Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from around the world and from all walks of life in the hope that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We're your co-hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting entrepreneurs as they launch their new business or product. We love doing it. We're good at it. And it's important to us that every new business launches well, launches strong with a sound strategy and strong brand. Giving them the greatest chance of success we want every entrepreneur to thrive. If you love this show, please help us out. Subscribe on whichever platform you're listening or watching on now, and that way you'll be notified of the next great episode.
And today we're talking with Mikal Minors, the CEO of Bermuda Better. He is a content producer, designer and marketer, and also an AI software developer, and he loves sharing his insights and expertise about AI content and design. It's a subject that we're certainly all over and in 2024, I would suggest that no business can afford not to be at least curious to know more. Welcome, Mikal.
Thank you very much and thank you for having me. I've seen the show and I'm very excited to be here.
Oh, thank you so much. We're so excited to have you and so excited to have this great conversation because like Vicki said, we're all about the AI and digital and how we're all going to move forward. We're into a new year and let's talk about how we can use AI to better all of our businesses. So I always like to start the podcast going back a little bit in history because when we understand your context and your background, we understand a little bit of who you are today. So can you tell us what we need to know about your childhood and your experiences growing up that helps you to become who you are today and perhaps took you on this entrepreneurial journey.
I would say it starts with not understanding why people think that you're special. I feel like a lot of gifted kids, because that was my upbringing, I was the gifted kid, a lot of gifted kids feel like it's just something that adults are saying to you, like “you're meant for great stuff” and it doesn't resonate with you, you don't have context for why it matters and you kind of go through life wishing that people didn't expect so much of you. So that's how I started out.
That led to not-so-great decision making as a teenager. I was definitely a troubled teen and I really wanted to figure out who I could be if I didn't have to live up to everybody else's expectations. My saving grace was, I'm sure you guys have heard of the Mirrors program. I wasn't actually a part of the training, I wasn't one of the youth that was in it, I was one of the counsellors. And it wasn't until I was in a position where I saw young kids in the same position I was in, looking up to me and having to realise, I don't know if I am a good role model. And that sent me on this whole deep self-discovery journey of, what does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be a good role model? Who am I trying to be if I'm not living up to somebody else's expectations but my own? And from there, as you guys probably know, we did the suit drive where it was collecting professional clothing for young men because while I was on my self-betterment journey, it's not easy to better yourself. You don't have that much help to figure out what the first step is. It's kind of assumed that you should be at a certain point and if you're not, there is no guidebook that helps you catch up. So we did the suit drive to try to make it easier, lower the threshold of trying to be better and make it free, it should be. And that's in a nutshell how I got from young kid with a lot of potential doesn't know why people expect so much of me, to come into myself understanding that I can do great things and it's my obligation to do those things because I know I'm able.
Yeah, what were your parents like? Because I'm really interested in the gifted part of things. So were your parents really driven? Were they pushing you? Tell me a little bit about that.
My parents were teenagers. They were coming up in life, figuring out things at the same time I was. And so, a lot of it came from my grandmother, I would say. My grandmother was the driving force, very driven woman, very much, nine to five grind, get it done. You will not use slang, you will not use short term words, expand your vocabulary, and because of her it was really just a no brainer.
Mikal, you talk about, well, that's it in a nutshell, but honestly, that nutshell needs to be unpacked a bit. There was so much in there and rich insights, I'm certain. So how old were you when you started this self-discovery journey?
Yeah, it's a lot. I had to be about 21. That's the first time I really looked at myself and tried to figure out if I was happy with who I was being.
Mikal normally people don't get to that stage until they're at least 40.
Normally people have a lot more comforts around them to keep them comfortable. Because I was the kid that was kicked out of school who was doing a bunch of bad things, I had a lot of time to reflect on myself. So yeah, blessings and curses.
And thank you for being honest about those times in your life. I think it's that honesty that helps people to resonate and connect with these kinds of conversations that help them to think that, well, maybe that's where I am now, but it doesn't mean that's my forever. Are you comfortable talking, perhaps you're not comfortable, but are you willing to talk a little into the adversity that you overcame because we believe that's really where resilience comes from.
Yeah, honestly, I attribute a lot of my success to my adversities and my failures. Beyond the win itself, it's how you win. It's how you got there, who was with you along that way, what morals did you sacrifice to stay aligned with? I feel like those are the things that nobody glorifies. They deserve a little bit of glorification.
So one of the biggest things that I had to deal with is failing fast, failing loud, and failing in public. It's fine to start a project that you never tell anybody about and then give up on it because there's no stakes. It is terrifying to tell everybody that you know that I'm doing this thing and I think you should give me money for this thing and accepting that some people might not think you did a good job, accepting that you might have a horrible, embarrassing moment and you might have to still get up and go and make money the next day. It's how do you accept that you did a bad job and still be confident to go and tell somebody else, I'll do a great job. And really the biggest thing that helped me get through that was compounding failure and transferable skills. I don't remember who said it but it unlocked something for me. It was, “if you are going to fail at something, the next thing you try should be twice as big”.
So that way you don't lose the time that you spent on the first thing. If you succeed at this next thing, it makes up for everything you failed at before. And then from there, you also have transferable skill sets, which means if I'm doing graphic design and I fail, if I go up and I do brand strategy, now I have skill sets that I've already spent all this time learning that transfer over to this thing and give me an unfair advantage against somebody who started from nothing.
And those two things, as you keep going, you might fail five, 10 times. When you do succeed, it'll be so much bigger and it'll be so worth it, because it's an accumulation of everything that you've been through - in a nutshell!
Yeah, big, big nutshell. But yeah, there's something so big about failure that teaches us how to succeed. And that's the, yeah, it's expensive, but it's the best investment at the same time, right? Failure, because it's the biggest teacher. So how did you, or what did you have to bounce back from? I want more. You're giving us, you're giving us philosophy but I want more, a little bit more of the story. How willing are you to tell us a little bit about what it all entailed?
I will be as transparent as I can be.
When I started out my entrepreneur journey, I was on my own doing Digital Marketing Services and I was picked up by a company that I will not name, but it was a startup company, things were very much up in the air. Everyone was trying to figure out where we belonged and I worked my way up to CEO. I then was a part of the company as it all fell apart and everybody had to kind of accept that this was not the million dollar idea, we don't like each other as people now, and we all have to go our separate ways. And then start from nothing. And then from starting from nothing, I was picked up by a couple of different businesses that were doing different things as an assistant that works my way up. And now again, I have power, and then we don't like the direction we're going, so we're just gonna not speak anymore. Okay. And then being picked up as an apprentice, because even though I was a CEO, I'm not getting results. So maybe I should start from nothing. Maybe I need to go and learn. And then realising that some people will keep you as an intern and get as much from you as they can and never pay you. And when you say no, they'll go pay the other guy that they've been waiting to pay this whole time they didn't need, because you did it for free. So you only hurt yourself by limiting what you thought you were worth. And these types of things happened over and over and over and over until somebody really close to me said, “you have spent all this time trying to make other people's ideas happen, and you've poured yourself into it, and you've gotten results for them that they did nothing with. So why don't you do something for yourself?” That was like, okay, fair. It didn't happen overnight though, five years later we’re here, but...
I dare say if it had happened overnight, you wouldn't have been as far ahead as you are now because without those things that you needed to overcome and lessons in that journey, we just don't get to where we need to be. But yeah, I dare say you're glossing over a lot of that and that's perfectly acceptable. I mean, I completely understand why we don't want to stay in the past and in the murkiness. So thank you for sharing that. And so much of that resonates with me as well. I mean, that journey that you just described about just keeping doing and wanting to help other people bring their dreams to fruition. And also that whole, oh, give, give, give and then find out that they're going to pay somebody else. Hello? This is all about self-esteem. This is all about not valuing our own work and our own contribution. And that is such an important lesson for any entrepreneur. And even if we've been in business for years, that can still pop up. So thank you for that nugget, that reminder for all of us.
Yeah, no, of course. And I'm glossing over things, but feel free to pause me on any part of it and we can dive in. I don't know which parts of my story are interesting, so I'll show you all of it and you can pick what you like.
Yeah. I think all your story is interesting, and I think you've had a really big year this year. I think you have come so much more into the limelight. I know you've had a couple of experiences on stage and recently with the Bermuda Tech Summit, which is a pretty big deal. So tell us a little bit about this year and what's happened this year to really change things for you.
It has been the craziest roller coaster. Not many people would know this, but it's actually all just a self improvement challenge gone kind of out of control. At the beginning of this year I was doing brand design and digital marketing solely. We would start to dabble in 3D because that was going to be the big thing. Along that way, I got really into AI and I started writing my first book. Into the Mind of AI: Conversations with Artificial Intelligence. It's just what does AI think about people and the world and politics? And that showed me that there's an interest in AI. And then I kind of got interested, but not too much. Fast forward to April. My birthday is coming up. I'm about to be 26. I'm not happy with my friendships, my business. I'm not happy with different milestones that I feel like I should have hit. And I said, you know what? Nobody's going to fix it but me. Nobody cares if I don't get what I want, but me. Let me do something about it, massive action, do whatever I can. And in the span of three months, we launched AI products and we made more money in that two month span than we made ever, which was crazy. We got invited to Disrupt HR Bermuda which was speaking about different things that affect our community, which got me back into my social things that I care about, which is amazing. I became a Rotarian.
I then got the opportunity at the Tech Summit, which was literally - if you don't think that things align, I was doing market research for the AI bots to try to figure out if people need them. During this, I happened to call somebody that thought I was calling about the Tech Summit. It was like...I'm calling you to see if you want this. They were like, oh no, I thought we had a meeting. I was like, no, what are you talking about? Come to find out they needed somebody to speak on AI. I called at the exact right moment and I just filled the role so perfectly that it was a no-brainer to go with me. I would not have applied to speak at this place, but I was perfect for it. And so fast forward from that, I have just kept doing this idea of massive action, go loud, go fast. Be okay with failing in public. And people are really nice, best way I can put it, people are really willing to work with you and give you patience. So yeah, it's been a blessing, but it's really just been due to everybody being willing to help me on this crazy self-improvement journey.
So where is this journey taking you? What's your vision for it?
The vision, I want Bermuda to be what I would have liked it to be when I grew up. I have a little brother and a little sister who now have to navigate the world. If I can do something that makes their journey less easily leading down the wrong roads, then I will feel like I've done my part. Give them entertainment, opportunities, and quality of life. Hopefully do that while getting extremely wealthy and ridiculously rich.
Yes.
I love it. Ridiculously rich is an excellent goal.
Yeah, because you deserve it.
Yeah, absolutely. We all do. And I think that's a mindset shift, a huge one. And a hard one when you come from struggle, like you talked about, someone who was getting in trouble. How did you see a vision like that? You didn't think you could possibly get to that. And look what you've already accomplished, right? That's the mindset shift. Sometimes we need to see a little bit of the light at the end of the tunnel to realise there is somewhere to go when we often get stuck. So I think that's a really good message for people to hear and to have those audacious goals. You've got to have big audacious goals because when you have them and when you accomplish them, guess how many other people you can help along the way. And that's what it sounds like to me, your main plan in life is. You get there and you can help others get there too.
And you're inspiring others to get there right now. And that's what I enjoy about seeing people really throw themselves into something without knowing whether it's gonna work or not. I mean, I think you know it's gonna work because you're you and you're gonna make it work. And if there's some stumbles along the way, so what? But I love to see people throw themselves into something in this way because it inspires everyone to do the same. You know, it's the Marianne Williamson quote, when you shine your light, you give others permission to do the same.
Absolutely. One big thing.
I love that, Vicki. So let's talk about AI because obviously it's been a buzz for a long time now. It feels like forever, but it's really only been a year and a few months that it's even become such a part of our lives. But I think there's still a lot of misconceptions around it and I think people really don't understand how it integrates into business. That's going to be huge going forward. Whether you're a small one-man band or a big massive corporation, you're going to need to use AI within your business. And I think most of us already do without really understanding that we are. So let's talk a little bit about it and how you foresee the future for AI in business.
Right off the bat, like you said, everybody's using AI. The best way that I could describe it is less terminator, more auto complete. Anytime you type a message in your iPhone and it tells you what your next word should be, that's AI. It's just computers learning based on experience. And as far as where it has its place in business? Everywhere. Not so much as these cruel overlords that we expect, but more so as assistants that don't cost as much, that answer fast, that everybody can use at the same time. It's empowering more so than replacing. That's the culture that I've seen.
And how do we get business owners to start thinking about integrating it into their own business for better efficiencies, better customer service, better everything.
The lowest hanging fruit for a use case that makes sense to people that's tangible is customer support. Everybody has all these different channels where we're accepting messages from multiple people at the same time. If you can answer that message in the same day, you're doing better than most people. If you have an AI set up, you can answer all of those messages in less than 60 seconds. Beyond that, instead of it being a generic message that you've typed out, pre-prepared for questions that you foresaw, you can make sure that the bot has the understanding to answer complex questions, answer the follow-up questions, show me instructions on how to solve my problem. The quality of customer support is so much better when you use bots for that. And take that principle, apply that across every element of your business. You can optimise, automate, and make more efficient anything that is digital with AI.
Where do you think businesses will be if they go, yeah, no, not for me.
They'll be with the horse and buggy businesses that were confident that they would need any of this new technology.
That's the perfect answer. That's so good. It's so true. And it's a tough thing because I think people are afraid of change. So how do we talk people through not being afraid of being early adopters? Because it still feels early. And I know it is still early in the age of AI. We still have a long way to go with it. But how do we get people past it? Or what have you come across people saying to you when you are approaching them saying, hey, I've got this idea for your business. What do people say?
Yeah, it's funny. The people that want it, want it within the first 15 minutes of hearing it exists. The people that don't want it, you know, I can't trust that it'll speak on behalf of my business in the way that I want it to. I can't trust this. I don't fully understand what it can do in the first place. I think realistically, the bridge is only gonna be made with breaking it down and making it sound less oppressive. Right now it sounds like it can do everything, but a tool that does everything really does nothing.
We just need to make it digestible, understandable. Here's how it works. If you put this in, this comes out. Socks, I love you, but you're messing me up my guy. Essentially, as long as we can make it digestible, people will swallow the pill a lot easier.
I guess that's true of most things is to break it down into small digestible pieces. So let's do that.
So Mikal, if a company is AI curious, where should they start?
I say they should start by playing. They should look for something like ChatGPT, Claude or Anthropic or Bard. These are all large language models which just means a robot that understands a lot of language based on being fed a bunch of information. The goal of playing with these things should be understanding how to ask questions to get the results you're looking for, understanding where its limitations are, like you probably shouldn't use it to do research for legal studies but you can use it for research on a great recipe. You can use it for certain business use cases, but other use cases you really should avoid it. And it's starting to understand the logic behind it, and you can achieve that by playing without spending any money. That's the best place to start. Now, I will say, if you're looking to invest in something like this, it's gonna be having a conversation with somebody like me, bloop bloop, and it starts with a request for information. Essentially, we would need all the information you want the bot to be proficient in so that we can train that bot. And you can normally expect to have customer support on your website within a week to four weeks. And it's pretty pain free. Or we like to say it is at least.
That's so useful. So how do you train the bot? First of all, it's a bot just for that company, right? So it would be customised. So how do you train it? Do you just, I'm thinking, scramble the information off their websites? What do you use to... I'm just so curious about how the backend of this process works.
Of course. Most of the time if you have a great website, which we know not everybody's there right now, we can just take the website. But in reality, most people have the website that was made maybe five years ago that needs to be updated. That's not the best data to use for your AI. Normally it comes down to, we'll send you a request for information to ask for your company's name, directory, your services, details and description of the services, and the frequently asked questions that everybody calls you five times a day for.
Those are the types of things that we train the bot on. And then the training process is literally us making sure it's optimised the right way, us doing our background coding wizardry, and on the outside producing a piece of code that you just implement into what you already have.
So, Mikal, what would be the ideal business or business stage for an owner to be having a conversation about this? I'm thinking more like the investment that's required. Where is the business in the cycle at this stage?
It's two different positions. I've seen it go two ways. There is the business that's already established, we know what we're doing. We know how we're doing it. We have the people in place to do it. And the issue that we face is scaling. We don't want to have somebody whose full-time job is answering all the different platforms because we don't want people to be on their phones or on the computer all day doing not work. But we can justify an AI that answers all the questions across all the different platforms. That's a no brainer that makes sense to me.
The other one has actually been startups. Pre any of that, pre-team, I wanna build a team that's leaner. I wanna cut my costs when I'm starting this business, but I want A+ customer support. If you have the startup capital, it makes sense because now you should still hire people in the future for these roles to manage and oversee, but you've cut a huge chunk of the upfront investment to still deliver high quality service. That's the two key areas.
Great, great answer. And I can imagine that for a startup, the very process of really understanding what the bot needs to know is gonna bring them such clarity for their own business as they're shaping it.
Absolutely, we've been finding that people learn a lot about themselves when you ask them to explain that.
I could say the same thing about exactly what we do because, and you too, you know brand strategy. When you start working brand strategy with especially a startup, it's incredible the questions that bring out histories and stories from childhood. So much stuff comes up in the strategy and you realise why you do what you do. And then you can talk about the value of what your thing does, the benefits. All these things are super important to do. I highly recommend anybody starting up a business anytime. Dig into the strategy, understand what it is, ask those deep questions of yourself or hire people who know brand strategy to walk you through it. It makes a huge difference when you're starting out and starting out strong. Like you said, especially when you get investment, because people can get investment in a startup and you all of a sudden have $100,000, $500,000, a million in capital to spend.
Investing that properly in your business makes a lot of sense. And investing in AI is the only way for the future that I see too. So you can also integrate way bigger than a chatbot for customer service, but you can integrate AI in systems, right? In backend system processes to make them so much more efficient for businesses. Do you help with that stuff for businesses as well?
Yeah, in the next couple of months we're actually looking at moving into more machine learning, which is just taking the process you already have, making it more efficient, more cost effective is the word I'll use. And essentially, I hate to say it, I think that strategists are going to be the most essential part of businesses in the next couple of years, because it's only going to be about how do we want the bot to do the thing, more than can the bot do the thing? The bot can do it, I promise.
Love that. I don't hate to say that strategists are going to be the most important people, I love to say that! I mean it is where your business grows. It is where your business succeeds. If you don't have a strategy, what do you have? Let's face it, it's the same with any goals, any objectives that you're reaching towards in business or in life. So it makes perfect sense. You're writing a book or have you written it already?
I did write the first one, I'm actually working on the second one now.
Oh hello, and it's published?
Yes, Into the Mind of AI is available on shops.bm
Thank you. That's exciting. Now, what did you learn from that? What is the mind of AI?
I learned that, I'll give you two big ones. AI is not as smart as we think it is. I think that when you speak to ChatGPT, it's easy to convince yourself that I'm talking to an intelligent being and this thing might have feelings and it must have opinions. But when you dive into it you start to understand I'm speaking to somebody's code that they've written with certain rules and parameters. Anytime you start to ask it certain really charged questions, you start to see the person that coded its opinions on it shine through really strong. It's not as smart as you think it is.
The second thing that I learned is it is much more capable than we give it credit for. When you start to ask it questions about complex topics like war, disagreements, it's not like talking to a person who has their own biases. You get a pretty accurate description of both sides of an issue.
This isn't across all issues, of course, because like I said, the coders bias comes in. But when you start to realise that beyond day-to-day convenience, beyond business being optimised, but the future of how we understand complex issues and how we teach children to understand, AI is going to touch all of that.
Hmm, tell us more about education. What are your thoughts on that? It's a hot topic for us.
Yeah, it's important. I want to talk about this too, because I absolutely believe that AI is going to change education drastically in the next 10 years. So I'd love, what's your thoughts on it?
Absolutely. I think that I would have done well with an AI tutor. In a classroom with a teacher who is focused on 20 children, imagine if instead of having one teacher's assistant helping, there was 20 teacher's assistants, each individualised for that child, so when they're stuck, they ask the question immediately and get the answer immediately. Now they didn't fall behind 20 minutes and have to catch up. Or when they're doing their homework, the AI remembers the lesson and it can go home with them, and it's not inappropriate. These are the different things that AI unlocks. AI means that each child gets the specific engagement that they need to help their learning style on their schedule. Big difference.
And I can see how that can help so many kids that would naturally fall through cracks because they didn't pick up things as quickly as their peers or didn't understand a specific topic and the teacher’s moved on to the next one and they get left behind. What about using ChatGPT to write essays though? I mean, obviously there's a lot of teachers upset and concerned about that right now.
I remember teachers telling me I wouldn't have a calculator in my pocket everywhere I go, so I needed to learn to do it on paper. It's gonna suck, but the world is gonna change as far as how we view information and learning. Hate it, but accept it kinda, I guess. That's my way of looking at it. But I will say, for the students who think you can just write it with ChatGPT, there is something to be said for being able to regurgitate versus being able to comprehend. So you should always seek to comprehend the subject matter that you are staking your reputation behind ChatGPT speaking on your behalf for.
I think this speaks to the whole issue. You've just touched on it. It's your own personal standards. It's how do you wanna show up and go through life and the world? Are you the person who wants to take the easy road and not think and not engage? Or are you gonna be the person as a student who wants to engage, have critical thinking, and bring back that element that a lot of the older generation are complaining isn't present right now. I don't know about you, but I hear a lot of people saying, oh, there's no critical thinking anymore. People are just going along with the flow. They're just doing what they're told. It's this whole, anyway, we're not gonna get into politics because there's a word or a name I would use there. But you know what I'm saying? I think there's an opportunity here and it's possible that it will evolve that AI brings back the critical thinking because it takes away the other day-to-day stuff, it leaves us the space and creativity to actually think into things. What do you reckon?
Absolutely. The world is full of cognitive overload right now. There's too many screens with too many apps with too many notifications. What AI really unlocks is an offload of all the stuff that bogged us down up until now. When that happens, you can then say, I have the capacity to think about this problem. I do have time to sit and read this thing that actually matters to me. I don't have to read all the stuff that doesn't, but when something is worth my time and attention, I have more of it now.
And to the point of the own standards that you have, one thing that is so important that I've learned is that in a world of people looking for the easiest way, in a world where how to get rich overnight is one of the most trending things all the time, doing it the hard way makes you stand out by default. You don't have to be amazing, you don't have to be gifted. You do things the hard way, and that's what makes you exceptional. And that takes you so much further than skill.
And clarify for us what would the hard way mean to you?
Meaning if I can go and spend $30 to get somebody to do a thing for me and give me a microwavable solution, or I can learn how to do it myself so that I can give more in-depth solutions to my clients, go spend the time to learn to do it yourself. Don't white label everything. Same way, if a client is looking for me to give strategy and I can do it through ChatGPT, I can probably make the money, but I wouldn't benefit as much as going the hard way, really thinking about their company's issues and producing a quality strategy to the best of my ability. That's the hard way.
Yeah, I think ChatGPT is an awesome support assistant sometimes for the idea generation, it can be the hardest part of the job. And you just need almost to bounce an idea off of somebody, I find it's really good for that. I love it for that. But then I often find it'll go too far down the road and I'm like, no, that's not where I'm trying to go. I want to go here and my own lessons, learning life experiences will definitely come into play. So I'm curious, what's the most important value to you? What do you value most?
Since I was a teenager, I have said I want to have a legacy that outlives my grandchildren's grandchildren. And that legacy can't be because I was an awful guy. So always seek to be exceptional in everything you do, if it means going the hard way, if it means being overwhelmed and getting it done anyway, that type of legacy doesn't come from doing things the easy way. So that's what I value.
Legacy. That's a really important one to talk about. What legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to have a library of books that you've written or speeches that you've done that's now all on YouTube? Where do you see that possibly for you if you can forecast into the future?
I think the best type of legacies that I've known are those that come with helping large amounts of people. If in a hundred years they remember me for being the richest guy in Bermuda, that's cool. But if in a hundred years there are hundreds of families that think that I was the reason that they got an opportunity that changed the trajectory of their lives, that is a legacy. That's a legacy that's going to live much longer. And that's a legacy that means much more. So my ideal legacy is one where when I'm gone, the sacrifices that I made today still benefit people.
So on the back of that, what's the most important thing for you? No, the question is, on the back of that, what do you love most about being an entrepreneur?
I'll be honest, it's not as deep as the rest of my answers. I love waking up when I'm ready to. It is a beautiful thing.
Okay, do you have a morning routine? Are you a routine kind of person?
I am out of necessity now. The routine is wake up, check see if I have a meeting in the next couple of minutes, lay back down if I don't, and if I have to get up, make sure I have time for coffee. That is it.
That's pretty simple.
Yeah, keep it easy.
Okay, here's a really personal question, Mikal. Do you have a personal assistant AI?
I don't, publicly. I will say that. Gotta have a little mystery.
Okay, I'll take it.
Thanks.
Can I ask you guys a question?
We'd love you too.
Of course.
I'm hesitant to ask because we're moving now into your services and stuff that I'm sure you guys charge a decent amount for but in your view as strategists who have done amazing things, when you look at us and what we're trying to do, do you have any advice for us young up and coming AI enthusiasts who want to be taken seriously but also express ourselves?
That's such a great question. My biggest advice for you is what you started doing last year is talking publicly as much as possible because as much as you want to raise your business brand up so people know what you do, I think your personal brand is going to rise above that. If you look at any great entrepreneurs, any great business people, their company, if you look at their profiles, even LinkedIn or wherever, their profiles will have so many followers, their personal profiles will have millions more. Because people are interested in people, right? We're fascinated by people. We trust people. We don't trust businesses. We trust people, right? So raising your personal brand is the best thing I would suggest for you in terms of strategy for the next year and going forward. Speak, especially because what you do is so new and people still need so much education around it to understand it. that the more you can talk about it and explain it and break it down and simplify it and show the features and great things that it can do, but also who you are as a person, is going to be so massively beneficial for you that I think you'll see huge gains just from that. So speak as often as you can, do as many keynotes as you can, get yourself booked, do podcasts like this, writing a book is huge because that helps you get more speaking engagements. That would be my piece of advice.
And I would only add to that, get that book out there on a massive scale. Launch that book. It's topical. It's timely. The world needs this. It doesn't matter if other people have written similar subjects. This is your take on it. Get it out there, launch big and make a name for yourself.
Thank you very much. Yeah, that resonates a lot actually. Okay.
I think it's when you change your mindset from, oh, I've got to talk or I've got to promote myself and it feels weird and it feels icky and I know a lot of people feel that way. But when you realise that what you do serves others because you can educate others and help them understand, it's not selling, which feels so icky. I feel like I hate selling. I'm not a fan of selling. But if I can educate others in getting better at marketing, because that’s what we do. Then that feels really good and I'm happy to do a webinar and I'm happy to talk about it on a podcast. And I want to bring this to people in the world. And I think when you and young people like you have an amazing idea, you need to get it out into the world. You need to not worry about copycats. You need to not worry about people stealing your idea. It doesn't matter because who you are is what's the difference. No one can steal you, right? They can steal your ideas. They can steal your business plan. They can even copy your book, but they can't steal you. And if you keep progressing forward with the lessons that you've learned, the experiences that you have, what makes you special. Because you're going to be doing more research. You're going to be understanding, you're going to be talking to different people where you're going to have to share. They can't ever copy, right? And they will only fall away. So let them come because you know what? That means you're leading from the front, right? Let people come, let people follow you, let people copy you. It's all good. Don't worry about it, but share your ideas, share your thoughts, share your experiences. It makes such a massive difference in putting you that level ahead. And you'll only want to do more and keep growing because you'll see the results of that, right? So that's my biggest thing. A lot of people fear is getting out there. You know, we talked about that earlier on, like failing publicly is the absolute worst. I mean, it is, it's terrifying. And it's the reason most people don't do things. And that's what stops them and prevents them from taking action from ever launching their business, from ever quitting their job. I was listening to Stephen Bartlett. I don't know if you listen to the Diary of a CEO podcast. I probably reference him a lot, but I listen to it religiously and he talks about quitting. He's really good at quitting. And that's another thing we often talk about quitting on this podcast if there's ever been times that you wanted to quit and go and take a nine to five easy job, right? I'll put ‘easy’ in quotes. But sometimes being able to quit too is a big thing as well, right? So it's all just different mindset, different mindset shift. So let's talk about that since I brought it up because we all know being an entrepreneur is a fun, crazy roller coaster of a journey. And there's definitely moments that we wanna quit. I think Alex Hormozi talks about despair, like falling into the despair of business and often that's when people quit before they go ahead and try to run and start something else. Have you ever been in that position? I know you're fairly new and business has been around a few years for you. Entrepreneurship has been around for years, but have you been, okay, that's it. Forget it. I'm out of here. Let me go get a nine to five and just give this up.
I tell you what, every time rent is due, if it hasn't been a great month, it's like, you know what, maybe this isn't meant to be. But yeah, the big thing that I've learned is to keep your metrics somewhere visible so that when you have that moment, you can look back and say, oh, well, we're doing way better than we were a year ago. It's not looking great now, but in the big picture, it's looking fantastic.
Yay, that's a good one. So do you actually literally have something up on the wall that says like...
It's not on the wall, but it's a project I have open every single day. It stays open on my computer. It's a yearly income. It's a growth on social media and it's the meetings that we have set up. And it's like, okay, obviously we're doing something right.
Do you have a mentor, Mikal, where you're learning these business strategies and techniques?
I am a big advocate of YouTube University. Actually, Alex Hormozi is the big person I always point to, but I was also lucky enough to go through Ignite. Sean Reel was my mentor-mentor in that program, and that man asked me some of the realest, hardest questions of my life. And besides him, there's been a million people. Dr. Kyjuan Brown from North Shore Medical, he makes time and he challenges me. We don't always agree, and a lot of the time, he's right, but that's fair.
Having that has been so reassuring, and then the Rotarians as well, cannot state enough. I think I said it at their meeting, having people that have gone through what you've decided to take on for yourself and have given their all and it's not enough and they came out the other side, having them there at your shoulder is so important if you can have access to it.
Yeah, it cannot be overstated how important mentors are. Okay, so mentor yourself, maybe 10 years ago. What would you have told yourself?
You care far too much about the opinions of people that don't think about you..
I have had big ideas, I have had a lot of support, and I have dimmed my light, for lack of better words, because I was afraid I would be judged by people that don't pay me anyway.
Wow, I think a lot of people could resonate with that.
I know I still resonate with that on certain days. It's not a destination, it's a journey.
Yeah, do you feel imposter syndrome sometimes?
Oh, yeah, all the time. Fun fact, there are hundreds of people more qualified in this field than I am to speak on this. I have to acknowledge that every day when I go into work. And I have to be okay with that, because I still, like you said, they can have the same stuff and not be me. And there's people that would only trust somebody like me to start their journey. So I have to be available to help that person.
Yes, amen to that, Mikal. Yes. And if I may, we were talking a bit about young people and young people in entrepreneurship. And I think it's very important to note that people who are your age, you said you are 26, mid to late 20s, people in that generation, in my opinion, are no longer young people. You may have been, when I was 26, when we were 26, it felt like we were young. But the way the world is now, the way we all grow quickly, the way information and everything is at our fingertips and so easily accessible, humans are developing and growing quicker. So I would go as far as saying this could be a mindset. I'm not suggesting you need this mindset shift because I think you're well and truly ahead of that curve but for our listeners who are young entrepreneurs, I'd encourage you to shift your mindset and perhaps not think of yourself as young. Because you, as a generation, know more and are more savvy and are more willing to fail and are more dedicated to the cause than I and my generation ever was, ever was at that age. And I envy that. I would love to be 26 right now, although I love my life as it is now, but I think you understand the point.
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you should say that. I still see myself as that teenager who is gonna be awesome and famous. It's hard to believe that my peers have five-year-olds and my peers have been married for two years and the world doesn't see me as this young kid trying to figure it out anymore. Older people like to pretend that I am when they're trying not to pay me as much, but as far as the expectations of the world, I am the new adult that children look up to as having his stuff together. So I have to live up to that.
It's a good place to be, I think. You're really at an ideal place, especially starting your business, your entrepreneurial success, which I only see as growing and growing for you, absolutely. But it is good too, when you think about others looking up to you, you have to pull out your best self, right? So it's the time to pull out your best self and keep growing, I love that. So we always ask on this podcast, because of course we are the Resilient Entrepreneurs podcast. In your opinion, as someone who's faced a lot in your life already, how do we become resilient? What does it take?
Not to get too spiritual on you, but there is a spiritual parable that I like, which is; if you pray for strength, you aren't given comfort because that won't build strength. If you pray for determination, you aren't given an easy life because that won't build it. If you wanna be resilient, you need to fail and wake up the next day and still be breathing. You need to do a horrible job at something that you thought would be great and realise that people will still give you money for other stuff. It's okay. It really is. Your worst failure is still better than you not trying it.
Your worst failure is still better than not trying it. Say that again, your best, I just lost my thought. When you said that, I really wanted to repeat it because I wanted to emphasise it. Say it again for me.
Your best failure is better than you not trying at all.
Yeah, that's it. I love that. And that's a really good place to finish this conversation because we could go on forever, but I do recognise it's been almost an hour and it's been really, really eye-opening and interesting and a really important topic to talk about AI in the future and where it's at, but it's also really important to talk about our journey.
Whether you start young in a rough place where you're struggling and you're figuring things out or you've had everything easy and now you're dealing with life. Everything that comes at us comes at us from so many different directions and it's about how we incorporate that, how we learn from it, how we fail fast and fail forward and keep growing.
And I absolutely see nothing but massive success in what you're doing, but also in who you are. And I'm gonna just repeat on the personal brand because I think you are building that and I wanna see more and more of it. I'm really looking forward to seeing you on a big stage. I think you need a TEDx stage or something big, something well beyond this small island, Bermuda where you live. I think there are much bigger things out there and I'm really excited to see what those are for you. So thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs, and definitely looking forward to the future for all of us.
Thank you very much. And honestly, you guys have given me a lot to think about, too. It's really nice having this type of warm environment to talk about these types of things. So thank you guys for making this platform.
Thank you. That's so kind of you to say.
Have a good one.
