Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation, JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire Brought to You by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Duct Tape Marketing. Today we'll be breaking down how to not get your ass kicked in business and life to drop these value bombs I brought to Michael McLean and the EO Fire Studios. Michael is a former professional and amateur hockey coach, multi-millionaire business owner, author, speaker, and consultant to thousands of elite business men worldwide through his new book in Badass Millionaire World Building Consulting Company. Today, Fire Nation will be talking about what it means to be a Badass Millionaire in a world builder.
We'll talk about personal sovereignty. We'll talk about the heroes in the story that you Fire Nation and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, Success Story hosted by Scott Declary is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and features Q&A sessions plus convos on sales, marketing, business, and more. A recent app on how to protect your business in times of crisis is a must listen, listen to success story wherever you get your podcast.
Michael, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is up Fire Nation? Michael McLean, this is Christmas Day for me. Biggest day of the year, JLD.
Never, ever, followed the crowd. Ever, period. My father who's 88 years old, he actually just retired at age 85 after 67 years as a business operator, entrepreneur. I had the honor of working with my father for 17 glorious years in the insurance business.
We used to meet on Mondays for a sandwich and a beer. These father-son meetings, they used to go three and four hours where we would talk about family and business and marketing and politics and all these great things. I remember talking to my dad on one of these father-son lunches. My dad was actually a lot of people don't know, but my father, after being an entrepreneur for 65 years, 13 different companies.
A lot of people didn't understand or weren't aware of how tough his upbringing was. My dad was abandoned as a newborn baby at the hospital. After 30 days, he became a part of foster care. He was actually adopted into a family that was less, less than the perfect entrepreneurial environment, a lot of addiction, not a lot of ambition.
Here's my dad at the age of 85. He's had all this success. Tremendous father, tremendous grandfather, tremendous entrepreneur. I looked across the table at him at one of these lunches and I said, Dad, you've got to tell me, what is your secret?
You were surrounded by all these difficulties and challenges. You didn't have very many positive role models in your childhood. He looked across JLD and he said to me, he goes, son, he says from the word go, I looked around. He says I took a page out of Earl Nightingale's book and I looked around at what everybody else was doing and I decided right then and there that I was going to do the exact opposite of the crowd.
He said that applied to my marriage. He said that applied to raising you children. That applied to my marketing business, my physical and mental health. He said I looked around at what everybody else was doing and he says, as a young man, I decided to do the exact opposite.
That's powerful Fire Nation for a lot of reasons. There's actually a quote that I left from Mark Twain that's, if you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect because there could be something that you need to shift about your behavior. I'm actually rewatching all the old science-led episodes right now. Pretty classic.
They haven't won Netflix. One of them is George Costanza who has all the bad luck in the world with women, with his profession, with health. He decides to do everything opposite of what he always does, what everybody else always does. It just works out incredibly well for him.
It's a funny episode, but about the truth of this as well. Fire Nation, as I mentioned during the intro, we're talking about how to not get your ass kicked in business and life. Michael, you were a professional in amateur championship hockey coach and team franchise owner. This actually means that you were working with some of the most mentally tough and competitive athletes on planet Earth.
What did this experience teach you as an entrepreneur, as a market, as a husband, as a father, and as a community leader? Tell us about it. In pro sport, I learned JLD how hard winning is. I grew up in the back of a general store watching my dad work 14 hours a day, seven days a week every day, but Christmas with my mom raising three children in the back of the store in the area that we lived in.
So I knew what hard work looked like, but I also, being in pro and amateur sport, it just took it to the next level of what mental toughness looks like, what measuring success, if you want to achieve things and you need to measure things, what a blueprint and a game plan looked like. And I took all of those qualities that I learned from being immersed, absolutely immersed in excellence for a number of years. And I took those into business. I took those into my marriage.
I took those into my consulting business and other businesses. And it just taught me how hard winning is. And it taught me what I call 365x, where if you want to be the best at whatever it is, if you want to be what I call a top one percenter, there's no days off. And the one thing about pro sport is no matter what, whether it's football, whether it's talking, whether it's golf, whether it's soccer, whether it's hiking, it doesn't make any difference.
Those athletes, at least they have a break. I mean, Tom Brady, he plays football eight months a year, Sydney Crosby plays hockey eight months. But being an entrepreneur, it's there's no days off. It's 12 months a year.
And that's what I learned from watching my dad every single day. But it just brought to me also the importance of systems and procedures. When I would show up to the arena for a game, I just didn't show up and wing it. I didn't like freelance.
So I took that those teachings of putting a game plan together, having systems, having procedures, having rituals. And that served me well in business because then I could have predictable income or outcomes in my business. And also just build it the right way. And what I'm talking about is culture is if you're going to build a business, build it the right way, build it where it allows you to do what you want to do.
And you build it with that personal sovereignty in mind, your freedom and your autonomy. So just being around those guys, I was coaching in a league three levels from the NHL. I called it the Hat Fills and the McCoy's like right out of the slap shot movie where every day was a different bloodbath. But when I own my own teams, I had to sell out those arenas every three or four days.
I had to win hockey games every three or four days. And I took that mindset into business where I would measure myself 15 minutes at a time, an hour at a time, and I would set these real small micro goals. And I just took that attitude into entrepreneurship. And it served me very, very well, just how hard winning really is and how true champions operate 365 days a year.
This is powerful stuff, Fire Nation. And again, we're going to keep on this theme of not getting your ass kicked in business and in life because it is that combo that we need to focus on. And you are actually able to transition from marketing and promoting a hockey team franchise to marketing and promoting an insurance agency. So that was kind of an interesting shift.
Talk to us about that transition and most importantly, the lessons you learned. Well, I joined my dad's insurance agency after I was fired after two and a half years of my first pro coaching job. I mean, if you're a coach in professional sports, you're hired to be fired. And I returned home and my dad and mum sat down with a kitchen table and they said, you know, we think the insurance business is the best business in the world for lifestyle, for marriage, for, you know, autonomy, all that good stuff, freedom.
And at the time, I was like, well, you know, I'm in the most exciting business in the world and coaching the sport of my dreams. But my dad and mum said, you know, you'll never ever ever have personal autonomy and freedom unless you run your own show. In other words, unless you're an entrepreneur. So I actually left what I consider the most exciting business in the world for the stale, dull and boring reality of insurance.
And my dad and mum said to me at the kitchen table, they said, do one thing if you decide to join the insurance agency and eventually buy this company, they said, do not change your mindset or your attitude towards business or marketing. They said, bring that same, that swagger, that same personality marketing style into what I considered a very stale, dull and boring business. So that's exactly what I did instead of, you know, entering the insurance business and saying, okay, I'm going to do exactly what everybody else does here. I brought that same mentality from pro sports and amateur sports.
And I said, okay, this is how I filled arenas. This is how I recruit at top notch, you know, talent. And I applied that same personality marketing style to the insurance agency. And that's how we were able to 3x our bottom line in the first 36 months.
I mean, I didn't have any insurance, I didn't even have an insurance license. I had never worked in my dad's agency, but literally by, you know, refusing to, you know, fit into that box of insurance, it made such a difference. So I just decided to bring what I had learned in pro sport and amateur sport. I applied it to a completely different niche, a completely different industry.
I made it fun. I made it about personality. I made it about Michael McLean as the spokesperson for my dad's insurance agency and the results followed. Now, what I want to move into next is what it means to be a badass millionaire world builder.
I mean, these are strong words. These are powerful words. You've had the experience, as we've already talked about in both the professional and amateur hockey, we've talked about how you made that transition into the insurance agency field and how you did that successfully by bringing lessons you learned from your prior careers. How does all of that mix in for our listeners, for Fire Nation to become badass millionaire world builders?
Badass millionaire means one thing to me. It means actually two words, personal sovereignty, and that's different for every person, completely different. But being a badass millionaire to me, and it's the blueprint that I've used over the last 19 years, is build your business around your life. In other words, you know, if you want to work, you work.
If you want to, if you want to go on a vacation, you want to vacation. If you want to read in the mornings, you read in the mornings. If you want to go hiking, you go hiking in the mornings. But I learned 19 years ago that when I'm in the process of building something, whether it's a consulting company, a barbershop franchise, a window washing company, an insurance agency, or an amateur hockey team, is I have to constantly ask myself, does this decision fit inside my world?
I have a friend by the name of Jeff Hunt who sold his carpet cleaning business about a decade ago for about 30 million dollars to the old Sears franchise. And he's the type of guy who lives completely on his own terms. He's married, he's got three young children. He's just a guy who, you know, he's got that replica of personal sovereignty.
And one time I was talking to Jeff on the phone and I said, you know, Jeff, you've got your own teams, you've got your own freedom. I said, how in the world do you get it all done, but still have an incredible life? And he said to me, he said, Michael, he says, vitamin and vitamin and is in as in the letter and he says, I say no to almost everything. And it just clicked for me there.
And this was 19 years ago. He says, you know, he says, if I'm offered an opportunity, the first thing he says, I always my default now is no. But if it's something that really resonates with me, if it's something that I really maybe want to consider doing, he said, I asked myself a second question. And that question is, if I do take on this new responsibility, what do I have to stop doing?
Do I have to stop driving my daughter to school? Do I have to stop chess lessons with my daughter? Do I have to, you know, walk less in the morning or take less, you know, Sunday afternoon hikes with my wife? So he taught me the power of what he called vitamin N just no, no, no.
And when you listen to Warren Buffett and all the great, those guys are no machines. If it doesn't fit in their world, like Einstein said, if the only reason to put something into your personal world, your personal life is that you want it to be there. So I really disciplined myself over the last 19 years to say no to almost everything. And to me, that's what a bad ass millionaire is, you live life and do business on your own terms, but you build your business around your life, not your life around your business.
Fire Nation, what kind of business do you want to build? What kind of life do you want to create? That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about being intentional about this.
And I do love that N word. No, I mean, I will say at the beginning of my journey, I had to use a guess word a lot because I didn't know which opportunities were going to turn into awesome opportunities. And I wanted to experience as much as I could. But pretty quickly, when things started rolling in a positive direction, I had to employ the word no very often to keep focused on what I was creating what I wanted to create in this world, both business and lifestyle.
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Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com. So Michael, you're a book, How to Not Get Your Ass Kits in Life and Business. Also, there's a pretty big tagline that goes along with this. So talk to us about that tagline and some of the key takeaways from this book.
Get Fire Nation fired up. I have a nine year old daughter and for the last four and a half years since I've gone into monk mode, for the last four and a half years, I sold my insurance agency five years ago and walked away into the sunset. And for the last four and a half years, I coached my hockey team, I hung out with my wife and daughter at our lake home. We bought a place in Naples, Florida.
It's been about family. It's about giving back and volunteering for the last four and a half years. But since I've returned to the coaching and consulting business over the last year, one of the things that's been speaking to me has been if I wrote a game planner, if I wrote a blueprint for my daughter, Emery, who's nine years old, what would that book look like? What would be in that book?
Because I'm an entrepreneur, my father was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur. What's the book that I would write for my nine year old daughter? And that's when I started at JLD putting this together. And it's my 25 rules.
And the reason it's a book of rules for men and women who usually hate rules. I mean, we're entrepreneurs. We hate restrictions. We hate rules.
We hate being boxed in. But the one thing I learned in pro sport is that rules are more powerful than habits. They're more powerful than goals. There's nothing more powerful than simplistic rules.
So I put this book together as almost a playbook for my daughter once she's an entrepreneur, once she's doing her thing as an adult. But the 25 rules that I put in here, they give immediate discipline. They give immediately a blueprint for somebody who's in that entrepreneurial battlefield every single day. If you truly want to build your own personal world, if you if you truly want what people call freedom and autonomy, then these are the rules that I put together over the last 19 years to get me there.
And we talked about rule number one, never ever, ever follow the crowd. And I think these are the rules that a person can implement into their life. They give you peace of mind. Like I have personal rules in my life, same things like, you know, I don't drink alcohol or I copyright for one hour per day or I walk at least one hour today per day.
These are rules that I put into my life that I no longer need to expend willpower on. I don't need to set goals. I don't have to have a daily ritual. When I made them rules, I immediately closed the loop on that mentality.
In other words, it's part of my life. It's a lifestyle now. So these are 25 rules that an entrepreneur can look at and read and say, you know, that's going to make an impact on my life. And it all gets back to that taking your life from ordinary to extraordinary.
I don't think you can do it without rules. I mean, you can't win pro hockey games without rules. You can't be successful in life or business without personal rules. And I just have found rules so much more powerful than habits and rituals that that that's the reason that that's the playbook that I've written for my daughter.
Fire Nation, this is the type of experience of life experience you come to the show to listen to people like Michael who have been there who have done that who have had seven eight figure successes in multiple fields because they know a system. They know rules to live by. They make things happen. They are productive.
They are disciplined. They are focused. These are key traits that you need to listen to over and over again and continue to learn from now. Michael, do you have an audio book for this as well?
I do have an audio book, the physical book and the audio book are available at noboobook.com. So and I encourage my personal students and stuff to read the book and to listen to the audio at the same time. That's a pro tip that I learned a long, long time ago from Anthony Robbins in terms of retention. So yes, we do have an audio book as well.
Love that. You talk about entrepreneurs being the heroes in the story. Can you expound upon that thesis? Entrepreneurs like your listeners are bombarded in 2022 by anti business, you know, anti achievement, anti goal setting, anti capitalism.
So and I'm part of it. I mean, I hear it every single day. And I think it's really important that entrepreneurs today vaccinate themselves mentally against this barrage of negativity. If people like you and your listeners took a nap for six months, we wouldn't have an economy.
We wouldn't have, you know, we wouldn't have an economy. We wouldn't have roads. We wouldn't have bridges. We wouldn't have schools.
So it all to me starts and ends with the guts and the courage of the entrepreneur. I've watched men like my dad for 65 years. I've watched, you know, people like yourself who create things, who build things, who hire people, who sponsor things. And you know, you're the heroes in our society.
And for me, like I encourage my guys, I said, you know, what happens in the White House and what happens in politics to me, politics is theater for ugly people. I mean, if we're going to, if we're going to take things to the next level in terms of our society, I think the greatest example that we can set is as serial entrepreneurs. I'll never forget my dad and I sitting down one time and I said, you know, dad, I think I'm going to run for mayor because I think I can make a really big difference in our community. And my dad looked across the table and he says, if you don't want to make a difference, he says, do that.
He says, if you want to make a difference in this community for the people that support you, he said, start another business. And he said to me, he said, you know, entrepreneurs, that's the man and the woman that's in the arena. That's the person that's putting their neck on the line. That's the person that's trying to make payroll.
And those are the heroes in the story. And that's why I wrote this book as a vaccination for those, you know, top 1% of those entrepreneurs, those entrepreneurs, the business owners, because all that other stuff out there is so negative. And just insulate, this is the reason that I don't listen to the regular news, I don't participate in anti social media, any of that stuff. I just worry about the heroes and the stories and the entrepreneurs listening to this call and men like yourself and women out there that are building things, you are the heroes in our society.
Fire Nation, you are the heroes in our society. And I love that phrase. I had to write it down actually that politics is the theater for ugly people. I mean, Fire Nation, you're not chuckling at that.
I don't know what's going to get you to chuckle because that is a funny, true reality type of statement. So Michael, I want to end with being here. Give us one key takeaway from everything that we talked about here today that you really want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with. There's no silos in life.
There's no business but a troubled marriage. There's no successful marriage but a troubled relationship with your children. There's not a multi million dollar business but not giving back in the community. There's no silos in building a bad ass millionaire world.
World building brings everything under one umbrella. And it's so important to understand personal sovereignty, freedom, autonomy, control, independence, all those good things. There's no such thing as a successful business without a successful life. And I know that you've gone through that.
I know that I've gone through that. It's constantly asking yourself the question, if I want to be a seven figure business man, I want to be a connected father, I want to be an excellent husband. I want to be a hero in my own home. What kind of man or what kind of woman or what kind of a person do I have to become to make that happen in my life?
And you reference it in your book, Becoming a Person of Value. And I couldn't agree with you more. Who do I have to become every single day to make sure that I build a world that I don't have to vacation from? Who who's the person I have to become to every single day become the best version of myself?
You don't need to be the next Elon Musk. You don't need to be the next LeBron James. You need to be the best version of yourself. And everybody has put on this in this earth with gifts and blessings.
And I believe everybody has a tour of duty here on this planet. And a big part of that tour of duty is understanding who have you been put on this earth to serve. And once you realize that you become a person of value and you become a person who builds a life that you no longer need to escape from, you no longer need to vacation from. So that's my big, big thing.
Build it so that it's what you want, build it with no silos, build it seamlessly, and build a world of personal sovereignty. Fire Nation, powerful stuff. You can put it on your own plate to say, I'm here to create something, to add value somewhere. What is that thing?
Where can I become the number one solution to a real problem in this world? If you do that, you have done your job on your tour of duty on this earth. Michael, how can we connect with you? Give us that call to action with your URL to your book again, and then we'll say goodbye.
Well, admittedly, JLD, I'm not everybody's cup of whiskey. I'm a certain type of guy I believe in in candor and honesty. My background in pro sport is recognizable in everything I do. But my book is the toughest advice for the toughest entrepreneurs.
And that's the way I've been trained. That's the mentors I've followed. And that's the way that I've been able to build the world of my personal dreams. So I have a brand new book called How to Not Get Your Ask Kicked in Business and Life.
It's as you mentioned, my 25 rules for badass millionaire, business, and entrepreneurs. And it's a noble, hardcore, unvarnished, take no prisoners look behind the curtain at my life over the last 31 years in the trenches. And my life in the last 22 years as a pro and amateur team owner and coach and what it really takes to live life and do business on your own terms. And your your members can get a copy of the book at knowbobook.com.
It's 1995 for the book. It's a physical hard copy book. As we mentioned, there's the option to buy the audio as well. For your listeners today, if they purchase the book, I will pay for the shipping.
I'll FedEx a copy to their home or to their to their office. So it's 1995 they pay for the book. It's a physical book. It's about 280 pages of my 25 rules.
And I'll pay for the shipping as thanks for being on this on this discussion with you. So not everybody's a cup of Earl Grey, but certainly for the top 1%er that wants to take their life from ordinary to extraordinary. And you know, you get one chance to build it. Why not build it the way you want it?
Why not build it so that you never ever need to take a vacation from it? Build that world on your terms. And that's what this book is all about. Knowbobook.com.
Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with MM and JLD today. So keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com type Michael in the search bar.
The show is major pop up with links to everything that we've talked about here today. Michael, thank you for sharing your truth knowledge value with Fire Nation today for that. We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side Christmas day for sure. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Michael and Fire Nation successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals.
That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you and accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. Visit the freedom journal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Success Story hosted by Scott D.
Clary is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and features Q&A sessions plus convos on sales, marketing, business and more. A recent app on how to protect your business in times of crisis is a must listen listen to success story wherever you get your podcast.