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Soulful Success Beyond Ego with Mike Brcic · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Well, ladies and gentlemen, adventurers and dreamers alike, strap on your explorer hats as we get ready for a heart pumping journey with the extraordinary, Mike Brcic, a serial entrepreneur with a soul as big as a great outdoors.
• 0:50
  Tom Jackobs: Mike is the genius behind Wayfinders where he helps fellow trailblazers live purposefully through community and adventure.
• 0:59
  Tom Jackobs: And not only that, but he also has an amazing podcast, A Wayfinders Guide to Life.
• 1:04
  Tom Jackobs: And today we'll dive into his heart-led business and discover how he's crafting connections in some of the wildest corners of the world.
• 1:13
  Tom Jackobs: So Mike, welcome to the show.
• 1:15
  Mike Brcic: Tom, I've been looking forward to this for a while, so I'm thrilled about this chat.
• 1:18
  Tom Jackobs: I am too.
• 1:19
  Tom Jackobs: And ever since we were introduced by another podcaster, Jordan Harbinger.
• 1:23
  Tom Jackobs: I've been listening to your podcast as well, and like I said, in the pre-show it's so good and just talks directly to people like me and probably a lot of the rest of your audience.
• 1:35
  Tom Jackobs: So really well done on that and really getting into my heart.
• 1:39
  Tom Jackobs: So thank you for that.
• 1:41
  Mike Brcic: Thank you.
• 1:41
  Tom Jackobs: But of course our first question out of the bag always is what's your definition of a heart-led business?
• 1:48
  Mike Brcic: Yeah, thanks.
• 1:49
  Mike Brcic: I might widen this definition of heart-led to include this concept of the soul.
• 1:55
  Mike Brcic: I think, obviously ties in with heart, but it is something that I've written extensively about.
• 1:59
  Mike Brcic: It's something that I've been exploring on a personal level for several years now.
• 2:05
  Mike Brcic: I'm currently rereading a book by James Hollis, who is a amazing Jungian analyst and writer.
• 2:10
  Mike Brcic: He was recently on the Huberman podcast.
• 2:12
  Mike Brcic: I was thrilled to see him, get the recognition he deserves.
• 2:15
  Mike Brcic: And he talks about the shift from moving from the first half of our life, which is generally, spent living according to the scripts that were laid out to us by others, our parents, our teachers, society, whatever.
• 2:27
  Mike Brcic: We fulfill expectations and obligations.
• 2:30
  Mike Brcic: And then at some point that starts to lose its sheen.
• 2:32
  Mike Brcic: Maybe we have haunted midlife crisis, so to speak, and we get woken up and then our task is to discover what is our life to live, who am I at my core and how can I live life from that place instead of the messages that I've been taught.
• 2:45
  Mike Brcic: And he uses the word soul as shorthand for that place.
• 2:49
  Mike Brcic: That who we are at our core, which I think is the same, as being heart-led and being soul at.
• 2:53
  Mike Brcic: Really tapping into who we are at our core and living life from that place.
• 2:57
  Mike Brcic: To me, a definition of a heart-led business or a soul-led business is one where it springs forth from a really true, honest, authentic aspect of ourselves and one in which we are expressing our gifts.
• 3:10
  Mike Brcic: In the world and our passions, and that we are generally living from a place of service rather than validation or achievement or financial.
• 3:21
  Mike Brcic: The financial piece is obviously important, but financial goals at the expense of anything to do with the heart or the soul ultimately are going to leave one hollow.
• 3:30
  Mike Brcic: I've walked this path with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last 8 years and prior to that, and it's amazing to me, how people will pursue that path and they'll reach the next milestone.
• 3:40
  Mike Brcic: Maybe it's a million or maybe it's 10 million or whatever, and they'll think that's the pot of gold at the rainbow.
• 3:45
  Mike Brcic: And when I get there, everything will be great.
• 3:47
  Mike Brcic: Problems will go away.
• 3:48
  Mike Brcic: I'll feel fulfillment at my core and peace.
• 3:50
  Mike Brcic: And then they get there and it's oh, the view's no different from this mountain but maybe I haven't climbed a high enough mountain, so maybe now I need to get to a hundred million or a billion or, whatever the next one may be.
• 4:00
  Mike Brcic: And then at some point, after many years or maybe decades of chasing.
• 4:05
  Mike Brcic: They realize the ultimate futility of it, and they start to ask themselves, what is my life to live?
• 4:10
  Mike Brcic: What is my business to lead?
• 4:12
  Mike Brcic: So that is my answer to your question.
• 4:14
  Tom Jackobs: I love that and connecting the soul in with the heart.
• 4:17
  Tom Jackobs: It totally makes sense because you always say it's the heart and the soul of the business.
• 4:22
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 4:23
  Tom Jackobs: I love what you said about leading with service versus leading for validation.
• 4:30
  Tom Jackobs: Could you unpack that for us just a little bit?
• 4:32
  Mike Brcic: Sure I'll tell you a personal story.
• 4:34
  Mike Brcic: My previous company we've chatted about this, it was called Sacred Rides, still operates to this day.
• 4:39
  Mike Brcic: I sold it seven years ago, six years ago.
• 4:41
  Mike Brcic: We led high-end mountain bike trips around the world and by 2013, I'd already been leading it for 16 or 17 years, and it been going steadily, but I was impatient with that growth and I wanted to put some gas on the fire and I was fully bought in to that world.
• 4:58
  Mike Brcic: It's like scale, hustle, grow, all that kinda stuff.
• 5:00
  Mike Brcic: I was fully bought in, believed that was the path to Nirvana.
• 5:04
  Mike Brcic: And so in 2013, that was the first time I raised money from investors.
• 5:08
  Mike Brcic: And then I did it again in 2014.
• 5:10
  Mike Brcic: And then again in 2016, I took on more debt.
• 5:13
  Mike Brcic: I hired the team.
• 5:14
  Mike Brcic: We grew all over the world in 2016, I set a goal of, the big hairy audacious goal.
• 5:20
  Mike Brcic: It's this term from the world of business and I set this BHAG of by 2021, wanna be operating in 150 countries.
• 5:28
  Mike Brcic: I look back at this now laughably, but I wanted to be on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine and I developed the business strategy to help us get there.
• 5:35
  Mike Brcic: Basically launched a whole new side of the business.
• 5:37
  Mike Brcic: This software platform.
• 5:38
  Mike Brcic: It's kinda like Airbnb for mountain bike guides around the world.
• 5:42
  Mike Brcic: We expanded to 45 new countries in the span of 6 months.
• 5:45
  Mike Brcic: From the outside, it looked like this was, just an incredible success.
• 5:48
  Mike Brcic: We were getting media attention.
• 5:50
  Mike Brcic: We were well on pace to hit our goal.
• 5:52
  Mike Brcic: Obviously at some point it slows down a little bit.
• 5:54
  Mike Brcic: It's hard to run, mountain bike troops in Sierra Leone but we were pushing on, and then, it came with a significant measure of stress.
• 6:02
  Mike Brcic: There was still the core business to run, but I was taking on responsibility for this new side of the business and managing it all.
• 6:08
  Mike Brcic: And I also had three young kids at the time.
• 6:10
  Mike Brcic: It really compromised a lot of things in my life, but I felt at the time that the cost was worth it.
• 6:15
  Mike Brcic: And then two things happened that radically shifted my course.
• 6:19
  Mike Brcic: One was, I read the book, Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday.
• 6:23
  Mike Brcic: He's a fantastic,
• 6:24
  Tom Jackobs: Great book.
• 6:25
  Mike Brcic: writer who writes in the stoic tradition.
• 6:27
  Mike Brcic: And it was, like you've said about my podcast, I felt about that book like he was writing directly to me and I could see myself in the pages of that book and just how much of everything I was doing was driven by my ego and this crazy quest.
• 6:40
  Mike Brcic: And the other was attending a workshop with my friend, Philip McKernan.
• 6:43
  Mike Brcic: Actually, this was the first time I met him, that workshop.
• 6:46
  Mike Brcic: And he's now since become a friend and it's soon to be a collaborator.
• 6:49
  Mike Brcic: But in that workshop he asked a question, where are you seeking validation in your life and why?
• 6:55
  Mike Brcic: And It was somebody pulled back the veil and I realized.
• 6:57
  Mike Brcic: What I was doing with my business was this really hungry quest for validation, and it was validation that I hadn't received as a child, not enough from my parents or from my peers or teachers or whatever it was.
• 7:09
  Mike Brcic: I really want the world to validate me, to tell me I'm okay, to tell me that I'm valuable and this is how I'll do it.
• 7:15
  Mike Brcic: Those two things, I woke up and just realized they were not gonna satisfy that need.
• 7:19
  Mike Brcic: And I had to go on an inner quest instead of this, outer quest that I was on for validation and get at the core of that.
• 7:25
  Mike Brcic: And that shifted everything.
• 7:27
  Mike Brcic: And within a couple of months, I'd made the decision to sell my business.
• 7:30
  Mike Brcic: And that was a process in itself that took a couple of years.
• 7:33
  Mike Brcic: But it also, along the way inspired the shift to what has now become wayfinders and, and there was a period there for a couple years where I was running both businesses at the same time.
• 7:43
  Mike Brcic: But ultimately realized that I found so much more fulfillment in this current company and meaning and joy than I did with the previous one.
• 7:52
  Mike Brcic: And in my early days, when I was young and I'd started to take a rides I enjoyed the heck out of it, but I outgrown it and I was chasing different dreams for not necessarily psychologically healthy goals or reasons.
• 8:05
  Tom Jackobs: Did it shift because of your interest or the business shift and migrate over because of the validation that you were seeking in terms of that growth and all that?
• 8:14
  Mike Brcic: I want to be clear.
• 8:15
  Mike Brcic: I may have worded that like I transmuted sacred rides into Wayfinders.
• 8:19
  Mike Brcic: They're two completely businesses.
• 8:21
  Mike Brcic: And I was running them concurrently for a bit, but I realized that I was no longer fulfilled by my previous company.
• 8:27
  Mike Brcic: I was becoming really burned out.
• 8:28
  Mike Brcic: The goals I had set in hindsight after those kind of seismic events of introspection really felt hollow and meaningless and it was also a period of some deep inner work.
• 8:38
  Mike Brcic: Working with different guides, therapists, different means of exploration, getting at some of these core wounds that were driving that quest for validation.
• 8:47
  Mike Brcic: And the more I began to work with and heal from and release some of these old patterns, the more that need for validation just magically disappeared.
• 8:56
  Mike Brcic: I was like I don't need validation from the external world.
• 8:59
  Mike Brcic: I can get plenty of it from within.
• 9:01
  Mike Brcic: And that's enough for me.
• 9:03
  Mike Brcic: And so then the question is what does that mean if you're not using your business to chase validation?
• 9:08
  Mike Brcic: Because that had been my pattern for over 20 years.
• 9:10
  Mike Brcic: I'd accepted, not consciously, but unconsciously, that was what I do with business.
• 9:16
  Mike Brcic: And I approached Wayfinders from a very different perspective.
• 9:18
  Mike Brcic: Some of them were very tactical.
• 9:20
  Mike Brcic: I decided I don't want to have any staff.
• 9:22
  Mike Brcic: I don't love managing people.
• 9:24
  Mike Brcic: I want to focus on profit and cash flow over revenue.
• 9:28
  Mike Brcic: I don't need lots of revenue.
• 9:29
  Mike Brcic: I just need enough to earn a comfortable living.
• 9:32
  Mike Brcic: And I want to do stuff that aligns with my passions and my gifts.
• 9:35
  Mike Brcic: And so how do I do that?
• 9:37
  Mike Brcic: And so then I reverse engineered the business model.
• 9:40
  Mike Brcic: And the business model, at that time looked like I'm gonna run two events.
• 9:43
  Mike Brcic: There'll be, longer, deeper events.
• 9:47
  Mike Brcic: I'm gonna charge a premium for this thing.
• 9:49
  Mike Brcic: I'll take 20 to 24 people.
• 9:51
  Mike Brcic: And at the end of the day that, creates a very comfortable living for me.
• 9:55
  Mike Brcic: I don't have to work like a dog to get there.
• 9:57
  Mike Brcic: And then, and I can pour my heart and soul into these two events.
• 10:01
  Mike Brcic: And the people that attend.
• 10:02
  Mike Brcic: And now that my kids are a little bit older.
• 10:05
  Mike Brcic: They don't require as much of my time.
• 10:07
  Mike Brcic: I'm slowly shifting that model.
• 10:10
  Mike Brcic: This year I'll do three events.
• 10:11
  Mike Brcic: Next year I'll do four and I have, a full-time assistant, I have a marketing person or whatever.
• 10:16
  Mike Brcic: But I'm doing it very carefully.
• 10:18
  Mike Brcic: Avoid making the mistakes of the past.
• 10:20
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:21
  Tom Jackobs: That's always the challenge is to not go back to the old ways of once we've made a shift in our values.
• 10:28
  Tom Jackobs: You were talking about the, you know, the profit and kinda the work life balance.
• 10:33
  Tom Jackobs: That's what I was hearing anyway.
• 10:34
  Tom Jackobs: What's your order?
• 10:36
  Tom Jackobs: Of importance of those different items when you started Wayfinders.
• 10:41
  Tom Jackobs: Where was profit, where was service, all that in your value stack.
• 10:46
  Mike Brcic: Yeah as I reverse engineered the business model I said to myself, okay, this is what I would like to earn.
• 10:52
  Mike Brcic: It's a comfortable amount.
• 10:53
  Mike Brcic: It pays my expenses.
• 10:54
  Mike Brcic: I can save, I can have a few things.
• 10:56
  Mike Brcic: I don't need sports cars or anything like that, but I do want to go on a few vacations and take my kids to some interesting places.
• 11:02
  Mike Brcic: And I came up with a number and that of course required further research.
• 11:06
  Mike Brcic: Like what is my actual budget?
• 11:07
  Mike Brcic: What do I need in order to achieve these things?
• 11:09
  Mike Brcic: So that was the number at the end of the day, and if you're ever been familiar with the Profit First model.
• 11:13
  Mike Brcic: So it was using that and saying, okay, this is how much I want to take home at the end of the day and this business, very simple.
• 11:20
  Mike Brcic: Not a lot of operating expenses other than my salary.
• 11:22
  Mike Brcic: A few software tools, whatever.
• 11:25
  Mike Brcic: And then how do I reverse engineer?
• 11:26
  Mike Brcic: If I'm gonna run two events a year because, each of these is two week commitment and then I have to do some scouting or whatever, and that's the max that I want to be away from family, then what does that look like?
• 11:36
  Mike Brcic: How many people prevent, what do I need to charge?
• 11:38
  Mike Brcic: What are the margins, I need to achieve?
• 11:40
  Mike Brcic: So I've adhered to that very tightly have very specific margin targets for event and and whatnot.
• 11:46
  Mike Brcic: And what that does, it allows me to just put my heart and soul into these things without having to work like crazy in order to get there.
• 11:53
  Mike Brcic: And so that was the starting point.
• 11:54
  Mike Brcic: And then the secondary point is what value do I need to provide in order to justify what I'm charging?
• 12:01
  Mike Brcic: And who are the people that I wanna serve, who are looking for that solution to and what is the problem that they're looking to a solution for?
• 12:07
  Mike Brcic: And so I realized I wanted to focus on entrepreneurs because I've been an entrepreneur for most of my life, most of the people in my peer network are entrepreneurs.
• 12:15
  Mike Brcic: And entrepreneurs tend to be, in my experience, more growth-minded.
• 12:19
  Tom Jackobs: Yes.
• 12:19
  Mike Brcic: Than the average person.
• 12:20
  Mike Brcic: And part of that is by necessity, because if you don't grow, if you don't invest in your personal growth you will hit ceilings in terms of where you go with your business because it requires you to grow over time.
• 12:30
  Mike Brcic: And I certainly, would not be able to run wayfinders with the same level of consciousness and awareness as when I was 24 and started my first business.
• 12:39
  Mike Brcic: Business model, who are the people I wanna serve?
• 12:41
  Mike Brcic: How do I wanna serve them?
• 12:43
  Mike Brcic: And how can I then develop a product or service that is going to justify the cost that is gonna provide that level of value?
• 12:50
  Mike Brcic: And so I've always approached it from the standpoint whatever business or project is, who do I want to serve?
• 12:56
  Mike Brcic: Get a deep understanding of the problem, and then provide exceptional value.
• 13:00
  Mike Brcic: And if I focus on that, if I provide enough value, people will want to pay that, right?
• 13:05
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 13:05
  Mike Brcic: Business is somebody's paying you because they expect value in return and the what they'll pay you is commensurate to the amount of value they expect to receive.
• 13:12
  Mike Brcic: And so the orientation has been around how do I continue to provide that value to people?
• 13:18
  Mike Brcic: And I haven't always gotten it right, but I continue to ask the right questions to get there and I have an incredible advisory board and anybody who's out there.
• 13:26
  Mike Brcic: And my advisory board is made up of five of my best and most loyal customers, people who've done 3, 5, 6 events with me.
• 13:34
  Mike Brcic: And we meet quarterly for a couple of hours.
• 13:37
  Mike Brcic: And I'm saying this for your listeners and I did this with my previous business as well in which my advisory board was made up of my investors and customers, but all of my investors were customers as well.
• 13:46
  Mike Brcic: And what I've done with this advisory board is I've created an environment and an invitation to them to be just completely, radically honest with me.
• 13:53
  Mike Brcic: And I've communicated through my words and my actions and my reactions that I'm okay with that level of difficult, sometimes difficult, sometimes tough to take feedback.
• 14:03
  Mike Brcic: And the result is that I get incredible information that almost nobody else would share with me from my actual customers who tell me things because I'm not certainly not getting it perfect all the time.
• 14:13
  Mike Brcic: And, my actions have consequences in the world, and they experience those actions and those consequences.
• 14:20
  Mike Brcic: So when I create that environment for them to share with me, it's just absolute gold.
• 14:23
  Mike Brcic: And it lets me know where I need to step up, what I need to let go of, what I need to embrace.
• 14:27
  Mike Brcic: And so that keeps orienting me around that idea of value of providing value to my customers.
• 14:33
  Tom Jackobs: That process that you described about reverse engineering what's my goal in terms of revenue and what do I need to do to get there?
• 14:42
  Tom Jackobs: And I actually did that with my fitness business as well.
• 14:46
  Tom Jackobs: I just didn't do the last part, which is probably the most important part, is finding the problem and solving the problem and creating the value.
• 14:56
  Tom Jackobs: For the ultimate customers.
• 14:58
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's a part where I really want the listeners to really get into and maybe do a rewind and listen to Mike again about the process that he went through to reverse engineer and create a program that not only provides you with what you want, but also provides your customers with what they want as well.
• 15:17
  Mike Brcic: If I can offer one more thing, is that, I do this a little bit more informally now in my current business, but it was a very sort of formalized thing in my previous business, which was continually connecting with my customers
• 15:29
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 15:30
  Mike Brcic: I wanted an insight into their worlds.
• 15:33
  Mike Brcic: Their lives, their hopes, their dreams their, the things that keep they're the things that keep them up at night.
• 15:37
  Mike Brcic: And it was, it was pretty simple, had a calendar, set up with a, booking link.
• 15:41
  Mike Brcic: And I had slots throughout my week for people to book a call.
• 15:44
  Mike Brcic: And so when somebody signed up for one of our trips, they would get a welcome video from me thrilled that you're here.
• 15:50
  Mike Brcic: And it was a personalized video.
• 15:51
  Mike Brcic: I had to record it every time and said, Hey, I'm super thrilled you're joining us for a trip.
• 15:55
  Mike Brcic: I can't wait to welcome you into the Sacred Rides fold.
• 15:58
  Mike Brcic: I'd love to connect with you just for 15 minutes.
• 16:00
  Mike Brcic: If your game, here's a link to my calendar.
• 16:03
  Mike Brcic: And so I had, five slots open per week.
• 16:05
  Mike Brcic: For this, and, some weeks I would only talk to one or two people.
• 16:08
  Mike Brcic: Some weeks I would talk to five people, but it would ha I would get a it accomplished a number of goals.
• 16:13
  Mike Brcic: Number one, I would connect with them as human beings, and they were quite impressed that they could connect with the CEO and the owner.
• 16:19
  Mike Brcic: Number two, I would get a really good insight into their world and who they are their hopes, dreams, all the kind of stuff I mentioned.
• 16:27
  Mike Brcic: And number three, it would give me insight right at or right after the moment of purchase as to why they signed up, why did they purchase my product or service?
• 16:36
  Mike Brcic: And and that would, that call would happen typically within a week or two of when they signed up.
• 16:40
  Mike Brcic: So it's fresh in their memory and the answers were quite surprising.
• 16:45
  Mike Brcic: What we were ostensibly selling was mountain bike trips.
• 16:48
  Mike Brcic: But the, what those conversations revealed was that it, it was so much deeper and I'd get, answers like my wife of 23 years just died and, we used to mountain bike together.
• 16:58
  Mike Brcic: Twice a week and this is my way of just honoring her memory and stuff like that.
• 17:01
  Mike Brcic: Or I'm going through a divorce and this is just a present for me or something like these really deep, meaningful things.
• 17:07
  Mike Brcic: And it just made me realize that what we weren't selling was what wasn't a mountain bike trip.
• 17:11
  Mike Brcic: It was, it was an emotional experience that people were looking for.
• 17:16
  Mike Brcic: And so you can imagine when you have a deeper understanding of that, how that might impact your messaging and your marketing.
• 17:24
  Mike Brcic: And what you're selling.
• 17:25
  Mike Brcic: And there's a reason that the company was called Sacred Rides because it used to be back in the day when I started, there was this little company in Ferny, British Columbia, and it was called Fernie Fat Tire Adventures.
• 17:34
  Mike Brcic: But then once we started expanding around the world, that name, number one was not appropriate, but it also didn't really hint at what, what we are trying to do, which was create like a sacred, travel experience on a mountain bike.
• 17:48
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Mike Brcic: All of that we're talking about being led from the heart.
• 17:52
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:52
  Mike Brcic: This is come back to this idea of this business being led from the heart, right?
• 17:56
  Mike Brcic: We're you're not just selling a piece of software or a mountain bike trip or whatever.
• 17:59
  Mike Brcic: It's like you're selling a window into somebody's hopes and dreams and a doorway for them to pass through.
• 18:04
  Tom Jackobs: That's right.
• 18:05
  Tom Jackobs: Putting the customer first, understanding their hope, their dreams, and what they value as well.
• 18:10
  Tom Jackobs: That's absolute gold for any business to understand.
• 18:14
  Tom Jackobs: And I think a lot of definitely profit led businesses don't go that far into the, they're in love with their product.
• 18:20
  Tom Jackobs: They're not in love with their customers.
• 18:22
  Tom Jackobs: And Tony Robbins says that all the time, fall in love with your customers, not your product.
• 18:27
  Tom Jackobs: And I love that having advisory board.
• 18:31
  Tom Jackobs: You said you had that with the Sacred Rides as well.
• 18:34
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:34
  Tom Jackobs: I think that's a amazing concept and I think a lot of entrepreneurs can shy away from having a board that feels, to me, that feels very corporate-y.
• 18:45
  Tom Jackobs: But how do you balance having that advisory board and keeping it live and more organic than a, like a formal board?
• 18:53
  Mike Brcic: Yeah.
• 18:54
  Mike Brcic: My business is, unique in that I, I lead every event that I run, they're quite immersive.
• 19:03
  Mike Brcic: They're an experience, they're a journey that I take people through.
• 19:06
  Mike Brcic: I connect with, a lot of the people who attend on a pretty profound level, many of them have become close friends.
• 19:13
  Mike Brcic: And our board meetings and the five people that are on my board have all traveled together with me and developed these deep friendships.
• 19:21
  Mike Brcic: And so when we get together, it feels like a reunion of friends more more so than a board meeting.
• 19:27
  Mike Brcic: And they tell me, I will usually get, after those advisory board meetings, I'll get three or four messages from these five people saying, thank you so much for that.
• 19:36
  Mike Brcic: It was such a heartwarming, couple hours to spend together.
• 19:40
  Mike Brcic: So it's not just, I'm not just asking, I'm not asking them for marketing tips or whatever.
• 19:45
  Mike Brcic: It's not very corporate at all.
• 19:46
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 19:47
  Tom Jackobs: Good.
• 19:47
  Mike Brcic: I'm trying to get insights into, why do they keep coming back to Wayfinders?
• 19:52
  Mike Brcic: And what is the transformation that it's creating for them and what, what hits really deeply and what's missing the mark?
• 19:59
  Mike Brcic: And how do I show up best as a leader and how, in what ways do I still need to grow as a leader?
• 20:05
  Mike Brcic: It's not just one way.
• 20:06
  Mike Brcic: I just pose a question and they share feedback.
• 20:08
  Mike Brcic: It's a dialogue and they, some of these questions, meaningful dialogue for them to explore these same questions.
• 20:14
  Mike Brcic: So it's like equal parts friend reunion advisory board and therapy session all rolled up in one.
• 20:20
  Mike Brcic: But it's extremely valuable.
• 20:22
  Mike Brcic: That's my particular context.
• 20:23
  Mike Brcic: But I'd say we're people really miss the mark with whether it's a formal board meeting or an advisory board.
• 20:30
  Mike Brcic: If we're talking about a formal board if you have a public company, you're probably not gonna run a me meeting like that.
• 20:35
  Tom Jackobs: Exactly.
• 20:36
  Mike Brcic: But an advisory board and just, for anybody can set up an advisory board, it's an informal thing.
• 20:42
  Mike Brcic: An actual formal board of directors is a different thing.
• 20:45
  Mike Brcic: Where people miss the market is they focus on some very narrow aspects of business.
• 20:50
  Mike Brcic: I need help with my marketing, or I need help, with financial strategy or whatever.
• 20:53
  Mike Brcic: That, that's really useful.
• 20:55
  Mike Brcic: But you have an opportunity, particularly if these are, some of your best customers of going deeper.
• 21:00
  Mike Brcic: And if you have that.
• 21:02
  Mike Brcic: And maybe you don't have that, intimate relationship with your customers the way I do.
• 21:05
  Mike Brcic: And you can't, if you're selling a piece of software, whatever, you probably ask people to give you insight into your leader leadership style'cause they've never really interacted with you in that way.
• 21:13
  Mike Brcic: But maybe you can.
• 21:15
  Mike Brcic: But, I encourage people to try and go a level deeper than just the tactical questions because my experience has been the success of my businesses is directly tied to my willingness to grow as a leader and the more I can grow as a leader.
• 21:30
  Mike Brcic: And a lot of that growth is just confronting the baggage that operates below the surface in the subconscious that compromises our ability to show up.
• 21:39
  Mike Brcic: And I'll give you a specific example to bring that home and then we can move on.
• 21:42
  Mike Brcic: Back when I used to do one-on-one consulting, I was consulting with this guy who led a software firm, had about 40 or 50 employees and, he was talking about how toxic the culture at his company had become and asked him some questions.
• 21:57
  Mike Brcic: We started digging a little bit deeper and what emerged was this culture where nobody really talked about anything.
• 22:03
  Mike Brcic: And everybody was afraid to confront things, but then everybody just got really resentful and angry and that they would snipe at each other behind backs or private slack chats or whatever.
• 22:14
  Mike Brcic: Instead of ever actually confronting the problem.
• 22:17
  Mike Brcic: And so I just asked him like, Hey, tell me a little bit about.
• 22:19
  Mike Brcic: You're home growing up.
• 22:20
  Mike Brcic: What was that like?
• 22:22
  Mike Brcic: And what revealed was this picture of a extremely chaotic household, and it was one in which he spent a lot of time hiding from the conflict, the constant conflict and yelling and screaming between his parents.
• 22:36
  Mike Brcic: And so he became extremely conflict averse, and he did it terrified him to ever confront issues directly.
• 22:44
  Mike Brcic: And so he would have, meetings with his senior team or whatever and he was just afraid to like ever, speak truth and everything.
• 22:50
  Mike Brcic: And he was always like walking around with kid gloves.
• 22:52
  Mike Brcic: You can imagine how that would filter through the office.
• 22:55
  Mike Brcic: And everybody's just walking around with kid gloves and being super passive aggressive.
• 22:59
  Mike Brcic: And so that's just an example when you don't, when you don't have anyone to point out those things, it just perpetuates for years.
• 23:06
  Mike Brcic: And then you're scratching your head as like, why are things like that?
• 23:08
  Mike Brcic: Your company is a reflection of you, and there's some work to be done.
• 23:13
  Tom Jackobs: A hundred percent.
• 23:13
  Tom Jackobs: I think that's gold right there.
• 23:15
  Tom Jackobs: Like the company is a reflection of you and to do that in your work to correct whatever might be going on in that company.
• 23:21
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:22
  Tom Jackobs: That's amazing.
• 23:23
  Tom Jackobs: And your journey as well is absolutely amazing.
• 23:26
  Tom Jackobs: Also, I can't believe this time has gone by the way it has.
• 23:30
  Tom Jackobs: But Mike, tell us how we can learn more about you and Wayfinders and what you have coming up.
• 23:37
  Mike Brcic: Yeah, thanks, so the website is way-finders.com.
• 23:41
  Mike Brcic: I'll tell you a quick funny story, but that,
• 23:43
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 23:44
  Mike Brcic: That dash is that I looked into way-finders.com.
• 23:46
  Mike Brcic: And it wasn't being used and for whatever and hadn't been used in years.
• 23:50
  Mike Brcic: And for whatever reason, the owner wants$25,000 for that URL.
• 23:55
  Mike Brcic: I, and I was like, there's no way I'm paying$25,000 to remove a dash from my URL.
• 23:59
  Mike Brcic: If I was getting if incoming traffic was a big traffic source then,
• 24:03
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:03
  Mike Brcic: Or lead source, then maybe.
• 24:04
  Mike Brcic: But it's not important for me at all.
• 24:06
  Mike Brcic: Anyway way-finders.com you can explore our upcoming adventures.
• 24:11
  Mike Brcic: My podcast is on there.
• 24:13
  Tom Jackobs: Nice.
• 24:13
  Mike Brcic: Season one of the podcast is really about looking at midlife through the lens of the hero's journey.
• 24:18
  Mike Brcic: Very useful way to to look at and contextualize the struggle, the typical struggles of midlife.
• 24:25
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:25
  Mike Brcic: That will give you a bit of a window into my world and how I see things.
• 24:29
  Mike Brcic: And that's probably a good starting point.
• 24:32
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:32
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 24:33
  Tom Jackobs: Obviously we met and I'm gonna be joining you guys in Egypt and really excited about that.
• 24:39
  Tom Jackobs: Why don't you give the audience just a little highlight of what Cairo or Egypt is gonna be like for everybody.
• 24:44
  Mike Brcic: Yeah.
• 24:45
  Mike Brcic: When you operate in the places where I do around the world.
• 24:49
  Mike Brcic: My most recent event, it was a very remote part of Papua New Guinea.
• 24:53
  Mike Brcic: In a month I'm heading to Western Mongolia.
• 24:55
  Mike Brcic: And so I'm operating these pretty wild places around the world, and there's a reason for that.
• 24:58
  Mike Brcic: It's because I believe it creates an emotional journey.
• 25:02
  Mike Brcic: The context for a really profound emotional and psychological and spiritual journey.
• 25:06
  Mike Brcic: And so when you operate in places like that, it's not like running a retreat in Costa Rica where everything's, pretty standard and contracts and whatever.
• 25:13
  Mike Brcic: Shifting sense.
• 25:14
  Mike Brcic: So that event originally began as we were going to start in the Neum Desert of Saudi Arabia, which is a spectacular, profound, desert and then head over to the Sinai Peninsula.
• 25:23
  Mike Brcic: And then the Saudi government started making that very difficult.
• 25:26
  Mike Brcic: And then we shifted to an event that was gonna take place in the Sinai.
• 25:29
  Mike Brcic: I'm just a sort of a couple weeks into this process now, when we finally figure all of that logistical stuff out, so that we're actually going back to NEOM and then cross red Sea over to Sinai.
• 25:39
  Mike Brcic: And it's a little bit of surprising news there but that was the original vision for it.
• 25:43
  Mike Brcic: And I'm excited that we can go back there.
• 25:46
  Mike Brcic: Just to paint a picture, the NEOM Desert is this vast mountainous desert in northern Saudi Arabia and very empty.
• 25:51
  Mike Brcic: There's no people that live there, but it's one of the quietest, most spectacular places I've been to.
• 25:56
  Mike Brcic: I think the new Dune 2 was parts of it were filmed there, so it might look familiar if you've been there.
• 26:02
  Mike Brcic: And we're gonna be using that backdrop for sort of this idea of getting quiet so that we can listen to what's going on below and listen to the soul.
• 26:09
  Mike Brcic: And then we cross the Red Sea, and then we're joining the Bedouins of the Sinai Peninsula, and we are trekking on a remote part of the Sinai Trail.
• 26:16
  Mike Brcic: Over five days up to the summit of Mount St.
• 26:19
  Mike Brcic: Catherine, which is Egypt's highest peak, and it's right next to Mount Sinai of 10 Commandments fame.
• 26:24
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 26:25
  Mike Brcic: And that is a region that is just really rich with history.
• 26:28
  Mike Brcic: It's important to the 3 major religions there and we're gonna dive in a little bit into history and this idea of pilgrimages and, what are the pilgrimages my life is calling me to?
• 26:38
  Mike Brcic: And I've tried, over the years to explain what it is that I do, and it's difficult.
• 26:43
  Mike Brcic: But the shorthand I've developed is the ACT model, which is adventure, community, and transformation.
• 26:48
  Mike Brcic: That's really the heart of the experience.
• 26:50
  Mike Brcic: Like a profound deep adventure and experience of really inner deep belonging and community.
• 26:55
  Mike Brcic: And then if you embrace it, it's up to the participants If they wanna embrace that journey.
• 27:00
  Mike Brcic: I can't lead them through it, but I create a context for transformation.
• 27:03
  Mike Brcic: It looks like a travel experience, but that's just the delivery mechanism.
• 27:06
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:06
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:07
  Tom Jackobs: And from what I've gathered too, in conversations that I've had with others, just the transformation alone is gonna be just the true value of the program.
• 27:16
  Tom Jackobs: I'm really looking forward to it.
• 27:17
  Tom Jackobs: A lot of that deep work that you've already done.
• 27:19
  Tom Jackobs: I'm due for that.
• 27:20
  Tom Jackobs: I've been doing that for a couple years now.
• 27:22
  Tom Jackobs: But I'm really excited about the adventure.
• 27:24
  Mike Brcic: I'm looking forward to our time together and being together in person'cause we've only had pixelated.
• 27:29
  Tom Jackobs: Exactly.
• 27:30
  Tom Jackobs: So when we do cross the Red Sea do you need me to part it or,
• 27:34
  Mike Brcic: Yeah.
• 27:34
  Mike Brcic: If you have that skill, it'd be very helpful.
• 27:36
  Mike Brcic: 'cause then we don't have to bother with a boat we can just drive across.
• 27:39
  Tom Jackobs: That's right.
• 27:41
  Tom Jackobs: Oh my gosh.
• 27:42
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 27:42
  Tom Jackobs: That's my heritage is in that region.
• 27:45
  Tom Jackobs: My grandparents immigrated from Syria, so I'm really excited.
• 27:48
  Mike Brcic: I remembered you saying that.
• 27:49
  Mike Brcic: Yeah.
• 27:50
  Tom Jackobs: But Mike thank you again for being on the show today and taking your time.
• 27:53
  Tom Jackobs: I really appreciate it a lot.
• 27:55
  Mike Brcic: I appreciate you.
• 27:56
  Mike Brcic: Thank you for the conversation.
• 27:58
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 27:59
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you Show listeners for tuning in for today's episode.
• 28:03
  Tom Jackobs: Hope you got a lot out of it, and definitely check out what Mike's doing down in the show notes.
• 28:07
  Tom Jackobs: We're gonna link, Wayfinders up in there if you're interested in having an adventure.
• 28:11
  Tom Jackobs: And contact Mike to see how to apply to be a part of that.
• 28:14
  Tom Jackobs: And If you could do me a great favor, and that's to give the show a rating and review, I'd certainly appreciate that.
• 28:19
  Tom Jackobs: It definitely gives the word out about the heart-led business show and helping other people realize that you can have heart and you can have a business, and you can make profit at the same time.
• 28:28
  Tom Jackobs: So until next time, lead with your heart.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.