Mike Malatesta is on a mission to help as many entrepreneurs as he can create successful companies that improve people’s lives, and he joins this episode to do just that for everyone listening in!
For everyone stuck in the Grind stage of the Entrepreneurial Journey – bogged down by daily tasks and unsure how to get back to what makes your business unique…
For everyone who feels like they are pivoting in circles when they should be shifting things forward…
For everyone who is in the Valley of Uncertainty and falling into the common fallacies of business ownership…
THIS episode is for you! Let Mike take you through the 4 Stages of the Entrepreneurial Journey and on to success!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Mike Malatesta: Selfish is the term that I use to describe making thoughtful choices about my future and how I could make it my property.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole: Welcome to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the vibrant coach and I am here with none other than Mike Malatesta. And he lives in Wisconsin and I want to tell you all, I used to live in Wisconsin and I loved living there. I thought it was fantastic. I lived in Hartland, Wisconsin. Do you know where that is, Mike?
Mike: Do I know where it is? It’s a few miles from where I’m sitting at the moment. Yes.
Nicole: Oh, my gosh. And I went to Arrowhead High School.
Mike: Oh you did?
Nicole: Is it still there?
Mike: Yes. Of course it’s still there. Yes.
Nicole: Well, I tell you what, I have the fondest memories of living in Wisconsin. I just had a ball. I lived with my cousins there. And I’d loved Arrowhead High School. I was on the swim team. Oh, my gosh. I had the best time.
Mike: Oh, you were? Yeah. Big time high school. So you had to be a good athlete to be on the swim team at Arrowhead. That’s for sure.
Nicole: I totally loved it. And I got my driver’s license in Oconomowoc. That’s where I went to get my driver’s license.
Mike: I live in Nashotah. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. But yeah, I live in Nashotah, so.
Nicole: You know, most people don’t think you know, when I get my vacation, I’m gonna go to Wisconsin. But here’s what I suggest is that you go because it’s absolutely beautiful.
Mike: It’s a wonderful place.
Nicole: Fantastic. All right. Well, let me tell you all about Mike, let me give you his little bio. And look what I have here, everybody, here’s a copy of his book. In fact, here’s a copy. And then guess what I did, you get another copy right here. Because I’m going to get one two a friend. It’s so important to if you get something good in your hands to you know, pay it forward. So I’m going to totally do that. But this is Mike’s book, it says How Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. So first of all, the little subtitle here, I know, you’re curious about that. And the title is Owner Shift. Don’t miss that instead of ownership, Owner Shift.
So this is really a great little book. It’s his story. So let me tell you a little bit about him. Mike started his first business in 1992, seven months after being fired from a company he had he had dreamed he might lead one day. Over the next 22 years, he helped run, lead and grow the startup selling it for more money than he could ever have imagined. So if you go to Wisconsin, you can stay at his house. He’s got a big house. And the creator of How’d it Happen podcast. Alright, so check out his hat. Check out his hat. I see your hat.
How’d it Happen podcast. Mike is deep into his second startup and an active early stage investor. His mission, oh I love people who have figured out their mission in life, Mike, you go. Alright, so his mission is to help as many entrepreneurs as he can to create companies that improve people’s lives and maybe the world. What a high and beautiful calling on your life. I love it. All right, so what what got you started on this book? And tell us all about Owner Shift. What is an owner shift?
Mike: Yeah, so what got me started on the book was really a desire, like many things in my life, a desire to do something that I think would be a challenge. And it took me a long time, because I started writing sort of writing a book, you know, 10 plus years ago, and, and I never could really, like pull together the discipline, and the organization and in the structure to actually get it done Nicole. Until I had, you know, some more time after I sold my first business and I, I just committed myself to doing it. And, and, and I did it. So that’s how it that’s how it got done. Owner Shift is actually a an interesting story.
Because, you know, when you start writing a book, you might have a working title or as you go along, you develop a working title that you think fits and I, I did that and when I went to as part of the publishing process, they have a, you know, a person who’s an expert in title picking, which I never, never thought that I didn’t even know that was a thing, right? I just thought you made up. And we had a an hour long conversation around what I was trying to accomplish with the book. And she her name was Skyler. She helped me by saying you know the title that you have for your book now, I don’t think it gets across what you’re trying to accomplish.
Because you’re talking about really making these moves along the way of your, you know, entrepreneurial journey. And the book talks about the four stages of the entrepreneurial journey. And we just started kicking around stuff. And all of a sudden this word shift came into the, into the, the conversation and I was like shift. That’s actually pretty good. And we kept working through that working through that. And we got to owner shift and why I love the fact that we ended up there was because there’s so much attention paid now to this term called pivot, right? If you’re in a business and it isn’t working, you pivot. And I don’t think that that’s what really happens most of the time, I think what happens most of the time, and what happens in every story is shifting.
You know, when you shift, you actually move in a direction. When you pivot, you go around in a circle, I mean, I, you know, I’m kind of literal with words sometimes. And when you pivot, you know, you, you go around in a circle, because one foot stays put. When you shift, you move, and the reason that that the shift in the book is italicized, is because a lot of shifts for entrepreneurs aren’t voluntary. You have to be trailing. And so I wanted to put some movement into the word shift to to, to give that real sort of feeling to it, that shifts are really required, but they’re not easy. It’s easy not to shift a lot of times, even if it makes you miserable. So that’s where it, where it came from.
Nicole: I love it. And it’s also a beautiful play on words, you know. Instead of ownership, owner shift. I love that. I think it’s fantastic. So, you know, send me Skylar’s number. Okay. All right, so we’ll get that going. Alright, so I’m going to ask you, I asked everybody this question, you know, kind of out of the gate, which is, you know, what’s your definition of leadership? What would you say leadership is?
Mike: I think it’s the ability to rally people around the common purpose or goal. The accomplishment of it, not, not so much rally around it, but rally around the accomplishment of it. So, you know, I, I think that’s really what it comes really what it comes down to is rallying around something that that they feel is important to them to accomplish as long as well as it being important to you.
Nicole: Yeah, you got to answer that. You know, that old thing? What’s in it for me?
Mike: Right, right. Right.
Nicole: Yeah. People have to understand that.
Mike: Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people make the mistake. And I certainly have over the years is like, if I have a goal, and it’s important to me, it’s got to be important to you, right? Well, no, it’s not necessarily. I can make it important to you, though. And that’s what I really need to do. Because if it’s important to you, and it’s important to me, we’re probably going to get it done. If it’s only important to one of us, we’re probably going to struggle.
Nicole: Yeah, 100%. And I think that’s really what you were talking about, at the beginning, when you said to yourself, I was, you know, playing with the idea of a book for 10 years, and then I finally committed myself. I wrote that down. And I think I think that’s what we got to help people do is commit to whatever that thing is we want done right. And then like, that’s where the rallying starts to happen is when there’s a sense of commitment. How does a leader you know, in your mind, get people to the commitment stage? You know, you get them curious. I think the first thing you need to do is get them curious, right, ask me questions. Let me share what I’m doing. Let’s talk about a little bit. But then how do you, let’s keep using shift, shift them into commitment. From curious to commitment.
Mike: I think ultimately, it’s making it important to them. And then, you know, if they see that there’s a bigger future for them, or a better future for them, helping you accomplish your goals, I think that people are going to want to do that. And if they see a scary future, or a future that’s smaller for them, or a future they don’t believe, then they probably aren’t going to, to be. And the thing is, I at least in my experience, Nicole, you can’t just treat everybody like they’re the same. I can’t. You may, I might have to talk to you differently about accomplishing the goal that I’m hoping to accomplish, then I would have to talk to someone else. But because you’re you know, you’re you’re a complicated human being and I need to be able to craft my message to resonate with you. And the way I do that might be a little different than I have to do with someone else.
Nicole: Yeah, I think that’s totally true. Because, you know, I’m, I’m, what do they call it certified? I’m certifiable sometimes, but certified in many personality assessments. And you know, that’s one of the major tenants that we kind of, or principles that we put forward is like, okay, so if you’re going to go talk to Mike, what’s he like? What’s it like to experience him? And then you know, change your approach so that Mike can hear you. Right? And then I just kind of drew a connection between this thing where you say how getting selfish got me unstuck. I mean, that’s exactly what we have to do with our employees is we got to tell them this is what’s in it for you. This is how you’ll benefit, because I think you’re kind of tongue in cheek with the word selfish. I mean, like, we don’t want people to be selfish, but but people are motivated when they see benefit to themselves. That’s just human nature. Right?
Mike: Yeah, you’re right. And I wanted to I use the word intentionally of course, because I knew, right, like what do you mean, selfish. Right? But ultimately, if I don’t know what, what I want my future to be, and how I want it to look and feel and all of those things, how, how can I possibly lead people towards that? Right. And I can’t do that by consensus. I can’t do that by, the point I make in the book, I can’t do that by being selfless, you know, because if I’m selfless, I’m really putting everything in front of me and I and if I don’t know where I’m going, or where I want to be, or the property that I want to own, or however you want to phrase that.
I can be selfless all day long and convinced myself I’m doing great stuff. But really, I’m just avoiding my responsibility as as a leader. At least that’s how I looked at it. And that’s why I used use of the word selfish, you know, you get once you’re selfish, you can be pretty self less. But it really didn’t work for me the other way because I tried it for a long time. And right, you ended up making me lazy, frustrated and unproductive.
Nicole: Right, right, right. And that’s the story you tell in this book right here. And I love the fact that you threw out the word property just a minute ago, because I actually, hold on, them me find it. On page 177. Everybody write this down. He talks about five words that changed his life. And so when when I saw that, I was like, because I love words too Mike. You said sometimes I’m really literal about it, you know, the pivot versus the shift? I totally see the pivot in the shift different. I see it. So you’re not crazy.
But he said these five words, did I get the five words, right? My future is my property. Is that the five words? My future is my property? So when I read that, I was like, oh, if only everybody understood that, like, the future is right there. It’s yours. You can build on it however you want. You can put energy into it any way you want. And create something fantastic. Instead of this thing that people do, Mike, which is let it unfold. Yeah. So talk a little bit about my future is my property on page 177 since you just dropped that in there. And I had read that in here.
Mike: Yeah, I just so I, I was coming out of this place that I call the valley of uncertainty in the book. And we can go into that if you want to.
Nicole: I do. I want to go into that.
Mike: So I was coming out of that. And I was making some progress. And I was making some breakthroughs. And I was driving along, listening to a CD that a guy named Dan Sullivan put out and he’s talking about being at a high school reunion. And he’s gone, you know, just rambling about this. And you’re sort of how he’s, he’s in his, like, late 60s at the time. So you know, people were winding down, and he was still winding up. And he said, on that CD, he said, you know, he said what, you know, what I was thinking about is my future is my property. It’s not my parents’, it’s not my siblings. It’s not my classmates. It’s not my, it’s nobody else’s. It’s me. And when I heard that, which I’d never heard before, Nicole, it was like one of those baseball bat moments to the head.
You know, I’ve had plenty of those where I was just like, what did he just say? Because at the time, my mind was looking for something, but it didn’t know what it was. But my eyes and ears were open to, you know, receptivity. And he said that, and I was like that. That’s it. Because at the time, I was in stage three, I was in the brake stage that I described in the book and, and when you’re in the break stage, you really are not looking at a future that is better and bigger than your present, because you’ve been so down by the grind, and by selflessness and by other things that you are thinking, I cannot continue to go on like this because it’s just going to be more of the same.
And you forget about thinking that it could be different. That it could be better, that it could be. You could imagine it to be something that’s so unimaginable right now, given your current situation. And then by having that start working toward it, it was like, you know, just I felt like I wanted to pull over that’s how much it struck me. And then and so I’ve been sort of using that for myself, ever since. My future is my property, I have to pay for it. I have to, I have to know what it is I have to pay for it, and I own it. And people say, well, you can’t predict the future and all this stuff. And I say, yeah, well, I can’t there’s a lot about the future I can’t, I can’t predict.
But there’s a lot about it that I can influence. And that’s what I mean by this. And yeah, I think just so so at least this was me, I think it’s I think it’s many people, you know, you saw you see the future as being the same as the past. And it’s just like to hear there’s another day, and here’s another day, and it’s just not going to be any different. And I want entrepreneurs to think big, and I want them to keep, you know, pushing through breakthroughs. But so many of us, me included, get worn down, and then the future just seems like you don’t want it. You know, you want out. You don’t want to own up future more. So it was a really, really big thing for me. My future is my property.
Nicole: Yeah. Oh, that’s fantastic. All right. So, Dan Sullivan, you need to go on to your Apple podcasts or whatever, wherever it is, you do your podcast listening, you definitely need to listen to Dan. He’s got several. And then also don’t miss this that Mike Malatesta has his which is How Did it Happen? Alright, so go in and get those subscribed, you guys, it’ll it will pay dividends. Okay. All right. So let’s, let’s do the four stages. Okay. So first of all, it’s the four stages that entrepreneurs go through? Did I get that right or correct me. You’re welcome to correct me.
Mike: So I separate the the book into four parts. And I think it describes most of what, at least for me, even the typical entrepreneurs.
Nicole: Yeah. And I just wanted to be very clear, though, for the listeners is so like, if you think to yourself, well, I have a job. I’m not an entrepreneur, I want to be very clear right now that even if you work inside of an organization, and you don’t you don’t own it, you’re not the original entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial experience exists inside of organizations, and you can have an entrepreneurial mindset. So I just wanna be very clear before you think well, I have this J O B over here. I think what Mike’s about to talk to you, we go through it in our careers as well. Okay. So I think it’s really important. So I just didn’t want anybody to kind of tune out right there. What, don’t you see the entrepreneurial spirit needing being needed so desperately in corporate America?
Mike: Uh, yeah, I do. And I and I, and I’m glad you brought that up. Because I also see, you know, people that have jobs, there’s, they have futures that they need to make their property as well. That’s so that is not something that’s unique and germane. And, you know, or only applies to entrepreneurs. That applies to everybody.
Nicole: 100%. So I just wanted everybody to understand, he’s going to talk about in entrepreneurial terms, but that’s what we need in every business is this entrepreneurial mindset. And you go through these stages. Alright, cool. We’re all on the same page. Alright, so talk about part one, the dream. Like, I mean, like, you get a new job, you have a dream. And when you start a business, you have a dream.
Mike: Yeah. So I am, we’ll go through each of them. And we’ll relate them to both both sides. Because, yeah, so in the entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial side, the dream is when, you know, you come up with your idea. You know, if you write a business plan, you write a business plan, you get funded, and you get started. And you think that your idea is the best idea that there ever was, and you think that there is zero chance that it’s not going to be 100% successful. And you everything that happens to you during, in that dream stage is good. Like, everything, everything new is, good.
Every problem is good. Every win is good. Because you you’re just so optimistic, and just so engaged and and all in. And the same thing happens when you get a new job, right? you’d like, you know, because you, you had a job. You know, maybe something you didn’t like, there, you got a new, you know, a new opportunity you’re interviewing, you’re really connecting with people, and then they make you an offer, and it’s a great offer. And you’re like, yeah I’m in man, and then you get in there and everybody’s so nice to you. And yeah, you’re like, oh, I made a great choice.
I’m this is going to work, right. And then stage two, on both, I call the grind stage. So from the entrepreneurial standpoint, the grind stage is, everything that I got into this business to do that I loved. I’m doing less of now. Because there are all these other things that need to be done that I never thought about, or that were cool the first couple times they happened, but now they just drive me crazy. And but I’m not changing. Because I’ve worked my way through these. I’ve, you know, I’ve ground through all of these things. I’m not changing. I can do it. I just do it and
Nicole: Right. Just more effort. More time.
Mike: And from an employee standpoint, it’s the same thing, right? Like, everybody’s nice to me, but oh, now I’m starting to see different personalities. Oh, now I’m starting to see silos. Oh, now, you know, I really don’t like when that person sends me an email. And it’s written the way that they write it, or, you know, on and on and on, and all of a sudden, you’re starting to think to yourself, did I make a good choice here? Am I really excited about this anymore, you know, all the things that I thought were cool, when I came in here, they’re not all as cool anymore. That’s natural. That’s natural, right? So, so part three in the book, or stage three is called break.
And for an entrepreneur, that’s when the weight of the grind has just become so heavy, that you just don’t want to do anything anymore. I mean, you’ll come to work, and you’ll, you know, maybe people on the outside won’t even be able to tell, but on the inside, you just not dreaming anymore. You’re not dreaming anymore. In fact, you’re just getting all that, you know, you’re just getting, you’re frustrated to the point that you’re like, I should just quit. I should turn back, I should expire, I should get smaller, because I’ll have less problems. You know, you start talking yourself into all of these things. But what you’re not doing is looking towards your future anymore. You’re just measuring everything against the past, or how you’re feeling in the present.
From an employee standpoint, same thing, it’s like, that’s when you get to the point, you’re like, I need to get another job. Or can I really stay here, the rest of my life, or, you know, can I go knock on someone’s door, and they’re gonna, like change the situation for me? Because as an entrepreneur, like when you’re in that break stage, sometimes you’re like, hello, is there someone out there who could help me, I’m not really, I don’t really want help, I just want you to save me. I don’t really want to do any work or anything like that.
So that’s kind of that that stage and then breakthrough is when you decide, choose to have a future that you’re going to make your property again. Something similar to what you had in the dream stage. Although, you know, now your future is going to be much different probably than what you’re imagining in the in the dream stage. And that’s the point where you, you get the energy back, and you get a system around you that will support you continuing to make breakthroughs and continuing to go big.
And for from an employee standpoint, a breakthrough might be, you know, having that conversation with a boss or getting a new boss or supervisor or getting a transfer or taking some new taking on some new challenges as opposed to waiting for things to come to you. And they’re not coming to you, you know, raising your hand and saying, I’ve, I’m the perfect person to do this, even if I’m not qualified to do it, because I’m willing to know, I’m willing to take the chance. And I want a future that’s different than what I’ve got right now. And I don’t want the rest of my career working here to be to feel like I feel right now.
Nicole: Yeah, I love these four stages. And you know, I’m an entrepreneur, I am with you, I have been in all four of them. So I want to go back to the dream stage for just a second. So you know, you had this big dream, you are optimistic. You’re not saying it’s not good to be optimistic. But it’s really good to be a realist, a realist. So in the dream stage, what things were you doing as a leader of your entrepreneurial, you know, vision that really served you? And then what were the things that you didn’t know any better? And they were not serving you? Can you kind of, you know, tease those out for us, we can kind of see maybe behaviors or skills or attitudes, stuff that we need to be careful about in the dream stage?
Mike: Yeah, I mean, for me, it was in the early stages of the dream stage, Nicole, everything was cool, as I said, and I wanted to do everything and touch everything and participate in everything. Because I was trying to find, you know, I was I was very young, and I was trying to find I’d never had a business before, or been in this situation. So I was trying to find like, where am I? Where is my fit? You know, how can I contribute the most? And so my way of doing that was just contributing in any way that I could. You know, ultimately, it turned out that there were certain things that I could do, that no one else could do. And again, I’ll get back to you know, in the dream, there was only two of us at the beginning of the dream, and there was probably less than 10 before the dream transferred into grind.
So it wasn’t like years of dream. It was, you know, a relatively short period of time. But I it took me a really long time to learn where, well it took, it really all it took to I was I was successful, but it really took till I was, you know, got selfish that for me to really figure out what I needed to do to move the business at the stage that it was and at the size that it was. You know, I guess I was skilled enough to be able to do many, many things at a moderate level for a long time. And it never seemed like I was completely faking it or anything.
But what I was in what I alluded to earlier was that it made me lazy because I was no longer I was, you know, because you can get really busy doing all kinds of things. And I just would get so lazy, not sitting around doing nothing, I was busy, but I was so lazy with my thinking about how to what how to really move the needle. So ultimately, for me, it was, and this took many, many years.
So I’m trying to, I’m trying to short circuit that with, by with the book to you know, to encourage people to shift earlier and see things earlier and put things in place earlier than I ever did. But ultimately, you know, I was a culture person I was, you know, the person who could see the future a little bit before other people, because I knew what I wanted it to be. And I could, I did a good job, I could do a good job of rallying people around a common, the accomplishment of a common purpose or goal, as I described my my definition of leadership earlier.
Nicole: Yeah. And I love what you’re saying. And I’m going to boil it down. I think what he’s saying is that if he had been more discerning earlier on, and I think that you said, I could do many different things to a certain level of competency. I don’t know if you said exactly like that. But one of the concepts that both Mike and I, I bet Mike’s learned this from Dan Sullivan’s work, too. Is that you have a unique ability, you have something that you do so fantastically. And if you did that most of the time, you would be much more happy and probably more successful.
Both in if you are having a career or if you’re being entrepreneurial. That’s one thing that I would say so everybody, Google unique ability, do that, write that down everybody. And then the other thing that I said, that I thought was so good, is you said, I would do anything that I could. And God when you said that, I was like, well, I can remember doing that in my career. Like people like Nicole, can you do this? I’d be like, yeah I can do it. And then you know, on Saturday, I’d be doing it and I’m like, nobody else was working today.
You know, I get like, all indignant about it. It’s like, wait a minute, I said I would do it. And here I am, you know, plus other things on my plate. But you know, I had people, Mike, when I was in my career, and then this this is also true in my entrepreneurial endeavor is that, you know, is that some people know how to say no to things and not try to be all things to all people and do all things possible. Just do the thing you’re really good at, right?
Mike: Another component of the, you know, the selfish exercise is knowing what what you will say yes to and what you won’t, you know, won’t say yes to. That was a big shift for me when I got there. Because I always thought that saying yes to everything was how you that’s that’s how you won. And that’s how you kept score. And that’s how you valued. That’s how you were valued. I thought that was the natural way for things to work. And you say yes, too much, and all of a sudden, you know, not only are you working on that Saturday, but you’re bitter about it, even though you said yes to it. And yeah, we that’s that’s grind.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so let me tell you what he told you, he said, I got lazy in my thinking. And I think when he went to, you know, the breaking out stage, which is stage four, I skipped over one but you know, that’s when he really got started thinking differently. My future is my property. So I just wanted to connect that. And then other thing he says if I gave it anybody any advice, shift earlier, shift more often. Okay, so I write that down. Shift earlier, shift, where can I shift? Okay, so that is the question you’re going to kind of live into till the next podcast. Alright, so that is the dream. Okay.
So then you hit the grind, and you’re saying yes to everything and trying to do all things. Okay. Tell me a little bit. And I think everybody hears the word grind, and they’re like, if you’ve ever driven a stick shift, which I did drive the Karmann Ghia in Hartland, Wisconsin. Yeah, but when Daddy tried to teach me I was like, yeah, I could I you know, it takes a while to get the clutch going and get the shifting working. I mean, it’s a thing, right? So I think people understand the grind because I grinded the grinded the Karmann Ghia while I was trying to shift it into second.
Mike: Yeah. So you want me to talk about the grind?
Nicole: I do!
Mike: Yes. So the grind is, you know, again, whether it’s an entrepreneur or whether it’s an employee, the grind is just the culmination of well, at least for me, the culmination of of doing whatever or you think it takes or whatever you think you should, or whatever comes your way, without a real purpose in doing it. So it’s the grind comes from tasks, instead of coming from purpose, I guess. And, and there’s always going to be grind, right? There’s always going to be grind, there’s always going to be things that you don’t necessarily love doing. Even there’s, there’s always going to be times you can’t be working in your unique ability. But the shifting part for me was okay, as soon as you start to feel that, do something about it.
Nicole: That’s the shifting early part.
Mike: Right. Yeah, as soon as you start to see something, or feel something, do something about it. That’s not what I did for, for a long time. I just like we talked about earlier is like, well, I just have to do more, I just have to, I was just not shifting correctly. And I wasn’t really even having conversations about it, I was internalizing all of it and thinking that someday it would be different. And that someday came, but not really not nearly as soon as it could have. And that’s what I that’s, that’s what I that’s what I want people to, to work toward is shifting sooner.
Nicole: Yeah, because once you get it in gear, you do get to go faster. That’s when you go from first to second to third to fourth. And if you’re lucky enough to have a fifth gear, you’re making it happen, right!
Mike: That’s a great point. When you’re grinding, you’re not going anywhere, you’re just making a lot of noise. And it’s it’s like a bad noise.
Nicole: And the person in the passenger seat is looking at you like what are you doing? What are you doing? There’s a panic.
Mike: That’s my transmission there, you know.
Nicole: So your employees are like, what are you doing? The guy in charge is just grinding the gears, right? So really important stuff. Oh, I love your metaphor. It’s awesome. Okay. All right. Um, so then you finally got well, wait, hold on. I don’t want to miss this. So earlier, you mentioned the valley. And it’s another little metaphor. So you talk about the valley for a minute?
Mike: Before I do that, though, I do want to mention, I have a chapter in the book that’s called Big Boy Transmissions. And it’s about, it’s not about driving a big garbage truck, but, but it is about driving a big garbage truck so there you go. So the valley. The value of uncertainty. So that’s a place where I ended up there after my partner Butch, who I’d started the business with died in a fire, or as a result of a fire that happened at one of our facilities.
So it was about 11 years in, and we had had a number of other things happen. We had another death we had, we had legal problems. And then Butch, you know, passed away, and I thought, I felt responsible. Even though I wasn’t there, I felt responsible for all those things. And really, the feeling of being personally responsible for everything, Nicole was a big part of grind as well. And when that happened, you know, I just dropped into this place where that I call the valley of uncertainty.
And I describe as a, you know, just a deep pit where you can see the world but you don’t know or feel like getting out of it. Because you had you just so uncertain about what to do. And for me, it was like a plate when I was in the valley, I thought to myself, why am I here? Whose fault is it? Who can I blame? You know, I had all these thoughts that weren’t around about me. They were who can reach in here and grab me and take me out of here and, you know, dust me off and show me what I should be doing?
Nicole: Right. But there is no knight on a white horse coming.
Mike: There is no. Nobody does that. No. They don’t do that.
Nicole: No, it’s not out there.
Mike: Yeah, so that’s so so that’s what it is. And then so and everyone can relate to that. I think they may call it something else. Or they might describe it differently. But it’s a place where you know, you are in real trouble. Especially when it comes to what you know, thinking that you have a future that’s bigger than your than your past. So yeah, that’s that’s how I describe the valley.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. And I think that, you know, the valley may not just come once it it could even come. Yeah, you know, you’ll you might get a different valley down the road, right. But again, I want to go back to what you said, which I think is so great. I wrote it down. I’m gonna make a sign and hang it on the wall shift earlier. The minute you start to feel something, do something and just real quick if I, if you’ll humor me, Mike.
I got some training about how the physical body and what we’re thinking, you know, like everything that we’re thinking that the body has a reaction to it. St. Thomas Aquinas, like in the 1200s wrote down, if you think something in your mind, your body has a physical reaction to it, you know, and he was just saying that happens. But now the science proves it’s true. And when you’re in that valley, you’re releasing all sorts of negative neuro peptides, you know, like cortisol, all sorts of, you know, testosterone, all sorts of things are going through your body, and you are getting your marinating, like in really bad stuff.
And that’s when you lose hope. And you feel desperate, and you wish somebody would just pluck you out that you can’t do it yourself. Because you are literally soaking in bad juju, is how I like to say it. You know, but if I, what if I shift and I get a better thought, you know, I’m not lazy in my thinking, like you said, I get a new thought, then I might get a little a different neuropeptide, some serotonin or something. And then I start marinating in good stuff, and then I can get out of the valley. Right. So I just wanted to share that. It’s chemical too, right.
Mike: I like how you put that. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.
Nicole: Yeah. So I think that’s important. Okay. But then you get to part three, which is the break. And so in his book, there’s only three little chapters in this part. But the four fallacies that you discovered. So these are like four things that you found out were false, that you thought were true. Am I right?
Mike: Yeah, there was there were four stories that I was telling myself all the time that I thought was, you know, I thought they were the truth stories, but they were turns out that they were just stories. And you know, the brain’s got a great way of deciding whether a story is true or false, but it’s still just a story. So you can change it.
Nicole: That’s exactly right. And the first one you had in here was, and you’ve said this before, but let’s say it again, in order, because in case you guys taking notes, like I believed that I couldn’t handle anything that came my way, you know? Yeah. So why is it that a fallacy? Talk about that a minute?
Mike: Well, because it ended up, you know, I ended up in the valley because of that, you know, I, I could handle a lot, Nicole, but but I couldn’t, I couldn’t handle everything. And there was no reason for me to. I guess that was one of the biggest things, right? It’s like, why did I feel like I needed to do that? Was it to prove that I could? Or was it because I didn’t have people that could do it? Which wasn’t the case. Or was I trying to be the hero? You know, was it just me sort of convincing myself that that’s gave me status now, but whatever it was, it wasn’t true. Or certainly wasn’t the truth that I now wanted to tell when I was, you know, at this stage, but it’s it is the truth that I had been telling myself.
Nicole: Yeah, we don’t live on an island, we need help. You know, you’re in the career place, you do need the people around you to help you. You don’t know everything, you need to borrow some genius from some other folks. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you got to find people to to help you on the way. The second fallacy you said, and I put a number two is I was responsible for everything that was happening to me. Talk about that a little bit.
Mike: I kind of alluded to that earlier. You know, this, you know, taking personal feeling like you are responsible is a very personal thing. And it’s very, it can weigh on you a lot. And I talked about this, this sort of mind shift that I made, when I recognized how I was thinking about that. And it occurred to me that I wasn’t responsible for everything that happened. I wasn’t even there when when Butch was burned. I wasn’t even there. But I did, I did have responsibility for everything that happened. And now some people might say, well, that’s just semantics. And maybe it is but personal. Being, I can only be responsible for me, that’s the only person in the world I can actually be responsible for.
But I have a responsibility to a whole lot of people. So if I could just compartmentalize it, like this isn’t so this happened, that doesn’t mean that I’ve it’s so I thought it defined me you know, that being by being personally responsible. It doesn’t it’s just a part of another part of thing that I’m that I have the responsibility for. And so when I when I made that, that shift, it just changed me. It just no longer made it feel like the weight of everything was my fault. It was something I had to deal with. So I couldn’t get away from that, but it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t a part of me, it was just a thing that needed to be handled.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and the thing is, is that when we do hire people, when we were talking, really at the beginning of this podcast, and we say, you know, rally around this endeavor with me, but make a commitment. That’s where other people take on responsibility, right? So it isn’t all me, I’m asking you to join me, people make a conscious decision to come on to the team or be part of the mission or whatever. And so we’re all responsible. So it just doesn’t, you know, fall completely on the entrepreneur. Alright, so then the next one that you have in here is I questioned whether it was possible for my future to be different. And you’ve already stated that, you know, that little phrase from Dan woke you up. But a lot of people I think, get in that place like that this is the way it is. I just need to suck it up, you know, buttercup kind of thing.
Mike: A lot of people, I’d say most people, yes, they do. And, and, and I was the same way. And I just, you know, got to shift. There’s no reason that your future can’t be your property. And so yeah, we’ve been through that. And yeah, that’s, that’s a big one. That was definitely a fallacy.
Nicole: Yep. And then the fourth one was isolation. So talk to me a little bit about isolation.
Mike: Yeah, so I, I think a lot of people have this, but whether you’re in whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee. I built these sort of mental walls around me. And they were called my company. And I was the, the king of the company, right? And, and everything that I thought that everything I needed was inside the walls, right. I got all the care and sustenance I needed from inside the walls. Inside of my company. But what ended up happening for me is that while I was thinking that and believing that, I kept building the walls higher and deeper, so and I didn’t think I needed anything on the outside of the walls.
And then when I fell into the valley, and I was like, oh, man, I was like, so I maybe I do need something outside of the walls, right. But they were so high and so deep, that I was very, I was challenged by how to get through them, and get past them, and get over them or under them, or whatever needed to be done or dismantle them. So, you know, I just I was, I was wrong about these walls. I didn’t need any walls around me, what I needed was, what I needed. And it wasn’t all inside of the company, like I thought it was and would be forever.
Nicole: Yeah. And that’s when you you start reaching out, you start getting involved in other groups asking other entrepreneurs or other people who do what you do get inside an association. How did you move up? What are you guys doing differently? What’s a best practice? Right? Instead of like you say, being the king of the company or whatever, you know, the king, you know, he should have advisors from afar that come in and help him.
Mike: Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. You’re exactly right. And, and yes. And on top of that, just understand how other people think about and approach things that I’ve been, that I’ve been thinking I know how to approach and think about, right. I know how to do all those things, but and I wasn’t. So that was another another thing. There were lots of things that came after I sort of understood that that was a, that isolation or wall building or whatever. It was a fallacy.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s fantastic. All right. So he moves through that. And then he gets to the point where he is breaking out. Okay, so it does get outside the walls of the kingdom. All right. And so the first chapter in breaking out is all about making choices. And I gotta tell you, Mike, one of the things I talk to people about all the time in coaching sessions, whether it’s about their business, or its personally, people don’t think they have any choices. In fact, they’ll say something like, I don’t know, I don’t have a choice, Nicole. And I’m like, oh, yeah, you do. There’s so many choices. So talk a little bit about that’s how you open up this really important fourth, fourth part of the book Making Choices. Tell me about some choices you’ve made and leaders need to really examine.
Mike: So in that, in that chapter, I go through this. Again, it’s a it’s a level, but it’s also a very powerful mind shift level or mind shift, change as well because I had been going through my career making a lot of decisions and very few choices. You know, decisions are things that are sort of quick and off the cuff and reactive and, and all of these things and I was making those all the time because you know, you have to. It sort of comes with the territory. But what I wasn’t making was deliberate choices, many deliberate choices. And I see the two as being very different, like a decision is that way.
A choice is something that is well thought out. A choice is very intentional. A choice is proactive, rather than reactive. And I noticed, I discovered, and I acknowledged that I wasn’t making very many choices. I wasn’t choosing my future. I wasn’t choosing the people I wanted to be around the best way. I wasn’t choosing what I wanted. I wasn’t, you know, there were all these choices that I wasn’t making, but boy, could I make a decision. And so that’s, that’s, it was a real difference for me. Like I, you know, choose to get selfish, for example, that was a big one, right? I didn’t decide to be selfish.
I chose to be selfish. And I had a reason for that choice, you know. So that’s what, that’s what that’s the, that is what that’s about. And I think if people think about decisions and choices that way, and not as the same thing, it’s, it’s helpful, because it, you know, it’s a switch, like, is this thing coming at me something that requires a decision or is to require a choice? Because if it requires a decision, then I need to make it quickly because people are expect that they’re counting on it. If it’s a choice, then I can sit on that for a little while. And I can really think about that and choose.
Nicole: Yeah, and, you know, the word decision, and the word incision are related, right? So it’s, you know, if I make a decision, I’m like, cutting this thing out. And all I’m left with is this thing over here. You know, like, I’m cutting that off.
Mike: Right. Elimination. Right, right.
Nicole: But choices really require, like, a lot of discernment. You know, like, there’s a lot of again, don’t I got, I let my thinking get lazy he said, and so now don’t miss this. Choices take a lot more thinking. A lot more reflection. And it’s been said, it’s been researched, leaders need to be reflective. They need to be great thinkers, right, Mike?
Mike: Yes. For sure. Even if you’re not the smartest person, which I’m not, you still need to be a good thinker. Yes.
Nicole: Yeah. And be purposeful about it. In fact, this morning, in my quiet time, I was reading the work of Sarah Ban Breathnach. And she said, you know, I write all day for a living, and then to think to myself that, you know, I would write a journal. I mean, I don’t need to have a journal, because I write all day. But what she realized and what she was saying is that I need to really think about my life, I need to think about what’s going on, you know, not not to do something to perform. And I think that decision thing is yes or no, well, let’s do this. Let’s execute. You know, it’s a performance thing. Versus choice is a thinking thing. Then there will be decisions afterwards, right.
Mike: Yeah. And it’s, you know, a lot of people including me, we, I ascribe, I ascribe value to how quickly I could make a decision, right?
Nicole: Look how smart I am. Yeah. Okay. So I want to ask you two more questions. I’ve had you on the, on the line for a long time. You’re such a good sport with me. So talk a little bit more and to be very clear with people let’s be real plain because semantics do matter. When you say I decided to get selfish and again, don’t miss this everybody his book is Owner Shift. How Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. So I want you to talk a little bit about selfish so everybody’s perfectly clear what you mean, because I don’t want anybody going I was listening to this podcast and this guy was telling me to be selfish. Listen people, he’s gonna explain.
Mike: I’m gonna explain. So selfish is the term that I use to describe making thoughtful choices about my future and how I could make it my property. Selfish is not about being a jerk. Selfish is not about pounding my chest. Selfish is not about putting other people down. Selfish is not about status. Selfish, for me, is just a way that resonates for me as as being different than selfless or serving that you hear a lot. It’s not that I don’t want to be selfless or serving. It’s that I can’t be selfless or servant well, until I’m selfish. So that’s about as clear of a definition is that can provide to that.
Nicole: Yeah. And I’m going to add just a little quick story if you’ll humor me. Would that be okay, Mike? Yeah, I got this little story from my mentor Ann Starrette and it’s called the lighthouse keeper. And if anybody on here wants this little reading, I’ll be glad to send it to you. But here’s how the story goes that the lighthouse keeper was on a rocky coast. And he got a certain amount of oil every month to keep the light on at the lighthouse.
But people came and knocked on the door and said, you know, we’re freezing over here, can I have just a little bit of oil. And so the lighthouse keeper gave them a little bit of oil, so they wouldn’t freeze over here. And somebody came and said, you know, I have the machine doesn’t work. And the machine serves all these people can I have a little bit of oil to you know, get my machine to work. And so he gives a little bit of oil, and it gets all these little requests for all these things. And then at the end of the month, he runs out of oil, and the light goes out. And when the light goes out, many, many ships crash into the rocky shore.
So hopefully you get the story. But the story is like the lighthouse keeper needed to say, I’m sorry, I only have so much oil. And here’s what I’m doing. Here’s my purpose. Here’s what my choice I’ve made. I’ve made a choice to keep the light on not to get up make you all happy out here. Even though they had legitimate needs. Right. So I think that’s it. Maybe that that helps people see what you mean by selfish.
Mike: Oh, it’s a nice story. I hadn’t heard that one.
Nicole: Yeah. So you know, keep the lights on people. That’s the whole point. All right. Fantastic. All right. Well, there’s somebody that’s on this podcast listening going, really, I can be selfish. Fantastic. I love that. Okay. And they’re going to keep the light on. All right, and they’re going to shift sooner, they’re going to stop being lazy in their thinking. They’re going to move through the four stages. Can you just drop us one more nugget for that one special listener who’s going give me one more Mike Give me one more goodie. What would you give them?
Mike: So for me, I guess I would say I have. The last chapter of the book is called Eraser Dust. And I tell a little story about how, when I was in grade school, I went to a Catholic grade school. And we still had regular chalkboards at that time. So every day, at the end of the end of school, the teacher would select people to take the the erasers, and erase all the stuff from the boards and then go outside and clap them to remove all the eraser chalk from the erasers and I loved doing that. And when when you get selected for that, it was like a big deal.
And we would go out and we clap the heck out of these erasers, and we would clap them on each other, you know, to get everybody’s uniform all dirty. Yeah. But all that eraser dust would just, you know, sort of fly off, and it would end up somewhere else. It would be gone from the erasers, but it would still be, you know, it would still land somewhere. And the point of that is, you can never change something that’s happened, it’s always going to be alive. But you can remove it from what you are thinking about and working on, because you can’t do anything to change it.
And so, you know, keeping up with my sort of shift theme here, your past is never something that you have to say, I can’t have a different future because I have this past. You know, think about if you if you’re thinking about that, just clap some erasers let that go. You’re not saying it didn’t happen. And you’re not saying it’s not out there, but it’s not affecting me anymore. Because I’ve got clean erasers. I can go learn new lessons now. And those are what I’m going to be paying attention to and not you know, not this dust or this, you know, mind trash or this regret or, you know, fallacies and all the other things that we’ve talked about Nicole.
Nicole: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay, and so I love that. So my my mother was a teacher, and I got to do the I didn’t get to go outside and bang them around. But I did have to wash you know she had a bucket with a rag. But I don’t know I just really resonate with your story because I got a visceral reaction to that as a small child I did the same thing. I had to do the the chalkboard. You folks with these white erase boards, you have no idea anyway. So we’re dating ourselves. I hate when that happens. All right. So hey, everybody, I want you to get a copy of this book. And so Mike, tell us where we can get a copy of this book. It’s called Owner Shift. Don’t miss that. How Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. Where can we get the book?
Mike: You can get the book on my website, Mike Malatesta m a l a t e s t a.com. You can also get, you can buy it there. You can get a free chapter there if you’d like to to check it out. And while you’re there, you can also find out about my podcast How’d it Happen. You can find out about my me. I’ve got a blog there that you can read. You can subscribe to my newsletter. You can connect with me, you can check out my coaching program owners shift coaching for high level entrepreneurs. And if you don’t want to do all that you can buy the book on Amazon.
Nicole: There you go, there you go. I’d go get the freebies of our all y’all that’s how we talk down here in Concord. Now I didn’t used to, I used to say you guys when I lived in Wisconsin. I say all y’all that’s what I do now. All right, you can also find Mike on LinkedIn, you just look for his name, Mike Malatesta. And that Malatesta thing is just how you how it sounds, all of his syllables, right. His syllables are just how they how they sound. He’s also on Facebook, and of course on Twitter. So if you go to his website, but all the little links are right there. So go out and find him. Mike, it’s been an absolute delight. It’s dinner time. It’s time for you to go have a beer, a bratwurst and a cheese curd. So you’ve got to go.
Mike: She’s going all Wisconsin on me. Thanks, Nicole. Thanks for having me on the show.
Nicole: Yeah, it’s been great to be with you. Have a great night. Thank you so much for your time and energy.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
