Unlocking Entrepreneurship: Personal Transformation with Mike Brcic

I started attending different entrepreneur events, joining

different entrepreneur communities, got a lot of value

from them. But what I what I felt going to

all these different events was that there was a missed

opportunity. The value that I got from them

was the connections that I made because I could, you know, I

could maintain those connections and we could continue to support

each other. So I decided I wanted to create

an event that was focused, that started with a focus on

connection first. How do I get a group of

entrepreneurs together and help them create really deep

connection? Take a group of people and you

take them outside and you're, you know, you're mountain bike

up a steep hill together and you're, you're sweating together

and you're cursing together and grunting.

And then you have a tonne of fun together that that group tends

to bond really quickly. I wanted to create something

where there was a big dose of adventure to bring people

together, a big dose of because shared challenge brings people

together and an opportunity for openness and vulnerability and

not pretending or posturing, just being human.

Welcome back to the Take a Chance on You podcast hosted by

me, Alexandra Forsythe passing the mic to Mike Vasic, who is

the founder of Wayfinders. This is a community bringing

founders and together. Mike, how are you doing?

Actually doing quite well today, yeah, and I'm excited for our

chat. And Mike, you're joining us from

Toronto, right? Toronto, where spring has

finally sprung after a long winter.

It's the same here in London. It's feeling warm, it's feeling

optimistic, I think. Do you want to give the

listeners a little bit of an introduction to who you are and

what you do? How?

Many ways I could meet that question I'll give you I'll give

you the give you the professional version.

I am the founder and my, my, the title I give myself is chief

explorer at Wave Finders. And that's both exploring the

world and exploring kind of more, more inner domains, both

my own and the people that, that I serve.

And really what I do is I take high functioning, high achieving

entrepreneurs and I try and help move them from high treatment to

high alignment. People that have people that

have spent most of their lives just really chasing and grinding

and hustling and scaling and help them and often getting

misaligned along the way, either through their work, their

relationships, their health, whatever that may be, and help

them reconnect to who they are at the core, what's valuable to

them. And I take take people to some

of the wildest places on the planet to do that really, you

know, remote parts of Mongolia or the jungles of Papua New

Guinea or the deserts of Saudi Arabia.

And I find that. Wow.

Yeah. And I find that the farther away

I take people from their familiar context, the deeper the

work goes. Listeners through What do these

experiences and retreats look like?

Typically anywhere from 6 to 9 days.

One, the ones that are a little farther away, like Mongolia or

Papua New Guinea, they tend to be longer because if I'm going

to, you know, make people slept halfway around the world to

attend, we're going to we're going to go deep and we're going

to make it worth their while. As I mentioned, we go to some

pretty wild or remote places sometimes.

Sometimes we're staying in beautiful lodges and you know,

resorts, whatever. I have an event that I've run in

Uganda, for instance, where we stay at this beautiful 4 star

lodge on the edge of on the edge of windy impenetrable forest,

which is where half of the world's mountain gorillas live.

And it's beautiful lodge, incredible service, amazing

location, all that kind of stuff.

Sometimes we're, you know, when we're in Western Mongolia, we

are staying in tents and we're in the middle of nowhere and

there's nobody around except for us and a few nomads.

And we're, you know, that particular event, we are

migrating with a local nomad family when they're doing their

fall migration to their winter grounds.

So it varies, but there's three main element elements are

adventure, community, and clarity.

The adventure part of it is going to these places and we're,

you know, embarking on a really cool adventure.

We do really cool activities, whether it's, you know, whether

it's migrating with the nomads or in Mongolia or whether it's

fishing with tribes people in Papua New Guinea, or maybe the

connection part, really deep connection among the

participants. I create an environment where

people can really dig deep into these big themes of life and

where they can be open and honest and vulnerable.

And that tends to connect people really deeply.

So people come away from this with really close relationships.

And then the clarity part is just creating a context for them

to be honest with themselves and to, to do the work to really

understand where they're out of alignment and what needs to

change and have the support of other people on that same

journey. So it's, it's a, it's a mix.

It's a mix of all sorts of different things with instead

of, you know, our group facilitation, I might send

people off into the wilderness for three hours on their own and

just say, you know, go, sit, go sit and be by yourself and just

listen and don't leave your phones and everything behind.

Leave your journal, just sit and see what comes up.

So it really changes from day-to-day.

And and I try to let the place that we're visiting and form

what we're the journey that we're going.

Through So when am I joining? Question.

I think the question is when you're ready I.

Think so. I'm, yeah, I'm very intrigued.

One of my questions, do you tend to do a lot of the facilitation

in terms of the activities and the workshops or do you bring in

external moderators? And I'm thinking about

well-being, breathwork, Pilates, yoga, that type of environment.

It varies. Sometimes I have a Co

facilitator, sometimes, sometimes it's just me.

I use. I use all sorts of different

modalities, whether it's reflection and journaling, small

group dialogues. I'm a trained breath work

facilitator. I also use guided meditation and

visualisation. Sometimes it's, you know,

sometimes the most powerful thing I do, I don't really do

anything. I just say go sit in the

wilderness for three hours. Sometimes we do it for 24 hours.

We send people off with a tent, go sit and see what comes up.

But sometimes I also bring a Co facilitator log.

So I'm running an event in Iceland at the end of May with

my good friend Philip Mckernon from, from Ireland, who's, you

know, world renowned coach, facilitator.

He's bringing his unique kind of spin on this.

And we're, I, I love, you know, the possibilities for our

collaboration are, are so beautiful because we each have

these different skill sets and we each have different sort of

opportunities or weaknesses or whatever you call it.

We, we can fill each other in. It doesn't really make sense to

like bring in somebody just to teach a, a few yoga classes.

I'm not going to fly them all the way to Mongolia just to, you

know, teach a few yoga classes. Yeah.

So I've, I did, I've done a lot of training myself.

Like I'm a trained yoga teacher. I'm a trained breath work

facilitator. So rather than hiring people, I

try to just up level my own skills and also take advantage

of this is the people who are there bring their own skills.

Right. So there's a lot of Crowdsource

stuff as well from what to say, You know, one of the questions,

yeah. And one of the questions I ask

in, in the in tech form is like what, what is a gift you'd like

to offer to the group? You know that comes from your

your heart, your zone of genius, whatever that may be.

Zone of juniors, I haven't had that before, but I am really

into kundalini yoga, so the and it's hard.

And when people do say, what do you recommend I do?

Say it. It's not for the faint hearted.

It obviously opens up the chakras.

You can decide. I do the heart chakra a lot and

the root chakra as well. Kundalini is a really good way

of kind of opening yourself up, but it's really challenging and

I've been doing it for four months now.

So I do still feel like a beginner in some ways.

I'm getting better at the breath of Fire, but it's it's such a

release in terms of energy. When I, when I did my training,

they used to make us do that for an hour straight.

And you know, as you know it, it involves holding your holding

your arms up at a, you know, 45° angle and breathing really

intensely and, and trying to hold your arms.

Up that. Long, but you get into these

like you get into these flow States and the the pain of

holding your arms. It's not like it disappears, but

it's sort of at moments it can just it can disappear and then

you become your capability becomes so much greater.

When we started out, it's like, oh, I can barely hold my arms up

for three minutes. And then when you get into the

right state and flow state, whatever you're capable of,

these incredible things like holding your arms above your

head for an hour straight. I get into flow state number

one, but also I think to myself, I can't stop because I think

breath of fire for me any longer than 3 or 4 minutes at a time.

I wouldn't want to store. Halfway through I almost tell

myself I've got to get to the end.

So it's almost me versus me. I'm shocked that I I've only

been doing it for four months. I wish somebody had told me

about it sooner because I changed my life in so many ways.

And I do a lot of somatic meditation.

So that's really getting in touch with on the emotional

side, asking yourself questions. People use different modalities

to arrive at the same thing, which is like a deeper

relationship with oneself and more honesty and more clarity

and journaling. For me, it's, it's to me, it's

just a dialogue with the soul or a dialogue with the

subconscious. And if I do it the right way

where I'm where I'm not overthinking it because it's

easy to start journaling and then you're like, oh, that

sounds stupid. And you know, you have to like

set the container for yourself. Like nobody's ever going to read

this but me. You can get yourself a journal

with a lock on it or whatever if you're worried about that.

But just like a safe space where you can just get it, get all of

that out right. And I find if it's done the

right way, it's incredible what can come out.

And it's like all this stuff that's constantly bubbling up

below the surface. It's actually running the

operating system of our life, All these unconscious beliefs

and values and stuff like that. Once you engage in that

dialogue, a lot of this stuff comes out.

It allows you to work with it. Talk to me about Wayfinders and

how it came to be. I've been an entrepreneur in my

whole adult life. My previous company, I started

it right out of university and basically created this company

operating high end mountain bike trips all over the world.

And I, you know, leading up to when I started Wave Funders, I

had my foot on the gas for many years and I brought on

investors, took on debt, grew the team, expanded all over the

world. And what I found was that as I

was growing the company rapidly, I was encountering all sorts of

problems for which I wasn't really equipped.

And that, you know, as a company grows, you, you, you generate

and encounter new problems all the time.

So the problems of a two person company are very different from

the problems of a ten person and 100 person.

And you know, 1000, whatever. And so I decided once I got

slapped around enough by the universe, the business world,

whatever, I decided to get over my own hubris and my own belief

that I was God's gift entrepreneurship.

I developed a little bit of humility to try and learn from

others. And so I started attending

different entrepreneur events, joining different entrepreneur

communities, got a lot of value from them.

But what I, what I felt going to all these different events was

that there was a missed opportunity.

The value that I got from them wasn't so much the information

that was getting fire hosed at me.

Here's here's a speaker and here's another workshop and

there's another speaker, another workshop and 15 minute

networking break in the hallway. It's like the value I got was

the connections that I made because I could, you know, I

could maintain those connections and we could continue to support

each other rather than somebody just like spewing out the very

same talk I could watch on YouTube.

And so I decided I wanted to create an event that was focus

that started with a focus on connection first.

How do I get a group of entrepreneurs together and help

them create really deep connection?

And still, you know, plenty of learning whatever.

And so with my other company, I was still running it at the

time, I knew that you take a group of people and you take

them outside and you're, you know, you're mountain bike up a

steep hill together and you're, you're sweating together and

you're cursing together and grunting.

And then you have a tonne of fun together.

You tend to bond that that group tends to bond really quickly.

And so I wanted to create something where there was a big

dose of adventure to bring people together, a big dose of

challenge because shared challenge brings people together

and an opportunity for openness and vulnerability and not

pretending or posturing, just being human.

And so the first event went off really well.

People loved it. They asked me to do more, I did

a few more. And then I decided I really like

loved this way more than the other company.

And I started the process to sell that company so that I

could focus on this full time. It's so interesting and I really

love what you mentioned at the end about being human.

I think in the business world it can feel quite transactional.

We know that and that's the nature of the game, KPISRY, but

we forget about our own ROI as human beings.

Being an entrepreneur, you're always switched on, you're

wearing multiple hats running a business.

So being able to get a group like that together and form

connection and conversations. Quite rare actually.

Yeah. And you know, for a lot of for a

lot of entrepreneurs, they often have nowhere to go to have those

conversations, you know, because it's it's a lot of pressure and

sure, you know, like the roller coaster of entrepreneurship.

One day it's like, Oh my God, this is going so amazing.

And then the next day, like, Oh my God, this is the hardest

thing in the world. I want to quit.

Damn why have I done this? I haven't had a great life and I

just. I took the leap because I feel

like I'm different. It can't fit inside one box.

It's just not the way my brain function.

But actually, that box is looking quite enticing, right?

Now and so that's that's the journey of entrepreneurship.

It's one of most rewarding is the only thing I'll add to that.

When you may not be able to see the end, but you can see steps

that will get you there. You have a conversation that

will spark something you hadn't thought about.

And I'm sure that's the same for you and your community with the

entrepreneurs. Well, yeah.

And you know, if you're a busy, successful entrepreneur, you,

you may not have anywhere where you can talk about all these

struggles and everything you're going through.

Most founders, owners, whatever, don't feel like they can be open

and vulnerable with their staff because they'll be seen as weak

in the process. If they have shareholders, they

certainly can't talk to them about it because shareholders

will get all worried like, oh, what's going on?

He's struggling or what's happening with my money.

And then in a lot of these peer groups I joined, it was kind of

like this rostering contest. You know, everybody's talking

about how amazing they are and all their achievements and how

much revenue, how many zeros they have on their balance

sheet. Very few contexts to just show

up like, Oh my God, like last last month was brutal.

I barely made payroll, my marriage is falling apart,

whatever, you know, all these things that are so common yet

nobody talks about. And that was, you know, I wanted

to create a place where, and that's obviously not limited to

entrepreneurship. We are everybody's struggles.

But what I, what I found was that, you know, creating that

environment, it just felt like such a breath of fresh air for

people to be able to just show up and be real and not have to

pretend to have all this together.

And one thing I wanted to say when you know, when you're

talking about entrepreneurship being rewarding, one of my

favourite definitions of entrepreneurship is someone

who'll work 80 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours

a week. It saw something yesterday,

somebody said exactly the same thing.

You work 100 hours so you don't have to work 50.

And it bizarre the way we trained our minds to think that

our reality is obviously better than working these 40 hours.

But flipping around, you're working for yourself, you're

making your own decisions, you get to build either a product or

a solution that begins with you and then on to the customer.

So it wouldn't change things ever.

But there are those days, as you say, where it would be nice to

have a circle of people who just get it.

And I think it's just get it, no questions asked, non judgmental.

And there are a few of those groups around.

I think about London is quite entrepreneurial here and there

are different networking events you can go to, but can feel

quite lonely at times and we don't talk about that, OK.

You know, there's so many studies about the confluence of

entrepreneurship with anxiety, depression, conditions like

ADHDI don't know if we've solved correlation or causation.

Is entrepreneurship 'cause these things, Do these things lead

people that you know, to people with these conditions?

Are they drawn to entrepreneurship?

Whatever. But there's, you know, people in

the entrepreneurial world tend to struggle, struggle more.

And I think if I look back in my own journey, I think part of

what roommate to entrepreneurship is that I

didn't feel like I could fit in. Like as you, you talked about

the box, I didn't feel like I, I graduated with an economics and

history degree. The morning after my last exam,

I put everything in my Volvo station waggon and I drove out

West to the mountains. And I thought, I don't know what

to do with this degree. I'm going to go be a ski bow and

I'll figure it out later. And then that turned into, you

know, 10 years living in the Rockies and starting my company.

I just, I just didn't know how to fit what, you know, my

internal view with the world I saw around me.

And I knew I didn't want to. I knew I didn't want to sit in a

cubicle. I didn't want to push numbers

around economics policy analysts or something like that.

That didn't, didn't feel right to me.

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs describe that.

They know they're different and they need, yeah, they need a

different context for that. I mean, it came to me quite late

because I spent five years in corporate and I worked in threat

intelligence, cybersecurity and in my career because I got to

speak to clients all the time. But I was slowly learning more

about myself and how I like talking to people, but all kinds

of people from all kinds of backgrounds.

And that's what developed into the podcast a bit later on.

I just put myself, I'm just not the same.

I don't think the way other people do.

I have these grand plans and I think global and I think about

everyone. So how that fits into your

standard day-to-day, It doesn't. And I'm OK with that.

I think I'm OK with that in my head because yeah, I'll be fine.

Yeah, good for you. Going back to kind of the

struggles and anxiety and thinking more vulnerably, guests

tend to open up on the podcast. Is there any stories you'd like

to share with the listeners? I've shared my own sense of I

have anxiety and very open about that, and being a public speaker

and having anxiety is a catch 22 because you're on stage in front

of hundreds of people at a time. But I've gotten to the point

where I embrace it a lot more now.

And I think to myself, I'm excited and I'm ready to speak

to people, but it's been a journey.

Well, certainly I'm, you know, I'm, I'm on the same journey of

exploring all these, you know, exploring all these things that

are going on inside me and how they relate to the world around

me. And, you know, I can say that

the most transformative period of my life, I was, I was 10

years into running my previous business in my early early 30s

and to receive 2004, the woman that I was dating broke up with

me and that sent me into a 2 1/2 year journey of darkness and

depression. And you know, the long dark

night of the soul, as as I call it.

And it was, it was a deeply difficult time.

I really struggled. There really did not seem to be

any point to life at that point in my life.

And as difficult as it was, I'd look back at that period with

really deep gratitude because the person that went into that

experience and the person that came out the other end were two

very different people. And I'm grateful and proud of

the person that I've become in large part due to that

experience and due to the support of some amazing people,

including a very gifted therapist who both saved and

transformed my life. And it sort of felt like I was,

I was painting life or colouring life with this very limited

palette of colours. And that that palette of colours

up until that point was really just how can I extract maximum

pleasure from life for myself. And I was living extremely

hedonistic life. I was living in the Rockies.

I was skiing and mountain biking all the time.

I was in a band and I was having fun playing.

And it was, there was a lot of, it was just a lot of hedonism

Right now, it's like it was really just all about me.

I barely paid attention to other people, didn't have a lot of

empathy. And I didn't really understand

suffering. I wasn't, I wasn't even despite

all of that, I wasn't particularly happy, but I didn't

really understand human suffering.

And then as I went through that experience, my, you know,

descending into this darkness, my first reaction to that was

like, Oh my God, what is happening?

This is so confusing. What is all this pain and then

all this shame that came with it and thinking, Oh my God, I'm the

only person in the because I didn't really understand other

people's experience. I thought, I thought I was the

only one in the world going through this.

And I felt like, you know, but the internal voice was like, Oh

my God, you're such a loser. What is going on with you?

And then as I started doing the work and coming out of that,

started feeling better, but also much more open and empathetic to

the people around me because I understood what human suffering

was. And I could see it in other

people's eyes, I could empathise with it and allowed me to

connect with people on a much deeper level than I'd known

before. So all of that I'm deeply

grateful for waking me up, basically.

But. In such a raw and honest way.

And as you say, the person that went through that journey isn't

the same one that started. You've learnt from your life

experiences. I always say grief is a really

interesting word and how we don't tend to grieve ourselves

enough when we go through different seasons and different

cycles of life because we don't take that time to really

appreciate where we are and where we're going.

But for you as well, having empathy, emotion, intelligence

is such a strong trait to have and you've managed to turn it

around in a way that now you listen to people and you see

them for who they are. It's really powerful to be able

to do that now with the experiences that you offer to

entrepreneurs. Again, it's all about giving

back acts of service and impact. Yeah, it's funny how life gives

you what you need in order to, you know, prepare for your next

phase. So, you know, I, I discussed

this a lot on on my podcast and I released there was just some

stuff that needed to come out of me and I didn't really have a

podcast on my bingo card, but there showed up one day and it's

like this stuff needs to come out of me.

Am I going to write a book about it?

Whatever. I really love, you know, the

spoken word. I love music, have a background

as a musician. And so I decided to create this

podcast and using my music production skills to really

create a, you know, beautiful Sonic journey.

I just the, the structure I decided on for the podcast was

looking at midlife through the lens of the hero's journey that,

you know, that Joseph Campbell described.

You know, there's, there's, as he described it, there's 12

stages that broke simplified it into 10.

But there's the ordinary world. We're just kind of going about

our life, just plodding along, just doing our life.

And then then there's the call, something happens to call us out

of out of that life. And so if you look at this

structure like it's present in almost every movie, book or

whatever, you can't Unsee it when you see it.

But the most obvious example is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, and

he's just plodding along on Tatooine, doing his farming

thing with his aunt and uncle, whatever.

And then Obi watch or and pick any hero movie or any, you know,

action, it's all there and he's just plodding along.

And then Obi Wan shows up and then the next stage is the

resistance. We resist the call.

We don't we want to stay stuck in our ordinary world and we

want to stay in our comfortable, familiar world.

So he whines and I don't want to go.

I don't want to be a Jedi, you know, this kind of stuff.

And eventually accepts the journey and it has to go through

all these trials and it's very difficult, but then it comes out

of it as a Jedi comes back with all these gifts for others and

how that relates to, you know, what a regular human life.

And it often happens in midlife because, you know, in our 20s

and 30s, we're so consumed with climbing the corporate ladder,

succeeding, achieving, building a family, all these kind of

things. And then it's only after, you

know, maybe 1520 years of that, that suddenly the call starts

showing up and sounds like that's maybe what, you know,

what happened for you is like, you realise that that life that

you were living was not right for you.

And I'm guessing that you maybe heard some whispers of that.

And then you just sort of like pushed them away and said, no,

no, this is, you know, that's crazy.

I'll stick with this and. I'll give it another go.

I'll give this time of my life another go.

Whether it's a job, a friendship, a relationship,

whatever dynamic. I was there and I thought it'll

be OK next week, next time next year.

I'll re evaluate later on. And yeah, I definitely kept

pushing things off when you mentioned kind of feeling like a

loser, as much as I hated you saying that, I've also felt the

same. That's actually the first time

I've had somebody use those words so matter of factly.

But I definitely have had moments where I think, Oh my

God, everybody else is so much rather ahead than I am.

I feel like a bit of a loser really.

I'm not sure if this is the right path.

So I really appreciate you saying that because I think that

any listeners out there, it's really important to understand

we are just human beings. We pretty much do all feel the

same way as each other at some some stage feeling like you're

not where you're meant to be. So just want people to know that

because I think that's really important.

Yeah. And some of, you know, I know a

lot of really successful people and some of the most successful

people I know still have that voice.

And for some of them, it's, it's quite strong.

And one of the reasons they're successful is because they're

trying to prove themselves to that voice.

And that voice, you know, might be their mom or their dad or

school teacher or whatever. And it still echoes many years

or decades later. And so they spend their whole

life just really trying to prove themselves.

But you know, coming back to the heroes journey, there's that

resistance phase. We want to stay, you know, we

want to stay in our familiar world.

And then the call just gets louder and louder.

And that usually manifests as we become more and more

uncomfortable with the life we're living.

Often we can't, we can't put our finger on.

It's like my life's kind of OK from the outside.

Like, I don't know what's going on and know why I feel so

crappy. Like what's going on.

Sometimes that call arrives as like a big shock.

You get, you get fired, you get dumped by your girlfriend on

Christmas Eve, as I said, whatever.

And that just sends you into a tailspin.

And that's just because you've been ignoring that call for so

long. And then all of a sudden it's a

big shock. And it's like, Oh my God.

Often it it occurs when we lose an identity, whether it's an

identity as you know, our career or our company or identity as

partner of this person or whatever.

And then we're faced with that journey of answering, you know,

of going, embarking on the next phase, which is who the hell am

I? Who am I am my core beneath all

these messages that people have told me about who I am and what

I am. And so now at this point in my

life right now, the last couple of months I've been going

through something pretty difficult and it's been a little

bit puzzling. But I'm also, I've also been

through this cycle enough times to know that every time that

this has happened, that it's led me to somewhere better, a better

version of myself, more growth, more understanding.

And so I'm able to, instead of just resisting and blah, this is

so terrible. Why is this happening?

I'm able to slow down and recognise, hey, it's happening

again, you know, life, my soul is calling me to something else.

And the job right now is to just slow down and pay attention and

listen to that voice and pay attention to some clues along

the way about where it might be leading.

The more you can just slow down and pay attention, the quicker

that process can be. I feel like with the podcast,

not that I kept putting it off, but I always kept saying it's a

passion project, I love doing it, but I'm not sure what the

future holds. And then really taking it

seriously, in the last few months, things have just

snowballed a lot faster than I thought they ever would.

And I've already made kind of a little announcement that I'm

doing live events, which I'm so excited about.

But people have just come out of nowhere helping.

Loving the idea, gravitating towards me.

Yeah. And yeah, yeah.

But it's, as you say, you resisting.

You resist because you think, well, it, I don't know if this

is going to work out. I have no idea.

But then as soon as you make that decision, things just start

to happen, which is really magical, but also at the same

time really scary. I think you touched on important

thing is this element of magic. I think there is an element of

magic to it. And when you actually finally

make that decision, and it doesn't have to be huge.

It doesn't have to be, I'm going to sell my house, quit my job

and I go, go do this. It's just like I'm going to I'm

going to take a few steps down this path and I'm going to see

where it takes me. And that's what I'm committing

to right now. What I'm working with people and

they, they've got, you know, they've got, they're feeling the

pull towards something or whatever, but then they've got

the resistance pulling them back and they feel like I need to

figure it all about first. I need a business plan.

I need to sort this out, you know, and I just say, screw all

that. What are some experiments you

can run? Just some tiny experiments.

They're going to, hey, give you some clues, but also signal to

the universe, Hey, I'm willing to explore this.

I'm committed to seeing where this takes me.

And then it's amazing this magic that occurs like all of a sudden

all these people and resources start coming into our life to

support us on this path. Then it feels at some point like

you've got a flashlight and you can see the next few steps

instead of just stumbling around the dark.

And then the light gets a little bit big and like, oh, that's

where I that's where I need to go and look at all these people

walking with me along that path. Say yes.

And then the magic shows up. Definitely, you have to say yes.

Then the vision gets bigger and more people put ideas in your

head and it's inspiration and it's knowledge, which is great

because I always think as an entrepreneur you're learning at

lightspeed. I almost asked myself, what was

I doing before this life? Because you were just learning

so much information every single day.

And I think in the last 12 months, well, I'm definitely not

the same Alex, as I was when I started.

I mean, the evolution is, is mind bending.

And I know that that's the same for a lot of entrepreneurs and

to yourself as well. Your reinvention in the best

way. I think you know, the key, key

ingredient in that is curiosity. It's just like maintaining,

maintaining that sense of curiosity.

So I have this, this, this band on my on my wrist that says

endless curiosity. Because I know when I, when I

maintain curiosity, it keeps me from being stagnant.

It keeps me growing. Sometimes that curiosity process

is really painful, forced me to confront things about myself,

right? But if I want to grow, I have to

print these things. I have to get curious about

myself, not just about the world or other people or software or

whatever, you know, I have to get curious about myself.

And sometimes that curiosity leads me to difficult places,

difficult truths. I have to confront difficult

patterns that I have to learn. All of that leads me towards a

life that feels more aligned, feels more in flow.

I'm living my life, not somebody elses version of it.

And even if that life has challenges, they're my

challenges. They're not.

They're not somebody elses. Challenges have.

You read Chicken Soup for the Soul I.

Did many years ago Many. Years ago, the overarching theme

that you have to take responsibility for your life.

Ultimately, that is what the book is telling you in many

different ways. If you haven't read it, I think

it's true. I think the challenges that

you're facing, they're yours and they might not be created by

you, but they're yours to be accountable for and to make the

necessary changes. And there's something really

inspiring and empowering about doing that because like you say,

you're not living a life that is controlled by anybody else or

environment. It's yours to do with it what

you want. That can bring certain feelings

of possibly imposter syndrome and fear and anxiety, but once

you get past that, it may never leave you.

To be honest, I still wake up and feel the pang sometimes, but

again, it's my life to decide what I want to do with it.

Yeah. And I think this idea of

responsibility can be, I don't know, confused sometimes.

But taking responsibility is not the same thing as making it your

fault. It's just understanding that,

you know, bad things happen to us, difficult things, suffering,

pain, whatever inflicted on us by others, where our agency lies

and how it is and how we responded to how we respond to

those things and how we choose to move forward with that.

And so if my background, you know, contains a lot of really

difficult things, it's not a child's job to take agency and

responsibility. They don't have the capacity for

that. But as you become an adult, it's

very easy to get mired in that and stuck in that and say, this

happened to me. You know, these awful people did

this thing to me. None of it was my fault.

And then you just anchoring that victim thing.

But taking agency and responsibility means you take

responsibility for how what you choose to do with that going

forward, how you choose to make meaning of those experiences,

for instance, and how you choose to heal from it, whatever that

may be. It doesn't mean you make it your

fault in it and then, you know, in any sort of way.

And to me, it's been such an important lesson to learn how to

take responsibility, how to take agency.

I'm going through this difficult situation right now where I have

these people who are refusing to take agency for their own

situations and, and trying to put that on me.

And in the past, my training would have been like, God, you

know, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry this happened.

But somewhere along the line, I learned to be a people pleaser

because because I felt that if I didn't do that, then it would

compromise or sever the relationship.

And now I'm able to stand firm in my truth and say, listen,

this is what I take responsibility for.

This is my agency. But you are not taking agency

for your role in this. And I'm not willing to enter

into that dynamic with you. And so I try to live in a world

where everybody is trying to take agency and responsibility

for their role in things and not deflect responsibility, not

deflected on to others and including myself so that I'm not

doing that to others. So it's an important thing.

And it's, you know, life changes when you enter into that world

and just say, hey, I have the agency and the power to create

what I want out of this situation.

Absolutely, agency and responsibility.

Like you say, it doesn't mean that it's your fault.

I always say that people react in certain situations with the

resources that they have at the time, whether it's right or

wrong. Unfortunately, that's the way

the world works. As you grow older and learn more

about yourself, then it's time to make a decision.

Am I going to linger on those emotions and those feelings in

that situation, or am I going to use it as fuel to get me to the

next phase of my life? Also for the listeners, it takes

time and it's such a process. And as Mike said at the

beginning about having a therapist, I have a therapist, I

have the years it. I find it so therapeutic to be

able to sit in a chair and talk about how I feel.

I've gone through CBT. It used to have panic attacks.

It was quite an experience. And again, that's been a lot

that I've gone through. But coming out the other side, I

used to be a people pleaser as well.

So I'm completely empathise with my you do get to a point where

that agency and responsibility, it's a necessity.

People with our mindsets, we have to, we have to put

boundaries in place because if we don't, we seek to lose out,

not the other person at all. It's very much if we don't do

that, we will lose some part of our autonomy and identity,

perhaps in a way. So it's a requirement really.

And I know that there will be a lot of listeners who relate to.

That, yeah. And this idea of boundaries is

also another misunderstood notion because a lot of people

hear boundaries and it's like they think it's about the other

person. But really a boundary is just

about you. It's about you.

It's you're taking on the role and process of self-care.

And so boundary is basically saying to another person, if you

do X, then I'm going to do Y. You're just making it very clear

to them that your boundary specifies what you're going to

do if they can't respect your, your need and your and your

request. I was, I was so terrible at this

for so many years. And it's kind of amazing when

you actually start to put these things in place, how things can

shift and how the other person can shift in response to that.

And they will test your boundary and they will test it over and

over. And then eventually, if you're

consistent enough with it, they will change their behaviour and

then it changes the dynamic of the relationship.

It's quite amazing. It's amazing because you do

realise who will stay and who will go very quickly because

somebody who puts fan boundaries in place and knows who they are

is less attractive than somebody who says yes to everything,

agrees with everything that you have to say and doesn't advocate

for themselves. So the listeners, you don't have

to resonate with everything that we're saying.

I want people to have a voice and be successful in their own

rise and come to the table, have a seat at the table.

So don't be afraid to put those boundaries in place.

Advocate for yourself, build your own identity and go out

into the world and be proud of who you are.

And I think my important building with the entrepreneur

community is having space to explore.

And it's having space to say not happy all the time but I'm doing

my best. Yeah, it's a journey.

It's a there's no clear endpoint.

It's a journey that goes on for entire lives if we're committed

to it. I don't think there's any

mythical, mystical endpoint where it's like, OK, I've

arrived. I know exactly who I am.

My life mirrors exactly who I am.

Challenge is done. I can just start coasting.

It didn't really work that way. There's always layers and layers

again, right? But if you stay committed, you

just, you just keep moving to a true or better version of

yourself. And if you, if you stay

committed, for me, it's just how can I get my exterior world to

match my interior world? And so in my interior world, I

know what makes me feel good. I know what resonates.

I know the type of people that I feel good around, that my body

feels safe around that make me feel welcomed.

I know the type of work that I want to do all this kind of

thing. And so it's getting that clarity

and then it's taking the steps to make sure that the exterior

reality matches my inner world. And the more I do that, the more

inflow everything feels. I don't wake up and like, Oh my

God, no challenges today. But I wake up and say, oh, I'm

going to live my life today. And that feels really good.

And I'm, you know, I'm going to take some punches or whatever.

There might be some difficulty, but they're my challenges.

And there'll also be deep moments of flow and beauty and

all that kind of stuff because I'm living my life.

The word trust immediately came up.

Trust in yourself that you will get through any challenges that

come your way. Trying your best might not

always work out. It's your lie to live, and I

think that's again, really magical.

The guy right back to the beginning.

I want to offer out any strategies for listeners from

your side. Obviously I won't really have

lived entrepreneurs if you've spoken about community and what

it means to you. Yeah, I think I just want to

revisit one of them that I touched on.

But it's this idea of experimentation and treating

this process of experimentation as plague.

And so if there's something that you feel that you're feeling a

calling to trying to maybe, you know, for me right now, I used

to be a professional musician, then I had kids and then I kind

of left that world, got my guitars hanging up on the wall

and I pull them down every now and then.

But I haven't meaningfully played with other people in a

long time. And so I'm really feeling this

call right now. And I've got this musical

project in my brain and it's kind of large and involves a lot

of people. And I've managed to, it's not

like I'm perfect at this process because I can fall prey to the

same traps, but I've managed to kind of build this thing up.

The point was like, Oh my God, that's such a huge project or

whatever. Like I can't do it right now.

It's too big. Wait a minute, slow things down

here because this project probably will involve like a

dozen or more people. It is kind of a big thing.

But I'm asking myself, what does that look like as play, as

experimentation? How can I take those first few

steps down the path, make it really bite size?

And that could be just like, hey, I'm going to, you know,

call up a friend and say, let's grab our guitars and let's sit

on the porch and let's just, you know, jam together just so that

I'm doing something to play music with other people.

I have a very dear friend who's now my coach.

And he was and continues to be a very successful entrepreneur.

He runs this very large business with his brothers.

And he is gifted. He's a gifted energy worker.

He can sense into people's energy, their blockages, all

that kind of stuff. And he had done recession with

me once, and I thought it was wonderful.

And he was telling me he wanted to start doing more of this.

And he was in this mode where he was thinking about his business

model and a business plan. He was sort of getting in his

own head about it and staying stuck, Said, hey, what if you

just create this as play experiments?

What would that look like? And he said, well, I guess I

could call up a few people and could I just do an energy

session with you for free? There's no, you know, obligation

or anything like that. We met for coffee, coffee a

couple couple weeks later. And it's like, Oh my God, it was

so great. I had, you know, 3 or 4

sessions. Like it just lit me up.

It lit them up. It was really such a beautiful

thing. And so he kept that process of

like going and then he started taking on someone on one

clients, people actually paying him money.

Then he started running some group sessions that were very

well received. OK, it's and I've created a

monster because he's booked up far in advance and it's hard for

me to get on his calendar as well.

And it's, you know, he's super filled.

He just loves this work and he's so filled up with it.

But you know, he just, he just treated those first few things

as play and like, take away the pressure, take away all that.

What's the first little step that that feels like play to

you? That feel the stakes are low.

You know, it doesn't matter if you fail or not.

Just get out there and experiment and play.

And maybe you have no idea what that is and you don't know what

you're so so then just treat that as a big experiment.

Go take a jiu jitsu class, take a, you know, salsa dancing

class, whatever. Just follow concludes, see what

see what lights you up and then keep following those bread

crumbs and see where that takes you.

But you have to get up there and you have to just start playing

around with this. Absolutely.

I think to me with the podcast, I met somebody in the networking

event and they said you should come and record here, otherwise

I didn't have a studio yet. So networking, building up your

brand as well online, your portfolio, I was the same.

I'd already spoken to a handful of guests in person.

They weren't guests yet. They were just people that I've

met. But I loved their story and I

loved their challenges and I thought combined I've got a

pretty good roster hero guests already.

I don't need to do any external outreach.

So I just contacted, I think it was 10 and they all said yes.

And it was a mixture of students and entrepreneurs and leaders.

I thought, right, that's it. I've got my first ten, don't do

anything else, interviewed 10. And then after that it unravels

and people see the content and they want to be on the podcast.

And now obviously I don't particularly have to do any

outreach in a very lucky position that I just handpick

who I want. Definitely starting small.

Maybe if anybody out there who wants to start a podcast,

writing down what you'd like it to be about, Is there a theme or

a topic? And then from that you could say

what would I like to call it? And then from that you could

maybe get some feedback from people and see if it's a good

idea if you want to do that. Yeah, yeah.

Test it out. More.

More play, more experimentation. It's such a pleasure to have you

on. There is one more question I

want to ask you. Talk to me about music and your

experience being a musician but did not know this.

In my so I've been a musician, you know, most of my life.

I think I was, I don't know, maybe 8:00 or so when I started

playing violin. And I and I studied at a place

called Royal Conservatory of Music here in Toronto.

It's very, you know, firm and regimented.

And I think maybe I lasted a couple of years and I had this

very stern Romanian teacher. Whenever I made a mistake, he

would wrap my knuckles with his baton.

And after a couple of years of being subject to corporal

punishment in the in the pursuit of playing music, I decided in

my young brain as I don't think music should be painful, I think

should be fun. And so I asked my parents if I

could get an electric guitar instead.

And they they bought me an electric guitar.

I just sort of self-taught myself a few songs.

I was like, oh, this is way more fun.

This is way cooler. And so I started pursuing that

just kind of did that on my own. Never really played with others.

And then I told you the story about moving out West and Pat in

the back of my mind, I wanted to be in in a band and I was a

pretty good guitarist, but I hadn't really played with other

people. One night there was a open mic

night at a local bar and they were inviting musicians on

stage. I up on stage, it was

terrifying. Never done that, let alone in

front of a bunch of other people.

But the house band who's doing that, they loved it.

I think it was the next day the bassist asked me if I wanted to

be in a band with them. Was like, Oh my God, that's

incredible. And so we, we formed this band.

We played for the next couple years mainly shows, you know,

around town, some neighbouring towns.

Then I then I decided I really loved it at this point, I was

mid 20s. I really loved it.

I love this feeling of playing music, making people move, all

this, all this kind of stuff. But I want to I want to connect

with some really good musicians and go on tour, release CD.

Decided best way to do that would be to go to music school

and meet people there. So I went to music school in

Nelson, BC met some amazing musicians there.

We put together a band, 66 of us, because one of the bars in

town needed a band for Saint Patrick's Day.

And they were, they put up a post or something and we

answered that and we had two weeks to prepare.

We created a, you know, 2 1/2 hour set in two weeks.

Just person like crazy playing a bunch of Irish, traditional

Irish songs, poke songs. Saint Patrick came around and it

was packed, lined up outside the door, really good reception.

We got more and more gigs as a result of that.

Eventually, you know, after about six months, we developed

our own sound. We recorded a couple of CDs.

We toured all over North America.

We toured Europe a couple of times and it was a blast until

it wasn't. And after about 2 1/2 years, the

music industry really, it's tough.

You know, it's a grind and you don't make much money, probably

less money, even less money now. But it's a, it's a, it's a hard

lifestyle and I think. Yeah.

Maybe once you breakthrough to a certain level and you're playing

at nice theatres or concert venues and you've got nice meals

and you're sleeping in a nice hotel.

But we were in 100 person clubs eating whatever bar food they

want to give us. We're sleeping in our bus or

friends couches. 2 tours in Europe were amazing.

We were, you know, pampered and treated like royalty in

comparison. After 2 1/2 years, I don't think

I can sustain this much longer. But that edge is still there to

play music with other people, play for other people.

Actually know a few people in the record label business.

Maybe I will pass your details along.

We'll talk about that after this.

I'll tell you when I get my new band together.

Yes, I think with musicians now, it's the same with artists and

the creative industry. It's a lot about brand

partnerships. I think that's more sustainable

alongside your gigs, for example.

And sponsorships are huge now, especially for festivals and

events. It is going back to the business

side and logistics. That's what it's all about,

yeah. What's what's interesting me

these days, interesting and concerning is AI music.

I don't know if you've ever played around with Suno, but

it's. But I've heard about the

controversy, yeah. Well, it can create some truly

incredible music just with a bit of prompting.

I've used it to create music for my events.

They're customised to the types of things I'm doing, whether

it's a guided meditation or a breath work or, you know, dance

party. It's amazing what it can create.

I don't know what sort of effect that will have on the music

industry, but there's tonnes of AI artists on Spotify.

You will not be able to tell that they are AI.

You will think that they are real musicians because it sounds

so good. And what's unfortunate about

that is that these models have been trained on real life music

from artists who put their their blood and sweat and tears and

soul into this music. And these AI models are trained

on that. And then these AI companies just

make money off of and they're not really compensating the

artists. I think in terms of copyrights

and IP, that's what comes into play.

Having policies surrounding disclosing if you've used AI,

It's a requirement in some industries.

I think in terms of copyright laws, there's a lot going on in

the creative industry, especially as you say, with

musicians. I think it just feels like it's

a loss of hard work. As you say, blood, sweat and

tears, a lot of time and dedication.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use AI.

I'm a big advocate for it and I do think we should embrace it

for what it is, use it to automate tasking as much as we

think we need to. And then it alleviates the

pressure and we can focus on our teams, people, connection,

community, the things that matter, I feel.

But yeah, there's there's it's an interesting conversation to

have. Yeah.

Well, I use it extensively as well.

And if you, if you extrapolate where this is all heading, it's

hard not to see a future in which AI is not replacing the

vast majority, if not all jobs eventually.

And I just listened to Tristan Harris on the Modern Wisdom

podcast going going deep on this topic.

And it's funny how the people that are the most concerned

about where I is heading are the people at the top of the

industry who are building these things.

And they're, they're sounding the alarms at the same time as

they're building these things. But they are deeply in the know

and they're actually asking to be regulated because they, they

know where this is heading, right.

And the problem, the problem with the way this is all

unfolding is that it requires massive amounts of collaboration

and cooperation across international borders. the

United States as a country can't say we're going to we're going

to put a pause on AI model development because we're

worried about how powerful these machines are getting.

And we need to pause and make sure that we have safety

standard because they feel that, you know, China, if China

doesn't have the same guardrail, they'll take the lead and it's

kind of a winner takes all race. And no individual company in the

AI space wants to do that because then they'll get their

lunch eaten by all their competitors.

And so it really requires an environment of very high level

collaboration, which I don't think that the climate is there.

Everybody's racing, racing forward at break breakneck speed

and they can't afford to put the guardrails in place because the

competitor who doesn't is going to he's going to beat them to

it. And so I think it requires

collectively people putting pressure on governments, on

transnational bodies. We need to really consider this

because this is not to be doing gloom about it, but it's an

existential threat. This is going to be already

wiping out jobs by the thousands and the 1,000,000.

But as it gets more and more powerful, the very nature of

capitalism, you know, company seeks to maximise return When

they see that there are AI models or robots that can do

things much more cheaply and more efficiently than a human,

they're not going to keep humans around out of the goodness of

their own hearts because if it doesn't positively impact their

profit and loss and their balance sheet statements,

they're going to get rid of those people.

And that would only accelerate over the years to come.

So we need to think about this collectively.

Absolutely. It's definitely a collaborative

conversation to have. I think there are some companies

who let people go and now they're hiring again because

they realised that they do need human beings.

And then secondly, I spoke to somebody who is based in Silicon

Valley. That's the hotbed or AI, but

also robotics isn't being spoken bad enough, I don't think.

And I'm keeping mine is to the ground in terms of robots and

homes helping do certain types of tasking that maybe you don't

want to do what that is also the future and that's coming around

very quickly. I know that there's beta testing

by the end of this year. There'll be a lot more movement

in autonomous vehicles as well. We're seeing it in London in the

US I'm not sure whether Canada you're trialling any, any type

of. Not that I know of.

No, I haven't seen it, but I've seen them plenty in the US and

you know that like I hear so many people say, oh, well, it's

not going to take my job or whatever.

They're a plumber or something like that.

Just follow Boston Dynamics and what they're building.

It's not going to be very long at all before robots can do

complicated tests such as plumbing or electrical or

drywalling or, you know, whatever all these things that

we think are beyond the purview of robots.

It's it's all. I think where do we go?

And I've always said having one job forever might not be

reality. It probably won't be reality.

It would be that you pivot across multiple different

avenues, portfolio careers and you dive deep into multiple

passions that you have and that will possibly be a new way of

working. And then they're also saying,

saying a three day work week might be our new reality in

years to come. And I think, but then you need

to be able to sustain that in terms of the cost of living.

It's funny because you know, you go back a few years when AI was

first come starting to come on the scene in a meaningful way.

And obviously people have been working on this for decades.

But like when it started becoming consumer facing thing,

there was this promise of AI was going to take away all the

drudgery and it's going to, it's going to allow us to just spend

our days creating art and, and beauty and whatever.

It's taken away the art and it's left us with the, the drudgery

now taking over a lot of the, the creation of art and all

these things that we think are human domain.

I don't think anybody knows where that future is heading.

But I, I do think it's important that people actually wake up and

start to ask the questions and start asking the people that

should be asking the questions to start asking the questions.

Because if we don't, if we're just ploughing ahead with it

sort of feels like we'll see what happens sort of attitude.

For now, I am taking full advantage of these tools.

I also think I've got 3 kids. I want to put pressure on people

that have have the ability to influence how this is shaping to

actually, you know, be asking these questions.

Absolutely. And I think I mean in terms of

your children and the younger generation, obviously they're

growing up with tech from day one in comparison 12.

Yeah, I'm trying to get them litter with this, with this

stuff because I know they'll need it.

But at the same time, I also have this, I also have this

other poll, which is I want to go just get a piece of land out

in the country and live there with my kids and grow lettuce

and return to something very simple and human.

I don't know how I'll resolve. It's not just you.

I think the trends this year, Gen Z wanting to step away from

social media, put the phone down, get back together in

person, we're all craving some type of connection.

It's universally happening right now.

It's not just you and me, it's society.

We need normalcy in a way of human.

But it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast, Mike.

Any last words for the listeners?

Well, First off, I'll tell people if they want to check out

what I'm up to, just go to way-finders.com.

Take seriously this idea of having a soul.

And soul is what is true deep essence at my core that's

beneath all of the exterior identities that I've created

throughout this life that others have created for me.

And to take seriously that process of discovering one's

soul, of entering into a dialogue with one's soul of, of

listening to that process will undoubtedly take you somewhere

maybe difficult, but eventually take you somewhere beautiful.

If you want to live a full human, meaningful life and not

look back many years from now on your deathbed full of regrets,

you have to engage in that dialogue.

Thank you very much. And that was Mike from Wave

Finders. If you want to go and either

drop him a message or find out a little bit more, I will put all

of the links in the show notes you can find at Mike online and

I'll speak to you all very, very soon.

Bye.

Game Plan