[00:00:00] Speaker A: The reality is, is that, you know, there was a certain lack of empathy. You know, I had a much more, you know, type a military, like, hey, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, figure it out. And after, you know, going through this, this experience, I was able to look at clients and look at business owners and go, oh man, like I actually see a lot more emotion in this situation. I can see how stressful it is and sometimes, you know, even with our best efforts, things don't.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Welcome back to innovate and overcome. Today we are joined by Mike Brown. Now he's an entrepreneur and investor and a wealth coach. Prior to founding and then exiting an eight figure oil and gas investment firm, he flew FA18 Super Hornets for the Navy. Now that sounds like some interesting stories. We're going to get there. But the combined tactical precision experience that he honed in the cockpit, he was able to bring with his real world experience to navigating the complex world of finance. Welcome to the show, Mike.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Thanks Richard. I'm really happy to be here.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: You know, I'm excited about this. Not just because of your background and I think there's a lot of very interesting lessons. You know, I've had a number of past military professionals join me on the program and there's always some interesting stories that are there. And what I find is a common theme is a lot of lessons from whether it's their training, real world experience being in, whether it's battlefield scenarios or something that they're able to bring into the professional world or a future business endeavor. Now many people don't forge into business, but the people that do, they seem to rely on those lessons a lot to bring them forward into their future life. What, what can you share about that for you and how that shows up in your own life?
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I, I, I say often that I wouldn't trade my mill military experience for any amount of money and you couldn't give me any amount of money to still be in the military.
So there's a wealth of amazing lessons that I think that combat is a sacred human experience. And I don't mean that from a morbid or bloodthirsty type perspective. I just mean that the ability to test yourself with the most critical with your life on the line and other people's lives on the line I think really forges a different relationship with stress. And I got so much from that experience that I use every day. So yeah, I mean, I think it truly is a pinnacle human experience.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate the way you said that. It makes a lot of sense, and I imagine it's not the first time you've had to explain it that way to others.
But before we hit the record button, we were talking a little bit about some of your background, and we didn't get into the military stuff a great deal. But really, you'd indicated that a lot of the world as you know it today really began after you sold your company. So I'm curious, before we get to that part of the story, tell us a little bit about, you know, starting your company before you sold it. And then what was the impetus of leading up to selling it? What was the decision? It was. You had a great offer. Was there something more going on for you that led to the reason to exit that first venture?
[00:03:14] Speaker A: Yeah, great question. So. So I did. I grew up in Midland, Texas, which becomes relevant when I get out of the Navy. I was figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always knew two things. I knew I wanted to be in the military, and I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I always had. Since reading Atlas Shrugged when I was 16 years old, I knew that I wanted to start a company.
And as I was getting out of the military, I had a family friend of my mentor invite me to join his oil and gas firm in Midland, Texas, and worked for him for a couple of years and then went out on my own and started with my business partner, who I also flew in combat with. So figured we were pretty good at flying jets together. We might be pretty good at running a business together. And as my mentor said, when I started, it was the best time in the history of oil and gas to be an oil and gas. You know, we were just unlocking a massive boom with fracking and horizontal drilling and unlocking reserves in the Permian Basin of Texas that were previously untapped. And so, as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. It was absolutely the best time in the history of oil and gas to be an oil and gas. And we built that firm over five or six years. But to give context, when we started, we were acquiring land deals, and when we started, we were acquiring land deals at $3,000 an acre. By the time 2018, 2019 rolled around, those same deals were worth 15, 20,000 an acre. So I felt that as an investor, the cycle, oil and gas, is a very boom and bust cyclical industry.
I started feeling that the cycle felt long in the tooth, and there was a lot more downside than there was upside left. And so for me, it was very Much an investment driven decision of like, hey, I think we are approaching or hitting the peak of this current cycle and I want to maximize our opportunity there. So that was really what drove the decision to consider exiting.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Well, I appreciate you mentioning that because I'm from Alberta, Canada, which is frozen Texas as we like to say. I don't live there presently, but my whole life grew up in an oil based cyclical economy of the world. Very prone to the economic impacts of the oil price. And of course Canadian frozen oil or crude oil that we have, the bitumen we have doesn't sell at the same price as West Texas crude. And so there's about a 25% discount on that which will be made more impacted by potentially some upcoming tariffs in the new administration.
But it's also interesting to hear you from Midland. The only time I've heard of Midland, Texas personally is actually in the book Becoming youg Own Banker that my mentor R. Nelson Nash wrote because he talks about the First national bank of Midland, Texas, which was you. You know, Midland was one of the most profitable, like per capita highest income places in the early 80s during an oil boom in the entire nation of the United States. And the whole bank was the most profitable bank but got decimated after the oil boom because the shareholders were using capital and not, you know, taking loans from the bank themselves and doing them in oil ventures, but not making any repayments and not making any plans for repayment. And so they under capitalized the best business in the world and it went belly up. And that's the story of the First national bank of Midland tests going back to the early 80s. And that lesson is, is, is implicated in Nelson's book Becoming your own Banker because he talks about the impact of that behavior, the mindset and the behavior that went into creating that environment.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean one of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes, right, is when the tide goes out, we'll see who isn't wearing any pants. And that was definitely the story of the First national bank in Midland, which, which I'm well familiar with.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: So it's fascinating to me. But your experience and your thought, and I'm guessing because you were familiar that you'd also again read Atlas Shrugged, you were thinking about some of these things in advance. You were seeing the trend, you're from the area, so you'd known probably from your past being someone who was born in the early 80s, what impact that could have created and you knew that the dime was going to drop eventually. So the desire to get out was the real situation so when you sold the business, you sold it at the right time, you were able to get out before things kind of dropped and what have you. But you'd indicated that your real issues or problems about what happened after the fact started after the business was sold. So you had this great success, you had this bull run for yourself and your business partner over, you know, six to seven years, you've exited, you're kind of sailing away off into the sunset. But that didn't really happen that way, did it?
[00:07:56] Speaker A: That's a great way to put it. You know, I say often, the day I sold my company, I thought I would never be unhappy again because I had done all the things that we're supposed to do. Studied hard, gotten good grades, went to the naval academy, tested myself in combat, flown jets at the highest levels in the military, gotten out, started and sold a company. I had checked all of the boxes for the things that we're supposed to do to achieve the American dream. And by all means I did. I had the money, the house, the cars, this Instagram worthy life.
And two years later I was so stressed out, I was losing $100,000 a month. I'd acquired a distressed company, I was working harder than I ever worked, nothing was working. And all of a sudden I had this life changing windfall and never should have had to work again. And now I got myself in a real crisis and had to take a step back and go, oh my God, how did I get here? How is this even possible?
And the reality is that I had not done the work to become a person worthy of wealth. And what I mean by that is I made money, but I didn't acquire the mindset and the habits and the skills to be a good steward of that wealth. And in my experience, and talking to many, many entrepreneurs since who have been on similar paths is if we don't upgrade our operating system consummate with making money, we will find a way to self sabotage and lose money. And that's exactly what happened to me.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: I like the idea of the operating system. It's like trying to build a business structure on Windows 95 today.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Totally. And look, this is not a subject that most of us are equipped to deal with.
Between politics, sex and religion, money is the thing that we're never supposed to discuss. And so we grow up with a lot of conflicting messages around money.
We're supposed to work hard and be successful, but rich people are also evil. And so from the time we are young, we are getting conflicting messages about how much is enough is it okay to be wealthy? Is there something morally wrong with that? So it makes sense that navigating that complexity is really difficult. And then, baby, you know, there's not a lot of, there's a lot of education about what we should do with our money, but there's not a lot of education out there or resources about there about how we should be thinking about money or what the overarching framework for making money decisions.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. I love the way that you put that and I 100% agree with you. That is a real catalyst problem with North America and I certainly think it extends beyond that. But there's a real issue with a relationship with money. And just like you might want to look at, you know, finding a spouse that you got to go into a dating and a courtship and eventually a proposal and you're going to make this lifelong commitment. I think people do that with money to a degree, but they often don't do it successfully because they don't think of it that nature. And if you want to be successful long term in a relationship, you have to really think about what do you want that relationship to look like.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, when I, the framework I use is like, if you, if you think about starting a business like a startup, founder burns the boats, wears all the hats. They're robbing Peter to pay Paul, they're waiting for the check to come in to pay their vendors. And we normalize that stressful situation. It's just part of being a startup. But then as we scale that company up, we need different skill sets to be successful. If we're still operating with that same system where we're crossing 10 million in revenue, like something is very, very wrong. We can no longer rely on burning the boats, wearing all the hats. We have to become good at building systems, at delegating about honing the craft of leadership. And the same thing goes with wealth building. We start as an accumulator of wealth. We've got everything on the line. We burn the boats, we go all in on risk, we bet on ourselves. But as we start to build wealth, we need to shift that mindset to being a defender of wealth, which is a very different protocol and mindset for.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Being an accumulator of wealth makes total sense. And so with your business and the sale of it, and of course you mentioned you bought a de stressed business, was there a lag time between the sale of the business and that? Or is it something like I needed something to do right away, Was there a boredom aspect There. What led you to the distressed business that you thought, this is a great opportunity, I'm going to jump down and get involved in this.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: There's certain moments in our life where we know that things are going to change.
That happened to me in August of 2009.
My life completely and totally changed forever for the better. I learned about this incredible concept called the infinite banking concept. Becoming your own banker. It was created by R. Nelson Nash. Nelson became my friend and my mentor. I loved him dearly. I now have the blessed life of being able to teach his incredible message, his incredible concept to the people I love to serve.
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[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yes, such a great question. And there's so much wrapped in that. Because first of all, I think that exiting a business and having a windfall when we're young enough to enjoy it is one of the greatest gifts of entrepreneurship. Most people will work hard their entire lives to finally retire and then maybe pursue the things that they put off in sacrifice of building that life. Getting a windfall in my case in my 30s was incredible. But there's a power vacuum that comes. I've spent my whole life working and building and grinding and all of a sudden there's this just wealth of space where all of a sudden, yeah, I get really bored. I don't know who I am without my company. I've got to rework my identity and find out if I'm not working, where does my value come from.
And so there's some of those things going on. I also started business coaching even prior. So I started angel investing in 2013, made a couple dozen angel investments, was mentoring startup founders, found that I really liked that. Started business coaching as I was exiting my company and then as my coaching career really started to gain traction.
The reality is I was afraid of who I would have to become to be to hit the next level in coaching. So I went and distracted myself by creating a story that I needed to buy and build another business so that I would have more success to be more attractive to coaching clients. The reality is, and this is all hindsight, 2020. Of course I didn't know that I was doing this at the time, but it was really at the root of it was worthiness issues. I didn't feel confident in my ability to provide value to clients. So I felt like if I built and sold another business that would finally give me the success that made me worthy of Coaching others.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Very interesting.
I can resonate with that message. I understand the feelings that come up from that vantage point, and I think a lot of people listening would resonate with it. And you don't recognize what's happening until it's in the past and you have a chance to reflect upon it. So I'm guessing that realization started to become more clear to you in the evenings that you are looking at your business bank balance and seeing $100,000 of expense transactions dissipate from what should be increasing going the other direction.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, the reality is that acquisition entrepreneurship over the last decade or so has really gained in popularity. And my friend Walker Deibel wrote an amazing book called Buy Then Build that talks about the advantages of buying a business versus starting from zero. But one of the things he says in there is, don't buy a distressed business unless you're a pro.
It takes a whole lot more to turn around than you maybe think. And the reality is, I was naive. I looked at the business. I thought if I just clean up the balance sheet, wipe out the debt, trim some operations, build in some efficiencies, we'd be off to the races and humming in no time. And the reality is, there was a lot of the fundamentals of that business that were broken, and it was a lot more than just clearing the capital stack that was needed to make that thing happen. And so I think, yeah, getting into a quagmire and going, okay, this isn't working. And now I am watching again. I mean, $100,000 a month, day in and day out, you're like, wow, my bank account is quickly dwindling towards zero. I've bitten off more than I can chew. And not only that, I am an experienced operator. This is not my first rodeo, and everything that I am trying is not working. And I think that's one of the most frustrating places for an entrepreneur to be is like, hey, I have the knowledge and I have the skillset to make this work, but the things that I'm implementing here that I know from experience work, aren't working. Like, oh, no, now what?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Wow. And so you're. I'm curious, you know, the size of the problem. The de Stress business, the size and the magnitude of the problem that it was in. You know, was there a piece of that that was maybe almost a bit attractive? Because, you know, the. The bigger the problem, the bigger the thing to solve, the more maybe there's almost like a competitiveness nature, like some of that might come from, you know, flying Doing dog fights in the air with F18s, like, I'm not sure, is there, is there some components of your past that you think would have led you to step into that role, even more so because of the size of the problem that the business was in?
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, I, I think there's no doubt that what you're pointing out there has some merit. I mean, first of all, I carried the arrogance of someone who had never lost truly at anything. Right.
My entire life I had been in situations where my back was against the wall and I always managed to come out the other side.
And by the way, that's a superpower that's really cool to be able to maintain the calm under pressure and, and come out the other side stronger. But what that resulted in is that I was addicted to risk and I was addicted to chaos. Right. So I would bite off bigger and bigger problems almost because I felt more calm in the chaos than I did in a smooth, peaceful environment. And so I think there was a huge element of self sabotage that caused me to bite off bigger and bigger problems just to test and just to see if I could actually get through it on the other side. And again, this is not a conscious thing. This is all my subconscious running in the background. Our brains are pattern matching machines and our brains are wired to create subconscious programs that keep us safe. And so, because I had put my back against the wall multiple times and been successful, that was my default operating system.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting, brings up something that my partner Jason often says. Workaholism is the only publicly acceptable form of addiction that exists in North America. And it is very common. And it's especially common in the entrepreneur community because you, most people start with some very hustle, grind oriented idea and there's long, long hours for very little to potentially no, no pay or income. And there's this dream or a vision and you're just pushing everything towards it. And then sometimes we don't know when to take our foot off the gas pedal. And because you don't even recognize that things are coasting now, like the vehicle is moving and you can actually go work on something else. And I think that it's either a combination of, okay, now that this is working and I can see that I need to go find another thing that I can do to put all that effort and energy in to get that, you know, call it a fix, I guess. But, you know, so there's, there's a kind of a variation there. There's either. Hey, what more can I do in this thing to make it even better? And everything's working so good, I'm going to change it all to do something totally different and wreck it so that I can fix it again. Or I'm going to go let it sit and ride, and I'm going to go over here and get distracted by this bell and whistle I see on this side of my, you know, the peripheral vision.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Yeah. No, you nailed it, right? I mean, shiny object syndrome for entrepreneurs is real. And, you know, I say often, like, show me a bored entrepreneur, and I'll show you someone who's on the verge of. Of true wealth, right? Like, if your business is humming, so you've built systems, you've completely extricated yourself from the day to day like this. That is a business that is built to scale and it is on the verge of scaling. And what happens is we get impatient, right. Or we get restless. And we are, like, a lot of us tend to be addicted to the chaos. And exactly what you talked about. We'll throw a wrench in there. We'll go acquire a competitor, we'll fire our marketing team and rebuild our funnels. Whatever we do, we always want to be tinkering. And we say it's in the name of optimization, but really it's. It's because I think we are addicted to the stress. And I can certainly say that that was the case for me.
And then the other piece is I hear a lot from entrepreneurs like, well, I could never retire. There's no. I'd just be too bored. And in the years since, through a lot of coaching and a lot of therapy and understanding who I am at a core level, my question now is, what is it you're trying not to feel like? What is this busyness? What is this hustle culture? What does this allow you to distract yourself from? And it's usually some deep core childhood wound or feeling of lack or a lack of worthiness or whatever it may be for that person, and they're filling that void to avoid the discomfort of having to sit with those feelings.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: That's very interesting. We talk a great deal about retirement from a perspective of it being a word that didn't exist in the English language until the 1890s. And what it was originally created for was effectively to move people who were beyond service life expectancy, still working to remove them with the thinking that we needed to bring in a new person and train them up to skill to replace that position, because that person's going to be dead They've earned the right to be able to be paid an income for the rest of their life because they don't have much left to give. That was kind of the original thought, and it began with audible on Bismarck in Germany. And so prior to that, it didn't exist in language. And then it got really gravitated to in the 30s and then became a part of North American culture. But yet the targets haven't shifted and changed. Life extension has changed, technology has changed, the world has changed, but that thought process hasn't changed, and it hasn't moved with the thinking of the times. And so my mentor Nelson used to say that he didn't believe in retirement because the root of the word retire is to be taken out of service. And so language matters a lot. And it matters on how we think and what we tell ourself in our brain. It's not that people don't want to retire, but maybe what they really want is they just want to be able to do something with purpose for the rest of their years, and they want the income coming from other sources to support it. So whether it's an active income you're creating in a new way or it's a passive income from assets that's generating that, but you can have purpose. And I think there's a big difference between setting a purpose for the last part of your life as opposed to retirement. And so I'm in alignment with you on that. But I think there's even more to unpack there for people to understand and look at it. And language that you use in your own brain and then you convey out of your mouth to the people you talk to has an impact not only to yourself, but to the people around you.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, totally tons to unpack there. Right. But I would argue, number one, rather than sacrificing yourself. And we have this culture of self sacrifice and delayed gratification. And so many of us are stuck in jobs that we hate, trading our time for money in hopes that someday we'll hit this magic number and then we can actually start enjoying life. I would much rather build a life I never have to retire from. And that doesn't necessarily mean working for money. I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give ourselves is the ability to divorce income and cash flow from our time. Right. That really gives us the freedom of choice of who we're going to impact, how we're going to use our time to be of service.
But the fundamental idea is that we can create that, you know, in the present. And we can pull that timeline forward and go, hey, what if I can align my values and the things that I care about with the work that I'm doing so that rather than feeling like it's something that I have to escape from at the end of my life, it's something that actually brings me joy and fills my cup up. And oh, by the way, now I'm earning income that I can use to purchase assets that replace active income with passive income.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Love it. Well, I'm so excited we're having such a great conversation. Join us when we come back after these messages and we'll continue to discuss the impact of getting your mindset and your money in the right place.
Are you looking for a great book to read? Turns out I have one for you. It's called Cash Follows the Leader. It's available anywhere books are sold, but.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: If you want to get a free copy and you can download it right to your inbox, you can go to coachcanfield.com.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: We are back here with Mike Brown unpacking mindsets around money and unpacking exactly how he got himself into hot water by buying a distressed business. And so, Mike, you know, before the break, we talked about, of course, how you know a little bit about retirement, the idea of that having purpose, getting clear on having the lifestyle that you want relative to your values.
Not all of that happened overnight for you. If we walk back to being in this business structure that wasn't supporting you, taking on a challenge that fundamentally was unnecessary in your life, but going through the motions, maybe it was necessary, but it was necessary for a very different reason. It was there to help create and craft and mold the Mike Brown that's with us today. So what progressed? How did you realize and get to the point where you found yourself in a position to try to exit that scenario? And what was the, I guess the straw that broke the camel's back that had you say, I need to get out of this business structure and move on?
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Such a great question. And by the way, I really appreciate the way you put that because I think most of us know that when we're in a tough situation or a challenging situation, the answer is to get to gratitude. How can I be grateful for this situation? But I think the mistake that we make is trying to rush to that outcome. Because the reality is I knew that someday, somehow, this would make me stronger. But in the moment, I was not grateful for that experience. I was very stressed out and a couple of things happened. Number one is I've actually Always considered myself an investor versus an entrepreneur. And let me tell you the difference. An entrepreneur back to that startup founder. An entrepreneur burns the boats, figures a way out and is all in and will never give up. And that's exactly what makes them successful. An investor takes a more 30,000 foot view. Right. I only need to be right more than I'm wrong. And I need to scale my winners and I need to cut my losers. And that is kind of the mantra as an investor. So pretty early on after I acquired this business, I knew this was a losing deal. But two things compounded it. Number one is it wasn't just my money on the line. I took investments from from some of my closest friends. So I felt very loyal and beholden to try to make this thing work so that I wouldn't lose my friend's money because I was fine losing my own money. I can weather that storm. But I had asked for support from some of my near and dear friends.
So a that caused me to stick around longer than I should.
And the other thing is that there is a difference between knowing that you have a losing hand versus being able to fold that losing hand and take that and actually put that loss on the books. And when it was all said and done, I lost like a million and a half dollars in 18 months. But it culminated with so my wife is also an entrepreneur. She is one of the fiercest founders I know. She is a classic burn the boat, I will figure this out entrepreneur. And the defining moment we were.
I told her that I had decided to sell the business for a loss.
And she, I mean, I'll never forget the look on her face. She screamed at me like I don't lose. And I was like, you know, honey, today, today we lose. And you know, it was really tough. I mean it was hard on our marriage. It was hard in so many ways. Hard to let my friends down. But you know, man, the minute I was able to find a buyer for pennies on the dollar and the minute I was free, I cannot describe it was probably equal to the feeling of elation that I felt when I sold my first company was the feeling of freedom that I experienced getting out from under this albatross.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: That's interesting. The connection point between two different, very vastly pendulum swinging different type events to create the same feeling. And fundamentally it was a freeing feeling. And I find that very interesting the way you describe that. I also thought it was interesting you talked about the way that you approach being an investor versus being an entrepreneur from a vantage point of a 30,000 foot view. And I'm like, well, there's got to be an F18 somewhere up in there. That's up in the sky where you're. Where the investor's looking down at what business to invest in. And you know. So how long was it after completing the sale that you were able to start to, I guess, start. Start to think about what you wanted to do next? Like, was there, was it prior to the sale, completing that you were already, or were you just so deep in the thick of it that you couldn't really see the forest through the tree? Sort of a situation.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Obviously a period of difficulty, I think forces a lot of introspection. At least that was the case for me.
So when I was in the thick of it, I was kind of realizing that, hey, actually what I really want to do here is coach, help other people solve problems, become the best version of their selves. And B, I'm really good at it. I really feel like this is what I was put on this earth to do. And the whole reason I had bought this business in the first place was due to my own worthiness issues that we talked about. And so that started to come together. I knew that I had distracted myself from my ultimate calling. So it was not long after that that I reoriented back toward coaching. But now it's with a much clearer purpose, a much clearer story. And so the irony, the great irony of the situation is that buying this distressed business gave me exactly what I needed it to give me. It just wasn't the win, it was from the loss. Right? But that loss turned into.
It turned into wisdom, it turned into empathy, it turned into real world experience. Because the reality is that there was a certain lack of empathy. I had a much more type A military like, hey, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, figure it out. And after going through this experience, I was able to look at clients and look at business owners and go, oh man, I actually see a lot more emotion in this situation. I can see how stressful it is and sometimes even with our best efforts, things don't work out. So it brought so much to my practice as a coach.
It was just a really difficult thing at the time. But now I view it really as one of the greatest gifts of my life and, yeah, shaped very much the work that I do now.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: So the reality is you actually did get what you were looking for. You were looking for a way to earn the right to support the people you wanted to serve. And you created it for the thing that you actually Needed, which is the ability to recognize and empathize with business owners going through tough, stressful situations that were diverse and different than what you yourself had already experienced.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Be careful what you wish for, I think is the moral of the story.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah, very, very, very interesting. I like how you kind of tighten that up now in the space that you help people now through coaching and mentorship. And you do a lot, of course, as an investor you still do those things actively. What are some of the things that you would wish people to understand and think about? We're in 2025 at the time of this recording. We're just crossing into a new year, 25 years into a new century. We're 75 a year away from the turn of the next century. What are some of the things that you want people to be thinking about from a future looking view as they look at both their money and their relationship with money?
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I love this question. And I think we'll start kind of with a more near term view and then kind of move into medium and longer term views because I definitely have some thoughts there.
The first thing that I learned fundamentally was that you can't outrun a poor relationship with money.
And I think that there is, like I said earlier, there's so much information out there about what we should be doing with our money, about how to invest, about how to build a portfolio.
But there's a reason we don't follow it and that's because our subconscious hijacks and is in charge when we actually think we're making rational decisions. You know, it's that software in the background that needs to be upgraded. And until we look at how our beliefs about money were formed. And so I have a whole framework around discovering our money stories. Like how did I grow up with money, what did I witness from my parents relationship to money and how does that show up for me now? When we start asking some of these questions, we might see how our past is influencing our present. And I believe that if we don't do that work, we will always continue to stay stuck. We will always continue to move the goalpost.
If we're trying to fill up a hole inside of us with zeros in our bank account, we will always continue to move that goalpost. So until we get really clear about our relationship to money and where our beliefs come from and what is it we're actually trying to solve for all of the information in the world, all of the great financial advice that we receive won't be enough because it's not addressing the Root issue.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So get down to the core is fundamentally where it's at and that's where things begin. And so when you've gone through that process with someone and there's been, whether it's a repair or a recognition or a reconciliation, maybe with that relationship, to some degree you can get things on a level playing field. And now you're forging ahead.
What does it look like after that process has been gone through? What do you see taking place with people that you're mentoring as now they're on the other side of that particular challenge?
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the first thing is I think that one of the really cool things about the work that I do is that I encourage people to get really clear about what is it that they actually want. What are we trying to solve here? If we're trying to grow our wealth, what is that in service of? What is the life that we want to create?
And for most entrepreneurs that I work with, it turns out they're a lot closer or within striking distance or have already achieved the thing that they set out to do. And that more money is actually not going to increase their satisfaction, their fulfillment and their alignment. It's actually all things that they can do for free. So to me, true wealth has nothing to do with money. Money is just fuel. True wealth is freedom. And it's freedom in four areas. Number one, freedom of health, meaning I have a healthy, fit, strong body so I can do the things I want to do. Freedom of relationships, meaning I get to operate from a place of getting to choose who I want to spend time with. And I'm not beholden to anybody.
Freedom of time, which is probably as obvious as it sounds. Time is our only non renewable resource and so we need to spend that in service of the things that actually matter to us. And then finally, freedom of mind, meaning all the money in the world doesn't matter if I'm staring at my ceiling at 2am stressed out about the decisions I have to face that next day. So if we can use our money as scaffolding, if we can use our money as fuel to create freedom in those four areas, now we start to step into alignment.
And alignment for me means my actions are aligned with my values, meaning I'm very clear on the things that I value. And I wake up every day and I do the things that serve those values. And the great news is that is available to any of us right now, we don't need more money to step into more alignment with our values.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: I absolutely love that. That's Fantastic. And we're gonna unpack more of that when we come back after this quick, short break.
Okay, Richard. I keep hearing about this thing called the Colby A Index. You talk about it all the time on the show. What is it?
[00:38:21] Speaker C: How do I get information about this thing, and why is it so important?
When I first got my Colby done, it totally revolutionized everything for me. I finally felt like, oh, my man, this is what I was looking for. All the things I've been doing that have been working for me and all the frustrations I'd had if I just understood this at an earlier age, boy, oh, boy, would my life be different.
You can take that step. If you want to learn and understand how it can change things for you and the way you communicate with others, you can go to coachcanfield.com and download your free report.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: As you see people do this work, as you're incorporating this and we're thinking about different aspects of money or aspects of lifestyle that are connected to our values, how does the changes that are coming or are here today, how is that allowing people to interplay with those things and create more success in those four freedom categories?
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, Great question. So as I start to think about the future of work, I think this is a really interesting conversation, because with the rise of AI and efficiency, we are stepping into a period of abundance like humankind has never seen before. Right? And with it, that comes unprecedented abundance, but it also comes with unprecedented problems. Right? And things that we are now going to have to solve for in our lifetime that humans have never had to solve for. So, for instance, what would it look like if we had a near limitless supply of free, clean energy? There is a real chance that that happens within our lifetime. What if we have an abundance of food supply so that we don't have to have humans in the loop to farm and create sustenance to feed the whole planet? There is a real chance that in our lifetime, we see a shift where humans no longer have to work in order to survive. And that is incredibly exciting, but also really terrifying for many of us because we have tied our worth to our work from the time that we're born. We hear from parents and teachers and coaches. Work hard and you'll be successful. Nothing worth doing is worth doing if it's not hard. And putting our best effort forward, we create our own intrinsic value from how hard we work at something. And if all of a sudden we live in a world where we no longer have to work to survive, that is going to put a lot of people on tilt. And so even looking at something like universal basic income, when I first heard about this idea, I thought it was some new fangled form of socialism. But as I think about the fact that very quickly we may be seeing machines replacing jobs at the rapid rate, we are probably going to be forced to create some sort of societal safety net for people to be able to survive as jobs are increasingly replaced by machines. And it's not just unskilled labor. In fact, I would argue that skilled labor is going to be some of the first things to be replaced. We look at something like a doctor already. Machines are better at diagnosing conditions than humans are because they have access to more information, they have a higher success rate. So in the future, humans are going to be more and more taken out of the loop, which means it's going to force us to reevaluate our relationship with work and money.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Well, just recently there was a major event that Tesla had and Optimus robots were there serving drinks and at a dance party. And, you know, we've got robot taxis and whatever coming out. So, you know, the, the Optimus robot just from Tesla alone is, you know, kind of not, certainly not the first iteration, but maybe the most advanced at present relative to like, dexterity, hand movement, control, those items. And that's something that's, you know, coming on board and will be available to the general public to start purchasing probably by the end of this year, if not already. And then they're only going to scale and ramp up production even further on that to a large degree.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's totally right. Like the, I mean, this is, it's such an incredible time to be alive. And, you know, a, you know, I think there's a lot of unrest and a lot of, you know, people are really scared right now. And I think that's like, you see that permeating into our politics, into our social media, because I think there's a lot of fear associated with this unprecedented wave of innovation.
And I think people have a right to be scared because we are now solving problems that we've never had to solve before as a species. And as they become more complex, the solutions become less human centric.
The reality is we are not going to be able to figure out how to solve things like climate change or, you know, food production or mass disease. It's going to be machines that are going to help us solve all of these problems. And I think that's terrifying, but it's also exciting, right, because the things that we can't do on our own, we're going to be augmented with artificial intelligence. And these solutions, we actually may find solutions to some of the biggest problems, like cancer. Right. I mean, that is, I believe that chronic disease will be optional in our lifetime. Like, how exciting, but also how terrifying because that's going to result in a population explosion. So we really are solving very, very complex problems and we can't actually predict the nature of what those problems are going to be well into the future like we used to be able to.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that also ties now directly back into money and money management and having a good relationship around money. So if you increased your life, you knew that you were going to have 25 extra years added onto the back end of what you think your lifespan is. What do you need to do differently today around money? Your utilization of it, your saving of it, your investing of it, your asset acquisition, et cetera, so that you can create more durability and stability over that extra time frame to enjoy a lifestyle that you want. If you think about modern medical technologies, and of course many of them are coming out, there's tons of incredible life extension technologies being invested in and coming out. But you know, still, for the average person, there might be out of, out of scope from a cost perspective, if you want to be on the ground level of that and starting well, you might need more investment. And now investment isn't so much happening in your asset based, it's in the asset of your body. And how well is it working for you? What are you investing into making it become the thing that's going to get you that 25 extra years?
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And I mean, this raises deep moral questions about, hey, we already have this wealth gap access that the wealthy have to medical technology.
The reality is those technologies are only going to be available to the very wealthy at the beginning. And we're already starting to see some of that with someone like Brian Johnson, who has the resources to try and literally live forever based on being at the forefront of technology.
And so it does really become critical at a societal level to start thinking about these problems. But from an individual perspective, I think that back to our earlier conversation of throwing the idea of traditional retirement out is probably the first place to start. Because the reality is we can't predict what our lifespan is going to be. And if we build our whole plan around retiring at 65 and dying at 90, we may be woefully underprepared for the reality of what's happening. And so rather than traditional retirement the concept that I teach people in my program and my clients is trying to reach escape velocity. And escape velocity is financial freedom, where your assets generate enough income to pay for your desired lifestyle for the rest of your life without ever drawing down on the principal.
That generally looks like about 27 times your annual expenses invested in, you know, something like fixed income, where very low risk, but again, generating enough cash flow in order to pay for your life. Like, that's where we need to start thinking about. And for me, you know, entrepreneurs have such a great opportunity because they have a wealth creation vehicle, which is their primary business.
And so really, it's a race to escape velocity. If we start thinking about it in terms of time instead of dollars, is we have three levers we can pull, right? The first is increase our income. The second is decrease our spending. And the third is pay less in taxes. And some combination of all of those affects our escape velocity timeline.
If I'm only saving $100 a month more than I spend, like my escape velocity timeline is way out, like in 400 years in the future, vice versa, I can only reduce expenses so much. So our best way to pull escape velocity forward is to increase our income. That means growing and investing in our primary business.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the income lever is far easier. Fixed expenses, not a lot you could do there. You have variable expenses, but the amount of energy it takes to put into managing and monitoring variable expenses. Well, if that same energy is applied to growing your knowledge base and understanding so that you can amplify income, it's the same amount of time, but you probably have a higher, much higher probability of a larger result because increasing income can be untapped. Dealing with variable expenses is. Is. Is a limited supply there. And then it requires, again, stringent and strict behaviors. People don't operate fundamentally very well for extended periods of time on strict behavior. You know, I hear there's people in the military that do that for a while, but then eventually they make a statement like you did at the beginning of the show, Mike, where you couldn't pay me enough money to go back there.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely right. And again, this is where I think the finance industry is fundamentally broken. Is, you know, we tell people to scrimp and save and deny and push out enjoying our life till some point in the future. And look, certainly I think there is something to being mindful about our spending. And I call this the Marie Kondo budget, meaning, let me figure out what it is that brings me joy and spend unapologetically on that and then cut out the things that are frivolous or excessive. I think this is a great exercise for all of us to go through. But ultimately we're only going to reduce expenses so much before we start feeling the pinch of, okay, I can't even enjoy my life at this point because I'm living like I'm at the poverty line. So you can only reduce expenses so much. So yeah, then now we have to focus on how do I increase my income. And the easiest way to do that is invest in yourself up, level your skills and provide more value to the market. That is the only way to increase our income.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I 100% agree and I think that makes a ton of sense and people need to be putting more focus on that. I don't think focus is being applied to that or being educated properly. Properly and in, in the modern changing world, the technologically advanced world that we live in today. In the last two years, just the advance in AI technology that is publicly available has really changed the game. And there's a lot of people going right now who are in university classes where by the time they graduate or get out, probability is the, the length of time that their chosen career path will still exist is vastly diminished. They may have a five year or ten year shelf life, maybe they're lucky and they're in one that's got a 30 year shelf life. But a lot of those existing outlets aren't even going to exist in the world of tomorrow. And so I would encourage people, and I'd like to get your thoughts on this quickly. Mike is as we look to close the show, why not take some of that time and invest in starting to look at building and solving for problems that AI can be utilized to solve for and finding a way to market that solution now to people who can desperately use it. That might be one area where you can create an income stream. Maybe it won't be there in perpetuity, but if it's there for five years or 10 years, you're learning a skill set and you're building something that gives you the methodology by which you can create a leveling up on your income capacity.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I think another way to say that is that as technology advances, the work becomes commoditized and when anything becomes commoditized, it's a race to the bottom, right? Prices decrease for what you can charge for that work. So literally in our lifetime, work becomes less valuable. So then what is valuable? Well, it's the things that machines can't provide. Right. One of those things is human connection. So I think one of the most critical investments an entrepreneur can make is actually building a personal brand and sharing our thoughts and sharing our stories and building personal connections like social media has created a unprecedented opportunity that we can actually make one video hit record and then that video could go viral and actually impact millions of people. With the things that back to alignment, back to values, the things that I've learned, I can share with other people, and that is valuable. That is something that I can't replicate. Right. They can't replicate, replicate human connection and lived human experience. So the more that I can lean into, how do I connect with people, how do I actually serve those around me? How do I create better experiences for the people in my life? Like, that is where value in the future is going to be created. And so if we can lean into, how do I create the most value in a way that's not going to be commoditized in five or 10 or like you said, 30 years if you're lucky. Like, that really is, I think, the intersection of value creation in a way. That's future proof, man.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Love it. So well said, Mike. Thank you for being on the show. Absolutely Appreciate all your insights today. For those of you tuning in, make sure you tune into next week's episode where we continue to unpack the major challenges facing entrepreneurs and the futures that they're building for a brighter and better tomorrow.
