Liam is in conversation with Mike Greene, a mentor, entrepreneur, and business owner, known for his appearance on the show “Secret Millionaire.” Mike shares his journey and valuable insights on achieving massive success in business, life, and property.
Mike emphasises the importance of mentorship, the power of positive mindset, and the significance of constantly assessing and improving one’s environment. He highlights the need to identify and eliminate anchors in life while focusing on propellers that drive personal and professional growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Evaluate whether the people and processes in your life are acting as anchors or propellers, and make necessary changes to create a positive environment for growth and success.
- Regularly assess and make improvements in all aspects of your life, whether it’s in business, relationships, or personal development, to ensure constant growth and progress.
- Implement a daily review process to track progress, identify challenges, and make necessary adjustments to stay on track towards your goals.
- Don’t hesitate to cut out negative influences, whether it’s toxic relationships, outdated systems, or unproductive habits, to prevent them from spreading and hindering your progress.
- View challenges and failures as opportunities for growth and learning, and use them as stepping stones towards success rather than setbacks.
BEST MOMENTS
“If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Assess all the time, right? Constantly be assessing, changing, pivoting, moving, making those improvements.” –
“I love doing one-to-one because it can change people’s lives. I do a bit of one-to-many because that might lead to one-to-one, but I really want to change people’s lives.”
“Make it happen no matter what and put yourself in the firing line.”
“I think, you know, you talk about being a round peg in a square hole and people feel like that. I’d say if you feel like that, something isn’t right in your life.”
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the dealmaker podcast, and today I have got a very special guest, someone from the Secret Millionaire, Mr. Mike Green mentor, entrepreneur, business owner, hugely successful big name in the business industry is here today to share his journey and how you can get massive success in business in life in property. So you can do what you want when you want with who you want. Mike, it’s a pleasure to have you with us with that intro I almost want to listen to myself.
So this is called the dealmaker podcast. Yeah, to kick us off, what does the dealmaker, what does being a dealmaker mean to you? I’ve never been asked that question before. But when I think of the word, you know, deal, II doesn’t love a deal, you know? So it’s about what do you want to do? What do you want to do with it? What does it mean? What does it need to go? But it’s about meet the maker bit making it happen? Do you know less than 1% of people trying to raise money when they go to pitch to an investment fund? That’s some 1% get that cash? Why? Because their pitches shit, they don’t get it right. You know, they will often want to tell them war and peace. And it promises we’re going to be the next Facebook. And so it’s about the makeup it is making it happen. If you want to do a deal. If you want to build a business, then focus on the end in mind. Where’s that? Can I go? Why should this person Invest in me? And why? Why is it attractive for someone to work with me to make a deal happen. So walk a mile in your enemy’s shoes, they’re not your enemy, but understand what they want from it, present it in the terms that they want to see here. And don’t focus on what’s important to you. If you get it right for them, you’ll get the deal and you’ll make it happen. I absolutely love that. That’s a great explanation for sure. I love that part. Make it happen no matter what. Put yourself in the firing line. So when did you know many years ago that you wanted to become a dealmaker entrepreneur, business owner? Can you remember a time when Yeah, it was nice. Do you know what inspires me about people but it also makes me sad to some degree that I think when we’re young and I mean really young, I can remember six or seven. We were poor. We lived in the caravan. And then we moved into a council I was really excited. I was sharing a bed with two brothers not a bedroom a bed with two brothers and and even then I thought I’m gonna be a millionaire one day mom, you know, Rodney, I look after you. And I think most young people have this belief in themselves. They think I’m not going to be poor like this or I want I want to do well I want to be like that Richard Branson guy that David Beckham and we all have this belief that we can be we should be
something and those dreams are there. Bit by bit life happens. teachers tell us we’re shit or our parents tell us we’re stupid sometimes. I don’t mean it badly. But the these things steal our dreams away and kill it now. Luckily, my mum, she was a fierce woman. You know, I’ll give everything I got to spend another half day with her because obviously she’s not here anymore. But she always always used to say, no one’s better than you. No one is better than you. But you also know better than anyone else. So she kept us level but gave us that belief. You know, you can achieve anything you want to do if you put your work in calorie. So she gave me that belief. So even though there’s stuff going on at violence stepdad in that and teachers, I went to rubbish schools, sadly, I think all people should get a good education. But even though that was tough, my mum always made me believe I could be something. And so from a really young age, I was willing to put the work in because i don’t know i inherently knew that you needed to work at it. But I always believed from the youngest age mom and she on my episode of Secret Millionaire she said you know even as a little kid, it’s gonna be a millionaire. Mom’s gonna look after you and that. And I thought it from a really young age, I knew it. I didn’t just think it I knew her. And and so even when we had failure in our lives, Jules and I, that was not a destination, we weren’t going to stay there. That was just shit that happened along the way. And it’s like next, next, and in fact, my mom, it’s probably not ideal parenting. But if we went home crying What happened? So beat me up. Did you hit him back? No, Slack, we should hit him back. You fight back. You know, don’t take it, you fight back. And so, you know, dust yourself down, get up, fucking do what it takes. And in that sense, you might think oh, that’s what you should cover them. No, fucking cuddling makes them a lazy ass on the couch. But so when we when it went wrong on and a few times, it’s gone wrong. And I mean, when we went homeless and bankrupt in my 20s, it was really wrong. But even then, there was a little period of feeling sorry for myself. But then it’s, I could hear her voice. Get yourself self doubt.
The belief that I’m meant to be something Yeah, yeah, it sounds like she was a huge role model to you. She was she actually installed some great belief systems in New at such a young age, I can identify with a lot that we lived on a rough counselor today, my mum was single, it was hard for her to put food on the table. And I just knew at the age of eight, I remember sitting in a woman’s refuge with my mum, and my little brother, when we were eating out of a cold tin of spaghetti bolognese. And I was just like, This is not what our life is gonna be. I am going over a carb rich, and I was obsessed with fast cars and opulent items and men in big suits. And there was just always this belief that I was going to do it. So I’m going through school. Did you have any sort of business venture? What was your first business venture? So how did that look like and was it a success? Was it a failure? What happened? Firstly, I’ve got to come back on this buggy fingers. Like tomorrow I’m going to condition go with great Michelin restaurant in London where my daughters and their boyfriends or wherever, but so I love fine dining. But also, I still love a cult in a bit.
Yeah.
You gotta go. Like what it was is when I was seven, I did a paper around. And my brother because you’re not really supposed to legally do it that young young, but he realized he could get me to a playground for him and he could take off the money I was I was kind of gotten I’ll do it for the bit of money. But it started that work thing we were getting up super early. And then we got chatting to the milkman one day, he was out super early and we did a milk round as well then we do car wash him to do potato picking so and this love of money, you know people think material is bad. But what you realize is money is great and it can do great things. If the love of money is your is your ruler then it’s a bad thing. But if you look at what money can do that the pain it can take away the communities it can help it’s an it’s an incredible thing. But there’s winning money is nice, you can have some toys, but it’s different when you earn in. And I really think we need to force young kids to do jobs wherever they want to. You’re not going to you’re not going on the dole you’re going to do this work if you don’t want to do it get a different job. But even if they do that whenever that money it changes your feeling. If you can earn more money, you think I actually so if I do, this job pays better than that job. If I work harder, I make more money. If I do something when no one else wants to do that on a Sunday or bank Aldi, they pay me a bit more money. And I realized that with that money, I could give myself some things instead of having clothes always from the jumble sale or car boot as they call them. Now. I could buy a new pair of trainers or something like that, you know, and you realize that it could solve some of the problems and it becomes like an addiction but it’s a positive addiction. Yeah, well I feel good when I put on a nice pair of trainers I feel good well we have a nice jacket I feel good when I know I’d rather holiday and it’s not Chelmsford I’ll never be on a five star all inclusive holiday flying business class, all the options are fly first, with the family and loving life. I think everyone can deserve that. You talk about work ethic, how important is work ethic to becoming successful and you know, getting that first million pound. Yeah.
So work starts with movement. I mean, firstly, we’ve got lazy we don’t really move much. You know, it’s the most most people do is walk to their car and everything. But when you move the only system in your body that doesn’t have a pump, it’s a limp system, and yet it’s the heart of all your health kind of thing. So movement is important. The work piece of it is is an extension of that in the sense that I retired at two in 2012 at the age of 46. I’ve been sold in a global business and I never needed to work again. And you know, I knew I’d be set up the kids we set up and stuff like that. I lasted about nine months because we are not meant to sit on our asses and watch Jeremy Kyle and it is not good for us. And, and mental health is the first thing to be here which we don’t see. So if you’re healthy and you suddenly stopped and did nothing tomorrow and laid on a beach which might sound a bit active for a couple of weeks. But what had happened is after a while, your energy goes down, then you start to feel no purpose and you you might still look good, but your mental energy start thing.
So, we are meant to move we are meant to work, we are meant to have purpose, I believe, and having had a period of retirement of 46, which was a goal and I thought it was nice and it was great, that kind of warm achievement. After the six months or so that I lasted I now know I will work till the day I die. And I love it. I love it. You know I got in. I got home about one o’clock last night up in Peterborough. I should have stayed in Stansted, actually, because I’ve really now I’ve been flown back from Ireland. So up again at six this morning to get down here. And I my driver has worked hard the last few days off and drove myself and I love it. You know, was I tired this morning? Yeah, but once I’m in the car, what is it about business and what you do now that you enjoy the most?
It is achieving a goal. Okay. And I think a lot of people don’t get that sense of achievement. Because the vast majority aren’t setting goals. They’re just doing they’re doing the doing the kind of living their their existing. Even if your goal is to doubt I’m gonna get one sale. Today, I’m gonna get in the gym for 45 minutes. Today, I’m going to touch base with someone I haven’t spoke to a while it doesn’t have to be a business goal. But setting goals achieving goals that sense of you, I did what I thought I was gonna do today what I wanted to do today. And once you get into that habit of setting a goal achieving a goal feeling the the recognition, self or other recognition of achieving that goal, you want to do it more and more quick wins. I called them quick wins. You know, make sure you get in quick wins all the time, and doing stuff that you feel good. And you can say, hey, I’m a good person, I feel proud of myself. And then hope hopefully motivates but when similarly I call that micro goals in the sense that people you know, I’m often working people say I want to get 20 million quid net worth in the next three years. Can we do it? Yes, but plan we work on one page mapping. But equally, I say but that will come from loads of little tiny goals. And if you don’t think little things make a difference. Try spending the night in a room with a mosquito. Little things make a huge difference. But but equally the Have you heard the saying about how do you eat an elephant? No, I haven’t. Okay. It’s a silly sound, but it’s one bite at a time. But let me break that down for you. Because people think that sounds fucking stupid, right? What’s that mean? If I said to you, then could you eat an elephant? That’s fucking big two ton elephant that you think one of course is massive. I gotta say, if you actually an elephant.
Because what two things positive motivation, I’ll give you a million quid negative motivation. I’m gonna take your firstborn. You’re fucking out, you’d start your brain would shift and start thinking, Well, how could I possibly an elephant? And then you’re not you. You don’t have to say we’ve got to do it. Now. I didn’t say we’ve got to do it now. And this will probably take me a year. Could you do it in a year? Well hang on a minute, 20 mouthfuls per meal three meals per day. That’s 60 mouthfuls 20,000 Waffles. I could do it in a year. Yeah, it’d be a bit boring because you’re only in elephant. But if the motivation is big enough, if the motive for action motivation is big enough the million pound or saving my daughter, or whatever it is, then I will fucking eaten. So even big, hairy ass goals like millions or whatever it is we want to go for break them down into those little bites. What do I need to do today? Can I pick up the phone to this person? Can I read a book? Can I ask someone for help? We’ve also got to the position where we don’t say can you help me? I’ll help you with something. And that brings us nicely onto mentors. You know, people just try and do everything themselves. And, you know, mentors for me growing up, I had my mom my mum was a great mentor, I, I looked up to my dad, I didn’t spend a lot of time with my dad, but he was still a type of mentor. And then I just did everything myself. And I was pretty successful. And then I lost it all. And then I and then I found mentorship and I found hanging out with other people. How important has mentorship for you been in your career? And is it something that you do still have mentors today? I know you mentor people as well. Let’s talk about the power of mentorship because it’s something which most people don’t do. And that’s why they maybe stay like the 95% of the population bloody broke. Yeah. So I used to have on my wall when we were broke. I showed up through the whole wall with pictures of boats and planes and and people might have always been material. Well, you know, when you have nothing that was something that inspired me but in the middle of it was a picture with a quote that said I saw further by standing on the shoulders of giants. And to me a mental may not be a giant but there’s someone who knows something you don’t know that you need to know. You know, we overcomplicated we think a mentor has got to be a classroom genius, let’s say or a business genius. We’re actually my mom was a great mentor. The guy who run the newsagent I used to work for it was a great mentor. Some teachers can be great mentors. It’s someone who’s going to see in you a potential tell you that they can see that in you and help you know how to get from where you are to there. So firstly, if it is to a future position a better person.
One achieving something that they can see in you that you may not yet see in yourself. What what that suggests is, firstly, we are to do where we are based on the knowledge we have to date, the actions we take today and the behaviors we have. So, to achieve something different, we need to do something different, we need to learn something more. So we’ve got to look at someone and say, who can do that my mum, if it came to showing love, if it came to tough love, if it came to making a great Irish do, she’s the mentor to go for, but she couldn’t read couldn’t write was only ever a cleaner and a seamstress? How the fuck was she going to teach me to make millions now that’s no disrespect to her. She’s the most important woman in the world to me and has been, but I needed to go to someone who run a business, you wouldn’t go to a dentist and ask them to perform heart surgery or vice versa. They’re both doctors, but you need to find the niche of specialty of skill set that’s going to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. And so to me, there are great people out there do you know you don’t even need to pay them and I say that as someone who’s a commercially fierce mentor, but YouTube that made the amount of free content on their audible. So listen, learn, listen, learn, but there is no replacement for someone who can look you in the eye and say, I believe in you. I can see you on those fucking beaches. In fact, I can see you own in the hotel, you know. And so people might say that’s bullshit or that but you feel it. It’s kind of physical when someone says, I believe in it is so true that the last 10 years for me have been probably the best of my life in terms of success and growing something really sustainable that I really believe in. And one of the biggest differences in the last 10 years I’ve had lots of great mentors, social media, mentors, property mentors, business mentors molded me you know that have helped me and I just go and find the best people in the marketplace pay him a ton of money or not even that much sometimes and and then copy what they do and then get that help and support so I think it’s really really important and and you want to a trades mastermind as well, don’t you do want it.
But this is all on Joe and Chris they’re amazing. You know, Joe’s had his challenges and, and bounce back, bounce back big style. The guy’s got massive believe he gets mentors, they pay, you know, a six figure sum for Grant Cardone training every year. They pay me a chunk of money for mentoring every week. And so, but they act on it, and they make it happen. And I love being part of that because the trade groups specifically what I really like and I’ve mentored and still do some corporates where I working with someone who’s Coca Cola, or BP or Unilever or Procter and Gamble or Red Bull, all these brands that I’ve worked with in the past, I actually much prefer SMEs. You know, taking someone who works really hard has a belief but don’t know how to get there. The corporates they kind of do it and actually, they do waste a lot of your time when you mentor and because they are too busy. We’ve gotten me in so go for the smaller medium in the trade group. What is lovely is these are people who have got a trade plumber, electrician, bricklayer Carpenter, whatever, but that when they did their apprenticeship, it didn’t teach them how to build a business. And so the bit that they’re missing is how do I build winning teams? How do I attract, train, motivate and retain great people? How do I manage the finance? What the fuck is cash flow? What does that mean? How far do I need to look out? Where do I get the money from? How do I get the money? And what’s this about building a brand you know? It’s mixed plumbers. Yeah, but you know, how can you make that more of a brand make it a known brand? You know, like Mick George might have been a skip hire guy sold for over 100 million quid make your business may mean something to build the brand, but people don’t understand marketing, social media and all the things that you talked about. What amazes me is there are lots of incredible companies that are the best at what they do that make no money. There are lots of average companies that understand marketing understand connection, get out there, do it build a brand, and a lot of businesses that are quite average in terms of their delivery, but exceptional in terms of their marketing changed the world. Yeah, I mean, Coca Cola essentially is fucking sugar and water but with a bit of branding it becomes a multi trillion pound business you know, so it’s it. People get distracted on trying to be perfect. I love the bit when I spoke to Charlie Mullins Pimlico plumbers. And he said, you know, Mike, if I got 70% right in a week, I made money if I got 70% wrong in a week I lost money. So as long as I was more right than wrong, I made money but I never needed to be perfect love that you ever need. Yeah. And people are caught up in the paralysis of analysis. I’ll get going when I got it all right on my website is not quite right. Or, Oh, I just want to perfect this. No set off and cause build a relation you’re still gonna cock up but just fix it as you go. I love what you said earlier just before we went on stage about actually you want to be going into the storm. People worry about failure. They worry about challenges and you know be as the successor there’s anyone listening to this now that are just starting off, be prepared for a storm like go for that you want to just share that. Yeah. And in that sense the storm is your friend is not your enemy. And, and this came out one of my mentors may be climb mountains run marathons do clip around the world yacht race and so on. And, and the clip around that I said to him, what next? And he said, What still scares your mic? And I said, Well, nothing really. He says something musky. I said, Well, I don’t like getting too much out of my depth in water. He said, Great, I want you to cross an ocean. That was a bit of a leap, to cross an ocean. And so we get a signed up clip around the world yacht race, first day interview. And the guy beside me says, What’s the training, they say first day in the classroom, second day in the pool for sea to Bible third day, we’re going to aim for the biggest storm we can find at night. So we’re all uncomfortable, II last awkwardly, and the guy looks at me in the eye and says, We cannot prepare you on calm waters. You know, we’re going to aim for the storm because we need to teach you the power of the storm. And actually, when you then learn about sailing, if you’re on calm waters where the sunshine is all lovely, but there’s no wind, without wind, you’re not moving anywhere. So but if you can get the storm, if you can hit it right skirt around that storm, use its energy to catapult you forward, you win that race. Everyone avoids the storms. The reason I call my book failure breeds success. And I thought it was so important to get that right, is that we avoid failure. We avoid storms, we avoid embarrassment. Actually, if you speak to people who have become multimillionaires and billionaires, you’ll realize they didn’t like the failure. But they started to realize I’m gonna push through it, I’m gonna push through it, I’m gonna push through, I’m gonna learn from it, I’m going to get better, I’m not going to get better. And they keep moving on. Failure is not the opposite of success. It is one of the key ingredients to success. Great. I love that and be determined, don’t give up, get up fast and just get on to the next thing, right, you know, learn from things that have happened, especially if you’re doing something that you love. Yeah, you know, would you this is a good question. If you had decent money, would you be willing to go to do a job for 810 12 hours a day that you hated every day for 50 years, just because it paid good money, if you made enough to survive, but never never made much monetary success, but lived every day doing something you love. You know. So I would rather fail or not massively succeed, doing something I love every day than succeed doing something I love that. If you can find your passion, find your purpose, follow your passion, follow your purpose, and then never give up then actually you end up succeeding at something you love. And that’s the real Mecca. That’s the real goal. And it’s achievable for everyone. I truly believe it. Yeah, people can achieve anything they want to put their mind to if they get the right knowledge, the right mentors, and keep focused until they get let’s go back to the Secret Millionaire. So what made you do that? And what were some of your learnings and lessons, you know, going back to where you grew up? And going back into that environment. So let’s explore that. Because like you say, you’ve got this real bullish attitude of like, you can do whatever you want. So talk us through that experience, and how that was and what you learned and what you can share from it. Yeah, we talked a little bit about my past and a great mate of mine in Ely, in Cambridgeshire, he’d been asked to do it. And he’s very charitable person, great businessman, everything else. And he’s chatting to his dad a month or two or a couple of months before it was due to be filmed the next episode, and his dad said to him, Listen, son, I know you want to do this and you want to do it because the charitable side and everything else. But have you thought about because they retail shops, if Mrs. Miggins sees that you’ve got all this money and all the trappings and she’s gonna then think he’s charging me too much for my milk. And you’ve got to face them every day these cars. So he had a bit of a wobble and he said, Oh, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. But my mate Mikey does a lot for charity. Even when we had nothing Jules and I have always given 10% of everything we earn every year to charity. It’s a kind of superstitious belief that if I didn’t feed the funnel, I won’t keep getting benefit from it. So always give 10% back. So I was in Australia at the time and I weren’t watching much TV I was building a business. I’ve never even heard of secret millionaire JJ sends me this message and says might you know I’ve told shine TV it was at the time. The give you a call, you know if you’re interested anyway, they ring. Anyway, I asked her. Let me have a look at an episode I went on catch up Telly on Channel Four. I’ve watched quite good. It’s quite interesting. I was already a behavioral profiler. And, and I wanted, I thought it’d be interesting on a couple of fronts, one to go back to poverty because we already had an international business making great money.
I wanted to go back to poverty to see how I felt about it now from a different position. And secondly, as a behavioral profiler. I was interested to see how I’d cope at that level. So anyway, I agreed to it. But I said on one condition it has to be within an hour of where I live because I don’t want to support any charities that I can’t stay in touch with and see feel in touch with do with the money, and so on. So I was the only person ever allowed to do it in their hometown.
Partly because I hadn’t been there for 20 years, because even though I lived just outside, I was in America, Australia, New Zealand, all over the world. And no one would recognize me anyway. So I agreed to do it. I was interested in psychology and what they do is they take your phone, you have no contact with anyone for 14 days. And they give you during that two week period, equivalent dole money. I think it was 68 quid at the time, you got to live off it. They ring up estate agents and they say you got any shithole properties that haven’t been cleaned and everything else so put me in this in this in this house. That I’m not kidding. There’s pubes in the bar.
With these beans on in the sink, and it always and when you turn when I tried to have a first bath, it leaked, like fabric kitchen ceiling came down. It was like horrible. You know, I’d experienced not nice places, but this was awful. But it really with a thump brought me down to earth to what people that have got no money that are living on that what how they have to live. And the first morning I got up I thought go for a run. Because the team said they’ll come pick me up at nine o’clock. And I see this little Greek coffee shop in the middle of town. I’ve got a stop I get a coffee I get A times new paper. I have a quick look. And I’m gonna fuck I’ve spent my whole days food and coffee and bought a big wake up call. And so it did reconnect me to there are some great causes out there are people really living by the breadline? Yeah, I’d still say the same thing. If I was mentoring them, you know, learn some new skills, do some different stuff, put some work in because we, you know, I’m prejudiced against any lazy ass bastard who can work and won’t work. Yeah, you know, I’ve never met a person who isn’t willing to support the people who can’t support themselves, whether they’re elderly, infirm, you know, just got problems. But we have too many able lazy non workers in this country. And not it’s not just because they need to pay their way is because they can be more happy, be more self fulfilled, they can change their lives and feel better about themselves. So are we connected with all that it was a great experience, but so much so that the minute I finished filming, I decided there and then I’m going to sell all my businesses, which we did.
Because my girls were growing up and when I was at home, I was a full time dad. I was on it. I didn’t go football or down a power. I didn’t enough corporate stuff. But I wasn’t old enough. Yeah, I was missing. How old were you girls at that time, when you went into Secret Millionaire, what would have
been probably 10. And so and you most likely want to spend more time? Yeah, I mean, I always even from that what I did at that age was I’d ring them every night. But when they were little we did the bath bottle bed kind of thing both involved in that as he got a bit bigger reading to him every night. So even if I was in Australia or America try and time that time it’s gonna have a quick call, do some of that. And then as they get older, when when they’re at school, and we give them their first phones that you love. And from that age every day I sent them a positive motivational picture called Love that Wow. Now what was interesting about that was and they know now I was brainwashing them, but that’s a good kind of washing and uh, yeah.
Every day 10 McCrone and sometimes it’s how it might have been slightly Sarki because they were bitching about something, you know, and they’d come back to you, or they’d get angry or they’d send me a quote that was taking the piss out you know, practice what you preach. But it was this banter around principles. And then if I missed the day for some reason that to me a positive quote how nice and I realized I was programmed but to do that every morning I get up on it, not a good picture but I might be sitting in the bar flicking through Instagram for motivational quotes or so to send them one that was appropriate each I probably went through 50 So instead of doing what most people do get up what’s in the fucking news all miserables if the world had a nuclear bomb, someone will tell me you know, I don’t need to look for it. So instead of doing that first thing, I would be looking through positive quotes. So in finding to to center them, I’ve looked at 50 great quotes from great people that starts my mind off with the right mindset every morning. Yeah. And then boom, we hit the day great. And now they have that positive can do attitude. So you know, I’m sure you’ve done it because you’ve done a lot of training yourself and developing yourself. If someone says to you, we’ve got a bit of a problem that hechos got my back and neck I think we’ve got a challenge we’ve got an opportunity because we become like don’t give me your problems don’t spew it it might you might see it as a problem but let’s treat it as a challenge that treat it as an opportunity. And when you program yourself positively on a regular basis
your brain can’t it’s almost like becomes a magnetic opposites and negativity. It bounces it away. Yeah. I mean, I’m quite excited about a business doing at the minute called your own unique radio your are you why are you are where we can for a couple of grand.
Set up everyone their own personal radio. So at the moment I’ve got life success radio, you could say Alexa launch life success radio, it comes on, but it’s positive, uplifting music, but in between that is quotes. Excellent. And then we’re going to put the podcasts on it and other people’s podcast.
But we can launch a radio, it can be your local town, it can be a radio for them, the parish events, some advertising unbelievable things. It could be a church, radio that with monastic music, let’s say or you know, so, but because that for me is if I listened to most radio stations, I’m hearing all the fucking terrible news. I don’t mind a few headlines, but it’s like they’re whinging about Boris Johnson. There’s Richie Sunak that also draw donald trump this is we might think it’s necessary really isn’t No, you can’t leave. I love the Serenity Prayer. You know, God grant me the ability to change things. I can’t accept things. I can’t know the difference. I can’t fix the world. Yeah, but I can fix myself. I can put myself out there to help other people. And bit by bit we change our part of the world. Yeah. What What would you say then? It’s that’s all great stuff. What would you say in your career, has been a moment where you did face a really big challenge? What was that challenge? And how did you overcome it? Well, the biggest one was ringing my my mate who became my best man, still one of my best friends. And so we’ve gone bust. And, and, and people avoid failure or cost, as we said, but I’m sure you’ll look back at your failure and think Christ, if I didn’t fail, I’d still be doing that. And that would be a lot worse than where I am now. So it’s hard to say it was a positive. But two things he said to me, Mickey, let me tell you one thing, he said, failure. And I think it was Churchill who first said it is not fatal. You can bounce back from this. And you can you can, you can come back stronger. But he said, The bit that will hurt you most is when it all comes out, you’ll count your friends on one hand, because like rats desert in a sinking ship, people go, boom, they just run away. They don’t want to be associated.
He said, But you know what, you’ll only ever need a handful of friends. And I’m one of them. And you know, when you know, I say to my daughters, if you get one really good friend, every decade of your life, you are blessed. We live in a world where people think I’ve got fans and friends on Facebook, I’ll tell you what, send them all a message today and ask them to send you 50 quid because you’re a bit tight, then you’ll know which ones are those 1000 are your friends? Oh, short minute, are they really going to be there. So he taught me in that one moment that, you know, accept, acknowledge the negativity, the feelings, the emotions, but don’t let them be your future.
Realizse that you’re going to now find out who your friends really are. And that’s really important thing. You know, I’ve got loads of acquaintances, but I’ve got a handful of friends and they are amazing. And I only need a handful of friends. And then if you want to change some things in your life, change some things in your life. If it didn’t work, how can you make it work? And that was really pivotable Pivotal, because I could have given up and just become a bum. Yeah, I people, you know, there would have been people who say, Oh, don’t worry, Mickey come and have a drink. So you have some drugs.
Having a friend that was a hand up, rather than a drag down, come and join us down it made a world of difference, I suppose you’d say like environments really important. People should be really cautious and protective of who they spend their time with. If there’s people tuning into this now, and let’s just say they’re in a negative environment, and they don’t know how to get out of it. And maybe that could be their loved ones. It might be their friends, their family members could be the husband, the wife, so it’s sometimes other words, and what could just be their work environment. They really want to break three, Mike, but they just feel a bit of fear now or anxiety. And they’ve got that negativity around them, what would be some of your positive inspiration and steps and what they need to do to break through and start getting some of those wins that you talk about? I could probably do an hour on that question. Yeah.
Firstly, environment is a really important thing. Yeah. Okay. You know, Jim Rohn talked about the way the average of the five people we spend most time with average income, average attitude, average health, average lifespan, all those kinds of dead right have never been found anyone who could evidence and argument against that, okay, but people often can’t see that or believe that. But what I’d say is, if you want to really get that message across, if a plant isn’t growing, do we say to ourselves, it was obviously a shit seed or a ship bulb? No, we immediately think I might need more sunlight, or I might need to give it more water or I might need to put some plants. We don’t blame the bulb or or the seed. We look at the environment in which it’s in and we do everything we can to change that environment or feed that environment more positively. So if, if we’re not feeling like we’re succeeding, don’t beat ourselves up or
Don’t beat someone up who’s not succeeding look at how to change their environment. Okay, so and that is really important. And then the other way that I look at that is the way you evolved that question is, every person in your life, every process in your life, every team or group or geography of your life, whether geography of the office, or home, is one of only two things, and it’s a bit black and white, but life is black and white, sometimes, it’s either an anchor, or it’s propeller. It’s either propelling you forward to your future that you that is the best future for you, or it’s anchoring you back. And sometimes you got to say, is my partner anchoring me or propelling me is my job anchoring me or propelling me, and, you know, people often doing loads of great things, I’m doing this or doing that our products are great, we’ve got good people, but we’re not going forward. I said, we don’t look at them. They’re all great propellers, look at the things that are anchoring your business back, you know, you’ve got a couple of people in the real parasites that are real terrorists that are really holding the business back, you’ve got outdated systems there, you know, you’re trying to run a good business. But your vans are beaten to shit, and you’re in some dodgy backstreet gun office or something like that. So it anchors and propellers judge everything has an anchor or a propeller. Now, sometimes people can be anchors, because you have not told them what you expect. Sometimes it can be anchors, because you’ve employed them, but not trained them. And you haven’t given them the skills or support. But, and sometimes someone can be an anchor just because they’re having a bad day. But if you can start that kind of dialogue, where you, you can make a bit of fun with it. And if we started to have that language, and you understood, we worked together, we had that language, I could say to you, you’ve been a real anchor today mate in the cockney sense, because they know where the inference is going to stop being such an anchor. How do we propel this, and I think businesses and relationships should be out of fine. That language that is that can safely challenge each other. And if that challenging doesn’t lead to a change, you need to create the change. Great, great cut that anchor loose, you know, if you’re not growing, you’re dying, assess all the time, right? Constantly be assessing, changing, pivoting, moving, well, and people tools, improvements, people do annual strategic review, you know, you know, Joe, I know, Joe, we work on daily, daily, daily, you know, what have we achieved today? Did we get the numbers? Did we get the numbers? Who got the numbers who didn’t get the numbers? Did they not get the numbers because they need training? All of these things? It’s like, Why the hell would you wait a year to put something right? If you were sailing, and you hit a squall, or you lost the wind, you would immediately either change direction or change your sails to harness that wind? If you said, I’m all a bit tired, let’s have some lunch. And then with James, the wind, boom, someone overtakes you. Yeah. So constant is not a it’s not a date set thing to plan to review to strategize. It’s a continuous evolution. If you’ve got your business and your got your customers and you’ve got your products, you’ve got to be looking at it daily, haven’t you and it’s going on. I use the example if we had a bowl of apples here, or you had a bowl of apples in your kitchen, and as you walked past this morning, you’re a bit bleary eyed, and you’re on your way to work. But you notice the one on top is moldy? What would you do?
Right away? Why? Because it’s moldy? Oh, yeah, but con either. What would you say? I need to throw that away later today? You’re tired. You’re on your way to work. Why wouldn’t you leave it till you come home from work? Because it just doesn’t sit right there now and it will rot the rot? Yeah. So if we wait till later, tomorrow, next week, next month, how much poison is gonna spread from that? Wherever that’s a bad person. A bad process. A bad system, a bad job? A bad environment. The minute you see a moldy apple in a bowl, everyone just takes it out. They know it spreads. And yet suddenly they get to work and that guy fucking late again for the third Monday on in a row. He seems to go sick every third Monday. Yeah, it’s unusual to someone to go sick on a Monday. He’s a lazy ass bastard who puts his weekends before the job. Cut him loose. I love that. Love that. Yeah, that you’re you are. You are cutthroats. But I can see that you’re very firm, but fair. You’ve got a hell of an energy about you. And even where you are. Now. I can see you just love this stuff. It’s like it’s ingrained into your DNA. What do you love most about what you do today? And where is Mike and the Empire and the family going for the next 10 years? That’s a really good question.
Listen, I fit fit. Someone sent me a connection and wanting to free mentor and the other day. I didn’t do free mentoring, you know, I want them to value that mentoring. But she said oh, you’ve got 7777 followers know what that means. And she sent me a link and I checked it afterwards. It’s there are loads only. It is if you asked what the number 7777 means it’s the angel number four, you’re exactly in the right place, and your purpose is set candidate. And even if That’s bollocks, you know, you’re really I think, really, it’s funny that she should ask the question on that day, and I should. And it was only I was only that number of followers for an hour or so, you know, it’s like, I do feel like I’m exactly where I need to be. I think, you know, you talk about being a round peg in a square hole. And people feel like that, I’d say, if you feel like that something isn’t right in your life. But I love every day I wake up feeling energized. It’s like the morning of a holiday. And I hit that day. And so I want to be doing more of the same. I love doing one to one because can change people’s lives. I do a bit of one to many, because that might lead to one to one, but I really want to change people’s lives. And the reason I’m a bit bare knuckle is
a lot of mentors want to cuddle and Oh, ya know, you’ve been busy. I know you’ve been this, I want to be your toughest mentor. So I can be your biggest cheerleader. Because if I come to you all the time and tell you that’s okay, that’s okay. That’s okay. You’re gonna get anywhere. Now don’t get me wrong, mental health is a big issue. And if someone’s, they do, I’ve had somebody who tried to kill himself. Last year, I’ve had people who are going through divorce in a dark place. And I’ll say, Listen, I can help you with some of that as a behavioral profile. And if you tell me what it is, we may work for it. But if you’re really serious, and you haven’t dark force, don’t be fucking stupid. If your car wasn’t working, you’d go to the garage, if the lights weren’t working, you’d call an electrician. If you are feeling that wrong or out of place, go and get some help. But I will never tell them what they want to hear. I tell them what they need to hear. Because I really, really is my biggest passion in life is seeing people become something amazing. And when you see that, it’s like, it’s it’s like they’re your kids, we go proud of our kids. But to me, someone I mentor, I’m not interested in the money, but I charge enough for them to take it seriously. Yeah. But I want to see them win. In terms of my family and the kids and that my youngest is just finishing union, she just got a great job offer. I won’t say the agency but and she’s not only is she going to become an account manager for great agency look after brands like Google and Apple and everything else. But she’s been asked to be as part of that role to be the EA to the CEO. And they run 37 countries and you think ship sometimes you put this in other people see it and that was from one little internship. The other one got the cognitive neuroscience masters and she works in Nilsen neuro, which is the kind of best department in Nielsen which are massive global firms. So I will always be there for them and give them the time and give them support and give them the love. And I love spending time with them every week when I can and we see most weeks we’ll see in one way or the other. But I know that if I die tomorrow, if we lost all the money, and I gave nothing else in life, they’re good. Yeah, those girls are set for amazing things. And so I want to live a long, full life. But if I died tomorrow, I’d die happy or die doing No, no. And I’m doing what I love. No, no, I have given my kids the ability to be amazing, and the desire to want to be amazing. And the tools that can help them when they hit challenges. Great. Great. What do you like to do in your spare time? Yeah, so in my spare time, I like spending time with mates, I set a challenge every year. So on the ninth of August this year, I’ll climb Mount Kazbek in Georgia, which about five and a half 1000 meters, you know, lots of crevices that we have to go across from across ladder bridges, and things like that. So still do a challenge each year that kind of makes me focus, and you have to break down and project. And I’d urge everyone to do a mount in do a marathon and do a big challenge. Because what it does is and I first got it from doing Anthony Robbins mastery university when he made us do walking on coals. And then I didn’t did 50 foot one in Hawaii, it should melt your feet. It’s four times hotter than your oven. But like the bee doesn’t know the beach shouldn’t physically and scientifically be able to fly. You can build something and you get intense. You build an aura around you that protects you from that heat. And after doing something like that, why the fuck would you walk on burning coals, we have to and you need to do it in a trained way. But when you do and you know that against all science, you have walked on a massive heat and you survived it puts a level of connection in your brain that says I shouldn’t be able to do that but I did. So when someone says you can’t do that or that nobody has been able to achieve that your brain says well you weren’t able to walk on burning coals you know someone your height your weight shouldn’t be I climb mountains or run marathons but I did. And so you know for me I it’s all connected because I’ll do the mountain in that will make me feel good. That will be a challenge 60 in November and I want to do the marathon for the sixth time next year to be able to run a marathon in my 60s and stuff like that.
And but that also gives me the analogies the metaphors the examples to take into my mentoring so it’s my life is not working home or my can. Isn’t is it is, it’s all connected? And that’s why I think it feels right. There is no, I’ve got to put on a new face, I’ve got to put on a different personality be different behavior. I am living true to an absolutely congruent to everything I want to be testing. If you could go back to your younger self, is there something that you would say to yourself? And what would anything be?
Wrapping up now you reminded me as you said that I’ve mentored Greg Wallace, for many years, Master Chef, great guy really talk about authentic. He’s the same guy on and off screen. But he did the Strictly Come Dancing, and he’s a great mover. I’ve been out with him before he’s, you know, he’s good, and so on. But that’s live. And he never did live TV. And he had a little bit of a wobble before. So he, he tells the story that he had a bit of an anxiety attack. So BBC, they got this woman in for him. And it said something like, Oh, I just feel like I’m scared. 15 year old. And she said everything we say, points to a truth. Why 15 What was happening when you were 15. And a lot of people don’t know this, but he was homeless at the time. And it helping out on different markets to get a bit of cat eating food, like apples, and that that were good enough to eat but not good enough to sell. Anyway, he said, well, at 15 I was homeless, and I was a bit scared. And I didn’t know where the next money or food or shelter I thought I was exposed in that sense. And I was scared and she said, Okay, what would you say now to your 15 year old self? And so that’s why you asked. And he said, I put my arm round round them and say it’s gonna be alright. Yeah, nice. I like gonna be alright. And she said, and what would the 15 year old say to you probably say Fuck, I’m going to be famous.
And so if I went back, I was skipped. My stepfather was a particularly violent man. And I got the brunt of that sometimes. And you know, as a behavioral profile, I’ve come to understand he was a Richardson, I’ve come to understand that violence was the go to place if he got scared or didn’t know. It doesn’t mean I forgive him, but it means I understand. But I would go back and say something similar. You’ll be okay. Yeah. Listen, this is setting you up. It feels painful. It feels scary. But everything you’re going through is your foundation upon which you are going to be able to build amazing things. Wow. Fantastic. I think that is an incredible message to end the show on. Thank you so much for coming down. What an amazing podcast with so many so many golden nuggets. And the audience is absolutely going to absolutely going to love this. I’ll happily come back again. Great. And look at you know, Mike’s got his book out. Failure breeds success. Go and grab a book is on Audible as well. It’s an audible, I’m a proud, proud owner, where can people hook you up Mike if they want to? I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on socials. I do do do my own LinkedIn. So that’s a good place to start. And I like connecting with people. I like hearing people’s stories, they can ask me questions, I tend to respond to all those questions. And if ever you’ve got an event, I’ll come and speak at that hook up there. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Well, make sure you go and hook mike up. We’ll put all of the handles and descriptions in all of the social media platforms. But there we have it another amazing guest on the dealmaker podcast. If we can do it, you can do it too. Strategy, belief and action. Get yourself educated. Get around great people, and why not? Now listen to the next day we’ll make a podcast and if you can, if you’ve got some great value, if you can like and share this podcast, we want to get the message out to as many people as we possibly can. And I would really appreciate your support in doing that. So if you can like if you can share, that would be incredible. And I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. You’re listening to the dealmaker podcast, hosted by multimillionaire property investor, entrepreneur, and Guinness World Record holder Liam Ryan, discover how to start scale and grow your business become a better negotiator create more opportunity and make massive profit so you can live the life of your dreams.
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