Episode #93: Mike Rutz - MakeMyMove

hello this is coach Tim Campsall and I'm your host for the self-made as a myth make a difference together show where we are chatting with successful business owners to hear their story of the journey to building their business and because we know that success in business is not something that we can do on our own we're taking some time to recognize and acknowledge the folks who have helped us along the way I'm excited to have a fellow business owner from Indiana with us today my guest was in a band after college that toured the Western U.S while also maintaining a a full-time day job as a republican fundraiser so we're gonna dig into that a little bit because that's intriguing I want to learn more about that his favorite downtime activity is uh spending time with family and friends as well as flying he is a pilot so I'm going to ask him a little bit more about that too that sounds exciting and he is most proud of his kids and even if that sounds cliche I think that is awesome who will get uh get him to tell us about his family too so it is my pleasure to welcome Mike to the show today hello Mike hey thanks for having me Tim appreciate it fantastic so hey let's start with having you um introduce yourself tell us a little bit of your personal story like where you're born and live and about your family and hobbies sure uh I grew up in Indiana I've stayed in Indiana pretty much my entire life um you know I was born and raised in Indianapolis and then um after college I went to IU or for college I went to IU and after college I came back to Indy and and stayed in Indiana um married my wife who I met at IU and ended up having three children and and we live on the North side of Indianapolis um and we have a place down in Southern Indiana that we escaped to on the weekends sometimes to you know get away from the big city and uh yeah you know I love it here and and a lot of our work you know we are we do have a make my move which is my company and we'll talk about later does have a nationwide and somewhat International footprint but um you'll see you'll notice if you ever visit the site a lot of Indiana presents because that's kind of where we started and and we we do care uh deeply about making sure the state uh thrives and is a wonderful place to live wonderful so um a couple things what's your wife's name Rebecca um and then my three children are 17 15 and 11. um two boys they're the older ones and then a daughter um who's 11 and uh they're they're uh they keep me busy my boys are youth hockey players so yeah in the winter time uh they you know they play travel hockey literally we're just we're all in different places every weekend you know I could be in Pittsburgh but my wife's in Minneapolis and my daughters and you know at all it's it's chaos and it gets tiring but it's fun and all that I know I'll miss it when it's gone there's there's nothing more fun than the relationships that I've made with that and getting to watch watch my kids you know um learn what life is like uh by playing youth hockey so it's fun fantastic so tell us about uh having uh touring in a band yeah so uh when I got when I got out of college so I studied um public affairs in French when I went to IU and um I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with my life when I graduated with this you know I I had dreams of being a French diplomat okay um but I was I had I lived in a house with a bunch of musicians and I ended up picking it up and we ended up starting a band and you know then after college the band was kind of like you know it was it was I we weren't famous or anything but we had a nice following and so we decided to tour I I just got a job working for Jim Kittle at the Indiana Republican party when he had taken it over as a fundraiser and I said to them when they were interviewing me I'm like hey I'm going to be gone for two weeks at this point in time you know and it was pretty early in my tenure there and they were like it's fun it's fine and so I was doing phone calls from the road and and but I mean it was a while I felt like I was living in the a double life you know I was like you know living in this van and I'm peanut butter and jelly and beer and bye bye day and night and play music at night meanwhile I'm dialing you know millionaires asking them for money for the Republican party and I'm sure a lot of the folks I was hanging out with on the road weren't you know they weren't Republicans that's true right yes yes so it was it was an interesting fun time on the road very cool and you're a pilot tell us about that uh yeah so um I I took up the hobby a friend of mine Bill osterley who was the founder of Angie's List and and just recently passed um from ALS when I was working for him and Angie's List we both had been you know we both had exchanged our enthusiasm um for Aviation I've always been just you know fascinated by it and um he's like let's let's learn how to fly so literally he had one a flight instructor come in one day into work you know and and we're sitting there in the office and we're like what does what you know what do we have to do and then it became like this race between him and I of who was going to get their pilots first who was going to score higher on the written examination but anyhow after that then um just ended up I I uh bought a share of just a tiny little single prop airplane and and um I you know I didn't really use a whole lot for business or family travel or anything I just would take it out if I wanted to relax there's not the the part that I loved about flying was you have to concentrate at least when you're younger pilot you have to concentrate so much on not dying while you're flying the airplane that you're you're not thinking about work or family or anything like nothing else I felt I felt mentally and psychologically like refreshed and invigorated every time after I was done flying um and I I went to get my um my instrument rating which was it's pretty intense and it it wears you down but it really it like I said you know the mental stimulation it's really invigorating and fun and very yeah so I love Aviation it's a fun thing and then um I think offline you had shared something about inheriting a powered parachute oh yeah yeah so um ha when when uh one of the things that we like to Tinker around with uh it wasn't just airplanes it was a thing and uh a type of plane called a powered parachute which is basically a cart with three wheels a giant propeller attached to it and a parachute attached to it and you you know like anyone could really fly one of these things it's not rocket science literally you the throttle controls whether you go up or down I think I see them flying around the freeway uh yeah yeah okay so that's what you probably do and so um you know he we we got into some of those and he ended up buying a few of them and I have some funny stories of just ridiculous like like maybe we should have died kind of stuff um because we we weren't trained and we were just out at the airport flying these things but anyhow when he when he passed I was gifted uh the powered parachute so um yeah we'll see if I I mean it's been sitting in a garage for like two years I it probably needs a good look over here very cool well you'll have to send me a picture when you uh take that yeah yeah I'll do that hey Mike is there a funny story that your family likes to tell about you that you'd be willing to share with us today yeah I I thought um ah gosh there are several I think um maybe the best one and it's not my my family it's my family that I grew up with um one of the best so I was the youngest um by six years um I was a complete accident um and I think I ended up I ended up being my parents favorite so um I'm joking but uh my my dad my dad used to tell this story about how when um and this just tells you how times have changed you know she was 32 and she was pregnant with me and um he came home from work and she was stirring a pot of soup and this was when she found out she'd gone to the doctor that day and she um you know she's crying you know and just you know wailing and my dad's like what is wrong what is wrong she says I'm 32 and I'm pregnant you know like she was very unhappy to be pregnant with me and so it was my dad but I mean 32 today is like we didn't even have our first child until we were 31 years old so um so anyhow yeah uh I was that was a mistake but I think it turned out okay I love it oh so um they started out with them crying about you and then you became their favorite and they loved me I took care of them so they both got sick because they got older and I stayed in Indianapolis and and took care of them well you know my my siblings were off doing fun stuff so yeah and now you're uh now you're flying and you're playing with powered parachutes yeah

hey Mike tell us um about how the business came to be and at what point did you have the confidence that you could run your own business sure so uh a little I guess a little background on the um the origin story so the business was was essentially started with Bill osterly um the gentleman I mentioned earlier who had founded Angie's List I met bill when I was working for Mitch Daniels raising money because he had taken a leave of absence from Angie's List to raise to uh run Mitch's campaign yeah after Mitch's campaign uh he ended up recruiting me to Angie's List and I ended up spending 11 years there so when Angie's List was sold in 2017 Bill had been gone for a couple years and he reached out to me and he's like hey what do you you know what are you going to do with your life and I was kind of like leave me alone I wanted to smell the roses for a second and um of course you know the next night we're uh at a bar having a beer and he's telling me um this idea that he has around using uh some of the marketing tactics and strategies that we used at Angie's List because you know Angie's was a huge marketing company obviously a well-known National Consumer brand um and we spent gobs of money becoming that um and uh he said hey you know like I think we could use a lot of the things that we did at Angie's List to um help communities attract talent and recruit people into their community and you know the population and Workforce shortage was not even I mean it was It was kind of out there but no one was really talking about it at that point in time right and um you know he'd been studying some of these demographic um like some of these economists that that were telling us hey you know like there's going to be an issue here in about five to ten years happened earlier than I think everybody imagined with the pandemic um but uh we started a company called tmap that was oriented around using data and targeted marketing to find people to recruit to your community well when the pandemic happened we saw a bunch of communities that were starting to offer incentives to folks to relocate there primarily targeting remote workers because suddenly you had this new segment of the workforce this huge segment and one of the more valuable segments of the workforce right High income folks that had suddenly become Geographic free agents right and this migration was happening by the way it's just starting like we are just scratching the surface right now um you know I've got to hope that the housing market will unfreeze a little bit and I think that's kind of just like I don't know you know I think it'll it'll really be moving then um but uh we saw these communities that were offering these incentives to these workers to relocate to their community and we were kind of going there's a Marketplace like here you know there's suddenly this this Market of geographic free agents there's these communities that need people the population need children need Workforce um and so I need need higher income Workforce and so we uh we basically just aggregated all those all those communities and it was fewer than 20 at that point in time on the site and we just wanted to see if we could get traffic and lo and behold you know we got a very very uh decent amount of traffic and we decided okay this is the direction we're going to take the business and so now we're really really focused on building this marketplace where communities can effectively merchandise themselves and tell them tell their stories um and why you should live in this community to an audience of people that are considering relocating and looking for this place that they're going to be able to live and connect with and actually become part of the community so it's it's tremendous fun it's a really it's a really really neat business um and you know seeing the movers you know that are happy when they move in the communities that are actually you know um for one you know they they actually feel a sense of Pride for once my biggest action that I get is we don't think people would want to move here so yeah you know from a lot of communities and when they see people actually do it's really it's neat that is awesome so tell us um a little bit more about the company what's the name and and how does it work the the company's called make my move um if you just go to makemymove.com you will see a variety of different communities all across the country that are offering programming dollar um incent you know hard dollar incentives hey other you know other things to people who um who decide I want to apply to this program and the programs require you to relocate to that Community you know and actually live in that community and have a job work in that Community um so you're contributing tax dollars and and new consumer spending um and the communities basically take all these applicants and um run them through a recruiting file right you know like like introduce them to folks in the community help them find housing all the things that people need in order to make that decision to relocate and ultimately relocate yeah do the communities help them find a job as well but some do so so most of the communities are oriented around recruiting remote workers okay um but there are a variety of communities on our site that do remote worker recruiting as well as Workforce recruiting okay so you know they're building a database of people who are literally you know I mean that are applying and saying hey I'm interested in um moving to your community tell me why I should yeah so so the the fascinating part about this is um this is not a muscle or an activity that communities know how to do sure right they've never been asked to they've always been B2B marketers so Economic Development has always marketed to employers to attract the company to open up headquarters or open up some operations in that community and when they land them you know then they hire 80 of the folks uh from within that Community right they create those jobs that play worked great and it still does to some degree but it doesn't work nearly as well when you have more jobs than people right when you need people you know this building they will come thing doesn't necessarily work um and so uh you know we think of this as an economic development activity it's just retail Economic Development sure right to Consumers and not to companies and every you'd be you'd be amazed at the at the value of a household to a community so you know we actually had an economist from IU that that did uh some research for us and put together an economic model it was really expensive by the way and it was every penny but um Muncie Indiana for instance Muncie Indiana's moved 45 new households into Muncie in the last year average income about a hundred thousand dollars the average that 100 each 100 000 household is worth eighty three thousand dollars of new economic activity that means um thirteen thirteen thousand dollars of new annual tax revenue and seventy thousand dollars of new consumer spending right and each one creates over half of the job so when you get 45 families suddenly you look at the economic value that you've created and that's just one year right they're gonna stay for five six seven years so the return on the investment is extraordinary you know um Tulsa Oklahoma who's the committee we worked with for every one dollar they put into that program they've generated I believe it's thirteen dollars of Roi incredible so yeah it's very very cool so Mike share a story where someone pushed or inspired you that you could um that you could do it even though maybe you didn't think that you could and the impact that that person had on you gosh I'll probably go I'll start with Bill on these questions just because I think this was a one of those moments in my career that uh changed the trajectory um Angie's List was just just starting to scale um they had just started uh National advertise National Television advertising and the sales organization was starting to grow and we were about a year from taking the company public I don't think taking the company public was necessarily on the radar at this point in time but uh the gentleman who was running sales uh for Angie's List had about 150 person organization and uh his uh he ended up having to move back to North Carolina which was where he was from and so you know the job was open and I I was literally I um I remember talking to people and they were like you should you should take that job and I was like I don't want that job

and I was saying I don't want that job that seemed that sounds like a grind you know and which you know the sales organization was kind of this like interesting organism you know I mean these these were Rough and Tumble you know transactional sales people you know and and uh you know HR had tons of fun uh working with them but they had their work cut out for them also um but um you know bill came to me and he's like I think he you know I think you're I think you're built for this WOW let's let's give it a go um and I didn't say I didn't say no but I did kind of go I don't man hey and he was like he was like you're doing this you know um and so uh you know it was one of these things it was uh man it was fun because like like one we were growing fast two we suddenly started this uh this process to take the company public and I was playing a pretty key role in that you know I mean I'm talking to the analysts I'm presenting at investor day um you know working on the pro forma and really running the revenue side of the of the business through that transaction and then the growth was intense you know I mean we went from 150 people in the sales organization to almost a thousand two years later wow um so it was just and you know the fight part time is I didn't really have any idea what I was doing you know but it was working right it was working and it's it's great so I remember a good friend of mine who I connected with in the middle of all that he was like man how do you manage so many people and I was like I hire great people you know like I have great people that work with me to actually like do the work you know and run run the business so um but yeah I would have never you know I don't know that I would have ever taken on um you know a challenge like that uh in an organization like that if it hadn't been for Bill wonderful hey um I'm sure there's many but what's your biggest learning as a business owner I think the remain calm I was thinking about this one uh uh when I was looking at the questions I I uh you know no business ever it goes nothing ever goes according to plan right

actually I mean I read a lot of uh books about you know Wars and Generals and things like that and literally look at the the best made plans never end up panning out and they always have to adapt and you always have to change and so when things aren't going your way um I think the best thing to do is not to panic right and just remain calm and evaluate your office there's always options you know like like there's always options now sometimes they're not good you know or some are better than others but you know there's always ways to um to to address issues and fix things so I'd say probably my number one thing thing would be remain calm another another thing that I thought about was you know um uh pay attention to your intuition and your gut yeah sometimes your your mind is telling you things and if you're not listening yes um like like you can let you you can it's all it's almost like selective avoidance it's like yeah

you know don't let that happen if you feel like there's something around the corner lurking and um don't wait to walk around the corner you know like like uh find out address it um and let let that gut and like that sense and that intuition just you have to you have to kind of fine tune it and and be able to uh know how to listen to yourself sometimes I think it it truly is a like a muscle right in terms of you know our gut or our intuition or our Instinct whatever word you want to call it our Mastermind um you know it does have answers and does have guidance and direction for us that that our conscious mind can't necessarily see so you know things like meditation right or or exercise or quiet time like being able to to get away from the the day-to-day and listen to what our mind's telling us um there are always answers in there but oftentimes we're were just running too fast to be able to to listen right yeah and that's one thing that I think that I've you know I've I've been a CEO for two years now and I you know I was with this with this uh Ambulance Company early on but this is a very different thing but um you know you have to you have to learn how to work differently yeah and and hustle is not always the answer yeah you know in fact I'd say more often than not hustle is not the answer so um so I think that's something you have to kind of um you have to train yourself to do I I share with uh with our clients and and and some education seminars that we do that you know the hustle and grind cons concept has been romanticized more recently but all hustle and grime does is leads to burnout right yeah and so right it's okay to do for the first couple years of of starting a new business but it's not sustainable well that sometimes you just got to back up you know and like what's happening uh you know like what is going on and where are we taking this yeah um yeah I absolutely agree with that now don't get me wrong hustle matters you know I it does but you can overdo it that's for sure yeah it's more like um short Sprints of hustle right but they need to recover and and rest and think yeah process and then you know do another little Sprint but if you're just constantly running then uh to your point you're gonna miss out on things that we that we need to be reflecting on and processing and you know and and considering in terms of what's the next the you know the next right step and and our Instinct has a lot of knowledge if we just slow down and listen to it yeah yeah and I mean and again selective I like I you know we tend to avoid things that we don't like doing right yeah you know it could be it could be you know making a Personnel decision and letting someone go which to me you know that's one that I've very been very intentional about um you know because it's one of it's my least favorite activity he's a manager but I also think it's one of the most important things to you know to do you don't have that problems linger because it affects not just the organization the business itself but the people on the business so yeah it's funny I've uh I'll have conversations with people and they're like hey Tim I don't know what to do about this situation I'm like well talk me through it and they'll talk me through it I'm like it sounds like you know exactly what you need yeah yeah that's exactly right that's fine that's right okay well just do what you just told me because that's that's what you need to do that's 100 true I love it Mike we know that business success doesn't happen in isolation so tell us about one of your biggest challenges um as a business owner and maybe a fellow business owner that came alongside you and helped you through that oh man um let me think about this it's probably uh I'll I'll tell the ambulance company story so um you know after the Mitch Daniels campaign a gentleman here in town his name is Tom Godby uh he owns a heating and air conditioning business but he also had an angels company a few other he was just a Serial entrepreneur um he comes to me and he's like hey I've got this Ambulance Company uh it's it's basically ready to go bankrupt do you want to come and try and fix it I'm like I don't know anything about ambulance companies or or health care you know and I've never run a business he's like it's okay you know you'll figure it out I love I love it you know it was one of those things he probably that's probably one of the great story about someone who put me in uh in an uncomfortable you know situation um that was really good for me yeah and it ended up being you know total triage business management you know the first two weeks um you know I I remember there was a 24-hour period I was sitting there it was a Wednesday afternoon and I was talking to the controller and literally I mean like this is my second week and we're looking at uh at you know the finances and everything and I'm like I don't know that we have enough money in the bank for payroll you know and she's like oh no we're definitely not going to make payroll this weekend I'm like are you kidding me you know I'm finding this out on Wednesday and then um and then the dispatchers I'm not joking this is 15 minutes later the dispatchers come running into my office and they're like hey the radios aren't working the radios aren't working they're like oh no this is and I'm going this is a pretty important thing for an ambulance company to have radios and uh it turns out I said we'll have you called the the you know the communications company now let's say they called and of course we were uh behind on payment and so you know we we ended up we ran them a check and got our radios turned on and I I went home to my wife and I was like man that place is like this is pretty crazy this is tough woke up the next day and was doing more just learning more and it turned out we didn't have liability insurance um because our policy left yeah there was this this weird thing and it just happened so I'm on the arm with the insurance guy and I called Tom that day and I'm like Tom man you know and this is one of those things where he was like remain calm it's okay you know we'll cover payroll you know like just get the thing back on it's true you know back on its feet to where you can you know where you can keep it y'all and so um you know so it was one of these things it was baby steps but we ended up um it ended up getting profitable and then we ended up selling it uh about a year and a half later so um that was a that was one of those moments where where it was like um you know remain calm yeah you know we can figure this out yeah well the good news is is that he was transparent up front and told you that the business was dying oh yeah he was he was yeah

yeah that's true it was what I I should have listened better

it was it was a great trust me it was a great experience but it was one of those things where it's like I was like oh yeah okay no problem it's going it's you know it's on the verge of bankruptcy we can fix that and then you get in there and you're going whoa you know this is pretty intense yeah well I didn't know you meant today it was on bankruptcy we had a year or something yeah yeah exactly uh Mike if I'm gonna put you on the spot here if I asked you to pick three people in your business owner Journey that you're most grateful for them being there to help with your business's growth who are those three people and how they help you well so I'm probably gonna go back rather than uh just talking these are folks who who uh helped shape me and kind of my my habits and how I do things um rather than are helping me with the business that are helping me with the business today but um Jim Kittle um for sure is you know one of the number one folks he was you know he came he was running the Indiana Republican party he's a um local businessman I don't know if you heard of him but kills furniture and just a very active Civic person and a smart business guy and uh I you know I came in to the Indiana Republican party as and totally inexperienced fundraiser and man he taught me how to grind and just and he also taught me how to not don't delay anything you know if you have something you got to do if you got to pick up the phone and have a conversation with someone pick up the phone and have a conversation with someone uh I remember the first fundraising trip we had was down to Tell City Indiana and we flew in this little um you know single prop airplane down to tell City we ended up raising thirty thousand dollars for the state party out of Tell City which was huge I mean that was you know it's more than any governor and um and I remember we were dismounting the airplane after we landed back in Indianapolis and you know I was all of you know two or three weeks in and I was like Hey 30 000 bucks out of Tell City that's pretty good and I'm not joking he looks at me and he goes well I guess you get to keep your job yeah and then you just turned around he just turned around and walked away no goodbye or anything like that that was it all right you know I was like see you tomorrow okay so um you know he just kind of taught me you know uh don't take anything for granted you you know do your job um and don't expect too much and uh Tom Godby who obviously you know kind of um uh gave me the keys to you know a company that he you know had was having trouble with and um you know was there with me kind of the whole time you know when I needed a shoulder to cry on or some advice or he was you know he was there um and so uh and then just the fact that he trusted me with that was um you know the lessons I learned uh from that was the invaluable and then Bill osterly of course you know like and Bill Bill just taught me um you know I I he taught me so many lessons I can't even I can't even think about him but the number one um I think the number one last thing I learned from him was uh you know even when you're worried or afraid just have courage you know um you know being in business sometimes requires courage and conviction and um you have to stick with it um and and so you know that's he was he was Fearless yeah uh which I don't know that he was Fearless I think he was probably more courageous than Fearless but um you know he had he was willing to take chances and um and then you know if things didn't work out uh Plan B uh so I I just learned it's learned a lot from him about being courageous I love that term courageous his the the reality is is that we're we're hardwired to prefer our comfort zone right evolutionarily right we're not supposed to leave the cave or because we'll get eaten so we stay in our comfort zone and and unfortunately right everything we want in life is on the other side of our comfort zone yeah yeah that's an awesome word of if we're courageous enough to step side of the cave right we're gonna experience the things we want to have in life when uh when I was man I even say this to my managers today but when when I was managing at Angie's List and I had a bunch of sales managers I said to them I I when I would talk with them I'm like what uncomfortable conversation have you had lately um and I would ask them that intentionally because I was constantly telling them like look if you're not having uncomfortable conversations you're not doing your job yes you know um you have to be able to speak directly to people to help them improve now just because uncomfortable doesn't mean toxic right it doesn't mean angry it doesn't mean mean it just means direct and transparent and compassionate yeah you know I mean people want feet they want real authentic feedback even if it's not good yeah um most of the time uh and so to me you know the only way you're really going to move the die I love I love what you said everything you want is on that other side of that comfort zone you know you have have to be get used to being uncomfortable yeah yeah there's a a term called perturbation that we uh introduce our clients to and you know it's that idea of that constant uncomfortableness of because we're either growing or we're dying there's no status quo so if we yeah we want to stay in our comfort zone we're actually dying because everyone around us is growing and we're not so it's I like your philosophy of daily right what are we doing to to make ourselves uncomfortable today to grow and stretch and evolve so that we're working towards you know the things that we want out of life yeah I I love that guy I love that concept Mike the let's think about the future so over the next three to five years what are the biggest challenges you see that you're going to face in reaching your business goals and who are the types of folks that you're going to need to to help you resolve those I'd say um probably first and foremost is uh you know capitalizing the business you know the economic climate has changed pretty dramatically um uh you know we are VC funded and then also we have Angel Investors um you know in in our business um the angels are great I you know they're very they're they're sort of kind of there when we need them um if we're good if we you know intend to raise and capitalize with some Venture money I just think everyone that I've spoken to right now that's in the market is like man it's tough it's tough to even get them to say Yes And even it's even more difficult to get to agree on evaluation sure so I think that you know I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we're gonna be facing and for me we talk about Comfort zones you know I raise money for political campaigns and I've raised some money for this business but we haven't done a large fundraise you know a lot of it's been through Angel Investors that I knew or you know through our Venture partner that we started with well hey maybe you need to go down to that little town in Indiana and and where you you got that thirty thousand dollars for your campaign yeah that's a good idea yeah so so to me like that's that's I I've got a lot to learn um in that regard um so that that's part of it that's one of the challenges I think the Second Challenge is more uh macro economic which is um you know one of the things that has um we're getting tons of traffic to the website we're getting people applying to programs but housing is is somewhat of a barrier in some of the communities where we work right there's people that want to move into a community but there is no housing and a lot of that is because uh because interest rates are so high right everybody's sitting there going well you know I'm locked in at three percent two and a half percent um and I don't like I would I would be interested in selling my house and moving to a new house but I don't want to go get into a six or seven percent so so Supply is down because people are holding on to their homes um and I think that's making things more challenging for us for sure but I also uh you know one I think things hopefully will change I think they kind of have to at some point in time um and two we're still finding ways around that uh you know I mean there's property management companies where we're starting Partnerships with in a variety of other things we're doing doing to kind of circumvent that issue but I'd say those are probably the two largest largest issues that we face as a business awesome hey last question here Mike um Jim Rohn awesome business Guru says we become the average of the five people that we spend the most time with so as you think about that what advice would you have for business owners who are doing it on their own and and you know think that you know that they can't or shouldn't you know ask other people for help oh man well number one asking someone for help is the best way to make a friend in my opinion I like like even if you don't know someone a cold you know a cold email uh if if you're authentic and you're real you know I I at least what I've found is a lot of people will answer that email and give you some time um I'd say the second thing is spent like like spend time learning I I I don't think that necessarily means reading books I think it means talking to folks you know other business owners competitors um you know uh uh whatever it is you're thinking about or working on or struggling with there's tons of other folks out there that that know more than you right um you know go out and talk to them and by the way you can develop really great friendships with the with these folks in relationships and those relationships can turn into new business opportunity I mean I've seen it a thousand times where you meet with someone and then two years later you know you're doing some kind of business with them yeah um uh so I think I think learning um in developing relationships with people are two of the most important things you can do why because it's fun and life is short and I I thrive on people uh you know uh so that that to me is a ton of fun but too because um it does open up roads and paths that you never would have thought of or never would have occurred to you you I I love what you said about you know don't be afraid to to make that cold Outreach so a lot of folks say to me uh Tim they're they're they're successful they're busy they're not going to have time for me how would you respond to that well uh I would say if you write them an email that's compelling and interesting then they probably will pick up they probably will answer that email or pick up that phone you know if it's just hey I need you know I um my advice like don't be afraid one you'll never get anything if you don't ask right so you'll never have a chance to talk or learn from this person if you don't ask so one is ask um two is ask in a way that's that's that's going to make it interesting to them and and gonna make them wanna want to talk to you yeah yeah here for here's the thing I I I've found is um we all like talking about ourselves right we all like talking about the journey we've been through we all like the idea that maybe our journey could help others so to your point like if the Outreach is through that vein of hey I've noticed that you've done this or that and and I'd love to hear more about your story yeah I think there's something that that I could benefit from most people are going to love to talk about themselves right exactly that's exactly right yeah like hey you've done this and I'm struggling with this would you mind giving me half an hour can I buy a cup of coffee or can I buy a lunch yeah yeah absolutely hey Mike it sounds like you've been blessed with some incredible people that have helped you in your journey if they were all here on the show today what would you want to say to them thanks you know um yeah but I I like to think it's a two-way street you know I I um they gave me a tremendous amount but I feel like I also gave back to them uh you know and and so you know there's this um Mutual mutually beneficial thing there uh but you know uh yeah I mean thank you would it would really be my core message and and you know like like I said life is short I'm you know I'm [ __ ] I'm 40 to excuse my language I'm 48 now um you know what I I look back on all the relationships and all the people that I've met through through my work um and a lot of them are just just friends you know a very important part of my life uh so uh I would say uh these relationships haven't just affected me as a business professional they've affected me as a human being and I will not regret and a thing you know whenever whenever my number gets called I won't regret a thing because these relationships have been so viable and um great great experience for me awesome so so cool to hear that the you know the combination of business and and personal relationships and and uh I I just love that idea of hey the that it's reciprocal right that we've the people that are in our life we've benefited each other as opposed to it just being a one-way Street yeah yeah I and by the way you know I know that there's this whole you can't mix business with personal relationships I think that's crap you know I love working with friends now now you know like things can go wrong but if you if you have a strong relationship with them and you you know and you have that trust man it really helps you get things done um and if things do go wrong you know you you if you go into it with eyes wide open and with the realization that things could could go Haywire typically you know there's no hard feelings you mentioned earlier about the transactional versus what you're just describing now like we all prefer to work with people we know like and trust and and it helps them through when things don't go exactly the way that we wanted them to because we can rely on that personal relationship right it's just hey we'll make it right but give me give me some Grace and some patience to to work through this yeah for sure I just it just makes sense to me yeah Mike it's been a pleasure speaking with you today thank you so much for being on the show thanks for having me Tim I appreciate it it was nice talking to you to everyone who tuned in thanks for listening to the self-made is a myth show with your host coach Tim campsel be sure to help us spread the movement by liking the show and posting it on your social media and to join our movement go to bemadtogether.com all right folks that's a wrap make sure to pay it forward and I'll see you all next time take care

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