Mike Handcock: Self-Discovery in Business

Summary

In this episode of The Chris Project, host Christian Brim interviews Mike Hancock, a multifaceted entrepreneur with a rich background in music, corporate leadership, and personal development. Mike shares his journey from a challenging childhood to becoming a successful musician and later transitioning into the corporate world. He discusses the pivotal moment when he decided to leave his corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship, driven by a desire to help others achieve their dreams. Throughout the conversation, Mike emphasizes the importance of self-discovery and understanding one's true identity as key factors for entrepreneurial success. He also highlights the common struggles faced by entrepreneurs and the mission of his organization, Circle of Excellence Group, to empower conscious leaders. In this conversation, Christian Brim and Mike Handcock explore the complexities of success, personal growth, and the importance of enjoyment in business. They discuss the guilt that often accompanies success, the need to reframe challenges, and the transformative power of self-understanding. The dialogue emphasizes the significance of aligning one's essence with their business endeavors and the necessity of self-acceptance for achieving true fulfillment in entrepreneurship.

Takeaways

• Mike's early life challenges shaped his resilience.
• He learned to stand on his own two feet at a young age.
• Transitioning from music to corporate was a significant shift.
• The decision to leave corporate life was driven by a desire for passion.
• Helping others achieve their dreams became a core mission.
• Building homes allowed people to realize their dreams.
• Circle of Excellence Group focuses on empowering entrepreneurs.
• Self-discovery is crucial for entrepreneurial success.
• Many entrepreneurs feel trapped in their businesses.
• Creating exceptional memories is more valuable than material wealth. Success can come with feelings of guilt.
• Reframing your perspective can change your business outcomes.
• Personal growth is essential for business transformation.
• Enjoyment in business is crucial for long-term success.
• Understanding the true meaning of passion involves recognizing the potential for suffering.
• Bringing your essence into your business can enhance fulfillment.
• Deep self-understanding is necessary for genuine motivation.
• Self-acceptance opens doors to new opportunities.
• Coping mechanisms can manifest in unhealthy ways in entrepreneurship.
• Your energy and mindset significantly influence your business success.

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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is Mike Hancock of Circle of Excellence Group. Circle of Excellence Group, sorry, mispronounced that. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Handcock (00:21.059)
Christian, it's great to be here and hello to everybody listening.

Christian Brim (00:25.208)
So before we started recording, you were telling me about that funny accent that you have and your journey. So why don't you tell us a brief synopsis of who Mike Hancock is.

Mike Handcock (00:42.083)
Well I was born in Australia but I lived in New Zealand for most of my life.

apart from some time where I lived in America, LA, and the last 10 years I've been living in Cape Town, South Africa. And I'm an only child to a solo mother, and I came home and found her dead when I was 15. And I had no aunties, no uncles, no grandparents, no brothers, no sisters, the list goes on and on and on. So literally I left, I left at home, went and stayed with my best friend and his parents for the last two years of high school. And on

the day that I got my results his father said did you pass and I went yeah just and he said okay great be out in two weeks so that's where my world started

Christian Brim (01:29.004)
Wow. Okay. Let's unpack that a bit. Do you mind sharing why your mother was dead? Did she commit suicide? Did someone kill her? Did she overdose? What?

Mike Handcock (01:32.921)
you

Mike Handcock (01:44.961)
None of the above. She was misdiagnosed, which led me on a lifelong journey of having very little trust in the medical field. she had pains in her chest. I was 15 years old. We called the doctor. He came around and he said, no, nothing to worry about. She has a hiatus hernia. And so we tucked her into bed. He left. And those were in the days when the doctor came around. Not that it did any good. And the next

I went to my sports training and I came home from that it was a Sunday morning and you know she'd passed away had a second heart attack and boom gone high stress smoker

Christian Brim (02:25.646)
mean, that's like, that's like symptom 101 for a heart attack is chest pains. Like, that's crazy.

Mike Handcock (02:34.775)
Yeah, but you know, common sense isn't that common,

Christian Brim (02:39.63)
Unfortunately, yes. Yes, we won't we won't dive into the medical industry because we'll probably be talking about that for the entire time Okay, so 17 graduated high school barely Living in your friend's house and dad says you got two weeks. What where is your head?

Mike Handcock (02:48.47)
Exactly.

Mike Handcock (03:05.088)
My head was, I was really shocked, looking back at it, think honestly, Christian, it was probably one of the greatest decisions somebody made for me in my life because I could have easily hung around there. I didn't get the opportunity to go to university at that stage like all my friends did. I had to get a job. So I got a job and I was out of there within two weeks. I had my own apartment. And then I literally had to stand

on my own two feet and I think that that's been one of the things that in my life I've always stood on my own two feet and I think there's a lot of people when times get tough they go, that's okay. I'll go lean on my dad or I'll ask my uncle for a few bucks because I'm a bit short this month. So none of those things were ever available to me. So right from that time when I literally turned 18, I think a couple of days before he said, see you later.

I literally from then had to stand on my own two feet, which I think was actually a great thing. I did go to university, I went in my 30s, but that was a different story.

Christian Brim (04:12.013)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (04:15.95)
Yeah, that's hard as a parent. My 24 year old graduated a few weeks ago and is at home looking for a job. as a parent, and of course his mother is much more sympathetic to his cause than I am, I can see where it's stifling to him and I can see where he's struggling with

this failure to launch like but you know that safety net can't help but detract from his efforts and That's a that's a real hard place to be as a parent But to your point, you know when you don't have anything else you you rely on yourself and you figure it out and and

you know, some people don't figure it out, right? You know, they don't have that foundation to be able to stand on their own two legs, but I think most people put in that situation can find their way. Where was your father in this?

Mike Handcock (05:30.105)
They divorced when I was about five years old. He was an alcoholic and a wife beater. And I didn't see him. I saw him at the funeral actually. He came to see if there was any money left for him but when he found out there wasn't so he disappeared. And I saw him later actually when I was 30 the next time. But I never had a relationship.

Christian Brim (05:52.876)
Any relate in any so today, today, no relationship.

Mike Handcock (05:57.369)
No, he passed away 10 years ago and I saw him about three weeks before his passing but I never had a relationship. used to laugh with my business partner at the time saying, I could go to Mumbai and get in a tuk tuk and have a really robust conversation and I can't get a word out of my own father. And I probably met him six times in my adult life. it was just, he was probably an instrument

instrumental in bringing me to life but apart from that we just had nothing to say to each other.

Christian Brim (06:32.194)
Yeah. So you exit, you get a job, get your own place, make it happen. What happens between there and in the thirties where you went back to university?

Mike Handcock (06:50.841)
I became a professional musician.

and came and lived in your wonderful country for a while and toured there and had a great time in the start of the 90s and did okay. And then I was offered, when the band broke up due to differences, musical differences, which is what they all say, I was offered a job in New Zealand and I moved to New Zealand. at that point, and that was in financial services and I rose through the rank and by the time

Christian Brim (07:14.04)
Yes.

Mike Handcock (07:23.995)
I was in my late 30s, was general manager sales and marketing for the biggest financial services company in New Zealand running about four and a half thousand sales agents, brokers, advisors, call them what you want depending on what country you're in. that was the point where I really said, I used to look around the boardroom table, Christian, I used to have to go to the board meeting once a week in Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand. And I used look

around the table and I thought none of these people want to be here.

They're all just going through the motions, trying to cover their butts and hope that their bonuses get paid. And we're all getting paid lots of money. You know, we're at the top of a major corporate. So I decided that it was my time to get out. And once I made that decision, it took me about 18 months to position myself so I could get out and become an entrepreneur and take my life into my own hands.

Christian Brim (08:06.797)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (08:26.594)
And you were how old at that point?

Mike Handcock (08:28.953)
39

Christian Brim (08:30.978)
I find that situation fascinating because your story is not unique in that people get to that point in their life, in their career, and they walk away. And I find that fascinating because at 27, when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I could see that if I stayed on my career track,

I would get to the point where I was too comfortable to leave. And I'm surprised that I had that much insight at 27. But I also didn't have a lot to risk, right? Like, I mean, I had two young children, but I didn't have a net worth. I didn't have that long of a career. So it wasn't like I was giving up this huge salary and had a lot of risk on the table. But you, at the point where you're making a lot of money,

and are secure, being able to walk away from that, where was your head there?

Mike Handcock (09:37.678)
Well...

You're right, and I think it comes down to your own value systems as a human being. So my life was very comfortable. I'd sort of got to the point in corporate where I realized I didn't actually have to do anything except about once a month some decision came where I had to go left or right and I had to choose the right way to go. And if I did, everything was good for probably another month because that's how it goes at that level. Apart from that, I could sort of shunt things

Christian Brim (10:02.008)
Right?

Mike Handcock (10:09.147)
around and make other people do things.

And were going through an IPO, an initial public offering listing on the share market at that stage. And my marketing manager came to me and we were going through some retrenchments and he said to me, he was 55, he said, I can't lose my job. I've got kids in university and, you know, I just need the money, please, Mike. You know, he was literally in tears. He was frantic. And I thought to myself when he left, because he actually was awesome, we would have never got rid of him. I thought I never want to

be that person when I'm 55 year old. So I need to take control of my life and I need to do what I'm passionate about. And I've long since lost my passion for the corporate nature of things. I need to go and find out what I love. I need to go and make a difference in my way. I need to, you know, I have a saying, Christian, that's, you know, when they bury you at 70, 80, 90 years old, they don't bury you with your Mercedes Benz.

Christian Brim (10:44.629)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (10:50.2)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Handcock (11:12.927)
They don't bury you with your beach house that you got or your wad of cash that you've got in Fort Knox You get buried with your memories So I decided at that point that my life was going to be about creating exceptional memories

Christian Brim (11:22.691)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (11:29.038)
Okay, I'm going to put a pin in this and I'm going come back to it. But we skipped over your music. So what was your instrument of choice?

Mike Handcock (11:40.249)
Guitar player, I'm never too far away from a guitar. There's one there, you know, so I'm surrounded by them at all times. I still play. That one's heavy. It's 10 kgs. But so it's not easy to pick up from the side. But yeah, I can play piano and a few other things as well. But I'm mainly a guitar player and songwriter.

Christian Brim (11:45.067)
Nice.

Christian Brim (11:55.853)
Okay.

Christian Brim (12:00.152)
But you were the guitarist. Were you the front man or no?

Mike Handcock (12:03.709)
No, my voice was average and still is so I can do frontman but we had a singer so singers always want to be frontman and if a guitar player gets in front of them they sort of kick them in the back of the leg.

Christian Brim (12:15.042)
Yes. Okay, so what was the band's name?

Mike Handcock (12:18.125)
The band was called Charlie Brown and unlike the cartoon character it was C-H-A-R-L-E-Y and then Brown had an E on the end so that we wouldn't get sued. And we got the concept, the drummer came up with the concept from Cheap Trick which was Cheap Trick was this really sort of unusual band that looked a bit dumb but actually they were a really good band that was you know pretty hard rock at the time so we sort of copied that genre so we were like a heavy band.

but we had this light image and I'm pleased to say that we've still got a following in some countries like Argentina and Germany and Cyprus are the three that come to mind straight away and I'm actually writing with the guys at the moment for the first Charlie Brown album which will release next year in about 15 years so that's a lot of fun.

Christian Brim (13:13.998)
Well, I'm gonna go listen to it. And you answered my question, is the man gonna get back together? So, perfect. All right, so back to your leaving. See if I can recapture my question and my thought, because I'm wondering here. You mentioned a passion. What was your passion at that point?

Mike Handcock (13:20.397)
I'm very keen to do that.

Mike Handcock (13:39.221)
I, my passion was that I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people achieve some of their dreams. And...

Christian Brim (13:44.62)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (13:48.93)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Handcock (13:50.115)
So I left and I started a building company and I built a lot of houses. I didn't know anything about building houses, honestly. It was like a nightmare, but I'm a good visionary. So, no, this was in New Zealand. so I put together this building company and I designed a whole range of houses. I put a show home together and we had people coming through the show home and they bought houses. In fact, in the first year I had it, we sold 28 homes, which is quite a lot for a new builder.

Christian Brim (13:54.67)
Okay.

Christian Brim (13:59.82)
This was in the States.

Christian Brim (14:04.065)
Okay, okay.

Mike Handcock (14:20.119)
either so three or four and and so then we had to build them that was a whole other story but but from there I just realized that business was there's too many components in it so I started a property seminar business where I saw literally sold property through seminars and we built the properties in the second year and and had other people build properties and then that led me into the professional speaking world and led me to write books and now we're about 14

15 books later and you know I've spoken over 3,000 times in more than 50 countries so and it's still for me today every day is about helping people to play a bigger game than they ever believed possible that they could play.

Christian Brim (15:10.158)
That's fascinating. So what about home building tied into that passion for

Mike Handcock (15:18.401)
I loved that people could realize their dreams and when they got the keys to their new home and it was everything that they wanted that...

Literally, I designed it and I literally did design them on CAD and then give them to an architect but most of the time they just polished them up and did the engineering on them. I was pretty good with it. So I learnt it myself. I just learnt it by hacking the software but so there was no real, there was no learning involved or anything like that and all of those homes are still standing today, you know, and everything went really well from that aspect. But the basis of it was

You know, your home is your biggest investment and it gets to a point in, you know, we weren't really building first homes or anything like that. We were building people's dream homes. The ones that they'd saved at that stage a million dollars for. So it's a long time ago now, but you know, a million dollars doesn't buy you much of a house. But back then it bought you a lot of a house. So that was really about what it was about.

Christian Brim (16:22.168)
You haven't been to Oklahoma. A million dollars can still buy a lot in-house. Yes, so you mentioned a business partner. Was that in the building business?

Mike Handcock (16:25.849)
That's good.

Mike Handcock (16:35.481)
No, it was in the speaking business. We built a brand that is now Circle of Excellence Group that you mentioned before. But this was the initial few years and I had this partner for about eight or nine years. And he's Canadian, he was based in Singapore then, he's back in Toronto now. And we were just complimentary in our skills and our networks really. And we built a business that was seminar based.

to help entrepreneurs primarily and help business leaders. And so these days it's a lot more than that but fundamentally these days we still help conscious leaders, entrepreneurs to play a bigger game and have much more impact and we do that through a range of programs and retreats and all sorts of different ways. But yeah, that's where the partner came from. And then we just got to a natural point where we went our different ways.

These days my wife and I run the company together. She's better at it than me so I take my direction from her and yeah that's how it works.

Christian Brim (17:46.808)
How did you end up in South Africa?

Mike Handcock (17:49.315)
My wife's South African.

I had a brand, which I still have. In fact, I'm judging it on Saturday, in fact. But I had a brand called Entrepreneur X Factor. And it was a competition where we found the entrepreneurs with the most X Factor. And when we originally started it in 2012, it was a live event and we went from country to country. I think in 2012, 2013, 2013 was our biggest lot of trips. We did 26 countries where we went and ran these events.

and look for entrepreneurs so people would come and they would pitch their business and there was the judges and the audience voted it was a whole lot of fun and good stuff

Christian Brim (18:28.844)
Was this pre-shark tank, guess?

Mike Handcock (18:32.765)
No, I was actually, it was around the same time because I was a judge on Dragon's Den in Singapore. But that was after I had Entrepreneur X Factor. And so my wife came to the event in Johannesburg as it was at the time in South Africa as an attendee and she cleaned it up. She won and that's how we met. And as they say, the rest is history. There's an amazing love story there, but that's maybe for another time.

Christian Brim (19:02.446)
I that. I love that story. Who doesn't love a good love story? Okay, so working with entrepreneurs and trying to, I'm gonna use my words because I can't remember exactly your words, but do more, be more. What do you see being the common limiting factor or factors that you run into with entrepreneurs?

Mike Handcock (19:32.897)
It's really not a lot of things. So I think the big two for me are they don't know who they are and I'll explain that one in a second. And the second one is they don't believe they're any good. So the first one is really about most people tend to know what they are.

Christian Brim (19:41.518)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (19:48.097)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Handcock (19:54.233)
So if you go to a networking function and you say to somebody, hi, who are you? They'll say, oh, I'm an accountant. You'll go, no, that's what you do for a living. Who are you? And they'll go, oh, well, I'm a mother with two children. You go, no, that's your family situation. Who are you? And then they just stare at you blankly like you're from another planet. So the biggest reason I think entrepreneurs don't get to the level which they really want to is that they think it's not about

Christian Brim (20:01.911)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Handcock (20:24.187)
What goes on inside themselves they think it's about what happens externally. It's not at all It's all about what happens internally and so my tip for any budding entrepreneur out there is the more you can study yourself and get to understand how you work and What pushes your buttons what your values are what your boundaries are all of those sort of things?

Christian Brim (20:29.996)
Hmm.

Mike Handcock (20:48.887)
the better equipped you'll be to be a better entrepreneur. just before we got on the live call, Christian, you told me about a particular client that you had and how his business was successful, but he really wanted out of it because it wasn't working for him personally. And that's because he never investigated who he was when he started this.

Christian Brim (21:05.186)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:15.724)
Yes.

Mike Handcock (21:15.897)
You know, so he did something that he thought, well, there's a gap in the market there. I'm trained for this. I can make money doing this and I think I can do well. here. I'm into it. And he goes into it and there he might be five, 10, 15, 20 years later where he's going, this is like feels like a boat anchor around my neck and I have to drag my sorry ass to work every single day. And I would say probably 70 % of entrepreneurs and self-employed people are in that space.

Christian Brim (21:39.116)
Yes.

Mike Handcock (21:45.851)
you

Christian Brim (21:47.21)
Yeah. And, and, and then if you're successful, you, you probably feel guilty feeling that way. Like, you know, you've achieved success where so many other people have not, who are you to be complaining about this situation? Right.

Mike Handcock (22:03.947)
Absolutely. And I was like that in my building business. you know, as I said to you, we sold 28 homes in the first year. Most people sell three, four, five if they're successful. Maybe a dozen, right? So we did really well. But then I had to build them. And I realized in that second six months to 18 months, I don't like this business.

I have to deal with contractors and everybody's asking for money all the time everybody's always broke and I'm like with my bank account and one day I've got a million dollars in it and the next day I've got ten thousand dollars because I've had to pay them all you know I don't want to do this this is I don't want to have this level of I won't call it abuse but this level of feeling like I'm got to look after everybody because they can't look after themselves and and so I realized at that point I got to a point where I was going I really hate this

business. And the business partner that I had later on was actually my coach at that time. And he said to me, Mike, nobody's going to buy a business that you hate. And I thought he's right. I've got to reframe this. So I reframed it. was trying to sell the business for about maybe four or five months. I didn't have one person interested. And then I reframed it to actually, this is a really good business, but it's just not right for me. And the minute I did that, I changed the energy around it and I got a great offer and I was able to sell the business.

and move on into what I really wanted to do, which is what I'm still doing.

Christian Brim (23:36.438)
I love that story. I had a similar experience. you know, I knew when I started the business that I wanted to help people. And that was my motivation for a long time. But it got to the point where I hated the business. Like it was a daily frustration.

And my brother was my partner at the time. And I said, I'm to go start a software company and leave you in charge. And I said, I don't know if this software company is going to succeed, but if it fails, I can tell you what I'm not going to do. And that's come back and run this company. Okay. So fast forward two years, the, software company.

as a business model was working, but I had.

I'd screwed up on the premise. So it was working and it was making money, but it wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. In the meantime, my brother had the company, I'm not gonna put this on my brother, but while he was in charge, the company had begun shrinking and not making money. And so we had a third party,

partner at the time. And so it was really kind of like I have to come back in. And I said, well, we've we got to do things differently because I'm not doing them the way we did them before. I had no idea what different was, but I'm like, I'm not going to go back to the way it was. And we implemented the entrepreneurial operating system EOS at that time. And

Christian Brim (25:39.886)
started working with a third party implementer. We had tried to implement EOS prior and had not had success. So we decided to bring in someone and pay them to help us implement it. And over the course of two to three years, realized that what had to change fundamentally was me. And I did.

I went through a lot of personal growth, a lot of work, with my business coach and

Christian Brim (26:20.298)
I re along the way I regained my passion like because my frustrations with the business weren't about the business. They were essentially about me. And so when you say knowing yourself that really resonates with me because I started asking those questions that you mentioned like why do I why do I feel the way I feel? Why am I acting the way I'm acting like and

I think the natural reaction of most people in the situation where they're not happy with their circumstances or not happy with the way they feel, they start looking externally, right, which is what I did. And so they say, well, you know, it's because of my wife or my business partner or the industry I'm in or whatever. And you can always find answers there. But they're not...

the problem, they're just symptoms. And now I can say, eight years on after coming back in, the business is fundamentally different. I am fundamentally different and I am enjoying it. I am working less and I'm making more money. right, but all of it started with me.

Mike Handcock (27:43.255)
Fantastic.

Christian Brim (27:48.654)
And I wish I wish I had the insight that you had earlier, but everybody's journey is different. mean, I actually, I actually, I actually beat myself up about that. That, that, was like, why didn't you figure this out earlier? Why, you know, like, you know, but, but, you know, again, everybody's journey is different. doesn't matter how long it took you to get there. You got there.

Mike Handcock (27:56.971)
I wish I had it earlier as well.

Mike Handcock (28:17.771)
Absolutely. think, well, the important thing is that you are there. And I think the important message for any listener is if what you're doing is not fun, you have to change it. You have to. And it's so interesting. I've got this client and...

Christian Brim (28:22.659)
Yes.

Christian Brim (28:30.22)
Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Mike Handcock (28:39.449)
When I took him and his wife on in 2019, they had this business. It doesn't matter what sort of business it was, but it was a bricks and mortar type business. And I really liked them. And then we got into the business and I looked at it. And this was in our first meeting after taking them on. And I said, guys, now I've looked through this. Can I be honest with you? And I said, yeah. I said, I think you're wasting this time. This business sucks. And they go.

What do you mean? I said, I think if you keep operating like this, you're going to dig yourselves a big hole. And they said, we're already in a big hole. That's why we got you. And I said to them, right, I don't think this is savable. That was on a Friday. On a Monday.

They contacted me and said, can we meet up? I said, yes, I got on a Zoom with them. I was in Belgium at the time. And I can still remember, I'm sitting in the lobby of the hotel on Zoom and they said, we liquidated our business over the weekend and we fired everybody. And I went, wow.

Christian Brim (29:40.898)
Holy shit.

Mike Handcock (29:43.809)
And now those two people today are so happy. They've got a brand new big house. He's got a high flying corporate job. She's got another business that she loves that's doing really well. And they were heading into a big dark hole and they weren't having fun. And you know, I didn't tell them get out of this business. I did tell them it wasn't working. I didn't expect them to take such drastic action. But

Christian Brim (30:01.475)
Yeah.

Mike Handcock (30:10.977)
That meeting that we had was sometime around the start of December and they told me later on it was that advice that got them to say we need to tell everybody prior to Christmas that this is going to happen because if we leave it anymore we're just not going to be able to do it, we're not going to feel it and because they did it they saved themselves from probably bankruptcy. Actually they would have been bankrupt.

Christian Brim (30:35.138)
Yeah. Yeah. But, to your point in that situation, they were not happy because the business was not working, but it can happen when the business is profitable and you're successful. Right? Right. I think it may be easier to see it when it's, it's not working, but I think a lot of people, to your point, you made a while ago, they get into business.

Mike Handcock (30:49.205)
absolutely, yeah absolutely.

Christian Brim (31:04.812)
without knowing why they're getting into business. And, you know, I interviewed on my other podcast, the author Todd Henry, the author of Accidental Creative and several others, but his most recent book is The Brave Habit. And he was talking about the Greek word for passion,

Mike Handcock (31:07.993)
Exactly.

Christian Brim (31:33.91)
I don't remember the Greek word, but the Greek word that we translate is passion actually means suffering in Greek. right. Exactly. I never under, I never understood that until I understood that meaning of the word. But his point was that if, if you have a passion, you have to be willing to suffer for it. Now,

Mike Handcock (31:42.487)
Yes, yeah, of course. The Passion of the Christ. Didn't Mel Gibson make that film, right? Yeah.

Christian Brim (32:02.732)
That doesn't mean that you have to suffer, right? But it means that you care enough about it that you're willing to suffer. So how do you know as an entrepreneur that your suffering is a good suffering as opposed to a non-productive suffering?

Mike Handcock (32:28.045)
That's a good question. think, let me answer it like this. If you have to get up

in the morning, four days in a row at like four o'clock to work on a project that you're working on and you still feel inspired to do it, then I think it's a good suffering. I think you're okay. I'm not a fan of the 5 a.m. club and you know all that sort of stuff. I believe in getting you know a really good night's sleep so I'm not advocating getting up early but you know...

Christian Brim (32:44.631)
Hmm.

Mike Handcock (32:58.935)
We travel a lot and for some reason all the darn flights that we seem to book on leave at 6.30 in the morning. We've got one coming next Friday, it leaves 6.30 in the morning. We're gonna have to get up at 3 o'clock for that flight. So when you get up, when you're on a tour, like we do a lot of tours where we might be in seven countries in 14 days or something like that. And when we're constantly getting up early and we look at each other and we're happy, then we know it's a good suffering.

Christian Brim (33:28.482)
Yes.

Mike Handcock (33:28.859)
were dragging our butts out of bed and going like, just give me another five minutes all the time then, you know, it's starting to sour. And one of my old friends who died a couple of years ago, he had a saying that, which I really liked in his saying is, when it stops being fun, stop it. Find something else. And I think...

Christian Brim (33:38.434)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (33:52.632)
Sounds simple, right?

Mike Handcock (33:54.101)
It is simple, you know, it's like we have some funny sayings in our business like everybody wants to go networking. I said, I hate networking. number one, I don't want to be caught in a net. Number two, I don't like the word work in it. I'd rather go to a playground, right? So that way can just hang out with my friends. So and do things that are cool and fun. So it's about the way in which you look at things. And I think this brings up another topic. I'm not sure if you want to explore it, but I'll throw it out there. If you're not bringing

Christian Brim (34:09.794)
Mmm.

Mike Handcock (34:23.995)
your essence, the things that are deep within you that you love into what you're doing in your business or career, then chances are it's not going to be as much fun for you. So for instance, I'm a musician, so we use a lot of music at our events. I write a lot of that music. So, and we don't tell anybody, it's just there. And I like it when they come up and say, that's a good playlist. Can I have it? And I go, well, it's all my own stuff, you know, and things like that.

Christian Brim (34:36.856)
Ciao.

Mike Handcock (34:53.915)
So it's a way of bringing your own essence in. If you're a good cook, cook for your clients. If you love gardening, give some of your clients some plants that you've grown or something like that. You know, it's that type of thing that makes your business more fun and really allows you to live out some of your dreams and passions in your business.

Christian Brim (34:57.069)
Yes.

Christian Brim (35:15.438)
I love that and I just had an inspiration from you telling me that we have an event that we're going to do in October and I'm going to make a couple of briskets for them because I love cooking briskets and they, you know, when you cook a brisket, you better have a lot of people to feed. So I don't get opportunity to make briskets that often. So I love that. I think

Mike Handcock (35:30.689)
Awesome.

Christian Brim (35:44.94)
Yes, I would like to discuss that because I don't think you can do that. You can't bring yourself and your essence into the endeavor, the business, whatever, if you don't know what it is. Right? And that's where I think I fell short. I had an idea of what I was about and my essence.

Mike Handcock (36:01.527)
Absolutely.

Christian Brim (36:14.904)
But I had to go much deeper. Like I only had a surface level of understanding about my passion. But when I dug deeper and deeper and deeper and really, really understood it, I'm like, okay, that's not exactly what I thought it was, right? So for me, very briefly, my...

motivation for wanting to help people in finances was my family story where we had a family business in the oil field service business and went bankrupt when I was about 16. And yeah, the thing that was traumatic about it was, well, so surface level,

Mike Handcock (37:02.585)
That sucks.

Christian Brim (37:13.176)
The the the my motivation was I know I know that my family situation didn't have to end that way like there there there was mismanagement of the finances Yes, there were industry things that affected it but like I knew that I Didn't know specifically how I would have done it differently, but even at a at an agent at University I knew what it didn't have to end that way

And that's my motivation. I want to help people with their finances because it doesn't have to end that way. But when I, when I got deeper into it, I realized that the, the, the finances weren't the traumatic thing to me. The traumatic part was that my family, because they were all involved in it, dispersed and, all went, you know, to the four corners and I lost that family.

like the, the connection of being together, right? But when I went deeper still, I realized that why that was so traumatic to me was because my parents were divorced when I was two and I was taken from my mother at three to go live with my father. And, and, and so I had this underlying separation anxiety that, that was still unresolved from a

Mike Handcock (38:38.455)
Yeah, got it.

Christian Brim (38:41.806)
pre-speech time when my brain was developing. And that insight actually led to the situation I was in at the time with my brother as my partner. I had known for three years that he and I were not equally yoked and I needed to get rid of him, but I couldn't get rid of him.

And I didn't even know why. But at that point I realized, well, you're afraid to lose him as your brother. Like you're, right? Right? And fortunately, as I was working this out, he came to the conclusion that he needed to leave. So I never actually fired him, but we did part ways and our relationship has been totally fine. But that's the kind of work we're talking about.

Mike Handcock (39:20.217)
Of course, it's obvious.

Mike Handcock (39:29.795)
Yeah right.

Christian Brim (39:41.73)
here is going deeper than just the surface level of what you say your passion is.

Mike Handcock (39:51.467)
Absolutely, I mean so many people.

Christian can't communicate with their spouse or their children because they can't communicate with themselves. know, it's the old story of, you know, go to a mirror, have a good look in a mirror and decide, is this the person that your five-year-old self would have been proud that you grew up as? Can you? You know, most people can't look in a mirror and admire themselves. You know, I've got a one-

Christian Brim (40:02.22)
Mmm, yes.

Christian Brim (40:15.982)
Hmm.

Mike Handcock (40:24.635)
We've got an amazing love story. We've been together for 11 years now and I got to a point in my life where I thought, you know, I'm never going to find the right person and she got to a point in her life where she said, you know, God just leave me being a career girl because there's no guy out there for me. So, and we were lucky enough to find each other in the world, even though we live 12,000 kilometres apart at the time, but that got, that got

But my point is that the only reason that we were able to find each other that we realized since then is because we both got to a point in our lives where we were fully accepting and happy and comfortable in who we were. So I don't want to put this this way because it might not come off right but we had to fall in love with ourselves first before we could allow love in. And it's the same way for an entrepreneur like

Christian Brim (41:09.804)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (41:17.624)
Yes. Absolutely.

Mike Handcock (41:24.475)
You know, if there's somebody listening there and things aren't going the way you thought they should be going at this point in your life, it's probably because you haven't done the work on yourself to understand yourself so that you can love yourself and accept yourself. Because when you do, doors seem to magically open. It's the weirdest, craziest thing. you know, good luck putting that in the law of attraction. But, you know, they don't tell you that you literally have to

You can't just say, I accept myself and I'm good. You actually have to live it and feel it and breathe it. And when you do, doors open and the right people seem to step in, whether it be a relationship, a business partner, a big client, whomever. And to give illustration to that, when Lundy, my wife and I got together, she was running a consulting business, very successful. And she realised that we would never see each other, so she said to all of her consulting clients, and they were

major corporates people like Thompson Reuters the airlines and and things like that she said look I'm in love now so I'm no longer going to be able to consult with you at your premises so I'm giving you all a camera because at those stages laptops didn't have cameras in them so she bought them all Logitech cameras we're now going to consult online and because my lifestyle is getting more expensive because I have to travel I'm doubling my fees to you

Now, you would think that the most ridiculous thing would happen, everybody would leave. 40 % of them did leave. 60 % of them stayed, which means her income went up 20 % and she got all of her time back. But then on top of that, one of the clients who did stay was actually her biggest client. She thought, this client is too needy and doesn't suit my value system. So she, in a very nice way, fired that client.

And that client alone, I mean she was a sole trader, but at that time that client alone was more than 10,000 US a month for that one client, right? And so it was a large chunk of income. And then I remember her saying, I'm not sure if I've done the right thing. I said, yeah, yeah, you've done the right thing. Well, it wasn't two days later that somebody was referred to her who ended up spending more money with her who was actually a really good client. Now you can't make those

Mike Handcock (43:53.045)
things happen. This is about how your energy is showing up in the world and what's attracted to you and what isn't and it's far reaching.

Christian Brim (44:03.424)
Yeah. And, and I think as you were talking, I was thinking that without loving yourself and without knowing yourself, as I said a while ago, you start to look for those things, other places, right? So you look at, look for them in your spouse or your children or your other relationships. But one of the most insidious ones is the business.

One of my colleagues who's working on his doctorate of psychiatry, he exited his business, made stupid money and decided to go back to school and get his doctorate in psychiatry. And he made the comment, entrepreneurs don't have very good coping skills. And he used that clinical term. And I'm like, no, you're 100 % right. And I said, I'll go a step further.

Mike Handcock (44:28.984)
Yep.

Christian Brim (44:58.08)
A lot of them use their business as their coping mechanism because they control so many of the variables. they, basically set it up to fill that need that they have in themselves without ever really looking at that knee.

Mike Handcock (45:15.993)
100 % agree with you. It's it's almost like that that's where they Extend and live out their fantasies Yep

Christian Brim (45:25.378)
Yes, 100%. 100%. And it's a scary place to be because if that business is successful and it's giving you that, you don't have any reason to stop doing it. You don't have anybody to check you on it. That puts you in a dangerous place.

Mike Handcock (45:45.623)
Yeah, absolutely. And especially if it's not making a profit. And I think, you know, everybody here can associate with the parking inspector. I mean, most of those parking inspectors, you know, they didn't do well at school. They weren't the quarterback. know, they're not, they haven't got a good relationship at home. But boy, when they get to work, they're going to nail your ass with that ticket. And they're going to show you that you've parked in the wrong spot. And they're going to talk to you and point their finger at you like this because it's, they're living outside.

their fantasy of being in control. They're in control of you because they have that notebook where they slap that ticket on your car. But we're all as entrepreneurs living out those fantasies in our own business as well and they can become very destructive if your business is not set up in a way that prospers for you and they can become more destructive, I agree, if your business becomes ultimately incredibly prosperous as well because then you can probably then you think you've arrived.

Christian Brim (46:29.368)
Yes.

Christian Brim (46:41.474)
Yes.

Mike Handcock (46:45.467)
and then you've got new money and new money is dangerous.

Christian Brim (46:46.114)
Well, yeah, I can think of an entrepreneur here in Oklahoma City that has been wildly successful. And along the way he's lost his wife and, and, and the reality is, is that he's really just kind of an asshole and the money just amplifies that behavior. I mean, it doesn't, right.

Mike Handcock (47:10.989)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (47:13.92)
Mike, I feel like we could talk for hours, but unfortunately, we can't. do listeners find you and learn more about what you do?

Mike Handcock (47:24.025)
There's two simple ways for you guys at home to connect with me. One is LinkedIn. So just go to LinkedIn and type in Mike Handcock, H-A-N-D-C-O-C-K, and you'll find me. pretty recognizable there. You'll see Circle of Excellence in the banner coming up. So that's one way. And the other way is if you're an entrepreneur, just go head on over to circleofexcellence.biz. You can check us out there. And on the homepage, there's a

really nice assessment that you can do that will point out which parts of your business you need to focus on next that aren't working as well for you as they should be. And it'll be really helpful for anybody listening to this. Christian, thank you so much for today and it's been really lovely and I've enjoyed talking with you immensely and also hearing your stories as well and I think you're doing a great job. You're helping people.

Christian Brim (48:07.702)
I love it.

Christian Brim (48:18.542)
Well, thank you and thank you for your inspiration. Listeners will have the links in our show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If not, shoot us a message and we'll find somebody other than Mike to talk next time. Until then, remember you are not alone.

Mike Handcock (48:36.473)
Exactly.

Mike Handcock (48:41.305)
you