Find Your Genius | Mike Zeller

Episode Topics:

• Learn how Mike generated $100M across 16 ventures and what he’d do differently.
• Discover the relationship audit system that identifies who gives you life versus death.
• Get the 80% approach that destroys perfectionism and procrastination forever.
• Understand how your defining life experiences are clues to your genius.
• Find out why your current self might be the real impostor holding you back.

 

Rick Jordan  

What’s shakin’? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan, and today we’re going all in.I am so stoked today because I got a dude on who is just incredible, badass and deep and just all the things that are amazing for entrepreneurs and relationships and life and just incredible, you know. So he has spent 447 hours with Tony Robbins too. That was, like the biggest stat that was just insane to me. And today we’re talking about how you find your genius within Mike Zeller. Mike, what’s shaking?

 

Mike Zeller  

Dude? Excited to be here, my friend, you know, I’m honored always to connect with brilliant fellow entrepreneurs like yourself. So this is a highlight of my day.

 

Rick Jordan  

I was reading your bio brother, and, you know, because we’ve known each other now for maybe about a year or so, right? And just just talked here and there, and just really connected in person, by mistake, like about two months ago, or by coincidence, I would say. But probably not mistake that when we started talking, it’s like, oh my gosh, there’s just so much that we can talk about between the two of us. So you got all your successes, bro, right? You know, because I see you’ve got, you’ve generated over 100 million in revenue across 16 different endeavors, which, like any serial entrepreneur, it’s a crazy amount of things, right? Fashion, real estate, automotive, marketing, coaching, a whole bunch of things, right? Where was, I’m curious, because where was the low points, and specifically, like the tipping point to come out of that low points.

 

Mike Zeller  

You know, I had, I would say there’s really two low points, two significant ones, one in 2013 you know, I was engaged and technically legally married to a French girl, and in in in the season of living abroad, we ran in some legal complications around immigration, and my businesses just kind of hit the gutter. I had about three different businesses at the time, and I was flying back and forth from Argentina once a month, and man, they were in the gutter at one point, and I had to fly back. I was broken hearted, and when we decided to end our relationship, and my businesses were not producing any income, really for the next four months. It took me four months to get them back on their legs. And so I was literally bouncing from house to house friends for a little bit, for a few months, even though I owned own three properties, but they were all rented out. And so I had a few few friends that were gracious enough to, you know, let me balance for a week or two, here, there, and then finally, another buddy moved in with him that was a former client, wow, and that it was remaking of my soul and remaking of my path. And I don’t know if you’ve been through a season like that, but that was, that was the first major one.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, Brother, I have been through a couple seasons like that because I think they’re, I wouldn’t call them cyclical in our lives, but the those low points, because if they’re cyclical, that’s bad, right? Because you’re always coming back to the same point, but you could have similar situations and take your learnings from the previous low point and apply it to where you’re at right now. What you were saying there is, I’ve seen this a lot, right? Experience it myself too, that relationships can freaking devastate you, yeah, right, when they’re when they’re bad, and it’s not just affecting you as a person. Is your soul like, it’s like this ripple effect that affects everything outside of you too, and that’s why it’s so key to lock those in. But you know that all sounds great and cliche. You know it’s like, hey, lock in good relationships. Get surrounded with good people. Let’s play Instagram coach, right? But can we open that up a little more? Please share of your personal experiences too. But what are your thoughts around that, like around having those key relationships? The part of your books about this too, right? Yeah, one of the one of the pillars.

 

Mike Zeller  

Exactly. It’s one of the four main pillars. And you know, in those Personal life Relationships, when you’re going through that, what I see happen is, is like man, your soul is grieving, and your soul or your emotional center is the birthplace or the genesis of a lot of ideas or creativity, and it’s just bone dry. If it’s a desert because it’s aching and it’s grieving, then it’s hard to generate, it’s hard to create, it’s hard to birth something new, until you move through the grieving season. But you know, then when you move through the grieving season, part of what actually helps you is relationships. In fact, I think one of the crazy things is, one of the reasons women rebound a lot faster from broken relationships is because they have a lot more significant relationships with intimacy men, we. A lot fewer. So if we it takes an average man about twice as long as an average woman to rebound from a divorce or broken engagement, whatever, and and so it’s it’s such a centerpiece. But then also, I look at relationships in terms of the genius and clues for your genius. Relationships, they really indicate based on who gives you life versus death. So you do an inventory of like the people in your life that you just enjoy being around, like you’re like, hey, I could spend more time with that guy or that girl and or I do. I can’t. I can’t spend another day, another hour. I don’t want to have lunch with that person again. It’s like my soul dies if I’m around those sorts of people or whatever. So just being honest with that. But then, if like now, I have almost zero people in my life, barring some occasional annoying family members, maybe, but I have almost zero people in my life, at least in my choices, and even family members, their choice to some extent, that bring me death. Almost all the people are like yourself, where they’re expansive, they’re brilliant, they’re up to something good with their life. They expand me. They help me dream bigger. Challenge me. We get to have deep conversations. So it’s really, really important. It’s one of the most, probably three most important things in your life, is your relationships.

 

Rick Jordan  

Wow, you really hit a chord with me. There is, like, the bone dryness of when you have those people that are just like death, right? Because it’s, it’s almost like a, I think of like The Matrix, right? And in Do you remember that? Now I’m showing that I’m 42 years old, right? You know, remember when he puts his hand in the mirror, right? And then he just gets covered by all that goo and everything, you know, that just like consumes him. But in his case, that was good, because he was breaking free. That’s like, the how I envision when you’re around bad people. It’s not like they’re even, like, sucking energy out of you. It can literally be like they’re consuming you and preventing anything else good from getting inside you.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. And it’s and, you know, at the end of day, sometimes they’re not, quote, bad people. They’re just not aligned. Yeah, true. They’re like, if you get a group of accountants together, they’re having a ton of fun as a group of accountants, a group of lawyers, ton of fun, group of government workers, ton of fun, group of entrepreneurs, ton of fun, entrepreneurs and accountants, or entrepreneurs and and salary lifetime government employees are not gonna be a great mix. Neither one of us are gonna be like, I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what to do with you either. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Let’s go to the bar and watch some sports where we don’t have to talk that’s hilarious, which, that’s an interesting point, you know, because, you know, this isn’t, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that love doing that, right? But that’s never been one of my things, either, because I much prefer the the conversations, yeah, and I said, this is a, this is a total tangent, you know. But if, if I ever go to a restaurant that has a TV, and I hate going to restaurants with TVs in them, because it’s like a natural thing, like your eyes are drawn to it and away from the individuals that that you’re there trying to connect with. But that’s almost like an analogy to the distraction. And it’s like in that environment, TV is the death versus, you know, another person being in your life and distracting you away from things that will provide life.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, 100% it’s like the nourishes our soul, and then like the deep seeks the deep and the shallow. Those who want to swim in the shallow, they there’s, there’s enough people in lanes for the shallow, but I think there’s also, you know, you look at intentionality most people. Is something that hit me about 10 years ago, on my goals, I would set goals at the beginning of the year, and I get 20 or 30 friends, and we create a vision board. I was like, I at the center of my goals, you know, you would, I would have like, four or five different quadrants, you know, relationships, financial, or I say, you know, romantic, financial, emotional adventure or whatever, and then right in the center, I would put the top 10, top 10 people that could change your life if you spend more time with them. Who do you want to invest more time with? Who would you who would your life be immensely better if you spent more time with them, I realized, like, no one set goals like that, or at least I hadn’t seen anyone set where like they put right in the center of their goal setting activities. These are the people I’m going to go deep with, because these people bring me life, and these people will help me fulfill the vision that I have, the desires and longings and the dreams. Things that I have in my heart and just taking ownership of like, hey, you know it’s okay for me to say, You know what I want to I want to spend more time with this person and a little bit less time with this negative Nancy over here.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, for sure. That’s an incredible process. Man, that’s a and you bring others into that process too. Did I hear that? Right?

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. At that time, I would get people together, and we do a vision board, and we do, like, a three hour goal setting exercise, and just totally free. And I was, you know, so I was in real estate game at that point, and so I didn’t do any coaching or mentoring on an official level, but I was still doing it recreationally.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s incredible, man, I can only imagine some of the things that came out of those times just sitting with people. And I also think some of the hilarity of it, right? If you’re looking at somebody else’s board, you’re like, wait, I’m not in your circle. What’s going on? I know, right? That’s funny. Oh my gosh, Thanks for laughing with me, dude, we’re all here together just trying to create this amazing thing, and we’re not in each other’s circles. What’s going on?

 

Mike Zeller  

I’m not valuable.

 

Rick Jordan  

Oh, that’s awesome. So, man, 100 million in revenue across 16 endeavors. You know, what’s the one that’s produced the most for you once the one that’s produced the least?

 

Mike Zeller  

And there’s, that’s a good question. I mean, my car dealership, and we were doing roughly about 30 million a year in revenue. So altogether that business did, in my time of ownership, we probably did 140 to $200 million in revenue, but the thing I loved about that is we also gave away cars to single mothers in need. So we gave away over $300,000 worth of cars and 36 plus cars to people in need, and partner with four, four or five different nonprofits to identify the most worthy recipients. We want to identify givers, not takers. That were the most giving causes at like these homeless shelters, family based homeless shelters, or women’s ministries and and so I loved that, and that was that was the first time I saw myself more fully as a business architect, because I was architecting out the vision and the brand identity, and in designing, really the team and designing, hey, like, it’s where I got early practice on different people have different strengths and different wiring, and you got to put people in the right positions. It’s like, even though, you know, if you don’t like sports, like you guys come from Chicago, Michael Jordan’s Dream Team, oh my god, yeah, right. Dennis Rodman, you don’t want Dennis Rodman taking the shot at the end of the game, especially a three pointer, even Jordan, Jordan’s gonna take the shot. Maybe Pippin is a follow up, or John Paxton or Steve Kerr but Jordan got the killer instinct to close the game out and and so it’s in business. I mean you, I’m curious to know more about your failures as well and your big wins. But I think almost every time that I’ve seen in business, whether my own or friends were really honed. It’s first who, then what, and getting them in the right positions, extraordinary, extraordinary results consistently, is preceded by great people in extraordinarily right positions over and over. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Wow. How do you identify when? When you know if it’s a good person, but they’re just in the wrong position, and what can you do about that?

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, first of all, you can look at certain each role has a different sort of skill sets needed. For example, project managers are probably going to love detail, follow up, follow through. Great sales, people have found they’re typically a very high di on the DISC profile, meaning 80 and above on D and I, in minimum for extraordinary and then typically at least 60 above and above for D and I, if they’re really good. And then other things. Like, you know you’re probably, I don’t know what your profile exactly is, but I’m a creator on the wealth dynamics, which is my favorite personality test that shows you your natural pathway for building wealth. Like some people are, like a lord. You look at a look at a who would be a good lord? Carnegie or Andrew Carnegie or Rockefeller, where they did the same thing for their whole life. Basically, they’re they’re Lord, like they just build this empire. Creators Steve Jobs did this. Steve now, Steve Jobs, within Apple had so many different companies he would have been bored out. And Elon Musk is creating a new company every other month. Sure, yep, on Twitter, he just decides to tweet something,

 

Rick Jordan  

Invest in Twitter, and then, you know, make 750 million on it overnight.

 

Mike Zeller  

So, you know, so I think there’s, there’s patterns to pop and what I’ll typically do with executives or leaders, like I did one last week, actually several in last few weeks. But we’ll do the deep assessment of their core team, leadership team, like, for example, one of the guys I work with, he’s got a massive podcast, big public brand. He wants to give this company into a billion dollars, but he’s he’s it is there’s plateauing, and it’s ultimately because he’s out of place in his genius. He’s a brilliant promoter, amazing promoter. If I when I did his in strings finder profile test, all like seven out of his top 10 were all influence. Almost none of his top 10 were in the execution side. And then the next step for him to solve his problem is to identify, does he have a players as executors on his team, especially in his leadership team? Because I’m not sure he does. And and then then we would start recruiting, developing or realigning certain team members and himself, you know, we all need to be aligned more deeply he is. We did our session. We did a zone of genius day and and when we came out of it, he’s like, Man, I’m not he doesn’t hardly do anything that he loves. Yeah, it’s like 10% of what he does in a given week is what is deepest zone of genius, and what really brings him life. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Wow, that’s misaligned completely. You’ve mentioned a couple of profile tests today already. There was disc right then there was a strength finder, which I know there was a wealth one you mentioned in there too. I had not heard it. Wealth dynamics, interesting.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah. So my full process is really four is it measures four different areas, and it’s basically, if you accumulate, accumulate all the data from these four different areas, one your unique talents, which is where I do all the personality tests, strings, finder, Myers, Briggs, Colby index, wealth dynamics and DISC profile, and throw an Enneagram or Another test as a bonus. But then second area is your defining life experiences. Like we know Michael Jordan cut from the high school basketball team at age 16. Yeah. Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt grew up with asthma, and in the 1800s asthma, even his own father thought he was destined to be a weakling. Yeah. He’s like, No, the obstacle is the way I’m gonna overcome that. I’m gonna train outdoors so hard, so strong. And eventually he overcame it a later in his teenage years, 18, he’s strong as an ox, and he’s and then gets married age 22 wife having first baby, she dies right after giving birth, second second or death happens. 24 hours later, his mom dies, 24 hours later, that’s when he does, grieves by going into the wilderness of South Dakota and hunts for six months. Hands off his baby daughter to his aunt, because he’s like, I don’t know what to do with a baby daughter. I’m I just lost the two most important women in my life, and I’ve already lost my dad to cancer, fighting against corruption, and goes off, boom, finds himself again, comes back, falls in love even more with nature. Guess what he does? His us. President eventually preserves more national parks than any other president in history, and these defining life moments that pointed to the future, you know Steve Jobs said you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can connect them looking backwards. Well, I think you can see the next few dots if you know how to connect the dots looking backwards.

 

Rick Jordan  

I’m with you on that, man, for sure. I like how you said the next few dots as well. Because you can never see all the dots. I think that we would if we saw all the dots, we would probably self sabotage every single one of them if we knew that that was actually going to be what our destiny is, because we’d see it like, well, there’s no way in hell. You know, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. I can’t and then these self limiting beliefs take over when we actually know the entire path.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s, I don’t know about you, but it’s like even I’ve been through enough failures and mistakes as an entrepreneur that I still have some almost like muscle trauma memory around it and but I’m still irrationally optimistic enough that I’m gonna keep going. And I don’t see the challenges and the ones ahead, just like I didn’t see them 15 years ago. I see him a little bit more so, but not entirely. Otherwise, if I did, I would stop in my tracks, because it’s the hardest freaking thing in the world to really grow and start your own business.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, no kidding, man, it really is. You know, there’s stuff in your book about this too, right? Isn’t you know about. How people sabotage their own dreams? Yeah, what do you see about that?

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, I think I don’t know if you find in your own life or life of others, your friends, people you work with, but the two biggest saboteurs of our dreams, actually, I’ll put a third one, unhealed trauma is definitely one like my wife, for example, suffered a lot of abuse as a child. We’re actively, proactively doing about three or four different modalities to heal her of that trauma. I’m releasing some trauma, of mistakes, losing a million dollars and this or that, you know, different things. And then so the trauma is a big piece. And because it becomes, it’s almost like a muscle memory that gets trapped in your body. And so it’s, there’s an involuntary reaction. It’s why, you know, our minds are like, so brilliant at storing things, and the human being can store things for and replay them for decades. Versus when I was a kid, my dad didn’t let us watch MTV and those type things. We didn’t have cable. We got to watch nature shows at night, so we’d watch this, you know, Lion chasing a wildebeest, and then catch the wildebeest and be hauling it off, and then somehow that wildebeest was still alive and then escape out of the jaws of lion and run away, and the lion was too tired to chase it. Well, that wildebeest, they would show the wildebeest, literally, two minutes later, it’s eating grass.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah? Like, I mean, the same thing.

 

Mike Zeller  

If I’m almost dead from a lion, I’m not eating grass. Two minutes later, I’m gonna be thinking about that lion for years.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, no kidding. I think because, I mean, you mentioned you lost a million dollars. I lost a half a million a few years back, you know. But that wasn’t the first thing I did. Like, I’m gonna go out for some steak right now and just want to eat my dinner, you know, like, I don’t want to eat. I just, I just sucked ass, you know, like, the worst in my life. I don’t want to do anything.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, and it’s, it’s both the blessing and the curse of being human, yeah, where we can create and imagine things that have yet to be created, like Walt Disney World, or Walt Disney died before Disney World was open, yeah, but he saw Disney World for years before anyone else saw it, it was all in his head. He was living it. He was experiencing he was dreaming it, and he was tasting it right. So, you know, the second genius blocker, I think, is perfectionism, perfectionism, where we just it, handcuffs us, handcuffs us, and handcuffs our progress. And then the third one is procrastination, which is, I call it the twin sister of perfectionism. So they’re the evil twin sisters, because procrastination is really sometimes disguised as perfectionism. But one of the big shifts that helped me is this concept called 80% the 80% approach, or what happens in like GE Six Sigma approach, which is platinum standard for manufacturing excellence is they, they, they want to make six iterations of 80% improvement. Wow. And what happens is, your mind relaxes of like, oh, I don’t have to get all the way to 100% that is making 80% improvement.

 

Rick Jordan  

It just has to be better. Yeah. Dude, that is so freeing. And just say, I don’t fall this isn’t really me about perfectionism. You know, there might have been, like, one or two things maybe in maybe in my life, but for me, it’s like, hey, you know, you’ve heard the saying, I’m sure perfection hinders progress, right? You can choose one or the other, but with that, individuals that dive into perfection, I’m just not really sure how they even get to that mode, to where they get stuck in it to begin with, it’s, it’s difficult for me to conceptualize, you know, because it’s, it’s freeing, man, when you’re like, just make it better, you know? And you don’t even know what better looks like. It just doesn’t look like where you’re at right now.

 

Mike Zeller  

 Yeah, yeah, I think there’s in our culture, Western culture, and other parts of the world too, but we’ve got a struggle with what I call the middle class mindset, which is avoid failure at all costs. Trauma. Trauma comes from embarrassing the family, getting bad grades in school and whatever, making a mistake, you don’t want to make mistakes. And that’s that’s part of the middle class mindset. It’s like, only do what you can, like you’re likely to succeed at, versus the billionaire mindset. Sarah Blakely is a good example. Do you. What her dad used to ask her and her brother every day at dinner. No, what did he fail at today? I love it. And then, you know what they had to do if they didn’t fail at anything, they had to go out and fail at something before they could go to bed. And so they would have to go and try a new skill, try something else, do something new and get comfortable with which is just programmed their comfort around failure. That failure is not the enemy. Failure is progress. So it’s a re patterning, an association, new association around failure. So anyway, that’s that that helped me. It helps me, like repatter myself after failures, too.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s so powerful man, absolutely powerful, right? And I’m sure imposter syndrome gets stuck into all three of these areas too. You write about that as well, don’t you?

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, imposter syndrome. I think the real imposter, more often than not, is our current reality, that our highest self, the self that we know we’re capable of, that we long to be the dreams that are placed within us. They didn’t come from us. So if they didn’t come from us, where they come from, maybe God, universe, whatever they were placed within us. You know, I’ve read probably about 30 different biographies, from Washington to Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, you know, all those guys, Warren Buffet, Rockefeller. And what happens is, lots of times these guys had a big dream. It was there, and they were just, we know their names, because they were courageous enough to pursue it, yeah, and to not give up. And they have a resilience that fail forwardness and and I think there’s we have to have, that we have to feed, that we have to feed what we want to live, starve what we want to die, and and just really embrace this higher level self. Because what if? What if our current person, the person that is playing small that is showing up right now? I asked that myself, because there’s smallness. I call it the disease of small itis. I’m eradicating small itis from my life. It’s still there, but I continually fight that pestilence, yeah, yeah. And if I can do that, if I can conquer small itis, I can show up, because the person that is showing up today, what if that is the real imposter.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s mind blowing as you’re talking about the small itis, it’s almost, I think there’s probably, or there could be both external and internal versions of that, yeah, because we’ve got our own self limiting beliefs. But then there’s the limiting beliefs of those are around. This is coming full circle, man, you know, back to those 10 people, you know, yeah, and it should be, because I suffer from it, you know, I’m sure you do, and it’s like a constant chipping away at the small itis from whatever our upbringing was, whatever our our situation was, or we maybe we had a trauma come up, you know, at some point in life has knocked us back a little bit. We had some more attach onto us, just to prove that. See, this bad shit does happen. Look at that. You got to protect yourself from here on out. Yeah, we don’t go back out eating the grass two minutes later, like we talked about, either. But the external versus the internal. Small itis, you know, because we’re never going to get away from people in general. In fact, I love being around people, man, it’s what I enjoy doing the most. You know, that’s why we’re doing this today, but we can’t control them. We can control how it affects us, though, yeah, yeah. So do we allow it to connect and amplify our own struggles that we’re working with, or we can actually use it to shine a light onto our own stuff and say, No, this, this is stupid. I don’t need this anymore.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. And, and, I think it also reflects back how important it is to also choosing that 10 people. Because your 10 people the way, the way I like to think of my 10 people that I spend the most time with. It’s like they are my gravity, and so are they the gravity that pulls me up like gravity can mean, can reverse it can pull you up is, you know, you think of, think of a lottery winner loses their 10s of millions. They won a lottery. Well, it’s gravity pulled them down because they they had that identity of poverty mindset or middle class mindset or whatever, and that’s why the average, 74% of lottery winners are bankrupt within three and a half years right on. Same with a lot of pro athletes. But then you look at the multi millionaire that was self made, that lost his wealth, his or her wealth, then remade themselves, typically. They’ll remake themselves in 1/5 of the time period that it took them, and then some. And like their wealth and their income and all that, will go way up proportionally, because their identity pulled them up, but also their peer group and their circle. So it’s so important to find Hey, define who I want in that peer group, because they’re, they’re, they’re like, re they’re my mirrors back to me. They’re reinforcing, like I had in my second rough period. I had friends that said, Mike, you know what? God’s letting you go through this? Because you’re meant to be a king. You’re meant to handle this. You got this, and this is and I felt that I was like, Yeah, that’s true and and so choosing those people, your people, your peers that you intentionally create or unintentionally create, are your mirrors back to you, and they’re either your gravity up or your gravity down.

 

Rick Jordan  

It’s mind blowing. Man Heart, heart throbbing, mind blowing. This is a I love the deepness. I love the deepness. I think back to the, you know, I said 500k It was that, you know, the half a million, and with your million and thinking about that too, because, I mean, it, it took maybe five years prior to that to get to the point to where I could, even if you want to call it, afford to lose that, right? And I don’t call it that way, because it didn’t ruin me, right, but it did put me in a really, really, really low point, but that is literally, because it took, really just five months after that to rebuild. It took five years to get to that point and crash down and nothing, and then just five months to rebuild. And I think about the timing in there too, because it was within that five months where I even signed the paperwork with the consulting team to take my company public. You know, it’s crazy as I’m recognizing this, you know, as you think back about that, you know, that low point of losing a million what happened, like, right after that, for you, in the months after

 

Speaker 1  

You know, I went during that period is really 2018 I got married as well during that season. So I was like shuttering. I was closing down a couple old businesses, really, my car dealership, old identities. I was shedding the old identities. Think of a, you know, Caterpillar turning in a butterfly.

 

Rick Jordan  

It’s like a purge, right? I did the same man with people. And, yeah, yep.

 

Mike Zeller  

It was rough. It was, frankly, I think I went through the first two years were the hardest, but now, like, I’m back on the upswing, and it feels good. It feels really and I’m more aligned. And I feel like the the 100 million dollar venture or billion dollar venture is there for me, the best selling books are there for me, the films, the documentaries, the movies that I want to get from my wife’s books, they’re all there, and I could see them and I wouldn’t have and I have that resilience, like it’s like I’ve been through boot camp, yeah, longer and much more arduous boot camp. Maybe I’m not David Goggins running on broken feet, but entrepreneur resilience, at least.

 

Rick Jordan  

There is something to that, man, if you want to call anything a disease, that might be, I’m happy to have that one if you wanted to, if you want to call it a deficiency of negativity or something like that. I don’t know. I like that phrase. It’s the first time that ever came out of my mouth. We’re booking that one.

 

Mike Zeller  

Well, you know, I listened to, ironically, the sports podcast, and the host, Colin Gower, said he’s never met a billionaire who isn’t an optimist, because he just can’t become a billionaire and be a pessimist. He’ll never make their courageous and foolish steps and risk and yeah, and faith that you got to make.

 

Rick Jordan  

Dude, I would even, that’s beautiful. I would even add on to that you’ll never make it there if you’re a realist. Yeah, because reality is literally what’s happening right now. That’s it. Yeah, that’s it. It has no bearing on the future whatsoever you can make an immediate shift tomorrow in anything and everything changes for the better.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. And you think, let’s, let’s rewind our reality four years. 2018 2019 Elon Musk is almost bankrupt with all of his companies. SpaceX is on his last of the last rocket launches, if this one doesn’t work. And third, and like, he kept on having to get his investors to re up, even though they said that was the last one. Like, all right, you know, sunk cost bias kicked in and got finally a successful rocket launch. Tesla. Was on the brink of disaster. Solar City barely hanging on. Now he’s the world’s wealthiest man after Putin has lost.

 

Rick Jordan  

Just four years later, that’s it. Four years

 

Mike Zeller  

Everything he touches turns to gold.

 

Rick Jordan  

Thank God he wasn’t a realist. 

 

Mike Zeller  

Exactly. I mean, think about he’s trying to solve the save the planet and also colonize Mars. In their right mind, are you freaking who are you, Elon?

 

Rick Jordan  

No kidding. That’s awesome, man. Dude, this is incredible. I love our conversation. This is maybe the first of many I think, yeah, brother, your book is the genius within, and I’ve only looked at a portion of it so far, but what I see is just incredible. It’s on Amazon, it’s on everywhere, and we can find you. Is it is the best platform, Facebook or Instagram?

 

Mike Zeller  

Either one or great also on YouTube, tiktok, LinkedIn, all under the Mike Zeller. 

 

Rick Jordan  

 I love it, brother. Thanks so much for coming on, man. You know one more thing I want to hit one more thing. Okay, before we head out 447 hours with Tony Robbins. So it just so happened, right? I I’ve, I’ve known about Tony, I’ve seen some of his stuff for years, right? I even remember his cameo in Shallow Hal that was, that was pretty funny, you know, sitting in the elevator. But it was, that was with Gwyneth Paltrow. I can’t remember who she starred with in that, who shallow hell actually was? But either way, I thought it was, wasn’t it? I think it was Jack Black, but I don’t know. Anyways, that was actually when I was introduced to Tony Robbins. I’m like, Who the heck is this guy, you know? So you’re talking like a decade ago or something like that. But looking at a lot of his materials since then, just incredible, right? I actually got to see him live for the first time just last year in September, which was powerful, you know, and then no joke, like just yesterday, no Wi Fi on the on the plane, right? Because it was like this regional, international jet coming back from Canada. You know, of course, I’m a little bummed. I’m like, I had stuff to get done. I got all these ideas and everything. But I’m like, I got nothing, you know, everything’s in in Google Drive and all this stuff. So I open up my iPad, I’m like, HBO, I don’t have anything downloaded, right? Then I go to netflix, somehow, some way, it was, like, three months ago, and I never watched it. I had downloaded his documentary. I’m not your guru, and I’m sitting there, right? And it was, like, it was a regional jet. I actually sat in the very back row, which was interesting, because it was a booked, last minute full flights, and I’m sitting there, and it’s like my ears are or my eyes are tearing up as I’m watching this, because I’m seeing people’s lives being changed in an instant. And it’s a lot of it is literally what we’ve been talking about today was the stuff that was getting in their way, in their life, you know. And I’m not talking the the suicidal people, because that’s something totally different, different level. Still came back to trauma, like hardcore trauma, but 447 hours, man, that’s that’s got to be life changing.

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, yeah. It was actually, you know, over the time, it ended up being over 14 147 hours, and it was like, and I was actually in that film. wow, I’m not your guru.

 

Rick Jordan  

 What? I didn’t see you. 

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, I had a buzz cut back. Then you can see me in the audience in a few spots. But man, in that experience, for example, I know people that were in that film, The tall Mateus, guy that was suicidal. Yeah, I was there live seeing this guy, and felt his pain and saw his pain four or five years later, like we’re Facebook friends, we message a bunch on Facebook. He’s still in a whole different headspace. Healed up a lot of his relationships. He would up different things and shows up and in powerful, magnetic way. And in it, partly, my experience with Tony is Tony really hammers on identity and the power of belief and your and this belief inside you, inside you, to find you. Help me find it. And it helped me formulate that really it’s your identity that precedes your destiny. That’s why it’s so important to work on that inner identity so that your outer world. It’s almost like, hey, if my identity is over here, my reality is over here. Well, if I keep my identity over here, eventually it will force my reality to catch up. It’s just gonna pull it up, or it’s gonna pull it down, like that lottery winner example. They pull it down because their identity says, oh, it’s not safe. This is not right. I don’t know what to do with this money. Yeah, and I didn’t earn it. I didn’t build the muscle to get it. Boom, I’m gonna get rid of it. You. Incredible, over and over healthy relationships, marriages. Why do why do people that came from unhealthy relational patterns re enter unhealthy relational patterns and stay in that cycle unless they break it, which is really hard to do, it’s because their identity is still back there.

 

Rick Jordan  

Man, that’s incredible. You start with like I am, right as your identity. And I’ve heard people try to fill in those blanks, you know, and even after years of work that I’ve done on myself, too, you know, at the beginning, it’s like you have to keep going deeper. You have to keep going deeper, because that I am always almost starts at surface level, you know, because it becomes like a quality, and it’s almost like you’re, you’re viewing yourselves through the filter of everybody else in the world. Or like or like the cog that you think you play at your job, or, or you think you are even a cog in your marriage, right? Or, or a cog as a as a parent, even. And that’s your I Am statement. It’s like, sure, you are a father, you are a husband, you are an employee, you are an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, you are a friend, you are all these things, but that’s not your I Am. Yeah, your I Am is tied to your purpose. 

 

Mike Zeller  

Yeah, so good in, in what you’re talking about your I Am is tied to your purpose. And sometimes, when it goes through seasons of transition, like you look at the great resignation you look through our seasons of reset, you know, whether it’s relationally, marriage, business wise, whatever, when you go through those seasons of reset, there’s a gift of the pain and in one of the ways to shed this old identity and step into your more powerful identity is ask your alter ego, ask the part of you that is letting go that like letting go of this old story, this old identity that was leading your life, and in part of it, like when I went through 2018 I had I named my disempowering Alter Ego. I named him weak ass Willie of your disempowering alter ego, the person that is causing you just play small or to hide. Because I wanted to be I wanted to tuck my tail like I was tucking my tail between my legs. I was like, that idea is not going to get me to where I know I’m meant to be, not going to get me to my destiny. So what’s the intent of weak ass Willy? Weak ass will he wants to protect me from embarrassment, from shame, from making other mistakes. He has good intent. All right, yeah, literally, you visualize and meditate. I have this on one of my YouTube sessions called claim your power, and it’s an NLP session. And in this meditation where we actually work on the subconscious and rewire your subconscious on the spot so that you identify your disempowering Alter Ego and then you anchor in. I was like, hey, what’s the part of me that is gonna lead me into the next chapter of my life? And it was magic, Mike.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome.

 

Mike Zeller  

The words that came to mind, I got a Hollywood Mike Z, the entertainer and all this stuff. And I was like, all right. And like, literally, now every morning, actually, I’ll play it for you now. Play a second. Here we go. Every morning. 

 

Rick Jordan  

I’m glad we didn’t stop 10 minutes ago.

 

Mike Zeller  

So this I played my meditation or my affirmations, because I am, is literally one of the most powerful phrases in the universe. And something I just learned recently, the ancient Egyptians actually had it written in their language, of course, in the hieroglyphics on the temple walls. All their temples had it. And then Moses, and when he interacts with, you know, Jehovah, or God, he, you know, Moses asked God on Mount Sinai, what’s your name? He said, The Great I AM. They knew the Hebrew people at that point knew that phrase, that I am. He’s the great I AM, and that so then you look at guys like Muhammad Ali, what’s he right at the time, his name is Cassius Clay. Yeah. He writes this poem in 1964 six months before he fights as a 701 underdog, when the biggest upsets in boxing history fights Sonny Liston and wins. And he wrote this poem six months before that said, I am the greatest. And he just goes on and on and on. And on, and then he renamed himself two weeks after you beat Sonny Liston to Muhammad Ali. He’s like Cassius Clay. That’s a slave name. I’m not a slave anymore. I’m not I’m moving into this new destiny. That’s where I’m going. So how you think about yourself is who you become. That’s why you. We start our day. I don’t know about you, but I wake up kind of in a I don’t wake up in a great head space every morning, all pumped up. I’m not Davey Goggins, we’re ready to go, you know, run 32 miles or something. Um, I gotta, like, just get do the lazy way and have have a replay that tells me who I am. So here we go. I’m just gonna play 20 seconds of it. Yeah. Magic Mike, I am a wealth magnet. I am attracting, earning and saving millions of dollars. I am worthy of extraordinary levels of success. I am a powerful force for good. So like it just goes on for two minutes and I say it out loud, I’ll often be looking in the mirror, 6am 5am on an airplane, whatever. I’m listening and thinking it and meditating on it. You know, 98% of the mornings and anchors me in so that I’m telling my mind where I’m going. If I don’t, I’m going downhill.

 

Rick Jordan  

Dude, that’s powerful. That’s amazing. Thanks, dude. Well, I guess that’s where we stopped today, because that’s just, that’s an amazing, amazing way to close this out. Mike, thank you for being on, brother. Absolutely incredible.

 

Mike Zeller  

Thanks for having me, Rick and and for your audience. If you guys want to pick up a copy of the book, I have it for free at genius, within book.com where you can text genius, you to 4747 47 if you’re in the US and you’ll get that book a free download, plus option to pick up the book for free. Just cover shipping and handling, but dude, thanks for having me on Always a pleasure. Can’t wait to connect more you.