122: Best Selling Author Who Used Cancer as His Biggest Mentor with Mike Koenigs

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. Mike Caning was a serial entrepreneur, 13 time number one best selling author and speaker. He was also a stressed out workaholic. And then it happened. A scary and life threatening diagnosis, stage 3A cancer. He went through a major surgery, four months of intravenous chemotherapy, 33 radiation treatments and oral chemotherapy. Cancer woke him up, up. But surviving cancer is not what saved him. Mike believes that his cancer was caused by a combination of unmanaged diet, incredibly stressful, 30 years of hard work, running multiple businesses, but more importantly, unmanaged emotions. Ultimately, he shares that cancer was his greatest mentor and teacher. Two years after his diagnosis, his treatment, he wrote the book Cancer Preneur to help other entrepreneurs thrive and survive through a cancer treatment and diagnosis with their marriage, family and business intact. The book and training has saved dozens of lives he knows and possibly hundreds more. Today, Mike is thriving, sold his fourth business and an investor and advisor for Fortune 500 CEOs and companies including Bulletproof Coffee Upgrade Labs, Entrepreneur Media. Dave Asprey clicked in Phoenix space Good Idea Beverages and host a podcast capability amplifier with strategic coach founder Dan Smith Sullivan. Join in today and learn exactly how Mike Cannings leveled up and created everything from nothing. I'm so excited. Today I'm leveling up. I've got Mike Koenigs. Did I pronounce your last name right? I realized I was sure pronouncing it wrong for like the last five years. So he corrected me earlier. I'm so excited to chat with you today, especially because I've known you as somebody that's so amazing at helping others with their messaging, with helping others fix their business, with helping others fix themselves. But what I learned recently about you is you had a point of massive setback that really changed your whole direction. So thanks for being here today.

It's my pleasure, for sure. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Yeah.

So take me back. Like before the cancer even. Who were you? What was you? What were you growing? Where were you thriving? And did you know things were going wrong for you?

All right, so the setup is I I'm a serial entrepreneur. I've had my first business. I started when I was 16 and it's just been like one thing after another. I grew up lower middle class, so my internal programming was always not good enough. I don't have enough. I'm going to run out. And that I practiced that trauma most of my life in some way, shape or form.

Were you told that as a kid? Is that where that was coming from?

No, I lived it. And here's what happened. I was the oldest of four kids, lower middle class. I remember a time, for example, where my mom said, hey, go to the store and, and get some hamburger. I'm going to make something for dinner tonight. And she had a dollar. Okay, she gave me a dollar and I had enough to get however much hamburger we could get. Like how it a hamburger or something like that and coming home. And my mom made meatloaf with crackers and ketchup and hamburger.

Yeah.

And an onion from the garden. And I grew up like we'd go fishing for meat, you know, so it wasn't like we were, you know, horribly poor. But I remember there were tested times and I didn't know it at the time, but there was a lot of financial tension because my dad was a barber and he was the building inspector for town and the city clerk. I mean, he was a very. He was really good at working hard his whole life, but he never learned leverage ever. So I remember distinctly saying, I will never be like this. And I felt like an alien where I grew up in this little town of Eagle Lake, Minnesota. And. And I was like, I'm going to get the hell out of here. So I taught myself how to program when I was 14 years old. I was going to run away from home when I was 15 and go work for Apple. I wanted to work for your jobs.

That was my plan.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was your plan.

I literally had a backpack always packed, ready to run away from home. And so if you fast forward to businesses, you know, just going through the ride, entrepreneurial roller coaster of up and down and up and down, I had reached a point where we were making a ton of money. Our overhead was about $750,000 a month.

I can't even imagine. Never had that type of overhead.

Yeah, it positively sucked. And I was on the road nonstop grinding, grinding, grinding. And it was like, what the hell's going to happen three months from now? I'm looking at the math and even though we're making tons of money, I'm reinvesting everything we Have I had a business partner who left. It cost millions of dollars to. To pay him and have him go away. And then suddenly I am bleeding from my backside. I literally, when I'd sit down to go to the bathroom, I peed blood. Oh, my God, my butt. And I told my wife, something's wrong. And I told her what was wrong. She goes, you need to go to the doctor right now. And of course, I missed my first appointment because I'm too busy.

I was just gonna say, I'm listening to you, and I'm like, were you, like, the way I would have been? And a lot of entrepreneurs are where I don't have time for this. Isn't that crazy? Like, we think we don't have time for this, and it's a massive emergency.

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what was going on. It's like, well, how. But I've got a meeting and I'm gonna be traveling. And then I tried to fit in this. This visit to get my colonoscopy. Oh, and then I missed my appointment because I was supposed to have a kit, a prep kit, basically something that cleans you out. Well, I didn't have it.

And who had time for that?

Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Yeah.

So the next time they could get me in was three weeks. So I finally go in there, I come out of the practice, and the. The doc walks up to me, he goes, look, I see this all the time. I don't need a biopsy to know what you got. You got a 5 1/2 centimeter tumor. It's at the top of your rectum. If that thing isn't cut out this weekend, you got less than six months to live. It's going to permeate through the walls, get into your body. You're going to be a dead man. And he says, here's the phone number of an oncologist, a surgeon, and a radiation oncologist. Get in the hospital now. And what I did is I did travel home that weekend. I looked at my parents in the eyes and I told them, hey, here's what's going on. I know I'm gonna be okay. And I had a little bit to settle, because after all, I'm running this business with a whole bunch of employees. And the other thing is, I'm thinking to myself, if anyone hears about this, my customers are gonna abandon me.

Yeah.

My. My employees are gonna wanna leave because I'm the figurehead, right?

Yeah.

And how the hell is this thing gonna survive while I'm gone and I'm like, this thing's gonna burn so much cash, I'm gonna be penniless and broke in a couple of months. It's gonna burn through every bit of savings my wife and I have. And, you know, that's the. That's what I'm doing.

Yeah. I'm following along. I'm like. That's totally that mindset that I get. Yeah.

Right. Right. So I go through the surgery. They cut out my sigmoid colon, a third of my rectum, stitch me together, and the first thing here was my mindset, too. I tell the surgeon if I wake up, if. If they have to cut me up, and they find that it's all over the place and I have to have a bag.

Yeah.

Don't even wake me up. That was my ex.

Throw me back together and just let me go. Yeah.

Right. And then. So the first thing I do when I wake up is I look down. I'm like, oh, thank God. No bag. And the other thing you don't know when you do the surgery is whether or not you're going to be impotent, whether or not you're going to be peeing or pooping into a bag.

Yeah.

Whether or not you'll ever be able to have sex and orgasm or anything. And then, of course, that I think.

Your whole dignity is going away. Right then.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not a man.

Yeah.

You're afraid of.

Yeah.

So were you, Mike?

Were you feeling scared or sharing that you're scared, or were you just in control at Fix It Mode?

Yeah, I didn't. I'm not going to tell anyone. You know, I'm scared about everything.

Yeah.

So I don't talk to anyone about this stuff. And I'm still trying to figure this out. And my oncologist basically says, I own your ass for a year, literally and figuratively. Just get used to it. So you're gonna spend a year recovering. Well, the surgeon walks in, and she's crying. And by this time, one thing I'm really good at is building rapport with my doctors and asking a lot of questions. She comes in, she's crying. She goes, I'm really sorry, but there's lymph involved, which basically means the stuff's in your body. Yeah.

It's in your lymph nodes.

You need to chemo. And. And so I get a port installed in my chest. I still have the scar here. Right here. And I start getting hooked up for IV chemo, which is FU5 and Full Fox, which is horrible. My hair starts falling out. And you know, you're waking up every day in a pile of hair and you feel like you got metal in your mouth. And the reaction is you get cold sensitive. So if you open up your refrigerator, it feels like someone smacks you in the face of a bag of broken glass. You know, it's. It's rotten. And then.

I didn't know that. That explains why you see some people going through that, wearing all the layers or the.

That's right. You're wearing mittens and a hat in the summertime. Right.

That's why.

And then, you know, I'm trying to muscle my way through it. So I'm like, so I'm going out, I'm running and I'm working out just because I feel the decay. And I'm like, I'm going to fight this. And I'm not taking any painkillers or anything like that because I'm tough, you know?

Yeah.

And. And eventually this stuff wears you down. I mean, there's nothing you can do just, except just lay on your side for hours and hours and hours and be miserable and just like. Yeah, it's like you got a mouthful of pennies all the time. You know, you're just tasting metal.

And at this time, did your. Did everybody know what was happening? Had you. Were you playing it off like, like it's not a big deal or what was happening?

So what I was able to do is the chemo cycle works where you get it and you feel good for a couple days because they fill it full of steroids and then eventually you feel like crap until the day before the next time you do it, which is two weeks. Okay. So during that time there's an up and down cycle and I'm able to go into work and deal with stuff. And. And I let some people know because once I had the surgery and the chemo, I knew I was going to survive.

Yeah.

And I felt good enough about that and I told folks. And fortunately, my employees really stepped up. They took care of things. I hired one of my best friends I've known for 30 years to come in who ran the business side. And then a very good friend of mine named Ed Rush stepped in and he became my voice and like the marketing guy. And interestingly, when my friend Gene came in and started running things, he started chopping expenses, finding crazy stuff, and the business became more profitable while I wasn't there.

Wow. Isn't that an interesting lesson? Isn't that funny? You see that? Wow. It's not me, it's the old Eb, that's crazy. I've heard this so many times from people.

So true.

But look what it took to get you to see that.

So true. Yeah, it's as I've said many, many times, cancer is a great teacher. So then because I had a young boy and one of my goals was survival long enough so he'd be 18. So I was willing to exchange long term survival or long term quality of life in exchange for short term survival. That was the math. And when you start looking at stuff again based on where I had it, I couldn't easily, you know, do a full, like go to a straight vegan diet and do. To do. Because it was so far along, I was a dead man. And you got to go. You got to go thermonuclear and the type of cancer.

Yeah, Right. So what happened is you had stage three. It was. You were giving a life, given a life sentence.

At that point, it's stage 3A, which is even a little bit further along when there's lymph involved. But I ended up doing radiation therapy at Duke, and. Which basically means you're getting zapped every day and taking oral chemo. And that's really when things got hairy. And I made it through that smile on my face. But I also wrote my first book. And I decided when I'd come back, what I'd do is create a whole program and product based around writing books.

Yeah.

And so when I came home, the Cancerpreneur.

Right. Is that the.

That that was that. Believe it or not, cancerpreneur is my 13th book.

Okay. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So that was okay. But what that my first book was a book about writing books because I figured out how to leverage the Amazon platform, kind of like how I figured out how to leverage video marketing and social media marketing in the early days. And. And so I took double radiation treatments on two days because I got a speaking engagement at a Tony Robbins event, a business mastery event. So on my way home from Duke in North Carolina, I stopped in Las Vegas. I weighed less than 150 pounds at a 27 inch waist. Third of my hair. I was green from all the chemicals. And I showed up, I got a haircut, I got a spray tan, threw on some pants. I'm still on chemo.

Covering it up.

Covering it up. I'm still on chemo and. And morphine. And I'm on stage doing a speaking gig, talking about writing books. And of course, I told my story and the crowd went nuts. They couldn't believe it because I'M like, I haven't been home yet. I literally just left the hospital.

Was that your first time, like, truly being vulnerable on stage or sharing that? Because I know we do. The reason I asked that is that's a buzzword. Like, Mark, be vulnerable and. Or be authentic. And I think people craft stories to sound that way. But you were like, in it. You couldn't hide it.

No, no. It. It definitely was the most vulnerable I had ever been. And of course I felt like I was through the cycle, so it was easier. The truth was I was still a coward and not willing to share the process so much. But that was a turning point where I'm like, oh, oh. When I'm really open in this raw. Because I had a standing O for 10 minutes.

Yeah. Because people connect with that. That's real. It's human.

It was.

And isn't it funny? We try to cover it up and hide it, but that's what people want to know. They want to see the messy.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah.

So what happened then? Is told the story, did the little thing, and then created a program and a product and that became like probably a $10 million franchise over the next few years.

Let me ask you before we keep going on that journey with the cancer, because a lot of people wouldn't have survived that. Where you were. What do you think made you survive? Was it your belief that you would. Was it the bigger vision?

What.

What do you think it was?

Yeah, I think part of it was I'm a fighter for sure. I mean, I'm just not. I don't know if you remember the. The movie Good Will Hunting. There's that moment. This was who I was. Not so much now, but I mean, it's like, I'll take the wrench. You know, it's like, what are you gonna. You want the wrench or the belt? And be like you. I'll take the. I'll take the ranch.

Yeah.

And so what I. Actually, here's what got me through it. First of all, I became a non judgmental observer of my body and realized and separated the two. I could become my spirit and live outside my body during the most painful times.

That's amazing.

And only experience compassion, love, and empathy for this body as a gift from God.

Wow. You really. That's. That's very evolved to be able to do that.

Yeah. And I'm not sure where all that came from, but it was like. It just. I had this practice every single day. And what I got used to doing is like, when the Pain got so bad I just said all I have to do is go for five more minutes. All I have to do is go for five more minutes. It's just like if you ever quit drinking for an extended period of time, it's sort of like, let me see if I can just get through tonight.

I feel like that about drinking. That's the opposite for me. I'm not a drinker. But yeah, I like if I'm at a place with everybody drinking, it's like, let me get through this for five minutes. Probably not the best one for me, but I get what you're saying. But that's. Yeah. Because separating yourself and almost watching yourself as you're a movie, like you're observing it, that's very evolved.

That's what I did is I just became a camera.

Yeah.

And watched the body and loved it fully. And then by then I also learned about pain management, which I made it through the whole process without taking any meds.

Why not take meds though? Like I want to speak into that because I'm all for natural and stuff like that, but I'm also not for pain. So why that decision?

Because I was stupid and I didn't understand that the amount of trauma that you cause your brain by not managing pain appropriately is profound.

Yes.

And I was afraid that I was going to get hooked on opiates.

Yeah.

And what I found was I turned it into an experience. So here's what I did. I would go through and every day I had my irradiation treatments, which was just horrible. But I laid with my junk in a lead pan and flag in my butt. And then they draw all over your back. They, it's like a non permanent tattoo. And then they line up these lasers so they can zap very specific parts of your body so you don't have like long term, okay. Organ damage or, or PP damage or whatever. Right. And then it burns like a mother. And everything burns. Everything burns going in and coming out.

Yeah. You're like microwaving stuff.

Yeah. And like I, I, my worst day, I was on the toilet 37 times in one day.

Oh my gosh.

So your rear end is bloody just from wiping yourself. You know, it's, it's hor. And I had less than five seconds from the time I had an urge and I had to be on the toilet. You have no control anymore and holding food down is impossible, etc. Etc. So. But what I do is I do my stuff in the morning, come back, I'd read or take care of a Little bit of business or a couple of calls. And then I'd take some lorazepam, which is an anti anxiety pill. And I had hydromorphone. I'd take a couple of those and I started watching movies. And I burned through more Netflix movies than you can imagine. So I had my iPad, wi Fi. And then in between I'd write a little bit. I was working on my book. So again, because what the drugs do is allow your brain to not experience pain, so it's not fixated on it. So it was like, I got to go on a little island and be free. And I never took more than two. I can't remember what the milligram count is.

Totally.

I mean, you're very happy, let's put it that way. And then I'd go to bed and that became the cycle. And I found that I could manage it and I never exceeded. Because of course, the problem with addictions are, first of all, I don't think I have the quote unquote addict brain. The second thing is where you run into addictions and so like, oh, you're cha. You're chasing the high.

Right, Right.

And in order to chase the high, you got to double the dose. And you got to double the dose, and you got to double the dose. So I, what I did is I just reminded myself, this is perfect. Yeah, I don't need any more.

No.

And if you start stacking the high, you're never going to get back there. So your, your body needs time to get rid of the stuff to recover from it. So I had the sense of if you're gonna ride the high, you gotta give yourself a break from it. And if you don't have the contrast, you don't experience the pleasure. Yeah, it's like you don't want constant orgasms.

I love that you're speaking into this because I think the pain. My opinion, but I think the pain medication scare has gotten out of control. I got that there's addicts, but there's also people that aren't addicts. And I'll tell you, when I had my surgery, I couldn't get a painkiller because they're so worried about people being addicted that people really in pain can't catch.

Totally. No. Every. Everything again, it's this usual. Edward Snowden said something amazing and you remember who he is. He's the guy who shared all the secrets and went down. He lives in Russia now and he has got a new book and he's talking about the culture we live in. Right. Now our pansy cry room culture. But he doesn't say that. That's my edit. But here's what he says. He says when feelings matter more than facts. Okay. Everyone's all bothered about feelings and entire reputations and careers are being destroyed based on something someone said or did 20 years ago. And what he, but what he really talks about is we live in this hyper elevated state of nonsense. And I think that's again where I'm not saying we don't have a real crisis, but it's, you know, with the media. We'll make a big deal out of 10 people dying from something when, you know, you know, thousands will die of alcohol poisoning or tobacco related illnesses. And from a proportion point of view, you just gotta look at stuff and put it in proportion. But again, the facts don't matter. And we live in a clickbait society right now where the only way to make money is by creating sensationalized news.

Totally.

And I think that unfortunately is affecting this. And so folks with problems. So I have the same issue, which is every once in a while, full disclosure. I still have some pain meds that I can take occasionally. Like because there's certain instances where my body doesn't work. Right, sure. Okay. And I simply can't get them. And I'll wait two months to get a refill.

Now isn't that, I mean, it's crazy.

Yeah.

Like legit problems, you can't get them.

Totally.

Yeah.

And so again now everyone's afraid to prescribe. And, and, and, and really what you're left to do is. Well, for some people it's buy illegal drugs. Yeah. And buy heroin, street drugs.

Even bigger problem because the heroin dealers don't care.

Right. Like they're gonna, or go to Mexico and get shitty opiates, you know, and.

So, so yeah, I, and I get, because I get that other side because I know how much pain I was in. And the fact that like you cannot get painkillers was crazy to me.

Yeah. And, and yeah. So. And I came back and I, I got Kratom for a little while, K R A T O M, which is supposedly a non opioid. But I started having crazy dreams from that. So I quit using that. And I think. And you don't know if it's pure because it's an unregulated. So you know, if, if, if we go down this monkey hole a little bit further. It's why legalizing drugs is the smartest thing because then at least there are standards, quality standards. And for the most Part, most human beings are decent, responsible people and you can't trust the media to not blow things out of proportion or create a one sided story. And I'm friends with a lot of people in the media. I'm part of the media. You're part of the media. Right. We can craft whatever story and message we want and justify it. So. So anyway, I'll let you.

Yeah, no, that's a great. I'm glad we went. I've never addressed this before or had a conversation around it, but I'm glad you brought that up. So it's interesting. So that relief and that pain is what allows you to have your freedom essentially in that. So you came out on the other side of this though, like you're cancer free. It's been five years.

Six years.

Six years. Which is amazing. How, what is your post cancer life like? How do you approach business now? And how did you get out of that nightmare you were in of all that overhead without falling apart? Like, because you had the most stressful time in your life and you're dealing with that.

Yeah. So here's what happened. I was very, very fortunate that when I got out I had much lower overhead. My team was really on point and I had someone keeping everyone on my company very accountable, watching them. So when people are watched, they behave better.

Yeah.

And the next thing is we got rid of a lot of overhead and I started honing some specific skills and reinvented the business. And then I met, I decided I wanted to sell it. So first of all, I made a decision to sell it. And I was fortunate that I had a software company. I had Trafficizer and Instant Customer, which were recurring income.

Yeah.

Essentially a software as service business. And then I had an information marketing side as well, which is essentially launch business. So I had spikes of revenue throughout the year. And even though it wasn't an ideal business model, I found a group that wanted to buy the business and we positioned it for an exit. There were a publicly traded company. I got paid.

Okay.

All right. So that was the first one. And in the process I timed some launches in such a way that it elevated the income. And when I walked away, I got to walk away with the cash that I had in the business.

Yes.

You know, at any given time I'm very conservative from a business perspective. So I always had a million dollars worth of cash in the bank all.

The time, which was brilliant because a lot of entrepreneurs don't.

Yeah.

Me included. Did not. Yeah.

Okay. So that was one thing. So I got all that cash plus the earn out or the money up front, plus what was in credit card reserves, which is another at least a half a million bucks. And then we had an earn out over time and a note. Unfortunately they broke a lot of promises and I didn't get the big, big numbers, what I call the fu money. But in the process I kept my studio, I kept a bunch of my ip and I was able to start again. So the mistake I made is like within a year and a half after cancer, so maybe two years max, I went right back into the crazy and started another company. Because my old trauma patterns of running out, not having enough, not being enough kicked in. And I was doing the math in my head, well, what if this happens? What if this happens? And again, some of it were just bad business decisions. Where I kept my studio, I kept my gear, which meant I kept certain people.

Yes.

And oh. Once I had this overhead that I had to pay for instead of stopping. And the illusion that I lived under was that what if I can't do it again? So I had self doubt. And then what if my following leaves me and abandons me? That abandonment kicks in. It's old mommy issues. Okay. When you get down to it.

Okay.

And all those little, little naughty demons started rolling around in my head and I burned through a ton of cash experimenting. Like I started an online TV show and everyone lined up for free money and I was stupid enough to just write out a lot of checks and that cascaded into more crazy, right?

Yeah.

And also my big ego got in the way, which is, well, I'm so successful, I gotta look like I'm successful. Even though the truth was I was just a scared little boy who didn't know what to do next. And I was in this little loop of self doubt and a bunch of stuff wasn't working. And again. Burn, burn, burn. And finally my wife kept walked in and so she swept a big pile of money out of my business account and she says no more.

Good for her.

Yeah, ballsy.

It was fully interrupted. You.

Yeah, yeah. She's always been my savior, but I.

Love we need those interruptions.

Yeah, we do it. What I can tell you is it's nice to be married to a nice Jewish girl who has her eyes on the money. So I hope that doesn't sound overly whatever. Someone might misinterpret that to me, but she's always been great that way. And she said you got to have a plan, man. You got a plan? What's the plan?

Good for her. She's not a Quick start. Right. I'm assuming she's not a nine.

No, she's definitely not a. Not a nine. Quick start. She is a quick start, but she is a very, very different personality.

Yeah.

And she runs a non profit.

Totally.

And we have a kid and we're sending them to private school. And we were saving for his college, you know, and by the way, I'.

Side note, I have. I've had his wife, Vivian Glick, on my podcast. Fascinating episode you got to hear. And what she stands for and what she. How she helps girls in Africa now. It's amazing.

Yeah, Right on. In fact, she's got huge things are happening right now. Her work's been validated by Texas A and M now research report by Oxford, and I mean, it's crazy. So if we go down that hole a little bit further, the bottom line is I did that, and then what I did to maintain quality of life is I really changed my eating habits. Alcohol consumption, for sure. Kind of abided by what I call the JJ virgin diet. No sugar, dairy, wheat, soy, corn. I became very good friends with jj. Dave Asprey from Bulletproof. We ended up investing in Bulletproof. I did shows with jj. So what that forced me to do is be brand congruent.

Yeah.

And widen where I spent my money. It turned out about a third of my clients were functional medical doctors. Yeah. So I had docs coming to work with me, and they all wanted to heal me and talk to me. So I got a lot of advice. And to this day, I still meet with several docs. And I'm very good friends with Dr. Alan Christensen, who's also a very talented doctor. And, you know, I've got access to some of the finest medical minds in the world right now who will take my call anytime I want. And if I ask them questions, I send them my blood. I get my blood checked every other month.

Amazing.

I do colonoscopies very frequently. I mean, I'm not gonna.

After that scare, you're not gonna go through that again.

Right on. Yeah, right on.

That's amazing. Wow. What would you tell somebody that's listening to this right now that's in their own personal rock bottom nightmare, that maybe they have that diagnosis or their businesses of that failure, and they're listening to you going, okay, I'm in that bottom. I want to get to the other side. What would you tell them? What advice would you give them?

Okay, so first of all, I wrote a book called Cancerpreneur, and the subtitle is how you. Your marriage let's see business, marriage, family can survive and thrive. A cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Okay.

And that book is. It's like every little health and psychological hack I use to get through the treatment cycle. And it applies to anyone in a major health scare or with cancer. Not just colorectal cancer and not just cancer. So it comes down to how to ask really, really powerful questions whenever you meet with a doctor and get multiple perspectives, but by essentially overlaying the data so you can make really good decisions. So for example, that's what you do in business. That's exactly what it is. Yeah.

I love it.

And. And what I learned is the better the questions you ask and the more interest you take in your health and asking better questions, the more time doctors will spend with you.

Yes.

So. And if you get them emotional, they.

Don'T want to hear the just why, doctor? Why doesn't.

Yeah, being a whining victim gets you nowhere in all of life, especially during a health scare. And the next one is practice this realization that you are. I don't care what your religious belief is, you are a miracle. The human body is a miracle. Just the fact that there is a union between soul and spirit and a physical presence like an avatar, you know, it's like it's. It's impossible. It really is. It's. It's miraculous. And to see it and celebrate it that way and realize that you can accept this sickness or cancer as a gift to wake up and like, what is the lesson here for you and I both are health scares, worry, message from God saying, slow down, appreciate, enjoy what you have. This very well could be the best it's ever going to get and you can live. Quality versus quantity. I really believe that where I am right now in my life, I honest to God could tell you I could die tomorrow and I won the game.

Yeah. That's amazing.

Yeah. I have no sense of loss or have to's. Right now, everything is a want to. So how can I turn today into a want to and not a have to? And know that you'd ask yourself, when's the last time I ever went hungry? Probably never. Okay. Yeah, Nothing bad is going to happen. It's all an illusion. You're all stuck in tomorrow. If you're worried and panicked and think about it, even if you've endured pain, it's like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Nothing. When's the last time you've been living in your car? Even when you're living in your car, it's not that Bad shoot.

You got an ocean view?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, really park at the ocean.

Yeah, totally. And so I really, really have been practicing living in the now. And when I went through that hell, I lived in the moment. And I just said, just five more minutes. Just five more minutes.

This is so good. This is so good. What are you working on now? And where can people find you?

Okay, so right now I'm working on two things. The first is I've got the podcast called Capability Amplifier with Dan Sullivan, which I love. He's 75. He burns a thousand calories before he has breakfast.

Oh, my gosh.

Put on over 20am 22 pounds of muscle. In the past two and a half years, he's worked out 900 days in a row. I mean, he's. He's really an amazing human being. Writes four books a year. And I could go on and on and on. He's really a fascinating human being. In fact, I'm coming up, I'm doing a podcast with him.

Okay.

20 minutes from now, in fact. And we are. So I've got that. The next thing that I'm really excited about, when I sold everything, I let everything go. Two years ago, I had a very similar health challenge like you did, or a awakening, a reinvention. And now I do one on one advisory work with people in transition in a state of reinvention, or folks who've sold their business and they. And they're ready to elevate.

Yeah.

So that means I help. I help visionaries and experts build empires.

And he's amazing just by the way, y'.

All.

He's amazing at. I've never met anyone like this that, like, you'll tell him what you do or what your vision is, and he. The questions he'll ask and how he'll spin it. You're like, whoa, can you come with me? You're like PR in the pocket.

Well, that's what I'm doing. Yeah. So, like, I'll sit down in the studio like we are right now, bring them in. I'll help you figure out your vision, how to get there, your story, and then I'll create media with you, like that day. So I'll get you an entrepreneur or Forbes and create the products. So I basically turn visions into reality. But the other thing I'm really excited about now is I've started something. I call it the superhuman or super being accelerator. Okay, here's the basic idea. I'll try to make this short. Right now, every institution we used to trust is obsolete and extinct. Whether it's business, government, money, transportation, schools. Absolutely. Education, medicine, we could go on and on. Everything we used to trust and it's being dematerialized. Meaning the physical doesn't really matter in a weird way. And many, many jobs are going to be replaced by artificial intelligence, machine learning, augment reality, virtual reality, Internet of things. So how's all this technology going to incorporate? And I believe, and we all, all of us who are high frequency beings see this. So I believe we are permeating the mystical spiritual worlds and we're oscillating between the old physical. So think of like orc energy. Think of our political climate today. I won't say Trump for example. But let's say there are negative leaders who exist in the world right now, low frequency who are holding on to coal and old jobs and the way things used to be stuff, rotting corpses and phantasms of what is already extinct.

Yeah.

And over on the other side we've got the new future integration where creativity and innovation and co creation and true leadership matter, true masculine and feminine polarity where both are celebrated. The divine feminine is celebrated. High frequency thinking. I think we're permeating the world of the mystical world, the energetic, the spiritual world. And science is proving that these exist simultaneously.

Yeah.

So what the Super Being Accelerator is about is exploring this in business and in life and getting more out of life and being spending time, physical, real time, not online time with high frequency people. I like it. That's.

That's a blue water strategy right there.

Yeah, it is. So that's where I've been spending my past two years building that next thing. And so I've got a group that I have assembled and I think you'd be a good member. How's that?

I might have to hear more.

Yeah, so that's. Those are the two biggies. I've got a new book called the Super Being Accelerator that I'll be releasing soon too.

Can't wait to check that out.

Right on, right on.

Thank you so much, Mike.

It's my pleasure. For sure.

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 nataliejofit. I read all the direct messages and comments over there. Make it a great day. Creating everything from nothing.