Mike Michalowicz
By his 35th birthday Mike Michalowicz (pronounced mi-kal-o-wits) had founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies.
Confident that he had the formula to success, he became a small business angel investor and proceeded to lose his entire fortune. Then he started all over again, driven to find better ways to grow healthy, strong companies. Mike has devoted his life to the research and delivery of innovative, impactful entrepreneurial strategies to you.
Mike is the creator of Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. He is the creator of Clockwork, a powerful method to make any business run on automatic. He is the author of Fix This Next, an instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller, The Pumpkin Plan, Surge and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His newest book, Get Different, teaches entrepreneurs how to creating marketing that can’t be ignored.
Today, Mike leads two new multi-million-dollar ventures, as he tests his latest business research for his books. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and business makeover specialist on MSNBC. Mike is a popular main stage keynote speaker on innovative entrepreneurial topics; and is the author of Get Different, Fix This Next, Clockwork, Profit First, Surge, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.
Fabled author, Simon Sinek deemed Mike Michalowicz “the top contender for the patron saint of entrepreneurs.”
Mike is also a guest lecturer for collegiate entrepreneurial programs such as Babson, Boston College, Columbia, Copenhagen Business School, Emerson, Harvard, Penn State, Pepperdine and Princeton. His books are in the core curriculum for entrepreneur students at Pepperdine, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford University, and universities across the country. His books have been translated into over 25 languages.
607: Mike Michalowicz, part 2: Being the Icebreaker
Mike committed to a year-long task. Few guests go for so long. Since we’re in a writing group together, I’ve seen him in between, but since I want you, the listeners, to hear guests’ results first, I didn’t ask him if he stayed on track. To be candid, I suspected he didn’t because of the year length. Regular listeners know I bring some guests on for episode 1.5s, where I help bring them back on track. Usually it happens because I didn’t connect them enough to their intrinsic motivation.
I can’t stand about our culture, including environmentalists: everyone uses extrinsic motivation, coercing, cajoling, convincing, and seeking compliance. All these techniques promote resistance. Even if the person complies on the action you bludgeon them into, you reinforce that they don’t want to do it.
So some guests, even when I do my best to make sure they’re acting for their intrinsic reasons, not something abstract like to save the world or think of the children, choose something extrinsic.
Not Mike! As you’ll hear, he went to town on picking up litter while running. He accidentally made up a new term for it and influenced people he knew and even people he didn’t.
First we talked about my disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid, a bit over a month when we recorded. He loved my activity. I loved his. A love-fest all around. Plus he felt that story should be out there so much, he put me in touch with another New York Times bestselling author I’ve since scheduled recording.
527: Mike Michalowicz, part 1: Entrepreneurship, stewardship, and engaging, compelling writing
Mike and I are in an online writing group together. For a while I knew him as the funny and diligent guy whose books have thousands of reviews online. Then I read his big one, Profit First. I know entrepreneurship from living it, so I expected to skim it, but two things. His writing is as funny and engaging as he is and what he wrote was new and valuable. Those who have read it know what I mean when I share that I set up my five accounts right after finishing it.
Next I read Fix This Next and loved it too. I couldn’t skim it because it also contained richness that I couldn’t just gloss over. Plus it’s fun, funny, and vulnerable. Both books covered values and acting on them. I invited him to the podcast and he loved the idea.
I don’t know if he realizes how relevant his approach to entrepreneurship is to sustainability. Like previous guest Steven Pressfield‘s, The War of Art, I could copy Mike’s books switching entrepreneurial things like profligate polluting for sustainability things lik profligate spending and humanity suffering for just family suffering. Other areas with parallels:
- Chasing growth mindlessly
- Ignoring costs
- Shame keeping you from change (also hopelessness, futility, community)
- Imbalance, not knowing or prioritizing values
- Unthinkingly applying old way that seems like it should work but it worsens
- Delaying what you really want, never getting it (profit / clean air)
- Desperation
- Monster destroys family and community
- Denial
Since I see him often online, I’ve heard little clues that his commitment from this episode is creating meaning for him. Listen to hear it. I wonder if it will lead him to apply his approach to sustainability.