Working harder is why your business stopped growing

I'm really excited for a conversation with you today, Mick. Thanks for having me.

You know, it's funny because I everything I do today, I started out diving into to fix my own life. You know, when I started out in sales, I went for years barely making a mark, always constantly worried about losing my job and everything else is, you know, things like that, and constantly working harder, traveling three to five thousand miles a week and and and barely, like I said, making a mark. And and so I knew that I thought there was something wrong with me because I had other people that I saw that were coming in. you know, taking off on Fridays, coming in late on Mondays, and they were just killing it and they loved life. And I was literally killing myself, you know, struck with anxiety and overwhelm all the time. And I couldn't figure out what was the matter with me. And as I started going through the process, which has been three plus decades now, is I started understanding what my real problem was. And as I did that, I went from barely getting by within a two year period. And we can dive more into if you want, but For within a two-year period, landing $18 million, $22 million. And the largest was a $25 million year-over-year contract for companies. So as I did that, you know, as you do well in sales, they promote you to a leader. So I got up into manager, director, and then vice president of sales in multiple organizations. And then I started working with my sales team and I started doing the exact same thing that I found worked for me. And I could see them elevate to the point in multiple organizations, they had the highest. level of top producers on their sales team that the organization ever experienced. Well then as those things are happening, now other people here and they're coming to me and they're business owners and that's where my heart's always been with business owners, entrepreneurs. And so I started helping them and eventually that excitement grew so much I no longer had time to do all the things required of a VP of sales and do that as well. And I thought, man, I'm so passionate about doing this and seeing it happen for people and such and helping people really thrive in business that I resigned as a corporate as a as you know from corporate America and moved down here to mountain into South Carolina and I've been building business and going ever since.

The missing piece was within me. Every business that I help grow and and th you know get into revenue growth, rapid growth, things like that and such, it it's about the business. The problem is always the business owner. It's never outside, it's never things outside competition. You know, all that does is allows us to be a victim of life. And as a victim, we have no choices. But when I took ownership on with that and I started looking at what is it within me driving me to live this way. And then I started seeing patterns of the same things I grew up seeing. You know, I grew up in a very low-income family in Detroit, Michigan, and I watched struggle all around me. As I got into my 20s, even when I would come into a decent sum of money, it wouldn't take long, and all of a sudden it was dispersed. And I continually struggled along those same lines financially and such. So as I started I understanding me and the part I was playing in it. That's how the whole method of what I do today came about, is because I I I I as I found that out, then it's like, okay, so how do I experience something different? And it's led to my doctorate degree, which you see behind me in in psychology, which is which is all about the subconscious programming. So if I could take just one second, Mick, and explain this, the easiest way I know how, is we are all born with hardware inside of us.

Within our within our subconscious mind, right? We we have this hardware and it works perfectly for every single one of us. But as we're growing through life, our parents, our teachers, our friends, our coworkers, our employers, our relationships, all of that feed into the software within that hardware. And within that software, we get things embedded into that that aren't really true for us, but because they came from the people that were influencing our life. We took that in as being us and we live through that. Everything I do and everything I had to do for myself and everybody that followed, you know, the hundreds of clients I've worked with over the past decade, all of it has been to identify what that is. What are those, what's that programming and that software that's working against me? As I identify it, then coming up with this tools to quickly shift that, which instantly opens up the door. And I'll give you a really quick example of this. Okay. I've experienced it myself and I know a lot of business owners I talk to experience it. Mick, what's usually the first thing that happens when business starts getting tough?

Well, and and that typically will drive somebody to working harder, to putting more effort, to working more hours, to, you know, constantly on your mind. You can't go anywhere without, you know, business being on your mind, right? And everything. And so we get consumed by that. And the more we get consumed by that, the more we're following software within that hardware that drives us even down. So it gets harder and harder and harder. And eventually what happens? Is I've seen businesses close because of what's in the owner software program. Or, and part of that, I'm sorry, and part of that is at some point they determine that they're the victim. And as a victim, there's nothing we can do. So anytime I talk to somebody, if your business isn't growing, are you willing for it to be not your fault to blame? I don't mean judgment. But are you willing to believe that everything you need to turn that around is is you already have. You're just not aware of it. You know, I wrote a book called Break the Attachment Pattern, Keeping Your Business Small. You know, and I one of the things I want to do as a gift to your audience is give a link to a free download to this book because it really talks, not everybody has the same pattern. We have similar patterns, but they're not that software is not the same. It's unique to the individual.

But there are some things that are common. Like when business starts getting tough, we work harder. When business gets tough, we automatically restrategize everything and we'll kinda in a way redevelop the whole business because it's slowed down. And so we start taking all these massive actions, exhaustive effort into trying to fix something that's only needs fixing because of the owner of that business. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, that would that would accelerate the process. Because most business owners I talk to, they have a million reasons why it's not happening right now, but they don't consider themselves one of them. And just like me, just like I used to be, you know, well, I'm working my tail off, man. I'm killing myself. Like, how much more can I give? Which is the wrong mentality, the wrong thought process with it. So the very first thing I do, I work off of two points of reference. It doesn't matter where you've been, what you've done, anything else, stuff like that in your life. All that matters is point one, where are you right now? Where are you right now in your business? What's going on with your business? And then point two, we develop where is it you want that business to be. What size is that business? How's your team flow and work interchangeably with each other and in the inter and independently? Things like that. How does that how does that all and and as we start working from those two points, the SMT method is designed to start opening up those successes to start experiencing rapid growth into that vision? So I come out of the gate with every client that I work with, and we develop what the SMT method refers to as a dynamic vision. In a dynamic vision, it's not goals. I don't work off a goal. I mean, we have, you know, the goals of things we want to do and things like that, but but I work off of visions. And the reason being is a is a goal is a hit or miss. You know, a vision is a mark that we're shooting for. So so working off of the vision, then we can develop our goals, our strategies, and all of that stuff based on that, rather than coming out of the gate. Every business owner knows what they the vision is. They've pictured it before they've ever taken a step into starting that business. They know what they want in that life. They know the freedom they want. They know all of those things. And one of the big traps that a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs run into is they s they get going, it starts out, the business starts out and it launches, and whatever happens there and stuff, and at some point it starts halting. And at that point, man, the mentality with because of the software will say. Well, you know what? I'll just work my tail off now because out there, then I'll get to live that life of freedom and everything else. And that's not what entrepreneurship is about. If you really look at the definition of entrepreneurship with creativity and all that, it's meant that we live in that excitement and that creativity that we're always creating and developing and expanding and growing and all of that. So when we stop, when we stop. Living for out there and we start living for today, all of a sudden today changes. Which then changes tomorrow.

Yeah, what we're doing is is is is we're developing again, what does that look like in the end? Not just what it looks like. You know, so often we do things like the description of what it is. I have a you know a two million dollar house, I have a you know, whatever, whatever life looks like like that. But really, what is it like to be that person? How does that person wake up in the morning? What do they wear? What kind of things do they watch? What kind of people they hang out? We start looking at all of those things because here's the bottom line. Is you can't go out and get to a two million dollar or ten or fifty million dollar business. You have to come from that within. And so what the SMT method it does is aligns that. And before you asked me that question, you made a really, really interesting point on something you said that I wanted to tap into. Is you talked about that, you know. my God, I'm gonna lose it now, Mick. We you talked about that, you know, with the way we think and stuff like that and everything, right? And and and so

You know, I talked about the SMT method, the the hardware and the software, but the subconscious mind is what triggers brain waves to the actions we take or we don't take. So when you have somebody who's struggling in business and they decide to pour more hours, more effort, more you know, themselves into it and stuff to fix it. That's coming from an that's coming from a that's coming from a programmed in that software response. It doesn't lead to the results somebody's looking for. But because we get a false sense of feeling good because we're taking action, you know, it it keeps a person going and they can get stuck in that and close a business based on it. So we know today, 85% of the results we experience in our life. Are coming from what's in that subconscious programming, that software. So if we have software and then it's a struggle, you got to work your tail off, you know, you get all things like that, that's what we're gonna experience. Until we identify and shift that, we're just gonna continue experiencing that in life. And then when we have a free, that's a reason why when people win the lottery, you know, millions of dollars, and you hear about them within a year or two, where they're broke.

Divorced, drug addicted, you know, jailed, this and that, and stuff like that, because they never did anything internally to shift that software to match living it that life. So now that now now can you see even more so why that having that vision, that marker of what that looks and feels like in is even more important. Because we're gonna become that person in that vision.

Yeah, it was it was a fun book to write. And and it happened at a time. My my probably 16, 17, 18 years ago now, my my father passed away. And my mom passed away just a little over a year later because she didn't want to be alive without him. You know, she passed of natural causes and stuff, but it was just heartbreak, you know. And and and here I find myself within a year, a little over a year, just being going from having two parents to an orphan. And it really Kind of messed with me and I didn't know what to do. And thank God I had a friend in my life who said it's time for you to do something, write a book. And so I had been journaling for a couple of years and it in the works, you know, and I had been writing about how things happen in life. You know, part of my struggle was I thought I was a victim. For a long time, I thought I was a victim. I thought life happened to me. You know, and so So whenever anything happened, I I continue. So as I so as I'm writing this book and just having fun, it's an account of several instances in my life where something happened, and instead of being the victim, I started looking at it this way. If life happens for me and not to me, then why is this happening in my life right now? Now, one of the things I learned in that process the book talks about is how I had to remove judgment. There can't be good, bad, right, wrong, fair, unfair, any of that stuff. It just is what it is. It just happened, right? So now if I say, why is life happening for me and not to me? And I take the judgment out of it, all of a sudden I could start learning about myself. And the book is an account, an actual account of events in my life where things happen and being able to get to that lesson. You know, so that was really a big starting point for me because from there it started going forward into what it is today. Where now we have to now we can identify exactly what it is, have tools to shift that and start opening up that other side.

I would tell him to trust more in that inner drive. I questioned it so much. I'm doing this stuff with, you know, with with what I was doing, my passion, which is the works I do today. In sales, I always question myself, self-confidence, things like that for a long time. I I would tell him to trust my internal drive. And it was gonna be beyond what I could imagine.

Yeah. Right away, like like one of the things I have to tell you here, Mick, it where I differ from a lot of other per I'm not a one size fit all type of a you know, with my programs and things like that. They're unique to the individual I'm working with. And right from day one, my clients will tell you it wasn't a big change in their business overall and things like that, but they start noticing change right from our first conversation with each other. Because I geared it because I'm the kind of person that likes instant gratification. So if it takes me a while to start getting to someplace, I lose interest quick. So this program is built the same way where right we come out of the gate seeing differences. As we see differences, as we're defining that vision, all of a sudden we start noticing differences in in our results of our life. And I'll give you a quick instance for that. Now, you know, my quickest and furthest client that I've ever had is I worked with a client that was at $7.5 million revenue as a 13-year high. Within 12 months working together, they bypassed $22 million in revenue. It was the only year of their adult life that they took five weeks of vacation during that year of growth. And they've been maintaining that growth for over eight years now.

the w what changed was the internals of that person in that software and the what was in that software, how they saw themselves, because how we see ourselves is how the perceptions we see of the world and we see ourselves in the world. So if we're not getting where we want to get to, and but we're looking at it skewed in our perceptions, it'll never change. Once we identify that, it changes how we see ourselves, with then changes our perceptions of how we see the world. changes it which ultimately change our results in

And it's not philosophy, it's all physic everything I do is based on physics, not philosophy, 'cause it's all about energy flow.

You know, I think I have one, two, three, four, five, five or six books out right now. I two two things I'm very extremely passionate about right now. One is a while back I met the love of my life. And, you know, being from Michigan, I didn't do much around farm animals and stuff, but she has a farm and I just love working with the horses and doing all the stuff there and and my plan is to marry her, ask her to marry me and, you know, cross my fingers, hopefully she'll say yes. and then and then for business side of it is I have an institute that we're getting ready to launch t to certify other coaches in the SMT method so I can expand the the impact of my life works now and even after I'm gone. It will be my legacy when I'm, you know, when I leave this place. I'm really, really excited about that.

Yeah, I I love life, you know. Somebody asked me one time, they go, Man, why do you joke around so much? Or why are you always so excited? And I told them, honestly, it's it's because I was so miserable for so long, I didn't want to live. Everything was so hard for so long. I couldn't stand this life. And today I don't have to live like that. And on top of that, the cherry on the cake for me is I get to help other people not live.

Yeah, it's so yeah.

You know, I would I I would I would tell people to ask yourself, why am I doing what I'm doing? Not not why do I have a business or things like that and stuff, but why am I taking these actions? Is the action leading to results? Or am I thinking if I work hard enough, I'll get result changes? Like, why are you doing the things you're doing? You know, and and right along with that, does it feel good to be doing those things? And I know firsthand that sounds silly. Because as a, you know, having had businesses that struggle, helping companies and bankruptcy get back to profitability, heck no, it didn't feel good, those actions. But they needed to be taken. But when I started looking at that to the result, to a vision of what I wanted it to look like. So really there's a couple of things right there. One, why am I doing it, taking the actions I'm taking? And two, what do I truly desire this business to be? Looking at those two things will start at least turning the turning the gears and things like that. And now of a sudden go, man, it doesn't even make sense, but I've been doing that for years. Then you can do something different.

We do. Yeah. Now we'll have my website and social media links and all that in the notes here and stuff. But the easiest thing to do is go to smtmethod.com and schedule a call with me. You know what else I'm gonna what else I'm gonna share with you, Mick, when we get done here is a link to where people can go in and and download that book I talked about, you know, break the attachment pair, keeping your business small. And and even that will spark, you know, spark some interest and get some things going with it and stuff. And that's for absolutely free.

Absolutely, Mc Great spend time with you here today.