Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Mimi Bouchard on Unleashing the Power of Activations EP 453

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/—Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! The book was picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024, the winner of the Business Business Minds Best Book 2024, and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer First Grand Prize.I had the incredible opportunity to dive deep into the world of personal transformation with the founder of Superhuman, Mimi Bouchard. The conversation delves into "activations," a concept pioneered by Mimi Bouchard. Unlike traditional meditation, which seeks to quiet the mind, activations aim to energize and transform the listener. These audio sessions are designed to be incorporated into daily routines, helping individuals rewire their neural pathways by associating new, empowering beliefs with regular activities. This method is presented as a practical tool for embedding transformation into everyday life, enhancing the accessibility and impact of personal development.Full show notes and resources can be found here: In this episode, you will learn:The importance of transformation and self-identification in personal development.How to overcome fear and uncertainty about the future, especially in the face of AI advancements.The role of resourcefulness in starting and growing a successful business is demonstrated by Mimi's journey with Superhuman.The power of activations and unique audio experiences in transforming lives and achieving success.The significance of clarity, consistency, and customer feedback in building a successful subscription-based business.All things Mimi Bouchard: https://www.mimibouchard.com/SponsorsBrought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place.Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://trynom.com/passionstruck.Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self.This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com.--► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to:https://passionstruck.com/deals/Catch More of Passion StruckWatch my interview with Jaime Bronstein On How To Manifest The Love Of Your Life3 Reasons To Never Believe A Prediction That Doesn’t Ignite YouCan’t miss my episode with Dr. David Vago On Self Transcendence And Personal GrowthListen to my episode with Robin Steinberg On Humanizing Justice Through CompassionCheck Out my interview with Scott Galloway On Why America Is Adrift And How To Fix ItMy solo episode on Why Your Micro Choices Determine Your Life Like this show? Please leave us a review here-- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally!How to Connect with JohnConnect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles.Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMilesSubscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclips

Coming up next on Passion Struck. This is not a meditation app. As much as meditation can be beneficial to help you de-stress, this is a transformation app. This is for the type of person that wants to literally become the highest version of themselves and to transform from being the old self to the future self. So I needed everything about it to embody this understanding that this is for transformation. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, Jon R. Miles. everything about it to embody this understanding that this is for transformation.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of

yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 453 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you

who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and most importantly, to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episodes starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. I am so excited to announce my new book Passion Struck is a finalist for both the Eric

Hoffer grand prize and the first Horizon Award for debut book of the year and you can find it at Amazon or on the Passion Struck website. In case you missed it earlier this week we had two fantastic interviews. The first was with Paul Rabel, known as the Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky of lacrosse, and he's also the co-founder of the Premier Lacrosse League. In our episode, Paul dives into his new book, The Way of the Champion, where he shares the essential philosophies and practices that helped him reach the pinnacle of his sport and beyond. He'll discuss the wisdom glean from icons like Bill Belichick and Steph Curry, and how these lessons can be applied not just in sports but in every walk of life. The second interview was with Dr. Jim Doty,

a renowned neurosurgeon and best-selling author. In this deeply moving episode, Jim shares his insights on the intersection of neuroscience and compassion. He explores how our brains and our hearts can be trained to heal not only ourselves but the world around us. From his personal antidotes to his professional experiences, he unveils the secrets behind living a life filled with purpose, empathy, and achievement. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews, and if you love either of those episodes or today's, we would appreciate you giving it a 5-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Get ready today to dive into the world of entrepreneurial excellence and personal

development with the incredible Mimi Bouchard as the driving force behind Superhuman, a revolutionary audio app redefining meditation. Mimi's journey from OG personal development blogger to wellness industry powerhouse is so inspiring. With over 250,000 followers and a highly successful podcast under her belt, where I will soon be a guest. Mimi's pragmatic approach to motivation has earned her comparisons to industry giants like Mel Robbins. Join us as we explore Mimi's secrets to success from scaling an eight-figure app in just two years to transforming health, career, and life as a whole.

Plus, discover the power of visualization, building healthy relationships, how activation energy can alter all aspects of our well-being, and falling in love with yourself, all from someone who's been there and done it herself. Don't miss out on this opportunity to glean valuable insights and motivation from Mimi's journey. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin.

I am absolutely thrilled today to have Mimi Bouchard on passion struck. Welcome Mimi. John, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited for this conversation. I am so excited as well. And recently, I don't know what it is, but I have been interviewing a lot of Canadians, and specifically people from Toronto, which I've spent some time there. It's a fantastic city. And it's where you grew up. But what influenced you when you were just 18 years old, to leave home and move to England?

That's a great question. I really wanted to do something quite dramatic. I went through a pretty hard time in my teenage years. I just lost myself and was partying a lot, doing a lot of drugs, just very much a completely different person to who I am today, to who I was meant to be. And I decided when I first got into this personal development journey at around 17, 18 years old, I got into it quite young, almost a decade ago. I really just decided that I needed to be

in a different environment. I started reading all of these personal development books. I started to listen to all of the gurus on YouTube, the Tony Robbins and all, and I just had this deep gut feeling that I needed to move to a different country to kind of reinvent myself. And that being said, looking back,

I think I definitely could have done it while being in the same city, but I was just at a point where I wanted radical change and I decided to go somewhere far away that spoke English and London was kind of where my mind landed. As a Canadian, you could get a two year working visa. And I kind of went there. I saved up all summer working at a restaurant,

moved there on a whim and tried to make my dreams happen. I'm interested to hear then how once you moved there, you found yourself on the reality TV show, Made in Chelsea. Yes, it was quite a whirlwind because when I first moved to London, I was 19 and I was working four or five jobs trying to make ends meet. Rent was really expensive,

especially coming from Canadian dollar to British pounds. And I was broke. Like I was self-sufficient since I left home at 17 and I didn't really have any money. So I was working at a juice bar from 6 a.m. to noon. And then I'd go and work at a styling agency from noon to five. And then I would take the tube across the city and go nanny at this Italian family's home

and nanny the kids until 10 p.m. And then work on my online magazine, which was my first entrepreneurial venture right after that. And I was just a pure hustler. I'd also go dog walking to make extra money. Like I was just really picking up jobs wherever I could. And as my online magazine grew and I was really working towards that being my first big break. I started recording videos on YouTube and for my online magazine. And I realized I really liked being on camera. So I thought to myself as my visa was now going to expire in a year, I'd been in

London for a year living this type of life, working endlessly and really hustling at that point. I remember at one point during that time in my life, I only had $8 in my bank account and I was late for my job at the juice bar. And I had to call my sister who was in Australia at the time, I had just missed the bus. I was going to be late. I didn't have time to wait for the next bus

and I couldn't be late and I didn't have money for an Uber. And I remember her ordering me like a six or $7 Uber from Australia. And that was like the lowest point in my life. I really just felt like I was working so hard and not really seeing results. So how that kind of turned into this TV show opportunity, I realized I needed to get a new visa to stay in London

and I wanted a new opportunity. I was always looking for opportunities at that time. And I met at an event, this woman, and she then became my agent later that year. I met her and I said to her, I want to get into TV presenting. I really like being on camera. I want to be a presenter and hopefully being a presenter will get me a visa to stay in the UK. And she looked at me and she said, Mimi, there's no way you're going to become a

presenter in England. They like a British accent. It also is a really difficult industry to get into. But if you can get onto this TV show made in Chelsea, I will represent you right away. You'll start making more money and I can assure you that they'll get you a visa. So then my eyes were set on getting on the show and I met someone who knew someone and it just kind of happened. So that was kind of my first, it was definitely the beginning of my journey.

This was almost 10 years ago. That being said, I was on the show for two years. I was a side character for most of it, but it still exposed me to so many opportunities and it really helped me grow up quite quickly at that young age being on such a crazy TV show. That's interesting. I live here in St. Petersburg, which is close to some of the best beaches

on this side of the United States. We have a St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, et cetera. And there've been a couple of TV shows that were filmed here. And I happened to be getting lunch with a friend of mine one day when this television crew just comes into this random eatery that we were at because it was on the water, which I think made a difference. But they started setting up on this table that was about 15

feet away from us. And as they were setting up, I noticed that some of the stars, because I didn't know this show, were sitting around me, and they were all separate from each other. happened, a couple of them kind of clustered together. And then they just sat down and started having this ad hoc type of discussion over lunch at this table where they started arguing and doing these other things. And I guess I wanted to ask you how much of that is scripted and how much of it just comes out of a natural flow. So it depends on the show, but it really shouldn't be called reality

because from my experience, it's not. There are Xs on the ground where to go stand. You're being briefed by a producer, almost to the extent you don't have a script, but you are being briefed and told essentially if you want to do well in this scene, if you want to be able to film more, if you want to be able to make more money,

because the more you film, the more money you make, and they pay like crap, by the way. I was getting paid 50 pounds a day for filming for a 12 hour day when I first started. And they tell you, they push you in a manipulative way, really take advantage of young kind of weaker people. And I was that at the time, I was really young,

and I just kind of did what they told me to, because they were also dangling this Visa over my head and I just said, you know what? I never thought I would ever do a TV show This is probably the classiest reality show you could ever do made in Chelsea it's like the hills but in it's an affluent area in London that they film these young supposedly rich kids It was so funny John because I was literally going to babysit at night after filming all day, because I could not make rent. It was such a double life, because on the outside,

they try to make you seem like you come from a family of wealth when my parents were struggling artists. I didn't have that, but they really wanted to position you in a certain way for the show. This show was not very real. There were some things that were real, but a lot of it wasn't because the cast was pressured to make up storylines to get more filming days booked.

Yeah, this thing this whole thing was so surreal for me because St. Pete Beach where we were is a really laid back area. I'm talking flip flops and people wearing probably shirts they slept in the day before and not really caring and they film the scene with the two guys driving up in like a Lamborghini or Ferrari and then they looked like they were more South Beach than they were anything to do with us. So the whole thing to me just didn't flow with where they were at. But anyway, well, I want to get into some of your backstory about your transition because we talk a lot about being stuck on this podcast, but oftentimes we're talking to people who are much further into their life when they realize that they're on a really difficult and wrong path to where they want to be. And for you, you realize the shift when you're in your teens,

but even when you realize you need to make a shift, oftentimes the most difficult thing you can do is to take that first step. Was there a fundamental realization that led you to even make that step? Yes, I had reached my breaking point. I had felt so disconnected to my real self. This is in my late teens. Again, I went through everything very young. John, I started drinking and doing drugs at

like 12 years old. Like I was really young and I don't know why. I think it was just, I was growing up in a big city and I had bad influences around me and I felt very much like I didn't belong. I was always kind of a different kid and I think I started getting really insecure about how I was a bit more quirky and just different at the core. I felt when I was my early teens, I really just kind of went down the wrong road and everything from drugs, alcohol, to eating disorder, self-harm, like I really was not in a good place. And when I reached 17, 18 years old, I started to realize after kind of being exposed to just some preliminary personal development content,

I started just to realize that there was like another way that I could be living my life. I could be living my life in a way where I didn't feel like a victim, in a way where I could actually design what my future would look like. So personal development, I just started getting really into and it was like this new big thing

that I just felt so much awe towards. And to answer your question, what was that breaking point for me? What really made me make that initial switch was feeling like crap. It was waking up and hating myself and realizing that I can't live like this. It doesn't work. Like I can't do this sustainably.

I'm also not happy. I also hate myself. So I need to change something. I started really diving into the work. And back then, this was a decade ago. Personal development wasn't that cool. So it was just like something that I didn't really talk about at first.

And I just started reading these books and listening to these mentors online. And I just got really talk about at first. And I just started reading these books and listening to these mentors online. And I just got really into it. I, at one point just locked myself in my room and tried to figure out what I wanted in my life. I didn't know what career I wanted. I had no direction. And this is right before I moved to London.

I locked myself in my room and I just got an empty journal and I just wrote for days and days. I barely left that room and I just got an empty journal and I just wrote for days and days. I barely left that room and I just figured it out. I was like, okay, what am I good at? What am I not good at? What can I try doing? Because I've now realized since reading these books that there's more for me out there.

I've now realized that little voice inside of me that kept telling me this doesn't really feel like me every time I would make a decision that was unaligned. I started listening to that voice more and the more that I listened to it, the more it became louder and louder. So for me, it was just this very steady ambition that I started to uncover at that time. This ambition of living a bigger life, this just like excitement about living a different life. And I started to think about what I could become. Like I felt like I was at this fresh slate in my life where I just could take many different routes and I could design this future of mine. And it just started getting quite

exciting for me. So I would say that I physically felt like crap and mentally felt like crap. And I just decided it's time to change. And at first it didn't happen instantly. I'd go back to the old habits and I was in this kind of dance of going out and partying with my friends and then trying to do a morning routine in the morning. Like it really wasn't linear, this journey, it was up and down.

And then over the years it became more and more, I guess, linear trajectory, like a higher rate of transformation over the years. The more you do it, the better you get. So that's really high level how it happened. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And at least in my case and in the case of some people I've talked to, I think there's

a voice we often hear, and I call it our louder voice, that is often telling us, keep doing what you're doing. You're doing enough. You're making progress. You've got money. You're doing enough, you're making progress, you've got money, you've got comfort, whatever it is. And I think there's a quieter voice that's inside us all that is more difficult to hear unless you're doing the work around introspection

and really trying to get that self-awareness about yourself. Do you find that to be true as well? Absolutely. But I do think that which is the real voice. If you just tune into your intuition, I think which is the real you. And I always say that this journey of self-development is more about unbecoming what you're not, than it is becoming something that you've never been. So my theory is that just like an onion, as I was becoming my best self, my future self, the life that I live now, I was peeling back the layers of the onion

and removing all those things that I never was that I just took on. Things that society told me to be, things that I thought would help me be more liked, things that maybe an old friend taught me to do. For example, I had a friend at 12 years old teach me how to make myself throw up, but those things aren't yours. And I think when you do this work, and you

really think about it as unbecoming, you feel more like it's meant for you. Because I can tell you right now, John, I feel more connected to that little girl that I used to be at six, seven, eight years old before I was all messed up from the world. I feel more like her than ever before now. And I can honestly say that reconnection is such a big part of this journey. And it's such a big part of creating success and happiness in your life. For me, when I first embarked on this personal development journey, it was because of more of the materialistic things. I wanted to make a ton of

money and I wanted to look better. I wanted to lose weight in a healthy way. I wanted to start loving myself. I wanted to clear my skin. I wanted the physical things. And of course, all of that happened. I've done a complete 180 in all those departments. I am the healthiest I've ever been. I have a completely different relationship with myself. I went from $8 in my bank account to now being worth tens of millions of dollars at 27 years old. It's really crazy actually what this can do for the outside external stuff, but really looking back, experiencing this dramatic life transformation, I have truly realized that it's more about me connecting with that truest version of myself, no matter what everything else looks like.

It is so interconnected, healing and finding success. Yeah, and I think that's an important thing to maybe explore just a little bit more. There's something I often talk about on the show called self-discrepancy theory, which is the three selves that we all have, our actual self, which is who we are in this moment, the odd self, which is who we think we should be in the ideal self, which is who we could be. And so oftentimes we go down the path of becoming our odd self. How were you able to, instead

of going down that path, as you're talking about these qualities and characteristics that you aspired to have in your life, how did you make those choices between not listening to what you think you should be doing, but actually doing the things that you wanted to drive you to that dream that you talked about as a little girl you wanted to become? Because I think that's a very difficult thing for many people to do because we're drawn to do the things that result in us becoming our own self. So for the first five years of my personal development journey, so from 17, 18 years old for those following five years, I did things the way that everyone else was telling me to. I was really consumed with those books.

Like I was saying, I was trying to do the morning routine, the visualization, the 5 a.m. club. I was trying to do all of that. And I was growing, but at a very slow pace. Over the past three, four years post that, or actually the five years post that, I'm like, timing is always, I'm not good at calculating timing,

but the five years post that, I have grown in such a different trajectory compared to the first five years because I've actually honed in on what truly works for me. So I'll give you some backstory and then I'll tell you exactly what I did. When I was first reading all those books and really inundating my mind with these new concepts and principles and theories, I did exactly what they said. So I would write down in journal my visualizations. I would really try to act as if and embody the energy of who I wanted to be.

But I didn't do it in a way where I could maintain it because I wasn't embodying that in everyday moments. So what I started to do, and everyone told me to meditate and I tried so hard, John, I was like really trying to do this visualization thing every morning and meditate. And I'd stick to it sometimes that I was never consistent. Like I was consistent with the other things. And I think I just told myself back then that I, my brain works too quickly. I can't focus. I want to, it was too boring to do the traditional

meditation. So what I intuitively decided to do, this was around five years ago, is I took my phone out and I opened the voice memo app on my phone. And while I was journaling, like my visualizations and really trying to understand who I wanted to become and the version of me I aspired to be, I started recording me speaking that out loud. So I started to record me describing my future life like it was already in the present moment. And I take these audios and I would listen to them in everyday moments. I would listen to it on repeat while I was cooking breakfast, walking to the gym, going into the bus, making my bed in the morning, brushing my teeth,

getting ready. I would just listen to it in the background of my life. And I started to see significant changes happen after that point. And I was fascinated with how this was genuinely helping me make different decisions, just listening to these audios. I started getting so familiar with my future self by doing this. And everything I had done the previous five years, just like it all came into clarity for me.

This was thing that emulated all these other things I was learning. So the visualization that was so important because you really need to understand where you're going. You need to feel what it feels like before you get there and then do the habits that version of you does. Cause I believe that to get to where you want to be in life, you must first become the kind of person that has it. So I started listening to these audios and I get bored of them really quickly and then I record more. And then I started getting into podcasting. So I would record them on my podcasting mic and then I'd add music because

I love the power of music. I've always been the kind of person that really felt an energetic difference when I'm listening to very beautiful, like cinematic music. So I kind of just started creating these like types of audios that I'd listened to. And it was just part of my personal growth journey. And since then,

I started getting these amazing ideas for business. I started having all these opportunities fall into my lap. I started to truly become opportunities fall into my lap. I started to truly become the person I wanted to be from a self-image perspective. Self-image psychology is something that we need to talk about more in the personal growth space because it truly is the core regarding how to transform. If you, for example, want to start running every morning, but you don't identify as a runner. You don't have the self image of a runner. It is going to be so hard for you to get up and put your running shoes on and go for a run. What if you hack the system? What if

you start to embody the energy of the version of you that is a runner? What if you started listening to audio saying, this is my new belief, these are my new thoughts. And just like playing with the idea of this actually just becoming a part of your self image, a part of you, and then see how much easier it is to get up and go for a run. And this happens with everything in your life.

If you identify as the type of person that is healthy, that takes care of their body, guess what? It's not gonna be hard to drive by the McDonald's and not even think about it, because that's not food to you if you are a very health conscious person. I don't crave unhealthy food because I identify as someone that just loves eating

healthy, good quality food. And this happens in every other area. I had to identify as the type of person that became a millionaire before I ever became one. I started making decisions like a millionaire. I started acting and speaking and holding myself like a millionaire. And then these things just started happening. We have to reverse engineer the process to make it easier. So I started listening to these audios and then that kind of literally was the thing that turned into my company, Superhuman.

I have an app called Superhuman and we offer these activations. So that's what these audios are. They're called activations and they're not meditation. Meditation is meant to calm your mind and help you not think about anything. But activations are designed to invigorate you, to transform you into your future self, to help you rewire old thoughts and beliefs. And the beautiful thing about activations and why they work better than any other type of audio to help you transform is because when you listen to them, you listen to them in everyday moments, the mundane.

You listen to them when you're walking the dog. You listen to them when you're getting ready in the morning. Whatever mundane moment in your life that you decide to listen to a superhuman activation, that is when your neural pathways start to rewire and change because you are mixing a new thought and a new belief with an everyday action. And just like the Pavlov dog theory, if you listen to a getting ready activation every morning, when you're getting ready for your day and getting dressed and you listen to this and you actually feel the energy of your future and you just feel that new positive energy, you feel up level

and you feel abundant, you feel happy, you feel confident. You don't even need to listen to the activations after a certain point to feel the difference. It is programming you in these everyday moments. That is what makes it so effective. It's habit stacking. It's not hard to change with this. And this is the biggest realization I had, John, because I was trying so hard.

I didn't think there was an easy way until I found this. And I was never the type of person that could be perfect. I never had one perfect day once in this entire journey over the past decade. And I truly believe it's not actually about perfection. It's about your bounce back rate. It's about how quickly you can bounce back after a setback. No one's perfect, not the most successful, beautiful, happiest people in the world. None of them have ever had one perfect day where they wake up at 5 a.m. They have a cold plunge. They eat perfectly organic. They don't think one negative thought. They don't procrastinate. No one is like that. So we need to start talking about this more. And the thing that gets you to bounce back quickly is by reminding yourself of who you want to be, whether that's with activations, whether that's with reminders on your phone. At the beginning of your journey, you need to remind yourself continuously because that is how you actually get to where you want to be. Yeah. What inspiring advice. And I have Gabby Bernstein coming on the show on Tuesday. And

I know that this whole activation and talking to the universe, bringing that positive energy is part of what she credits her success story on as well and teaches in a lot of the work that she does and speeches that she gives. I want to hone in on this just through one more lens. I have a 25-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter and the 25-year-old and many of his friends right now have gone down the historical path where you go to college and you start working for someone and they are very concerned about

their future, AI displacing their jobs, et cetera. What would you say to people who are facing that? And they could be Gen Zers like them or younger millennials. This is a big part of my audience. If they're fearful about these things, how would you approach it? What would you recommend to them? And what do they need to start doing differently? That is such a great question.

And actually one that I've never answered before. I can completely resonate by the way, it's hard. I remember the moment where I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I really wanted to choose a path where I would find success and that pressure we put on ourselves is really hard. So the advice I would give is, first of all, the fear I, comes out of feeling unworthy, of feeling doubtful of one's abilities. If you truly love this one thing, this one type of role, this one type of industry job, and you truly can see a vision to make this world better in a certain way, I think that AI cannot replace you. AI can replace, let's say, a bus driver or a garbage man, or even writers,

like the chat CPT stuff. Like it's definitely going to influence our world, but I would actually urge the listeners to see it in a positive way, to not see this as a threat, to see the rise of AI as actually a really incredible opportunity to take advantage of the beautiful technology being discovered right now for your own potential career or business. It is easier than ever to start a business. And especially with all these AI capabilities, like you don't have to maybe hire, if you want to be an entrepreneur, a copy lot of AI is used for that now. If you don't want to be an entrepreneur, cause that's also okay, it's not for everyone. It's a really different type of life.

I would just look for a quite forward thinking company that doesn't do things the old way. The only thing AI is gonna do is it's going to hinder the growth of companies that don't do things in a modern way. It's going to hinder the growth of companies that don't do things in a modern way. It's going to make everything easier. And that means that companies that aren't evolving with the times are going to be affected.

So my advice is to see it in a different light, number one, and position it as an actual huge opportunity to help you create something that you desire, number one. And number two, I would actually look deeper into why you're feeling self-doubt regarding your capabilities. Are you even clear about what you want is another one?

Clarity is everything. A lot of us think that we're clear, but we actually haven't even sat down and written about our future goals and written about what we could create if we really reached our ultimate potential. I think just brainstorming, putting pen to paper is so deeply transformative.

It was a huge part of my journey, especially at the beginning. And I can tell you that we have guided writing activations on Superhuman that will help you by giving you specific journal prompts to help you get clear. And we do have that, but I will also say you don't even need Superhuman

to get clear. All you need to do is get a journal, we do have that, but I will also say you don't even need superhuman to get clear, all you need to do is get a journal, get a pen and just free, right? Put your phone on, do not disturb, turn it off. Just write, even if you don't know what to write. And we live in such a world of distraction right now. And it's so hard to focus. We're always on our phones or a distracted technology or listening to the news, or there's always something going on. There is something so beautiful about turning off that noise and just being with

yourself and getting really familiar with what you actually desire deep down and it gets those creative juices flowing. So that's my biggest piece of advice. If you don't have clarity, right, put an hour aside in your day and put your phone off and just write. You'll learn so much about yourself. You'll be amazed. I appreciate you sharing that. I always tell him and others that ask me thing I would do is what I'm doing myself is I'm fully immersing myself with AI because I want to understand how it gives me a competitive advantage. because I want to understand how it gives me a competitive advantage. What can I do differently? How can I speed up processes? How do I make my job more efficiently? And since it's going to be there for everyone to use, the more adept you are at using it, the more it's going to help you create

an edge over other people. The other thing I always try to tell him and others is you have to be thinking five to 10 years ahead and thinking about what is gonna be different in the future and then start aiming for that with the training that you can do, schooling, continual learning, because that's what's gonna keep you ahead. Even when I was growing up, there were things that we were afraid of,

but you can either allow that fear to ground you or you can take the steps to confront it and get ahead of it, which will constantly put you in a position of being ahead of the majority of people who are out there. Incredible. That's such great advice. And you're right. The times are evolving, but imagine how much you can create with that. It's like we're in the dot com boom again, almost like the whole, what was it 25 years ago when the internet really started to boom, there were so many opportunities, Amazon, all these huge Google, these huge companies came from that. We're living

in a time of opportunity and it's time to see it as that, not as a risk. living in a time of opportunity, and it's time to see it as that, not as a risk. Mimi, I wanna talk to you more about Superhuman. Before we get into it, I wanna talk about the transition into it. So if I have done my research correct, you started off with the Mimi method subscription platform, and then you happen to be sitting in your parked car

at a pivotal moment when you decided to fully commit to the superhuman brand. Can you take us back to that pinnacle point? Wow, John, you've done your research. I don't even remember talking about that, but you're right. Yes, that was a moment. I'll high level talk about since I last kind of shared on my journey earlier in the conversation. So I had done the TV show, I left when I could self sustain myself with collaborations and brand deals. I had gained a little bit of an Instagram audience from that show. And then I was starting my many different entrepreneurial journeys from there.

I worked in TV other than that show and I had a huge business from that almost happened. That was a long story for another time, but essentially at 21 years old, I had created another TV show that got sold to one of the biggest networks in the US and last minute, something messed up in the contract and someone pulled out and that failed. So I was definitely in this era of hustling after that show and really wanting to make something very big of my life. So that was my first big business failure. And then I got into some other businesses.

I was involved in some online education companies that didn't end up working. And I just kept trying things and I kept failing and that's completely normal. You will never reach success without failing. So I invited it in and I kept going. And I started to really at that time, start sharing more about personal development. And I started building a community around that online. And I decided that I wanted to create a subscription

platform to share some workouts, some healthy recipes, and then also to add extra value to the subscription, I added these activations kind of right at the bottom of the subscription. I had never shared them publicly before. I had never shared them with the world because I was doing them for years. As I mentioned, I was listening to my own for years

and I was adding music and I made them really good. And so I finally just decided on this subscription platform that I launched called Mimi Method just to add these activations right at the bottom to see if anyone liked them. And it was never part of my plan to have an app all about activations called superhuman. But then after three months of launching Mimi method, I realized that I can see

the numbers in the backend and the activations were doing better than any other content on that platform. And this platform was a very low lift, cheap thing. Like I was using a third party platform to host the videos on. So I didn't really have much money at the time. I was maybe making five, maybe 10 grand a month from the subscription platform at the beginning and brand deals. It was still quite inconsistent. Some months I'd make two grand and be struggling with groceries. And the next month I maybe make eight. It was very

inconsistent. I had my podcast back then as well. So the subscription model really enticed me as a business person because it's consistency, which was like the thing that I had craved my whole life. I had very inconsistent income until then. So I launched, maybe method, the activations were kicking off. And I like really looked in the mirror one day and I thought, okay, I think I have something here. I think I have product market fit with this one thing activations. It's different to what else is out there. And the workouts, the recipes, everyone has that. Every creator has that. I really can start seeing a vision of what this activation thing could become. And yes, I was in a car parked talking to someone on the phone. I was talking to a woman that I was working with.

I hired her for some marketing stuff. And I really came to the conclusion on that call that there could be something quite big in this activation audio space because it's never existed. And I couldn't reinvest all the money that I'd made from Mimi Method in those past three months and create a custom app and call it something different. Take myself out of it. Mimi Method it sets me as an influencer. I didn't really want to be an influencer anymore at that point. I wanted to be more behind the scenes. I had also realized, so I wanted to create a company that could be a global household name without being attached to me.

I didn't want it to be about me. I wanted it to be about transforming people's lives. So in that car, parked car, all the biggest revelations happen in park cars, I feel like I have always sat in a parked car and like really thought about my life deeply. That also happened before I moved to London. But anyway, yeah, I decided I want to create a custom app. And I hustled like crazy trying to find developers that could do it for a good deal for me. And then I really started building this concept. I hired this marketing

team to really create this brand with me. And I wanted the brand to be vibrant. And I wanted it to be energizing and inspiring because this is not a meditation app as much as meditation can be beneficial to help you de-stress. This is a transformation app. This is for the type of person that wants to literally become the highest version of themselves and to transform from being the old self to the future self. So I needed everything about it to embody this understanding that this is for transformation. So I spent the next six months working tirelessly on this brand. I spent all of my savings.

I believed in this so much after six months of Mimi method, it started really kicking off these activations started going viral. And I was probably doing 20 K a month at that point. And I invested all of that back into the business. And then I relaunched as superhuman and I only offered activations and over the past almost three years since launching superhuman. It has been the most growth that I've ever experienced in my life

professionally, financially, personally. I now have a team of like over a dozen people. I like, we have tens and tens of thousands of users. I have a whole team of audio engineers. The company is doing insanely well. As I mentioned earlier, it's the company is worth a huge amount now. And I really do believe that the success of the company came from the product being so needed and so good. We had amazing product market fit from the beginning. We hadn't even started paying for marketing until two months ago.

The first two and a half years of the business, we didn't pay a cent for marketing. It was all word of mouth. And for a subscription business, having low churn, which means like a low rate of people unsubscribing and growing so much to tens and tens of thousands of users just from word of mouth is a pretty unique situation to be in the more I learn about the SaaS space.

So I just feel so proud that I was able to, you know, create something that was new and different because having that uniqueness was so important. There are so many copies of everything out in the world. Activations, you can only find them on Superhuman. We actually own all the IP to it. And it's a new type of audio that's like a mix between guided visualization, motivational, cinematic music.

And it's kind of like a motivational podcast kind of mixed with a visualization. It's a very unique form of audio. And it is, they're meticulously made with different frequencies in the background with this beautiful cinematic music that makes you feel like you're in a movie. And then these guided visualizations

that just remind you of who you want to be. It's so unique. And I think that the fact that I was able to create this from a need I had in myself and I had the confidence to share those initial versions with the world. And they were like, Oh my gosh, what's this walking activation? This is like changing my life. And it was, I listened to the customer from day one and that I believe that the success of the business is our customers talking about it to their friends, changing their own lives with it. We have people message us every day. We have a dozen, at least messages a day. My customer service team or our social team receives people saying, Oh my goodness, I have just changed my life in the past 60 days. I committed to one activation a day. This crazy thing happened.

I started this business and then this opportunity came up or I met my husband or all these crazy things happen when you change your energetic set point, when you embody the self image of your future self. And from my research, these activations are a really good way to get to that point. What an incredible background and story and congratulations on the success.

I have to ask what role did resourcefulness play when you were starting the Mimi method and then getting into the launch of superhuman? Can you share any specific instances where you had to think outside of the box and that proved instrumental? Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Resourcefulness is my middle name. And I've also bootstrapped this company fully myself, by the way, from day one. I have been doing it

fully with my own savings. I didn't come from savings. I really had to build and it's a long game. But one of the best things I've done, if we've had a month where we've had to spend a lot, whether it's on development or hiring, um, once a year, I've been doing these retreats. I don't even know if I'm going to do it this year, cause there's just so much work, but when I needed the money to invest in like a new app or a new

technology, cause we spend a lot on software, like it's a tech company. I will host retreats. And the first retreat that I hosted, I designed a whole website with my team and I was gonna do like a five day retreat in Arizona. It was going to be a luxury retreat. And we had this whole trip planned. The tickets sold out within two days, which was crazy.

I wasn't expecting it, because I was only used to selling lower ticket items, like our app, it's an app. It's not a thousand dollars a month. So this retreat, it was a higher ticket item. It was, it ranged from, I think it was $7,000 a ticket to $12,000 a ticket. It was all in all included. It was very luxury.

And I remember my first retreat, we wanted to make a bit of money to invest in a new app. And I launched this and that was the first time I we wanted to make a bit of money to invest in a new app. And I launched this and that was the first time I made six figures in a day after launching this retreat. And that retreat brought in the quarter of a million dollars for a five day retreat. And it was really crazy. So I knew the power of doing things like that. That's on a big scale of resourcefulness because obviously I wanted to build a new half a million

or quarter of a million dollar app and I needed the money for it. So in that sense, I think big when it comes to the beginning phases, the resourcefulness is really just translated into taking it one step at a time. I wasn't ever going to just launch superhuman and with the concept that activations might work, it's from a business perspective, you need to see if you have product market fit or not. So many companies are pre-revenue and they raise like tens of millions of dollars. And that's so stupid to me. Like as an investor, I would never do that because you don't even know if the product's going to do well.

Start small, even if it means being budget, even if it means using a third party platform where you pay $500 a month to have your videos hosted on there and then promote it to the people that you know, your audience and see if it actually works. See if people actually like it. And if it does, then you can reinvest more and then you build the confidence over time to reinvest in what matters. I am resourceful, but I also have gut feelings that I listen to a lot. If I have a gut feeling something will work. My gut is usually right. And I have learned to listen to my intuition over the years. It wasn't always right. And sometimes I still will misjudge it, but I'm very confident in my gut reaction now. So for example, if I have an opportunity with the business

where I need to pay a certain amount, I will listen to my gut and truly most of the time it works in my favor. Well, thank you for sharing that Mimi. And one of the things in order to this, for this to have been successful as it is, you had to have a creative process for visualization and then manifesting your goals. How do you yourself harness the power of activation and energy on a daily basis? What are some of the ways that you use it and how do you see daily benefits from it? Well, John, it's actually a lot more simple than we think.

And this is coming from the girl that read every self-help book, that tried doing it all, that overwhelmed myself essentially with all of this work. I have simplified it down so much so that I don't even really do a morning routine anymore. And I'm seeing results right, left and center from the work I'm doing. And that is simply, and this might sound a little bit rude to some listeners and listen, I am more pragmatic and science-based than I am spiritual. I'm kind of live in the middle. I like to say that atheists will call it the placebo effect. Christians will call it God prayer.

Scientists will call it quantum physics and spiritualists will call it the law of attraction. It's all the same thing with different words. All I know the simplicity of it all is your energy creates your life, your thoughts, your beliefs, how you hold yourself, your self image, your identity, the energy that you embody inside and around you

is what determines your future. So when I think about what I want, and even today, I need to activate, I need to activate that future self inside of me. I need to embody her. I need to act as if I'm already her. I always have aspirations to be a better and better version of myself.

But I also learned to love the moment as well. That was something that I needed to learn over the years. There's this very beautiful balance of both. We're ambitious creatures, humans. We need to want something to have a goal to try to succeed. But we also need to learn to enjoy the life that we have in the moment as well. I'm just going on a tangent now, but going back to the point,

really the thing that you need to do, the thing that I do every day, part of my morning or my daily routine is simply embodying the energy of who I wanna be and whether that is an activation that helps me get there, whether that is journaling, whether that is putting my phone away in the morning and sipping my coffee on my balcony and just having a moment for myself.

It is just the understanding and the education, the knowledge that my energy creates my life so that in everyday moments, I can check in with myself and think, how am I feeling? It is about feeling, not about thinking. A lot of people make the mistake of visualizing by just thinking about what they want. The trick is that you need to feel what you want.

That is why so many people try quote manifestation and it doesn't work because they have a vision board with all of the posters of things from the magazines that they want, the car, the this, the that, but they don't even know what it feels like to be wealthy. The trick is feeling. And that is why activations are so fricking powerful. The mix of emotive music and the powerful words change how you feel and how you feel creates your life.

So that's what I'll say to your answer. It's not about having a 10 step morning routine coming from the girl that used to have that, it is not about old plunging and fasting and blah, blah, blah. That's all great, but it's at the core about how you feel your energetic frequency. And if you can actually acknowledge the feelings of your future before getting there. Podcast I was listening to to prepare for this was my friend, Terry Cole, and I've been on her show as well, love the work she does around healthy boundaries. And so it leads me to this question, building relationships is so crucial for our personal lives, our professional lives. I'm sure it's been key to

your success as well. What advice do you have for listeners for creating healthy boundaries and fostering positive dynamics with others? Such a great question. I love Terry's work. Boundaries are something that I've actually needed to work on over the past few years, especially. I've always been the type of person that just says yes to everything

that wants to help in every area. But I think the more that I've really respected myself to create these bigger boundaries when it comes to work, when it comes to my employees, when it comes to my friends, the better my life has become. So my advice, I guess I can just share what I've learned myself. It's like the stronger your relationship with yourself, with your soul, with you and the better you get at setting boundaries because you feel connected with yourself, you respect yourself more than anything else.

And that's the most important. So if, for example, you want to start improving your life and you have some old friends that keep wanting to drag you out and they have the habit of drinking a lot and partying and you kind of are just over that at this point. That kind of happened to me at one point in my personal development journey. I just didn't want to go out and drink anymore. It didn't make me feel good. I felt like I took three steps backwards whenever I would do it. So I had to start creating these boundaries between me and some people in my life and relationships. And I had to try to do it in a way where it wouldn't hurt the other person just in a very and relationships. And I had to try to do it in a way

where it wouldn't hurt the other person just in a very loving way. I love you and I wanna see you, but unfortunately this is just not the lifestyle I want anymore, so let's try to do something else instead. And it would actually distance me from the people that didn't wanna do things that weren't aligned with them. They wouldn't necessarily just wanna go for coffee

instead of going out and those were party friends and that's okay. So with friendships, I had to create boundaries. And I'm lucky enough that the people closest to me in my life now, like my fiance, my sister, my best friends, my mom, the people that are really closest to me in my life, my parents, like I just love my family so much. I think the more that I've done this work, the more that I just want to be with people that make me feel like this is what matters in my life. So relationship wise, I don't feel like I have any thing that I need to create boundaries for. I feel very blessed, but it's really the place where I have to create the most boundaries is

old friends that maybe don't have the same principles as me, which I don't really have many of anymore. And then employees and people that I meet giving my time to strangers. I often, I'm quite introverted and I now have really realized that to get to the next level, I need to not say yes to as many things. So I've started working on that as well, but I'll tell you something. I'm not as good at boundary setting as Terry is I'm working on it. I don't think many of us are, hence why she is the boundary expert.

Well, Mimi, I thought we would end today by having you talk to the audience about your great podcast, which I can't wait to be on. Thank you, John. I'm so excited to have you on, by the way. I have had this podcast going for honestly almost seven years now. I've been like one of the OG podcasters and I've just kept quite consistent with it. It was it kind of, I went in and out of it being my main focus and now I am a little bit less consistent.

I used to do two times a week, but now I'm doing at least one time a week just because my business has taken up a lot of my time. But that means that the episodes that I do release are quite powerful. Maintaining quality is something that has always been so important to me and my brand, anything that I put out into the world. And the podcast has been one of the best pieces of growth for me because a, I've gotten to meet the most incredible people. I actually initially started my podcast almost seven years ago so that I could meet these mentors that I was so obsessed with when I started my journey. I wanted to have

an excuse to have a conversation with them. So I started the podcast to just let you more inspired. And it was a really great thing because you can go back to the first few episodes. I sound completely different. I'm a completely different human. Just like on my YouTube, my first videos, I was a completely different human. And this was the beginning of my journey. And you could just see the evolution over the years. Now I think we're almost at 500 episodes or something. And it's pretty incredible. So the podcast is all about personal development and interviews with incredible people that help, that can help you transform your life and improve your life. And there are some businessy episodes and there are a lot of audios that I also take from my YouTube and it's just all value.

And I'm so excited, John, to have you on in a few weeks. It'll be an amazing conversation. Maybe thank you so much for joining us today on passion struck for listeners who have made it this far and want to learn more about you. What is the best place for them to do that? Absolutely. So you can find me on Instagram at Mimi Bouchard. And if you want to try superhuman activations, we actually have a secret discount going on at the moment on a specific landing page on the website. You can only get the discount on the website, not on the app store. because Apple doesn't let you do discounts.

But for all the podcasts that I guest on, I do a secret code. So the link is activations.com slash podcast. And there you can get over 60% off our memberships, which is crazy because we really don't offer discounts very often. But make sure to go check out Superhuman there. We have a two week free trial, a money back guarantee. It's super low risk to try the activations and there's literally nothing else like it. I would just take advantage of the free trial and just try it out. And you can go get that on activations.com slash podcast. And

then me on Instagram at Mimi Bouchard on my podcast at just Mimi. And my YouTube is just my name, Mimi Bouchard. Mimi, such a fun interview. Thank you so much for sharing your guidance. And it was truly an honor to have you. Thank you again for coming on. Thank you, John. So excited to have you on again.

And I really appreciate your time. What an incredible interview that was with Mimi Bouchard and you can find everything Mimi at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

Videos are on YouTube at our main channel, at John R. Miles on our clips channel, Passion Struck Clips. Please go subscribe and join over a quarter million subscribers. You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles where I post daily bits of inspiration. And if you want to express your courage muscle, then please join the Passion Struck Challenge. And you can do that by signing up for our weekly newsletter called Live Intentionally, which you can do at passionstruck.com. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast with none other than Oz Garcia, a renowned authority on healthy aging and nutritional science.

Oz is a trusted advisor to world-class athletes, as well as A-list celebrities. And he will share his cutting edge insights on how not to just live longer, but to thrive with vitality. When you solve the problem where you're going to get food from, right, the whole keto calorie phenomenon is gone. You're not only to hunt for our food, you can go to McDonald's and for six, seven, eight bucks, you can get 3,800 calories right in one meal. That trigger to keep eating, now it's going full circle. Now it's fully triggered. And so the mechanism to actually keep eating is now working to keep eating. So you have an obese culture,

and you and I both know that being over in this country is epidemic. Type two diabetes is epidemic. The rise of cancer among younger people now is baffling. The weak immune systems that people have, the high amount of neuroinflammatory problems that we suffer from, and a lot of it's the overconsumption of really crappy food all day long.

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your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion-struck.