Facilitating Transformation: Mike Brcic's Insights on Self-Awareness and Business Growth

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My goal is to be pushing people in various domains, whether

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it's physical, emotional, spiritual, whatever, outta that comfort zone.

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Because too much time in that comfort zone is just very stagnating.

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And life will contract if you spend too much time there.

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Tim Winders (4): The life of an entrepreneur can often be solo and lonely.

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How can that journey transform from a path of isolation to one of deep

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connection and shared discovery?

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Welcome to Seek, go, create.

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where today we're joined by Mike Burch, the founder and chief explorer at

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Wayfinders, a community dedicated to redefining the entrepreneurial experience

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through connection and exploration.

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With a rich background spanning 27 years in entrepreneurship from

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running high-end mountain bike trips around the world to a stints.

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As a journalist and social enterprise leader, Mike's life is a testament to the

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power of community and authentic living.

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He's here to share his insights on how connecting with others

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ourselves and our natural world can lead to a more fulfilling,

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entrepreneurial or just life journey.

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Mike, welcome to Seat Go Create.

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Mike Brcic (4): Yeah.

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Happy to be here, Tim.

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Tim Winders (4): I'm glad you're here too.

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First thing I'd like to ask, let's just pretend we meet each other,

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or if somebody just bumps into you, you're at something with your kids or

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on a plane and they ask you what you do, what do you usually tell people?

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Mike Brcic (4): Yeah.

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If I wanted to talk about work,

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I would tell people, the way I describe it, my shorthand for it is

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I take entrepreneurs to the wildest places on Earth and I make them cry

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Tim Winders (4): So it's like a and then you stop.

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Is there anything else after that or you just

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stop

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Mike Brcic (4): usually, I usually,

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Tim Winders (4): response you get?

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Mike Brcic (4): I usually just leave it hanging at that point, just to

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peak their curiosity a little bit.

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So I'm gonna leave it hanging right here.

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Yeah.

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Tim Winders (4): So you take 'em to the farthest parts of

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the world and you make them cry.

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There's multiple things in there that either excite me or bother me,

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depending on which position I'm in.

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But, how do people respond?

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Usually nothing.

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Or they just go, huh, and move

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Mike Brcic (4): Well, the, the

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Tim Winders (4): that sounds like a question that one might

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respond to when you might be trying to get rid of somebody.

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Am I correct in that or is that, are you really trying to engage with them?

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Mike Brcic (4): And no, I'm just trying to peak their curiosity.

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partly it's because what I do is very unique, right?

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And so to give you the long answer, I host, I host adventure.

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I guess you could call it a retreat.

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I call it a journey, um, in really wild, remote, spectacular places, on Earth.

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So a couple months ago I was in Western Mongolia leading a group of

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27 entrepreneurs, in a very remote part of one of the most remote

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and Empty Mongolia is the least densely populated country on earth.

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And I led them on a nine day journey.

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We accompanied a local nomad family on their fall migration.

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And that was, that's the adventure part of it.

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But it's also a journey.

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And I'm tongue trying to take people on a transformational journey.

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And it's a journey of, self-discovery.

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It's a journey of community with other souls along the journey.

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It's a journey of confrontation where you might confront, certain aspects of

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yourself, and that could be coming up against a physical limit, emotional,

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spiritual, whatever that may be.

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Um, it's all part of the mix of what I do, which is try and create a meaningful

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journey and hopefully the person who comes out on the other side isn't the same as

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the person who went in and that person has a deeper sense of connection, to themself.

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Also to others.

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Also, you touched on it to this, this beautiful landscape and this

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beautiful setting of earth that we live in and and maybe a deeper sense

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of connection to a calling as well.

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Tim Winders (4): So when I hear that, Mike, that there's two

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things that pop in my head.

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One is, here's a guy that's got it figured out, or here's a guy that's

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really trying to figure it out.

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Is it one or the other for you?

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Mike Brcic (4): Uh, it's definitely the latter.

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I think, you know, I've been on, a journey of self-discovery

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as, as long as I can remember.

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Uh.

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I like to think I have a pretty high degree of self-awareness

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at this point in my life.

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I'm 52.

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I've put in a lot of the reps I've put in the work.

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I also think I'm just scratching the surface and it's a big

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onion with many layers to it.

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And really, one of my, one of my members, one of the people

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who's with me in Mongolia.

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said it.

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She said, she said, you are going on a beautiful journey and you're

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bringing, you're just bringing all of us along for the ride.

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And that's really what it is.

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I don't, I never pretend that I've got anything figured

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out or I'm some sort of guru.

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I'm not interested in being that person.

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Some people might be, but, um, if anything, if I've discovered anything,

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it's maybe a process and a commitment.

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And a commitment to my own Process of self-discovery, a commitment to

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my growth because I understand that there's so many layers to that.

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There's so much work involved.

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If I wanna live a life that is congruent with who I am, at my core and at my soul,

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then I need to understand myself better.

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And I find that when I take myself to these wild places and I spend time

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in the company of other people, or if I spend time in complete silence and

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stillness like nowhere else on earth.

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I come to a deeper understanding of myself, and of course I don't

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have to go to Mongolia to do that.

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I have practices that I do at home, but really I'm just going

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on a journey and inviting people to join me because it's more

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fun to walk that journey, you know, with others.

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Tim Winders (4): when you were, when you were talking about going

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to those places, my thought.

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Which is when I've been looking at some of the things you've done and

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reading your substack and things like that, that we'll talk about later.

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I've been going through this process of do you have to go away to a far off place?

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For this process to work, to take hold, whatever term we wanna use.

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Can it be done locally?

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Can it do, can it be done in the comforts of my own home, in the comforts of my

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current life, whatever that might be.

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And I'm guessing, based on where you've landed, you have some thoughts on that.

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But contrast those two.

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Going through a transformation or going through a seeking of yourself, being more

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self-aware, why go literally to the other side of the earth for that to happen?

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Mike Brcic (4): Mm-Hmm.

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Well, if I were, you know, if I were the head of PR for my

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company, I would say yes, you have to go to Mongolian to do that.

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Uh, but speaking more seriously, of course you don't have to.

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Um.

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What, what I do is I create a journey that's so far out of the regular realm of

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experience when we're in Western Mongolia, again, we're in an extremely remote place.

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There's nothing else around.

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It was just us, our small camp crew and this, nomadic family walking through

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this massive, massive landscape.

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We didn't run into a single other person for nine days and.

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That has an effect on you.

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It makes the job easier when you have, access to these incredible landscapes

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and stillness and just completely, it's very easy when you're in your home

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environment to just get sucked into the minutia of your day-to-Day, to the

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Distractions, all that kinda stuff.

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You have to be much more intentional.

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If I take you and rip you outta that and put you in Western Mongolia,

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you are going to have a meaningful experience unless you're completely

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cl closed off to the world around you.

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Yes, it helps and it helps to have a facilitator like me who

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is guiding you on that journey.

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And it helps to have people around you who are interested in that journey.

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But you can do that at home.

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I have a daily practice every morning, um, that helps me, undertake that

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process of self-awareness and discovery.

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I have a, I have a daily journaling practice that, I just write

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for 10, 15 minutes on whatever topic happens to be top of mind.

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And.

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I'm essentially just giving free reign to my subconscious to speak to me,

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and that's a very valuable practice.

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I also meditate and do breath work and all these other practices that I do from the

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comfort of my living room, surrounded by my computer and my tv and my phone, and

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all these other things that distract me.

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And I have to work hard against them, but I do it.

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So, uh, it's a both end situation and if you find it hard to commit to a

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regular practice, then sometimes it's useful to have a reboot and just go

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Go to Mongolia or walk the Camino, or just go to, go drive outta the city and

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go find some wilderness and sit there for three hours and see what happens.

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Tim Winders (4): And I like that you brought up distractions because

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to, to me, that's one of the biggest values of getting away.

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and I'll give you an extremely granular.

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Petty example.

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I was, I was spending my quiet time this morning that I do, and journaling

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and prayer and things like that.

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And then I was moving into my time of pre prepping to have this conversation

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with you where I wanna be intentional and focused and all of that.

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And we're sitting here in the small space of our rv and I kept

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seeing trash sitting right there.

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The trash bag, from last night that still there this morning.

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And I kept thinking to myself.

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So I, so this was the mental pinging pong, got this conversation with

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Mike, talking about traveling the world, doing all the things he does.

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Adventure and working with entrepreneurs.

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I.

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and the bag of trash . That was what was the distraction

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that was going on in my head.

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And of course now we've got devices and everything like that.

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it seems as if one of the things you're able to do is

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sort of take people outside of.

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I don't know if comfort, I don't know if it's the, distractions or outside of

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themselves maybe, and people around them.

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And, what do you observe as being the most valuable thing that you bring people

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out of to take them to places like that?

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Mike Brcic (4): first thing I will say is that there will always be trash.

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Right.

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There Will

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Tim Winders (4): Even in Mongolia?

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Did y'all had trash there

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Mike Brcic (4): yeah, more, more metaphorical maybe.

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But

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there'll always be those things that distract us.

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And then the work is not to eliminate those distractions, but learn how

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to live with them and how to be present and all of those things.

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But getting to your question, my My goal is to try and bring them to a

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place, and I'm speaking metaphorically, not literally bring them to a place

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where their armor and their normal defense mechanisms come down.

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Because we have all, a lot of this armor gets built up in our

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earliest childhood experiences and.

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Unless we bring awareness to them, unless we bring intentionality,

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unless we bring, hard work to them.

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those defenses and those systems tend to remain in place.

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And they served us as children.

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They kept us safe.

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They, you know, whatever they did.

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But as adults, they they compromised the quality of our lives.

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And so my job is to try and Bring them to a place where they can

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become aware of those things.

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And sometimes that can be done through, facilitate and exercise.

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Sometimes it's done simply by virtue of taking people up, a really

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steep mountain and and forcing them to confront their physical

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limits, which tends to strip them.

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And they will, they'll hopefully learn something about themselves.

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In the process.

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But if I do my job they, they will encounter all sorts of limits over the

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course of their time with me, whether it's physical or emotional or mental.

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And if I frame that they will learn something about themselves in the process.

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They will learn something about their habitual patterns

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of interacting with the world.

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And then they have a conscious choice of whether they want to continue.

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Those strategies are not.

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But the first step is the awareness, right?

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And, um.

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Taking them to a place like Mongolia just happens to be a ripe

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environment for that type of work.

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More so than if I were doing it, in a boardroom at the

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Cleveland Convention Center,

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Tim Winders (4): Right.

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I, I like that you brought up the physical because I, I've observed

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with myself, I'm, I look at myself as spirit, soul, mind will, and

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emotions, and then body and physical.

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And there was a time back in, it's been years ago, I was working

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with the leadership institute of a large corporation and we would

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do these, what I call a bit dated now, team building exercises.

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We'd take people up to the North Georgia Mountains, put 'em in.

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Pseudo situations like you're talking about.

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These were corporate teams, though a little bit different than leaders.

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I'll ask you a little bit about the difference between, you know, what

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you see with fixed teams and then also with leaders and entrepreneurs.

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But I did notice a few dynamics that occurred when we would

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bring in physical challenge.

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There was a certain group of people that it really . Had what I would call positive

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impact, where it really created something in them where it shut down some things

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for them where they maybe had confidence in their physical ability, but yet

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they realized they were being stretched and it forced them to a new place.

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And then there were some people, and it's one of the reasons why I started

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moving away from those team building.

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Sometimes they were the higher ropes courses or at least medium type ropes

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courses, things like that was that I recognized there were some people.

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That it put them in a situation that I didn't like.

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It almost set them back a little bit.

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They just weren't . Comfortable enough, or, I don't even know how

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to exactly say this, but I'm kind of framing it for you to say a

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little bit more about the physical challenge, maybe the pro and the con.

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have you seen people that think they want to go, you know, climb a

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19,000 foot peak in, south America, but then yet it sets them back?

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talk, I guess talk a little bit more, putting yourself in a physical,

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demanding situation and what that can do for us as far as our growth,

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Mike Brcic (4): Yeah, so I, I have this model, and it's concentric

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circles, and in the middle of that circle is our comfort zone.

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And that's where we tend to spend the majority of our time.

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And not a lot happens in the comfort zone.

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We stay a little bit stagnant there.

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Life will proceed, as it has, for years or life will even contract.

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And just beyond that is our stretch zone or our growth zone.

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And that's where the growth happens when we push ourselves outta that comfort zone.

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But then beyond that.

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You have the panic zone and if you push too far, or if I push somebody

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too far or somebody pushes somebody too far, then they get outta that

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stretch zone and into their panic zone, and that's when they contract.

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And you have the opposite of the intended effect.

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And so for me, you know, as a facilitator and as a designer, you know.

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Designer of events, whatever.

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My goal is to be pushing people in various domains, whether

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it's physical, emotional, spiritual, whatever, outta that comfort zone.

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Because too much time in that comfort zone is just very stagnating.

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And life will contract if you spend too much time there.

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Mike Brcic (4): And I wanna push them into that stretch zone, and I don't wanna

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push them outta that, that panic zone.

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Now the trick is if we're talking, sim simply in the physical realm, everybody

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brings different physical capabilities.

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To that.

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Now, my, my experience, and the science will back me up on this,

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is that one's actual physiology is actually a smaller part of the

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equation than the mental makeup, right?

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and and so somebody who's, already comes to an event, quite

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fit in whatever, they'll have an easier time up that mountain.

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But if they lack the mental capability to push through barriers they might have

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just as hard a time as somebody who's Kind of outta shape, but I also have

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to, you know, mitigate that, somewhat.

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And so everybody's stretch zone looks a little bit, looks a little bit different.

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So I have to tailor that somewhat.

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Mind you, in the case of, you mentioned, 19,000 foot.

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Mountain in South America.

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So we're heading to Ecuador at the end of February.

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We're gonna attempt to summit, uh, I think it's like 19,400

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feet or something like that.

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Mount Epoxy.

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And it's a big undertaking.

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It's a mountaineering undertaking.

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We'll have, we'll have tools and we'll have crampons and all that kind of stuff.

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Um, I've, I have urged everybody and most of the people are already

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training so far for that experience.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:21

But I know that when we get on that mountain and it's, um, You

Mike Brcic: 00:16:25

know, we leave, we, we drive about halfway up the mountain.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:27

We stay at a refuge.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:28

we leave the refuge around 1230 in the morning, just after midnight.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:32

And it's about a seven, eight hour ordeal to get up to the summit.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:35

Uh, for sunrise and then, and then back down.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:38

it's a 12 hour day.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:39

Um, I know that everybody there is going to encounter their limit at some point.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:44

Some people will encounter it sooner.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:46

Some people will encounter it harder.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:48

And so a lot of it is the train that, that mental training, we have to do

Mike Brcic: 00:16:50

the physical training beforehand or we're doing, we're doing breath work

Mike Brcic: 00:16:54

and all these different things to deal with the altitude and physi, but the

Mike Brcic: 00:16:57

mental training is part of it too.

Mike Brcic: 00:16:59

And just what is.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:01

It's learning how to deal with the voice that comes up in your head

Mike Brcic: 00:17:04

and it says, this is too hard.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:05

stop walking.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:06

This is ridiculous.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:07

This is insane.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:08

That voice is gonna come up, when you're at 19,000 feet.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:11

And so that's the training and that's the stretch zone, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:17:14

It's learning how to deal with that voice.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:16

'cause most of us hear that voice.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:18

Whether it's something physical or whether it's just, life we need to

Mike Brcic: 00:17:21

get better at tackling that voice and speaking to it compassionately but

Mike Brcic: 00:17:24

firmly and just saying, Hey, I know you're just trying to keep me safe, but

Mike Brcic: 00:17:28

I got this, I'm gonna push through this.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:30

And I've seen this time and time again.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:31

when we were in, in Morocco last year, uh, trying to climb Mount Tube call,

Mike Brcic: 00:17:36

which is, I think around 14, 15,000 feet, highest peak in North Africa.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:40

Um.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:41

There were a number of people there that were, ready to pull the plug,

Mike Brcic: 00:17:44

but they just, they dealt with that voice and they pushed through it.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:47

And, you know, one guy in particular, we're now a year later, a year past

Mike Brcic: 00:17:51

that event, and he's told me just that one experience of pushing up that

Mike Brcic: 00:17:55

mountain and pushing through that voice.

Mike Brcic: 00:17:57

He recognized how much of that voice Dictated his life and how that voice

Mike Brcic: 00:18:02

would come and say, you're a failure.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:03

You're worthless.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:04

You can't do this, whatever.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:05

And just that act of pushing through and making it up to that summit has

Mike Brcic: 00:18:09

been so powerful for him because he knows that he now has, he now has the

Mike Brcic: 00:18:13

tools and the wherewithal to speak back to that voice and push through it.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:18

Tim Winders (4): Yeah, I think there, there's power in that voice

Mike Brcic: 00:18:22

and knowing limitations, knowing when to stretch, and I think I'm

Mike Brcic: 00:18:25

becoming even more aware of that.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:28

I.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:28

As I, I won't say, get older and as I mature of what I can do physically

Mike Brcic: 00:18:33

and recovery time and things like that, it seems as if, going back with

Mike Brcic: 00:18:39

I, I know you had a company that did adventure trips with mountain bikes

Mike Brcic: 00:18:43

and all that, but it seems as if.

Mike Brcic: 00:18:47

I think a lot of us in life we're, we've been prepared all our lives for what we're

Mike Brcic: 00:18:50

doing right now and, and as I've just kinda looked at some of the things you're

Mike Brcic: 00:18:55

doing and read some things you've done and things like that, it seems as if that

Mike Brcic: 00:19:00

Mike has been prepared for this almost, I.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:04

All your life.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:06

I, I wanna circle back to your process and see what some of our

Mike Brcic: 00:19:09

leaders that are listening in can gain from what you've learned.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:12

But let's back up a little bit and whatever you wanna share.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:17

what has prepared you either positive or negative, by the way, too.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:23

We're, we're re we redefine success here.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:25

This is, we don't back away from what some might call failure, because I

Mike Brcic: 00:19:29

actually think there's more power in . Things that don't look successful in

Mike Brcic: 00:19:33

the world's structure, but, but what's prepared you for what you're doing now?

Mike Brcic: 00:19:39

Just a couple of high points.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:40

Maybe a low point or two.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:42

Mike Brcic (4): I, I mean, I think being an entrepreneur for as many

Mike Brcic: 00:19:46

years as I've been an entrepreneur, 26, 27, I don't know what it is, 27 now.

Mike Brcic: 00:19:52

there's no job security that comes with being an entrepreneur, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:19:55

You create

Mike Brcic: 00:19:55

your own, you create your own job security, and.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:00

you learn.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:01

I learned very, I don't wanna speak for everybody, but I learned very

Mike Brcic: 00:20:03

on that in order for me to have successes, I need to have failures.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:06

I need to take risks.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:08

And that was in fact, one of, one of our core guiding principles at my

Mike Brcic: 00:20:12

previous company was, was take risks.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:15

And I knew that if, operating in a very competitive industry,

Mike Brcic: 00:20:18

we needed to take risks.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:19

We needed to do things differently.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:21

Otherwise we would just get we we would just be bland and we'd

Mike Brcic: 00:20:25

just be like the competition and eventually we'd go at a business.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:28

And so, you know, I've, over the course of that entrepreneurial career,

Mike Brcic: 00:20:33

I've come within a hair's breadth of going bankrupt three separate times.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:37

And, and I, and I've now gotten better at understanding the

Mike Brcic: 00:20:43

mechanics of how that happens.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:44

And, the financial mechanics and my current company is far better poised

Mike Brcic: 00:20:49

to To withstand something like that.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:52

or just not have that happen in the first place.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:53

'cause I just manage it better.

Mike Brcic: 00:20:55

But it, the same principle of taking risks and doing things differently applies.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:00

and I know that's going to lead to a lot of failures, but it's also gonna lead to a

Mike Brcic: 00:21:03

lot of successes on the way along the way.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:06

And, so I guess, you know, in some ways I've become a little

Mike Brcic: 00:21:09

bit, uh, inured to failure.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:11

And that I just understand that as a learning opportunity, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:21:14

It's just, if you want to, if you wanna do great things, you have to be prepared.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:17

they're just not all gonna work out, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:21:19

If I take a hundred swings, they're, you know, they're not gonna work.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:22

If you look at Aaron Judge, you know, uh, best Home run hitter in baseball

Mike Brcic: 00:21:26

over the last few years, that guy strikes out an incredible amount,

Mike Brcic: 00:21:29

because that's what he's gotta do.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:31

He's gotta swing big.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:33

And, I think that's really prepared me for understanding the value of risk

Mike Brcic: 00:21:39

and that, as you said, it's been a lifetime thing and when, if I look back

Mike Brcic: 00:21:43

at, maybe the 24-year-old me, he took a lot of stupid risks without, without

Mike Brcic: 00:21:48

really putting a lot of planning or thought or risk mitigation into place.

Mike Brcic: 00:21:54

And now Now I still take, you know, probably just as many risks, if not more,

Mike Brcic: 00:21:59

but I'm far more planned, uh, about it.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:03

I mitigate it.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:05

A lot of it is mitigating catastrophic risk.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:07

I would do things in my twenties where the risk that I'm taking

Mike Brcic: 00:22:11

actually could be my life.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:12

Um, whereas now I'm not gonna put myself in a situation, especially with three

Mike Brcic: 00:22:16

children where I'm risking my life.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:19

I might risk a broken bone, something like that.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:21

Or maybe a, Maybe end up in a wheelchair.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:24

I don't really tend to push it that hard anymore, but I'm mitigating

Mike Brcic: 00:22:27

against worst case scenarios and that the same applies to my business.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:31

I might take, a big risk and a new product, a new service or whatever,

Mike Brcic: 00:22:34

but I'm not gonna do it to the extent where it's gonna risk taking

Mike Brcic: 00:22:36

down the entire company with it.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:38

so it's being just more measured with my risks and wiser.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:42

About it, but still maintaining that ethos of just continually pushing and

Mike Brcic: 00:22:45

pushing and taking risks, hopefully to be spending as much time as possible

Mike Brcic: 00:22:50

in that stretch zone and not getting into that panic zone where everything

Mike Brcic: 00:22:53

gets overwhelming and shuts down.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:56

Tim Winders (4): One of the reasons really for what.

Mike Brcic: 00:22:59

We are even doing here is that for many years I was really bothered by how

Mike Brcic: 00:23:06

culture . Defines that word success.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:09

it.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:10

And in fact, it still bothers me.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:11

It bothers me

Mike Brcic: 00:23:13

what I see out there that we call success and failure.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:17

In fact, by the way, and I've tried to come up with different words or

Mike Brcic: 00:23:21

ways to describe it, and I don't think I've done a great job of it,

Mike Brcic: 00:23:25

but it seems as if that's a little bit of the business that you're in.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:30

Would that be accurate?

Mike Brcic: 00:23:33

Mike Brcic (4): Well, so for me personally, I define success as living

Mike Brcic: 00:23:36

a life that is true to nature, my soul, my, deep, deepest authenticity.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:43

If I'm living a life that's authentic to who I am, then

Mike Brcic: 00:23:47

that, to me is a successful life.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:49

And there, there's two ingredients to that.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:51

One is understanding Who the heck you are.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:53

and going through a process of self-inquiry and self-awareness because

Mike Brcic: 00:23:57

it's very easy to bullshit ourselves.

Mike Brcic: 00:23:59

And the second part of it, after you've gotten clear on that or not after, it's

Mike Brcic: 00:24:03

a concurrent process and it's an ongoing process, is the actions and the decisions

Mike Brcic: 00:24:07

that move you in into greater authenticity and away from more bullshitting.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:13

Um, and most of what we define as conventional success, doesn't

Mike Brcic: 00:24:19

actually align with that, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:24:21

most people, I know a lot of financially, very successful people,

Mike Brcic: 00:24:25

who live lives of utter mis misery.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:28

And it, because it's not in line with who they are or what they want.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:31

And, and some often it's because they haven't taken the time to define who

Mike Brcic: 00:24:37

they are and what it is they really want.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:39

It's like that saying, it's if you're gonna climb the ladder of success, make

Mike Brcic: 00:24:42

sure it's leaning on the right building.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:44

And so you gotta understand which is your building.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:48

Tim Winders (4): Have you, uh, this is a little bit of a trick question.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:54

Have you always been.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:57

In that mode.

Mike Brcic: 00:24:58

I'm sure it's been a process, I guess go backwards.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:00

I did a search this morning because I was trying to remember how we were connected,

Mike Brcic: 00:25:05

and so I went to my Gmail and put your name in, which is a nice, unique name.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:09

So it pulls up and I realized that I subscribed to some email list

Mike Brcic: 00:25:12

you had back in 2016 and I got the seven steps to do this or that or

Mike Brcic: 00:25:19

whatever.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:19

I've got it.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:19

If . I've got it.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:20

If you wanted to be, would you be excited if I brought that up and

Mike Brcic: 00:25:23

we discussed it or would you go, Ooh, let's not, let's move along.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:26

What would , I'm just curious.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:29

Mike Brcic (4): Sure.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:30

it's all part of the evolution.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:31

it's probably, probably had wince a little bit at it, but, but to answer

Mike Brcic: 00:25:34

your question, was I always this way?

Mike Brcic: 00:25:36

Certainly not.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:37

I would say, I went through life rather blindly until I was 34.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:45

And then when I was, and my life, I kind of did what people expected of me.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:49

You know, I went to university, got my degree, and there was

Mike Brcic: 00:25:52

some aspects of rebellion.

Mike Brcic: 00:25:54

Like I took a year off and I went and traveled through Southeast Asia

Mike Brcic: 00:25:57

for six months and but then I moved to a little ski town in the Rockies.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:00

And then life, those 10 years I spent at West were really about me and

Mike Brcic: 00:26:04

my hedonistic desires, skiing and mountain biking and playing in a band.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:08

And it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was a selfish, ARS asshole, but, it,

Mike Brcic: 00:26:11

I certainly wasn't thinking much more.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:13

much more expansively than beyond myself.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:16

And it wasn't until I was 34 that the universe delivered a nice cosmic

Mike Brcic: 00:26:20

upper cut to the face in the form of a very deep and painful depression

Mike Brcic: 00:26:25

it was, which I'm so grateful for.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:27

And it was such a, as painful as it was such a transformative experience

Mike Brcic: 00:26:31

of opening my eyes up to, a totally different experience of the world

Mike Brcic: 00:26:36

and and that kicked off several years of like really deep self-inquiry and

Mike Brcic: 00:26:41

therapy and, became a yoga teacher and meditation, all these different

Mike Brcic: 00:26:45

things that I discovered along the way.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:46

And it's been kind of a.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:48

You know, it's been a bit of a sine wave.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:51

I had three kids along the way and it's, sometimes I get a little bit, too

Mike Brcic: 00:26:55

focused on, supporting the family and my business and the family and whatever.

Mike Brcic: 00:26:59

And I forget that, hey, invest in yourself as well and continue this process.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:04

Um, so it's always there.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:06

It's a constant thread moving through all that.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:08

I'm just, I'm just a naturally very curious person and I try to

Mike Brcic: 00:27:11

extend that curiosity to myself.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:14

Tim Winders (4): Y you brought up something there that I did, I wanted

Mike Brcic: 00:27:16

to discuss if it came up and it did.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:18

And that's the whole aspect of money when we start talking about

Mike Brcic: 00:27:22

business people, entrepreneurs, and, the world we're in today.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:26

And one of the things that I think I saw, and I don't know where this was, that

Mike Brcic: 00:27:31

your previous company, sacred Rides, where y'all did mountain bike trips, adventure

Mike Brcic: 00:27:36

type, mountain bike trips all over.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:40

It sounded as if that journey was, I'm gonna simplify it

Mike Brcic: 00:27:46

and you could correct me.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:47

it was awesome until there was a decision for growth.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:52

I.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:52

That was involved with bringing outside funding in and I, you could go into

Mike Brcic: 00:27:57

more detail there if you want to.

Mike Brcic: 00:27:58

'cause I think we have listeners that could learn from the process of

Mike Brcic: 00:28:02

being addicted to growth or thinking that they need to grow and then

Mike Brcic: 00:28:06

thinking they need to go down a path.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:08

But what I really would like to talk more about is that aspect of what money does to

Mike Brcic: 00:28:14

. Us when we're in this arena that we're in.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:18

So just I'm, I think I gave you hopefully a little softball pitch to talk

Mike Brcic: 00:28:23

about pros and cons of money.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:25

Either or, how, however you want to.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:27

So money, that's the topic.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:29

Mike Brcic (4): Yeah.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:30

people much smarter than me have said that money is an amplifier, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:28:34

It amplifies what is already going on in your life, your feelings, your beliefs.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:39

And so, um, you know, the common saying is if you're, if you're an ars, then a

Mike Brcic: 00:28:44

lot of money is probably gonna make you an even bigger, um, I would say With my

Mike Brcic: 00:28:51

previous company there prior to bringing on investors, and I did that three times.

Mike Brcic: 00:28:57

There was a real, there was a real striving, I was looking for something

Mike Brcic: 00:29:01

from my business that it, that it couldn't necessarily deliver.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:04

And that was, that was a real sense of validation.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:07

Uh, I discovered it could give me all the shiny trappings of

Mike Brcic: 00:29:10

validation, awards and, uh.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:16

Magazine covers and I didn't get any on any magazine covers, but I was

Mike Brcic: 00:29:18

certainly featured in a lot of them.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:20

it could give you all those trap, but it couldn't give you real deep

Mike Brcic: 00:29:23

sense of validation and self-worth.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:26

And once I started bringing on money outside investors, debt, all these other

Mike Brcic: 00:29:31

forms of money and there's quite a bit of it coming in, it just amplified that.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:37

And it made that quest for validation even more frenetic and more frantic,

Mike Brcic: 00:29:42

and hiring more people, more expansion, more programs, more you

Mike Brcic: 00:29:47

know, more building more of that.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:49

I took what was a, up until that point, was a really nice lifestyle business.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:52

where, I still got to travel and on my mountain bike and have fun.

Mike Brcic: 00:29:56

And I turned it into this big unwieldy beast where I spent a lot of my time,

Mike Brcic: 00:30:00

you know, reviewing bank documents and reviewing shareholder agreements and

Mike Brcic: 00:30:04

writing shareholder updates and managing a big team of staff and all this stuff.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:08

I remember waking up one day, it's this is not the company I set out to build.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:12

What have I done?

Mike Brcic: 00:30:13

And and then the next few years we're just backpedaling from all of that.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:18

And, it was, it was nice for a couple years while all that money was coming in

Mike Brcic: 00:30:25

to not have to worry whether I'm gonna make payroll or not, and I can pay myself

Mike Brcic: 00:30:29

a decent salary and all that kinda stuff.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:31

But that quickly ran out and, had I instead spent the time like really,

Mike Brcic: 00:30:37

really .Understanding, really taking the time to discover what it was

Mike Brcic: 00:30:41

that I wanted from this business.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:43

I could have, I, I could have spent that time engineering and developing

Mike Brcic: 00:30:48

and creating that company instead of the company that it became, which, um, ended

Mike Brcic: 00:30:52

up just stressing out a lot of people.

Mike Brcic: 00:30:55

Myself,

Mike Brcic: 00:30:56

Tim Winders (4): Yeah, I've observed, I've been in the coaching arena, I

Mike Brcic: 00:30:59

guess is one thing I would call it, and facilitation and things, which you've got

Mike Brcic: 00:31:03

similar things on your resume and I've observed that many people in this arena.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:14

Have an addiction and I'm gonna use that word because I think it's appropriate

Mike Brcic: 00:31:19

and it's an addiction to growth or an addiction to more, I interviewed

Mike Brcic: 00:31:24

someone recently, they said they had an addiction to tomorrow, and you had

Mike Brcic: 00:31:33

that company, and it sounds like that growth and you thought you needed

Mike Brcic: 00:31:37

to grow it and things like that.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:40

And then all of a sudden you kinda like had a reset.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:42

and almost started chunking down to some base level things.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:48

If you can, I wanna move into some things you've learned

Mike Brcic: 00:31:50

in the current iteration of.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:53

Mike, you know, Mike, I don't know if it's 2.0, 3.0.

Mike Brcic: 00:31:56

I don't know where you are in your iterations, but, but wherever you are now,

Mike Brcic: 00:32:00

I want to get some lessons learned there.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:01

But that transition from where you were, 15, 16, 17, 2015,

Mike Brcic: 00:32:08

1617, to where you are now.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:11

Talk briefly about the transition and what occurred and how you moved

Mike Brcic: 00:32:17

from where you were to heading in the direction that you are now.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:23

Mike Brcic (4): Yeah.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:23

if there's, one thing I've discovered is that transitions are generally difficult,

Mike Brcic: 00:32:27

both for myself and my life and the people that you know in my community.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:31

I help them navigate transition , um, transitions.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:35

Usually painful because it forces us to let go of something.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:39

And as humans, we don't like to let go of things we don't

Mike Brcic: 00:32:42

like, we don't like change.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:43

Our brains are not wired for change.

Mike Brcic: 00:32:46

And that transition me, you know, I was, I was letting go of a company that

Mike Brcic: 00:32:53

I'd been running for over 20 years this was, I started this company very quickly

Mike Brcic: 00:32:59

out of university and it become an it'd become an extricable part of my identity.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:03

And, and this, and this is so common in the entrepreneurial

Mike Brcic: 00:33:07

world where, the founder and his or her company become inseparable.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:12

And that's kind of a dangerous thing because the company can

Mike Brcic: 00:33:14

come and go in an instant, right?

Mike Brcic: 00:33:16

And so I.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:18

The job, our job is to not let our companies define us.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:22

And we can be passionate about our work, but when it becomes enmeshed in

Mike Brcic: 00:33:27

our identity, that's a dangerous thing.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:29

And that's, was blessed and I was fortunate that I, I was winding

Mike Brcic: 00:33:32

my way out of that company.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:35

I was starting this company, so there was about a two year overlap there and.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:41

And so when I sold the company and I was out, I had made it very turnkey.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:46

and so I was outta the company within five, six weeks, which is extremely rapid.

Mike Brcic: 00:33:51

and I've, I know a lot of people, I have a lot of friends who've sold companies and

Mike Brcic: 00:33:56

some people who've had, extremely large exits and you think, you know, somebody

Mike Brcic: 00:34:00

sells their company for $25 million, you think, oh, they've got it made.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:05

I would say more often than not far, more often than not, I would even

Mike Brcic: 00:34:08

venture to say those people end up really miserable after, you know, for

Mike Brcic: 00:34:14

the first year or two, after the sale.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:16

Because this thing that they've tied their identity in and all these people

Mike Brcic: 00:34:19

that you know work for them and all these things that gave them validation and gave

Mike Brcic: 00:34:22

them a sense of purpose or whatever, it's suddenly gone overnight and they have

Mike Brcic: 00:34:26

all this money, this thing is missing.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:27

So I was fortunate that I had this other thing I could focus on that

Mike Brcic: 00:34:30

I was quite passionate about, but I remember, I was early on in that process.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:37

I think I had just sold the company a few weeks before and I had my

Mike Brcic: 00:34:40

monthly meeting with my forum.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:41

This is a group of five, uh, five guys, fellow entrepreneurs.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:45

We met monthly and it was my turn to present.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:48

To the group and I said, I've just sold my company.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:52

Um, I've got this, I've got this, you know, new thing that I'm kind of starting,

Mike Brcic: 00:34:56

but it won't take up all of my time.

Mike Brcic: 00:34:59

I'll still have lots of time left over and here, and then I think I outlined

Mike Brcic: 00:35:03

five or six different projects that I'd been that were on the side burner.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:07

And I said, and I walked them through it and I said, which of these do you

Mike Brcic: 00:35:10

think I should, you know, I want to turn one of these into a company,

Mike Brcic: 00:35:12

or I wanna do something with them.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:14

thank God for that group because every one of them said to me, why on earth do

Mike Brcic: 00:35:18

you need to rush into the next thing?

Mike Brcic: 00:35:20

You know you've got another company that you can put your time to that, but

Mike Brcic: 00:35:23

you've got this amazing opportunity.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:25

Just like slow down, spend time with your family.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:27

You know, it was spring, we were heading into summer.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:30

And just enjoy that time and so I'm so grateful.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:33

they said that I ended up, spending a lot of time with my family.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:36

I ended up spending a lot of time just, being quiet and being still,

Mike Brcic: 00:35:40

and getting to know myself and I.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:44

So that, that transition was actually relatively relatively s smooth.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:50

there were aspects of it that were painful.

Mike Brcic: 00:35:52

Um, but part of it too is I'd been running that previous company for so

Mike Brcic: 00:35:57

long, it was a little bit burnt out, even though my identity was so wrapped up

Mike Brcic: 00:36:00

in it, I was burnt out and I was happy.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:02

It felt like it, it felt like it belonged to another chapter of my life

Mike Brcic: 00:36:05

and that I'd hung onto it for too long.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:07

And, So I'm super proud of what I built with that company, and I'm glad the

Mike Brcic: 00:36:12

new owner is doing great things with it, but I was also happy to let it go.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:16

a lot of what I think about these days is how can we more elegantly navigate

Mike Brcic: 00:36:19

transition and how can we more elegantly navigate that letting go process?

Mike Brcic: 00:36:23

Because often the what makes the transition so difficult and so hard

Mike Brcic: 00:36:29

to move on because we won't let go of the thing we're supposed to let go of.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:33

And so it's hard to move on when you're still holding on for dear life to

Mike Brcic: 00:36:37

something that just needs to be let go of.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:39

And that's a question I ru ruminate on often, what needs to be let go of.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:42

Tim Winders (4): And I guess somewhere along the way, I think one of the initial

Mike Brcic: 00:36:46

names that you had for your current company, Wayfinders, was Mastermind.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:52

Mastermind Adventures or something, which I've, going way back years

Mike Brcic: 00:36:56

mastermind's, word that's thrown around.

Mike Brcic: 00:36:57

I'm not even sure if a lot of people even know what it means.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:01

now at its root.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:02

But I've always enjoyed most of those type environments.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:06

I've enjoyed running them and things like that, but, and then I heard

Mike Brcic: 00:37:10

somewhere or saw somewhere that you really decided during covid to up your,

Mike Brcic: 00:37:14

what we'll call facilitation game.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:17

Mike Brcic (4): Mm-Hmm.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:18

Tim Winders (4): And I remember the first facilitation training I went through

Mike Brcic: 00:37:20

in the late eighties, shortly after I came out of university at Georgia Tech.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:25

And I remember I, I thought to myself the philosophy of facilitation is

Mike Brcic: 00:37:32

probably as important as the technique I.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:35

I, I'd love for you, just maybe briefly contrast the differences between maybe

Mike Brcic: 00:37:43

coaching Mastermind and that word that I think is more powerful than just

Mike Brcic: 00:37:49

a technique of holding a marker and standing in front of a group, which

Mike Brcic: 00:37:52

is facilitation that it seems as if is a craft that you're really immersing

Mike Brcic: 00:37:57

yourself in is the ability to facilitate.

Mike Brcic: 00:37:59

Mike Brcic (4): Mm-Hmm.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:02

Well, coaching a lot of coaches Approach that That technique from a standpoint

Mike Brcic: 00:38:11

of giving people advice and telling them what they should do, which doesn't

Mike Brcic: 00:38:16

really resonate with me because unless I'm spending, 10 hours a day with you for

Mike Brcic: 00:38:20

six months, I never really get the full sum total of who you are as a person and.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:26

My experience may not be relevant to yours.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:29

now more evolved coaches might take a different approach where it's

Mike Brcic: 00:38:32

more about questioning and that's where it ventures into facilitation.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:35

And so for, and then just briefly, mastermind is this term that

Mike Brcic: 00:38:39

came up to denote like, you know, people get in together for a shared

Mike Brcic: 00:38:42

purpose and to, shared brain and thinking and stuff like that.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:46

I the reason I changed the company name, I got so sick of it, the term, 'cause

Mike Brcic: 00:38:49

it just, it was popping up everywhere, as you said, facilitation for me.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:54

and I've taken a number of different trainings.

Mike Brcic: 00:38:56

It's really about a process of helping, for me, it's about helping people unlock

Mike Brcic: 00:39:00

their own wisdom and create, and my job is simply to create the context and

Mike Brcic: 00:39:05

create the stage for that to happen.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:07

And one of the things I learned about facilitation is that in order for me

Mike Brcic: 00:39:11

to do my job well, I have to, I have to try and be as present as I possibly

Mike Brcic: 00:39:16

can to the people that I'm with.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:19

And so there's one training I took where.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:21

so most of the training was just learning how to be in presence.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:25

not just with what's going on in the room and with the other people,

Mike Brcic: 00:39:27

but what's going on within yourself and learning to navigate those

Mike Brcic: 00:39:32

dynamics of, you know, this person.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:35

Uh, and then what's happening in the, what's happening in that person,

Mike Brcic: 00:39:37

what's happening in the group, what's happening in myself, and the complex

Mike Brcic: 00:39:42

Interdynamics of all of that's going on, and how does that inform how I show

Mike Brcic: 00:39:46

up as a facilitator and if I do that job well, that that primary ingredient

Mike Brcic: 00:39:51

is presence and being presence to all of that stuff, uh, simultaneously.

Mike Brcic: 00:39:57

Tim Winders (4): I talked to someone who was a coach and

Mike Brcic: 00:39:58

they said one of the things that coaches will often do is project

Mike Brcic: 00:40:01

themselves, their issues, whatever.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:04

I've been around facilitators that do that.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:06

Also, it's, I don't even know if neutrality is the right word.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:11

But I love your description of it because I do think there's a certain degree of

Mike Brcic: 00:40:16

healthiness that one has to have to do it, and I think our world would be a little

Mike Brcic: 00:40:20

bit different right now if we had more people that adopted political leaders

Mike Brcic: 00:40:25

and leaders in situations adopted that.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:29

I'm, I'm not the expert, I'm just here to help.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:31

Pull out whatever greatness is there.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:35

And so I love that you, in your role, get to be around and

Mike Brcic: 00:40:41

with some great deal of time.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:44

This group of people, we'll call entrepreneurs 20 to 30 at a time.

Mike Brcic: 00:40:48

Just what is some of the best, coolest things about

Mike Brcic: 00:40:55

being around entrepreneurs and

Mike Brcic: 00:40:58

What's one or two things that might suck about being around entrepreneurs?

Mike Brcic: 00:41:03

I mean, there, I mean, there, it's a, it's an odd group and in

Mike Brcic: 00:41:05

fact I'm, I think sometimes we're overusing the word entrepreneur.

Mike Brcic: 00:41:08

I think we're throwing that around in an odd way, but just the good

Mike Brcic: 00:41:12

and the bad of entrepreneurs.

Mike Brcic: 00:41:15

Mike Brcic (4): Mm-Hmm.

Mike Brcic: 00:41:17

uh, I would, you know, in terms of the good, what I, the reason

Mike Brcic: 00:41:21

I serve entrepreneurs and, and they're my customers, is that I

Mike Brcic: 00:41:26

mean, I could, you know, I could do what I do with, for anybody.

Mike Brcic: 00:41:29

But the reason I continue to focus on entrepreneurs is they tend to be, they

Mike Brcic: 00:41:33

tend to be very growth minded, and most of them, not all of them, but I think

Mike Brcic: 00:41:40

You discover very early on that your company will only go so far as you will

Mike Brcic: 00:41:47

go as a person, and if you don't invest in yourself and your growth and your

Mike Brcic: 00:41:50

awareness, that's going to come back and really bite you in the ass in terms of

Mike Brcic: 00:41:54

how your company runs and who you are.

Mike Brcic: 00:41:56

all the, all that stuff, all that baggage, whatever shows up in your company.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:00

And so you have to develop a level of self-awareness.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:02

And entrepreneurs tend to be.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:05

More growth-minded and more curious, I find than the average person.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:08

Now the bad part of it, and this is something I play with a lot at my events,

Mike Brcic: 00:42:13

is that they tend to really want control.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:16

They're used to, they're used to creating the company and the life that they want

Mike Brcic: 00:42:20

because they can, they have the means to, to create what is it they want, and

Mike Brcic: 00:42:24

then they start to fool themselves into thinking that they can control everything.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:28

One of the ways I play with that is I reveal very little about my.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:32

My events, you'll get a packing list when you go to, Ecuador or Papua New Guinea

Mike Brcic: 00:42:37

or whatever, some of these places I'm heading to in the future, you'll get a

Mike Brcic: 00:42:40

packing list and a few things to prepare, but beyond that, you have no idea what

Mike Brcic: 00:42:43

you're in for and nor will you know on any given day other than you should wear this

Mike Brcic: 00:42:48

and you should put this in your backpack.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:50

And one of the reasons I do that, I do it for two reasons.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:52

One, because surprises are cool.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:54

Secondly because it plays around with, their sense of control.

Mike Brcic: 00:42:59

my my customers, and they learn to surrender and just trust.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:03

And if they can do that in the rest of their lives, just surrender a little

Mike Brcic: 00:43:07

bit more and trust a little bit more.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:09

It tends to have good results.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:11

Tim Winders (4): Yeah, that trust is powerful.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:13

Another thing that I see you talk about and just maybe a

Mike Brcic: 00:43:15

brief statement on this, is the importance of being still and quiet.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:20

We've talked about that a good bit here.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:22

It comes up often, but in the world we're in today with so much coming outta, so

Mike Brcic: 00:43:27

many distractions, so much going on.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:30

What is a tip or two you have about, and maybe the importance of just being

Mike Brcic: 00:43:36

still, it sounded like that helped, sounded like that helped you through

Mike Brcic: 00:43:39

your transition that you went through.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:42

Mike Brcic (4): For sure.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:43

as I'm fond of saying, if you don't become still, you can't listen to your heart and

Mike Brcic: 00:43:46

you can't speak to your soul, and these are ne nebulous, ethereal terms, but I.

Mike Brcic: 00:43:52

That term soul for me really is just who are we at our core?

Mike Brcic: 00:43:56

And we can't find that out on when we're drowning in a world

Mike Brcic: 00:44:00

of distractions and noise.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:01

And so we need to find stillness, And again, you don't have to go

Mike Brcic: 00:44:04

to Western Mongolia, do that.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:05

You can do that in your living room.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:07

Just be quiet, and meditate and, or just sit there for 10 minutes.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:11

And if you can go out into the woods and find a little patch of willingness,

Mike Brcic: 00:44:15

leave everything behind and just sit there for an hour or three hours or

Mike Brcic: 00:44:18

overnight and just see what happens.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:20

And, it's a very, it can be a very powerful, it's just the

Mike Brcic: 00:44:24

simplest thing in the world.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:25

Just go sit somewhere quietly.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:27

And it's amazing how transformative, it's how transformative it is, and

Mike Brcic: 00:44:30

it's amazing how people avoid it.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:33

Tim Winders (4): I, I think that's where people gain the clarity of what their

Mike Brcic: 00:44:35

journey is supposed to be versus me trying to copy Mike's journey, which is

Mike Brcic: 00:44:40

what a lot of people are doing.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:42

Hey, Mike, where can people find you?

Mike Brcic: 00:44:43

Where do I know?

Mike Brcic: 00:44:44

I know . It was powerful.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:46

You said we're booked.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:47

we don't have spots available for anybody, but where can people go if

Mike Brcic: 00:44:50

they just wanna connect or follow some of the things you're doing?

Mike Brcic: 00:44:53

Mike Brcic (4): Yeah.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:54

Wey finders.com.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:55

WAY finders.com.

Mike Brcic: 00:44:58

Uh, yeah, my next available adventure isn't until October, 2025.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:01

But I also have, we have our community membership model.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:04

I have a really cool business coaching program starting in January, 2024.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:08

So there's other ways to get involved.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:11

Tim Winders (4): Cool.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:11

So people can check that out.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:13

Mike, we're seek, go create those three words.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:16

I'm gonna allow you as my last question to pick one of those that

Mike Brcic: 00:45:20

means more than the other two and why, and then we'll be finished.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:25

Mike Brcic (4): Hmm, I'm gonna go with Seek 'cause in the process of seeking, I

Mike Brcic: 00:45:29

have to go and I probably have to create something along the way so I get to cheat.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:34

But no, really, I think, I.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:37

like I, I touched on curiosity is one of my biggest values

Mike Brcic: 00:45:40

and curiosity about the world.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:42

Curiosity about other people, but especially curiosity

Mike Brcic: 00:45:45

about myself is a huge value.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:47

And that's obviously a process of seeking.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:49

And I just love being a lifelong seeker and I look forward to doing it.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:52

You know, I don't expect to find all the answers, but I just like

Mike Brcic: 00:45:55

the questions along the way.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:57

Tim Winders (4): Thank you Mike for joining us.

Mike Brcic: 00:45:59

We are Seek Go create releasing new episodes every Monday.

Mike Brcic: 00:46:03

Your support means the world to us.

Mike Brcic: 00:46:05

We appreciate it greatly.

Mike Brcic: 00:46:07

Now we got something new.

Mike Brcic: 00:46:08

You can tip us or buy me a cup of coffee or maybe a sip of whiskey

Mike Brcic: 00:46:12

or offer financial support.

Mike Brcic: 00:46:14

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Mike Brcic: 00:46:18

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Mike Brcic: 00:46:20

You could start at just a dollar and you can leave a comment, say

Mike Brcic: 00:46:23

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Mike Brcic: 00:46:27

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Mike Brcic: 00:46:33

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Mike Brcic: 00:46:35

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.