Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #225: Discover YOUR Road To SUCCESS With Mike Bayer, Life Coach & Founder-CEO At CAST Centers

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

In This Episode You Will Learn About:  How to evolve holistically   Finding & living your true purpose   Exercises to help begin trusting yourself  Strengthening your mental health  Resources: Websites: coachmikebayer.com & www.castcenters.com   Read One Decision  Join The Next Step Program Listen to Always Evolving  Email: [e-mail]  Text  [phone]  LinkedIn: @Mike Bayer Instagram & Twitter: @coachmikebayer Facebook & TikTok & Youtube: @Coach Mike Bayer Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com  If you haven't yet, get my first book Confidence Creator Show Notes:  Give yourself permission to explore what life has to offer! There is NOT always a clear path when it comes to finding your purpose in life. Experimenting is OKAY, and it helps us evolve into our true selves. In order to help us start this journey into up-leveling and balancing our lives, Life Coach and CEO Mike Bayer is here to guide us. You’ll learn the 7 different areas in your life where you can keep evolving and finding NEW successes. Start believing in yourself, and TRUST the process, even when we’re NOT at the top of our game.  About The Guest: Our wonderful guest, Mike Bayer is a two time New York Times Best Selling Author, a well known tv personality, and a personal development coach. Mike’s mission is to help people achieve sound mental health in order to become their BEST self! As a previous drug and alcohol counselor, and board registered interventionist, Mike was inspired to create CAST Centers, a leading dual diagnostic treatment center in Los Angeles. With an impressive track list of assisting A-List celebrities, he’s here to help us ALL keep evolving.     If You Liked This Episode You Might Also Like These Episodes: What To Do When You’re Being Blocked with Heather!  Resiliency, Creativity, & Never Settling with Mario Armstrong  Cody Rigsby, Peloton Master Instructor: The Benefits Of Being Unique 

The seven areas of your life. So your social life, your personal, your health, your education or how you're evolving, your relationships, your employment or earnings, and your spiritual development. So at any time, our scale goes up or down in terms of how we're feeling. And they all affect each other. When our health is off, it affects our social life. When our spiritual developments off, that affects, you know, how we're evolving. I think it's important that we always are.

simply looking at what's working for us and what can we lean into even more and what can we improve and the great thing is with a lot of things they're not overalls. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. Overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet Mike Bear. He is a two-time New York Times best-selling author. And you know I'm so jealous about that. He's a TV personality and personal development coach whose mission is to help people achieve sound mental health in order to become

their best selves. Mike spent the earlier years of his career as a drug and alcohol counselor and board registered interventionist. In 2005, Mike founded Cass Centers, a leading dual diagnosis treatment center in L.A. He has a highly reputable track record helping A list. And I mean A-list celebrities heal and recover. Mike has worked in the field in a variety of capacities, including team building, with corporations, keynote speaking for numerous events, Fortune 100 companies, as well as providing creative workshops. He also has his own podcast, always evolving.

And he is Dr. Phil's right hand. He's on Dr. Phil's advisory board and makes regular appearances on programs such as Dr. Phil, the doctors, and Dr. Oz. Coach Mike, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks, Heather. I can't even believe I did any of that stuff, but it's kind of amazing. Wait, people need to know, though, because I was just dying over the massive success that you have had. I mean, you are everywhere, and I love that you just shared with me that it didn't just happen overnight. Especially in the coaching space I found. I'm a bit newer to the public life coaching, although I've been doing it for almost two decades.

But no, I mean, I started off working with clients for $90 an hour and sleeping and, you know, $30 a night motel rooms and trying to, you know, getting scholarships and, you know, and I had to really work my way through the ability to figure out what was I good at, what was I not good at, which you start to learn when you help other people because sometimes in the social media world, you know, there's this quick fix or quick pills. where suddenly you're going to get the results overnight, and it just doesn't work that way. Oh, it's so, so true. All right. So you're bringing up an interesting point that I know you cover in your new book, One Decision, that I've been asked a lot about lately, and I'd love to hear your take on it. How do listeners, how do people find their purpose? You so obviously found yours.

What are those strategies that you recommend for people who haven't discovered it yet? Well, you know, I think I'm one of those that I'm constantly redefining my purpose. purpose. I know everyone's different. I do know that I have a better life when I feel that I'm adding value to other people's lives and I'm getting to be creative. But I would say every three or four years I go through kind of, I think I've had a midlife crisis like 20 times to my life because it always seems to change, you know. I went through a period of time where I didn't want to work with celebrities anymore. And so I started going to Iraq to work with Yazidi women in open mental health clinics alone. And I thought that was my purpose. But then when I did that,

I realized I couldn't raise all the capital I needed to help these families. So then I thought, well, what if I became the brand? And then somehow I met Dr. Phil a month later and that became a rocket ship. So I think like I love being in the trenches helping people. I've realized that I, I don't like to play life coach or play helper. I love the adventure of helping people feel better about themselves that don't have a big opportunity. And the whole thing with purpose is we have to be connected with other people. So it's extremely hard to, in my opinion, live in purpose, but not be out there in the real world. I think that's where the isolation makes it highly confusing because we do this together and the adventures together and purpose can be together.

We're kind of always redefining what our purpose is. You know, I spent so many years working and make money and travel and I was on tours and it looks incredibly sexy. But now recently this year, my purpose is more in alignment with settling down and having more love in my life. It's about giving yourself permission to at different times embrace a different purpose. Yeah, and being easy on ourselves and not comparing because we all, our purpose is for, I assume, is to live a life that we're really proud of and happy and have peace with.

So much easier said than done, though, as you know, is what you're dealing with every day. Yeah, yeah, it's really difficult. And it's confusing. Something that I talk about in one decision is, you know, you ever go to a party, I'm sure you have, Heather, where you are like, why am I here? Maybe you got so dressed up, so excited, you thought it was going to be something, you had expectations, and you're finding yourself in a conversation, talking to a guy that literally is going to talk news weather sports with you. And you enter into another conversation and somehow it's a conversation about cars and you can catch. give two shits about cars. So what happens is when we're confused, like, why am I here? We have to reestablish our purpose all the time. So if we're at the party, was our purpose to show up for a friend. We'll show up harder. Was our purpose to network and market and

make that purpose harder? Because as soon as we get confused about our purpose with wherever we are in life, that's when things start to create those stories. That's when we get self-centered and selfish and we lose opportunities because purpose is throughout the day. Purpose is, well, why am I going to go do that? Well, you don't, if your purpose is what's in it for me, okay, then maybe you can live that way, but I find that people are having much more joy in life when they can think about what is my purpose for being here and how can I add value. Oh, that's such, such good advice.

That's how I try to lead every exchange is how can you. you add value? How can you support and help? And when you lead that way in business and in life, the payoffs always end up being so much greater than you expected. Don't you agree? Oh, yeah, for sure. I've been interested in you talking kind of about like advertising and marketing. And do you think that that was something that was inherent in you? Or do you think that's something that you learned growing up? I'll tell you, what was inherent in me was sales. I just was good at it, right? right away because I listened to people. I was curious. You know, I wanted to really understand whatever their goals were. I like problem solving. I like helping people. So sales was definitely

pretty easy for me. Advertising and marketing, I had no idea about. But once you immerse yourself in anything, if you're open to failing trial and error, you can learn anything. And so being there for over 20 years, I was able to become an expert in that field, read all the research, read all the the white papers and whatnot and then apply what I was good to, which was sales and leading teams, you know, into creating a business. So yeah, I mean, I never had some big ambition as a kid to be a C-suite executive and advertorial. That's not the things people dream of. But I'll tell you, when I think of purpose and I look back, you know, to when I was a child, I remember I loved being on stage as a kid. And I remember one day when I was 10, someone said to me, you know, you can't do

this for a job, right? Nobody makes it in acting. And when that conversation hit me, whoever it was, you know, a teacher or the principal, I remember thinking, okay, all right, Heather, get your head straight. What can you do? You know, okay, maybe you could, you know, sell this or you could, and I just left that and then cut to whatever it was 40 years later. I'll never forget. I got off of really one of the largest stages I had taken at the time. And I remember feeling like magic. And when I went backstage and I was like, thank you God. This moment is everything.

I just feel so joyful. I wish I could feel like this all the time. And it hit me. Oh my gosh, that was how I used to feel when I was a little kid when I still believe that anything was possible. Let me ask you, because your background was in selling products and then transitioning into selling yourself in a way, right? What was the biggest difference for you in doing that?

I love how this has become your show, by the way. I don't know. I'm just curious. And I'm happy to give you the show. But so what's interesting is, number one, I had been fired, right? And I was a type A overachiever, still am my whole life. Right. Like, I want to check the box.

I want the star. I want to be told what a great job I'm doing because I'm trying so hard. So getting fired for me, and I know you can relate to this, at first was like this moment of total shame, total failure. Like I'm like, oh, my God. I can't believe this is my life. and stepping into unknown because I hadn't predicted this. I didn't forecast this.

This wasn't my plan. Right. So it was that moment of I've been white knuffling everything my whole life and strong arming that I'm going to outwork everybody. I'm going to make this work. I can see what it looks like in corporate America. I can climb the ladder. I can outdo the next guy to get where I want to go.

And when I made it to the top and then was kicked out, you know, unexpectedly, that was the single hardest thing for me to over. the shame and the unknown. Number one, that was really, that really was the hardest. But then two was after you develop a network and an expertise over a couple decades, you kind of get used to, oh yeah, don't worry, I got the solution here. Let me make a call. Or I can call in a favor on this one. Now I started at Ground Zero. I had never written a book. I had never, you know, dove into this whole new world. And I didn't know who you went to. I didn't know what the steps were. and no one was handing me a magic roadmap.

So that kind of unknowing and being willing to start trusting myself in the dark when I didn't know what that next step was, those were the hardest things for me. Yeah, I think any big change in life, whether it's a breakup or a loss, or it's just the cycle we go through trying to make sense of it all and trying to see where the light is and believe in ourselves, because it's really easy to live. believe in ourselves when we're writing some wave that's incredible. It's really hard to believe in ourselves when we're feeling really low, you know? And it sounds like you used it as an opportunity to believe in yourself and pivot and reinvent instead of maybe staying in the same

industry. It kind of propelled you into doing what you do now. Oh, no. You're making me sound way better than I have credit for. So this is something important for everybody to know if they don't know this. When I took the C-suite position, I signed an 18-month non-compete, non-solicit. I could not go back to the industry that I had found success and had expertise in for 18 months. So for 18 months, in order to gain a paycheck and make income and I'm a single mother and I built, you know, quite a luxurious lifestyle with lots of bills, I had to leave and start over somewhere else as a beginner. Got it. So it had an 18 month, and during that period of time, that's when you were like, when you reinvent.

First of all, back then, I didn't even know what coaching was. No one was doing coaching in the media industry. You just did your job and maybe someone would mentor you along the way. But I didn't know about coaching. So I didn't know to hire someone who had been where I was. I didn't know to hire a coach, Mike, and say, okay, I need help building this roadmap. Anyone who's listening right now, if you are reinventing, if you are starting over, hire a coach. ask someone for the roadmap who has been where you are. It will help you accelerate so much faster. But I didn't know that. So for me, I was kind of just mumbling around saying,

okay, I'm going to try something different. I'm not publicly going to say I work for myself for fear of embarrassment. What if ultimately I couldn't make it work and I had to go to the aviation industry and work for Delta? You know, like I didn't know if I'd find success. Even though so many people who were on my old team always say, Heather, please, of course you were going to find success. We knew you would, but I didn't feel that way until once my first book came out,

once I started landing big stages, and that was a year into it. I kind of said, I woke up one day and I said, I'm going to start telling people that this is what I do. And that was a scary jump. And that's the thing that's never ending kind of the evolution of growing. And there is a, there's risk when you do it for yourself because there's, infinite roadmaps and there's not already a roadmap that's kind of built. But there's also a lot of joy in that because you can be as creative as you want and push yourself and learn more about

yourself. And I now enjoy speaking, but for the first few years, I didn't enjoy it. It's very confusing, I believe, when we help people and we go, okay, just because it feels good doesn't mean it's right in life. You know, just because we did something when we feel amazing, sometimes we can make immense impacts when we are really emotional and other people can connect to those emotions. And as you know, it's just kind of this exciting journey of figuring out your art and how do you be of service to other people and help people change their lives. And there's so many different ways to do it.

Oh my gosh. When you say that, it reminds me of a shrink that I had a few years ago. I was in a relationship and I definitely wasn't being treated the way that I should be. And I would complain to her about it, and she said to me one day something to the effect of you need to be willing to give up the short-term gain that you're getting happiness, comfort, whatever it is that you're getting out of it that you think feels good or positive or safety or whatever, not being alone. Give up that short-term gain for the true long-term gain. that you're looking for in life, and that's how you make things better. I have so many projects going on right now, and I help people with that literally you're, it's almost like creating.

Sometimes it's really important, set a goal, get to it, here's why I want to achieve. But also, it's, where's the fun, where's the creative? You know, I'm writing my third book now. And as you know, writing a book is a lot of work, especially in self-help. it's almost, not to say it's easier in fiction, but at least you can just make things up. And self-help, you kind of can't if you wanted to resonate with people. And so I bet you 90% of what I write doesn't make the book, but I'm writing a lot of fun stuff, you know, and it's enjoyable. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with Lux Essentials that feel effortless and look polished.

They're perfect for layering, mixing, and building. a wardrobe that lasts. Their versatile styles make it easy to reach for them day after day. Quince has all the staples covered from soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the markup to 100% silk tops and skirts for easy dressing up to perfectly cut denim for everyday wear. Their wardrobe essentials are crafted to last season after season. Their Italian wool coats are real standouts. They're beautifully tailored, soft to the touch, and built to carry you through years of wear, not just one season. The quality shows in every detail, the stitching, the fit, the fabrics.

Every piece is thoughtfully designed to be your new wardrobe essential. And like everything from quince, each piece is made from premium materials in ethical-trusted factories that are priced far below what other luxury brands charge. I can't tell you how much I am loving my new cashmere sweater. It's a staple for sure, and I can't wait to give one to my best friend for her birthday this year. It is timeless, gorgeous, and the softest thing I've ever touched. Which quince pieces are you interested in? I mean, from the bags to the denim, to the sweaters, to the jackets,

they're all incredible luxury high-end products without the high-end price. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash confidence for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash confidence. If your anxiety, depression, or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another meditation app.

Takiatry makes it easy to see a psychiatrist online using your insurance in days. Takayatry is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Unlike therapy-only apps, tachiatry is psychiatry. That means you're seeing a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All their 600-plus clinicians are in network with major insurers so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out of network fees. You'll meet with an experienced licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to

understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and can prescribe medication when it's right for you. Your care stays consistent and evidence-based. Head to tachiatry.com and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talk gyatry.com slash confidence to get matched in minutes. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S.

With over 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way. Build your business identity fast with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free resources, forms, and step-by-step guides without even creating an account. Sign up for a free account to begin managing your business hub with lawyer-drafted operating agreements, bylaws, resolutions, membership certificates, bills a sale, and more, all at no cost. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Learn how to build a professional website, what annual filings your business needs to stay in good standing,

and simple explanations of complicated business laws. With Northwest privacy is automatic. They never sell your data, and all services are handled in-house. Because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Don't wait. Protect your privacy. Build your brand and get your complete business.

identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwest registered agent.com slash confidence free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www. northwesternigestedagent.com slash confidence free. What's the new book about? Where I'm at right now is I'm really, I'm really excited to help free people with resentment and disappointment and past pain. But what I've done is I'm writing kind of through metaphors right now, like metaphors and that people see in their childhood, because I think that's when we start to view life a certain type of way. And as adults, we never want to go back to that pain, you know, and because this is a heavy topic,

I have to figure out how to get the reader not to check out. You know, I'm always thinking, okay, because as soon as we start to feel too emotional by ourselves or it's too painful, we don't want to do it. So there's an art that I'm trying to create with getting people to continue because a lot of my style is exercises and the writing in the book. And I'm very much into people having tangible takeaways. So this topic, I'm trying to create a lot of hope and inspiration and fun with topics that suck.

You know, it sucks. But that's also what I really love helping people with. You know, I love helping people who are really depressed. I mean, I don't want anyone to be really depressed, but I usually can get them to crack a smile or loosen up and lighten up and like get into a flow with them. And I think mental health is one of those exciting spaces where you can see such quick change in a human, you know.

you, whereas it's like almost like mental physical therapy works a lot better than the physical physical therapy. I'm excited by this. Once you put your creativity into it, I'm sure it's going to be offering people massive solution and that payoff will be there. Yeah. And it's good for anyone to be, you know, we always talk about journaling and everyone's like, oh, the journal. It's almost like there's a saying in recovery, keep it simple, stupid. And the simple things work so well. The, The really basic things, putting thoughts on a piece of paper when you're struggling. If you're really angry at someone, write on the paper a letter to them that you're not going to send, but let those out and see it back and write the next day.

And there's something really powerful when we can get out of this, our heads, our brains, and somehow translate it all the way down the arm by the time it hits the fingers, the fingers hit the pen or the computer, then we lift it up and put it down. And it starts to help us. And it's so basic. I mean, I journal every day now. But like, sometimes I look at my life and I'm like, oh, my God, I'm still journaling. I'm 42.

You know, I've been doing this for almost 20 years. Pull it together, Mike, you know. But it's a way to be more at peace. and I want to do anything it takes to have more peace in my life. Oh, I love that. I'm 47 and I'm just figuring this stuff out. And, of course, I still journal too. So do not feel that you are alone, my friend.

I want to talk about some of your exercises because I agree with you so often, you know, in self-help or personal development, there's conversation and whatnot. But to really do the work, and I feel like I know I read somewhere that your goal is that you write these books so that ultimately people can be their own coach at the end, that they don't need to be finding a coach, correct? Correct, yeah. What are your favorite exercises, or give us one example of an exercise you shared in one decision

that you really get some good feedback on? Well, best self was all about creating your kind of alter ego. You know, everyone thinks about devil and angels. So I like to create who truly is your best version of self, who is your anti-self. And what are all those characteristics? Because when you can add a little bit of humor to the stuff we don't like about ourselves,

it helps us navigate because if we just say I'm depressed and when I get depressed, I get angry and lonely and I push people away, okay, that's one thing. But if we give her a name and draw her out or him out and let's say, I don't know, we call him, you know, Diana Downer and she's wearing like a horrible wig and she draws it, it's a little more light and she can go, I'm just being this. And it's also figuring out her best on. What are all those characteristics? So a lot of this stuff I do, you can do with like kids as a family. It's really helpful to see how they perceive themselves in a creative way.

And then with one decision, I really love, and I wrote the book because we're always one decision away from changing our life. And I love assessments because they're very telling. How would we look at one area of our life versus another? And I find that we often find one area of our life to be. that thing we need to work on, but it's not it. It's usually not it. We convince ourselves that it's it.

And so I developed a bunch of exercises to help people find their blind spots and to figure out what's really driving that thing that is keeping them from being more at peace or happier or whatever they want. And then what's one decision we can make right now? Like right now, what is one decision we could make that would help in this area? And again, keeping it simple works. You know, it's, and it's what I've done with clients for years. You know, I can in 30 minutes help people make one decision to get their income up 20% by next year.

Like, I know how to do this. I'm confident in it now, you know? When you make one decision, it's almost like you're going in a whole new lane. And if it's significant, like you made the decision to pursue what you. you do now, right? It's a chain reaction. There's a lot of other decisions. But some people will make a decision to sue or get upset or they'll go through whatever process they need to go through. And that probably isn't going to bring them more peace. Do you see one thing being the most common holdback for people or do you see any theme that

really comes first in mind to you? I think insecurity is the most prevalent. Needing other people's opinions to validate self, criticism from people that don't even matter to people. It's like, that's the irony. And just overall lack of awareness and interest. You know, some people really, I've worked with plenty of people. They're really, they'll say they want help, but they're not really interested in getting the help that maybe I think would be most beneficial. But also, I mean, I'm always.

shocked by people who can transform their lives and change for the better that don't have resources, that don't have money, that don't have the hottest body. And I've worked with plenty of people who are rich, beautiful, but that doesn't really build any sense of self-esteem or self-worth. It's like a drug. You know, attention is like a drug. That's why people will do whatever they can to get attention. But for themselves, I've found, unless they're total narcissists, like, to the extreme, at the end of the day, they're not really happy. Like, they really, people want to be loved, like, truly loved. We all really want to be loved by others. We want to be loved by our friends. We want to be loved by our family. We want to be loved by our kids. We want to give love.

And that's what people really crave, I think. Oh, for sure. And what are the things that you ask these people to do when you're working with them? And they are so focused. or obsessed or addicted to, you know, these outside opinions or this attention from other people. And how do you get them to get beyond that? Well, I create a lot of exercises or ask questions. So it depends on who it is. But normally I'll say, well, when was, you know, the last, give me the last time you had a moment where you fell completely at peace. That wasn't contingent on other people's opinion.

And usually everyone can tap into, oh, I was eating oatmeal in my backyard or I was talking to my friend Susie or it's nothing to do with these huge achievements or even the people I've worked with who have had that no one I've worked with has said, oh, they got to perform at the biggest show in town and got so much recognition. And that was the moment they had the most peace. No one has ever said that. So I like to help people figure out how life has had these moments for them where they weren't doing much, but they felt a presence inside themselves like, I'm digging this life. This is cool. This is magical. Wow.

You know, and helping people continually tap into that part of themselves because it can really start to get rusty. And it's how do you bring light? How do you bring more of that in? What do we need to do? Is it a priority? Why is that going to priority number 50 and priority number one is blank? Do you want it to be a priority?

Do you want to really do what's going to bring you peace? And it's hard. You know, it's extremely hard when life starts to get good. It's hard when we think, oh, that didn't work. But we have to continually work that muscle. We're not taught any of this stuff in school. sadly. Yeah, sadly. Like there's none of this is taught in school. We had no choice what families we were born into. And we end up later in life at different moments going, how the hell did I end up here?

And I'm always focused on the people who don't really love themselves or like themselves. Because if someone's really happy in their life, typically, I mean, I've worked with a lot of people and help them make more money who are pretty happy in their lives. You know, I've done a lot of work with executives and stuff, but usually people are coming to me because they're suffering and they've tried many things and they just are like, I don't, I'm so frustrated. I don't know how to change this part of me. What do you see as the common or biggest issue with people who can't make more money and seem happy in their life? What is their challenge? I think there's a few. So I think there's a category of people that are delusional. And what I mean by that is they didn't learn from their mistakes

and get humility. And they don't ask for help. This category that's, I'm going to go make this, you'll see it. They're all over the crypto world and, you know, they're always in these new scenes and this new pill or this new, you know, they were probably into the goji berry 10 years ago or whatever, right? Like, whatever these trends are. But I think asking for help is something most people don't want to do, even though we all know it is a joy to help other people when we're not put out. You know, it's a joy to mentor other people. So if you ask other people, hey, how'd you do this? Like if someone reached out to me and said, Mike, how did you get to where you got to? And like, I'd love to pick your brain. That's very different than saying,

Mike, can you get me an introduction to Dr. Phil? And can you read my book? And can you write the forward? By the way, that's the majority of what I'm hit up. I'm talking about people who want to help growing their business. It's almost like it can't happen organically that way. And asking for help is always one issue I find that gets in the way. The other is not researching what they're getting into.

partnerships, partnerships can be deadly and detrimental and stressful. And of course, there's a lot of momentum when things are going well. I've seen more partnerships work with husbands and wives than I've seen with friends. And I'm talking childhood friends. Because everyone gets really excited. There's entrepreneurship. But then you're in this marriage of shorts and it affects your livelihood. I think also starting small.

And then when people are trying to make millions, like I've had people where they're wanting to go from seven figures to eight figure, right? Like that's a different set of issues. You know, usually that's more about what can they leverage. What is their skill set? How can they get partnerships? And that's just like a different, those are luxury problems, right?

When someone was to make $10 million. First world problems. Yeah, you're a year. first world problems. And giving that, people don't prioritize. You know, there's no, unfortunately, you're competing. And when I say competing, sure, we are competing with ourselves and being better. And we don't want to become workaholics.

But at the same time, on that Saturday night, when the weekend comes up this weekend, I don't want to have to sit and write. I want to go wherever. I want to go on a vacation. I could afford. I have amex points. I could go off somewhere. but if I want to deliver something great and get paid and help people,

I need to dedicate the time to write a book on a weekend, even though that's not what I want to do. And so I think the other part is for people to realize just, they think I worked for another company. I had to do a lot of things I didn't want to do, but they may not have the discipline to realize you're going to have to do a times five now. It's much more difficult because you're now having to deal with all the problems. And so having that commitment, I think, is a challenge for a lot of people.

You touched on so many amazing things. I want to bring up again and just highlight the partnership issue that you brought up. It's interesting, twice in the past couple of months, I've had two very dear friends of mine, both in very successful companies, come to me and disclose. They're in a legal battle with partners. And to your point, each one of them are childhood friends. And it's ugly, really ugly. And they're both on the end side of it, back side.

They don't want to talk about it publicly. They're really disappointed, embarrassed that they look beyond what the problem was because they feel like had they really stopped and looked at it from a business standpoint, they would have never entered into it to begin with. Yeah. I mean, it's so tricky, isn't it? Because we feel like we need someone else that we don't have that ability. but that's what friends are for with advice.

That's what mentoring's for. That's what calling the friend who's an attorney to do a look over, calling the friend who has had successful businesses giving you that HR packet. You know, you don't, I find that a lot of people get into partnerships. The divorce rate's about 50% in the U.S. I have to imagine the partnership dissolve rate is higher than that because it is just really difficult to, unless there's silent partners or there's an amazing

dynamic, I see a lot of challenges there. Okay. You've got up another point that I just had an epiphany on for myself and you were talking about self-awareness. I believe, this is so funny and humbly, but I believe I'm incredibly self-aware because I've done so much work the last decade on making this, you know, an issue. I remember when I got divorced, I was 33 and I said, how did I get here? I am deconstructing myself.

Like, I'm going to go all in and figure out what did I do to, you know, own this. Anyhow, fast forward to I'm on a board of directors of a company. My CFO called me and said, I need you to jump on a call with the CEO and walk through the situation that's going on. And I said, okay, yeah, got it. I get on the call. I think I'm being, I have a tendency to be aggressive and very direct. I know that.

So I was trying to be very even keeled and calm because I don't have a strong. wrong personal relationship with the CEO. We've only worked together for a year and a half. And so in my self-awareness, I believed I was very even-keeled and calm yet made my point. Cut to a day later, I'm back on the phone with the CFO, who I'm a lot closer to, I've known longer and whatnot. And I said, listen, I just want to let you know, I was very even keeled. I, you know, I was not abrasive. I know I have a tendency to be that way. It was, you know, and he starts laughing. And I said, what's funny? And he said, you are so incredibly not self-aware. And it was so interesting, Mike, because I haven't had anyone say this to me

in years, right? And I said, what do you mean? He said, I knew how you'd handle it. That's why I called you because I wanted that outcome. I knew you'd go in there. And it worked. You went in there. You were incredibly direct. You were a bit aggressive. You made your point immediately. And we laughed and whatnot. And I hung up. And I did have to reflect and say, I still thought that I was being self-aware. However, to your point, we're always evolving, changing, you know, maybe this is that next layer that I need to dig into that when I am triggered by something or, you know, passionate about something, I forget how I'm handling myself. I think we always are learning more and more. You know, I have a bunch of, I think, seven therapists working for me at the center that I'm the CEO of.

And, you know, it is, it is similar. I find, so my challenge today is I end up beating myself up with managing employees, not necessarily because I want them to like me, but because I want to have a positive impact and I want to show up as my best self leading them. And again, if we get really comfortable like you're saying and not look at how we can improve, we kind of become those people that then it starts affecting our personal lives. We may start to have inauthentic through lines throughout our life because I work with this person and over here with that person. And I think it's allowing yourself the room to realize, yeah, I'm always trying to get better at what I can do. How fun.

Instead of it being, oh, man, I didn't do this right. It can be, oh, wow, I get to do this right. I get to learn more. I get to change. I get to question myself if I'm being too bossy or maybe that guy's too passive, whatever, you know. That reminds me of your exercise that I did, the Spears exercise. And one of the elements in there was around education. And that really made me think when I was reading and, you know, assessing my situation,

for a long time, I was not, you know, really tasking myself to learn or read certain books or what I am now. Ever since I got fired, it's a part of what I do every day, which is so exciting because I never thought that way, you know, back when I was in corporate America. But I found that exercise to be really impactful. Yeah. So that's an exercise looking at the seven areas of your life. So your social life, your personal, your health, your education or how you're evolving, your relationships, your employment or earnings, and your spiritual development. So at any time, our scale goes up or down in terms of how we're feeling.

And they all affect each other. When our health is off, it affects our social life. When our spiritual developments off, that affects, you know, how we're evolving, I think it's important that we always are simply looking at what's working for us and what can we lean into even more and what can we improve. And the great thing is with a lot of things, they're not overalls. You know, they're not. For example, if we're, let's say we're not evolving that much in our life, there's need to pick up a book. You're now at a good score.

It's not that hard. But next to my bed, I have the four agreements, right? which in my head, I'm thinking, Mike, shouldn't you by now be reading the most sophisticated, cutting edge, you know, new book no one's heard of that has this now. I'm trying to keep it really simple and go back to the basics. And there's a reason why things work in culture is because usually there's a lot of good messages. I love the work that you're doing.

I love the joy that you bring to life. I mean, I can just feel it right now being here with you. I'm so appreciative for you making the time to be here. How can everybody get one decision? and how can they connect with you? Sure, yeah. And I appreciate, you know, Gina made the introduction to us,

and I'm going to have you out on my podcast when you're in L.A. and coach Mike Baer, like the aspirin, coach Mike, B-A-Y-E-R on all social media. And the book is available at Amazon or wherever books are sold. It's one decision, and you've got to check it out. Mike, thank you to everybody listening. Go check out Mike's stuff. You will not regret it.

Keep creating your confidence. We'll see you next. I'm on this journey with me.