Mike Brcic — Founder of Wayfinders on Ditching the Hustle, Healing the Inner Entrepreneur, and Building a Life of True Alignment

Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01.514)

Mike, welcome to the Motivate Collective podcast.

Mike Brcic (00:06.246)

I'm thrilled to be here now.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:08.694)

Awesome. How do you explain to people what exactly you do?

Mike Brcic (00:15.258)

There's, as of late, my favourite way to explain it is, you know, when people ask me, what do you do? And I tell them I take high-achieving entrepreneurs to some of the wildest, most remote places on the planet, and I make them cry. And that's just sort of my cheeky way of describing the very unique nature of what I do, which is I work with high achieving entrepreneurs, people who are, you know, very focused on success and growing their businesses and scale all that, but they've reached some sort of wall where they've reached some sort of point where that striving isn't really getting them what they want. And so I take them out of that, you they're familiar, they're day to day, and I take them to some very, very different places like the middle of nowhere in Mongolia or the jungles of Papua New Guinea or the Amazon or whatever. And I create a context, and I create an event for them to actually really explore who they are, you know, what their deepest most desires are, not what people tell them, or they think that they should want. And I also help them get in touch with any blockages or emotions that are actually getting in the way of where they actually really want to go on a deeper level. And sometimes that results in tears, sometimes it results in joy, sometimes it results in anger. But I create a safe space for emotions to come to the surface. Sometimes entrepreneurs are very good at outrunning their emotions and outworking and out hustling and out grinding.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:43.714)

Have you seen that a lot of founders use their work as a distraction from their emotions?

Mike Brcic (01:52.294)

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Myself included, you know, it's still happens to this day, even though I'm much more aware of it. But in the past, it was, you know, I got sucked into that world of, you know, always be hustling, always be grinding, scaling. For myself, I realised it took me almost 15 years to realise with this and with my previous company, and I was aggressively scaling it and doing, I was doing everything that an entrepreneur should do you bringing on investors, growing the team, scaling all over the world. And it was, it was making me more and more miserable on the way. And I couldn't quite understand why, because I was doing all the things I was supposed to do. I was doing all the things that I said I wanted to do. I was hitting the goals that I'd set up for myself, and it was making me more stressed, less happy, less inflow and all these things. I realised.

It took me a little while to get there, but I realised so much of what I was doing was just a quest for validation because I didn't have that internal sense of self-worth or validation. So was seeking it externally. I had these big, aggressive numbers. I wanted to be in 150 countries. I wanted to be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. And once I realised what that quest actually was, this quest for validation, it was like a switch went off, and I just realised, my God, this is a crazy hamster wheel. I have to get off. I need to, you know, I need to focus inward rather than seeking that externally, because I'm never going to get it. It doesn't matter how many zeros I have on my revenue or how many magazine covers I make or whatever. And, and I see that pattern in so many of my fellow founders and entrepreneurs. And the thing is, you know, drugs or sex addiction or other types of addictions are less socially acceptable. Whereas this particular addiction or this method of distraction or numbing is not only acceptable, but it's applauded. And so we hold the Sam Altmans and the Elon Musk's of the world up. They're our heroes. But if we look at all these people, are

Mike Brcic (04:06.574)

Absolute messes of human beings because there's something on the inside that they've never addressed, and they try to address it through their work. And so to answer your question, yeah. Yeah, it's very, it's very common in this world.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:19.318)

It is very common. It's partly evident in the great founders of the large companies, but this hustle culture and the sense of achievement in any form that has impacted so many people, because there will be some who are starting out, who are struggling with wanting to tick the boxes and reach those milestones, the worldly standards, as they don't feel right on the inside. can relate to what you were saying so much because even recently, some people were saying just be your work. You are your work. But I'm curious, in the early days when people are starting to grow something to some extent, we do need those zeros. You do need the extra. You need to move that decimal place to keep everything afloat. So I'm wondering where do you find the balance or not balance? Where do you draw the line? How do people know when they are being responsible in their growth, compared to growing for the sake of growing to a point that takes something away from their lives?

Mike Brcic (05:36.966)

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. A few years ago, I hosted an event in Greenland, and we're in this magical little village. had our own sort of lodge and resort in this building where we would meet. We had some really beautiful, intense discussions. And one of the discussions we had, and it was based on a conversation. We were out on a hike, and I was having a conversation with another founder. It was based on this question of, when is enough?

And so we had this very rich discussion. These are people who had means. My events are quite expensive, and getting to Greenland is expensive and all this stuff. So these were people who were doing pretty well for themselves. And it led to a very rich discussion. And of course, if you're an entrepreneur and you're starting out, you need to make enough money to pay the bills. You need to pay your staff. You need to pay yourself. You need to keep the lights on and be able to feed and house yourself. And of course, nobody's debating.

debating that, but at a certain point, you get to a question of, this enough? And the question beyond that is the why question. And for each individual person, that question of enough personally varies greatly, of course. But beyond, I always think a starting point is think about the lifestyle that you want to live. What are the things that are most important to you?

And then actually sit down and write down what does that lifestyle actually cost? And then for each item in there, obviously, you don't really need to debate paying your mortgage or paying your rent, whatever. That's an easy decision. But if part of your lifestyle that you want is you want a private jet to fly around the world, you have to ask yourself, well, why? Why do I want a private jet? And then maybe you'll get a response to that and ask why again. I'm sure you've heard of the five whys exercise. But going deeper, and at the end of the day, if the private jet is because we're seeking status, are we willing to really kill ourselves so that we can afford the $200,000 a year cost of the lease of private jet or whatever it is? Or ask yourself, why do I need this feeling of status? Because deep down, it's because I feel insecure or I need validation or whatever. Well, you could probably solve that much more cheaply with a good therapist than a private jet. And it's actually going to address the root problem. And the jet is not going to.

Mike Brcic (08:04.838)

address the root problem. And so you need to, because at the end of the day, we're all seeking the same things. We want connection, we want to feel accepted, we want love, we want to feel some significance, we want to feel a sense of contribution. And so going, going through that and asking yourself, like, what is it that I actually want at my deepest level? And how can I build a lifestyle or flex that it's probably a lot simpler, probably a lot cheaper than you think you don't need, you don't need a private jet, you don't need to fly off on vacations every other week to address the things that your heart really wants.

And then, and then beyond that, there's one of things I want to push back on is there's nothing wrong with running, you know, a beautiful small business that supports you well, that doesn't stress you out, that supports your goals. You've built a lifestyle that are business that serves the lifestyle you want. And there's nothing saying that you have to constantly scale a business. I've know, I've way finders has grown over the years, but I not because I'm not because I'm you know, got my foot on the gas and I'm constantly trying to scale, but just because more and more people want to be part of what I'm doing. I've actually, you know, put the brakes on that growth because I don't want it to compromise, you know, what I already have, which is a beautiful business that doesn't overwhelm me. And, and so if you want to scale beyond that, asking yourself why, and if the answer is why, because I really deeply believe in my work and it really impacts people positively, and I want to be able to impact people more, that's great.

But if the answer is I'm looking for significance, or I'm looking for validation, or I want the respect of my peers or whatever, that's a fool's game. And also, even within that contribution and impact and significance, I just saw somebody who's running another community, another entrepreneur community based here in Toronto. saw his business completely implode about 10 days ago for years, and the reality was he was, for years, the public persona was heart-centred business, and of this thing, they ran these big conferences all over North America, thousands of people. And his mission was he wanted to impact a billion people. And privately I'm thinking, geez, that sounds like, know, that doesn't, the language was so much about, it sounded like it was so much about him and needing that validation between people.

Mike Brcic (10:28.772)

The reality of the behind the scenes is he was taking out these massive loans. He wasn't paying people back. He wasn't paying his suppliers all the stuff, all to feed this hungry beast. And ultimately, it consumed him, and he had to shut his business down. And now he's basically in hiding. So we have to be careful about, you know, the goals that we're chasing.

Mike Brcic (11:36.934)

I love that question. And it's so timely because I'm in this phase where I've more or less done the same thing for nine years now with Wave Runners. I run two or three events a year, 20 to 24 people per event, high ticket price. And what this does is allow me to focus my full energy on this and on these events and on this community and give my heart and soul into it without having to take on other work. And I'm at this point, you

One of my three teenage kids one of them's heading out the door in September. The other two are a couple of years behind. I have a lot more bandwidth. And so I've been asking myself, what does this next evolution of Wayfinders look like? And within my community and within the people that come to my events, are, I would say about a third of the people who are coming are people who are doing work that is directly, the mission is directly to help others.

And of course, that broad mission, you know, that could be very broad. could say any like software company, but I'm not talking about a software company that, you know, that's helping you automate your, your calendar or whatever. I'm talking about people who are directly working with others, trying to impact people positively, trying to impact the planet. And, and I think back to this couple who were with me in Mongolia last fall, and they, they, they do some incredible work. I'm actually doing one of their programs right now, and they do like really incredible deep work. And she said afterwards that Mongolia shifted something or cracked something open and has significantly impacted her work since then, and how she shows up for people. And it's helped remove a few remaining blocks that were standing in the way of her really fully committing to this work and fully committed. And that, to me, you know, got me thinking like those are the people that I want to create a context for meaningful change and growth so that they can, the ripple effects of that, right, go rippling outwards. And also because I believe we're going through a very significant societal global transformation over the coming years. And I think most people can feel that whether it's AI or climate change or geopolitical events, there's a, systems are crumbling, these institutions that we trusted for so long are proving to be a lot of them are proving to be very fragile and actually ultimately not serving humanity. And believe there's something on the other side of that transitional phase that is going to serve humanity at a much better level. But in between, there's going to be a lot of disruption and chaos. And I find myself coming back to the idea of creating a context for those people. I think of them as guides or shepherds. People are going to help imagine what that next future looks like and creating a context for them to explore that together. So in answer to your question, know that's actually actively what I'm trying to create is a system for to help people help others and to do it. The key thing for me is ego. And when we come at our work from a place of ego, the ego is just that, the identity that we've created, it's the sum total of all the experiences and the wounds and the traumas and everything that has created this idea identity and when we come at our work from that place trying to feed that beast it is it can create a lot of harm in the process and of course the ego you know the ego doesn't go away the the important thing is how do we integrate a healthy ego into our lives and into our work and when you come at your work from that place it's a very different result of how you look at those are the people that i want to serve that aren't that aren't you know completely feeding their egos so I absolutely, 100%. And I'll go back to this example I gave. This person who shut down his community, shut down his doors, but 10, 12 days ago, his public persona was he had a lot of people who really loved him. And when he posted on Facebook that he was shutting his doors after 12 years, and there were a couple of hundred comments you people saying, you know, and it was all in this language of, I need to take time to look after my family and look after my health. And there was all these, you know, beautiful messages of support. And it was, you know, wishing you strength for this next chapter. You've created something so beautiful. You've impacted so many people. And then about three or four days later, somebody else that I know and respect posted, you know, basically the reality of he had invested a considerable amount of money in this person to attend his event and just, you know, outlining all these shady business practices. And then there were probably six or 700 comments on that. And many of those were other people who had gotten burned by this same other person who had invested money, had, you know, loan money never got paid back. And to be clear, this person shut down his doors two days before an event that featured thousands of people, and he was taking money for that event right up until two days before, and he shut down. It's a huge mismatch between this public persona, was very celebrated and people loved him or whatever, and then behind closed doors, all this other stuff going on. And so it's really hard to discern. And I don't know if I have anything useful to give you or your listeners, but what I saw in the comments of that second post, including the original poster, was he felt something was off, and yet he persisted. And it's only now, after everything kind of fell apart, that he can look back and he can see the warning signs that he ignored, and his intuition and his gut and all this kind of thing. I think, you know, when I work with people and, you know, when I'm working with them on one of my events halfway around the world or whatever, and we're in these wild places, there's a few different modalities I use. One of them is this idea of wilderness as a teacher, as a co-facilitator. And so I take people up to these wild places, and I help them develop a relationship with wild places and with the natural world. Because we are an integral part of that. And when we live in these environments where we've completely severed that connection, we cut ourselves off from this incredible source of wisdom. And the other is developing a relationship with our bodies. And because, as entrepreneurs, we tend to spend a lot of our time up here in our heads, intellectualising and strategising and executing all these things.

There's so much wisdom that lives in the body. There's so much wisdom that lies in our connection with the natural world. And when we're actually slowed down enough to be able to listen to these things, we realise that there's these incredible other sources of wisdom that we don't access on a regular basis. And so, you know, when he's, when this person's talking about something felt off, he didn't say, I thought something was, was off.

He felt off, he felt it in his body, he felt it in his system, whatever, and yet he ignored that. His brain overruled that because his brain and his ego wanted to see a different result. They wanted to see him succeeding at this event or whatever it was. And so we need to learn to tune into those systems and we need to learn to trust them because they are a much deeper source of wisdom than we have access to on a regular basis.

Mike Brcic (20:59.366)

100%. And we need to trust that.

Mike Brcic (21:39.398)

I I lost you there just for the last five seconds. Yeah.

Mike Brcic (22:20.132)

Yeah, 100%.

So it's one thing to feel that in your body, to feel some things off, or maybe conversely to feel something right. It's lighting you up. And in our go, go, go, hustle kind of culture, that might be a very fleeting thing. You feel it for a few seconds, and then you move right on. And what I've learned to do is to actually create space, create space in my day to actually tune into that. before we started talking,

You know, it's more it's early morning here in Canada. I spent you know, I did a 15 minute breath work I did a 10 minute meditation and all of that that That it's not the objective of that is not to calm my mind or you know I do get benefits my mind gets calmer my nervous system gets home but it's really just about developing a practice of tuning into my body and and Tuning into what is expressing itself through my body and right now, the last couple of weeks, I've had this real heaviness in my abdomen. And so I'm exploring that. What is that telling me? And when I take the time to slow down and tune into that and breathe into it and feel it, a few things often happen. One is I allow that feeling to express itself. And often, it just moves itself in my body, and it releases. Secondly, that might be tied to specific thoughts or memories or whatever. And I can actually tune into that and explore that. And that gives me useful information as well. I can't do any of that if I'm just, if I'm trying to tune into what's happening in my body while I'm at my laptop, banging out an email or watching reels on Instagram. I've got to have to make intentional space to allow that. And the more I do that work, more wisdom and the more intelligence access that I can't access throughout the rest of my day.

Mike Brcic (24:33.956)

Yeah, and I would add to that, I live fairly central in Toronto. It's a good bit of effort to access something that approximates wilderness, but this work gets so much better and so much more powerful when you can do it in wild, natural settings. So last weekend, I just took my van, and I drove two hours north of the city, and I found a beautiful, quiet place.

And I just stayed there for the weekend, just on my own. And I do this a few times a year because it's such a valuable practice to be able to just slow down and create big blocks of, you know, of uncluttered time just for myself and just to spend time with myself. It helps me develop a relationship to myself, to my soul, to the wilderness, to my wisdom. And I can't, you know, I can't do that all the time. I can only do it in little chunks. So I try to make time for it here when I'm in my home, but it's not quite the same thing, right? Sitting in my living room surrounded by my technology and devices and whatever. So the two pair well together, having a regular practice, but also creating deeper, you know, time for deeper, more structured intention.

Mike Brcic (26:44.198)

And it requires intention, right? Because it's two vastly different things to go out into nature somewhere where you can be by yourself and uninterrupted without your devices, without distractions, bring a journal versus I'm going to go on a camping weekend with my friends, or I'm going to go on my own, but I'm going to bring my laptop and I'm to bring my phone and I'm going to bring a book and all these things.

That's nice. It's nice to spend time in the wilderness, but I'm talking about something very different, but being as still as possible and about slowing down and just reconnecting and listening to your body, to the sound of a bird's call, listening to this incredible harmony and wisdom and balance that we find in the natural world. And remembering that we are an inextricable part of that.

We are not separate for that because it's very easy in our, you know, in our urban lives to think of ourselves as completely separate from everything around us. And then when we get into these wild places, and we spend time, intentional time, slowing down and reconnected, we remember that we are connected are an inextricable part of everything. And that, and it also, you know, there's many, many studies that point to this, but just the benefits of that connection to the natural world that just slows down our heart rate, it slows down our nervous system, it brings deeper calm, and there's just so much value in it. And all those things are great, but to me, the ultimate value is access to wisdom that I can't access in other ways. And so when I go away these weekends, there's always a little bit of clarity about some way that I can be more committed to the path that I'm on.

And the path that I'm on is this path towards deeper alignment, towards living a life that feels like a truer expression of who I am rather than who I think I should be or who others think I should be. Because ultimately, if I stay on that path, eventually I can awaken and say, what is this life that I've created for myself? This is not my life. I don't want this. How did I get here? And so the more I can commit to that path of truth, the more I can keep coming back to that centre when I keep straying off into other directions. And I don't have to wake up 20 years from now saying, what have I done and look back with decades of regret.

Mike Brcic (29:29.69)

Yeah. Well, and so much of what the world tells us we should want was planted, the seeds for that were planted decades ago, you in childhood by our parents, by our teachers, by our peers, you know. And in childhood, all of those messages land a lot harder than they do in adulthood. Because we are these tiny little creatures looking up at these giants all around us, telling us who we are, we should be.

how we should show up in the world, the patterns that we create, all these things. And we take it all in because we don't feel like we have the means to discern for ourselves. It's like, okay, well, these giants are telling me what I should do and how I should behave. not just in a direct way, you should, how many doctors and lawyers and engineers are out there in the world because their parents said that's the path you should choose. That's one direct manifestation. But I'm talking about the messages we receive about how we should show up in the world, right? And so when we're a child, we learned that if we speak up, we get punished, you know, for example. And so we learned to quiet ourselves. We learned to quiet our voice. And that was a very, very viable and very necessary strategy when we were children, because if do otherwise, it felt just too unsafe. And as a child, don't have that, you know, we don't feel we can do anything about that. We have to go along with this narrative. But then you carry that into adulthood, and then that pattern follows you throughout adulthood. It's like, okay, don't speak up because to speak up, you know, it's too dangerous. Even though it's probably not dangerous as an adult, but it feels extremely dangerous. It's encoded into our nervous system, right? And that's just one of many operating systems that are running under the surface. And all of that keeps us from showing up in the world, you know, in our full truth, how we want to live and how we want to be, all this kind of thing. And so our job our job in adulthood is to peel that onion and try to get to the core of what's at the centre of that and find something that's true, and that's our own, and that's our own way of being in the world and showing up in the world, expressing our gifts, all these things. You know, I won't sugarcoat it. That's difficult work for any human being, particularly for those who've suffered a lot of deep trauma and wounding childhood. But it's really necessary if we want to live full, deeply aligned lives.

Mike Brcic (33:09.998)

I think there's a process of discernment here. And I'm not minimising the real potential risk sometimes of speaking up and speaking your truth. There is, in a dynamic with somebody else, for instance, there is you're speaking up, there's a potential cost in terms of the relationship and how that it might impact the relationship, but there's also a cost to yourself from not speaking up, from not speaking your truth. And the process of discernment is asking yourself, much am I going to pay on a personal level if I just silence myself here in this situation? And for me, the key thing to tune into here is resentment.

Whenever I feel resentment, is a clue. Resentment or anger. And that is a clue that somehow I've not lived in my truth. I've not spoken up. I've not made decisions that are in my own alignment. And then I'm feeling resentment. And the anger, it's usually directed towards myself. I've abandoned something core that's important to me. And so when I feel that, I need to stop and I need to tune in, say, what is going on here? And realise maybe I've betrayed a core value in you know, in not making a certain decision or not speaking up ever. And then I have to ask myself, is it, you know, is it perpetuating this relationship and perpetuating this dynamic by staying silent? it worth it for the cost to me? And there's the writer Glennon Doyle. And I can't remember which book it was of hers that she wrote. But she said, you know, when in a relationship with with another, when it when it comes to the choice between abandoning the other person or abandoning the relationship or abandoning yourself, you should always choose for yourself, i.e. not abandoning yourself. Because ultimately, when you abandon yourself, that resentment, that anger, all those feelings that you get from abandoning yourself are going to ultimately compromise the relationship. So you're actually harming both parties. And obviously, this has to be handled with diplomacy and whatnot. But consistently choosing against yourself, your beliefs, your values, what's important to you is going to really, is going to make your relationship suffer, whether they're personal or professional. And also, I understand, you know, for a lot of people, if this was encoded in childhood, this programming that speaking up is dangerous, I get that how perilous that can feel. And for some people, it's incredibly hard speak up because their whole nervous system wants to shut down when they feel that need to speak up. That's where the inner work lives is, you start with speaking up in situations that are maybe a two or a three out of 10 kind of emotional charge, just to be able to train yourself that, hey, I can speak up, and it's not gonna be catastrophic. It's not gonna be the end of this relationship, or it's not gonna be it's not going to spell my personal doom. And then over time you realise, hey, it feels good to speak my truth, and it feels ultimately, you we create this internal narrative that if I, if I speak up, it's going to damage this relationship. The other person's, you know, not going to like that or whatever. What I found is the opposite. When I speak with clarity and when I speak from a place of my, you know, speaking my own needs and desires clearly.

Other people appreciate that, even if it's sometimes difficult feedback. But when there's this whole layer of hidden conversation and hidden needs and desires that are not out in the open, it just creates these really confusing dynamics between people. And so people generally appreciate clarity, even if it's difficult to hear. And so that's where the speaking up, and that's where the discernment part comes in.

Mike Brcic (37:40.806)

100%. And, you know, this, that word authenticity has become such a, such a buzzword. And, you know, and I want to, I don't want to, I want to bring it back to, to it's actually, you know, a lot of what, what passes for authenticity in social media is like people being really open and vulnerable about the difficulties, in, know, in their lives. going through something difficult or whatever. And that's all fine and Dan, it's certainly better than just constantly presenting this polished completed version of yourself that's got everything figured out and I'm know, such a I'm such an enlightened being which of course is not not true for anyone, but What I see masquerading is authenticity is this openness and vulnerability, which is Which is often just a plea for validation, you know, and and also and worse it's a it's a it's an algorithm choice because people know that when they're open and vulnerable like that. It's going to get lots of likes and comments and shares and stuff like that. so what we're talking about, you when I'm talking about authenticity, it's about showing up in the moment, being completely real with yourself about what's going on in your internal experience, your feelings, your needs, desire, and communicating that to the world, whether it's the person sitting across from you or whether it's, you know, your friend or whatever situation. We have to, of course, apply discernment. We don't just walk around being an open book all the time.

And if our neighbour asks us, how are you, we're not going to spend the next 10 minutes going through the details of our divorce or whatever that may be. We have to apply discernment, but it's choosing our moments where we are actually tuned into ourselves and our own needs and desires. And we're communicating that clearly and effectively to other people so that they understand us, they understand our experience when it's needed, in situations where that clarity is needed. And that's real authenticity.

And also the boundaries are a form of authenticity. And authenticity is also understanding who we want in our lives and who we don't want or need in our lives anymore. And being unafraid and unapologetic and saying, " Hey, I don't need this in my life right now. And that's being authentic rather than just going along with an unhealthy dynamic just for whatever reason, maybe. So it's a difficult process.

I won't understate that.

Yeah, you know, related to that, I don't know who was it said, but this idea of teaching or sharing from our scars and not our wounds, right? And if we are in the midst of going through something difficult and we're just sharing that because, I mean, you know, I like, I tried before I'm posting anything publicly, I try to ask, stop and ask myself, what is my intention behind putting this idea or putting these words out into the public realm. Because it's very easy, and I've done this many times, it's very easy to do it from a place of wanting some validation for this, or it's want to position myself as a certain type of person, an expert or a guru or whatever that may be. And so I have to catch myself, like, what is the actual intention behind this? And

So if I'm sharing something, know, something difficult that I'm going through, it's very different to say, I'm going through something difficult, you know, please, please validate me or, you know, and obviously I'm not going to state that, but hey, I'm going through something difficult. This is, I think, this is the lesson that's contained within this thing. And I'm going through this process, and here's kind of what I've discovered so far. And this is, you know, I'm actually going through something pretty challenging right now, and I've put out a couple of posts like that because I've learned something throughout this process, and here's what I want to share, and what do you think about that? Or it might just be, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with something. I would love to hear from other people who are struggling from the same thing and being real about, hey, I'm actually asking for help in this moment. But being really clear because I just, you know, there's so many people, especially in this coaching world, or influencer or guru world or whatever that may be. And I just see so much of this sort of fake vulnerability and authenticity, is really just either they're trying to do it to game the algorithm because it'll get them lots of engagement, or they just want validation from people that say, " You're so real, you're so authentic, I appreciate you. And it's just, frankly, it's just bullshit. The world doesn't need more of that.

Mike Brcic (44:26.884)

And so I think that process of stop stopping and say, actually, what is my intention here? And catching yourself like, Hey, is this actually how I want to show up in the world? Just like, you know, hungry cry for validation, or I want to position myself as somebody who's really got figured out or whatever, versus I have something of value to offer to people in the world. And this is how I want to choose it. And it's, and it's a tricky process, that discernment of how you're going to show up.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:58.72)

I wanted to apologise so much because the connection cut.

Mike Brcic (50:03.793)

All good.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:05.513)

Okay. We're talking about social media, but I wanted to flick to anything that you...

Mike Brcic (52:11.835)

Sure.

Mike Brcic (52:25.217)

Not, not necessarily, not necessarily. No, no, mean, I've, I've worked there, there have been, you know, I've had solo printers and stuff like that. I would say the average person, their team, their team is usually, you know, like five to 10 people, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. I've worked with a few solo printers. So it's not, it's not just giant teams. Mean, obviously, because my events are not cheap, they have to have the means for that, but it doesn't necessarily translate into, you know, giant or not giant.

Mike Brcic (53:19.441)

Well, these days, of course, it's more and more possible to run a one-person, very successful, profitable company because of all these tools, AI tools and automations and all that kind of stuff. And also, you know, it's also very easy to get lost in that world, and you're actually investing more time than you're getting back and bringing up in that world. I think there's more

I think there's more value in really understanding your own worth and your own value. I see a lot of people who really understate their worth and their value, or not understate, underrecognize their worth and their value. I've worked with a lot of people who have...

blocks around money, around receiving, that is. That usually, usually, usually, and, and I actually am, you know, over the years, I've really, my financial success has increased considerably. And it's not because I'm doing better or I'm marketing better or I'm selling better, because it's because I'm working with the internal blocks around that, which are usually tied to, you know, self-worth. And so I'm actually in about halfway through this course, talked about this, you know, these two excellent coaches that came with me to Mongolia, they've actually done three of my events. And so I wanted to experience their work in return because they've experienced mine. And so I'm doing this amazing course called Inspired Money Foundations. And it's about relation, examining our relationship to and with money. And a lot of the work is understanding all the, you know, all the moments of guilt and shame that have, that have piled up on us throughout our lives, even the most even the person who had the most wonderful childhood and adulthood or whatever, there'll be all sorts of small moments that impact us over our lives. And it's about all of those moments, and guilt is we feel that we've harmed others more than we've benefited, and shame is we feel we've harmed ourselves more than we've benefited ourselves through our actions. And all of these moments over time come to impact our sense of self-worth. And as I've looked back, particularly in my teen years, my teen years were very, you know, my father became sick with brain cancer and died a couple of years later when I was 14, and then he died when I was 16. And there were so many moments through that where I carried all this, subconscious guilt about how I showed up for him or didn't show up for him. And, you know, going through this process is realising how much of that I internalised, and after going through this process, being able to look at that and see that with compassion, Hey, I was just a teenage kid trying to figure out life. And I didn't always show up for my dad the best way I could have, but having real compassion for that and understanding and realising, and with hindsight, looking back at that and realising how much that impacted me, how much it impacted my sense of self-worth. And it created this, it's not the only narrative that exists, it created this narrative of like, I'm not a very good person. didn't show up for my dad, you know, the way I should have when he truly needed me. And that, that narrative without the accompanying narrative of compassion and understanding that I'm a human being and I'm a kid, and you know, all these things create this dynamic of like, Oh, I'm not a very good person. And if I'm not a very good person, then, you know, that's going to impact my relationship with money. And so if I'm going into, you know, say a conversation with you as a potential customer and, and I've got this narrative operating underneath and, and then that's going to impact how I feel the value of my work because what sort of work would a person who's not a very good person, you know, do and what sort of impact would they have? And as I'm going deep into this, I'm, you know, I'm realizing I've done some great work in this regard and my, you know, my income is far beyond what I dreamed it would be, but there's also more narratives to go into here that are, and for the last year and a half I've been, I've set these ambitious revenue goals and I've been stuck and I'm realizing that I sort of reached that limit of my current identity of my current belief system and that more work needs to be done to unravel that. it doesn't matter what I do, what strategy or what marketing, and I keep bashing into that because of this belief system underneath. so more so than execution or AI tools or automation, those are all important, but especially if you're a solar person, it's really understanding your worth, really undoing some of those narratives that get in the way of your worth.

Mike Brcic (58:08.497)

I know, and I've worked with coaches who are just, know, coaching is very simple because it's a one-on-one relationship. I'm creating value for you. You're paying me for that. I've worked with some of them who are extremely successful at what they do because they really have that belief in their own self-value, in their own self-worth, in the value that they create for others. So when they, when they say to somebody, you know, this is how much it costs, you know, it's going to cost you $15,000 to work with me. We're going to work together for six months. I'm going to create, you know, real, true value, you're gonna get way more time back than what you invest in this versus other people are like, well, you know, like, it's, it's, you know, it'll cost you $2,000. But if you don't, you know, if you can't really afford that, well, I can give you 50 % off or something like that, right? And we see people show up with that energy. So that is, you know, that is where I think the most important work is like really understanding your value, undoing those patterns, undoing those belief systems and showing up in the world, understanding your value and how you create it for other people. That's some high-impact work there.

Mike Brcic (01:01:12.881)

Well, the ceiling is often subconscious. We don't understand that. One of the exercises I've done with people is ask them to write down what their level of income that they're currently generating or that they estimate that they'll bring in this year, whatever number. And then ask them to double that number and say, what feelings come up when you double that number? Let's say you're making 50,000 a year and you say, OK, $100,000 a year.

Could you make 100,000 a year? Does that seem feasible? What feelings come up? What thoughts come up when you print? And then ask them to double it again. Okay, now we're at 200,000. Maybe 100,000 is like, oh, I think I could see you get in there if I work hard and I do this and I do that. And I say, double it again. And then usually by that point, people are like, oh, no. If you're at 50,000, the idea of making 200,000 is like, there's just no way. There's no way I'm going to be able to do that. All these beliefs start to come in. And then you double that again. It's like it's even deeper. And so you realise that there's this hidden script underneath that's running the show. And I'll give you a very concrete example, another shift that's possible. This woman that I was chatting with, she's leaving her corporate life, her corporate world behind, she's trying to get into the world of coaching. And so she's been offering her coaching for free to a bunch of people. she says, she positions that like, it's, I'm offering my gift to them for free. And she’s sort of putting in these noble terms, and it helps me build my skills and whatnot. And I said to her, you've provided me real value. You have the skills. You don't need to practice your skills. You practice by working with people who are gonna pay you. And asked her, if you were charging these people, let's say you were charging them $500 an hour.

Would you show up differently for them versus what you're doing right now for zero dollars an hour? And she says, yeah, probably. I said, how? She says, " Well, I would probably spend some time preparing, and I would really, really prepare before every session. I would show up 10 minutes early, and I would be fully prepared, and I'd be grounded. I would probably follow up afterwards. I would do a bit of extra work for them, that kind of stuff. They said, " Okay, well, can you see now by not charging them, you are not showing up for this person.

Mike Brcic (01:03:41.379)

in the way that you should, you're not providing them full value, and they're probably not showing up. And so then I, she used to be a competitive swimmer at a very high level. And I said to her, " Can you imagine showing up at a pool for a swim meet and there's no timers, there's no lanes, there's not even an endpoint, there's not even any way of knowing who got to the end first. How would you show up for that? And then it was like a light bulb clicked off or clicked on for her. It's like, okay, you know, the money is the scoreboard. It's the thing that brings both people to the table with full commitment. And it's all tied to that idea of self-worth, right? And so the more you can do that work and really explore these ideas of self-worth and where did those messages come from that taught me that I'm not valuable and that is going to have the biggest possible income.

impact on your income and what you income or any other you know, love you name it, those messages of that were ingrained a long time ago are going to are always going to form the invisible ceiling for us.

Mike Brcic (01:06:15.68)

Yeah, only about 100 % of the time.

probably even more so with some of the most successful people. Some of the most successful people I know have the most imposter syndrome. And often they're like, you know, they're looking around like, don't, they can't even believe that they created this thing or that they have the level of abundance or wealth. And it's, but something, you know, something in them was able to break through that. Often what I experienced is some of most successful people are driven by some sort of wounding. They're trying to prove themselves to mommy or daddy, or they grew up.

And, they grew up in poverty and scarcity, and that felt very precarious and scary to them. And so they're constantly pushing and striving. And, you know, it's amazing to see people who are running a hundred-million-dollar companies, and they, you know, they have $10 million in their bank account, but they're still worried that they're going to end up out on the street. Because when that is encoded in your nervous system, it doesn't matter how much abundance you have; there's always this feeling of life. It's scary. Life is precarious. And so happens all the time, matter what level you're at. And then you have to just understand that and have compassion for that. And just remind yourself that it's just a story, right? And so when you're experiencing that, and you see somebody else building a business, and then you hear that narrative, that's, you know, they've got something, some skills, some magic or whatever that I don't have. That is those old patterns, those old strategies that kept you safe.

Mike Brcic (01:07:51.973)

Continuing throughout adulthood, and you just catch yourself and say, there you are, you know, thank you for thank you for trying to keep myself, it's okay. I've got this now and So, you know we were talking earlier about this idea of like, you know for some people when they grew up They learned that speaking up is very dangerous right and so you're as an adult you find yourself in a situation and You want to speak up you want to speak your truth, but then you feel that in your body like it's so scary And it's just having that moment of awareness like and you can give that a name

You can call that hiding Henrietta or whatever it is, this persona is like, oh, there you are again. You're trying to keep me safe. I appreciate it, but it's okay. I've got this. I'm an adult now. I can make different choices. And so when you encounter that situation, like, oh, this person has built that. I can't do that. Just remember that that is not reality. That is just a story. And you catch that, and you say, thank you, but I'm to make a different choice in this situation. I'm going to choose to believe that I can do that.

Because I see all these people around me who don't have any particular skill or magic other than they've managed to break through that story. Because I guarantee they also have that story. They've just somehow found a way to live past that story.

Mike Brcic (01:09:51.441)

100%, 100%. Most of what goes on between our ears is just stories. Even this thing we call reality is just our construction of reality. And so all this information that's coming, all this sensory data and whatever that's coming in that we call reality, we're not gonna get into quantum physics and metaphysics and whatever, but just what we call reality, we have this thing called a reticular activating system, which tells us what to focus on.

And so if we've got all this data coming in, maybe there's 2 % of that that our brains are saying, OK, this is important. Take this information and ignore the other 98%. Well, that 2 % becomes our construction of reality. And that's how we choose to see reality. And that's how we choose to create the stories in our head. But we have to just remember these are just constructions. And we can construct a different reality. We can choose new things to focus on. We can completely shift our identities, our belief systems.

our own sense of value and self-worth. That's all stuff we can work with. And ultimately, that is, if we don't address it at that root level, then it doesn't matter. We can only get so far with better execution, better strategy, better content, whatever. We need to work at a deeper level.

Mike Brcic (01:11:23.579)

again, only 100 % of the time. That's just the nature of being human. Even the people I know who've done the most work and are living the most abundance and deconstructing those stories, they're still, for me, the work is these old narratives, and these old patterns don't completely go away. We just become much more aware of them.

And then the gap between our habitual reaction and then catching ourselves and making a more informed adult decision, that gap gets narrower and narrower. And so if you don't do any work with this, you just continue with the same pattern. Maybe you start to do some work, and you do the habitual pattern. And then maybe a day later, you're like, that really wasn't, you know, so I'll give you very concrete example. You know, my son last night, he did something that I really didn't like. And I reacted kind of habitually, and I was kind of angry and frustrated. I just went into his room, and he was in the middle of playing a video game, and I just shut down his video game. And he was upset by this. And in the past, I might have felt very justified in this, and it's like, did the right thing. And I went away and went to my room. took a deep breath and like, wait a minute.

And I went back into his room, and I said, " Hey, buddy, really sorry. That was really not a cool way to handle this situation. In the past, I might have done that maybe an hour later or whatever, and I might have excused it. Hey, I'm sorry I did that, but you shouldn't have done this thing, which is not an apology at all. This time, within 30 seconds or whatever, I was able to go back and say, " Hey, really sorry I did that. That was totally not cool, not a good way to handle this situation. Hope you'll forgive me.

We had a hug, and that was it. And that's because I've done the work so that, you know, so that I don't have to, I don't have to dwell in that place where my nervous system is triggered. And, you know, maybe someday I will get to a magical point where stuff never triggers me. highly doubt it, but doing the work allows me to shorten that time between trigger, habitual response and mature response. And sometimes that can just be, you know, one second later. So that is, you know,

Mike Brcic (01:13:50.107)

When you do the work, it just shortens that gap.

Mike Brcic (01:14:21.841)

100%. There is no endpoint. There is no, you know, I've arrived, I'm enlightened. It's just peeling away more of the onion. You never get to the center of the onion. You just keep peeling away layers. It's an endless onion.

Mike Brcic (01:15:10.05)

I I've valued so much the people that I've worked with over the years and there've been so many, and it just spans a full gamut from business coaches to therapists to medicine guides or whatever all the, you know, there's so many resources out there and you have to apply this process of discernment, finding the right people, the people who feel legit and you have a good feeling in your gut about them. But working, working on the inner level before you start working on the outer level of strategy, the execution, or do both in parallel, but find the right people who are going to support you on your journey and who are going to deal with, you know, the things at the root level rather than just symptomatic kind of thing and external level and commit to that journey. And that journey doesn't always have to involve other people. Like I said, I have a daily practice of breath work and meditation that helps me tap into my body and to my feelings and all this kind of stuff. And have these ongoing practices that will support you in this journey towards wholeness. Because as you move further and further down that journey, you show up more authentically, you express your gifts more authentically, people are drawn to you.

You're not coming at this, you work from a place of fear and scarcity, and you know, and again, just remember that it's a journey, just commit to the journey.

Mike Brcic (01:16:56.155)

Yeah, I do need to wrap up in the next couple of minutes if we can.

Mike Brcic (01:17:23.633)

I would say the one thing people need to know is themselves. They really, truly get to know and understand themselves so that your work can be a truer manifestation of who you are in the world rather than some manufactured identity, some manufactured idea of who you should be, how you should be. Because when your work comes from that manufactured place, you are not doing your best work. And people will feel that. And your compensation will reflect that.

When you come at your work from a place of truly understanding yourself, your gifts, your values, how you want to express yourself in the world, people will feel that, and they will want to do business with you. Again, that's not an easy task of truly understanding yourself. It requires a lot of work, archaeology and all that kind of stuff. But when you truly understand yourself, you know the wisdom is there, and you already have the answers. You don't have to turn to other people for answers. You already know how to show up in the world, and you will get clues along the way.

Mike Brcic (01:18:44.411)

Thank you, Melanie.

Mike Brcic (01:19:14.801)

Next time.