The Entrepreneur DNA - Stop Building for Yourself: How to Build What the Market Wants | Michael Burcham

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Are you ready to stop treating your startup like a side project and start building a scalable business? In this episode, Dr. Michael Burcham shares the hard-earned wisdom of a veteran who has transitioned from a physical therapist to a multi-million dollar private equity investor.   We dive deep into the mindset shifts required to go from a day job to a full-time founder, the critical importance of customer discovery, and why most investors won't touch your project until you have skin in the game. Michael breaks down the common mistakes technical founders make and how to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of anxiety and frustration that comes with the territory. You will learn how to differentiate your brand in a noisy market, the power of personal touches in networking, and how to align your vision with what investors are actually looking for. What You’ll Learn in This Episode Why most early-stage businesses are still just “projects” ● The biggest mistake founders make before launching ● Why investors care about paying customers more than perfect decks ● How to build awareness without wasting money ● Why failure is part of the entrepreneur DNA ● How to avoid chasing every opportunity ● Why your network can become your biggest growth engine ● How anxiety, insecurity, and frustration show up in business ● What investors see that founders often miss ● Why selling your company can trigger an identity crisis About Justin:   Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The Science of Flipping podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience.   Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence.   Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby About Michael Burcham Dr. Michael Burcham is an investor, author, business strategist, and private equity operator who has spent decades building, scaling, and advising high-growth companies. After starting his career in healthcare, he went on to build and grow multiple companies before transitioning into venture capital and private equity, where he now helps founders navigate growth, fundraising, leadership, and long-term business strategy. He is also the author of multiple books focused on startups, scaling, failure, and investor relationships. Connect with Dr. Michael Burcham: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michaelburcham Instagram: instagram.com/dr.michaelburcham  Website: www.michaelburcham.com Chapters 0:00 Intro and meeting Dr. Michael Burcham 3:15 The journey from physical therapy to private equity 6:30 Why relationships and local ecosystems matter 9:45 The biggest misconception for early stage founders 13:10 Diversifying your offerings and solving customer pain 16:20 The framework for launching a successful venture 19:40 Building awareness and the sales pipeline 23:05 How to differentiate your brand in a noisy market 26:30 The power of handwritten notes and networking 30:00 Projects vs businesses and getting investor attention 33:50 Learning from failure and the importance of grit 37:20 Managing the seven deadly emotions of entrepreneurship 41:00 Identity shifts and the new book Blood Sweat and Equity 44:49 Final thoughts and where to find Michael #entrepreneurship #startupgrowth #venturecapital #businessstrategy #entrepreneurmindset Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you still got your day job and you were walking around with a deck saying, when you fund me, I'll quit my job and do this. You need to just keep looking. I have zero interest in that. People don't want to talk about it. It's the failures. People don't want to hear about the challenges of business. You're going to find hardship.

You're going to be a challenge. You're going to lose money. You're a project until you have a paying customer. And most investors do not invest in projects. Every chapter is a contrast between how the investor sees this versus how you see this. I find so many people as entrepreneurs and founders. they wrap their entire identity in the business. And then when it comes time to sell it,

the separation of anxiety is unbelievable and they don't know what to do next. Dr. Michael Bircham, who not only has been named by President Obama the champion of change, but he is also, like we said, bootstrapped his beginnings as an entrepreneur and now sits into the private equity world, the venture capital world,

and helped a lot of us business owners and entrepreneurs scaled a couple hundred thousand dollars a year into the multi-million a year. I've had to accept that my life is a little different all along the way. And what I've learned was applied a little differently and I'm not trying to just do the next thing. Have you ever lost money on a venture? What is up? The Entrepreneur D&A family.

Welcome back to another incredible episode with another incredible guest. If you are someone who is a startup or is about to launch their company and is trying to grow in scale, you are going to want to listen to this because this gentleman and my guest, not only bootstress, his world of entrepreneurship, but now is on the PE side, private equity side, venture capital side. So he knows exactly what it takes to grow and scale their business. And as always, these episodes are brought to you by the entrepreneur DNA community. If you just go to the entrepreneur DNA.com, you will see there is a community built for you that my guest, such as the one we are about to listen to right now, will come in and help advise us on how we can

start, grow, and scale businesses, the entrepreneur way. So with all that said, I want to bring in my next guest, Michael, how are you? I'm great, Justin. Thanks for the opportunity to spend some time with you. Yes, thank you so much. And I'm going to call myself out to my audience. I bumbled the calendar a little bit. This should be in person.

And if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see we're virtual. But he's in my studio. He sacrificed to be here with you guys. And my calendar got messed up. And so I'm excited and happy that you're still here with us. Let's talk a little bit about your journey a little here. I think it's important for the early stage entrepreneur to know what it really takes to get to where Dr. Michael Berkong is today. Already have written three books, has a fourth on his way, sits in the private equity, VC area.

Talk a little bit of that journey that you took. Well, I think I'd spent several years working in the healthcare industry as a physical therapist. I always was working for someone else and had this incredible itch to have my own thing. So I decided I would break out and do something as a physical therapist as an entrepreneur, and that is to start buying and growing a physical therapy business. So the first company, Therapeutics, was one where I bought locations across three key. markets, Denver, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Pittsburgh, because they represented three very interesting types of markets that I believed a future buyer, which would largely be a large strategic

would want. And that first experience got me really hooked, and so it led to two more companies and along the way building an entrepreneurial community in my own town, Nashville, Tennessee, for the entrepreneurs there. Yeah, I see if we looked over your resume, you were very, you were very, very green in the community yourself. Does that play into some level of success, the network, people knowing who you are? Does it help to really be localized, or do you think that doesn't play into much of the success? I think if you're in a city where there are entrepreneurial opportunities, it matters. Relationships matter in entrepreneurship anyway. It's hard to scale

a company by yourself. And if you are in a community that has a great entrepreneurial ecosystem, you should absolutely take advantage of it. If you don't happen to live there, do it virtually, but absolutely make those relationships because you're only three to four degrees separated from anyone you need to know that could help you be successful. And you never know who you're sitting across from having coffee that can introduce you to the next opportunity. So do it. Funny you say that. I'm a big believer in talking about having coffee chats and setting up coffee chats. and it's the best way to get to know people and then for them to get to know you yeah and to do that you you've written a great book you've written three great books by the way and i know there's a

forthcoming that we want to talk about but part of some of these books is a person starting yeah and the things that they need to do or the misconceptions they may have what would you say the person the early stage entrepreneur they're just starting they're just getting rolling What's the biggest misconception they're telling themselves? I think the biggest challenge is they look at a situation or problem they have, and they design the company for themselves rather than for a marketplace. And while you feel the problem, if you don't do enough customer discovery and enough interviews, you'll be five or ten degrees off true north for success,

and you'll certainly design something you love, but you may not design anything the market wants to buy. And I think that's the most common mistake is you take your very first idea, your very first business model, you never adjust it and iterate it at all, and you take it to the market when a three or four time-enhanced version of this thing

would probably be better. Funny you say that. I was just with one of my mentors, and he was talking about having multiple options for your clientele, right? And not to be just a one-trick pony. And I thought, you know what I've thought about is, is Starbucks. What is Starbucks known for? Coffee.

Right. But every time I go to Starbucks, I'm getting a breakfast sandwich, I'm getting my daughter a, one of those cake pops. Sure. They've diversified my ability to spend time with them, to think about Starbucks beyond just coffee, right? So if my daughter and I are driving and she, it's just us, Daddy, I'm hungry. Yeah. Am I thinking about Starbucks? Absolutely.

So I think this diversification based around Starbucks's idea or concept was coffee, but now it's turned into almost this cafe. Yeah. Right? I think every entrepreneur venture starts with a single idea or a single concept. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's probably preferred to get the first thing right. But I also think you have to get the right thing first, which is go after the number one or number one. number two pain your customer has and then expand from there down the list of things that frustrate

them. If you start with something that's number five on the list, there was number one for you, you just don't get much traction. So start with something fairly high on the customer list of the problem they won't solve. And then you will find interesting ways to expand out from there, from that core issue to the complementary issues around that that you could also solve for them. And it gives you a better share of wallet, which makes your comparison of your customer acquisition costs to long-term customer value even better. So now you're talking to good stuff, right? Acquisition costs, lifetime value of client. So I'm sitting here.

If you guys are watching on YouTube, you will see the book, card cover. This book is beautiful, brother. Thank you so much. And he actually personally gave me a nice little note. And so I just want you to know the man this guy is, that's not a common thing in today's world. Michael, you and I both know people have lost some of that. What are we just thoughtfulness for lack of a better way saying? But let's talk about this book for a little bit because it quite literally is called creating and launching adventure.

Yeah. And you've gone through 20 chapters from building a team, the attitude that you have to have. What is the right framework, the sales pipeline, everything in between. I'd encourage everyone if you're launching, this is a book you must have. not it's a nice read this is a must walk me through the over you know high level concept of a handful of these right from the vital signs building for scale like some of these things what is this book about where are people going to buy this and really get in i mean there's quite little images ladies gentlemen this is a must have so let's let me tell you the origin first of all

yeah so this came about after building growing and scaling two of my companies, launching the Entrepreneur Center in Nashville, where I was meeting with hundreds of startups every year and teaching entrepreneurship at Vanderbilt University there in Nashville for over a decade. And I saw common patterns and issues that early stage entrepreneurs just kept having. So what I really began to appreciate is there's really not a good playbook. It says, let's start with chapter one, how you got to change your own mindset to get in the game, all the way through what you've got to think about as you scale and grow.

And so I try to lay this out in a way. I think most of us as humans think about our journey in building a company and put those things together in a sequence that I think works the best for the entrepreneur. So I've tried to lay out a sequence there if you follow it.

I know there's no such thing as a recipe book for success, but every chapter's full of amazing things that you should not do as well as some of the things you should do. And I think, avoiding the traps and mistakes of everybody else is probably some of the best lessons learned. That's one of the second book, which is the artist startup failure, is nothing but the 23 most common mistakes I've seen hundreds of entrepreneurs make.

And every chapter has a failure story and a success story around actually entrepreneurs I personally worked with and I see 90% of them I invested in. Oh man, you know, I flip to sales pipeline because all entrepreneurs know that we need to go make sales to make some money. Yeah, right. You have two, the first thing that comes up, and I know this isn't meant to be like me who's showing book, but the first thing is you say awareness. That is your top of funnel for all those that are aware of, you know, sales. I just had a great conversation whether people love him or hate him. I don't care because he's a billionaire and knows what he's doing.

but me and Grant literally yesterday sat down in his office talking about if he were to do this all over. The only thing that really matters is that awareness. And how would you today go out and get that awareness? What is your answer when talking about awareness these days? I think where I start is who do you want to be aware? Because if you spray it out there and pray, people will see it. You're just wasting your money. But you've got to know who is your audience.

Then where do I go find that audience? and awareness is nothing more than getting people to stop and think that something could be different. And what I want to be different is whatever service or product I'm selling in their mind. And awareness is, wow, this guy Bertram is out there and he's offering something a little different than what I'm buying today, but it sure smells or sounds better than what I got. And to me, when I think of awareness, this is what I got to develop. So the way I build awareness in any of the companies I'm working with is, first, I really, get a good sense of who is my ideal customer profile.

Then I go build awareness with that set of people because it allows me to go deep. It allows me to give them a whack on the head and say, what are you thinking? Would you consider this? And I'll start to move them through the sales funnel if I've gone after the right people to build awareness. Funny that you saw that because I was going to, my very next favorite page in the book was the differentiator, right? Yeah.

So if you're, if you get this book building a brand, I want to lean into this a little bit with you, because I think when you and I first started and you started your first practice, how many years ago when was that? Oh my gosh, 30 plus years ago. Yeah. Right.

And so you've been in the game a decade longer than me. I've been in the game for 20 years. You've been 30 plus. But the brand now, right? I think this is taking shape differently. Obviously, you and I started. I don't even think we had. I'd for sure,

I think maybe I was on the presence of social media. I know that was not a thing 30 plus years ago. No. How can you help people differentiate themselves today? Because that, me, building your brand, your brand, my own opinion, is paramount. Sure. To what the company services. Yeah.

Does that make sense? It absolutely does. I think if you want to build a brand, you've got to be the signal in this ocean of noise out there called social media. And if you sound like everybody else from your messaging and your words and everybody, everything, you're just going to blend into the background and nobody's going to pay any more attention to you than they do, you know, a car driving by the highway. So you've got to find what is that point of difference. I really like to take a contrarian view when I start something because I think a really good provocative question

or something that's a little bit stated opposite of what people. people tend to think, really cause them to stop a bit and reconsider what's going on in their life. So I think if you really want to get a brand moving and you want to be seen and heard, you've got to make sure you're standing out in a way that looks different than all the noise. And I think the best way to do it is take a slightly contrary an approach and give people something provocative to think about. There's no doubt. You know, even unfortunately what you are saying is so true even within the social media space is because they'll come up with the contrarian point of view of a subject

matter that is talked about all the time. Yeah. And then they call it, you know, clickbait, right? Where they'll say something contrary into the normal thought. Yeah. Um, but you have another chat. I mean, guys and girls, this book is phenomenal. Building the network, you and I both know, we've made more money by the people who we know or know us. Yeah. Than any type of marketing sign we've made. Talk to us about how people can go out again the book is about starting the journey how can you start building your professional network i think it is paying attention to the details uh it doesn't matter how prolific social media is uh people pay attention when you personalize thing to them i mean you notice that hey i sent you a book you also notice i signed it um i still send handwritten notes and cards to people constantly every day

I take the time to take a 30-minute Zoom with a startup entrepreneur I've never met, and all I ask them to do is if I was helpful to tell somebody they know. The word of mouth marketing that can happen from one party to the next is the best PR you can ever create for yourself, and it's 100x more powerful than you blasting out your own message on some social account. So I think it's all in the little details of how you build relationships with people and how you think about them as humans, not just a customer, and what would actually be different than they typically hear every day.

I mean, think of yourself. How many handwritten cards do you get in the mail each week? Almost none. Exactly. So when one shows up that isn't printed on the cover, but handwritten, you tend to open it first because you're like, who the hell just sent me a handwritten card? Who is this? Yeah.

That's right. And I want to be that who's this, that people open first. And I think that's the best way to build a brand. I would tend to agree, you know, it is always easier. You know what I have found? I've taught probably not as many as you since you're an actual professor at the College of Vanderbilt.

But I've taught thousands of entrepreneurs. Yeah. They don't understand the simplicity of just ask. Right. You just mentioned like, hey, if this is valuable, I'd love for you to, you know, mention it, mention my name to one or two people. Sure. How simple is that?

It's very easy and rarely done. It rarely done. One of the thing I'd like to add to what I said just a bit ago about taking the time to do something personal for individuals is that I probably get on any week 200 plus inbound messages saying I want to pick your brain. And they're about three-sentence-long emails or LinkedIn post. And I'm thinking, boy, you took about 30 seconds.

to message me, do I really owe you any more than 30 seconds back? Now, people who took the time to get to know me, do a little research, send a note about some of the things I've done, what they admired, and what they'd like to talk about, and here's two or three things on my mind

that I know you could help me with. I'm going to respond to every one of those because it took more than 30 seconds to put that together. I know it was meaningful to that person, and I'm going to give them the same courtesy back. And I think that's true in all the business, whether you are getting your very first customer or it's your 1,000th customer,

never forget the importance of the intimacy of the relationship. It's what keeps your customer once you get them. Yeah. And I want to jump into a subject I've been pretty passionate about talking about recently these money. I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs

that care about the first thing first, let me go make some, right? which is, if you're just starting, that is crucial. Maybe you'll pay your bill. Yeah. But talk to us a little bit. You have this whole chapter on money that I went through, which I absolutely love. Talk to us about, you know, the needs of entrepreneur, when starting, go make yourself some money for sure.

But then what are the right ways to set up your business financially around the money based on the book? So I think so many times startup entrepreneurs put together a PowerPoint. deck and an Excel and then go shopping for cash. And they have nothing more than an idea. I really don't even call those businesses, Justin, I call those a project. You're a project until you have a paying customer. And most investors do not invest in projects. I want to see you've put some skin in the game. I mean, think of the pig and the chicken making breakfast. I want you to be the pig donating the ham and I'm going to lay your egg or some money. Okay. but if you don't have some serious skin in this,

if you still got your day job and you were walking around with a deck saying when you fund me, I'll quit my job and do this, you need to just keep looking. I have zero interest in that. But if you've put a lot of sweat equity into what you're putting together, and if you have at least one letter of intent

or a paying customer, you're going to get an investor's attention. You're certainly going to get mine. But until you have that, you're a project and you need to think about it. I encourage everyone in my, my local market. I always start with a board managed LLC structure. It's the simplest thing to set up. It allows investors to invest. It's not as complicated as setting up a C-Corp. You don't have

any money anyway and you don't have any earnings anyway and you can convert it later if you want. But it's a good protection for you individually. It allows me to invest into an LLC that's board managed. I can become an advisor or board member with you. And for little to no money, you can have was set up in a day. And then from there, I would go get my first customer or letter of intent. And I would start with something I did myself, some kind of bootstrapping or something to show I'm serious about this. And then the gamut of fundraising starts with seed or angel investors and will roll all the way through venture into private equity as you grow. But, you know, private equity isn't going to reach all the way back and take the highest risk item as a

PowerPoint, but a seed investor will. And I think you start there, start small, prove something and build yourself up. I want to jump to, I think it might be your second book, but this one got my attention. Because this is what people don't want to talk about, is the failures in your space. I've been very vocal about my failure in 2024.

And it's because people don't want to hear about, like, the challenges of business. And there are many, I mean, you literally have 20. have 24 chapters here. Yeah. Challenger that you can go through. I want to lean into this a little bit. Again, you guys got to get this book because if you want to understand what it really

takes to have the DNA of an entrepreneur, what, you know, Michael, Michael Birchup has, myself and so many others, you're going to find failure. You're going to find hardship. You're going to gain challenge. You're going to lose money. So we're clear. Michael, let me ask you, have you ever lost money on a venture? Yes, I have.

Shocker. Me too. Yeah. Several times. You know, right, because, you know, I made a bet on someone and wasn't thinking clearly. Once I made a bet on myself and wasn't thinking clearly. That's right. And I failed to follow the patterns I knew I should be following because I got so excited and passionate about it.

I started jumping ahead of where I should be. You know, I think every successful entrepreneur, if they're really honest, can not only point to some things they've lost some money on as you describe it, but probably a dozen or more near misses where their entire company almost imploded on them. And they saved it at the last minute because they got super serious about locking down a path forward. I think in times of adversity as an entrepreneur is when you get your most creative of how to turn this into something meaningful. And I think those stories are, well, they're some of my favorite stories to read because I want to hear your near-miss stories and how you clawed your way out. of that because I think gritty entrepreneurs who know how to do that are the best investments I can make.

So somebody who's clawed their way out of poverty, somebody here's clawed their way out of adversity and a business that almost failed, send them to the front of the line. Because if you've got grit, I'm with you all the time. But if you look at this is just something you're going to go try. And if it doesn't work out for you, you're going to get your day job again. I can't help you because it's never going to work out the way you planned. It never does. Yeah, when you have that parachute, like to protect yourself or the net,

it never works out. There's something here I loved about the mistake of obsess over design. I love this chapter. Talk to us about that mistake that entrepreneurs are making. So I wrote this for all of my technical founders because I've got a ton of young people around me

who think, you know, healthcare is broken. and I can create an app for that, or people want to do their banking, and I can create a financial app for that. And I watch young, smart developers and technical people think that if they build and design this beautiful business concept, particularly around the technology, everybody's going to want a piece of it. And it's really just pretty pictures that nobody sees much utility in,

because you've got to do something that takes some pain out of my life or makes my life better, buys me back my time. And so it's great to have something that's designed beautifully. But if it doesn't have utility, it typically doesn't sell. And, you know, it's the whole, it's that old adage of, you know, style or substance. Too much style and no substance won't make a company. A lot of substance, even with a little style, will make a great company. But you can't be all style and no substance.

And I find people who obsess over design, they stay in the building, they never go talk to customers. They keep trying to make it perfect. And it gets in the way of good. Your first version isn't going to be great anyway. Your first website will suck. Your first version of your product will suck. And you've got to keep working at it. And you've got to keep colliding it with customers and getting their feedback and iterating.

And so I'm trying to get the message out in that chapter is don't obsess over the design out of the gate. You can be perfect later once you've got a lot of cash rolling in. But let's start with just being good enough to solve a problem. Yeah, I say a slightly different way just about like get going. So perfect is the enemy of done. Yeah. You'll never be done. No.

Right? You will continue to try to perfect. You and I both know there's that never actually happens. There's no perfect ever. Right, right. And so I love that. I literally will keynote around that whole subject. for 20 or 30 minutes.

Another thing I think is a masterpiece or a topic, chasing every opportunity. Yeah. I found myself, I mean, I literally today, they'll have to say, because when you get to where Michael's at, you get opportunities all the time. And they could sound great.

Yeah. So talk, like, how can people refrain from chasing other opportunities rather than focusing on the business they're building? Yeah. So I wrote that chapter because I saw so many startups who just needed cash that they'd take anybody's yes with all the conditions. And so they end up with five to ten customers, but they look like a custom consulting shop. They don't look like a product or service business because they may have five or ten customers and they're doing five or ten different things and there's no path to scale.

And so I work a lot with entrepreneurs trying to get them to think very careful. about what you're going to say no to so that you can be really good at what you're going to say yes to because all the opportunities you could chase take time and money and so you are burning precious energy and money on things that may not create the greatest value for you and uh always go to the end point of where is the value in this going to be in the future who are the customers that i need for that value to materialize and what do they need so that they stay with me and they become a recurring revenue stream because they love me as a as someone who solves their issues. So that was really written to get entrepreneurs to stop thinking about all customers are equal.

And that's not true. The right customers are what you need, not a lot of customers. So something you and I both agree in your network is your net worth, right, the cliche saying. Talk to us about trying to do this business, this vertical of entrepreneurship, let's say. Try doing that alone. What else about the downside of trying to do this alone? Well, I think it's a lonely job to lead a company in the first place. You've got to be a little crazy to do it.

And there's really not many folks, particularly in your family, you want to hear much about it after a couple of months. If you do not have a team around you, particularly a team that will take a contrarian point of view, most friends and family is going to tell you what you want to hear. And if you're in this alone, you don't have the advantage of seeing another point of view unless it happens to come from your customer.

Even a small team, when you ask somebody to play a devil's advocate or give you an opposite view to think about or how else might we do this, it expands the options of the ways you could organize this company. Here's the way I like to tell entrepreneurs to think about it. Imagine your startup is a box of Legos,

and I ask you to build a house with Legos. If I put that in front of 100 entrepreneurs, they could build 100 different little houses out of Legos. That's what building a company is like. There's probably many ways to do this, but what is the best way that gives you the best margin and the best opportunity to create enterprise value? And that usually comes from more than one person thinking about it.

So finding advisors, if you can't afford a team, finding a community you can talk to over coffee, find a way that other people get to weigh in because the more people that weigh in on an idea, the better it gets. And you'll hear stupid stuff. You've got to filter out for sure. But you'll hear some good things too. And at a minimum, it causes you to stop and think about what you're building

and to make sure that you haven't drank so much of your own Kool-Aid that you're building something that only serves one person and that's you. You've said this, I think, twice or three times, about serving just you. And you come up with this idea and this vision of the business and you're like, this is amazing. Yeah. But does anyone else want it? Does anybody?

It happens a lot, man. It happens a lot. Yeah. So true. Yeah. There's a third book. And I'm going through these books because it's going to lead heavily into this new book that you are coming up with. And we're going to get to that.

The seven deadly emotions of entrepreneurship. Yeah. Why this timing when I literally, do you know who Ben Newman is? Sorry? Do you know who coach Ben Newman is? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he is one of my coaches, and his big thing is standard over feelings.

And I loved this book. Your book is just so great. I mean, literally the big ones, anxiety, insecurity, rejection, frustration, letdown, fatigue, stress. They're all in me. Yeah. And you. They're all in all of us. Right. I would love to talk a little bit more about the frustration part. Sure. I think anxiety is very real. There's no doubt. I think insecurity is probably the biggest. But the frustration part is where Ben and I fully agree,

if you hold yourself to standards and don't lean into the frustration and feeling of it, then you do the very next thing, the very next move. Right. It's it. That's the standard you have. That's all you got to do. Right. And so talk to us about the frustrate.

Because we all go through it. I mean, I feel like it's a daily or weekly thing of frustration. How do you handle that? I think every time I have faced frustration, it's really driven because I'm sitting there frustrated because a client doesn't see what I see in something or a team member doesn't see how I'm trying to build this or an investor is disconnected on where I see value. And what I really am trying to get across in that particular chapter is that we often aren't communicating our message very clearly and probably.

both parties want to get to the same thing, but the way I'm describing and the way you're hearing doesn't show up the same way because you have a set of biases on how you hear things. I have a set of biases on how I say things. And every time I get that, I'll usually stop and say, am I distorting this message or am I not coding it in a way they can hear me? Because I know this is good for them and the market and us, am I not communicating this correctly? I find about half the time my frustration stems out of my own lack of taking the time to communicate the message really clearly. The second way I deal with frustration is I go to the gym because there's nothing better

than getting out of your head and physically exerting yourself to realize, you know, this too shall pass. And if this is not a problem six months from now, it's probably not. a problem. It's just a speed bump. Deal with it. You just said something that gave me shivers. If this is not a problem six months from now, it's probably not a problem.

I think, you know, one of my good friends told me years ago, you make everything in your mind bigger and the good side and the bad side that it is in real life. And particularly if you're a stressed out entrepreneur running on too little sleep and too much coffee,

everything gets amplified the good and the bad. And that was the point. I mean, you know, I meet so many stressed out entrepreneurs. I'm like, all right, let's get a deep breath and let's see what you got here, you know? And how do we, how do you suggest stress? I like the anxiety chapter. I'm going to use anxiety because I do think stress leads to this anxiety.

I believe, and I see this all the time. This is where the standards break. You start to sleep in a little bit more. Yeah. You may start to consume alcohol more. maybe some drugs more, whatever it is. Yeah. It's because you don't want to feel.

Right. And that's where me and Ben, he was just on my podcast. I just, and this book talks all about this. And guys and girls like, so for you, anxiety, how do we deal with anxiety? Going down a new venture, doing a startup, bringing on people, you know, growing, scaling. How do we deal with that? I think you have to always remember with anxiety that there are. are four balls you get to play with your health yourself uh you know with your health your family friends

and what you're trying to do um the only one of those that is not a glass ball uh is your work uh your health is a glass ball your family is a glass ball your friends are a glass ball and when you're juggling don't drop the glass balls and so when i'm dealing with anxiety it's usually because i have i'm commitments I should have made or should have done with family or friends. I'm dealing with time pressure. I can't be all things to all people. And I feel like I'm in this game by myself. That's typically when anxiety shows up for me personally.

Now, it probably shows up differently for entrepreneurs, but inability to keep a commitment, inability to manage my calendar, inability to manage my schedule. And so I usually deal with it first and foremost by looking at my calendar, which I do every single Sunday afternoon and say, what am I saying yes to you that I probably shouldn't have? What am I doing?

I should have delegated? Where have I made time for myself this week? Where have I made time to work on the really important two to three things that are going to drive value versus just being busy? I tell entrepreneurs all the time. You cannot live in the business 100% of the time. You've got to have time to work on your business. And the best way to get rid of anxiety is step up out of the business,

look up and work on it. Get mentally 10,000 feet overhead, look down on your business from above, and evaluate what's really going on instead of just pushing the bolder, harder, when it doesn't seem to be moving. You said so much that I want to impact here, right? I find morning time the best for me.

And you also talk about anxiety around a calendar. Today is one of the days for me, right? I have known. We should be together. Right. I looked at the calendar last night And I saw our pot. I literally had the books.

I was like, I'm so excited. Because just our first conversation went so well. I was so excited. I don't know why I did not see that it was an in-person podcast. But that, but these things happen. And, you know, Michael, you were so gracious. You're like, hey, we'll figure it out. Things happen.

And you went literally out of your way to get this done, right? You made a lot of sacrifice to you get this done. But one of those things is, what's the next best move? Right. That's how I try to handle all. it. What's the next best thing I can make? I made a boobah. I made a mistake. Okay, own it. I called you immediately. I said, this is 100% me. Nothing to do with my team. My fault, right? And so now we got here. The next best thing, okay, let's at least do a virtual. Right. And so here we are. But I think a lot of

people have to hear what you just said is you need to focus on looking your calendar, getting you time. I think anxiety builds up in me when I'm going so fast, go hard at all the things, and it don't have a time for a breath of fresh air. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Because you have given everything you have. You're pouring everything out of yourself, and you're getting nothing back. And that's when it can just hit you like a wall. And I think that's when people turn to some sort of substance that may create an addiction for them, just to numb the. anxiety and pain their feeling because they feel so lonely stressed and anxious about what's going on and they just want to numb it down a bit you know that's right and in i want to jump into this for

the sake of time uh and i know you have meetings you have a new book coming out yeah what's the new book coming out it's called blood sweat and equity and it's how uh an entrepreneur survives uh the the life with investors um because a lot of my journey has been that. I mean, I met my first investors and my first company after I got 30 No's in Nashville and went to New York for my very first time, met some crazy, amazing investors. It's terrified the whole time. And ever since then, I've dealt with investors in all my companies up until now joining Shore Capital and being on that side of the table. And I think there's always this healthy tension between the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and the investor of what they're each trying to achieve.

And so blood, sweat and equity is about, you're going to put your own blood into this. You're going to do a lot of sweat. But let's make your time worthwhile so that you get a pay date at the end of this thing. And what is the investor thinking versus what you're thinking? So every chapter is a contrast between how the investor sees this versus how you see this. I find so many people as entrepreneurs and founders, they wrap their entire identity into business. And then when it comes time to sell it,

the separation anxiety is unbelievable, and they don't know what to do next because this is all that's ever been their life. This is their life. And so it also speaks to how you think about your own journey. I mean, I started as a founder, a doer, a business, builder, a builder of other people. And now I think of myself more as a river guide helping other people. But I've had to accept that my life is a little different all along the way. And what I've

learned, let's apply it a little differently. And I'm not trying to just do the next thing. And so the book's written for the entrepreneur who will turn CEO who will actually scale and have investors. But don't kid yourself. They think of you and your company really differently than you think of your company. And it's important to know the difference. Yeah, you know, the identity break is interesting. You see that lot in athletes. They've literally spent their entire life building and identity of being the athlete. Yeah.

And then it's over and what do they do? Right. You know. And that can be hard. I just recently, I think we talked about it, I just recently went through a little bit of a shift in where I am, who I am, and how I want to be viewed. And it is a lot. I spent the better part of two or three months smoking cigars in my backyard and being quiet and just trying to understand this next chapter and this next version and what is that

going to look like? Because I've been very much in the real estate space for the better part of 20 years. And that is transitioning to the entrepreneur space as we have this incredible podcast, incredible guests like yourself and so many others. And I need to lean into that. But it definitely was like, I'm not the real estate guy now. Well, you know, I think every five to seven years, if we're actually growing as humans and professionals, you're going to have a little bit of reinvention in yourself. I mean, this is a crazy example, but heck, look at Madonna. She's come a long way from where she first performed. She reinvented herself over five decades, five times, I think. Entrepreneurs are just like that, too. And I think, you know, as you go through the journey

of a company whether you scale and exit successfully and go into another one, or it does quite work out and you start again, you've got to really take some inventory into each of those and really understand what's next for me? What did I take away from this last thing? What have I learned? Do I want to jump into just one more of those or do I want to do something a little different? You know, I have a number of friends that I've helped scale and sell their company and they're just kind of lost for a while. And their first reaction is, I'm just going to go start another company. And sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. You've got to be mentally ready to start the grind all over.

And I think it's easy to forget what the grind was like if you've had three or four years of success. You're like, oh, hell, what do I just step back into? You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's like having a baby after your 15-year-old. It's like, oh, man, okay. I thought I wanted the cute baby.

Now I'm up all night. Exactly. Exactly. Well, when is this book coming out? It'll be out this summer, probably June. Working on it now. The editor has it. but you know how editors can be,

so I'll be back and forth a few times. But I'm really trying to make this something that the CEOs I work with and the investors I work with really get a better understanding of one another because they really are aligned. I mean, the CEO has equity in the company, investor has equity in the company.

They both win together, but they see the business evolution through such different eyes. And I've been able to have a front row seat to that. I mean, I've had three companies with investors. We currently have over 60 corporations in our portfolio. All of them have a CEO we've are investors in. I'm an angel investor in probably 30 companies. And all of that, I can just feel and sense tension that exists between the investor mindset and the entrepreneur or CEO's mindset.

And I'm really trying to clear up that mystique and help each party understand the other better, because I think they can make a better company together if they do. agree. I would agree. It's someone that's raised a lot of capital over the years. If there's more alignment, you move further, you move faster, you move again. It's just, it's easier if that's the right word. Sure. I agree. Dr. Michael Bircham, it has been a pleasure to interview you. Where can everyone get these books? I self-published. They're all on Lulu Press or they can go in my website, Michaelbertram.com,

and order them right off the website. Michaelburcham.com. I would encourage anyone, regardless of where you're at in business, pick up these books. They're incredible. I think if there was a world that combined them all, because even the emotion side

on the starting your business is so valuable. It's great. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for making a sacrifice. They can't thank you enough. Please, everyone go follow this man. He's brilliant what he does. If you're in Tennessee and around him, I'm sure he has a place to get a hold of him.

Where should everyone try to get a hold of you? Through my website, I keep my mobile phone there and a good email. Just reach out. I'm all over LinkedIn. Just look me up. You'll find me. And Justin, it was a pleasure to be with you. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you guys. And if this actually was powerful, impactful, and you think someone you know needs to hear from Michael about this, please share this with at least one or two of your friends. We'll see you on the next episode. Peace.