How To Re-Write Your Mindset with John Michael Morgan

Hey, welcome to today’s Referral Secrets podcast. My name is Tony Crawford and I have the distinct privilege of filling in for Curtis Lewsey, the founder of Referral Secrets. We welcome today’s guest, John Michael Morgan. John Michael is a best selling author and an international keynote speaker. He is the founder of ACHIEVR, a unique coaching program used by leaders and entrepreneurs across the globe. Currently with members in eight countries, he affectionately refers to them as The ACHIEVR Tribe. 

He’s worked with some of the world’s most successful brands, Fortune 500 companies, and small businesses. There’s a saying “success leaves clues”.  John Michael is going to leave many clues. So take notes or check out the post below to capture those success clues. Let’s go ahead and meet John Michael Morgan.

Thank you so much for taking time out to join us today. We are so excited to have you here; you’ve got a story to share and you’re doing some great stuff. So let’s start right at the beginning. Tell me how you launched your business, why you created ACHIEVR.

I didn’t really go to college.  I tried that and was kind of bored.  I got into real estate and built a successful real estate business, but I really didn’t enjoy real estate at all. It was more just an industry. My father has a construction business, so I grew up familiar with the process of home building and buying homes and all of that.  I had success with it, but just wasn’t fulfilled. Thankfully during that time, the success I had with building the real estate brand and the marketing that we were doing, got the attention of businesses and entrepreneurs completely outside of real estate who were then contacting me saying, Hey, can you help us? And I realized I had so much more fun doing that than I did real estate.

It was very much God moving me where he wanted me to go, without me really knowing what the plan was. I remember my wife, who’s a million times smarter than I am, saying, you know, with the money you’re making coaching and consulting and what we make with the real estate business,  it’s probably time for you to go all-in on this other thing. So I sold the real estate company, and now I’ve been coaching and consulting and speaking and all that stuff for about 13 years now. So I coach people, solo entrepreneurs to big well-known brands.  We offer group or one-on-one coaching, all of that. Best of all, I get to do it from home while I’m watching my kids grow up.

 

Nice. Amazing. And you married your high school, sweetheart?

Yes. We met when we were 17, and just last week were in Disney World, celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary! We have been together a total of 24 years, not a common thing these days, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Awesome. So, John Michael, in your success, obviously you’ve had to build some relationships.  Please tell us what that looks like for you. What is important about relationship building and connecting with others, whether they’re solo entrepreneurs sales partners, or a company. Tell us a little bit about that. 

So I didn’t realize until looking back a few years ago, that I was very fortunate in that my father, who owns his own business, was one of those guys who makes any stranger, his best friend. He really connected with people, and watching that growing up, I never realized like, “oh, he’s being very strategic”. He was being very smart.  I didn’t understand that he was relationship- building and nurturing;  it just seemed like, well, he’s an extrovert and that’s who he is. But it certainly was something that influenced me in my career.  I realized if you can get people to like you, then you can do things. You know, the old cliche of “we do business with people we know, like, and trust”. I feel like we miss the “like part”, like we’re all about trying to get people to know who we are.

Of course we want people to trust us, but what about the likable part? So what I realized, and this is still my focus today, is I network and build relationships differently than a lot of people.  I use a  real tactical element. I look at the person and try to decide or evaluate what’s important to him outside of his career, because everybody connects with people on what they do, so that doesn’t really stand out. Let me give an example. Let’s say that there’s a well-known author that I want to connect with. If I write to him on social media or email or whatever, and I let him know I’m a fan of his books and his work, they appreciate it, but they also hear that every day.

Instead I look at their social media, and realize, oh, they like this kind of music. And if I do too, that’s my angle. Let’s talk about the music. Because what I discovered is that if people view you as a friend, then they’ll send you business. They’ll promote your products and services. You know, friends help friends, but if we’re only ever talking shop, if we’re only ever talking business, then they view you as a peer. And that’s never my goal. I don’t want to be viewed as a peer. I want to be viewed as a friend.

 

That’s awesome. I really like what you said, that people miss the “like” part.  What are some other things you do in addition to looking at their social media pages? What are other things that you do to enhance that?

I think a lot of it is common sense. When we are in business, we think that everything has to be really complicated. So I throw out any professional tone. Let’s talk like we’re friends. The other part of it is finding out what’s important to them in their life, and sharing what’s important to you, because if they don’t feel like they’re getting to know you, then they’re going to keep you at arm’s length. Right? I need to figure out what areas of my life I’m comfortable being an open book about, because that’s going to let them know who I am and what I’m about, which then ties into the trust part. They let their guard down when they realize, “Well, this guy’s got nothing to hide.  You know, he is sharing everything with me”.

So I think that’s it. The key here that a lot of people in business need to learn, is you must have patience.  Real relationships are organic, they build over time. You’re not going to contact someone on LinkedIn today and be their best friend tomorrow. But that’s how a lot of people think:  “Well, why didn’t that person send me referrals?”  Well, you’ve not given it time to build. The second part is to be genuine about it. If there’s someone that I can’t relate to, then I don’t try to build a relationship with them. I don’t fake it.

You know, I’m in Nashville, Tennessee, and I hate country music. I don’t pretend to like country music just to try to network with someone who may be a big fan of it. That’s not my thing. So I’ll either find another way to connect or I’ll just find someone else. So there’s that authenticity and patience;  sometimes people won’t play that game long enough to then let the referrals hit. Truth is, I’m sitting here now.  I don’t do paid advertising. I have a waiting list of people that want to hire me and it’s all real. I’m super-focused on the relationship. And as I said, I’m willing to not build a relationship with someone just because they’re a big name or they’re a good prospect, if we don’t genuinely have some connection points.

 

Great. Wow! I am taking tons of notes. Can we back up a little bit here? You had mentioned earlier that you were in real estate while you began mentoring and coaching people, and God kind of led you down that path. I was reading in some notes that you also do some mentoring and coaching with churches, on top of Fortune 500 companies. That’s impressive in itself. I’m going to throw some stuff at you and you can share whatever comes to your mind and your heart. Being in Nashville, you probably have run into famous people or they’ve been in your circle, you know, but they are passionate about things other than their career.

They don’t always want to talk about career. They want to talk about other things and you really hit that on the head because we’re so focused on what people do for a living, that we forget, What is it that they are passionate about? What gets them fired up?

 

Would you talk about your mentoring and coaching in different industries, different venues and with different people?  We want to help empower people to seek the tools they need to learn how to build solid relationships, to build those foundations. If you’re somebody who can help them with that, let’s point them in your direction.  

So, what are you passionate about?

You know, that’s a great question.  I am passionate about my faith. I can say faith, right? That’s the right answer. Don’t hit me with lightning or anything. That’s a big passion of mine and of course, family. I’m a huge Disney fan. Disney is a client of mine, but I’ve grown up going to Disney. I create some art, that’s a passion. I listen to rock music, I like movies, and I love travel. You know, these are the kinds of things that if people are being strategic, they’re connecting with others about.  I’m a huge book nerd, specifically old books.  There are people who have wisely followed exactly what you and I are talking about,  and have done it to me. And I know what they’re doing.

A couple of years ago, a friend found a really, really old edition of Think and Grow Rich. He knew that I collect old print additions of self-help books, so he was like, “Hey, I’m going to be driving through Nashville. I’d like to give this to you. If we could meet and have coffee, that would be great”. Of course, coffee turned into half a day of basically free coaching for him, right?  I was excited to have the book and that’s what a lot of it’s about.

You mentioned Nashville, celebrity, whatever it may be. I think the thing that we often forget is that everybody’s human, and everyone wants to feel significant. If you can make them feel significant, you’re going to win. Now the challenge with that is how someone feels significant, may vary from person to person, but that’s always the goal. So every time I meet with someone, I think, How do I make them feel significant? How do I make them feel important? How do I make them feel seen? Often in the case of celebrities or big corporations or whatever, we assume they know it, we assume that they get it all the time. But frequently they’re more isolated than any of us. Sometimes the ones who are begging to feel significant more than the rest of us, may be disconnected from everything else. So I try to build a relationship with them, or strengthen a relationship. I’ll think, How can I help them? How can I make them feel significant? Sometimes it is as simple as bragging about their business. But again, for a lot of people, that’s kind of the lowest level. That’s the easy thing to do. What else can we do? How else can we shine the spotlight on them?  When we do that, it just opens the doors.

 

That is really powerful stuff! 

Let me give you another example. This is a complete, silly example that I did it on purpose for stories like this, right?  If you’ve got someone that you want to connect with, maybe a celebrity, or someone who isn’t readily accessible, this is where patience comes in. You have to sit there and ask, How can I contact them? What can I say to them? Something that’s different than everybody else. Like, figure out how to stand out.

So I’m a huge fan of The Rock. And I’m thinking, okay, what can I do to get the rock’s attention? You know, as a fan, just get his attention. Right? That is my goal, to prove that this stuff works. So if you look on the rock’s social media, you see that while he is engaging with fans, most people are talking about the same thing. “Oh, we can’t believe how much you eat….We can’t believe how often you work out”. They’ll talk about the movies and then maybe wrestling. So, okay, this rock is hearing the same thing over and over and over. So if I send a tweet to the rock that says something about working out, that is not on his radar at all.

So a couple of years ago, The Rock won People magazine’s sexiest man alive. I noticed that when that was announced, he was actively on Twitter, engaging with some people. So I thought, here’s my chance to say what no one else is saying and completely stand out. I wrote a tweet and I said, “It looks like the rock beat me out for sexiest man alive. But he seems like a nice guy, so congrats on the win”. He retweets and adds on “next year is your year, my man”. All of a sudden, I’m getting text messages from friends of mine asking, How do you know The Rock? The rock just called you the sexiest man alive? Like, how did you do that?  It was great. But the way I did it was that no one was saying anything that stood out to him.

Everyone else was just talking about the same things. So how do I say something completely different than what everybody else is saying? That’s the approach. So again, with The Rock, that’s like an extreme mega-celebrity kind of deal. But imagine taking that same approach with someone in your business industry that you’re wanting to connect with.  It’s going to really stand out and it can open a conversation, which is what we’re all trying to do. We’re just trying to get into conversation with people.

 

Do you find that people may want those conversations, but they struggle with how to start those conversations? And like you mentioned earlier, are they being genuine? Are they being authentic? You know, for me, I think that it’s that 80/20 rule or that 3% rule people who are successful. You have just a few people that are successful because they are doing things that you are doing or they’ve hired you as their coach. Right?

Yeah. I mean, you’re exactly right. I love this question. The problem is they don’t know what to say or what they say is all about them. Meaning, if I contacted someone and was, Hey, I’m John Michael Morgan, and I do X, Y, and Z.  These are my accomplishments;  like who cares? Right? That’s not how to start a relationship. Instead, I make it about them. They are their own favorite subject. So what I’m trying to get in that conversation, I am truly, baby-stepping my way into that. I am not asking for a meeting or a phone call or a zoom. I’m not asking for any of that immediately. I am simply trying to get on their radar to the point that we converse to a level where they recognize who I am.

That’s when I can find my window, you know, to go in. This happens on LinkedIn a million times a day, right? People will just send you a message. Maybe it’s, I help coaches with high ticket offers and blah, blah. But it’s like, you don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me. I’m never responding to that, right?  I’ll  never respond to that message.

Instead, if someone sends me a message on LinkedIn, saying, Hey, that recent article you posted was really top notch. I just wanted to let you know, I really appreciated it. So at the very least, I’m going to maybe write back. Hey, thanks. You know, I appreciate it.

Then you write back and say, what’s your next article going to be about? Or, what inspired you for that article?  Get in that conversation, start talking about writing, start talking about their interests or passions, whatever, rather than, I’m from ReferralSecrets.com., and I’d love to talk to you about what we do.  That time will come, right? You guys know this, because you know that the key to building referrals is never direct promotion, it’s relationships. I think people don’t know what to say, it ends up sounding like a sales pitch. Right?  We’ve all seen that. So the good news is we just talk to them. Right? You know, it doesn’t just carry into only your professional life. It carries into your personal life, because if you’re not taking care of those relationships, and if you’re making it all about you… what does that say?

 

May I share a quick story with you? So we had a washer and dryer delivered like 30 minutes ago, and I told the guy, “Hey, I’m going to be in my back office, so go at it. Here’s 20 bucks.  Go treat yourself to lunch today”. Oh my gosh! His face just lit up. 

So what you put out there is always going to come back to you. Right? That’s not why I did it, but to grow our business, we have to be likable, we have to be good to people.  Like you said earlier:  authenticity! Too often, people are thinking, what can I get versus what can I give?

Yeah, absolutely. I love that example. It inspires me to share this with you;  the washer and dryer delivery is such a great example. So sometimes I get on my wife’s nerves, because anytime we have a serviceperson like that in the house, I’m asking them a million questions. She’ll say, you don’t need to follow them around. It’s just me trying to put gratitude into practice. So I love what you bring up, because here’s the thing, Tony, if we can practice in those situations, we are strengthening that muscle when it comes to business.  So like when UPS or FedEx comes, they barely throw the package at the first step on my porch. If it’s raining, it’s  going to be soaked, but I’ve never had a chance to talk to the delivery person, and it’s a different person every time.

But one day, the delivery woman pulled in to ask for directions. And I asked, Hey, do they not even have AC in these trucks?  I’m just talking to her, asking questions about herself, her interests, etc. I asked, “what’s the craziest thing that has happened on your route?”  We’re just having a fun conversation. Now when we have a package, she brings it all the way onto the porch, and ensures that it’s covered. I never asked her to, right?  But now there’s a friendship. It’s a different relationship. If I go to a coffee shop, I’ll ask the barista, “who’s the worst customer you’ve had so far today”, and it just opens up a whole bunch of conversation.  It makes them feel noticed and significant.

 

And that’s exactly what you did with your delivery person. You took the time to treat her like a valued human being.  Now look what she does. She takes care of the Morgan family. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s it. So I just try to practice in those situations, because there’s really nothing at stake. You know what I mean? At worse, you know, I’m an annoying customer or I’m a weird-o or whatever, right?  But at best, they feel significant and noticed. So my goal every day is to make people glad that they came in contact with me. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a server at a restaurant or a client, or, you know, this. My goal is, that at the end of the day, it was a cool day. I’ve had fun talking with people. I just believe that if I do that more often than not, I’m going to be as successful as I want to be in business.

So I think when we have these business conversations, we get so intimidated and put so much pressure on ourselves.  I need this, I need the referrals, I need the business, I need this connection. So practice, when it doesn’t matter, you know, practice with the employees at gym practice, the stranger sitting next to you at church, just practice.

So we just got back from Disney World, and we drove because we buy so many souvenirs, that flying would be a nightmare. So we load up the car and head home. Now, I know most people are mad to have to keep stopping and paying all these tolls. They probably don’t even make eye contact with the person in the tollbooth.  So I pull up, and the lady says, it’s a dollar 25 or whatever it is. Before I hand over the money, I asked, “How are you doing so far today?” She started laughing, and said, “You don’t even want to know!”  I said, “Oh my goodness. I hope it gets better.”  So I gave her the money, and she was still laughing. She goes”You just made my day by asking that!”  I don’t know what had happened, that she was having such a bad day. I didn’t catch her name, there’s no followup or anything like that, but that’s me trying to strengthen that muscle, so that when I’m doing it in business, I’m not as intimidated. Right?  I’m not as scared to do it because I do it all the time.

 

Right? What a great nugget. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. This is good, man. This is awesome!  You call yourself the achievement hacker.  What does that mean?

Well, I discovered it. My transition from real estate to coaching was greatly about branding and marketing. I learned very, very quickly, that if someone has the wrong mindset, then all the great marketing and strategy and tactics really don’t matter. It will become sabotaged and messed up. Now, this was God calling for me, because my teenage years were very much wracked with heavy depression. During that time, I started reading self-help books and learning stuff about mindset, not because I thought it would ever help me in a career, but just simply help me survive and find happiness, self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love.

So what ended up happening was people would hire me to build their brand, or do this or that. Conversations behind the scenes were always about their mindset and getting their mind right. So today, that’s really what I do, which again is always funny to me, because I told my clients one time that I was making a shift. I was no longer talking about branding, I’m only going to talk about mindset. And every single one of them said,”Isn’t that what you already do?” And I’m like, “Oh, great!  I’m the Branding Guy who doesn’t have his own brand, right?” They already thought of me as a mindset mentor to them rather than just a marketing coach. I realized every single form of achievement is based on our mindset. What do we think is possible for us? What do we think we’re capable of? What doubts do we have?  How are we sabotaging ourselves?

So, you know, the real simple example of this is that you guys could take one of your clients and lay out just a wonderful, beautiful blueprint to grow their business and have this incredible thriving referral network. But if there is a part of their mindset that doesn’t believe that they deserve success, they’re going to screw up your proven blueprint, even though what you’re teaching them works. They’re going to be oh, it’s not working for me because internally something’s messed up. So that’s where it is. Okay, how do we achieve things? We have to hack our own mindset and get our mind right, and set ourselves up for success that way. So we need the marketing tactics and we need the strategy and we need those blueprints. But in addition to that, we have to make sure that we aren’t sabotaging all of those efforts because we’re full of self-doubt. Right?

 

As little children, we believe that we can conquer the world. And then somewhere along the line, something happens, and now we’re filled with self-doubt, self-sabotaging. We know what we need to do, but we can’t get out of our own way. Even successful people may have that going on too. So what is the one nugget that you could give our listeners today on how to hack that?

Okay. You just hit on one of my favorite subjects.  I’m very passionate about how as a society– and not just in America, but the whole world–we basically take all the beauty of childhood and ruin it, you know? Think about, you know, schools. They’re not about encouraging free thought or exploring ideas or trying new things. It’s very much about, you know, here’s this assignment, here’s the due date, do it this way. But we want the freedom. We want the creativity. We want to kind of carve our own path. But what happens is, as we get older, we get in an environment where the message is doubt. You know, we’re often surrounded by other people who have failed.

So what happens, if you try doing something outside of someone else’s comfort zone, they’re going to doubt you. Yeah. They may say, “Oh, I don’t know that you should start that business. You know, starting a business is risky”. Well, they’re only saying that because you’re doing something that they’re not comfortable doing themselves. That’s why they have the doubt, you know? I can sit here and think about people who go bungee jumping. That seems insane to me. Why does that seem insane? Because that is not in my comfort zone, right? But for someone else, it may be.  So I can’t sit here and say, oh, people who go bungee jumping are stupid. No, it’s just outside of my comfort zone. That’s what’s really happening.

So how we hack this is we have to get super-disciplined in our environment;  and this means a few things. This means the people who we’re surrounded by, but it also means our online environment.  So spend some time the rest of the day, going through who you’re following online, and unfollow every single account that doesn’t inspire you, motivate you, or bring you to life. If it’s a friend or family member or client or whatever, mute them, if you don’t want to unfriend them, just hide them.

Stop consuming everything that you feel like you’re supposed to consume, because our mind is like a garden, every seed grows. So if we plant something negative, that’s going to grow. If we plan something positive, that’s going to grow. So we have to become super-disciplined on what we filter, and this is why I don’t pay attention to the news.

I don’t get caught up in the stress and anxiety of different things. I try to be very, very focused on things that help me be the best I can be. Because again, when I come in contact with people, I don’t want to be the negative guy. I don’t want to be the guy with no energy. I don’t want to come on this podcast and seem half-dead or negative or jaded or whatever. No, life is too amazing to look at it that way.

We all know we’re a part of our environment. We have to look at that and say, okay, what is our environment? It’s not just the people we’re around, but it’s also the social media that we consume, television that we watch, the movies that we watch. We have to be aware of what is in that messaging. When you start to look at it, you will realize a lot of that messaging is full of doubt and “don’t do it”, and those sort of things.  For we entrepreneurs who are trying to grow and expand and create a legacy, it’s really hard to do when you are full of doubt.

 

Yeah. Wow. So much good stuff!  I could probably spend a couple of hours chatting with you. I tell you, I can feel your passion. I can definitely see your enthusiasm for what you do. So thank you for bringing that today. I want to ask you a couple more questions.  I noticed on your website that you’re getting ready to launch a podcast.

Yes. Who knows when? We’ve recorded a bunch of episodes, and it was actually set to launch right before the COVID pandemic first started. So, what ended up happening, was instead of launching it, I knew my clients were going to need me more than ever. So, we said, we’re going to put that on pause. We’re going to buckle down and focus on making sure all my clients are super strong and thriving during this time. So we did that and are sort of coming out of that. I’ve been working on my next book. So then that was a priority. We’re doing another event later this year. That became a priority. So the podcast will come soon, we’ve got it all recorded.

I’m big on trying to not be super-stressed. I think a lot of times we have 17 projects going on at the same time, we’re completely stressed out and we wonder why, and it’s like, you know what? There’s no rush. The podcast will happen when it’s meant to happen. I don’t need to force it while I’m trying to do all these other things.

 

Tell us about your book. 

So the book is going to be all about mindset, and my goal is to make it one of the most actionable books that’s ever been written on enhancing and strengthening our mindset.

So what I’m trying to do is continue to give people all these different principles that I’ve tested, that my clients have used, that make our mindset what we need it to be,  and give them the principles and the tactics and let them understand that, this is like just a side note, but I think sometimes we have a lot of coaches and teachers out there acting like the tactics have to be followed to the letter, and that’s not true. Principles are what stand the test of time. So principals need to be followed. Tactics are where you have the freedom to make it work for you.  I’ll just give an example of what I mean by this. It’s a fundamental principle that we need a strong morning routine. We should start our day strong. Now whether in your morning routine, you journal, meditate, pray, do yoga, workout, or whatever, those are tactics.

That’s where you need to say, I don’t need to follow the tactics that everybody else follows. I need to figure out which ones work for me. You have these gurus out there and they’ll say, well, you need to wake up at 4:00 AM and you need to do yoga. You do need to wake up early. You do need to do something that enhances your mind and your body.  But if yoga is not your thing, then do something else.  If meditation is not your thing, then journal or read or, if prayer’s not your thing, then go meditate or whatever.

The principle is to start your day, putting yourself in power. The tactics are those things that specifically trigger you.  That’s the theme of the book, because too many people get caught up on the tactics and put this pressure on themselves with what this or that guru told them.  You have to figure out what works best for you and what you like.

 

Nice.  You are a wise man.   Here we go. Here’s the pressure. Okay. What’s your favorite song?

My favorite song is a song called  “Alive” by Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam is one of my favorite bands, well, it may be my favorite band. And I love that song because of the depression that I had when I was young, and that’s actually when that song came out. That song has a really cool story where it was written in like a negative way.  He had gone through this trauma, but he noticed at concerts, the way the audience sung it to him was like, heck yeah, like we’re still here. We’re still fighting. We’re still alive. So the audience, the fans, changed the meaning for him. That’s a really cool thing to me, that the artist who created the art, the meaning, changed it to something very empowering, you know, based on the audience.

 

Right. So is there a book that changed you during your teenage years?  You were reading a lot of positive material, and good for you that you recognized early on, to change your mindset. So is there a book that actually really spoke to you?

Yes. I could talk about this all day and give you a list of a hundred books, but you asked for one. I’m going to give you two, because it’s hard for me to say which one of these impacted me greater, because both are certainly responsible for my success and happiness. The first is a book called The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino, which is a book that I reread frequently. It’s a unique book, because there are instructions on how you’re supposed to read it. As sort of a footnote here for the listeners, the book contains these 10 scrolls and the author says, take scroll number one, read it three times a day for 30 days, then scroll number two. But  everybody skips this, because it’s like, who wants to read a book like that for 10 months?

I will say that every time I have done it, my revenue has doubled and I recommend this to all my clients. Of course not all of them do it, but the clients that have have experienced the same thing. So it’s super hard. It gets boring, it gets redundant, but I cannot stress enough how there’s magic in that book. It’s a great read, and if you just read it once through, it’s still going to have a powerful effect. That book certainly continues to change my life.

The second book ties into a lot of what you and I have talked about today. It’s called Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, which is all about your identity and your personal narrative.  I remember the first time I read that book, I was in an airport. I can’t remember where, but I remember I was sitting on the floor in the airport and I called my wife and I said, Hey honey, I’ve got good news and bad news. And she’s like, okay, what’s the bad news? I’m like, the bad news is, I’m the reason we’re not successful yet. It’s all on me. It’s not the industry or economy; it is all me. She goes, okay, well, what’s the good news? And I’m like, it’s all on me to fix it.

That book just transformed me, our financial success, my self worth. It’s a book that I listen to over and over, because I’m constantly consuming the right stuff. Constantly feeding my mind the right things. So those two books, The Greatest Salesman in the World and Psycho-Cybernetics, are easily in my top five books that have not just impacted me when I was young, but still have such an impact, that I still reread those today, I’m still picking up nuggets and, getting value from them.

 

Wow. Good stuff. So do you, John Michael, have a mentor or coach?

Yes, absolutely. I think it would be weird to be a coach and mentor and not have someone also speaking into your life. We all have blind spots, right? The thing we don’t realize is that we’re so close to what we’re doing that we can’t see some of these blind spots. If any listener, anyone listening to this, could come and spend the day sitting here at my desk, just observing me, at the end of the day he would have suggestions of what I could do better. My goodness, the number of mistakes I make is absolutely mind blowing!  So I have to have mentors and coaches.

One is my pastor, who is a solid man of God, and also a brilliant author who understands public speaking and communication. So we talk about those things, and work on them. I also have a MasterMind, a group of gentlemen who speak to each other about the good, the bad, the ugly, and  call each other out when we need to, and hold each other accountable to those things.

In many ways, unofficially, my wife is my coach. I know that sounds funny, but yeah, she has gone through all the training that I have been through. We attend  every conference together. She has listened to the coaching calls. She went through the courses that I went through, has read the books that I’ve read. She’s brilliant, and of course, knows me better than anybody, so she can see those strengths and weaknesses. There are times I have to say, okay, honey, like, just talk to me as my wife, and not my coach!

I believe that these are the people allowed to speak into my life, my wife and kids, because everything I do affects them the most. So my wife and kids are allowed to speak about my life. My mentors and coaches that I pay to speak into my life, my clients, because their feedback matters. It is a relationship as we’ve talked about. So I care about them. They care deeply about me, so they’re allowed to speak into my life, and my parents, because they gave birth to me.

So, you know, they can have an opinion every now and then. Otherwise, no one else is allowed to. What I mean by that is, if someone writes me an email and they didn’t like something that I said online, or they disagree with me on social media or whatever, that doesn’t even register on my radar because they’re not on the list of people whose opinions I have decided I value.

 

Good stuff. Is your wife actively involved in your business?

Yeah, she homeschools our kids. So first and foremost, she deals with that and is brilliant at it. So, I often joke and say that we homeschool the kids and I’m in charge of recess. Right? You know, it’s not really weird, it’s all her. So, when she’s done with that, then yes, absolutely; she helps run my business. She is also super creative, she’s a brilliant artist and has had a photography business. She can paint and write and all these things. So her help in my business is very much on the creative side of things. And we’ve built out a team for admin and tech stuff because I try to be in the creative zone as often as possible.

Maybe people like to hear, you know, behind the scenes stuff.  Let’s say that I have an idea for content or something. Because I try to write every single day. I’m very old fashioned in that I write with pen and paper because I don’t want to be consumed by technology.  So I write out my content by hand.  I then give it to my wife, who will make sure that it makes sense, massage it, edit it, whatever, and then we get it typed out and she’ll figure out what photo needs to be with that post, and all of that kind of stuff. So for me, I just want to do the creative part and then hand it off. She takes that and adds her creative side, and structures it and makes sure that it looks good for the brand and all of that. Then we post it.  So she’s often like, please don’t post that here, give it to me, let me take the photo, let me figure it out. So yeah, she’s very involved in my business in that way. And truthfully, she is my sounding board.  We’ll be out driving around on a weekend and you know, I’m like, here’s this and here’s that. I’ve got this idea and that idea, and then she tries to organize that chaos.

 

Yeah. Nice, good teamwork happening for sure. So if people want to reach you, well, let me back up, you also offer a group coaching program too, right? 

I do. Yeah. I have a group coaching program called the ACHIEVR Tribe, which is for entrepreneurs, leaders, artists, et cetera.  We’ve got members across the world. I was going to say from seven countries, but we had an eighth country sign up yesterday. So we’re in eight different countries in terms of members, with people in every range. We’ve got some people just starting out, so they’re building their business, they’re growing it. We’ve got some people that last year made over $200 million. So it’s a wide range of industries and personalities.  I do two coaching calls per month where I’m delivering a topic and then we get to do some Q and A.  We have a private Facebook group where we share our outcomes and victories for the week. So we have some accountability.  Like, did we actually achieve those things?

Then of course throughout the week, I’m posting content and they’re asking questions and all of that. So it’s content and coaching, and also the community aspect where it’s super strong and a good vibe.  It’s a very family feel, even though it’s again, people from all walks of life, which I love.  It’s very diverse. It’s very exciting. Yeah. So that’s called the ACHIEVR Tribe, which is probably my favorite thing in my business to work on.

 

So how do our listeners find out more about ACHIEVR Tribe, or more about you or any upcoming events that you may be doing?

Yeah, I appreciate you asking. So if they go to JohnMichaelMorgan.com, they will find out about the ACHIEVR Tribe, you know, how to join it, et cetera. Also we have  an event later this year, now that we can finally gather again and do events, called ACHIEVR Live. That will be added on the site very soon;  we’re going to announce the dates and everything within the next two weeks. So, JohnMichaelMorgan.com. We’ll let them know more than they would ever want to know about, okay?

 

The event that you’re going to be hosting. Is it going to be there in Nashville?

Yeah. About 20 minutes outside of Nashville. We’ve done this before, of course pre-COVID. One of the things that we do is, we go outside to help small businesses. We go outside of Nashville a little bit. Our venue is a historic movie theater.  It’s in a historic city block, full of local, independent restaurants, shops, and things.  I’m not against chains and all that. Like, man, you should see my door dash receipts. I’ll eat at a chain restaurant, no problem. But for that event, we’re trying to support the local businesses as much as possible.

Even before COVID. So it feels even more special now because those people really need it. You know, a lot of these local restaurants and people have really struggled this last year and a half. So, yeah, it’s about 20, 25 minutes outside of Nashville. It’s a two-day event, and it’s a lot of fun. The theme here is, ‘how do we do something different than everybody else’? The events are mostly me speaking, because that’s why people want to come, and the other speakers are not professional speakers, but clients of mine who share what works in their business and how they’re getting great results. So it is legit entrepreneurs and business owners, not someone trying to sell a course or a book or whatever. These are real people running a real business who are completely pulling back the curtain and saying, here’s exactly how I did it, and how you can too.

 

Yeah. I love that you make a conscious effort to support the local businesses because local businesses, those small businesses you’re right:  they need our business right now. Not only are they entrepreneurs trying to make a living, but  it is the small businesses that have driven our country. So I am excited to hear that you’re doing that, John Michael, This has been awesome. You have been an amazing guest with a lot of great content. So let’s wrap this up. You’ve shared how clients can find you. Do you have a favorite quote or some little piece of advice that may create an “aha moment” for our listeners?

I do have a favorite quote, which no one knows who originally said this, and I’m a big history nerd. I have searched long and hard and talked to a lot of people to try to figure out where this originated. And literally, nobody really knows. There are some false attributions to it, but they have been proven false. So we don’t know who said it, but the quote is: Every Day is a New Life to a Wise Man. That can sound kind of simple on the surface and very, you know, Carpe diem and all, which some people kind of brush off. But if you think, look at every day as a completely fresh start, then you’re freeing yourself up from any mistakes that you made yesterday.

So if you truly can get in this mindset of “today is a brand new start”, it really changes things. And that’s how I look at my business. You know, I woke up this morning and I was like, okay, you’ve just been given this new day!  Here’s where it is now. What are you going to do with it? It almost creates this mental detachment a little bit from the past or anxiety about the future or just any of that. And that’s just really good for me because I mess up a lot. There are days that I’m like, today was not a good day. But tomorrow is a new life. Cool. Fresh start scoreboards set back to zero. Let’s go. Yeah.

 

You know, what I really appreciate about you is not only all the sharing that you’ve done today, because this is packed full of great content, but I love the fact that you’re very open. You’re candid and you don’t hide your messes.  Get that out. You have honorability.  You’re not afraid to say you messed up.

I appreciate you saying that. That means a lot to me, so I really am grateful for that. I think for me, the reason– and I’m sharing this because maybe it’ll help the listeners–First of all, I failed high school English three times, and yet I still became a bestselling author.  I was in speech therapy for seven years to get rid of a lisp that I still have. So I really shouldn’t be speaking on stages and doing things like this. If you look at all of that, I should not have picked this career. Right?  I think because of that, there’s a bit of this, like, I’ve killed any ego of thinking that I’m good because in my mind I’m like, oh, best-selling author? Right.  But I still feel like I’m in high school.  I failed English three times over, and know, oh, you speak for a living? It’s like, yeah. But that’s kind of funny because I had speech therapy for all those years.

But, you know what? I’m truly just a dude trying to share what I believe works well, what’s worked for me, what’s worked for clients and that is my passion or calling. So I don’t get caught up in the, Does this look okay? Did that sound okay? Do you know what I mean? Like I don’t, I don’t know.  I guess for me, when I mess up, I say, well of course I did,  look at my past.  There’s no pressure to try to chase perfection in my mind because I ain’t hitting it, right?

 

You’re a humble man. It has been an honor to sit here with you today. I cannot wait for our listeners to hear this. I appreciate you so much for taking the time and sharing, and I would love to have you on again, in the future, after your book comes out.  So, John Michael, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you for the time. Hey listen, you have an outrageously productive day.

I will. Thank you. You too.

 

Important Links:

Website: https://www.johnmichaelmorgan.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.morgan/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmorgan/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmichaelmorgan/

John Michaels Book:

https://www.amazon.com/Brand-Against-Machine-Marketing-Competition/dp/B08BCS8MLF/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=brand+against+the+machine&qid=1623771421&sr=8-1