The Seamus Fox Podcast.
This podcast has been created to share real life experiences from inspiring people in all walks of life, those who have engineered change in their own lives through a shift in thinking and beliefs. I want to share my own journey and have others share theirs so that it can help inspire others to crete the internal changes thats needed to create long lasting life changes.
The Seamus Fox Podcast.
Shaping Success Through Struggles: Meet Michael Mojo
What happens when a young man from Adelaide, South Australia overcomes a challenging upbringing to build a thriving career in personal training? In this episode, we welcome Michael "Mojo" Johnson, who shares his incredible journey from being the "poor kid" with learning difficulties to becoming a renowned personal trainer and coach. His story is a testament to resilience and the power of mindset shifts. Mojo reflects on how his early life, filled with camping adventures and motorbiking, laid the foundation for his passion and work ethic inspired by his father's relentless drive.
Mojo takes us through pivotal moments that shaped his path, including his expulsion from a prestigious Catholic school at 15 and the subsequent transition to a more inclusive environment. This change instilled in him a profound appreciation for diversity and connection with others. Through various career attempts, from marine biology to mining, Mojo's love for weightlifting ultimately guided him to his true calling in personal training. His candid reflections offer insights into overcoming adversity, the importance of self-acceptance, and finding one's purpose.
We also explore the broader themes of personal development, mental stability, and the transformative power of mentorship. Mojo emphasizes the significance of creating a clear success map and achieving a balanced state for consistent growth. His experiences with mentors like Paul Chek and thought leaders like Dr. Joe Dispenza provide listeners with valuable lessons on mindset and business mastery. Join us for an inspiring conversation filled with practical advice and motivational stories that resonate with anyone on a journey of personal and professional growth.
Recording in progress.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, so welcome back to Conversations that Matter and back to the podcast. This week's guest. We have Michael Johnson on the podcast. Michael Mojo Johnson, michael, welcome to the podcast. Excellent thanks for having me. Looking forward to having the conversation, michael. What I'd like to do with all guests is try and get a wee bit of insight into who you are. What's actually got you to this point? So you grew up in Adelaide, is that correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:yes, yeah, yeah, down here in South Australia so what was it like as a young Michael Johnson growing up in Adelaide?
Speaker 1:well, first of all, it's weird because no one calls me Michael Johnson everyone. I'm used to being called Mojo, so it's my name, but very rarely does someone call me Michael Johnson. You don't get the full title.
Speaker 1:I'm like who's that guy? But look, growing up was interesting. Now that I look back I mean I'm 40 now, so looking back, you get some time to reflect and I guess try and learn from how you grew up. But for me personally, my mom was 17 when she had me. My dad was 19. My mom was from a Catholic family. My dad is probably what you'd call in Australia a Bogan atheist, so almost what Americans would call a redneck a bogan atheist. Um, so almost what americans would call a redneck. And, um, yeah, they, uh, I guess they got married and just tried to make a life for it. So my dad always worked two jobs. My mom worked as a shoe clerk.
Speaker 1:Um, we didn't really have a lot of money, we just sort of skimmed by. I remember going camping every weekend. My parents still lived life, they still partied, they still went out. But I mean on Sundays if we were camping, everyone would have barbecues and things like that. If there was leftover food, my mom would get all the leftover food and we would end up eating that for the day or the week, and so that was quite common for us. We used to have a joke that we used to call it sausage Sunday, because because we were always eating sausages or, you know, sangers.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, that was sort of growing up, but, um, going to school was tough. I was the poor kid at school, um, and it's not. I mean, there's a lot of people who are like me who, I think, grow up, who don't have wealthy family or, you know, my parents couldn't afford basketball shoes and things like that, so I always had the cheap shoes and the kids used to pick on me. I look back now and I used to go motorbike riding. My mum and dad's friends would always have a water ski boat, and so I would grow up wakeboarding, water skiing. I would be riding someone else's motorbike, I'd be driving cars from the age of nine know, nine or ten years of age. Um, so it was. It was a great life at the same time as it wasn't, so there was a lot of challenges and a lot of adversity, but, um, yeah, yeah, what were you inspired by, um, at that young age, michael?
Speaker 2:was there anything that you kind of if you look back through your life right now there's usually a thread was there something that you were inspired by at a young age, at that time, like going into school, etc not really.
Speaker 1:I was, I think, growing up around my parents, who were so young. A lot of their friends were my friends, um, and so, even though my parents used to party and drink a lot, us as kids were always safe. Their friends would do anything for us, like, like, if we were, you know, myself or my sister would wake up, um, you know late at night and the music was blasting or whatever you know, someone would come and sit with us, um, so it was always there, was always. We were always getting looked after, and so I guess I looked up to my parents' friends. Um, a lot of them were into car racing, um, my dad friend was an Australian rally champion and so we used to go away every couple of weeks on like a car trip to go and help with the rally cars and stuff. So, even though we didn't have a lot of money, my parents always, especially my dad, was always doing something. There was always something going on. They're very social, so they would always find a way, something going on. They're very social, um, so they would always find a way.
Speaker 1:But I think I I never really looked up to anyone apart from my dad and his close friends, and then I guess I got a little bit older, I started playing basketball. So michael jordan was like the cool thing, um, and that. That was probably about it. I didn't really apart from that, and maybe, uh, another uk legend um, colin mccray in the in the rally, rally things, uh, he was definitely big. Uh, him and carlos saines back in the day. I remember them racing um, so motorsport was probably I would look up to them, but I wouldn't say that I would look up to them as such. It was just I was fascinated by how they did things school and things like that.
Speaker 2:Was that anything that you were ever really interested in, or did you really apply yourself to school?
Speaker 1:No, I really struggled at school. I was put into special classes so I was told that I had dyslexia the word ADHD or ADD back then was thrown around quite a lot learning difficulties. So I really struggled with school, although when I look back now it's really interesting on reflection self-reflection. I was put into these special classes and I felt like I was dumb and really bad at school. But there were some subjects I thrived in, weirdly enough.
Speaker 1:Geography was something that I did really well in. I was fascinated by how things work in the natural world, so I love learning about volcanoes and how hills are formed and the earth's crust and that sort of stuff. And then I did really well in science, with biology as well, and economics, weirdly enough. So I remember doing an economics class and one of the things that I wanted to do I think I was in about grade nine at school was I started buying shares on a fake dummy account just to see what I could do, see if I could try to figure out how businesses worked.
Speaker 1:But other than that I failed at everything else. So I was in quite a lot of trouble. I used to go I I used to go to music class because in music class. I knew that if I didn't rock up no one would know. So I would. I would leave class to go to music tutoring, and if I just didn't rock up, they wouldn't talk between the music tutors in the class, so I could just go and sit and do whatever I wanted, and I never got in trouble.
Speaker 2:So it's funny. It's funny because you know, and I know, michael, that a lot of those things um shape us into who we become and what we do. Yes, looking back, when you were getting put into those special classes, did it affect you in that way? Was it something you were aware of in terms of driving you forward? Did it shape you in any way, shape or form? Were you even aware of that at that time?
Speaker 1:I wasn't even aware. I just knew that I wasn't smart. I used to get picked on. I had bright red hair, freckles, white, pasty skin. I definitely have. You know, I've got a bit of Irish blood in me and a bit of Scottish blood from long down the lineage, so I think there was that as well, which was quite challenging. So I got picked on quite a lot. So I used to fight. I was a fiery redhead. The kids would pick on me and I used to cry, and then one day I realized that crying doesn't get you anywhere. So I learned how to smash people's heads in and someone would pick on me and I'd just beat them up and they would leave me alone. And so that became my coping mechanism for dealing with bullies and getting picked on at school, um, which that led me to getting expelled when I was 15, um and in high school.
Speaker 1:So that wasn't the best. I sort of fell into a very dark, negative place where I wanted to end my life because I was in trouble at home all the time and I was in trouble at school and I didn't fit in. I knew that I wasn't going to get good grades. My mom wanted me to do really well at school because of her. I guess you could say mistake by falling pregnant at 17 and having to pull out of school. So she put a lot of pressure on me and yeah, it was school. I hated school. Even if someone said to me now, would you ever go back to school, the answer would be no, I just I really struggle with the idea of being forced to think. I love, as you can tell behind me, I love reading, researching, thinking, but I don't like being told what to think. I like trying to understand how to think. The actual how part is more important to me than what important to me than what?
Speaker 2:yeah, 100% man. I was the same. I hated school, just didn't get it. Left school at 15, didn't set any qualifications or exams, couldn't wait to get out as fast as I could, and I think there's a big thing with me around that as well, too is probably more around like the authority of somebody telling you you need to learn this and you have to do this, and I just never understood it yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1:I'm a bit of a like, very lot I wouldn't say logical person, because everyone thinks they're logical, but I don't know. I just either things make sense or they don't. And so at school, teachers would say, well, this is the way things are, and I go, yeah, but why. And they go, well, because it is what how it is, and I go, but why. Or I would get back an exam and I knew that there were multiple answers to the question, and so I would be thinking about it from different angles, but I would get across because it wasn't what they wanted. And so, you know, I've I've really wanted to go back to university and study psychology and neuroscience, but I have put it off for well over a decade because I don't want to be told how to think through things.
Speaker 1:I want to go and study to be able to understand things and learn at a high level, and so that's been my biggest fear. So I've actually hired a lot of tutors over the years, like chemistry tutors, physics tutors, so that I can learn off of someone without the exam but still understand how things work, and I can ask as many questions as I want until I understand how that thing works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you leave school. 15, 16, Michael. What's the path then? What are you doing? What are you getting up to? How are you making 11?
Speaker 1:So I got expelled when I was 15 and then the I had to sit exams at home that year and I just remember, like I because I, because of my situation, of my parents being so young and going away every weekend and partying with them not that I was partying, but they were partying I would rock up to school and everyone would play, everyone was playing sport, team sports, and so they would all be together in their groups and I didn't really fit in. So I was sort of friendly with everybody, but I never got invited to birthdays, never got invited to do anything on weekends. So I just remember, when I got expelled, I just thought this sucks, like I don't fit in anywhere, I'm in trouble at home, I'm in trouble at school and I don't fit in. And so, you know, one night I snuck into the kitchen and I grabbed a big kitchen knife and, um, I went to my bedroom and I was about to end everything. Um, and it was there that I realized that in know, in this place of I guess you could say darkness, and I just remember being so distraught, like I was so distraught because I just didn't know what to do, but I was just sick of I, was just sick of everything and I just felt like I didn't have a place, and I know a lot of people go through that at some point in life. But in that moment I realized that I had given away all my power to somebody else or to everybody else around me, and that I just had to stop caring what other people think. And that was sort of my big realization that night and I think that has helped me so much in my life is at the end of the day, I have to be cool with me.
Speaker 1:I can put my head on the pillow at nighttime and go to bed. I'm like everybody. Some days I stuff up, some days I say the wrong thing. Actually, most days I say the wrong thing. I make a lot of mistakes throughout my life. But again, I have to know what the intention was behind, why I did what I did, and if the intention was wrong, then I need to go and fix it or figure it out. If the intention was right and someone took it the wrong way, well, it is what it is and was right. And someone took it the wrong way, well, it is what it is and they might realize it one day, or maybe we just need to communicate more effectively. I'm not sure, but there's always a way around it. When I know, if my intention is right, things seem to work out and I just have to stop allowing other people to dictate how I behave and how I think. So that was really a big realization and I decided to go back to school.
Speaker 1:So I finished off high school and I decided to go back to school. So I finished off high school not well, but I ended up changing schools, finished off grade 12. I really enjoyed it. I think the change of environment between schools was different. There was a.
Speaker 1:This first school that I went to was a Catholic school, but it was even though it was like a sort of prestigious school that my parents put so much money into, which I don't know why they you know school was so important to my mom, but they spent so much money on sending me to the school where I had to wear a tie and the blazer and the shirt tucked in everything. But there the kids were horrible. They were. There was a lot of racism, there was a lot of fighting, there was fighting between racial groups, and so I hated it.
Speaker 1:But then I changed schools and I thought this is going to be bad because it was sort of there was a lot of, uh, a lot of different races at this other school as well. So I thought, you know, it's going to be like that. Uh, like the school I just came from and I got there and everyone got along and I was like this is cool, I like it. And so all my friends became like greeks and italians and and you, you know, australian, Aussie rules, football players and it was just such a diverse range of people and I've never judged people on their race or their color or whatever, like I don't care. If I don't like someone, it's because I don't like them, it's not because there's something about them with whatever.
Speaker 1:So when I went to that school, I was like cool, everyone gets along, I can mix with all these different kids and I loved it because I think, more important than anything, I love food and it was awesome going around, you know the Italians and Greeks. You go over their house and their moms come out with all the food and you know, I thought that was the most amazing shit because when I grew up, we had sausage Sundays and I go to their house and I walk in the front door and they're like eat, and their moms had literally cooked food all day just so that everyone got fed. So I thought it was like the most amazing thing, um. And so, yeah, I've got, you know a lot, of, a lot of friends from all different, um, ethnic cultures, races, religions. So that's that. That was so cool for me, because that's, I think that's where I started realizing that I actually really love working with people fantastic man.
Speaker 2:It's funny how that comes about, isn't it? How those voids are formed and then they shape so much of our values and what we do right now and the connections that you make there. So you didn't get into coaching, I'm assuming, just straight off the bat, coming straight out of school. How did that evolve?
Speaker 1:So when I was at school I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought I've loved biology and I love geography and I've always loved learning how things work. So even when I was a kid, from a young age, I've always watched documentaries. I love watching anything online, Like when the internet came out and there was dial-up internet and I could plug it in and I could sit there and type how does this thing work and you've got to wait for the little sound and all that stuff on your computer and the telephone cuts off. No one can call. I remember back in the dial-up days.
Speaker 2:People don't remember that. A lot of people may not remember that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, someone would call when you're halfway downloading something and it would cut the internet out. So I loved it because I could sit on there and just research. There actually was a website called how Things Worked and you can sit on there and type in how things work and figure it all out. So I used to do that. And then, because I loved geography and biology, I thought you know, maybe I might want to get into marine biology. So I ended up going and doing work experience about eight hours from Adelaide. My grandpa took me to this aquaculture farm and I worked down there for a week and it was the worst experience.
Speaker 1:It was cold. The winds were coming off of the Southern Ocean, from Antarctica. It was so cold, the wind. I mean we don't get snow here in Adelaide but it can get down to, you know, three, four degrees. But the wind, wind, the chill factor on the wind. You can wear big coats and the wind just blows straight through you and immediately it's just. I haven't really experienced too much like it, like I can go to the snow, I can go to places, yeah, but nothing like that wind that just blows the, the gale that just blows straight through and, you know, from the Arctic. It's horrible.
Speaker 1:So anyway, when I was working there, you're essentially working in an abalone farm where your hands are in water all day, with gale force winds blowing in this cold air, and you wake up in the morning you're freezing, and then all day you freeze. And then you get home and you're freezing until you pretty much go to bed and just by the time you get warm it's time to wake up and go back to work. And I was like this is not for me. So I decided that wasn't for me and I don't think I wouldn't have got good enough grades to do it anyway. So I decided that maybe cars were sort of my thing, but I knew the technology was moving into the mining industry, especially here in Australia. So I thought you know what I might go and do, some work experience at a mining company. And so I ended up getting my apprenticeship with Caterpillar here in Australia or South Australia, the big Caterpillar machinery company. So I started working for them doing my apprenticeship, didn't really think much about it, I just knew that I just wanted to make money, buy a house, get married, have kids and that was going to be my life. Maybe get a couple of investment properties and just work for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:But then I started noticing that everyone was coming to work and they were in this really shitty mindset. And so a lot of people would come to work on Monday and you'd ask them and do you mind if I swear on the podcast? Yeah, walk away. So on Monday morning I'd get to work and all the guys would rock up. Now they're making great money. It's the start of the mining boom here in Australia, you know, 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:And the guys would walk in and go how's your weekend? Oh, it was fucked. How's the kids? Oh, they're fucked. How's the wife? Oh, she's fucked, and it's like. And then they're like I don't get paid enough money to be here to deal with this shit. And you go on. Okay, you're earning more. You're earning probably double the average income, if not triple.
Speaker 1:You don't want to be home, but when you're away, you complain. When you're home, you complain. When you work, you complain. When you're not working, you're complaining. And the only other thing that you do is buy shit and drink. So they would come back and buy a jet ski and a boat, and they're always buying stuff, which then always put them in debt, and so they're always having to work in order to pay off the stuff, in order to feel good about life. And so they were just in this cycle and the environment was just so bad. And then I kept thinking like this isn't what I want to do, and I'd knock off of work on Friday afternoon, I would stop in at the, the drive-thru, and I would get either a carton of beer or I'd get a you know some bourbons or some scotch or something, and then I'd get another six pack of pre-mixed and then I would drive up to the riverland to go water skiing or something like that with all my mates and we're all just drinking and and all I would do was obliterate myself all weekend and then start work again on Monday and talk about how shit everything was until Friday, until I could go away and drink again. And that was like this cycle that I was in.
Speaker 1:But the only place that ever made me feel good from a young age was going to the gym at 13. I started training and lifting weights and my dad used to lift weights at home. He was a Aussie rules footballer here in Australia, so I started training with him and I remember from a young age I was like I love training. I'd get home from school and I was like the only kid who lifted weights and so there was something in it and I remember reading there was a little book that I had that my uncle gave me and it just had. It was a workout. And I remember specifically reading about lat pulldowns and the latissimus dorsi and I was like I still remember that to this day and how the muscle works. This was like a 13 year old kid Now.
Speaker 1:I didn't know the impact that that would have on my life, but that played a major role. So I was working as a diesel mechanic and eventually I just thought you know, I can't keep doing this, I'm not enjoying life, this isn't fun. And I started getting back into that dark headspace that I was when I was 15 and I knew it wasn't healthy. So I just remember I don't know what drove me to do it, but one day I was just flicking through the newspaper looking at job advertisements and this ad came up and it said become a personal trainer. And I went. Hmm, so I went to the gym the next day and I was talking to the guy who owned the gym and I was like look, I don't know if this is what I want to do, but can I come in and do some shadowing and some work experience or something? He said, yeah, if you want, and I walked in there and he's, you know, every day it's like this place that after work people go and they supported each other, they looked after each other. These aren't the environments that I'm used to working in. So I just saw that there was this different culture that people went to the gym because I actually liked being there and people liked working there because they liked the people that came in, and so I thought this is really cool.
Speaker 1:But the thing that scared me more than anything was I knew I had to go back to school. Now, if I was going to go back to school, and back then it was 18 months to become a personal trainer of after our study, and I thought I'm going to have to go back to school. I'm the dumb kid, I'm going to get picked on again. You know all those fears from your past childhood. When you grow up it's like, yeah, but I can't read properly, I can't spell properly, I get told off all the time. All of that came back up again and you know, I just had to deal with it.
Speaker 1:I remember the feeling of walking into the study school and signing up. I was so scared. I was scared shitless. My stomach was about to either come out the top end or the back end, but I did it anyway. Then, when I got in there, it was amazing. They gave me this big, thick folder and they went here's term one and I went home that weekend. I read the whole thing from start to finish. And then I'm sitting on the internet exploring all these words that I didn't know anything about. And then my girlfriend came home she said I got a nutrition book and I remember sitting there forcing myself to read it because I'd never really read properly before. And that was the start of something.
Speaker 1:And then eventually my best friend's three-year-old niece was killed in a car accident when we were probably about 20 years of age, 20, 21. And I just remember this little white coffin going into the ground thinking you know, how can life just be taken away? We're just here one day and we're gone the next, and we don't have a choice in most cases. And while I was at the funeral I don't know how it happened, but I remember just watching this white coffin going into the ground, and these questions popped into my head what's the purpose of my life? Why do I exist? Why am I here? How am I going to be remembered when I'm not here? And I remember this sick feeling of not being able to answer those questions and that imprints it in my head for so long.
Speaker 1:And then fast forward. A couple of months later, my boss called me into the office and he said, michael, you know your job times are as good as anyone. I'm going to sign you off your apprenticeship or your internship as a mechanic. I remember getting the certificate and putting it up on my toolbox and I sat there and I looked at it and my stomach just sunk and I kept looking at it, just thinking this is it, this is life, this is the game, this is it, it's as good as it's going to get. And I was like this fucking sucks, this is not what I want to do, this isn't where I want to be. And so I grabbed the certificate, I went back into the boss's office and I said look, I don't want to be here.
Speaker 1:And he said what do you mean? I said I'm out of here, I'm leaving, and he said what are you going to do? And I said I don't know, it's not this. And he looked at me and he was a head. And I'm unpacking it. My mom comes out and she goes what are you doing? I said I quit. And she said well, what are you going to do? And I said I don't know. I'm going to go see if I can get a job at the gym. And then she burst into tears.
Speaker 1:You know if you just stick at it. For 10 years, you a house, get married, have kids. But what I realized then was they were her dreams, not mine. So I walked into the local gym and I said, look, I'll do anything, I'll clean toilets, I'll do anything to be here. And they said we've got a desk shift. And so I stood on the desk and when people would walk in I would greet them and they had barcodes on a little card and I would scan their card and I would welcome them in.
Speaker 1:And within a couple of months I knew everybody. I would go upstairs and I'd train with all the big boys. After work In the morning I would sit with all the grandmas. Mid-morning I'd sit with all the moms who would come in with their kids. I love that environment. And then, about three months into working there, my boss came to me and he said Michael, the like, the moms love you, the old ladies love you, and the blokes upstairs, they all know that you're a personal trainer and you're studying and everything. And they and he said look, people keep asking us if you, if you train them Now. Look, I know you're not fully qualified, but if you don't tell anyone, why don't you just start?
Speaker 2:And that was it. That was my foot in the door of the personal training game. So that's how it all started. That's the long story. The long short story. Yeah, it's such a similar story to to mine in so many ways.
Speaker 2:I had been working for god knows how many different jobs. I was a riffer, was a concreter, I was a taxi dispatcher, I was a doorman, I was absolutely everything. And then I got a chance. I competed as a bodybuilder, got a chance to work in a gym and I worked there for a year. He let me go and at that time I wasn't qualified as a personal trainer. So when he let me go, I ended up back out in the sights again shoveling concrete. And then he asked me back and when I got back I was like I'm getting qualified, I'm getting the money up, I'm going to do the certification this time around um, and then, when I got fully qualified, that was the door and then also to become a personal trainer. What? What were the first things then that you learned about growing um in business? What was the mindset shift that you got initially then, michael, as a personal trainer, to start to really grow your business? What did you not know that you wish you had in you at the start.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because my first job I got my first job when I was 13. So I started working at a service station and I worked there packing shelves and cleaning the toilets and it sucked, but at the same time it was amazing, because at the end of the week I got some cash. And I still remember this to this day. The first thing I went and bought was a pair of rebox. I still remember the smell. I remember the look, because it was like I could never afford basketball shoes prior to that, and that day was like the most amazing day of my life was having a pair of rebox that I could go to basketball training in in. And so I started from a young age. And then, when I was about 15, I started working with my dad and my dad would do night cleaning jobs and he said look, if you want, come and do some work with me.
Speaker 1:Now my dad has always run his own business, but like a real small business, so I would go to work with him. He worked as a courier, but like a real small business, so I would go to work with him. He worked as a courier and he worked for a stationary company where he would have one big long route that he would take, and so he would start in the morning, figure out where each parcel would go along the route and then pack his van absolutely to the brim where you couldn't even breathe in there it was so packed. And then we would start and we would go for the whole day up this one route and then back and deliver all the parcels. Now he would work, he would outwork everybody. He was a hard worker, build up by trade, tough as nails, physically similar, build to me, like broader shoulders, bigger chest. He's got these little pigeon chicken legs. But that's why I'm always training my legs, because I don't want to have the chicken legs like my dad. But he's quite stocky.
Speaker 1:And so I learned how to work from a really young age. I was never afraid to get my hands dirty. I was never afraid to work hard. It was always building cars in the shed at nighttime until midnight and then he'd go to his second job. So I just had that work ethic installed in me anyway, and that wasn't the hard part and I think that's probably been my greatest gift is just my work ethic. I wouldn't be where I am today without that work ethic and I'm still working my ass off.
Speaker 1:But I think when I started as a personal trainer, the thing that I really had to learn was probably how to be more confident around people. I think that's probably been the first big shift was from a young kid growing up who was picked on a lot, I was really awkward around people. I was comfortable when I was comfortable with them, life of the party, but just communicating with people that I didn't know, I was very reserved and always worried about what they thought. So I had to overcome that fear and I think that fear to this day. My wife says to me she's like how do you just go out and talk to anybody? And I'm like, because they're more scared of me than I am of them. So you know, I just talk to anyone. Yeah, so that was probably the first big thing, especially around running a business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can resonate with that again, because I remember you've heard of fitness first the gym's fitness first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I worked in one yeah for a year.
Speaker 2:It was the first gym I worked in. Well, second gym I worked in as a personal trainer. I remember sitting being really shy at the start and people coming in and thinking about trying to get clients and not having the confidence to go up and really approach people. And it was after a couple of weeks I didn't have any clients and I was like, right, I'm going to end up back out in the fucking side concreting again. I'm going to end up back out in the bulletin side doing that shit all day long that I don't like, unless I get over that fear, unless I get over that thought of what if somebody actually rejects me and I think that's what most people allow themselves to actually prevent them from growing and moving forward in any walk of life, getting that level of confidence and getting over that fear and just putting yourself out there. So from there then, michael, when you started to grow that personal training business, until where you are right now, what was that length of time? How many years were you a personal trainer until this point?
Speaker 1:There was a big crossover. So there was about five years that I worked at the first gym and I helped them set up a franchise system. And when I was there they said look, we want you to do a seminar. And I remember, like shitting my pants, that I would have to get up and talk in front of people and that was sort of the first time I ever got a taste of speaking in front of a large group. But when I got off, everyone seemed to love it and I thought, oh, this is cool. It's cool that I can impact people with my voice and my knowledge, and prior to that I never thought I was smart enough, really. So that sparked my interest about speaking more.
Speaker 1:And then when I set up the franchise system, the boss said well, why don't you go out and train all these other independent gyms on how to use our system and our model? So I started going out to other gyms and training them and developing them and I found that really, really cool and really rewarding. So that happened for a while and then I decided to leave that gym and I went and worked at Fitness First. That was cool because it opened me up to a national organization international organization, I guess. But prior to that we worked a lot with a lot of independent gyms.
Speaker 1:So even though we thought we were the best because we were the best in the independent gyms, I hadn't really gone out and worked for a large national company where you've got personal trainers from all around the country with all these different ideas, and so when I hit fitness first, it was crazy because I was like I thought I was a top dog. And then I went there and I was like shit, there's these other people who have this great knowledge. So I started learning, I started studying a lot more Again. I went back and studied all the pull check systems and so I did his holistic life coach level one, two and three, and then the Czech practitioner level one, two, three as well. I think I did them in like a year and a half, maybe two years. I did pretty much all of the all of them up until Czech level four. I think that's the only one I haven't done.
Speaker 1:I just studied my ass off. What's that sorry?
Speaker 2:is the OG in that space, for sure Paul Cech is is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was pretty. He was pretty out there, definitely ahead of his time. Um, so I, I did all of that, and then I had a falling out with my manager there. Uh, what I found was I, the first week I went and worked at fitness first because I'd already built my confidence the first week there. Um, actually, I should rewind a little bit.
Speaker 1:The reason why I went to fitness first was they essentially poached me, and what they wanted was they wanted someone that just come to South Australia and they'd launched a brand new branch, which was their second one, I believe, in South Australia, maybe their third, but I think it was their second one Highmarsh. And so they had a lot of young trainers who were like 18 out of school, you know, bushy tailed, but after eight weeks, even though they had 10 trainers, they were doing minimum sessions, um, and so they needed someone who was a bit more um grounded in the industry and who'd been there a while to come in and sort of help them a little bit. So when, when I got there the first week, I just stood at the front counter and I said hello to every person that walked in from like 6am in the morning until 9pm at night, like I just I said hello to everyone and by week two people coming up, they're like, oh, what do you do here? And I'm like, oh, I'm a PT. And they go oh, actually I've got a question. And so then the next second, so within they, I think they used to have the 12, it was like 12 weeks. You know, the first four weeks you don't pay any rent, and then the second four weeks that you put in a little bit more, and then the, and by the end you're you're full amount. Well, by 10 weeks I was already doing 50 hours of PT a week. So I was like I don't want to do none of your like free shit and whatever. I don't need less rent, I'll pay full rent, but I don't have time to do the rest of your crap.
Speaker 1:So often I was running, I was mentoring the other kids and all of that. But I think the gym manager there got a little bit jealous of all the younger guys coming to me instead of going to him, and he was the big dog. But what I also noticed was they're a bit sly. They used to sell these gym experience packages where you'd get the first three sessions for 50 bucks or something like that, and then they would give them to you as leads. But what happened was I would get a lot of leads come in because I would talk to everybody, and so I'd be out on the weekend in nightclubs, like at rave parties and stuff, and I'm like talking to people, giving them my cards, and so we would get all these different people come in to the gym and sign up just to train with me.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize, though, what he was doing was. He was actually taking them, telling them that I was too busy, and then palming off the leads to the other younger trainers because they couldn't pay their rent. Now, it wasn't until one day one of my friends signed up, and he rang me up and he's like bro, what's going on? I come in to sign up to train with you and this guy tells me that you're too busy and I can't get him for sessions. And I said well, what do you mean? And so I asked him that question, and then I went around and I asked a bunch of people, and the same thing happened, which was damaging my reputation, you know it was. It was damaging the club, all because of this manager. And so I took it to the big boss. And then I ended up getting a phone call from him and he said look, mate, you're out of the club. And I said well, you can't do that. And he said yeah, you do. Yeah, I can, cause your contract expired two days ago and you haven't signed it. And I went, you fucking prick. So my one year contract was up when that happened.
Speaker 1:So I ended up going and I got poached anyway by a medical center because I used to work with a physiotherapist. And he said to me look, if ever you want a job, come and work in the medical center. Now, when that happened, I just called him up and I said look, I'm ready to go. And he said I've got a brand new medical center that's about four weeks away from being finished. And I said I don't give a shit, I'll move in today and I'll get everything set up and ready and I need to train people. So I started working in a medical center for three years and that's sort of. You know, I was doing physical rehabilitation, sports performance, and I loved it, because I was working with physios, chiros, doctors, podiatrists and I would just pick their brains and just suck all the information in. I loved it. So that's sort of.
Speaker 1:I went down that path in uh, I loved it, yeah, that's sort of. I went down that path and then I realized, um, you know, I realized when I was in there that everyone knows what to do. They don't do it. And that's when I had the big click that the mindset was the thing, that was the biggest problem so to give people some context, then, michael, who are you involved with right now?
Speaker 2:like, what do you do right now as a coach, as a business? Um, what's the what's the emphasis in in terms of? Because you work with people globally, you work with a lot of them. Well, I'll let you explain it. Go ahead, you're right, you're, you're on a roll. I was just going to do it for you and I'm going to ask you the question no, it's good you're on a roll.
Speaker 1:There I was, I was impressed, yeah. So really, I would put this down to personal development. That's what I do, is I help people develop personally. Now, when I, when I say that I've got to be careful, because people have, uh, an idea of what a coach is and so they they base it on their own perspective and their own experience with other coaches. The same as when you say a personal trainer, there's everybody from like the ex junkie that throws a couple of punches at a gym bag and calls himself a personal trainer, right through to people who specialize in sports, performance and human movement and, you know, sometimes are even smarter than physiotherapists and things like that, who've done decades of study. So there's such a broad perspective. So when I say coach, I normally get thrown into a pool and someone says, oh, I got a friend who's a coach, I work with a coach, and I'm like, yeah, but you don't work with me. So we could be talking different things here.
Speaker 1:But when I say personal development, it really comes back to how do we get the best out of our ourselves. My job is to help people perform better, and so over the years I used to work a lot with helping people build their own success map in life. What I found was that almost everyone I come across is actually lost and they're using trial and error as a mechanism to figure out how they want to live. And so a lot of people don't really know what their long-term objective is as a mission. They don't understand their life purpose, so they can't live it every day. They're unclear on their true values. They have something called an implanted value, or Sigmund Freud called it the superego, which is the internal voices in our head that think that we need to do things and and carries guilt and shame and, and you know we, we try to people please others. So most people that I meet they say well, you know, I sort of think I know what I want to do. Like this is what I enjoy. But what you enjoy maybe is a fantasy or delusion. Um, you know the matrix of the woman in the red dress. It's a distraction. If you look at the word passion, the word passion means to suffer in the etymology. So a lot of people follow things that they're passionate about because it gets them excited and it makes them feel good in the moment. But a lot of the time, the things that we're passionate about, that feel good in the moment, actually have consequences and make us feel bad and create vicious cycles.
Speaker 1:So what I realized was that I had to help people to get really, really clear on where they wanted to go, who they were, what their unique gifts were, and then let them go in the world. But then what I realized was that unless you have mental and emotional stability, it's very, very hard to be consistent, and I realized that there was this big emphasis on positive thinking that was out there. But if you have a look, anything in nature that has a positive charge attracts a negative charge in order to stabilize. And then if you study chemistry, chemistry, if you look at bonding, ionic bonding and so on, everything is trying to go back to its most stable form. Now, if you have an element or an atom that has an imbalanced outer shell, it's highly volatile. When it's stable, it's called noble. So if we want to be noble and live a noble life, we have to be more mentally and emotionally stable, and so I started creating tools around mental and emotional stability so that then people could stay on the path that I'd help create for them, so they could live their life.
Speaker 1:Over time that has got phenomenal results from people all around the world. I've worked with rich listers, professional sporting teams, a lot of the big companies here in Australia, top executives right through to mom and dads, people that have gotten out of jail, people with PTSD and a whole range of people out of jail, people with PTSD and a whole range of people. Just sometimes people lost, so that sort of started everything and then eventually a lot of business owners were coming to my events and they were saying, shit, this is really good, can you come and train my team? So I would go out there and train my team and I was thinking almost every business owner's problems are people problems. If you have a sales problem, that's people dealing with people right, even when you do business to business, it's never. There's not.
Speaker 1:I don't believe in business to business sales. You're essentially doing a person to person sale. It's just you've got to find the right person to communicate with to try to get the sale through. So we're not really doing business to business, we're doing people to people. So sales is people, your sales team of people. Marketing is how you get your message through to people and potentially influence. Then you have staffing that's people problems. Then you've got the owner that's people problems. Leadership and management are two completely different skill sets. They're people skills. So I went shit. There's all of these things that I can help businesses with, so started branching out into the business space. So we run business masterminds, business courses, marketing, branding, sales, but then a lot of it is still human behavior, personal development, so it all really sort of falls under that banner. I guess you could say what?
Speaker 2:what have you seen then, michael, in terms of the differences between business leaders and businesses who are flourishing from a personal perspective? What have you seen? The differences, then, between leaders who are growing and smashing it and getting to where they want to be and the ones who constantly kind of feel stuck and feel lost?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. It's all the same principles really, like I can take. I can give you example after example where I've had people come to me, like one of my clients, um karina. Many, many years ago I met her. My staff said, can?
Speaker 1:I was running a one-day event and my staff came to me and they said, hey, this woman wants to meet tomorrow and asked if it's okay, if she can bring her son. I said yeah, that's fine. When she came in, her son was in a wheelchair and he was. I didn't really see it first, but when he got closer I realized he was heavily disabled and she came up and she introduced her son as Jake and said this is Jake. And I said, oh, hey, jake. And he didn't, he couldn't talk. And she said, yeah, jake was born with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, so he never walk, never talk, anything.
Speaker 1:We end up having this conversation. She sits down, she says my life is wrecked, like when my son was born. My husband started using drugs. I didn't know anything about it, but he wasn't. He had a little small business, didn't invoice customers, and then one day I got a phone call from the bank and they were about to repossess our house. And so I have a son who's got quadriplegic cerebral palsy, a daughter as well, who's a little bit older. I've got to.
Speaker 1:I had to quit my jobs to look after Jake and I'm like. She looked at me in the eyes and she was terrified. She said I'm fucked, I don't know what to do. And I just said you need to come and do my thrive time event. And, um, she looked at me in the eyes in desperation, said I'll do anything, I'll be there. And and this is why I, I hate, I hate talking to people who have every opportunity and don't take it, because I reflect on people like that, who you know. When you look at that, how much, how much harder can life get when you have a son who's born, who needs full-time care for the rest of his life, who'll never talk, walk, be able to change himself anything, and he's got to go to school? She's also got a young daughter as well. Husband gets kicked out of the house. He's using drugs, they've got no money he hasn't paid. The mortgage Bank's about to repossess the house, like it doesn't get worse than that. I mean it probably could, but not by march. And she still makes it happen.
Speaker 1:And then I talk to all these asshole business owners who sit there and they're like, oh man, like everything's shit. I'm like, bro, you complain for like 30 minutes, what are we going to do? And then I give them the solution. They go oh yeah, I, you know, I don't need to think about it, I'm just like you're a piece of shit. I don't, I don't, I don't even have time for you. You've got every opportunity in front of you and all you've got to do is pay a small amount of money and you make fucking excuses. That's why you suck, that's why your business sucks and that's why you're not going to get anywhere until you hit rock bottom.
Speaker 1:And sometimes everybody knows this pain can sometimes be a human's greatest teacher. And I've got a famous quote that my community want me to get printed on a shirt and it says if your life looks like shit, your head is up your ass. And I think it's just such a beautiful quote because there are so many people who have such shitty lives and they don't realize that their head's just up their ass and all they got to do is just take their head out and life gets better. And I think that that's. You know, I deal with a lot of people who a lot of people want my help but their life isn't bad enough, but it's also they're not inspired enough to just want to grow and push it and develop. So, in answer to your question, the thing that separates high performers, I believe, from everybody else and Karina is a high performer, you know now she's thriving, she's got a business. I see her at events where she's doing stuff with disability support and she got engaged only recently and I'm so proud of how far she's come. But I think the thing is that the thing that people need if they want to succeed is, first of all, they've got to develop their own self-belief around the belief that they deserve to have something greater in the future.
Speaker 1:I was talking to someone the other night and we're just having a chat about this. Sometimes I get deep into philosophical talk with certain groups of people. I studied a lot of philosophy over the years and also a lot of science. This person said to me what you want in the future is already yours. You just have to be in the right energy in order to realize that it's yours and just go and take it. And I went. That is so brilliant, I mean, it makes me feel amazing, just saying it. You know what, if everything we want is already ours, but we just have to put ourself in the right state in order to just see that it's there, then we can just go take it versus.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people work extremely hard, but people who tend to work extremely hard and that's their only, that's their only skillset Eventually they'll realize that you can work extremely hard and you'll do better than someone who's lazy, but at the same time it won't get you to a greater level because you've got to be physically. You have to physically work hard, but you also need to mentally work hard, and you can be mentally lazy and physically a hard worker. And I meet blue collar workers every day. A lot of my community are blue collar workers who have become business owners. Now they're great because they realize that working hard gets you so far. But eventually you have to start working smarter. And the more you start to work on your mindset and the way you think through things and your leadership skills and your communication skills and your ability to inspire people, the more money they make and the better the life they have as well.
Speaker 1:But then I meet other blue collar workers, and my dad is one of them. You know he just works and works and works and works, and if he needs more money, he just works harder and works harder. And then he complains and he burns out. And then you know everything's shit and fuck everyone, and but it's just because he's so burnt out, because the only strategy that he has in life is work hard, do the same same. But then there are other people out there as well who are, I think. They work hard mentally and they get caught in their head and they're always thinking but they're lazy, they don't, they actually don't want to get their hands dirty and make shit happen.
Speaker 1:I think there's this beautiful balance between people who believe that they have something greater, that's almost theirs in the world, or they have a future vision, that they go.
Speaker 1:I know, know that that's meant for me, and so there's some intrinsic pull, whether it's a vision or a mission or a purpose or all three, but they have something in the future that drives their behavior.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that they start to realize that they need to both work hard and smart, and one without the other you get to a point where, eventually, you melt down and burn out. So it's probably those two things, I think, are the big thing. And then I have a little framework that I use and it is clarity times by standards plus environment equals success. So if you don't have clarity, you can't have high standards. So you need to know what you want. If you're a business owner, you've got to have clarity around your strategic map, your culture guide, your company guide, and then you drive all the behavior in the company through that and you have high standards. Then you create an environment where people can thrive and then the business keeps winning. In your personal life you can have have clarity, but if you've got shit standards you're not going to get anywhere. So you need the clarity times by the standards plus the environment.
Speaker 2:So you've got to put yourself around people who also have those high standards yeah and sometimes people are hungry and they want it and they know what they want, but at the same time they just don't have the right environment to flourish I think sometimes that comes down to lack of clarity, obviously comes down to, like, the subordination of values from others, where they've obviously injected values from other people and they think that it should be something else or they think that they should be doing something else. But most people, I think, deep down inside actually really truly know what they want, but there's a fear of actually really allowing themselves to step under that. Would you agree?
Speaker 1:I do agree. I mean, you're Irish, you're not Australian. Right, part of our culture is just hit the bottle, and I think that hitting the bottle is a lot of internal conflict between what people really want to do and then what they think they should do in order to please other people, whether it's their parents, their friends, whether it's to fit in, whether it's to stand out and for others. If you try a little bit and you fail, and then people pick on you or you get reminded that maybe you're not good enough or you're not smart enough, or I told you so how do you consistently deal with that internal drive that I know I can be better, I know I can do more, I know there's something for me. What do you do when you've got that conflicting with your head? That's going, yeah, but what if I upset my mom? What about if I upset my dad? I don't want to let people down. I've got a family now. I don't want to put them at risk, and so I think a lot of people have this internal conflict between I don't want to say head and heart, because it's very cheesy, but like our core drivers in life and then the fears and the implanted values of other people.
Speaker 1:I think after a while a lot of people just get in the habit of shutting shit down, and I think that's why alcohol is such a big, you know, cultural norm in countries all around the world. It's a skip. And then you, yeah, and then you've got to look at, like drugs as well, australia, like our, our culture over here we have like a huge cocaine and methamphetamines problem in australia. Um, and I look at that and I go well, that's the same thing, right, like if alcohol doesn't work and and you don't feel good on, you know, when you're getting drunk, now it's okay, we can just juice it up a little bit with some drugs, but then eventually that becomes pain as well, because anything that's pleasurable eventually becomes painful. So pleasure and pain are the other pendulum that swing from side to side.
Speaker 1:And then if that doesn't work, you just go, you know, watch your favorite sporting team, so that you can feel great when you win, even though you didn't do shit. So so people can still feel like they're winning because their team won, but they didn't do anything, and then you can still feel down and like you've lost when you haven't done anything as well. And so sport is just such an amazing distraction for a lot of people. Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sport, there's nothing. I don't judge people who use drugs. I've never touched them, but a lot of my friends use them. My best mate went to jail for drug importation, so you know I think drugs, alcohol I grew up drinking like it's just it's what people do.
Speaker 1:So I think these are all just distractions from. I think if people sit for long enough, they go. You know what I'm pissed? I'm really pissed off that I'm not where I want to be and there's something inside of me that's telling me go do more stuff.
Speaker 2:There's something better yeah, I think I also believe that.
Speaker 2:Oh, go ahead sorry there was a fellow mentor of ours. Uh, dr de martini says all addictions are um an unfulfilled highest value. Yep, and I thought that was so true and I can reflect back on my own, my own life at times. I haven't touched a drink in nearly two years. But at times when I was drinking too much it was because I wasn't actually doing the thing that was most important for me. I had actually removed myself a lot of the time from certain processes in my business and then I felt lost and I had all this time and I was like now what do I?
Speaker 2:do and I stopped doing the thing that was actually most important, and that's when I was more volatile and that's when I was going to all the different things like alcohol etc. To try, and, I suppose, numb the pain of not doing what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree with that. It's pretty common. I have it a lot in my community. You know, when we're dealing with a lot of business owners, a lot of them will come in, and I noticed that when we have lunch breaks they'll go out and they'll get some food and then they get a bottle of wine and then they have a couple of beers. But what I notice is that after they've been in the community for a little while, all of a sudden the alcohol stops. And I ask them I'm like why, what stopped? And they're like I don't have time for it, like I don't want to wake up tomorrow with a hangover. I got too much shit to do. And so I just noticed that when you have a purpose, all that other stuff goes away.
Speaker 1:Like even now, I very rarely eat even chocolate because I go just the sugar and everything like that. I, I don't, I like eating it, but I just don't like the feeling of going to bed and being a bit more wired. And you know, most people don't even know that that happens because they just they just can't feel it, whereas I think the clearer you become, the harder it is to be around. That Even now, like I say that nothing good happens after nine o'clock and then my mates go yeah, that's because you're fucking boring. And I go well, maybe it's just because I would rather wake up at six o'clock in the morning, go for a walk and run and go get a coffee and go train and feel amazing, get heaps of shit done, while you're lying on the couch with a hangover, eating pizza, feeling like crap and hating life, like maybe, maybe I'm the one who's who's actually like enjoying life and maybe what you call enjoying life is actually a distraction.
Speaker 2:100 man, I think you're. So it's so right what you've said, because once you do get really dialed in with that purpose and you feel really aligned with it, then all of those things that you used to do you're taking away from the thing that you find most meaning and what actually really gives you energy and what you feel most inspired by. So it just doesn't even make sense to try and go to those things. And I'm the same half eight quarter nine, bedtime out, cold, wake 5 am, nice and fresh and get after it.
Speaker 2:So if somebody was, let's say, somebody's, listening to this, michael, and they're feeling, they're feeling the way that we've kind of talked about already in this podcast and they want to create change and they've tried it before, let's say, and they've maybe done the healthy habits and they started the gym and then they've fallen off the bandwagon again, but they do want to create change, what advice would you give them? What could they do themselves to start to really implement and shift their mindset around? They create some sort of change in their life? What would be your first thing that you would take on too?
Speaker 1:there's a few different things. Like I think if they're listening to this podcast, anyway, they're already doing the right thing. The right thing is you. You have to change the environment. You know, like if you look at someone who's a drug addict, why do they put them in something like aa or why do they put them in something like AA or why do they put them in a rehab facility? Because it pulls them out of an environment that has these mental attachments to the thing that triggers them. So like I'll speak to people and they go.
Speaker 1:I never smoke, but when I go out with my friends I have a beer and then I have a smoke and I'm like that's because beer has the attachment. So if we just don't drink beer, then we don't smoke, and if we do that for long enough, then eventually the smoking is easy to give up because you just haven't done it. So I'm like you just got to change the environment, start hanging out with people who don't drink beers. And then some people are like yeah, but that's, isn't there an easy way? And I'm like that's cool. Just the shortcuts are always the longest route, right? I wish the shortcut to. I wish there was a shortcut to dieting, but there isn't right. It's calories in versus calories out and you burn that shit off slow and and it just reminds you that every time you put shit in your mouth it's going to just be harder to burn off. And so you get these amazing lessons that help you to be better in life, like even now.
Speaker 1:I go out. I had lunch today and I was. I had a risotto and as I'm eating the risotto, I'm going I wonder if this has got cream in it. No, I got it dairy free, that's okay. And so I'm trying to calculate calories because I know that this shit I got to burn off. So if I keep putting on the gut, that makes it harder to lose next time.
Speaker 1:Now some people go well's. That takes all the fun out of it and I go, maybe. But it's a lot more fun when I don't wake up and I can get out of bed. And I've been overweight before and I don't like it. I feel like shit. You know, in grade five I was the only kid in the swimming carnival with a t-shirt on. I don't want that shit.
Speaker 1:When I go out now and I walk in somewhere and I'm a 40 year old man still, you know, I've still got a fairly broad chest, big shoulders, sort of solid arms. And I walk in and people look and I go yeah, you know what the fucking deal is, but I'm not. You know, I'm not being cocky or anything like that, but I just know that they get it. And they're all sitting there eating all their food and drinking and everything. They're like they get it Because when we see an attractive person, we know that there's something about them that we admire.
Speaker 1:Just like when we see someone who has money, we're like there's something about you. Can I mean, I've got supercars, so I rock up somewhere and I hear people talk shit about it. I bet he's a drug dealer, but that's the way that they mask their own insecurities, because they don't want to admit the truth. And that is there's something about me that they admire. They just don't know what it is and they're not smart enough to ask good questions. Some people come up and they go hey brother, what do you do? And I, I talked to them and I, you know I'm like hey, I started here and I had it. The other week I went to go get new tires on one of my cars and this's like what do you do? And I had this hour conversation with him while I was getting my tires changed and he's like, mate, you've like changed my life.
Speaker 1:And now he follows me on social media. He's like listens to the podcast, Compared to somebody else who's?
Speaker 2:who's giving you some grief and giving you some stick about your car, where, if they had been open enough to ask the question or just like, admire so because, as you said so, many people will automatically just start to assume that you're this and you're that because they've got insecurities within themselves, that they maybe want those things but they're not willing to do the work to go and get them, whereas that young guy comes along and has an open mind and asks a question and then gets all these different insights. That is probably going to have a massive effect on his life going forward.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the keys to success, right Like? I've been like that from a young age. I've always been inquisitive and I think my inquisitive mind has got me in a lot of trouble, but it's also provided a lot of benefits. You know, I met a head of a mining company here in Australia. I was getting one of my cars washed and this guy rocks up and he was just in you know, work clothes, like you know tradie work clothes. And he said, mate, nice car. And we started talking. And I said grab a coffee and grab a seat and we sit down, we start talking and I realized this guy was a lot more switched on. I said you know what are you doing? He more switched on. I said you know what are you doing? He said, oh, I've got a few businesses. You know, when someone says oh, I've got a few businesses, they are winding that down pretty, pretty hard.
Speaker 1:And so I asked him just just before I was about to leave. I um, I said look, before I go, I have a question for you. Do you mind if I ask it? And he said, yeah, that's fine. And I said what's the one point in your business where you went? I am fucked and you knew that you were about to lose everything. I said what did you do to turn around? He leant back in his chair and he said no one has ever asked me that question. I said I know, that's why I asked it. He said I think we need to do lunch. Anyway, we exchanged numbers and we became good friends. I ended up finding out he owns a whole bunch of gold mines and mines in australia and he's become a good friend. He's probably who knows, he's probably worth close to a billion dollars. What did he do?
Speaker 2:and that came from just having an open mind yeah, no, no, you've got me thinking what, what did it do? What did it change? Uh?
Speaker 1:I don't know that he ever answered the question. To be honest, now you're the first person who ever asked me. I've hung out with him so many times and I've never asked that. I've never gone back and asked that question Because he said to me. He said, let's catch up for lunch. That's the first time. I know it sounds stupid, but that's the first time I've actually ever thought that I never got the answer to that question.
Speaker 1:And I talk about this story all the time. Um, but um, what it was was I had to go to a meeting afterwards and he said let's go to lunch, but I had to go. So we ended up not catching up for like a couple of months later, Cause he, he goes and works in the middle of the um, you know outback, uh, here in Australia, because that's where some of his minds are. Um, but yeah, I I actually never, never asked him what the answer.
Speaker 2:that question was stupid enough, because when we catch up, we always talk about business problems and what's going on, and family and amazing, and that's the thing like, just from having an open mind and being able to ask questions and sit down and speak to somebody.
Speaker 2:You just never know where it leads and you never know the connections that you can make.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think that is one of the biggest traits that I see from the people that I coach, from the people that I coach and the people that I work with, and from speaking to other people in the podcast and people like yourself who are striving and want to keep moving and want to keep growing. They've got a vulnerability about themselves and they have an ability to also allow themselves to be the stupidest person in the room, let's say, and go and ask the questions that need to be asked in order for them to grow. Um, and sometimes that's just like literally getting out of your own way and getting rid of that ego and being open enough to take that feedback good, bad, whatever it might be so that you can succeed and that you can grow. On that, michael um, before we kind of finish, I want to ask a couple of questions then. So number one is what's the biggest mindset shift or the biggest mindset lesson that you've learned from any of your mentors up until this point?
Speaker 1:it's like I. It's like asking what's the favorite breath that you've ever had throughout your own life? I, I, don't know that there is one.
Speaker 2:But is there some key thing that you've learned from somebody that you've been connected with that you went? That's made just a massive difference for me. That's a thing that I've never heard before and I've taken and I've implemented and I know teach other people.
Speaker 1:Not really. There's just too much. Like I could go back through all my mentors and everyone. I think there's a there's the right piece of advice at the right time, and I've had the ability, from even a young age, to find the right information at the right time, even though sometimes it doesn't seem like it's the right time it is. You know, recently, this year, I've I've been working with two mentors who are, you know, one of one of them is the biggest, one of the biggest marketers on the planet, um.
Speaker 1:The other one has a massive, massive online following and I become good friends with them. Uh, well, not the marketer, but I've become good friends with his best friend, um, and so it's sort of it's opened up corridors and they've taught me things that aren't like big, mind-blowing, mind-altering experiences, but just little things that I'm like shit, I never thought of that. Wow, the way you see that is different, and so I tend to take those perspectives and I'm always building it. Um, I would definitely say like, if I, if I go back, there's been a bunch of things that I've been introduced to which were sort of opened my mind a little bit. So if I go back, um, probably paul check was the first one to open my mind up to thinking a bit more philosophical. I always did, but not really. I didn't really have a an idea around the exploration of what that was, so he sort of opened that up. But I also had a couple of friends that I was hanging around with. One of them was a medical doctor that used to do biofrequency or bioenergetic stuff with like different quantum machines and weird shit. He was like a nutty scientist dude, almost like a bit of like Tesla, so he was a bit of a weird out the box thinker. Um, so he, I, they, they sort of came around the same time. That made me think outside the box.
Speaker 1:Prior to that I was very attached to the physical world that you know, you work hard, you do things, you get outcomes, and so I was very attached to that physical realm and they sort of opened my mind up to the exploration of philosophy and thinking about maybe there's some impact with energy and light and how light works, which then sort of moved me into studying and even meeting people and having lunch with people like Dr Joe Dispenza, some of his researchers as well, some of his researchers as well and then from there I started studying a lot more harder sciences, like actually went and got a chemistry tutor and a physics tutor and started learning a bit more about that stuff. So I think that was a big thing. Dr Joe Dispenza opened my eyes up a lot more to potentially the idea that maybe there's some sort of quantum influence in the human experience, but I didn't know what it was and still don't. I think he tries to do a good, he tries to explain it, but I think there's still big gaps and I think there there's a lot of debate around how the human experience interacts with the non-physical, or the quantum or the. Even the world of physics, and I mean even in physics, if you look at the difference between quantum physics and physics, we don't know where energy matter, where that that change happens, like we know that there's an observer effect, but so anyway, I'm going off track. There was all of that Um check opened me up to the idea of like just eating a lot better as well. Um, yeah, so there's always, there's always different mentors at different times. Sometimes there are people that you know some of my mentor, business mentors, are mind blowing.
Speaker 1:I was in um just recently. I was in Bali and um one of my, my accountant. He has become a very close friend of mine and he was one of my clients Very, very smart guys, one of the big partners of a big accounting firm here in Adelaide. And I'm in Bali and I said to Jess, you know what, today's my first day that I'd relaxed. We went to Singapore, then went to Bali and we changed two different places in Bali, two locations, and we ended up staying at this big resort for the last part and it was the final day and I just started relaxing and I said, Jess, you know what? I want to stay for another week. He said, all right, let's just book for another seven days. Got to change some clients.
Speaker 1:So we make the change. I walk into the. They have like a lounge sort of yeah, like a business lounge. I walked in there for breakfast and my accountant's sitting there and I went get the fuck out, what are you doing here? So anyway, we hung out, we stayed in the same hotel in a whole nother different country and we're in the business lounge at the same time, which was just like freaky that it just happened that way. But anyway, some of the conversations we had he's very philosophical as well, even though he's very mathematical. Some of those conversations were life altering as well.
Speaker 1:we just made me think a little bit different. So, yeah, I'm always looking for those moments. They're there every day in front of us.
Speaker 2:We just got to open our eyes to them what's been the biggest, what's been the best advice that you've had around money around money.
Speaker 1:Don't be fucking stupid. Probably that simple right. Just don't be fucking stupid with it. Easy come, easy go. Warren Buffett said there's two rules to money Don't lose it and don't forget rule number one. Never lose money, never forget rule number one. There is two rules for wealth creation. I don't know. I think for me, probably one of the biggest and best things that I've learned is that money is just an exchange of value. So if you don't have your own intrinsic internal value, it's almost impossible to cap to hit earning potentials. So most people I work with who say I'm stuck financially, they're not stuck financially, they just can't see their own value. You know when your self-worth is low you're beating yourself up and I'm a hundred percent sure the more you focus on money, the more money goes away from you. The more you focus on acts of service, the more you focus on adding products, looking after customers, helping people around you, the bigger business grows, and you see that time and time again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100% when you look at people like Steve Jobs. He creates better products for the world, makes them simple, makes them easy and sells them really well.
Speaker 2:As again hearing from Demartini. He says that money trickles through society from people who value it least to people who value it most.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Which is true If you value it, then you're going to save it, and invest it and use it wisely, for sure, michael. Um, it's been an absolute pleasure having you in the podcast man. I've really enjoyed this conversation, really enjoyed actually getting to meet you as well too. For people who are interested in what you do and are interested in your coaching, where is the best place to find you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can jump onto michaelmojocom. So it's one word Michael, m-i-c-h-a-e-l, mojo, m-o-j-o all one word com. That's my website. Also, you can search michaelmojo underscore success on Instagram. I'm normally on there. I'm in the DM, so I talk to everybody, so you can jump across there and say hi. If you just type in Michael Mojo, you'll normally find me on most social media platforms. And then, finally, I also have a podcast as well, called the Underestimated Entrepreneur, where I just do like a daily talk about whatever. So at the moment I don't have anyone else on there. I just wake up in the morning and I go, right, this is what I feel like talking about today, or this is something that I've studied. I just want to share it with people. So I share something every morning just to get people's day started right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's five minutes, sometimes it's an hour yeah, I've been listening to them, so, um, definitely give them a lesson. I have some bullets of information there. Yeah, 100, yeah, yeah, very good, awesome, thank you. Yeah, excellent, michael. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Man really enjoyed the chat thank you so much, thanks for having me and, uh, yeah, thanks for everyone else.