All right, we are going to start in three, two and one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Freight Coach podcast. My name is Chris Jolly, I am your host and I am the Freight coach. Before we jump into this episode, you guys, as always, thank you guys so much for tuning into this podcast. This is a rare pre recorded episode here, but at the end of the day, you guys, like I always say, my guests have day jobs and they can't always make it at the 10:30 time slot. So we try and accommodate to that and especially with my special guest that I got 20 coming on today, you guys.
And we're here just to talk about their journey in freight, where how they got started and all that fun stuff, what they're doing right now and kind of how the market's treating them out there. So I have Mr. Mike Goulet on the show today. So, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to join me.
Hey, thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me on.
No, absolutely, man. And so, dude, how did you get your start in fray? What, what brought you into transportation?
It's a. Interesting journey, man, I'll tell you that. It was just, I picked it up as a new industry. Never been in it. Said I needed a job, got out, I got a job with my first company, which were. They're great people over there at zmac. Yeah. And they got me started and I got to learn the industry from there on. Just kept learning, learning. And then one day I picked up and decided, you know what, I needed to support my family more, make some more money and started my own thing.
Okay. And then so is that what brought you into, like, going out on your own and becoming an agent? I know. You know, you said you brought up money. Was it because, like, for me, dude, I've always thought I could do it better than everybody else. Right. Like, I personally never enjoyed working for other people. I, I worked for, you know, I only worked for a couple of companies at the end of the day. But like, deep down I, I always wanted to come out and do my own, some capacity. I didn't know what it looked like. Was that a part of it, man? Do you just kind of want to like, jump in and control more of where you were going?
Well, the thing is, you know, everybody has their own recipe or own formula to success, right?
Yeah.
And even though you might start off with one company who's successful, their formula works right for them, but might not work right for you. And you might be like, you know, I want to add this to it or try something different, and it might not work for them, but in the end, if you can make it work, well, then, you know, you got to go out and try it and. And it be. In all honesty, this was. I would almost say, like, this was like, the lottery for me. I wasn't. I wasn't expecting this kind of success at first. It was more or less just make a point. That's it.
Whoa. How has it been, you know, Because I think going out on your own is, you know, it's a challenge, right? Like, I try and tell people all the. I try and be honest with people all the time about, like, what you actually should be expecting before you go out on the. Go out on your own. And obviously, like, I've started a few companies now, like, with zero customers, zero revenue guarantee. Like, I had nothing. Right. So it's been, like, complete day, $1 one in both situations. And I'm a glutton for punishment, Mike, So, like, I fucking love to that stuff, apparently. But at the end of the day, man, how has that transition been coming out, you know?
Like, how do you approach customers differently now, do you think, than you'd have in the past, or have you kind of always been the same with it?
So, you know, I've always just been very transparent with my clients in the past. You know, I think your clients appreciate transparency. You know, they always say, don't discuss the costs or whatnot with your clients, you know, because you. You're gonna always want to put on your back end, you know, your profits, right? Yeah, but you know what? I decided to do the opposite. I'd always just tell my clients, hey, look, this is where we're looking. This is what we're looking at. This is what the market's looking at. I'm looking to put this on. You're good with that? You agree? We both come to an understanding, mutual relationship. They could appreciate that. And at the same time, I wasn't always the cheapest. Yeah, but they could appreciate the service were putting in when were rocking and rolling, man. And I'll be completely honest.
I haven't been as active as I used to be. I feel like I hit, like, a little rock point, and I guess that happens, right? But in the end, I got to pick my. You know, pick your pants back up and keep going. And right now, I'm still trying to find that. You know, we're still young. We're not even a year in, Right?
Oh, wow. Okay.
And we're doing. We're doing very well. At the same time, man, you have to have a team. You have to put the right team together and if you have the right support system, where you fall short, they'll put pick you up and where they fall short, you'll pick them up. So it's almost like a give and take, right?
How is that? Because like I, I mean I honestly think, with all due respect to everybody at spi, I, I honestly think the real unsung heroes of are like client care and like the back office support that we get, you know, because it's like from my perspective when we're out there, like, you know, we move a lot of high value freight at the end of the day, you know, and like the ability to have riders purchased and like ready to rock on that, you know. And then like with, you know, we've had a couple of instances where we needed to hire crane and riggers and everything else that came in and they come in and they facilitate that. Right.
So it's like, you know, you brought up that when you're starting out and being a younger, you know, agent with them and we are too, man, like we're only in our third year as being an agent. But like I truly feel like the ability to pack the punch of like a couple hundred million dollars organization is like completely insane. Where we can walk into any situation with any customer, no opportunity comes to our lap where we have to look at it and be like, can we even afford to quote this shipment? You know, like, do we even have the back office infrastructure or the infrastructure internally to make a move like that? Right? Because like, dude, I've been doing this long enough, Mike, where like, you know, not all business is good business.
And sometimes brokers can't even afford to move freight for some customers due to like credit restraints and everything that comes along with trying to bootstrap a company.
Yeah, well, I mean that's all the risks you have to take. You have to, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, man. You gotta take it one day at a time. So for example, when I got into this, you know, every day I was learning something new that I didn't know the day before. And with SPI's support and SBI gives great support, they have a great team over there. They taught me a lot or a lot of things that I, I wasn't even aware of. And like I said when I first started this, I wasn't planning on starting this and thinking that this business was going to be operating a year later.
I was doing it more or less, you know, I had a baby on the way, we just had a newborn, and I'm like, hey, you know what, let's, I gotta do something to generate, you know, and at one point, didn't discuss with my wife, didn't discuss with anybody. I just up and started it, had a good support system. A lady that supported me, she helped me out tremendously. We hit the ground running and then at the same time, it's your clients are going to follow you, right? So I don't like to say I chase clients or customers, I try to gain clients, right? And if our clients need, whatever our clients need, I try to oblige. Sometimes you're taking big losses and trust me, I've taken big losses throughout this journey.
But if you're just looking for a short term gain, most of the time you're not gonna take those losses. But if you're looking for the future of a company, you're willing to take those losses because you're hoping that you know what, you'll make those gains back up, hurdles losses back up.
And, and I think like, that's the way that you really need to approach any business at all, right? Like, you have to remove the transactional mindset to a lot of it because, yeah, man, it sucks, dude. Like, it sucks losing money, it sucks having to, you know, go through some of that stuff. Especially when you're, you know, 100% on your own with stuff, right? It's not like there's a direct deposit coming every couple of weeks, you know, like, you know, you eat what you kill and. But it's like you need to be focused on the next 12 months. And in this market in particular, I've seen it be more about price now with some shippers than historically in the past, right?
And it's like, dude, you have to be showing up, you have to be executing at a high level because like, dude, I, I cold call every single day, right? Like, I'm making no less than 55 cold calls every single day to try and get new business. Hoping, you know, like, I don't advocate for failure, but I'm hoping their current network drops the ball and we're hitting them at the right moment to where they think of us next, right? And you have to be out there willing to do literally whatever it takes right now because as somebody who has been developing their book of business for the last couple of years, dude, it takes way like, this is the longest sales cycle I have literally ever seen in this industry. You know, if you sold pre Covid, you understand what I'm saying?
Because like, dude, it used to be like you get a couple of people on the phone, man, after a couple of decent conversations over like a 60 day period, going to get a pruvit shipment. Now prove it. Shipments don't exist. Like, as soon as you kind of get in the mix with somebody, dude, you're. It could be another year before you win a shipment. Right? So it's like the sales cycles are increased from that perspective.
Well, I can agree and disagree with you at the same time, so. So one thing I disagree with is you don't need a ton of clients, right? You don't need. I mean, it'd be nice, but you don't want to bite off more than you could chew. All right? So our main focus was to try to gain as much of the shipments of our clients as possible. So if we had big clients that are shipping, you know, two, three shipments a day, or let's say 30, 40 shipments a month, and we could maintain having four or five of those clients on our books, and there's only a few of us, you see how SBI operates with the team. You know, there's not many agents one team. You know, they span. But I mean, for my company, we're less than five. Right.
And with that being said, you know, if each one of us could have two clients that are shipping with us all the time at that point, that's great. And then when we have one off clients, that's even better, you know, that's, those are the bonus. But if we can maintain and grow, and I don't want to add on any agents that are just, you know, half ass or just, yeah, you know, just want to take in or just be settled, basically settle with what they have. You know, we try to, we go out for what we can do, you know, whatever we can deliver on.
And if we can deliver it, if we can do it, I tell them, you know what, let's not do it and give our clients the fair heads up that, hey, you know what, if you have someone in the back or in the corner that can take this one, just give it to them. We're not going to hold you guys back, you know, so it's just being, it's being completely transparent with your clients at the end of the day and they'll appreciate that because if you don't get this one, they'll give you the next one.
No, absolutely, man. I'm right there with you. I'm, I'm a firm believer where it's like, if you can't do something, let them know and let them know an ample amount of time, you know, don't wait till the last minute. That's, you know, when you take your customer's ability to do their job away from them, that's when you lose business. But if you give them ample heads up, of course no one's happy in the moment, but ultimately they're going to look at it as at least you told us, right? Like, at least you gave us an eight hour heads up to give us an opportunity to find somebody else that's going to come in there and, you know, at least make it happen, right? We've all dropped the ball, right?
Like, I've been never going to sit here and say that I've never done anything wrong. I've made. Like that's my biggest value add is I know exactly what not to do at this point in my career, Mike. Like, I've, I've burnt it all down, brother. And I'm just out here trying to do as best as I can. And, you know, I, I feel like, what's. When did you, when did you start in the industry, Mike?
What.
What year did you come in?
I want to say it was 2022. Okay, mid-2022. But even with that, man, you're. You're not going to hit a home run, you're not going to hit a grand slam every time you're up to bat, right?
Yeah.
You can swing. There's nothing wrong with swinging for the fences. Yeah, I say that all the time. Swing for the fence. But if you get a base hit, be happy with that.
Yeah. No, absolutely, man.
Everybody always tries to say, oh, you dream too big. You know, you're looking at a big picture. No, that's okay. I dream big. But I'm picking up the small pictures on the way, all right? So there's nothing wrong with that. And for anyone that's out there that wants to go on their own and do their thing, don't get discouraged. Like, listen, there's gonna be. There's gonna be a ton of obstacles in your way, and it's never gonna stop. It's never gonna. But if you keep running through them, keep running around them, just keep moving forward, even if it's an inch at a time, then that's all right. And honestly, sometimes I forget that myself because it gets tough. It isn't it isn't the easiest thing. And Chris, I'm sure you know you've been in the industry for three years now.
You said you've owned your own company for three years now.
I've been in transportation for over 15 years. I've been an agent now for three years with SPI and dude, for like we cold started, right? Like we had no customers, we had nothing, right? Like we had no existing book of business. It was all just hammered down from that perspective. But I've been self employed now for over five years or about five years now. And you know, D, you're 100% right if you understand what you're walk into when you go out on your own to start a company and then you stop taking that salary, it is way harder than you think it's going to be. It's way more rewarding than you think it's going to be. After you kind of realize like, essentially you just got to deduce it down like this, man.
It's like don't make the same mistake twice and just never quit, you know. And if you can take that approach to it, I feel like success inevitably will come. And it's like you do. You have to take the good with the bad. And I personally feel like the most transformative moments throughout my entire career were the times that I thought I was not going to recover from because it's. You need to learn how not to operate. Like you need to know like making mistakes and stuff like that. I think mistakes are, can be extremely valuable to you in the long run. Because it's like, dude, the faster you can get to that, what not to do, the better off you're going to be. Because a lot of people get stuck in that, man.
A lot of people get stuck in a little bit of adversity and they just quit and walk away. They'll walk away from a relationship, whether it's personal business, it doesn't matter. As soon as they hit that inevitable wall, they stop. But it's like, dude, if you can just push past that, you know, like it's always going to be uncertain. I worked for a large corporation. I didn't for a long time. I didn't know if I was going to have my job some months. You just never know, man. And I just look at it like this, Mike. I would rather take the stress and uncertainty of doing it for myself than the stress and uncertainty of making sure my boss liked me to keep my job like that, man.
Like, dude, I'm gonna, if I'm putting all the chips in the middle, dude, it's gonna be. I'm betting on me a hundred times out of 100.
Right, right. Yeah. I could agree with you in that. Yeah. At the same time, and if you're a family man, if you have family, if you have kids, well, now that weighs a lot on you. Now, coming into this business, I didn't have a penny to my name, right. But I have to recruit the right players and I had to make sure that they weren't going to go anywhere else, that they put their trust in me. So, you know, money talks. So you got to give them a little bit of money to get them started and believe in you. And that's honestly where it started, man. When we're, when we're rocking and rolling. And like I said, I know you said you're talking about cold calling. And for the most part, man, I was cold calling non stop.
I don't even remember how many calls I was making a day. But even with that being said, the clients that followed me, they weren't client. They weren't. It wasn't me soliciting them. At the end of the day, I get a random phone call here or there and I'd be like, hey, look, I can't, you know, I, I don't want to overstep my boundaries, but if you're okay with it, you know, you got to make sure that you're okay with it because I don't want to overlap or take anybody's. I don't want to pull the rug from anybody else's feet under anyone else's feet. So if you're very satisfied with my service, yeah. You're more than welcome to give me a call, send me an email.
But at the end of the day, you know, I'm very appreciative of the companies that gave me the opportunity and I'm very appreciative of everybody that, you know, that I was able to learn from. In this industry is a, it's a dog eat dog world, man. You can be here one day and the next day you're done.
Dude, straight. What industry were you in before this, Mike?
Medical.
You were in Met. Okay. Were you in like medical sales or.
Yeah, not medical sales. I was just medical assistant. That's it. Just assisting in managing, actually.
Okay.
That's it. And I honestly, I just liked helping people. And that's another part of this Business that people don't understand. You're really helping people, Right? You look at your clients and at the end of the day, between the clients, between the drivers, and people take the drivers for granted.
Oh, yeah.
People don't understand how important truck drivers are to this industry. Like, those guys are work. Like work, Alex. Like, they deserve, you know, they deserve fair rates.
Yeah.
And I always try. I don't try to undercut any of our drivers ever. I try to make sure everybody gets a fair cut so then everybody eats at the end of the day, right?
Yeah.
And if you can maintain that kind of balance, you know, you could. You know, you could just have a. A list of drivers you go to every single time.
That's literally how we operate, Mike. Like, we have a list of carriers, we have our core carriers. We try and develop them out on every lane that we do for our customers. And because, like, at the end of the day, like, load boards serve a purpose, but, like, that's not an end all, be all, man. If that's the only way you source capacity, I think you're going at it all wrong. I think it's a giant waste of time because you should be curating relationships with your carrier partners. And, you know, for us means I do. They build us out way more than we've bailed them out, you know, and there's last minute changes to stuff, no matter what they come through for us. And, you know, I wasn't always like this, Mike. Right.
And I always like to very much be abundantly clear that I was that broker that people didn't like early on in my career, right. Pulling carriers off for 50 bucks and all of that stuff, making up all of those excuses, yada, yada. But eventually it hit me in the pocketbook, right? And then that's the best lessons you can learn out there sometimes is when you got to pay for that stuff out of pocket. And it makes you realize, like, all right, a, I'm not as cool as I think I am, baby. It is not as hard as I'm trying to make it out to be. And I'm like, dude, I just want to. You know, because like you, truly as a broker, man, you got to balance it out.
There's got to be three winners to every transaction, man, your customer, when the driver has to win and you have to win. And I have. Out of all the podcasts that I've done that I've talked about this, Mike. I am still waiting for the freight broker to come to me with a business plan. Where we can make money as a freight broker, where we don't need trucks. And I'm still waiting for it, man. I'm hold my breath on this one and see how long I can last.
Yeah, I don't know if you're gonna find it, but at the same time, you can't forget your teammates then. Yeah, my teammates might. And then I call it the Oldfield family. Right? Anyone that's. That contributes to my company is part of the family, you know, even if they're a temporary family member and they're just a carrier. But my operations director, she's awesome. She's been rocking with me since day one. And. And we got another agent that just joined the team. She's. She's doing phenomenal job, but both of them together, like, you know, dealing with them all together, we're doing a great job. And I think, I think our company has a long way to grow. Obviously, we're still young in the game, but I'm just, I'm very curious to see how the future comes.
Do you have a. Do you have anything laid out over the next five years or are you kind of, you know, like, where do you want to take this? Right, Because I feel like, you know, everybody goes in and they start a company and, you know, you have obviously long term goals. But like, I also, some of the, My best friends who are some, you know, entrepreneurs that I respect the most that are like, no, dude, I don't want to be a certain size company. Like, I want to keep it boutique. I want to keep it small, and I want to just keep it where we're providing the best service that we can out there. Because they worked for the large corporations, they saw, like, how that kind of essentially transitioned into a chop shop mentality.
And, you know, some people I know, they're, dude, I don't want to do that, right? They're like, I want to build it up to a certain point, and that's as big as I want to take. And I have a ton of respect for people who know exactly what they want in that regard.
Well, let me ask you this, Chris. Are you a faithful man?
Absolutely, man. Pray every single day, read the Bible every single day.
There you go. See, that's. That's great. I just leave it in God's hands.
Yeah.
Right. So, I mean, it's nice to have goals, dreams and all that, and that's how I was when I first started. But, you know, sometimes you get that reality check. Yeah, right. So then that at that point we're always running to who? The Almighty. When, what, when hits the fan.
Every single time.
Not running to him when things are going well, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. So at this point I've come to terms where I'm like, you know what, setting those long term goals aren't always the best. I mean there's, they're not bad, don't get me wrong. Yeah, you'd always set goals. But at this point in my journey, I'm leaving into Almighty's hands.
Yeah, no, dude, I'm right there with you, right? Like I pray for guidance every single morning in regards to all of this stuff. And you know, I, if I look out over, you know, the next 30, 40 years of my career, right? Because like I don't, I'm not one of these guys who are like, oh, I'm going to retire. I'm like, dude, I love doing what I'm doing, right? Like this is being self employed, Mike, for these last five years. This is like the most free that I've ever felt, right? Like this is like the most energized I've been about everything. Like, I finally feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I finally feel like I was, I'm doing what I was put on this earth to do. And it's like, you know, yeah, I have some big audacious goals, right?
Like I don't hide behind the fact that I want to build the largest transportation company in North American history. That's what I'm going to build. But if I reach a certain point in my life, Mike, and I'm not there, am I going to look at it as a failure? Absolutely not. Because of what you just said, that maybe that's the journey that God has for me and that's where I'm supposed to go, you know, so it's like I'm leaving it up in those hands. I'm going to work every day and do as best as I can and that's how I'm going to take it.
And one thing that's been really transformative for me here and this is really over the last like three to four months, is that it finally really clicked for me, Mike, of like, dude, I just got to control my actions today, right? Like, I have some critical tasks that I need to accomplish every single day and that's all I'm focused on. I'm not worried about tomorrow anymore. I'm not worried about next week anymore. I'm worried about, you know, after I, I chat with you today and we finish wrapped this up, I got to make a couple more sales calls for today, do a couple more little videos that I record, and that's it. And then today is a win for me, Right. Because I accomplished my day and I just look at it like that, man.
So I try and simplify it to where it's like instead of, not instead of worrying about where I'm not, I need to worry about right now and then execute today. And if I execute today every single day or as many days as I can in a month where it wins, dude, I'm going to win eventually. Right?
Right. I mean, you're gonna get a, a thousand losses before you get one win in this industry. Right. And so when you get, when you have a hundred thousand losses, that's what, 10 wins?
Yeah.
And W's are probably the biggest W's of your life. And then it just starts domino effecting. Yeah. I'm not, honestly, I'm not worried about the losses. The losses are the best because once you stop losing, you're not going to know how to win.
Yeah. Yeah. It definitely makes you appreciate it a lot more. Right, Right. Because otherwise it's like, it's not, man. It's not all wins. It's not all sunshine and gumdrops out there, man. You have to go through it. And, and you know, I honestly think, like, it sometimes, man. It, it is a true test of like, hey, if you're praying for all of this stuff, if, let's see how bad you want it, you know? Because like, nowhere in the Bible does it say life is supposed to be easy. Like, contrary to that, actually.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, life is a test. Life is a journey, and you just got to keep passing those tests. You know, once you keep taking those failures, it gets difficult to want to get up and be like, hey, you know what am I going to be able. Do I even want to go into class to take that test?
Yeah.
Do I just want to drop on, say, forget this. Yeah. Different. But you know what? In the end, it doesn't even matter. Believe it in Almighty's hand and see what happens. That was a good quote from Lincoln park right there.
Yeah. Oh, dude, I love that.
Yeah.
So, dude, how do you, how are you out there building your book of business? Are you focused in on a specific niche or do you kind of take on all modes, man?
We take on all modes. That's the, that's the truth and realistically speaking, lately I've, you know, when I drive around, and this is what I used to do anyways, we used to drive around everywhere or I used to drive around. How about this? I did more work in my car driving around, okay, for the first year than I did sitting in a chair in an office. No joke, I was driving around with a computer. I'd be parking, booking loads, driving. But I'd be looking for companies, writing down their numbers, trying to give them a call, see if I could get in with them. You know, I'd go to the industrial area, wherever I could. And man, honestly, it see success to me, I, I, and I'm not saying this in a narcissistic way, I've succeeded.
I've had a lot of success in my life in different aspects of my life, different industries. And it's not the success where I'm making tons of money. That's not what I, that's not what I see as success. Seeing a success. Seeing success for me is being able to hold my head up high at the end of the day, being able to smile, being able to come see my wife, kids and look them in the eye and being like, hey, you know what? We got a W today. You know, why did I received all this money? But we got a W today. But yeah, man, all this at the end of the day, you just gotta, you gotta take pride in the work that you put in. And that's the W that you get, right? Eventually it's gonna pan out. If you're consistent, it's gonna.
Like I said, I've hit a little bump in the road, but that doesn't, I mean, I probably just overworked myself. How about that? Yeah, probably. You know, when you first start off and you're on your, kind of on your own and you're just doing everything, you just burn yourself out. But day by day, getting back up, getting back at it.
Dude, how did you get to this realization on stuff? You, you know, it's, I, I realized that the old, the older I'm getting, you know, I'm still young at the end of the day, right? Like, I'm going to be 39 here soon, but like, it took me a long time to get to kind of what you're describing. And I can't even say that, like I'm fully there, right, because like, I'm just, I'm a competitive person, right? Like, I hate losing more than I like winning. That's how competitive I am. And it's like How. How do you, like, what advice would you give to people out there who kind of think like me, you know, and kind of bringing that balanced approach of like, hey, man, like, shit's going to happen. We kind of gotta roll with the punches and stuff like that.
Yeah. I mean, if you. You said earlier in the podcast that it's not always going to be sunshine and rainbows and all this stuff, so you just got to get back up. If you've. You basically have to have trained yourself, not. You look like a guy that's gone through a lot throughout your whole life, right. You've got knocked down and got back up. Got knocked. So, see, the easy part is getting knocked down. Everybody's gonna get knocked down. You ask any. Any of these billionaires walking around how many times they've got. They've gotten knocked down before becoming successful. I'm sure they'll have a ton of stories for you.
Yeah.
But what I'm saying is the hard part is learning how to get back up. Right. And I think, myself included, I'm still learning that I get knocked down every day, and I got to learn a different way to get back up. And it's tough, man. It gets really tough sometimes, especially when you have other things on your plate, you know, other parts of your life that you're dealing with, you get knocked down. You got to get up in that aspect, and you have to get up for work. Right. So it's just a balance. You have to find that balance. Also, good exercise. You have to exercise some sort of physical activity to help get that blood going.
Yeah.
It'S a formula. And I can't tell you that my formula will work Right. For everybody else. Right. So everybody has to have their own formula. They have to figure out their own formula, their own recipe that's going to work for them. And for me, man, I had that formula.
Yeah.
At least. Hey, Chris, I thought I had that formula. Okay. And I did. And it worked. That formula worked. Right. I mean, perfect to the T. It worked perfect to the T. And then one day, it just doesn't. So then you have to do what? You have to figure out a new recipe.
Yeah.
So that's where I'm at. And right now I'm in. I'm in the midst of putting together a whole different recipe for success to keep this company moving and growing. And I have no regrets. You know, to have regret would mean that you're not. That you're not taking pride in where you came from. Right. And I've had a lot of downfalls just as much as I've had success. And at the end of the day, they both wouldn't work if they weren't. If they wouldn't. They wouldn't balance each other out. Do you understand what I'm saying? If I didn't have downfalls, I wouldn't have those successful days. If I didn't have those successful days, it's because I didn't have any downfalls.
Yeah, no, you. You need to. You need to go through those to appreciate the wins, right? And then you also need to go through them to. To know that when you're down there, it's not always going to remain right. And I think that's something that, you know, I wish the younger, you know, again, I'm not old, but, like, I wish, you know, people would come to that realization younger. And then, same thing, what you're talking about, you know, physical fitness and eating right and everything, that. That's something that I've really taken charge of in my life here over these last couple of years. And I would say that has been. That and sobriety have been the two single best decisions I've made for my life. And it's. It's more of just, like, the clarity that I feel now, right?
And it's more of that, like, I. I don't need to seek, like, when. When. When shit gets stressful for me, man, like that, like, my anchors are working out, right? Like, getting up early, going to the gym, getting a workout in before everybody wakes up. That's my anchor. And when shit's, like, really stressed me out, dude, I just. I make sure to do another workout when I get home from work. I'll go outside. You know, it's going to sound a little hippie, but I just, like, walk in the sun. I live in Arizona, so it's sunny all the time out here. Sitting in the sun for, like, 45 minutes, dude, is like the best therapy that I've ever gotten in my life.
Yeah, I could agree with you on that. I could agree, Chris. And then another thing is, man, don't stay down. And a lot of the younger generation might not understand is, you know, if you start on top and then you fall, you're not gonna know how to get back to the top. Now, if you start at the bottom and you crawl your way to the top and then you fall back and you crawl your way back to it's a lot easier. I'm not. I'm not. Look, one thing I could tell you Is I'm not scared to fall all the way back to the bottom.
Yeah.
I could start over a million times in a whole different industry. And if I. If I put my mind to it, I'll be successful in there, too. And it's not me being a narcissist or. Or anything. It's me being confident. Hey, I'm not going to keep failing.
Yeah, I'm right there with you, man. I feel like after a while, you. You develop that, right? Like, you know, I share the same sentiment, right? I feel like my greatest asset is my work ethic. Like, I'm not afraid to work 16 hours a day if I have to. Like, that. That does not. Like, the thought of that does not bring me any anxiety. It is just the literal. I chose the path that I'm on, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure that this works out. And if at times it calls for me to work more, I'm gonna work more, man. Like, that. That. That is what it is. Like, I look at it as, like, this is how I provide for my family, right? Like, I don't take anything that I do lightly.
I don't take anything that I do for granted. Because I look, every time I look at my son, I'm like, dude, this is what it takes. Like, I am doing whatever it takes so he doesn't have to go through the. That I went through, you know, so he can live that life, and hopefully he's set up better than I was and, you know, but again, if it. If it all went away tomorrow, dude, like, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get back to where I am, man. It's just only a matter of time.
And let me ask you. Let me ask you, Chris, relate to this. When you got. Did you get to a point where you're like, you know what? I succeeded at this? And then you fall back down and you're like, no, you can get back up and do it again. You know, you could do it again, but you're just like, for what? Like, did you ever feel like that? Like, for what. And I know you have kids and whatnot, but you could always just look at a different industry and be like, I could go do it in this industry. But you have to find that inner. Inner strength to be like, yeah, it might be boring again because, you know, you accomplished it the first time, right? And you need to find that niche, that fire again, that flame to get going.
Have you ever gotten to that point? And. Well, let me ask you what's. What Gets you what? Gets that flame going under you.
Yeah, I. Dude, I go through that multiple times, man, sometimes multiple times a week. There. There's days that, dude, I don't want to get up and do anything, man. Like, I want to. I want to stay in bed. I want to. I don't want to do. You know, Like, I'm inherently a lazy person, you know, Like, I would love to just off all day long, but I think I. I've trained myself, and I'm training myself to kind of snap out of that and not let that kind of take charge of my life. And, you know, there's. There's days that, dude, I've woken up and I'm like, man, I think it'd be so easy to go do something else, and it would be, you know, I think I'd have more fun. But, like, there's a lot of hobbies that I.
Like, I have hobbies, but, like, do I want to do them every day, all day long? Probably not. And it also helps, like, dude, I've surrounded myself, and I've been in an entrepreneur group for a while now, and it helps to talk to other entrepreneurs about that, you know, because you come to realize, like, how much you actually love what you do, you just might be going through a bad season in it. And then what you realize is literally, it does not matter the industry. Everybody goes through them. And I feel like it's just the. The. The thought of, like, oh, this could be easier or better, and I would almost guarantee that it's not. You know, I feel like it's. It's just going to be a different thing that's going to come up that's going to eventually deter you.
And now if you wake up and you're, like, miserable. Right. And I think that everybody needs to delineate. What I'm saying here is there's a difference between having a couple of. A stretch of bad time and, like, being literally miserable, where you're physically ill at the thought of doing something. Then I feel like, dude, you got to make a change because you literally only live once, and you should not be in a position to where, like, you hate what you're doing every single day. But I feel like if you're in a season of your life where it's like, you're thinking about it, maybe quitting is the right decision for you. You know, maybe going and trying something new is the right decision for you. Or maybe it's, you know, depending on your family situation or what.
Maybe go get A part time job, doing something else and see, you know, like, hey, is there something else out there that's better for you? You need to find that out. Like you have time to find that out.
Right, right. Yeah. No, no, I agree with you. Sometimes I just get to that point where I'm like, man, I've done it and it seemed like, you know, you can do it again, you can make it bigger, you can make it better, but at the end of the day you're thinking like, is that really what you want to be stuck in? Is that. But hey, sometimes you just have to do what you don't want to do. Not because of anything besides, hey, you have your family right here. Now at this point, you brought in these lives into this world. You have to be able to support them. Yeah, right. So I could.
Yeah, there's gonna be, there's a lot of tough days that you're gonna go through in this industry, but at the end, as long as you can keep rolling with the punches, get back up, roll with the punches again. Get back up. You're gonna, you're gonna get a few concussions, Chris. Dude, but dude, that's so true. Yeah, but you gotta recover from. So, I mean, that's my outlook on this industry, my journey.
I'm right there with you, Mike. And I feel like, you know, again, what's really worked for me though is just kind of attacking it on a day by day basis and realizing that not every day is going to be bad, just like not every day is going to be good. And it is just more of like, just what's worked for me is it's just really focusing in on that moment and really just focusing on my tasks for them because it's helped me kind of quell any potential anxieties that pop up about where I'm not. And then if I just focus on like, dude, I did everything I could today, you know, or like I say with sports, man, just leave it all out on the field.
At the end of my workday most days I, I will always feel like I could do more, but I'm proud of what I accomplished because I held myself to doing what I had set out to do and I did not put any excuses out there about like not doing anything. Right, right.
No, I agree with you. Yeah. Other than that, Chris, the journey. Everybody has their own journey. Expect unexpected and prepare for the worst, but wish for the best.
Amen to that, man. Mike, thank you so much for joining me here today. Dude, I really appreciate, man. This is a great conversation. And how does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you got going on if they want to connect with you?
Well, they could always look us up through spi man.
Yeah.
Ofil.
Perfect. That. That works, man. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen. As always, if you got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious after this one, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify, because if you saw value, that's how your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys, and we'll be talking to you soon.