191: Founder Brands, AI Chaos & Content That Converts with Mike Koenigs – 8FE

Is all that content you’re putting out actually doing anything or just adding to the noise?

Mike Koenigs has been creating content that converts longer than most of us have been online. He’s a five-time founder with multiple exits, 19 books (including a WSJ bestseller), and decades of helping entrepreneurs turn attention into revenue. And in this conversation, he breaks down why the old rules of content no longer apply.

We talk about the trap so many creators fall into (chasing likes, followers, and attention for attention’s sake) and why that strategy is dead in the water if there’s no conversion on the other side.

Mike shares how to stand out in a sea of AI-generated noise, why founder-led brands are the most defensible asset in any business, and how to make sure your content actually drives revenue. 

He also walks you through his brilliant “$1,000 Cup of Coffee” method for qualifying high-ticket clients and the simple six-part framework he uses to reinvent founders and their brands.

If you’re feeling stuck in the content hamster wheel (or just want a smarter way to grow) then this episode will show you how to create stuff that actually moves the needle.

Tune in now and get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about content.

Inspiring Quotes

• “If you’re giving away free money and free food for a long time, pretty soon you have an entitled audience.” – Mike Koenigs
• “The value of real is going to be even higher about the time when most people don’t learn how to play real instruments anymore.” – Mike Koenigs
• “Founder brands matter more now than ever before.” – Mike Koenigs
• “If you don’t have the life you want, it’s because you’re asking the wrong questions.” – Mike Koenigs
• “Your own self-perception is preventing you from having the courage to ask for more and to be more.” – Mike Koenigs
• “Nothing is unknowable now. Nothing is unmakeable and nothing is undoable no matter what your education or your location on the planet is.” – Mike Koenigs
• “If you’ve got an employee mindset, waiting, trying to figure out how to get by on a wage instead of creating massive value—that is a disease on the mind.” – Mike Koenigs

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:26 What you’re missing when creating content
• 05:19 Content marketing then and now
• 08:31 Let’s talk about AI-produced content
• 22:40 The six Ms
• 39:21 The importance of accepting (and celebrating) your past
• 42:40 The $1,000 cup of coffee
• 51:04 “If you could spend 95% of your time doing one thing, what would it be?”
• 58:18 Why you need your own equivalent of a TED Talk

00:00
Mike Koenigs
My first company was Digital Cafe. We’re one of the first digital marketing agencies in the world. Every single time, here’s the cycle that would happen. I’d build a company that eventually outgrew me, and I’d get nervous. When I got bored and I was ready to walk away from it, literally light it on fire, I found someone who would buy it. I’ve had five substantive exits and sold lots of products in between. There’s always been a solve a problem, commercialize it, market the product by teaching the process. And now in AI, I’m kind of doing the same thing again. You could build a tool that scrapes data, write it in your voice, and make a whole bunch of synthetic videos and distribute it all over the Internet. And I’d say more than half of the human population wouldn’t know it’s AI.

00:43
Mike Koenigs
So if you think there’s a bundle of garbage out there now, ain’t seen nothing yet.

00:48
Brad
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine, and even ten figures. I’m Brad Weimert, and as the founder of Easy Pay Direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology, and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics, and strategies that are working today. In those multimillion 8, 9, and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Mike Koenigs, my friend, it is so good to see you.

01:31
Mike Koenigs
Thanks. I’m so glad we made this happen in beautiful, hot Austin.

01:35
Brad
Yeah, you think it’s hot now? Man, this is.

01:37
Mike Koenigs
We’re.

01:37
Brad
We’re barely scratching the surface.

01:39
Mike Koenigs
It’s toasty out there. I just left Perfect San Diego this morning. I’m like, oh, that place.

01:44
Brad
Trade offs, trade offs. So you have sold several companies to big public companies. You’ve started many companies while I’ve known you. You have 19 books you’ve written. Several have hit bestseller status. Actually, probably all of them in whatever way you want to market them.

02:02
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

02:03
Brad
But one that I’ve got next to me. Your next act, Wall Street Journal, bestseller, big deal. Those are the harder ones to game, so I like to highlight that. I want to talk to you about all sorts of stuff, but you have been producing content online as a huge Part of your businesses from like early 2000s, if not earlier, before the 90s.

02:24
Mike Koenigs
Believe it or not.

02:25
Brad
Yeah.

02:25
Mike Koenigs
Before there was an Internet.

02:26
Brad
Yeah. So today what are people messing up when they’re trying to produce content?

02:32
Mike Koenigs
Well, I’m going to steal something that I’ve said for many years, but it’s nuts on I was actually watching a Gary Vee episode today and he was effectively saying, until you’ve tried your content out on organic, don’t bother spending any money on it. And now your content either makes money or it doesn’t. It either builds a brand or it doesn’t. And one thing that I never got behind, you know, I’ve been using social platforms forever, ever since there were any. And then we had Traffic Geyser to broadcast to all of them. We just used them all as mules.

03:08
Brad
Yeah.

03:09
Mike Koenigs
And I always said, get your people off the platform and put them in a list and sell them stuff. And of course everyone was like, get followers, get likes. And I’m like, stupid. Because at some point, just know every one of those companies are not your friends. They are there to take your money and take your customers attention and your audience’s attention. They’re building on top of your back. Never forget that. And you might get a lift for a little while. But I think that’s the central theme is like create content that matters frequently. And if it isn’t turning getting attention and then converting that attention into some kind of monetization strategy, I think you’re doing it wrong.

03:53
Brad
So the biggest mistake now is producing content to get attention without worrying about the conversion on the back end.

03:59
Mike Koenigs
Just makes sense to me. Why would you waste your time now getting loved? And back when influencers were all the rage, it’s like, oh yeah, they got a million likes. I go, yep, try selling something. And sure enough, if you remember the early times of the influencers, every one of their followers thought that content should be free and that they somehow should be receiving more free, whatever. And you’re somehow turning against their audience. It’s like, yeah, you gotta feed this machine somehow. Right? But I can remember during the earlier days, you know, people would come in and they’d say, yeah, I’ve got a million followers. I, I’d say, well, have you sold anything yet? You’re like, no. And I go, well, why don’t you try that and see how many you get and how many are going to turn against you.

04:40
Mike Koenigs
Because most of them are probably communists or socialists and they expect it. You know, if you’re giving away free money and free food for a long time. Pretty soon you have an entitled audience.

04:49
Brad
Yeah.

04:50
Mike Koenigs
And you’ve got to create a conversation that’s reality based. And that doesn’t mean be a greedy jerk and don’t be like a hardcore marketer who’s constantly nitpicking. I didn’t say that. It’s just like understand what the value exchange is and what a real relationship is and have a conversation about what’s.

05:10
Brad
Real on some level. Sales of sales. Marketing is marketing. There are these timeless tenets that just exist. What has changed in how you use content marketing from early 2000s or 90s today in terms of where it fits into the marketing puzzle?

05:31
Mike Koenigs
I think, I think it has more to do with the delivery. So if we go back to right when the Internet was brand new, okay. Pre social media, pre video, it was all SEO. And back then it was copywriting in a sales page. And one of the first pieces of software I ever wrote that did something real online is I built a tool that would generate 50,000 pages of content a minute. Okay. So it was SEO spamming. But back then that wasn’t bad. It worked. Yeah. And I would basically, I built a tool that would build tens of thousands of web pages that were filled with keywords and copy and some sort of an opt in. And then this tool would go and ping all the, at the time the search engines and say, hey, I’ve got, I have a new website.

06:29
Mike Koenigs
There was always an add a page feature that eventually turned into what became Traffic Geyser. And then we started doing the same thing with video. And again, content spam wasn’t a thing back. It wasn’t too long ago you were happy when you’d hear you’ve got mail, you know, and you’d hear that, and it made you happy because you got email and you’d sign up for a whole bunch of mailing lists. You’d have something to read or you’re sending jokes to your friends. Right. That was, that was early content marketing. And then it was ebooks and then we had info products.

06:57
Mike Koenigs
And before, in the early days, when the earliest days of information marketing, you’d go to a Dan Kennedy conference and you’d see someone pitch for 50 to 75 minutes and sell something for 300 to $2,000 and you’d get a big box of stuff and the volume and the weight mattered. And then when went to digital and you started having membership sites and then it turned into community. So along the Way we changed our sales strategy to the Jeff Walker style product launch with four videos.

07:31
Brad
Okay.

07:32
Mike Koenigs
For a while it was just one video, the equivalent of a sales page. And then, you know, how do you create interest? How do you create engagement? I just think it’s all the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s an infomercial. The value of attention is at an all time high. I don’t think human brains can absorb more stuff. Okay, that’s one thing that isn’t, that hasn’t increased. But the cost of attention is higher now than ever before and the cynicism level and you’re competing against incredibly bright, attention getting young people who know how to create ma, you know, unbelievable engagement. So again, I think it’s just a matter of who’s freshest, who’s faster. It’s no different than pop music. To me, it’s like nothing’s changed. Newspapers, magazines.

08:25
Brad
Yep. Inattention’s expensive right now. So what you put out has to be engaging. Right. So one of the things you said was back when it was okay to spam content. Okay. So we’re moving into heavily, quickly, an era of AI content production.

08:42
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. So right now there’s faceless YouTube channels and God, I can’t, I. I’m going to quote Gary Vee again. But I’m only solidifying something I’ve been thinking about and experimenting with. So back In November of 2022, when ChatGPT was released, and that was, I’d consider the first mainstream AI, you know, before then, AI has been built into our devices and gadgets and all sorts of stuff for a long time. But it was a chat interface. Brilliant. No different than really text messaging. Remember when were T9, text messaging with our alphanumeric phones, before the iPhone.

09:21
Brad
Hate that shit.

09:23
Mike Koenigs
It was crazy. You know, you see kids, their typing is like, I can’t remember how many words per minute. It was insane. With their thumb, a couple fingers. So AI comes along and it wasn’t too much later. Synthesia was one of the first AI avatar companies where you could upload an avatar of yourself and create a synthetic human video. And it was pretty good. And then, hey Gen came along and I built a tool that would generate a report from a script based on all the data that I’d gather about you and make a custom video. It’s still live as of right now.

10:00
Brad
Custom video coming from you?

10:02
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. So it was a synthetic mic talking to you about you and how we could work together. And I built that like A year and a half ago. It was a long time in AI years. What I’m getting at right now is using tools like N8N and Hey Jen. A couple other things. You could build a tool that scrapes data that would. And then write it in your voice and make a whole bunch of synthetic videos that’s good in your voice and then distribute it all over the Internet. And you could have either a faceless YouTube channel, and I’d say more than half of the human population wouldn’t know it’s AI. And in nine to 18 months, you will not be able to tell there. You cannot. You will not be able to tell what’s AI or not.

10:48
Mike Koenigs
So if you think there’s a bundle of garbage out there now, ain’t seen nothing yet.

10:52
Brad
Yeah.

10:53
Mike Koenigs
Now what it tells me though is, you know, like YouTube at the moment, the algorithm prefers what we’re doing right now.

11:00
Brad
Yeah.

11:00
Mike Koenigs
If it sees two real people on video and it can’t determine that this is AI generated, the algorithm’s going to bump it up higher than a zoom style interview, for example. I think we’re going to reach a moment in time fairly soon when the younger generation who’s been had all these digital tools and phones growing up in a social media world are going to crave an environment with real wood instruments performed on a live stage with no phones and no technology allowed, where you want to have someone’s phone in your way, craving real connection. So it’s just a cycle we’re in and the value of real is going to be even higher about the time when most people don’t learn how to play real instruments anymore.

11:52
Brad
I mean, I have a million sort of different derivative paths to go down relative to that specific topic, but the one that I run into all the time, especially because Easy Pay Direct serves the creator economy so heavily. We’ve got 20, 25% of our portfolio people creating content. Right. And we used to call them info marketers, now we call them creators or consultants or, you know, whatever.

12:16
Mike Koenigs
Influencers.

12:17
Brad
Exactly. But the question for me on that topic is when, you know, even it’s happening now, but when we move into indistinguishable AI generated content or even what’s there now when that floods the market, how does that impact the creator economy?

12:31
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. Let’s think about what has value. So if I were going to turn this back to you and I said, all right, Brett, if you think about the most valuable brands in the world and what you feel has value and what you see has value, what are the things that come to mind that have the most value from a content perspective, from a personality and a brand perspective, what shows up, I don’t know.

12:56
Brad
So I sort of put those in two different buckets. When you said that to me, I thought about the guru people. I thought about what Tony Robbins means to me and then I thought about what Apple means to me. Right, right. From a brand perspective.

13:07
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

13:08
Brad
And on the one hand, from a brand perspective, I think about these things that certainly can be reproduced, that don’t need humans, that doesn’t need a human face. It’s not about Steve Jobs, it’s about the quality of the product and the robots will make the products better. But then I look at Tony Robbins and I think, what would Tony really be without Tony? And the answer is that information’s all over the place. So I really value Tony as an individual and as a brand. Right. And so I don’t think AI is going to knock that out. But I think that those are scarce.

13:37
Mike Koenigs
Those individuals, I think the winners in this new economy right now. Let me give you one other quote. This is a Sam Altman quote that he said about a year ago. He said, my buddies and I are in a chat group and we all have a bet on when we will see the first one person billion dollar company. And these are all tied together. So I had someone ask me, I did an event recently and they said, what do you think the first billion dollar one person company is going to be? And I have answer to that. But the other more important thing is what has value. So number one, it’s scarcity and rarity, but it’s also the speed of innovation and retaining relevance. So what? There’s a guy named Max Martin, he’s a music producer.

14:27
Mike Koenigs
He’s kind of like Rick Rubin, if you’re familiar with him. Max Martin, if you look him up next to Paul McCartney. And John Lennon has, I think 30 number one hit songs under his belt.

14:41
Brad
Wild.

14:42
Mike Koenigs
But most people have never heard of his name before. He’s Swedish, he’s worth over $300 million. He could walk down the street and be completely anonymous and only a hundred people in the world need to know who he is. Now what does that mean? So let’s say you are a famous music star. Think of a really hot music star who has been hot, hot, hot and suddenly not hot, who’s faded out of public view and hasn’t had a hit in a while. Anyone come to mind?

15:10
Brad
Nearly all of them, eventually, yeah.

15:13
Mike Koenigs
So when you’re that Person relevance means more than anything to you. And one on, you know, on your way up, there’s here and then there’s down. And very rarely can you ever maintain like Sting reinvented himself many times. I think he’s one of the greatest musical performers of all time, but he’s a triple threat. He’s a music, he’s a musician, he’s a songwriter, he’s a performer, he’s a producer also. But Max Martin produces music. He, he makes more money than the actual artist. And if you want a number one, you call Max Martin. So he did. The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Pink List goes on and on. Just like Rick Rubin brought Johnny Cash back from the dead. I think that illustrates the point of popularity, relevance, what kind of content. So if you’re not a Max Martin, you’re not an unbelievable producer.

16:05
Mike Koenigs
You got to find a way to create massive value and it’s going to be dependent upon rapid innovation, rapid iteration and then speed to market and then continuing to stay engaged with your customer base. God, I think I over explained that one.

16:23
Brad
So I. No, no. So I think that the, I mean what I kind of heard was the. Because the question was how does it impact the creator economy?

16:32
Mike Koenigs
Right.

16:32
Brad
And what I heard was the creator economy will inevitably change to actually being the creator. Not being the face of it or the guru, but actually being the creator of what’s coming out, regardless of what the face is.

16:45
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, I’m going to plus that. So lately and when I wrote your next act, I didn’t fully comprehend this at the time. But think about these people. Okay. You got Steve Jobs dead for how many years? 12, 13, something like that.

17:06
Brad
Yeah, something like that. 2010, I think.

17:08
Mike Koenigs
And at any given time, Apple is still one of the most valuable companies in the world. Not the most right now. Part of it’s because they have a dead fish running it. Steve Cook has the personality of something dead on my windshield. But he’s a great, he was the great guy at the right time who understood supply chain, which is what Apple needed. Still might. Okay, but they haven’t innovated anything really great in a while, in my opinion.

17:32
Brad
Yeah, look, I, I think that’s a common, very common opinion.

17:36
Mike Koenigs
Yep.

17:37
Brad
AirPods, even though it doesn’t seem like a massive innovation, is one of the best selling products in the world.

17:41
Mike Koenigs
Absolutely. And I am not knocking it or Apple from that point of view. It’s just that I haven’t been excited by my iPhone in a long time.

17:48
Brad
What are you talking about? But every year it’s the newest greatest thing.

17:51
Mike Koenigs
Yes. Who cares? Now Elon Musk doesn’t matter if you like him or hate him.

17:56
Brad
No, it doesn’t.

17:57
Mike Koenigs
But unbelief, I’d never bet against him. He’s the most. He’s the wealthiest man in the world and you’re going to have an opinion about him.

18:03
Brad
Yeah.

18:04
Mike Koenigs
And he does not pay for advertising or marketing, by the way, or publicity. You could go on and I’ll say Bono. Everyone knows who Bono is. I think almost everyone. Maybe young people will be like, who’s you too. But that guy’s made an impression. Now if I say, okay, what cell phone provider do you use?

18:23
Brad
AT&T?

18:24
Mike Koenigs
Do you know who the CEO is?

18:26
Brad
Not a clue.

18:26
Mike Koenigs
Do you care?

18:27
Brad
Nope.

18:28
Mike Koenigs
Do you have any real loyalty to at t? Right. How about your Internet provider?

18:34
Brad
Same thing, right?

18:35
Mike Koenigs
Who cares?

18:36
Brad
Yep.

18:36
Mike Koenigs
How about the car you drive? You know who the CEO of that company is, Elon? Okay. You got a Tesla. Okay.

18:42
Brad
Yeah.

18:42
Mike Koenigs
But if you had any other car, you probably couldn’t answer the question. And if something better came along. And I think founder brands matter more now than ever before because what they are a distinction of is that there is a founder with a mindset, some non negotiable values and rules they live by. And everyone knew what Steve Jobs lived by and what he stood for. And he’d be the first one to say that, you know, and Elon will be like, it’s get rid of it, launch more rockets. It’s innovate, iterate. Blow them up, Blow them up. Blow him up. But you know what? He’s the only guy having the conversation.

19:23
Mike Koenigs
And I think in the world of the creator economy, if you’re going to model the best in the world, even the founder, I can’t remember his name right now because I probably can’t pronounce it, but the guy who’s CEO of Nvidia, which is the most valuable. Yes, Jensen, most valuable company in the world at this moment. That guy’s got opinions. Guy’s a leader. He is a founder. Brand and founder brands multiply the value of everything that comes out of that company. Now, eventually it’s okay for him to go away, but Jobs has been dead a long time.

19:58
Brad
Yeah, well, I think so. So bring it down to, you know, pragmatism for most entrepreneurs, right? Because I think it’s scale, like first and foremost, I think there are great lessons to be pulled from the icons. Right. And there’s a reason that I Was forced to read a bunch of dumbass books about Fortune 50 companies from the 90s. When I went through college.

20:20
Mike Koenigs
I know.

20:20
Brad
It was so bad. I was like, why am I reading.

20:22
Mike Koenigs
A. I got a study about you that’s not like that. I do have a great. I want to hear it.

20:27
Brad
But yeah, the question is, like, I think you can get a lot of lessons from this stuff, but the question is, how do you use it? Yes. Strategy and tactics for somebody that’s running a 5 million. A 50 million, $100 million company.

20:38
Mike Koenigs
O. I’m going to give you a book reference, which is a really good read. And then I’m going to. I’ll give you the formula that I use, and I use it all the time now. It knocks me out of. Every business problem I ever have can be solved by answering six questions. Okay. First, the book. This is a book called Build. It’s by Tony Fadell. And he’s the guy who brought the ipod to market. So. And before that, he was with Magic. Is it Magic Desk? It was a gadget that was kind of like an early iPad that had the Internet and icons, and it didn’t work very well. It’s just too early for its time. And they couldn’t find anywhere in retail to put it because no one knew what it was. Okay. So it was way too ahead of.

21:26
Brad
Its time for those that don’t know what that means. Meaning you didn’t know where to put it in the physical store, literally. Because there was no category for.

21:33
Mike Koenigs
No category.

21:34
Brad
Yeah, yeah.

21:35
Mike Koenigs
Which. Which is interesting.

21:37
Brad
Which is the only way you sold that.

21:38
Mike Koenigs
It’s Holy cow. Right? And then the next item, he also brought the iPhone to market. And then he created the Nest, thermostat that Google ended up buying for $3.3 billion. This guy is a baller. I met him at an event a few months ago. Really approachable, decent guy who’s, you know, he’s a multibillionaire. And he still. He’s as ordinary gets.

22:01
Brad
One of the things that’s weird about those three products is the iPhone and the ipod weren’t even sort of first to market. They were way fucking late to the game. Way late to the game. Nest was really first to market. It was the first digital that I knew of.

22:16
Mike Koenigs
The first digital wi fi enabled own thermostat market, which sucked.

22:20
Brad
It did suck forever. Still pretty much sucks. Nest is the only reasonable brand, the.

22:24
Mike Koenigs
Only one that doesn’t suck.

22:25
Brad
There are a bunch that kind of suck a little bit Less, but they still suck.

22:29
Mike Koenigs
So this book is a master class in creating stuff that matters and creating stuff that works and thinking through and building that matter. So if there’s one thing someone gets out of this, go get that book. Now I’m going to answer the question. So I’m going to take you down the six. Okay, so I’ll tell you what they are and then I’ll tell you how they fit into building products that matter and that have value. And now I use it to architect every business we launch. So the 6Ms. Are mindset. So what are your non negotiable values? And ideally they’re founder brand led and the only reason is people. When you open up their hearts, their wallets will follow. And articulate founders who have stories to tell and stand for something will have a lot more impact than a thing.

23:20
Mike Koenigs
Always has been, always will be. Okay, Jesus Christ is a great brand, so is every other religion. Right? Okay, so then you’ve got market which is your ideal customer profile and you’ve got to be able to tell, you know, like if we break yours down, I said okay Brad, think of your top five clients you have, you’ve had the longest, who’ve referred the most business to you, who do the most transactions, who are the least pain in the ass for you. You’d be able to tell me who those five people are?

23:51
Brad
Yeah, probably.

23:51
Mike Koenigs
And if you found a hundred more just like that, you could live happily ever after forever. Third is the model. So that’s the value and the brand promise. So it’s always a combination of what your core values are, what you stand for. A thousand songs in your pocket make a dent in the universe. Apple made an impression. A bicycle for your mind. That was the original Apple II hook. Steve Jobs was a walking metaphor making machine and you look at the imagination that Elon brings to the conversation. I mean I don’t have a cybertruck, don’t really want one, but it grabbed a lot of attention.

24:33
Brad
Yeah, it did.

24:34
Mike Koenigs
That is an iconic machine, whether you think it’s ugly or not.

24:39
Brad
I do by the way, but it doesn’t matter.

24:42
Mike Koenigs
No, it’s like my opinion doesn’t matter for squat. I don’t really care anymore. Now it’ll be like what? So I want to make sure my market believes they have been delivered salvation through the brand promise and feel they’ve received value. So it’s the value exchange and how you make money, whether it’s subscription or one off price or whatever it is. Okay. And then the fourth is the message, which is what’s the transformation you’re delivering? What’s the story I need to tell you? So the Christ myth or the hero’s journey is once upon a time there was someone just like you, icp, who believed what you believe mindset and felt the same way you do and had the same problems, the same pains. And along came a wizard who promised that was going to change and gave you hope.

25:34
Mike Koenigs
And while you refused the call at first and you went away and you kept on doing it the stupid way you’ve been doing it, and you tried and failed and tried and failed. And finally you came to your senses and you listened, you followed instructions, you listened to the message. You were saved. You receive salvation. And you said, thank you, Jesus. But you accepted that gift in the form of the message. And so how did you receive that? Though it had to be through a medium. So it may have been through a long form podcast, could have been video, could have been audio, could have been on social media, could have been a printed report. But the media is where your market communicates, listens, and where you can get their attention and keep it.

26:13
Mike Koenigs
And then the multipliers, that’s the sixth M are the techniques and the tactics that I get you there. So maybe it’ll be a tattoo on a stripper’s butt. You know, that was an advertisement. Doggone it. I scan that barcode and now I’m listening to this podcast. Receiving salvation. But that’s the so it’s mindset, market model, message media and then multiplier. The multipliers are. How are you going to spread the word? Hallelujah.

26:43
Brad
So you. So let’s roll with that. So you’ve written a lot of books and we could talk about. Actually I want to talk about why you wrote so many books, but I want to. Let’s pin that one for a second.

26:56
Mike Koenigs
Because always anxious, afraid of going. Getting poor.

26:59
Brad
Yeah. I actually very much believe that to be true. One of the books you wrote, your next act.

27:07
Mike Koenigs
Yep.

27:07
Brad
This guy, which I’ve got my hand. One of the things that I love about this and is so intriguing about you in general and you just told me why the driver always anxious about getting poor.

27:16
Mike Koenigs
Being cold and poor. Hate being. It sucks.

27:19
Brad
Well, but you’ve also done a whole bunch of different stuff and so many entrepreneurs are so are. Are concerned about either they exit something and then they don’t know what to do with themselves or they’re concerned about the exit because they don’t know what they’re going to do with themselves and they don’t know how to reinvent themselves. They don’t know what they’re going to do. They don’t even know who they are when they move to a new chapter of life. You’ve gone through this, but I’ve always.

27:44
Mike Koenigs
Done the exact same thing.

27:45
Brad
Well, kind of, yeah, but you’ve done different things. And so that’s actually what I want to talk about. Right. So what are the steps you take when you do something new and how is it the same thing to you when it looks different to everybody else?

27:55
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, so the reason is I get bored quickly and once I figure something out. But everything I’ve ever done has always been about creating platforms with or for someone else. So my first company was Digital Cafe. We’re one of the first digital marketing agencies in the world. And the way we got paid is we made content. We used to make video games that were branded our first one or actually our first really visible thing we made were floppy disk screensavers for movies. Okay. So and so people, they’d get distributed in magazines and by mail and then this is before online and then we made them for CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, Delphi, which was, you know, Apple Link, all these services. And then when the Internet came around we got hired to do the same thing. Then we made video games.

28:53
Mike Koenigs
Our biggest video game shipped in 6 million boxes of cereal. But they’re all mechanisms, unique mediums with a message packed in something entertainment. So it was edutainment and then games and stuff. Then it was, you know, I made info products for a while but I’ll get to answering your question. So every single time, here’s the cycle that would happen. I’d build a company that eventually outgrew me and I’d get nervous and anxious and my tendency is to over create, make another thing and create my way out of a problem instead of build a real company with a balanced infrastructure and great operators that I wouldn’t drive crazy. Pure immaturity. That’s absolutely what it was. The inability to read a team properly.

29:46
Brad
Did you develop that self awareness or were you aware of it at the time also?

29:49
Mike Koenigs
No, I think here’s what would happen. I, I don’t think I was unaware of it. I just didn’t know how to self manage. I lacked emotional maturity.

29:59
Brad
Well, our buddy Gene was aware of it at the time.

30:01
Mike Koenigs
Oh yeah. No, I mean he’d be like look dude, I’ll tell you what’s wrong.

30:06
Brad
Gene Is a mutual friend that has helped a lot of different companies with operations. Yours one of them. And also helped you with a couple fails. Right.

30:12
Mike Koenigs
Two places. Yeah. Saved my life multiple times in many ways.

30:18
Brad
So he has given me this narrative of you in the past.

30:21
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, yeah. It’s like, I can take it. I. I’m like, I love harsh feedback. And Gene delivers harsh direct feedback.

30:29
Brad
Yes, he does.

30:30
Mike Koenigs
It’s a gift. I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t have open channels nor the ability to do something about it. Which now I hire people who disagree with me. So we can have spirited conversations and do something about it, you know, and build slower. But I’ll get to what happened is the company had too much stuff to sell. And fortunately, when I got bored and I was ready to walk away from it, literally light it on fire and just walk away, I found someone who would buy it. This happened okay five times now. I’ve had five substantive exits and sold lots of products in between. So, you know, Traffic Geyser is one instant customer was another. We bundled that up and sold it to basically an investment bank. And then I had a couple product sales that were separate businesses.

31:31
Mike Koenigs
And then you everywhere now, which was platform building for we would publish and profit, Speak and profit. They’re all info products with events and digital product, all that stuff. So. And each time I had a problem. So when Traffic Geyser was built, I had clients and they all were trying to get search engine traffic. I did an experiment with my automated SEO and then figured out how to put video on the Internet and effectively keyword load it and make many copies and like in 20 minutes it would be on every major search engine. Google, Yahoo, all of them. And stay there for extended periods of time.

32:13
Brad
Yeah.

32:14
Mike Koenigs
So we turned it into a product. I just made something that solved my problem and turned it into a product that had subscription income. When I wrote my first book, I created a product called Publish and Profit. I was probably one of the first to figure out how to leverage Amazon and Publish quickly and then figure out how to guarantee a best seller status because we wrote software that data scraped Amazon’s categories and figured out approximately how many sales in each category it would require. And then we would gamify publishing and promoting books. So in each book was really a mechanism to promote the business which then was very replicable. So there’s always been a solve a problem, commercialize it and then try to find a pathway that would market the product by teaching the process.

33:13
Mike Koenigs
And so now in AI, I’m kind of doing the same thing again.

33:18
Brad
Are you connecting the dots backwards, or did that become clear to you at some point, then you just kept replicating?

33:24
Mike Koenigs
That’s a really good question. So here’s what happened. So the foundation of what became your next act after I sold you everywhere now. No, There’s a couple life experiences that led up to this. So. 13 years ago, I was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. I think you and I met before then. And then I went through it crazy. And I was like, I looked about the color of your shirt for a little while. Gray Grain Alien esque. It was bad. And I’ll just say colorectal cancer is a bad place to get it. Very unpleasant. But that’s when I wrote my first book. So I was. I had no energy. Figured I might as well write a book, especially if I might die. Might leave something behind. Right. And figure out how to do this finally. But that.

34:12
Mike Koenigs
Then I sold Traffic as their instant customer shortly after. So I got. Came back from the dead, packaged those two businesses up, and then started you everywhere now kind of in between. And when that business model started, just funnels started breaking. And I didn’t want to do events anymore. I was just burned out. I knew it would kill me. That’s the God honest truth. But when I sold it, I was also depressed and anxious. I couldn’t sleep. And for the first time in my life, I was, like, suicidal. I wanted something to kill me. It was dark. But I belonged to strategic coach. And I sat down with Dan one day, Dan Sullivan. And I said, dan, what do you think I should do next? He said, do the. Talk to eight or 10 business owners and do the dos on them.

35:02
Mike Koenigs
What he calls. It’s dangerous. Opportunities, strengths. Just interview them and ask them what. What do they want to do? What’s preventing them from getting there? What opportunities are there that they want to take advantage of, and what are their strengths? And he said, after you interview a few of them, you’re going to know exactly what you should do next. Yeah.

35:22
Brad
And did you have any idea what the he was talking about when he said that? Or were you like, sure, I’ll blindly follow you and see where this goes?

35:28
Mike Koenigs
Both. Like, Dan’s a really complex, deep human being who’s. So I hear, unbelievable. I’ve been in coach 15 years, and I’ve been doing a podcast with him now for seven, so. And he’s 81 years old and so hungry. So hungry. It’s. It’s astonishing. So I walked away. I did that after three Interviews. I not only had the answer, I knew exactly what business I was going to do next. And the answer was what became the superpower accelerator, where now I work with founders who are stuck in one of three places. They’ve either sold their companies and want to reinvent themselves, and they’re lost, and they’re usually anxious and depressed. Solve my own problem again. Right. And there’s and there. I’ll get to that. The second is a founder owner who has a business, but they’re frustrated and tired of what really is.

36:29
Mike Koenigs
Their packaging, positioning, marketing, messaging. Because someone with a worse product, with fewer credentials, is making more money and selling premium products. So what they want is they want to make their business premium and create premium products. And they probably paid companies for years and got nothing. And their teams can’t innovate their way out. So they have an innovation and a new problem. So one is reinvention, one of them is innovation and new. And the third is a frustrated founder who has seen a similar thing. Other business owners, less credentialized, not as smart, who’ve got speaking gigs, they’ve got authority, they’re getting attention, they’re relevant, and they’re like, what is wrong with me? So what I set out to do was to solve that problem, which was really my own. How do I reinvent myself in record time?

37:22
Mike Koenigs
How do I build a business I love for the rest of my life based on my superpower? Or how do I multiply the value of everything I touch the rest of my life? Founder led brand. So I solved my own problem by making a business to solve that same problem. It’s the ultimate therapy.

37:40
Brad
Interesting. So, and this is basically what you’ve been doing the whole time past seven years. Okay.

37:46
Mike Koenigs
Done about 150.

37:48
Brad
Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, it’s the same exact thing.

37:51
Mike Koenigs
Different. Now, I didn’t have the sense. Right. Until two years ago, I was like, because. And it was Dan and I doing an interview.

38:01
Brad
Yeah.

38:01
Mike Koenigs
And the first time he did it, he does. He does this every three years with me. He said, well, tell me about your reinventions. And really what he’s trying to do is get me to realize what the hell I’ve been doing with my life, my whole life. Right. It wasn’t until Dan really kind of psychoanalyzed me on our own show that I got it. And now that I’m doing this with other founders, I mean, we can’t get to heaven staring at our own belly buttons. We all need coaches, and there’s got to be skin in the game and fear of loss. And also you’ve got to be willing to confront the identity. The thing you think is you is a hallucination and it is keeping you stuck.

38:44
Mike Koenigs
Your own self perception is preventing you from having the courage to ask for more and to be more. And sometimes it takes a brand new skin and that’s what a rebrand is. And also the courage to ask, make up something and ask ten times more for it from an audience that feels out of reach and out of touch that is salvation. It’s self perception. It is the cage we all put ourselves into. And it can be the safe way is through business you’re really confronting deep inner self worth issues.

39:21
Brad
Yeah. That’s powerful. Do you have a sense of when Dan sent you on this mission to interview founders about dangers, opportunities and strengths, why he thought that would show you?

39:30
Mike Koenigs
No. I had no clue at the time.

39:34
Brad
Do you now?

39:35
Mike Koenigs
Oh yeah.

39:37
Brad
What is it? Why, why was that the key for you.

39:41
Mike Koenigs
So. Oh my God. God. That’s a good question. I’ll tell you what it is. So.

39:47
Brad
So normally I interrupt the show to promote EPD to tell you about credit card processing, but today I’m going to tell you about our partner program. If you know other business owners that accept credit cards and you refer them to Easy Pay Direct, you will get paid a percentage of what we make for the life of the account. As long as they’re processing. You can build a residual for doing nothing, just the introduction. You can do that by going to epd.combampartners that’s epd.combama partners.

40:19
Mike Koenigs
Dan is absolutely focused on your better moving future and celebrating your past with no regrets and seeing the gift in it. So the way strategic coaches framed and worked is every, they have meetings every quarter. It’s one day you sit down and you celebrate your past 90 days and you write down all the things that you’ve accomplished and then you build a plan for your next 90 days. And one of the exercises that Dan does so I have dinner with him every quarter. I go have family dinner and he does an exercise. You sit down for dinner with Dan and we do positive focus. Positive focus is what’s something that’s been happening in your life personally or professionally. It’s just lighting you up, makes you super happy. And he’ll have like will be eight of us for dinner.

41:14
Mike Koenigs
And then the table topic is usually what the most interesting thing is that got the most attention during that conversation. Then we go deep on it. But his whole focus is Your past is an indicator of your better moving future. And the sooner you understand and see the pattern, the sooner you can predict and create an even better future for yourself. So it’s making sense of all of the wins and the successes, but doing it in an orderly fashion. And I just never did it. Like I was not a good historian of my own successes. I did not see the patterns. It just felt like insanity and something I was running away from instead of running towards. And I see that so often now in founders who come broken after a sale.

42:08
Mike Koenigs
They got their eight figures in the bank and they are depressed and anxious and addicted.

42:13
Brad
Often scary.

42:15
Mike Koenigs
It’s common. More common. When I get to have this conversation with them, most break down and cry and they say, I have no one to talk to about this.

42:25
Brad
What are the steps that you encourage people to take or you help people take to understand how to connect the dots of their past as it pertains to the future that they could potentially have?

42:40
Mike Koenigs
I’ll tell you something that it’s the best marketing campaign I’ve ever created. That also is therapeutic. And it wouldn’t be. I was doing it anyway. I didn’t realize I was doing it. And then we turned it into a marketing campaign. And I’m going to give credit where credit is due. Joe Polish interviewed a guy named Ron Lynch.

43:02
Brad
Oh, I know Ron very well.

43:03
Mike Koenigs
Okay.

43:04
Brad
Yeah, Ron has been on the show and he’s a good friend.

43:06
Mike Koenigs
Great.

43:06
Brad
Yeah.

43:07
Mike Koenigs
So Ron gets kudos for this.

43:09
Brad
Love that.

43:10
Mike Koenigs
So Ron, of course, had been in. In the infomercial business, television for a long time.

43:17
Brad
That’s an understatement.

43:18
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, long time. And super fascinating guy.

43:23
Brad
Just like so bizarre.

43:24
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. Larger than life. And so Joe and Ron were having a conversation and. And people always go to Ron, they say, well, can I pick your brain and go, yeah, for a thousand bucks, go out and take me out for a cup of coffee. It’s not about the money. But if I just sit down with you’re not going to write it down. You’re not going to take this thing seriously. I’m going to give you a whole bunch of nuggets. You’re going to do nothing with it. At least this way. And Joe’s got a great saying. If you don’t pay it, don’t pay attention. So I was at another strategic coach meeting and the product I sell right now is somewhere around $200,000 to work with me when I build these businesses and brands and it’s expensive and I have the mechanism.

44:09
Mike Koenigs
I forgetting clients like that they usually have to consume my content. See podcasts, get to meet me, get to know who I am and know this isn’t that I’m not completely batshit crazy, right? And it’s all right, I can live with it. But I, I was telling Joe and another guy who is at my table, the problem I have, which is I have a long tail sales process and it requires a lot of dancing bear. And Joe said, way I had to do the thousand dollar cup of coffee. Actually it was the other guy who said, right now I’d pay you 2,500 bucks for an hour of your time, but I’m not gonna write out a six figure check cause I don’t know what I’m gonna get. And Joe said, why don’t you do the thousand dollar cup of coffee?

44:50
Mike Koenigs
I’m like, what the hell’s that? And he said, I did this interview with Ron Lynch. He said, let me get Eunice to send you the interview. So within 10 minutes I had the interview, I transcribed it and I looked at the transcript and I used ChatGPT and I made the campaign, which now is my thousand dollar cup of coffee campaign.

45:10
Brad
Oh, beautiful.

45:11
Mike Koenigs
So I had it launched in 48 hours and it produced, I’ll say, multiple six figures in business crazy weeks. And here’s the answer to your question about the salvation. So the thousand dollar cup of coffee is a way for someone else to put skin in the game. Show up at a meeting with expectations that I’m actually going to give them a transformation, guaranteed. If I can’t do it, I give them their money back right away. But when I come to the meeting, I have built an AI tool that does deep research on the prospect. It learns everything about you, looks at your backstory, it determines your better moving future based upon some of Dan’s mindsets. And it estimates your personality profile on eight different levels. So your Colby score, your Myers Briggs, your Enneagram, love this.

46:01
Mike Koenigs
And then I run a Chris Voss influence filter on the top 10 tips to make a connection and create influence in our conversation. And then I also have it load up with my offer and look at their business and their history, how we can best collaborate. So what I do then is I just say at the very beginning of the meeting, I show them the report and I say, I’m going to give you this report. We’re done. I’m going to ask you seven questions and my goal is to give you an 11 experience on a scale of 1 to 10, help you create a better future for yourself, a better business, and a better personal future. So let’s go. So in 30 minutes, they’ve got the map. And then the second part is, would you like to know how we can do it together?

46:47
Mike Koenigs
And I walk them through a customer journey that converts better than anything I’ve ever done on. I mean, we’re talking one call to deep rapport and trust. And I think the answer to all of this is if you can show someone a logical progression from where they are, help them see their past with clarity, and give them a better future and show them a pathway and a map to get there, they will trust you to deliver.

47:19
Brad
Are you, I would assume, then you’re prompting them to give you as much data as possible on the front end. Fill out a form.

47:26
Mike Koenigs
It’s one form. And now what I do, I simplify it even more. I ask them, you can just read these questions and send me an audit file with the audio. And I use voice recognition.

47:39
Brad
What kinds of questions? Because ultimately, the questions, the purpose of the questions is to allow the robots to dig in and do deep research on them in the background, right?

47:48
Mike Koenigs
Yes. So I’m going to give you the questions and I’ll pre frame that by. One of my other books is called Punch the Elephant. It’s my sales book.

47:57
Brad
Seems dangerous.

47:58
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. If you’re going to walk in, there’s going to be you and an elephant in a room. You better knock that bastard out as soon as you walk in the door or have knocked out when you walk in the door. And that’s the whole thing is what’s the biggest objection that someone’s going to have. That’s the only thing. The elephant in the room.

48:10
Brad
Nice.

48:12
Mike Koenigs
And there’s a secondary elephant, which is Eels kill deals. So it’s not just the elephant, but it’s he or she who influences the elephant has twice the force. So it’s the. And it’s the silent one. It might be the spouse or the business partner who’s not there during the first conversation. You got to knock both of them out.

48:31
Brad
Yeah.

48:32
Mike Koenigs
So the questions are. And I asked this, I should have asked you this at the very beginning, is, hey, Brad, if at the end of this interview today you feel like you have an 11 experience on a scale of 1 to 10, what kind of value can I deliver to your audience? That they would say that was the best interview you’ve done so far on the show.

48:56
Brad
And that would be the prompt for me.

48:58
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

48:58
Brad
And so you’re asking them that on the Front end.

49:01
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. What would make this experience, this conversation? 11 on a scale, 1 to 10, what would you like to walk away with? Know or understand?

49:07
Brad
Got it. And that’s the first question.

49:08
Mike Koenigs
The first question.

49:09
Brad
That’s awesome.

49:10
Mike Koenigs
Okay. Yep. And then I ask a variation of what’s known as the Dan Sullivan question. The Dan Sullivan question, also called the R factor, is if you and I were to sit and meet here three years from today, what will have happened personally and professionally for you to be happy with your progress? That is a big ass question.

49:30
Brad
It is. Yeah.

49:31
Mike Koenigs
So now you’re projecting into your better future self or what you think it might be. And then it’s what dangers are preventing you from getting there? What have you tried and failed at? How much does it cost you in time? Money, resources, energy, relationships. And then opportunities. So if this problem were alleviated, what kind of opportunities could you take advantage of that you can’t right now? What do you wish you could do that you can’t? But you lack the resources, capabilities or knowledge.

50:10
Brad
So I would. I would assume. I’m thinking that in this context, because they put a thousand bucks in for an hour, they are in the. I think the frame of the thousand dollar cup of coffee is awesome. Right. But because they’ve invested, they probably take that form seriously.

50:28
Mike Koenigs
Oh, hell yeah. No, if they don’t fill it out, I just refund them immediately. I. And, and if I can’t help them, I give them back their money immediately. I take every one of these seriously. It will not. I don’t need the thousand bucks.

50:41
Brad
Right.

50:41
Mike Koenigs
It’s a symbolic exchange of energy and a bond of trust.

50:48
Brad
Yeah, I really hate the way you said that, but I understand.

50:53
Mike Koenigs
I know.

50:53
Brad
Symbolic exchange of energy.

50:55
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. Not in a dirty way. No, just a cuddly way.

50:59
Brad
No, no, I mean that.

51:02
Mike Koenigs
I know what the last question is.

51:03
Brad
Yes, please.

51:04
Mike Koenigs
Okay. Yeah. So it’s better. Better future, dangerous opportunities. And then. Now this is again a variation. But if I said to you, Brad, if you could spend 95% of your time doing what you were meant to do, what you’re destined to do, what you love to do most, where you feel like you’re creating the most value, what is that special thing?

51:26
Brad
How many people don’t know the answer to that?

51:29
Mike Koenigs
Many don’t. Yeah, you can guess.

51:30
Brad
What’s your guess what their answer is?

51:33
Mike Koenigs
No. What your answer is.

51:34
Brad
Oh, my answer.

51:35
Mike Koenigs
Your unique ability, your superpower. What do you love to do more than anything? That just lights you up and you.

51:40
Brad
Do it for free, man.

51:41
Mike Koenigs
And it just so happens that it just works. And what you’re. What you’re known for. People who’ve known you a long time say Brad is the best in the world at bro.

51:54
Brad
Why do you think my question was how many people don’t know the answer to that?

51:58
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, but if you had to guess he had a gun to your forehead in 10 seconds to live, what would you say?

52:02
Brad
I mean, I think it’s. For me, I think it’s something. I don’t know, the activity, it’s some just progress in discipline. Progress down a path is ultimately where I. Where I thrive, where I feel like I’m doing the best thing is consistently growing and pursuing a bigger objective.

52:19
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. I think you’re a natural problem solver and you. I think you’re really good at seeing the value that other people have and how to solve challenges that they experience. Now the business you happen to be in happens to solve those. But you found a unique way to solve unique problems with a toolkit that other people haven’t figured out. You know, you’ve got a niche business. You’re really good at spotting niches that are profitable and you can build moats. I don’t think you do enough with that, but I think it’s a unique ability.

53:01
Brad
What do you think I should do?

53:04
Mike Koenigs
I think. I think you could build a much bigger, more valuable platform as a super connector.

53:20
Brad
Then I’d have to talk to people.

53:24
Mike Koenigs
Well, you don’t mind talking to people you like. You like one one. You’re not grouping.

53:28
Brad
That’s true. That’s actually very true.

53:30
Mike Koenigs
So that.

53:30
Brad
Actually I love talking to people one one. It is the group thing that bothers me. Yeah.

53:33
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

53:34
Brad
And obviously like people. Whenever I tell people I’m an introvert, they’re like, what? Because I’m, you know, fairly social introvert.

53:40
Mike Koenigs
But yeah. So I might have to spend some more cycles on that. So it would be. Because here’s, you know, one of the tagline is creating a business you’ll love for the rest of your life. I approach it through that lens. Yeah. Let’s just pretend now I got a couple of years on you. I just turned 59, so I’m hitting that 60 mark. I have fewer in front of me than I have behind me. Right.

54:08
Brad
Probably.

54:09
Mike Koenigs
Statistically speaking.

54:10
Brad
Statistically, yeah.

54:12
Mike Koenigs
And I had stage three colorectal cancer. There’s certain damage that was done by the medicine. Okay. I have to live with that. Chemo and radiation are not kind to the human body.

54:22
Brad
No, they’re not.

54:23
Mike Koenigs
So with that in mind, I. I’m living life through a different filter than I was 10 years ago. So getting back to answering your question about you is when I ask someone about their superpowers, I really want to get down into what is your core identity right now? And if I bounce this back and I said, all right, Brad, what do you want to be known for and what do you think other people say your unique ability is? Some of the people who are closest to you in your life who know you the best?

55:00
Brad
Yeah, I mean, I think over time, I mean, I know that over time I have pulled the audience to try to get feedback on that. And the feedback had. Has historically been disciplined, deliberate. And those are kind of themes that pop up. People that know me well see me being a goofy idiot periodically. People that don’t know me that well.

55:24
Mike Koenigs
Usually goofy, not dangerous.

55:27
Brad
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

55:28
Mike Koenigs
Just goofy.

55:28
Brad
Just goofy. Just strange. People that don’t know me as well think I’m much more serious, I think, than that. And I think through the era of social, maybe there’s more personality that comes out. But, but that’s historically been the case. Though I will say that, you know, a lot of what you talk about in terms of founders exiting, looking to exit, post exit, being confused, alone, you know, trying to find their way. I totally understand that. And I think that part of that is that when you solve your initial challenges in life and you go through these different sort of plateaus or stages as you solve those problems, you are confronted with new ones.

56:15
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

56:15
Brad
And you don’t know what they’re going to be until you get there.

56:18
Mike Koenigs
Well, I’ll tell you what, the big ones are that stay there all the time. So we all fear banishment. Okay. And that’s banishment from the tribe, which is deep rooted shame. But if you’re banished at prison, for example, is outside very complicated form of banishment. Because once a felon, always a felon. And it’s hard to recover from that. Unless, by the way, if you’re an entrepreneur, you can not as an employee, but get. But the other one is relevance. So without naming names, I know a lot of aging, old or dead celebrities and gurus and that is what they’re most terrified of. And this is why most men die quickly after retirement because they not only lose their purpose, they don’t feel valued. But as soon as you lose relevance, you can’t pick it up. It’s like scraping onto a greased steel wheel.

57:26
Mike Koenigs
You just can’t get back on Again and build momentum. So there’s a pretty famous. He’s just passed. Not that long ago, someone who had some legal problems and was very famous called me up and said, I really need your help. And I’m like, dude, you are. You are a dangerous personality to be around. I. I can’t risk help. Like, I can’t do it with you and for you, because the risk to my own reputation would be too high. And it really hit me hard when I said those words that I, you know, and I didn’t dislike this human being. It’s just that it was way too much to dig through. But his challenge in creating relevance again was so dramatic, it would have been nearly impossible.

58:18
Brad
All right, so let’s bring this down to all of the operators out there.

58:22
Mike Koenigs
So make it relevant.

58:23
Brad
Well, right, so. So, yeah, look, I mean, as a, you know, as a young entrepreneur or an old one that’s doing a few million dollars a year and kind of looking at scale or ramp.

58:38
Mike Koenigs
Yep.

58:38
Brad
We’ve talked about these big levers. Do you avoid doing that for the risk of not having it later? Do you do it anyway, knowing it’s going to go away later? Do you somehow decide that you’re going to be relevant forever? Like, how do you solve for that?

58:52
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. Yeah. So here’s the toolkit I always. I always build. You should have your equivalent of a TED talk, a speech that you could do in 10 minutes or 50 minutes, ready all the time. And there should be one that’s your founder brand version, which is who you are, what you stand for in a way that’s meaningful to an audience, the audience you wish to serve. So I. One of mine is, I literally have a. A story called your next act. It’s ready to go all the time. I have another one called Punch the Elephant. It’s my sales tool. Right. I’ve got one on. I’ve got probably a dozen on AI days and days worth of content. So be prepared to create value everywhere you go. And I would say, learn to be a very good presenter speaker.

59:42
Mike Koenigs
That will make you relevant for the rest of your life. Tony Robbins said to me years ago, I was at his house, and he said, Mike, 80% of what I do is entertainment, 20% of its content. And I hated him for a couple minutes when he said that. I’m like, what? You changed my life. Remember when I was at your event in 1995, I was such a shit show. He goes, mike, how do you think I get six days of someone’s attention and time for 14 or 15 hours a day, I gotta keep em entertained before they’re ready to open up to the content. So this is why Joe Rogan mostly has entertainers and comedians on his show. Because that’s entertainment. This is entertainment. So you got to be able to entertain.

01:00:28
Mike Koenigs
And those who don’t know how to entertain well will always get less attention and probably be less relevant unless they’re delivering massive value some other way, which is a much slower burn. So. And you better be using AI right now. That is the. My son is starting building little businesses right now and he’s got the AI bug and he’s figuring out how to apply his unique ability with AI. Tell every founder that.

01:00:54
Brad
Now, I think one of the things that I want people to hear is that you said, but I want to underscore is be ready to provide value at any moment, anywhere you go.

01:01:04
Mike Koenigs
Yeah.

01:01:05
Brad
And I think that’s such an important frame shift for most people because most people, specifically, when they’re newer in business, walk into the. And think about how to quote, unquote, network or connect with people. Right. And the answer to that is how do you provide value?

01:01:20
Mike Koenigs
You mean walk in and take.

01:01:22
Brad
Yeah, right, yeah. Well, and that’s the thing is like trick to get.

01:01:26
Mike Koenigs
Yeah, that sounds like a great book title.

01:01:29
Brad
But even if you’re not proactively thinking that just having the frame of how do I meet people and connect with people is very different than walking in and thinking how do I create value? It’s also then a step or two beyond that to say I’m going to prepare a number of different ways that I know I can provide value to people when I come into the room and be ready to do that. And I think that the lack of preparation frequently is what causes people to fail from start. Right. Like, they just, they should know that they’re going to fail because they’re given the opportunity, but they’re not ready to have it.

01:02:01
Mike Koenigs
That is absolutely true. So getting back to being able to create some value someone can walk away from a conversation with you, which I will tell you flat out, if you follow the questions that I gave you at every party and just ask people those questions, people will think they will have had the best conversation and most intimate, meaningful conversation of their lives. And by the way, you did no speaking. It was all about them. So the show has to be all about them. And like, if I would have masterfully done this interview with you, I would ask you almost all the questions, I would have reversed Them and made you the show the whole time. And I didn’t have the discipline to do that. That’s the God honest truth.

01:02:57
Brad
Well, I wouldn’t have done that anyway. I would have been like, I’m not.

01:02:59
Mike Koenigs
Gonna turn it back over you introvert types. But. But that is some of the best interviews I’ve ever done. Even though I was the guest, I made the show all about the host and delivered salvation. And I think that is it. I think life, it’s such a cliche, but life is show business. And if one of your outcomes and your goals is I am going to help you make a great documentary, a great movie that’s all about you achieving your highest purpose. And I will serve with no strings and no catches. So if we go back to the symbolic, even though I made fun of it at first, like the symbolic story of the crucifixion and Christ died for your sins. Okay. That is such a powerful, symbolic, energetic exchange. Even before you were born, God’s son died for you. Okay.

01:04:01
Mike Koenigs
That is, that is the sacrifice of ego for a purpose that is hard to comprehend for humans. And there’s so much wisdom locked into that mythology. So I’m not speaking about Christianity. It is the greatest story ever told. That’s why it’s been retold for centuries, many millennia. And I think it’s useful in the context of how can you show up.

01:04:28
Brad
Yeah.

01:04:28
Mike Koenigs
And then in the meantime, you better have some damn good capabilities. You know, it’s like Napoleon dynamite is. Chicks love skills, girls love skills, guy with skills like nunchuck skills and trapping skills, but gotta have some capabilities.

01:04:43
Brad
Yeah, for sure. Well, that’s. Yeah. The fake it till you make it is weird advice. And I think that the. I also, and you’ve said it and we’ve hit it on it a couple different ways. But I really want to make sure that the point is driven home that if your takeaway was providing value is showing up in demonstrating what you know because you have a product to sell that’s not really providing value. And so your example that you expressed was providing value is coming with a pre determined set of six questions about them to open them up and uncover things with them, which ironically is also the win because it makes them feel like the act, you know, the main act.

01:05:25
Brad
And it also gives you the information that you want to know to see if you’re going to be able to help them further with your particular thing.

01:05:30
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. And I think the word going back to a very Much a Dan Sullivanism collaboration. So instead of a sale, a collaboration is so much more powerful because it’s an energetic exchange. It’s receiving, it’s to going contribution. It’s when I ask for your best self to show up and I’ll show up with my very best self because that’s my brand promise and deliver you to your version of an 11. It’s why again, getting back to the 11, if I set the standard right up front, and the perfect version of that is imagine you and I started to work together today and I help you build your founder brand.

01:06:16
Mike Koenigs
I help you achieve your greatest, highest goal that you just told me right now and help you defeat your dangers so that you can achieve your goals, your objectives while you get to live inside your unique ability, your superpower and do that almost all the time. What would that be worth to you? Okay. That sets up a frame for our relationship in a way where you see the customer journey and the outcome. Great marketing, great influencers, great founders are doing that all the time. When you pay attention to their language patterns and what they’re doing and what they’re building and why.

01:07:02
Brad
How much time do you allocate, if you are a new entrepreneur to trying to figure out those questions versus executing on the thing that’s in front of you and trying to make it work?

01:07:15
Mike Koenigs
Yeah. Let me give you a really a real life example of something I just did. So I have a really interesting client. It’s the name of the company is Indered E N D U R E E D. And I’m working with the founder. His name’s Abram Hubert. H U B E R Huber. And they make synthetic thatch. So if you want to make a tiki hut for your backyard, it looks like the real stuff, except it’s fireproof, weatherproof, bugs don’t live in it. You know, rats, bats and critters and stuff like that. And it’s not toxic. You don’t have to treat it with anything. And it lasts forever. They’ve, it’s, they put some of it on Disneyland, Animal kingdom, then they’re 25 years. Like, what the hell does this have to do with anything?

01:08:04
Brad
So wildly expensive.

01:08:06
Mike Koenigs
No, it’s not. Oh, super affordable. Yeah, it’s really easy to install and they’ve got like basic stuff. So you could just turn this place into a cute little tiki bar. You can put do a tiki bar. More people want to come to your studio. It’s cool as hell. And then the second thing is they’ve got like stuff for houses and then they do their high end for theme parks and all that. And were talking and were just coming up with some new ways to market. And Vivian, my wife, said, hey, I wonder what our backyard would look like if it had tiki thatch on it. So we made a little chat GPT that would put thatch on a picture of our backyard. And we’re like, let’s make an app.

01:08:50
Mike Koenigs
So I used a tool, it’s by a company called Abacus and there’s another company called Replit. And then there’s Cursor, there’s all these code generators. They call it Vibe coding. And I built an app that made this Tiki Hut maker, right? A little app. It’s called. It’s called Thatchit.

01:09:08
Brad
Nice.

01:09:08
Mike Koenigs
And prototyped it and showed it to them. They’re like, yeah, let’s do it. And the point is, here’s the value. So if I were a young person right now, or any entrepreneur, and I wanted to create something new, I would start just meeting with people and asking them the questions. It’s the punch the elephant question. So I’ll give you guys the book so you can give it away. It’s what you know, how can I make our conversation? 11 Tell me about your better future. What dangers, opportunities, strengths, and then if I felt I could solve that problem. Nowadays you can sit down with these code generators and inventory software that’s prototyped and semi functional in about an hour. Okay.

01:09:55
Mike Koenigs
And then either Vibe code your way to the end or you work with a programmer and show them this and say, now build it so it’s real and done.

01:10:03
Brad
Yeah.

01:10:04
Mike Koenigs
All right. That is the future of AI and business is having meaningful conversations, solving a problem, prototyping it in real time. So the answer to your question is how fast can you bring something to market and invent a solution? And nothing is unsolvable. Now, with AI, the notion of saying, I don’t know how to do that or how do I? Is a disease of the mind that can be cured and solved by having ChatGPT installed on your phone. Nothing is unknowable now. Nothing is unmakeable, and nothing is undoable, no matter what your education or your location on the planet is. And most human brains are not ready to receive agency, to actually have ownership of their thoughts and solve problems that are solvable.

01:11:02
Brad
So what I think I just heard is your advice for a new entrepreneur is to get your mind straight and know that you have to solve the problem. Interview people, ask Them deep questions to see what their problem is.

01:11:15
Mike Koenigs
Yep.

01:11:15
Brad
And run to solution. And go to market with it.

01:11:18
Mike Koenigs
Yep. And hang out with entrepreneurs. For the love of God and all things holy, the world that we are living in right now is going to be owned by those who know the trades and those and curious generalists who know how to use AI. And they’re the mentors who help pave the way and the apprentices who are willing to receive the gift of acceleration. Those are the four types of people I’d spend all my time hanging out with right now. Be a great apprentice, find a mentor, learn how to use AI and hang out with entrepreneurs. Because if you’ve got a employee mindset waiting trying to figure out how to get by on a wage instead of creating massive value, that is a disease of the mind.

01:12:16
Brad
Mike Koenigs. I love hanging out with you, man.

01:12:19
Mike Koenigs
The same. Always been that way.

01:12:21
Brad
Yeah, it has. Where do you want to send people? Which of your 19 books do you want? All right, I want to fill people.

01:12:27
Mike Koenigs
So if you go to here, I’ll start here. Yeah, this one is go to paidforlife.com free. That’s you’ll get. It’s the same as my website, mikecanigs.com free. But you get your next act and that’ll get you into getting all of them. Or aiaccelerator.com free will get you the book. And this is. It’s not just like how to use AI, it’s how to think in AI, how to reprogram your brain to think about the new economy and innovate differently.

01:13:00
Brad
Yeah, I mean, I’m glad that you hit on the thought process side of it because if you’re not asking the right questions, you’re not going to get the right answers.

01:13:08
Mike Koenigs
Truer words, never spoken. That, that is the answer. If you don’t have the life you want, it’s because you’re asking the wrong questions for sure.

01:13:20
Brad
Love it, man. Well, until next time.

01:13:23
Mike Koenigs
Until next time. All right, that’s a wrap for this episode.

01:13:27
Brad
I’m supposed to tell you that you should subscribe to the show and you should leave a review. I really want you to leave a review though, because it makes like a radical difference in the algorithm and getting other people to be able to see the show. So can you please go leave a review? It’ll take you like 30 seconds, I promise. Also, if you want more episodes that are amazing, you can check out the full length video [email protected] or YouTube.comyondamilion you won’t regret it.