The G.E.M. Series EP28: How To Tap Into Your Zone of Genius With Mike Zeller
Blake: [00:00:00] Welcome to the G.E.M Series, powered by Rocket level. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by setting big goals, executing like a pro, and having a fearless mindset. The G.E.M Series is all about investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of life by sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves.
Providing thorough research from our team on what careers and habits are yielding the best results, and discussing the mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that all future entrepreneurs will face. Investing in yourself starts with putting in the work every single day, and this podcast is here to help you do exactly that.
My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the Vice president of the Ambassador Program here at Rocket Level, and I'm thrilled to be your host for the G.E.M.
All right hello and welcome everybody to today's G.E.M series. I am so excited to welcome today's guest, Mike Zeller, Mike. You have a lot of titles and [00:01:00] I think that you do each one of those equally well. You are a business architect, entrepreneur, mentor, and author. Several other things that I'm sure I'm not even mentioning here but what Mike does is helps high achievers align their purpose with both the business they wanna build and the life they wanna live while getting unstuck and shaking off some of those limiting beliefs. So his businesses have done hundreds of millions in sales. He's the author of several. Excellent books.
His new one is the Genius Within. He's mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs and has some incredible knowledge to share, so I'm sure you can tell I'm super excited to have Mike on. Mike, 
Mike: welcome to the show, Blake. Thanks for having me on, man. And my intro makes me sound like I'm a lot cooler than I am.
I think so. 
Blake: man, I was looking around. I think you're just as cool, if not cooler. Then I just, I stated here, I I saw Were you wrangling snakes at one point? I think I saw it somewhere. 
Mike: Well, I, I, I did get in the ring with some [00:02:00] king cobras, so I, I did that, but I did not wrangle them. I, I got right, right behind you did go back and research.
But that was in Thailand. They, man, these guys, you paid $20 for like a king Cobra show and you can literally, while they're doing their dance with the king cobra, which is like striking and doing their thing. And they're like three feet from the King Cobra. You can get behind the King Cobra and they'll take a photo
I'm like, that's I, I would not be risking my life for someone else's Instagram photo. Man, but somehow they have a ton of fun doing it. So I thought that was pretty 
Blake: epic. And I'm, I'm sure it's still pretty nerve-wracking even being in the being in the ring with this king cobra, you 
Mike: know? Yeah, yeah.
No doubt. No, I thought that was I thought that 
Blake: was pretty cool. But it was funny. 
Mike: I, I, I had that in my 
notes 
Blake: to bring up at some point, but when you said that I, you weren't as cool as I had just described. Y'all don't even know. Mike's been in the ring with King Cobras and done all kinds of stuff.
So for those who don't know you, would you mind just telling the audience a [00:03:00] little bit about yourself, Mike? 
Mike: So, Blake, I've, I've started over now soon to be 20 different ventures and fashion, automotive real estate, now health and marketing. Few other things, but I've, you know, coaching, consulting, but you know, my love is unleashed.
people's divine potential. I, I'd say what drives me in my new healthcare venture is, which is called Superhuman Health, or super superhuman iv.com, but we treat aging, fatigue, mental health, and addiction, all using one core ingredient called N a d plus, which is a coenzyme that our bodies make that is central to all cellular functioning.
But I got into it because my wife was battling depression and I also felt like I aged five years and a year during that first year of her battle course with course two year battle with depression. And in that season I was looking for a solution. When we tried it, it worked and I was like, oh.
Boom. This [00:04:00] is amazing. I felt five years younger in the next five weeks or so. Wow. And as I've gotten treated more and more regularly now I feel like I'm 30 again. I'm 43 chronologically, but I felt 30 in terms of my energy. Right. Mental clarity and stamina. And so it gave me a new, new angle to help unleash people's potential.
Cuz I, I felt like I was operating with just fumes in the. and now, yeah. If there's a way that I, I've always been like, Hey, if, if there's a way they can give me an unfair competitive advantage, I want that. And I don't, I don't want to age any faster than I have to if I can slow that clock down. Absolutely.
So that's, but, but central, that's what I'm all about. 
Blake: That's so cool, man. How did you even find out about this? Do you know? Yeah. Were you in mad scientist mode? Did you do all kinds of research? I'd 
Mike: love to, yeah. Yeah. You know, in 2019, right before the pandemic, I was [00:05:00] heavily recruited to be a part of this other company that was treating addiction using N Ad Plus, and they had about a 400% more effective rate than typical rehab centers.
In other words, 82% of their clients didn't relapse versus 20% of rehab centers. The traditional method they relapse, right? So mm-hmm. , I'm sorry. Only 20% of the patients don't come back. 82% of patients with n a plus don't come back, which is what you want. Wow. Want someone to be yeah. Treated and cured.
So 400% more effective. And so I was like, there's something here. The sh world should know about this, this, this is a big problem that people need. You know, I've seen addiction ravage families and destroy marriages. And it's a disease. And, then when my wife was battling depression when she got pregnant and it brought out she was, had terrible abuse as a child very abusive mom and stepdad, and triggered tons of [00:06:00] PTSD, s anxiety, depression.
Yeah. And I couldn't pull her out of it. My Twin Robbins positive mindset stuff. Mm-hmm. didn't work. Meditation, breathing. Didn't work. Exercise helped, but didn't solve it. Somatic psychotherapy didn't help. I mean, it did help, but it didn't cure it. Mm-hmm. neurofeedback helped but didn't cure it.
We didn't give a noticeable, lasting jolt above. It improved, but never like transformed. But when we got a total dose and full, what we call now called the loading phase of three. Rounds of treatment of N A D plus, which is a non-addictive substance our body makes. It's, it's like stem cells. She was a night and day difference pretty much immediately and was, and her energy was back, and her mental clarity was back.
Her joy, her mood, and her ability to handle the stresses of life, normal stresses of life, didn't overwhelm her and, cause her to plummet down into the gutter. [00:07:00] And, so I was, There was something there. I, I knew more people needed to hear about that. And, so right now that's a big part of what we do is, is great for mental health.
Cuz it's a, it's not a pandemic, it's an endemic or whatever you would call it. It's a, it's a big problem in the, in the US I think it's what we would call it. But you know, I've always been mission-driven, so, yeah. And. The energy I feel is an entrepreneur is, is amazing. So I love it. 
Blake: No, that's that's wonderful.
And it seems like so many of your businesses have been rooted. A desire to help people. Yeah. As the kind of core mission. I mean, I looked through, you know, did me, I told you, I was like, I was scouring through some podcasts listening through, and that seemed to be a commonality. So I guess going way back, even into childhood, what do you think maybe formed some of this desire to be attached to a bigger mission?
Mike: Yeah, I think it. You know, longing to be a part of something [00:08:00] meaningful. And, I'm a deep thinker. Like my freshman year of college, my nickname was so crates as in Socrates and I was always asking some big questions about life. I found faith. My faith was a big piece of it initially, which was, and I found a lot of value in that.
But then, I felt like, you know, at the end of the day, it's like businesses, ministries, organizations. If they don't enrich the world and make the world better, then they shouldn't exist. And, so I, I was looking for, Central to, like any business I participate in, I wanted to enrich the world and make people's lives better.
It's something that I can believe in standing tall, feeling great about, and then when I stumbled upon this and I noticed immediately, what was cool for me, it's like you take a supplement and sometimes you feel something sometimes. Well, nine times out 10 when someone gets an [00:09:00] IV infusion, cuz it's bypassing the gut barrier.
You know, our gut, yeah. Our gut barrier allows only about 10 to 30% of supplement absorption. Right. But if you do an IV infusion, it's like 99% of it's hitting your bloodstream. So you can, you feel it? I like it when, when any of these is coming into your bloodstream, it kind of feels like you're becoming wolverine is how to like, like to think about it and then.
Because you feel it. Like if you let it slow, it's like intense. Yeah. Like you wake up, I usually wake up the day after and the days after, like before my alarm with more energy, more mental clarity, not needing caffeine, just ready to go. And so anyway, that's my faith was a part of it. Just serving the world driven to serve the world and make the world a better place.
Got it. No, 
Blake: that's I think that's, you know, Interesting cuz I, I, I think you, did you grow up in the southeast too? 
Mike: Yeah, I grew up in l [00:10:00] in Kentucky? Yeah. Okay. What about you? Yeah yeah, 
I 
Blake: grew up in Georgia, so Georgia, a small town in Georgia. And you know, I, it's interesting cuz Christianity's like one of them, you know, religion is a, is a big part of like how a lot of folks in the south grow up.
Yeah. But what's interesting too is kind of how. What do you take away from that? So I like how you've applied that in what you do currently and being attached to this idea that Yeah. You know, like if you're not doing something that positively impacts people, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it, you know?
Yeah. Because otherwise, you're, you're detracting from the world. Yeah. So with this, I'm curious about this. What, because you do so much with the mindset and helping get people, you know, to break through that whatever ceiling they kind of might foresee ahead of them. What do you do to kind of supplement alongside all this stuff?
Is there any kind of coaching that goes along with that to help people you know, adjust? Or is it pretty passive? [00:11:00] 
Mike: For the, for the IV side, you know, ideally we want them enrolled in some sort of healthy optimal therapy that's helping them process if they're battling, you know, the addiction or mental health side.
So we highly, recommend that. But sometimes people, they're just, they're cellular. Their cellular metabolism is just, And, and they're dragging. And, and I felt it myself, so I understand. But if you're dealing with fibromyalgia autoimmune diseases, and lupus there's Hashimotos. Like if you reboot yourself from the cellular side and all your cells feel younger and are operating more efficiently, or just like you turn back the clock, guess what?
You think differently. You act differently. You, mm-hmm. show up in life. And, so that's one of the cool things about the IV side, is it's an immediately noticeable effect. [00:12:00] And if you haven't had one, you know, I'm sure there are places down Atlanta, you're probably pretty healthy still. I would, I would start getting at least an, you know, a couple of times, once or twice Well, maybe once every two or three months get an id.
Yeah. Especially N A d glutathione, the vitamins. But N A D I would love 
Blake: to give it a, I would love to give it a try. Yeah. You know, cuz I think that that's Hey, I still feel worn out too. You know, some days, right? I I, I, I'm still, I'm like, I love you have those days where you're full of energy, but I've noticed Yeah, the older you get, that's the more it starts kind of creeping up on you.
Yeah. And you know, I quit drinking about four years ago because of that. Exactly. I was like, oh my gosh, this is just deteriorating my efficiency. My happiness. Oh. Ability to, I, I could just feel myself aging. Like you kind of talked about aging five years in one year or whatever it is. [00:13:00] And if this could be a fast track to helping people do something that makes sense for them or change those neural pathways, I think that's, that's great.
Do you know? Yeah. And with this kind of endemic that you were talking about, Why do you think that we're in this place right now where so many people are struggling 
Mike: with, with mental health? Yeah. One of the big things that the human body can only handle I had another natural health practitioner explain this to me in 2019 and said, Hey, when in a given week, you can only handle so many stressors, and if you get one big knockout punch.
Then you can't handle a whole lot of other knockout punches before your body starts breaking down. And if you, if we rewind to February 2020 and March 2020, and we were just hit with knockout punch after knockout punch. With uncertainty on a global scale. And then, then you couple it with loneliness, then you couple it with, oh, economic fears and worries, and then you're, [00:14:00] oh, you have to wash your Amazon boxes because you might get the virus.
Cause no one understood breathing the wrong way. You have to stand 12 feet apart, six feet apart, whatever it was, right? And man, it, it was so much stress. And your body, our humans are resilient, but everyone has a different level of resilience depending on their health, depending on what type of traumas they've been through, and depending on what type of triggers are already embedded into their body.
And, so like it's created, a mental health pandemic. In many regards, I mean, suicide rates robbed. 30.4% of Americans have battled depression in the last two years. According to the APA, American Psychological Association, 64.1% of Americans have had some sort of significant trauma or challenge in the last two years.
Yeah. So those numbers are like off the charts. In many regards of recovery, most people [00:15:00] don't understand recovery. Most people don't understand mental health. I didn't understand mental health. Nearly enough two years ago, and I still feel like I'm in the dark about some things, even though sure, probably no more than 98% of Americans on that.
But that hits your heart and, it creates cortisol levels that are way, you know, way out whack. Hormones get outta whack. You're energy production. You're not exercising, you're not seeing sunlight, you're not seeing friends. So yes, we're reapplied, but I. When we first started going back out into the world, my wife was afraid to go into a restaurant.
Mm. Right. And yeah. And then we are, some of our friends that we had, we still don't see some of the friends that we saw before the pandemic. And so this reset, it's been a big global reset that's still happening. And it's happening less crazy in a less crazy way right now. But we, our nervous [00:16:00] system are still looking to recalibrate and find certainty.
We can handle what we want, and uncertainty to some level, but we need some certainty. And each person's tolerance is, is different. And we had dramatic amounts of uncertainty and very low amounts of certainty for a season. 
Blake: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And whenever I've looked at it that's, that's one of the biggest factors I've seen.
I always think. You know, as a, as a nation, sometimes I worry that we don't, cuz there's so much of this that we just don't know. Yeah. That's in it's in the unknown in terms of like we have umbrella categories for mental, you know, mental health you know, whatever you're, whatever you're, you're navigating.
It could mean all kinds of things if somebody tells you you're diagnosed with something. But I also wonder on the coping side of things, how do we develop? Coping skills, as human beings nowadays. Cause listening to your stuff, I just, I, I heard a lot of good snippets, but [00:17:00] I mean, yeah.
What do you tell some of the people that you're mentoring? When, when they're trying to push through a wall? Yeah. 
Mike: You know, sometimes when you slow down and you pause and you breathe and because sometimes when we're trying to push through a wall, it's almost like we are we're bludgeoning our head and there was a way around it.
Yeah. And pushing through walls sometimes conveys can convey a. Spirit of scarcity instead of a spirit of abundance or a spirit of lack instead of a spirit of resourcefulness. And I think the bigger things I would look at is like, how do you reverse engineer my whole environment so that I can get into a state of flow and flow state when you're in the psychological state of flow, which is like that nirvana-like state where you're, you know, if you think of an NBA player, can't miss a.
[00:18:00] Tom Brady completed 22 passes in a row. Well, we can have that in our work world where our, it's four main energy quadrants, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. If I get those up to a peak level, And I'm aligned deeply with a purpose and, and mission and big, and something that's a healthy amount of challenge.
Like there's your comfort zone and your discomfort zone, where your discomfort zone, which is where the magic happens, is only typically for most people, 10% beyond your comfort zone. So if I go not 20%, but if I go 10% above my comfort zone, then I'm more likely to hit a flow state. When I'm in a flow state, I'm 500% more.
And I'm also typically releasing all six of the positive neurochemical cocktails, those serotonin, endorphins, dopamines, all those guys. I release all that. And I'm also, cuz I'm releasing those neurochemical cocktails. Basically what happens is I'm also more likely [00:19:00] to be happy. So, my quest is instead of if I'm looking at a wall, I might want to slide back for a minute.
Reverse engineer, get back in a flow state, let my subconscious work on that wall, come back to it later, work on something else where I have a clear pathway, and ask different sorts of questions to that wall. One of the big things that I did in, my entrepreneurial journey is as I said, all right, where's my deepest area of genius?
And then how can that deep area of genius be applied to higher leverage?  and, and I looked at, oh, I can develop out businesses and sales models and unlock mm-hmm. , you know, a good mentor and, and I can leash people's, you know, talent and get them more deeply connected, their purpose so that they can drive with even more certainty and precision.
But if I'm just doing lower level, you know, [00:20:00] early stage entrepreneurs, if I'm just doing. Real estate sales that don't have as bright of a future versus applying it to say ammo, you've got a SaaS business, right? Yeah. Well, if I can apply that to something that continues to grow and is much more scalable, so like superhuman, I feel like this can be a hundred-million-dollar company.
And that's what I'm gonna build it towards. My real estate team is never gonna be a hundred-million-dollar company. Maybe gonna be a million or 2 million in terms of value. Yeah, I think that. 
Blake: It's such a good way to reframe your brain and also the fact that maybe the wall is there for a reason.
Mike: yeah. Yeah, exactly. 
Blake: I mean, a wall can't go on forever. The Great Wall of China. I'm not exactly sure how many miles long that is, but guess what, it ends at a certain point. . Exactly. 
Mike: And you 
Blake: know, I, I, I think that's such a, such a great perspective. And you touching on kind of the real estate and going into something a little more scalable and where you could reach more people and be tied to yours.
I was, I was checking it out [00:21:00] and yeah, you were doing real estate for a while, and then, correct me if I have this wrong, but you went to Argentina for a sabbatical in between that? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I wanna hear. So what happened in that sabbatical period, you know, cause that sounds pretty magical, 
Mike: you know? Yeah.
Inspired a four-hour work week. I went down there and had a little six-week mini sabbatical where I turned my cell phone off, didn't I set up a whole new email? Called Zeller Sabbaticals and was just in that email account. A handful of close friends had that email, had handed off my real estate business for someone else to run and learned the Spanish tango, went kit surfing, fell in love with a European girl a little bit, and had a great adventure and it was a, a cool.
I knew I would find my aha or find some, like when you're in that sort of environment where you're creating an [00:22:00] intentional space, and when I create breath, you know, it's almost like you think of the whole universe is on this rhythm of energy. Exertion, renewal, exertion renewal, day, night, daytime, nighttime summer.
It's winter, it's fall. It's. It's rotation. The Earth's rotating, everything's rotating, breath in, breathe out exhale, carbon monoxide, inhale oxygen. So in fact, you know, most Americans we're just, we just exhale. Just mm-hmm. just exert exert exert. Very true. And then I listen to this one podcast, or you TEDx talked called The Power of Time Off by Stefan Sage Master, and you talked about.
How he was. He owned a big design firm in New York City, and he worked for brands like Nike and Prada and all that. Well, every seven years he would close down and shop and put a sign on the door, sign on the website, and says, we're off for the next year [00:23:00] to creatively renew pay and staff. Everybody gets paid.
But what happened is at the end of that sixth year, they were running on burnout. Creative ideas were running dry by the time they come. After that spot up there infused with brilliant, cutting-edge, the front end of the trend ideas and pioneers and innovators again, I was like, I gotta, I gotta get off the hamster wheel.
I was on a hamster wheel. Mm-hmm. , I mean, while I was there I had this big aha that, you know what, I'm good at developing sales and growing businesses, but what if I could become the designer of the engine in the business instead of the actual? I was tired of being the engine. And so I came back and that next year I started three different businesses and started building from the engine mentality.
How do I design the great engine instead of being the engine or the mule? So would [00:24:00] you say 
Blake: that was kind of the. The beginning. I cuz that is, I mean, that goes yeah, that's scalability right there. Mm-hmm. , I mean, it's a, it's a heck of a lot easier to be the person who designs the engines than be the one that's taken the mileage on yourself.
Yeah. And well it's not easy, but it's a, it's, it's a different kind of work that's scalable, you know? Yeah. Would you say that was kind of the beginning of that, you know, whenever you started being able to build out, those ideas? Or is this something you? Had it, in your brain? You know, for a while I've 
Mike: probably had it in my brain some, but for a while.
But it, it accelerated it and kicked that into another gear and I longed, I think if I was going to, you know, there's a gap between our vision and our reality. And I knew I was capable of building some bigger businesses, but if I was ever gonna do that, I had to reset mm-hmm. because, I only have so many hours and so much energy, but I had to reset, my pathway and build a much stronger [00:25:00] foundation.
Absolutely. 
Blake: And I think that's a risk that you know, people, we see it as a risk to take a break any kind of a break nowadays cuz we go so nonstop, or a lot of us do anyways, especially if you're trying to execute on your vision. But it's, it's weird because sometimes when you put in those stops, that's where the biggest epiphanies unfold.
you know, can become real. So I think that's pretty neat. So did you start seeing, yeah? What was that like once you went ahead and, you know, launched, launched into this new frame of mind? Like, did you start seeing the traction pretty quickly, or were you nervous about this at all or anything like that?
Mike: Not really. I, I, I felt like, you know, I've had a client who's an entrepreneur and just. Business and did well. I had a nice little figure actually, and we were sitting in this room last, last Friday, and he was like, Mike, what's always struck me about you [00:26:00] is like, you're always pretty self-assured.
and I don't get nervous very often. Like I as speak, I can feel unprepared, but I'm still not nervous. I can roll in and just roll and, and be good with it. I think. When I look at that season, I knew I was also going to treat that season as a season of experimentation, of learning, and, I ended up starting altogether.
I started like six businesses in three years and not the best idea. Can be pretty dumb in some regards, but I was like, Hey, I'm gonna learn a lot. I'm gonna learn more than most people cuz I'm gonna have more things I'm learning at the same time. And more mistakes mean more learning.
And so sure enough, I learned a lot and made some mistakes. I lost some money. I made some money. But, I went in with a learner's mentality. Like this is my season of, I don't think my season's ever over, but that's the season of deep experimentation and [00:27:00] learning. 
Blake: Yeah. That makes, yeah, because I mean, if you go into it with the idea that, hey, regardless of, you know, it, I could lose money's money, but I wanna learn and I wanna become a better person and, and get closer to my end goal.
When you have that mindset, it makes sense why you wouldn't be, why you wouldn't 
Mike: be too nervous about it. 
Blake: Yes. Do you know? Yeah, exactly. So is this the season when you were, you know, spending a lot of time with Tony Robbins and like studying under him or, 
Mike: yeah, that's, that's the season that I jumped in with Tony.
You know, I spent a couple of hundred grand, grand with that guy and 1,447 hours with Tony, and that was the season I grew from, you know, having a handful of employees having 55 employees, and doing like 30 plus million a year in sales revenue. And I enjoyed that season. It was a great growing season.
And then, you know, I'm, I'm in the early stages of another growing season that I think's built on a much wiser and more solid and mature foundation. But yeah, I, I [00:28:00] learned a ton. I was like, you know what? This is a season. I'm just gonna invest, invest, invest in myself learn mash. Cause I've got, I've got decades ahead to be an entrepreneur and to build wealth.
So if I. Can do more in 10 years or five years than most people would do in a lifetime, then I want to do that. I wanna learn, I want to stretch. So, 
Blake: Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, I've heard you talk about kind of like age ranges and being in your, how being in your forties and fifties is kind of like When a lot of people hit their stride.
Mm-hmm. , I wanted to ask about Yeah. About that. Why, why is, why does it work out that way that most people make the most money they're ever gonna make in their 
Mike: fifties? Yeah. I think the maturity, you're able to put the pieces together. Yeah. A lot more. Like I look at how I'm building superhuman versus how built problems I love United, building it so much more wisely.
It doesn't mean I'm not making [00:29:00] boneheaded decisions sometimes. Overall, I'm, I'm more intentional. The maturity of the partners is different. The strategy, I can tie things like most of the time when we start a business, we can usually do one or two, maybe three things well out of the 17 things at the beginning, and then we just kind of go without some of those other parts working Well, and we're ok.
We're like, I'll figure it out. And that's to some extent, that's what you gotta. But then when you start finding your stride, you're like, oh, this is my lane, my zone of genius, which is what my first book is about. This is my lane where I'm an absolute badass. If I know that with a greater position, then I can design who, and what team I join, and make sure that I get the exact right role instead of playing out a position, in my twenties and thirties.
It's easier to play out a position. And you gotta try different positions so you know what's in position or out of position. But then you, [00:30:00] once you've figured it out, now you can act with more precision and you can design out businesses like I'm I thinking myself as an architect, a business, sorry, who do I need over here?
That is phenomenal because I need to build a dream team. I mean, the right players in the right position in the right. . And I have necessarily that, that full maturity back then I had some understanding of it. But now I'm more rigorous and more astute and I've also been through the battles.
So I, I know what's, what's something I should get stressed about and what's something I shouldn't. Yeah, 
Blake: no, and it's kind of interesting cuz in your twenties it feels like you're just trying to. Get a sense of who you are and what you're, yeah. What you're good at, you know? Yeah. Is there any way that people can kind of fast-track some of that or tap into that zone of genius?
Like you're talking about? 
Mike: Yeah. Great question Blake. What I've seen, what I've seen with my clients is if you do a deep inventory of yourself [00:31:00] you think of one of my favorite quotes, Socrates said, to know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. So how do I know myself? Like I'm sitting here at this 12-foot marble table.
Well, if I could gather all the clues about who I am and put 'em on one table, then the patterns will pop like popcorn. It's like Jim Collins wrote Good Grade and all these other great books and what's sing does just gathers all the data for the patterns to emerge. He has a hypothesis or ideas. Then he says, oh, this idea was not proven to be true.
This idea was, yeah, and patterns. And so when someone goes through my genius within the process, what they do is I take him through five different personalities. My favorite is the wealth dynamics. I just got an email from another client who just sold his business for 5 million and flying in for a Genius day with me and we're unpacking his mm-hmm.
And what happened is you read the report of the Wealth of [00:32:00] Names. He's a star on the Wealth of Famous, I'm a creator. He's, he's like, Mike, that was spot on. It's, it's crazy how it's 10 to 15 minutes brought so much clarity about who I am. And so we do the Welsh dynamics. Couple it with the strengths finder test, Meyers Briggs DISC profile, and Colby Index, which measure measures how fast are you to start things, how many details you need, and how strong is your follow through.
Mm-hmm. , those types of. And maybe Ingram. So that compiles one unique area called your unique abilities can add that to your unique life experiences, like those pivotal moments. Just having coffee with another guy today, and he's been in a bunch of different roles. Those have set him up to be where he is now, and it's not by accident, for example, that I went through a battle with depression with my wife.
It was her battle, but I was there to support her. And now [00:33:00] that life experience has catalyzed me to help create, create so much around mental health and to be a. Excellent problem solver for solving that problem for hopefully hundreds of thousands of people before I'm done. And then you couple that with key relationships, which is the third area, where'd already have a natural hotbed of relationships.
Mm-hmm. , I knew I was meant to be an author and mentor and had all these friends that had bestselling books. So like that was an angle. And then the fourth thing, the values, and passions. What do I stand for? What do I stand against, what, what, what am I naturally curious about? But if all four of those things overlap, that's probably my zoning genius.
So that's, and that's where I wanna swim. And then if people like getting in that lane, guess what, man? You're on fire. Yeah. 
Blake: Yeah. Dang man. Everybody needs to be doing this right now. Do you know? I'm like, it sounds great. You're sounding like a real [00:34:00] Three on the Enneagram right now. Oh, I'm a three. Oh, yeah. I was just messing up or not.
I I thought that was something else. I, I, I, I think I'm a, I think I might be a four. Okay. If I remember correctly, it was a long time ago that I took that. Yeah. But I love, I love, you know, using, I've used the Myers Briggs and the Colby task. What? The Myers Briggs and Col. So my Colby is, what's the, I have the results right here.
I should have, I should have what's the number, remember? So on my, on my Colby test, it was super high on the like basically I'm the one who's like the I eight and get stuffed, get started. Yeah, get begun Guy. Yeah. , I was like, like, like kind of too high cuz I'm not very, I I had to grow in my organizational skills a little bit, you know?
Yeah. 
Mike: and the main catalyst. Yeah. Yeah. So high on the quick start, probably lower on a fact-finding lower on follow through. [00:35:00] Exactly. Yeah. So I saw 
Blake: that it's way out of proportion. On that 
Mike: one. Me too. So that's okay. The thing is to, you know, we never asked Dennis Rodman to become a great three-point shooter and we wouldn't ask Steph Curry to like get in the paint and you know, bang bodies where Tom Brady cannot run fast.
So you don't want him fast. You want him to be great at what's great 
Blake: at and manage the rest. Yeah. That's why it's called a strengths finder, right? That's right, That's right. We're not to point out your weaknesses. Yeah. No, that's a, yeah, that's a great point. You know, as long as we're leaning into some of those things that we're, you know, naturally inclined to, we're probably doing good.
I think you used, a metaphor about going out poisonous mushroom hunting. Oh, yeah. Is that? Tell me a little bit about that, if you don't mind. I'd be 
Mike: curious. Yeah. So, you know, as an entrepreneur, An innovator if you, and it depends. Some entrepreneurs, they just wanna be, they're in the [00:36:00] preservation mode.
Like a wealth manager, you primarily want, if you own your wealth management firm, you want to be a little, need to be pioneering to acquire new clients. But mm-hmm. , you don't wanna be pioneering in risking clients' money. Totally. And, but on the other end, if you look at a company like Amazon, you look at Apple, you look at Tesla, They gotta keep innovating and pressing.
The innovation button is almost like a poisonous mushroom meter. You look at tribes in the early days, if they're nomadic and they're traveling, traveling through the forest, well, you gotta have a couple of poisonous mushroom meters, guys that will go ahead of the, of the pack and, and test out the fruit, test out the mushroom.
See, oh, is this a portobello? Is this a truffle or is this a poisonous mushroom? So you taste little bites to see if it's good or if it makes you. Or is it a psychedelic mushroom, whatever it may be, and the same thing in entrepreneurship is learning and embracing. [00:37:00] For example, Amazon has that deeply embedded in their, their philosophy, and that's why it, you know, they seem like they keep growing and they keep adding new things, and they, and they do, they also are very comfortable with big strikeouts.
Like how, how many people ever owned an Amazon phone? Did you ever own one? That was a multi-hundred-million-dollar bet that didn't pay off. Mm-hmm. , it was a flop. Total flop. They lost lots of money on that. Yeah. But they did all right with Prime. They're doing freaking phenomenal with Amazon Web service.
They're doing phenomenal with adding all these other services. They knew, hey, we gotta add our electric vehicle fleet. So they did a hundred million dollar investment in the Caribbean. And so, you know, as a, as an entrepreneur, When things, when we're about to have a hundred years of technological change in 10 years, which is the era that we're upon, then you can't stand still.
Otherwise, you will be [00:38:00] a relic of the past in many regards. And so you have to keep innovating and creating. Now if you're selling to, you know, Baby boomers or a generation or psychology of people that are change resistant. You don't have to change much, but eventually, they're gonna become dinosaurs and go extinct too.
Yeah. So 
Blake: yeah, that's something to be aware of. Absolutely. You know, and I think the reason that stood out to me so much, was having an early Thanksgiving celebration with my family, And it was my wife's family and her uncle goes, who the hell tried eating mushrooms for the first time? He just started talking about that.
He's like, what kind of guy goes out into the woods and tries it out? And I was like, well, maybe he watched animals, but then when you just explained it, I'm like, yeah, they probably just tried a little bit. Right? Yeah. And, and went for variety cuz they knew that. If we tap into something viable, this could sustain us for, [00:39:00] you know, for years and we won't die in the winter.
Mike: Yeah, exactly. Do you know? Yeah. 
Blake: What do you think is like a small, oh, go ahead. Sorry. 
Mike: And, and I think in reality is only, you know, if you look at the diffusion of innovations curves I wonder about two and a half percent of the population are true innovators. About 13.5% of the population is in early adoption.
And so, you know, you don't need many people and you don't want many people being like, true innovators because it creates too much disruption. Absolutely. 
Blake: Anyway, what you gonna say? Yeah, no ab no. I was just wondering maybe what does that look like? Cuz you gave them the kind of like Amazon and Apple version of that.
I just think about people that are in the early stages of being an entrepreneur, what is, you know, sifting through and trying things out looks like. And what are some of those risks that people maybe aren't taking on that they should be trying out because they Yeah, they could be missing 
Mike: out, you think?
Yeah, I think I refer back to [00:40:00] the, a great book called The Four Steps to the Epiphany, or the Startup Owner's Manual by Steven Blank. and in that journey, it's four steps. The first step is customer discovery, and you gotta get radical intimacy with your ideal, who you think is your ideal client.
Mm-hmm. , and they liken, liken it a little bit to like Airbnb. When Airbnb was founded in the first couple of years and the co-founders, were going to people's houses, literally themselves, going to people's houses, taking photos. Having as many conversations with people as possible to know, understand, and care about their problems so that they could do micro pivots, and keep pivoting to get the value proposition nailed in.
And, so the, the season many people abort the learning and active learning season two early and, and also should. Continue, but it continues in a little bit different way. [00:41:00] So like in my season with Superhuman ib, I'm going to meet as many clients as possible. I, I want to have conversations. I wanna connect with them.
I wanna learn what their health challenges are. I wanna start seeing patterns. I want, I want my mind, my body to be stacked with data of like, this is what people were facing. And then this subgroup cares about this. Like, I know an entrepreneur, who cares about peak performance. If I. Work harder, last longer, and feel great.
You know, my stamina's up. We're, we're also more likely to burn ourselves out. So if I can infuse an entrepreneur with energy and stamina, that makes 'em feel superhuman, boom, that's a great value prop. If it's, someone battling mental health, they just want to feel normal, they were less anxious, they want wanna be able to handle life and not panic.
So anyway, like given that intimacy with your client and falling in love with your client, not fall in love with your product. Like horses, some buggies went out of business [00:42:00] cuz they were not so in love with their client. They wanted transportation issues solved 
Blake: and the most efficient means 
Mike: possible.
Eventually, Henry Ford created Model T, and eventually, Henry Ford lost sight of that and said, you gonna have any car you want as long as it's in black. Eventually, Chevrolet and GM came along and said, Hey, we'll make any color you want and we'll make different models and we'll accommodate and listen to what people want.
Yeah. And then Ford came around and now makes more than one color. Wow. Yeah. No, that's 
Blake: that's, that's so important too, whenever you're, you know, getting wrapped up and trying to make these moves. Cuz we also just get so focused on kind of, cuz we have to, in a sense too, is we're like, I gotta make money.
I gotta make money, I gotta make. But then you lose sight of, Hey, I prob the money will come, but I need to tap into where the actual demand is and what, yeah. Like you said, like, I have to fall in love with my customer, you know, because otherwise, we're [00:43:00] on, we're on different, you know, we're on different planets.
We're in a bad relationship waiting, wait, not even waiting to break up. You're not even dating yet, you 
Mike: know? Mm-hmm. . So, yeah. 
Blake: Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. So a few questions that I always ask, kind of wrapping up here. Are there any myths that you, would, you try to dispel around you know, coaching and, and, and mentorship and entrepreneurship that you would just, you think are important for people to, you know, go ahead and execute those limiting beliefs 
Mike: in their brain?
Yeah, I think when you look at coaching and me, Now the pro athletes in the world, the top pro athletes, they pay a lot of money for that extra 1%. Mm-hmm. , if you're playing a bigger game, that extra 1% means more and more and more dollars. So, the challenges when you're, 
Blake: you're the leader, 
Mike: creator you know, founder of a business, whatever is [00:44:00] your, on the inside of the.
It's really hard to LA read the label when you're on the inside of the bottle. So what I see from if you get aligned with a great coach or mentor is man, they help you read the label on the outside. And that self-awareness, that extra level of self-awareness is what separates the truly great from the potentially great.
And you look at, say a guy like LeBron James, his self-awareness is much greater than a Russell Westbrooks and I, I love sports metaphors. , but LeBron sees and recognizes his weaknesses. Russell Westbrook doesn't, and, he deflects and rejects criticism in some regards and doesn't have awareness of where he is good and not so good.
In, and if you want to become a mature level five, In your business, you've gotta have that accurate self-awareness and create safe space for [00:45:00] communication and create an organizational structure that enhances the health of your organization, your communication, your trust. And, and for, for me, that's, that's a big piece of the pathway of how I'm gonna build a hundred million dollar company.
It's like, Hey, I gotta have real health with my people. I'm gonna listen. Doesn't mean I'm gonna be perfect and I'll flub. Sometimes, but then I'll learn. But then also I would need to be in the right position. We have to ask ourselves, where am I desperately needed? Where can I be one of the best in the world, in terms of my job, my role, and my industry?
And if you can find that, then you, you get rewarded handsomely if you're in a, in the right situation. And also can imply intelligence. To find the right situation or design the right situation. I love, I love to ask a lot of my clients an opposite question than what they'll probably think of, which [00:46:00] is, what does my environment have to look like for my success to be inevitable?
Mm. Like I know if I jump off a table onto the floor, the floor, the gravity is inevitably gonna pull me down. Doesn't matter how high. I'm gonna come down. That's inevitable. Well, what if my success was inevitable? Cuz I designed it based on I got the right people around me. I got myself in the right position, I got the right marketplace.
I'm writing the right wave of momentum cause so much success and business is right in the right wave of momentum. I'm solving the right of the right problem with the right offer. I have a sustainable business model. I have people executing at each critical place at a high level. I'm protecting myself.
I'm building a moat around my business so others can't attack. Course it's much harder and I've got myself an optimal mental, emotional health so that, you know what, I'm not gonna get d.[00:47:00]. So what does my environment have to look like for my success? Being inevitable is one of the biggest things, and if you take some thinking time, cause if man, I, I had a, a friend, or not a friend, but a guy I connected with, he's Australia's seventh wealthiest man.
Hmm. And wow. He, does something that I encourage entrepreneurs to do a lot, which is thinking, And, and he would sit down and take a core question like, what does my environment have to look like for my success? Be Inevit, writes out the question, answers it for 45 minutes, and do that same question four times.
And by the end of the fourth time, he solved that problem. And he is one time he took, how do I get my company to a hundred million in one year? And he did that question four times and he figured out the solution. And by the end of that fourth time, well, later on, that year, he got into over a hundred million dollar evaluation [00:48:00], and Wow, 
Blake: that's so 
Mike: powerful.
Yeah. It's, it's thinking and growing rich. It's not working hard and growing rich, not grinding and growing rich. So yeah. Long-winded answer, no. Yeah, 
Blake: no, I, I just think that that's powerful cuz even in my own experiences, you. All this stuff is floating around, knocking around in your head like crazy
So sometimes if you just take that 45 minutes and dedicate it, to knocking it out, it's pretty incredible what comes from doing that. So I love that. So you said to write it down four times, work through it over 45 minutes, see what you've got, you know, and just keep, keep chipping away at, at it, in that way.
That's no, that's, that's wonderful advice. I think. Okay. And Mike, I always ask as my kinda last question, what's your favorite part of what, of what you do right now? I mean, I, I think I kind of have a sense of that, but, but what would you 
Mike: say as a, I'm a creator on the [00:49:00] wealth dynamics and quick start on Colby and I N C P, which is Meyers Break.
So I love creating, I love generating ideas, and birthing things into existence. So that's a real joy for me. But then also I love, it's such a joy to see people experience lasting life change. I love, you know, I mean I love it when entrepreneurs fly in or I fly to them and we do a VIP zone and genius day.
Cuz usually we'll do, we'll unpack more in that one day than they all have impacted, you know, in two years. Mm-hmm. shifted and so that's me. Days of immersion. But I, I love a lot of it. It's, it's hard for me to say, which part do I enjoy more than the other? Yeah. But, I love the joy of creating and growing and calling others out to their highest level of greatness.
Mike, 
Blake: I appreciate you coming on [00:50:00] here today. I I learned so much already. Our audience is gonna learn so much. It's been an absolute, absolute pleasure. Where can everybody kind of keep up with everything that you're, you're doing right now? Yeah. 
Mike: Thanks for asking Blake and pleasure connecting today as well.
You can go to, for my book, you can grab a copy of that for free@geniuswithinbook.com or Amazon of course. And then you can also. Grab, I've got a little free download, six steps to find in your Genius, so grab that as well. You can click on that in my Instagram bio, which is Instagram. All the social media handles are the Mike Zeller, and that's Z E L L E R.
So that's on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and the end. So you can find me on all those platforms but would love to connect, message me if something resonated that we shared today, or share the podcast and tag us both. 
Blake: Wonderful. Awesome. All right, well thank you everybody for [00:51:00] tuning in.
Yeah. Please subscribe. Keep up with Mike, keep up with everything on the G.E.M series Instagram that we've got, and yeah, this has been the G.E.M Series. Until next time, everybody.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The G.E.M Series, the podcast for anybody dedicated to investing in themselves. If you'd like to see the resources mentioned in this episode, learn more about what we are up to at rocket level, or come over and join our team, just click on the links below. Until next time, this is Blake Chapman, and remember to be awesome and do awesome things.