when that collapsed, people that were uber successful, like, their lives fell apart in an instance is what it felt like. So some people just literally quit, gave up. Some went back to corporate. I mean, I know you said you're masking things, but how did you even pick yourself up every day to want to go learn and do this? Like, how did you do that? And if there was. You had lost all this money, like, what was happening with your, with your. In your family, and how were you talking yourself into, I'm going to learn. I'm going to still figure out something to create. When you were coming from this place of perceived failure, I would say it.

Wasn'T easy at times. It felt like a real struggle. I'm grateful that I did attach such a deep meaning to my kids because if in my mind, if I quit, it was showing them it was okay to live a settled life, to not go after their dreams, whatever they were going to be.

So that was your driving core motivator. That was your, like, I'm going to. This is what's going to drive me. And okay, so you had this very clear driving core motivator, like, it's my kids. I'm going to pick myself back up. Somehow you weren't attached to that industry, but somehow.

Somehow I was attached to the vision I was attached to. I wanted a life with. Without business partners, like multiple business partners. I wanted Life without getting 500 emails a day. I wanted to have income. I wanted the dream, you know, I wanted to work with who I want, where I want, when I want. I wanted to set the rules. So I was always attached to that. I had a very clear focus of where I wanted to be from a structure standpoint.

Got it.

And I did a really smart thing in hindsight, which is I didn't attach it to a certain business, I just said, this is the end goal I'm shooting for. And then I attached a deep meaning to why I can't quit. And the combination of those two things helped me through. In the beginning, I went through 15 months of no income. And then when I started my current company, I went through another 15 months with no income. And those. You really learn something about yourself when your ego is not attached to the stuff you have, you know? In 2007, I was a liquid millionaire by January. No, it wasn't January. It was about July 2008. So July 2007, I was a millionaire, had a big house, had fancy cars, all that stuff. July 2008, I'd lost everything and was even in debt.

What did you believe about yourself at that point? Like, what were you telling yourself before? I. Obviously you had this DCM with your kids, but what was that? The conversation in your head?

Negative. It was, I'm a failure, I'm a loser. I did have an ego that was attached to financial stuff at the time. Yeah, I was reading lots of books at the time about minimalism. I was reading books like Affluenza that was about. About this societal impact that we all go through these, these belief systems as we grow up and we are comparing ourselves to the Joneses all the time. And it's like, well, they have a nice house and nice cars. I need to have a better house and better cars. And for me, it was like, looking back, I'm grateful now. It was, it was not only stripped away all my stuff, but it stripped away my ego. It humbled me. But my story for a long time was a failure story. I mean, it took 2008 to 2012 before I was able to turn that around in my head. And then I had some things happen over the last few years where I invested into a mindset coach, I invested into coaches and mentors. And then things dramatically began to take off for me. Once I recognized that the root of the problem was my mindset, things began to shift.

Yeah, the mindset is so much and people overlook at it. They think it's woo woo. But if you believe you're a failure, you become a failure. If you believe you're powerful, you become powerful.

Yeah, I would say, like even three or four years ago, there's no way I'd be on this podcast with you. Like, my confidence was so not where I needed to be to just put myself out there and just do it. Like, you know, once, once you kind of start to tell yourself the true story. Like, I realized when I started putting myself back into the marketplace and I'd done all these trainings and read all these books, I started having impact with people and recognizing that it wasn't about me. I was literally robbing people of my experience by not sharing it.

Say that again. That is huge right there. Because people get so in their own heads. And you're right, what you just said.

Well, I just figured, like, it was like, I talked with somebody. I don't even remember who it was, to be honest, but I just said, here's my story. Here's the eight years it took me to figure this out, and here's what I went through. And if I could rewind, I would do this, this, and this. And I saw her have success in less than, like, eight weeks. What took me years. And it was like. That was like this light bulb for me. It's like, oh, my gosh, I'm robbing people of the experience that I've already had. If I could tell them that mindset's the key. If I could tell them that you've got to prove your business model in the marketplace, then you've got to look the part. Then you've got to blow up your pr. Like, I could share my story and have a deeper impact with more people. Like, that was a huge turning point for me.

Oh, my gosh. I love that. I love that. So then it sounds like what happened, though, is then you. You were clear on your driving core motivator. You're clear on the mindset. You're believing you're powerful and you can add value. You've done all this research. You're learning, but what still was missing, which is where I'm assuming you're gonna go now, is that you didn't. You didn't know how this was gonna benefit others yet. You weren't clear on, like, how do I add value to others now?

Yeah. It's like you can only look back in your reflection or your wake to kind of see how things tie together, and you start seeing meaning that wasn't there originally. Like, you lose your mortgage company, or you have a failure, and then you look back years later, and you're like, oh, this happened. But it taught me this lesson. Or I learned this from that. So for me, as I created 50 brands trying to discover what's my thing going to be, 47 of them failed, three of them took off and did pretty well for a while, and there was still something missing because I was still attached to, like, my ideal Lifestyle, like, and I had a business partner in one of our businesses. We ran a CRM marketing and coaching company. And that was from 2012-15. And there was still something missing. It was like it wasn't me. I was like number two behind the scenes guy. And I knew that there had to be a shift. And what I learned from my experience of creating all these brands, I knew what it felt like to try to do it on your own and have it look like crap. I knew what it felt like to buy a stolen logo only to find out later that there's hundreds of other companies with the same exact logo of mine. And so I started thinking, like, man, I could really help people in business look the part because I'd been through it so many times. I know what's important. I know what's not important. I knew how people generate first impressions. I knew how cognitive bias and cognitive fluency worked in human beings brains and how we process information. I had known all these things. And that's when it was like that the. My life just kind of came together. It was like I had all the business knowledge I needed, plus the experience of going through these brand builds. And then I realized it was never about me. Like, my purpose today is helping each client become more successful in their niche because they have amazing skills like you and your people that you communicate with, you have impact on their life. So if I can help you out and help you attract more people with your visual brand and help them take the very first step in the relationship with you, it's not about me, it's about all the people that you serve.

So let me get this straight. I want to make sure I'm following this correctly. So when you started, what you're doing now, initially you're saying you were making it still about you. Like, look what I can do. Did I hear that right? And then when you transitioned to and that wasn't working, the results were not there. But when you transition to taking that step into, it's not about me and what I can do for them, it's who are they and how do I bring that to light? Is that what you're saying?

I think just like a lot of business owners, when you start, it's like you're in survival mode a little bit. You're like, well, I've got to make money because I've got rent or I've got my mortgage or I got my car payment or whatever it is. And so your brain is focused on the results. And the shift was actually when I Made it nothing about the results. It was about the client and the impact I could have with them. A couple things happened. I completely shifted what we were doing. We were originally doing a lot of logos and social media. I realized, like, this is helping them look the part, but it's not actually helping them because we're not doing the whole thing. We're not creating the entire visual identity. So we had to add websites, we had to add a visual branding review audit where we go in and we really view each business as a new prospect, seeing you for the very first time and help you clean up anything that's going to confuse them, not to take action with you. That was the combination shift. Yeah. Is the results all camera once I made it not about the results.

Yeah, you focus out. You focus out on them. And it wasn't selfish anymore at all. So that's what it was.

It's totally. And then I started to see the actual impact. I actually invested. Like we raised our prices a bunch, we added more value. And it wasn't about raising prices either. It was about. It was about raising our value to the marketplace. But I've seen it with like my mindset Coaches is a guy who's amazing talent. He studied NLP and brain science and all these things. And actually he helped me through a combination of coaching and hypnosis through a lot of my own self confidence and mindset issues. Then I saw my wife had debilitating anxiety for a long, long time. And in less than four weeks he solved that. And so we're doing his visual brand right now. Right. We're doing a makeover of his business.

Who's this amazing person? Who are we talking about?

His name's Clay Moffatt.

Okay.

He's like, I call him a wizard because it's an interesting process that you go through. But he literally can rewire your brain.

I love it.

And my wife was a new human being after four weeks. She had no anxiety. And I realized, like, that's what this is about. This is about if I could help his visual brand. Like his visual brand is like a lot of entrepreneurs. It was all over the place. He'd been busy doing lots of different things, but he hadn't taken the time to look the part of who he really is. If I could clean that up, he'll attract and help so many more people. I mean, he can help people quit smoking in one session. It can help remove anxiety. And so that was like big light bulb for me is who are the thousands of people he'll impact?

Yes.

He actually looks the part now.

So, Mike, I don't even know if you're fully connecting the dots. I'm connecting. I'm here in this, your story, which is so incredible. Like you mentioned earlier at the very beginning that your ego got bruised at the beginning, which I can totally relate to with that big failure. And then you were stuck in this ego conversation. But literally it's you focusing out on other people that shifted everything for you. So, yes, it was the mindset, the learning all these steps, but you shifting and being selfless and focusing on other people is what. Is what has created your now success, it looks like.

I will say there was a period that I think you have to go through it, but I had to actually flip it in the very beginning. I had to be extremely selfish. I had you. You know, you can't pour from an empty cup. They say it's like I had to become whole and believe in myself again. I had to believe in my worth. I had to love myself. And so there was a period where I was extremely selfish. Focused on my mindset, on my.

That's not selfish, though. That's not what I mean. That's self care and that's what allows you to be this vessel for others. When I met by selfish was the. That ego conversation of like, what's in it for me? I'm just, I'm make money. I'm going to make money. But yeah, the mindset, the investing in coaches, all that personal development work, that is not selfish.

That is, it was like going through a period of selfishness to be extreme, to be even more unselfish than ever. You know, it's like it was.

I think it's self care, not selfish. That one. Yeah, that's self care. To me, selfish is the. I'm doing this just to make money.

Yeah. And when you, you know, you said my ego got bruised, I think my ego got like beaten up and thrown at her box and set on fire.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've been there. I've been there. I get it. I get it. Okay, so how do you define success now? Because I'm assuming that it's a very different definition now today than it was.

Yeah. I think I always relate it to. I don't know. I like golf. You know, I like. I like the game of golf because it's. It's the game where it's about your mindset and the game is against the course. It's not about other people. It's about. About you determining what you're trying to do. And achieving it against the course. And so business is the same and entrepreneurial ship is the same. To me now, it's like this is the game within myself. It's not about comparing myself to this business or that business. It's about the success in my definition is really, am I achieving what I want to achieve? I think a lot of people can't answer that question when you just simply say, what do you want? So I have a very clear what I want. I want to have balance, I want to have money, I want to be debt free. I want all these things. And every day I wake up and I just keep taking action to improve it. So my days that I feel like I'm not successful is when I feel like I'm not making progress or I feel stuck or feel like it was a bad day, was when I feel like it's not working. And a good day is when I make progress towards improving that envision. But it doesn't have to do with money. It doesn't have to do with stuff per se. It's just, am I making progress towards improving every day?

Yeah. How do you view failures now?

I don't define them as failures. Everything is like a left or a right to me. It's like instead of right and wrong, it's right and left. So it's like when things don't go like as a human, we all have the ability to envision a future. Like dogs and cats don't do it right. But we're able to kind of say, I'm going to do this. And I think this is how it's going to turn out. And it almost never turns out exactly how you think. And so failures to me are usually what I would call lefts. They're just like, I tried that and it didn't work the way I thought it was going to work or it didn't get me closer to my end goal. And so I quickly try and process that and let it go and get back to work. It's like we all have things that don't work out. We all have quote, unquote failures. So it's like, I think the key is how quickly can you admit it, how quickly can you breathe again, remind yourself where you're headed and get back to work.

Yeah, that's good.

Because if you get bogged down, like I did that for years in the beginning, I hung up on the mortgage failure and it spiraled me for months or years. Even right now if I have a failure that something doesn't work out right it might spiral me for an hour or minutes.

Yeah.

And then you just breathe and remember that we're all going to be here another 20, 30, 40 years or maybe even 20, 30, 40 minutes. So life is too short to dwell on things you can't control.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Do you worry about what other people think?

I really don't. I do in the sense when it comes to my clients, I want them to be extremely happy with our work. I want them to enjoy the process. I want them to have massive impact on their following and the people they're trying to serve. And so if things don't go smoothly with my clients or we're not nailing it in the beginning, which is that. That's part of the process of nailing a visual brand, is you kind of go through this back and forth. So I care what they think, but when it comes to, like, other people, I really don't like the car I drive, the house I live in. Right. I don't drive a house.

Well, you could. You never know.

That stuff is stuff. Like, that comparison game's completely gone away from me. Like, I really. I do care. I care a lot about the people closest to me. My wife and kids. I care what they think.

How do you view material possessions now? Because you mentioned earlier at one point, it defines you.

Yeah, I view them. Money and material possessions are a little bit of the scorecard. They kind of tell me how well I'm doing on mastering my own daily habits, on fulfilling my vision, on having impact in the world, on having impact with my clients. Like, the money and stuff becomes a byproduct of doing a great job. And so if I have more money and more stuff, like, stuff is. Stuff's an interesting one because I really am not hung up on it. I'm not hung up on more stuff. I do like to have nice things because it just makes me feel good. It's like some people, it's putting on a business suit and that makes them feel good. That doesn't make me feel good anymore. Like, I don't. I don't wear suits. So I think it's really getting clear on yourself and what is important to you and then just spending every day trying to fulfill that vision. I love that material things. Like, it is nice when you turn on the car and you know it's going to start. It is nice. I think that's looking back. Like, I know what it feels like to walk into a restaurant or even a Starbucks and have to check your bank app to See if you have enough money to pay for the meal, you know, Like, I know what those things feel like and I'm grateful for those because I never want to be back in that place again. But I can relate deeply with people that are struggling to figure out their business or are struggling financially. Like, I'm glad for those experiences because if I didn't have the mortgage experience, I think I would have just been a cocky asshole. Like, I mean, I really do. It was like the, the failures or the things that didn't go well shaped me as a person.

Yeah.

And. And I think it's important, I think it's important that we, we kind of get punched in the face every once in a while.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes I meet people that they're just so uber successful and they're young and they haven't had that failure yet. And it's like this. I don't want them to fail, but I want, it's. But you want them to experience the growth that comes from that, you know, Because I feel like they just, they don't know, but they don't know if they haven't had that yet.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure.

How do you start your days with two kids?

My kids are 11 and 9. Still something I'm trying to master. I have a morning routine. I have about a 10 minute meditation routine followed by a 28 minute nap session. And that's it's not nap like sleeping, it's literally like a self hypnosis session and a ritual of kind of repeating and rewiring my brain towards success. I haven't nailed doing it every single day, but that's how I try and start my day. But some days just don't work out that way. But I try. I try. I find that the days that I'm super on point, usually it's form of meditation, clearing my mind, getting intentional about what are the three or four objectives I'm trying to accomplish that day. In several areas of my life, business and balance with my family, in relationships, I get clear on the three or four things I want to accomplish on that day and then I'm able to go through the day and do them. So when I do that in the mornings and I journal a little bit, my day just goes way, way smoother.

It's funny because you said, you mentioned I don't have much of a morning routine with two kids, which I can, I have an 11 year old. But you did say the two things that are so critical and important and don't take so Long. And they are key is the meditation and the journaling. So it sounds like when you do those things, it's. It clears you up. And what would you tell somebody that's listening to that going, I don't have time to meditate or journal because clearly you're seeing how powerful it is.

I'll say this from my own experience, is that I used to have these big swings where there would be three or four weeks where I felt like I was making massive progress towards my business or my life or momentum. And then you kind of hit this plateau where you achieve the thing that you're working at for that period of time. And then sometimes I would spend a week or two weeks, like, what do I do next? And when I meditate or journal every single day, I avoid that one or two week period. And so what it does is it Jesse Elder actually calls this compressing time. What it does is that it shortcuts the ups and the downs. For me, I don't have these massive swings in momentum followed by a week or two where I'm wondering what to do next.

Wow. Yeah.

And so if you can just kind of get clear with your daily intentions and just journal for. I mean, really, you can spend half an hour, half an hour in the morning of just getting up a little bit earlier and just think what you want to do that day and journal what are my priorities for the day? And then just go knock those out. You'll avoid those big swings.

Yeah. And part of those big swings would be, and I'm sure people listening can relate to this. And I've definitely been guilty of this some mornings when you grab your cell phone and just start reacting.

Absolutely. You find yourself like, next thing you know, you've been on social media for four hours straight just commenting on things and you're like, what am I doing? You know?

Yeah.

You're not being intentional with your time. You're not prioritizing what's really important. Because at the end of the day, there's literally only a few key things that can drive all your revenue for your business. So you need to stay focused in your unique zone of genius and everything else. It's that 8020 rule, which is probably the 95. 5 rule. Right. It's like there's only some few key metrics you need to be doing to get 95% of the results you want.

Totally. Now, I wanted. I have a couple more questions for you.

I'm sure you see that with working out, right. It's like everybody wants to shortcut These results and get like, oh, I want six pack abs. And I worked out three times. And why are. Why don't I have six pack abs yet? And it's like, it's about falling in love with the process and doing. If you just do 20 minutes or 30 minutes every single day, and you constantly put the right stuff in your body, like 8, 10, 12 weeks later, you start having your friends going, have you lost weight? Or you start having these confirmations from outside sources. But we all want it now. We all wanted it in three days. And sometimes it takes three years.

Totally. Mike, you're just so positive and I love your outlook. Now I want to know who's in your circle. Who do you surround yourself with now? What types of people?

No, negative people. And a lot of times negativity can be disguised as people saying, well, you need to be realistic. So I watch out for keywords. I surround myself with. One of the best decisions I made a few years ago is I felt like I was accumulating a chessboard. Like, I needed this piece and I needed that piece. And so I would run into people and I was like, this person is positive. They're an entrepreneur, they're energetic. And so I have both. I have two forms of the chessboard in my mind. I have live, real people that I can share in the journey with so that when I'm struggling or when things aren't working, I can connect with other positive people that are going through the same journey so I can get my answers faster. I also have a few live mentors and coaches in several areas of my life. I have a mindset guy. I have a marketing and advertising team. I have a PR team, and I have a fitness coach. They all mentor and coach me in some way to hold me accountable and to shortcut the times where I'm trying to figure things out on my own that I'm not the expert at.

Right, right.

And then I have the other side of the equation, which I would say are my virtual mentors. It's people I've never met, but I listen to. I listen to people like Gary Vee. You know, I listen to, like, one podcast I've really recently kind of really fallen in love with is Oprah Winfrey's masterclass.

Love those. Love them.

Because it's just like people sharing their story, their real story. And you recognize these people, that massive success, they're all doing the same thing we do. We put on our pants one leg at a time. We all poop and pee. You know, it's like, they all had their own struggle, their own moment where their wallet had $7 in it or they were in a crappy apartment or whatever. They've all gone through it, and you can relate. And you can see that success is not about the car you drive. It's about becoming one with yourself. It's about mastering your own game for yourself.

Yeah, I have a final question for you and something I ask everybody. Mike, if you're talking to somebody that's had that massive failure, maybe they're where you were back in 2000 when the housing market crashed, or maybe their family split up. Something's going on where they feel that they're in that rock bottom spot and they're having those conversations that you once had that they feel like a failure. Do you have three pieces of advice you would give them to start leveling up and shifting and being able to create everything from nothing?

I would say the story you tell yourself is the most powerful story in the world. And words matter, so you have to shift that first. You have to accept that whatever happened, happened. You can't change. Doesn't make you a failure forever. I would say that once you tell yourself the right story about where you're headed, things will begin to shift for you. I would say it's okay. We've all had struggle and failure. And I would say the shortcut to that is once you admit it and tell yourself that happened and I can't change it. I would say get very, very clear on where you want to be three to five years from now on. Your vision and your vision. I would say attach it to an internal purpose that makes it more painful to quit than to keep going. And I would say find some coaches and mentors that are already where you want to be and do anything you can to work with them. For some people, that means just paying them and hiring them as coaches and mentors. So, like, if you're clear on your vision, go find somebody that's already there and hire them or offer to work for free for them or offer to be around them or do whatever you can and they will shortcut your success. I Learned more in 6 months after I hired coaches and mentors in several areas of my life than I did in the previous eight years. And it was just like that. That was the shortcut. I was clear on what I wanted. I had a deep internal purpose on why I can't quit. And I hired people that knew how to get the results because they already got them for themselves.

Wow. Mike, you are truly inspirational. Amazing. I can't think of a better person to go to to help tell a story for our own brands. You've been there, you know, you care, you've done the work. So thank you for being here. Where can people find you if they want more of you, they want to.

Work with you, they can find me. My website is themakeovermaster.com I know that sounds arrogant. My handles on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn are ikeyoungmakeovers.

You're awesome. Thank you.

Mike, you are awesome as well. Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for leveling up with us today. Please share this episode if you found it helpful so others can join in. And don't forget to hit that subscribe so you don't miss out on future shows. And if you would leave me a five star review. I appreciate those so much. I read all of them and it's how I know that I'm giving you information that you find valuable and come interact with me over on Instagram at Natalie Jill Fit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day creating every everything from nothing.