Michael Koenigs - Tips on Surviving and Thriving from a Serial Entrepreneur

Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting Exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their. Best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thanks so much for joining me today. It's always a pleasure to have you with me. Uh, today we have some very special guests, and my first is Mike Koenigs, and Mike is he helps experts build empires as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, judge on Entrepreneur.com's Elevator Pitch TV show. And 13 time bestselling author Mike is passionate about helping his clients build their platforms and amplify their message. He turns his clients into sought after thought leaders, authorities, and celebrity influencers. He's a regular contributor to Entrepreneur and Forbes, and Mike has interviewed, consulted, and advised celebrity clients including Tony Robbins, Paula Abdul, Richard Dreyfuss, JJ Virgin, Jordan Belfort. That's the wolf of Wall Street for those of you who don't know. And he's here today to share his experiences with us. Welcome to the show, Mike. Thanks for joining me. Hey, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much, Bill. My pleasure, Mike. You know, I've, I mentioned to you a little bit earlier. I've read a couple of your books published for profit and you everywhere now, and I was like, wow, these are not only well written, easy to read books, but full of great information that listeners need to know now about, you know, things have changed so much for a lot of our listeners, Mike and And they're, you know, they, they're not up to speed on how to do, how to promote in today's world, so those were really great books for me to read. How did you, uh, how did you start uh getting into all this stuff? Tell us a little bit about you and your background. Sure, well, the, the generally speaking, the opening story as I grew up in a little tiny town in Eagle Lake, Minnesota, and we didn't have money. I didn't have mentorship, and I just wanted to get out of the town where I felt like an alien. And um, so I learned skills that gave me some capabilities that were useful to other people, so I learned how to program when I was young and I started realizing that when I had a job and I worked for other people. The only way I was ever gonna have the freedom I wanted, the economic freedom, is I needed to learn how to market and ultimately learn how to sell, and I wanted to find a way to create to multiply that. So I started studying direct response marketing and along the way made a ton of bad mistakes, but I've started businesses and I found ways of finding, um, providing value, but other people paid me to um. Uh, to learn skills and and so it's just been an evolution like I dreamed of writing a book someday and wound up writing a book when I had cancer, and then I created a course on how to write books and become a bestselling author, so it forced me to write more books and get better at it. So generally speaking, I found if I can paint myself into a corner and have to prove myself on a regular basis with the skill that. Uh, was that's the best way to learn more skills. It's just, you know, continue to, to create courses and teach people how to do it yourself and, and, you know, the best way to be a great person is to become a great coach. Mhm mhm that's that's a really great intro for our discussion today we tell a lot of our business owner listeners Mike that as a lot of them don't have um their uh standard operating procedures like, you know, written down and in a in a transferable kind of a fashion where if they sell their business they can transfer to a new owner and. And what we tell them is you're going to have to relearn how you did that and capture that information or maybe teach it to someone else and as they, as you do that, you're going to be creating a model for how people can do this in the future, which is exactly kind of what you did, right? You said, you know, I need to learn some things, and as I learned them, heck, I might as well turn it into a course and teach people how to do it and tell them how to avoid all the mistakes that I made. That's exactly right. Um, and you know if you go back, uh, you know, the very first product I created was something called Everything you should know about Publicity publishing promotion and building a platform. It was a system for authors and I partnered up with. At the time, the world's number one publicist, her name's Arielle Ford, and she was the person, she was the gateway to get on Oprah for many years. If you want to be on the Oprah show, you talk to Arielle, and she represented Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neil Donald Walsh. Uh, the conversations with God guy, uh, Louise Hay from Hay House, um, uh, Mark Victor Hanson, you know, like tons and tons of the early people in the spirituality and consciousness space, and when we met. She told me she was going to quit the publicity and book world and do something different and I'm like, before you do that, why don't we create an information product together? I'll do all the work. I'll produce it. I'll sell it and I'll give you half the money. And she's like, I'm in for that. Well, along the way I learned so much about being an author, making money, monetizing a platform, and she legitimized me. She basically gave me a platform by creating a platform for her. And I wound up doing that a second time with a product called the Internet Infomercial Toolit. I was one of the very first people to ever use video to sell products and services online, even before there was a YouTube, and I gained my expertise by interviewing some of the biggest infomercial pioneers in the world like Joe Sugarman, for example, who did Blue Blocker sunglasses. And the bottom line is Um, what wound up happening as a result of that is they legitimized me. I got an MBA in or a PhD in all things related to infomercials, book publishing, created a platform, made plenty of money, and I got asked to be a speaker, um, so it was like one of those evolutionary things, but without having that pressure and without being able to work with someone who had knowledge that I didn't, I never would have gotten to where I am today. Incredible, incredible, and I note, I note that um when I, when I Google your name and I put Mike Koenig's books, um, you know, a flurry of books come up. You've, you've written, you've been a bestseller 13 times there it looks like there was a real. Uh, starting in around 2012 or so, there was just a, you were busy because you you put out a couple books a year during a time period there for for quite a few years and they're all, they were all fantastic and they're all pertinent. What would you say are, you know, there's a lot of our listeners out there that are thinking there's a couple ways we can go with this, but I'm thinking there's a lot of our listeners that are thinking, you know, I know a lot of information. I, you know, I want to maybe change up my life and and stay within my, you know, what I've been doing all these years. How can I capitalize on all of my knowledge and turn that into books and things like that? Which, which of your books would you recommend that they read first, which one would you say is the number one book to read? Well, I'd say publishing profit would be the one to to hit because it's step by step how to write a book, become a bestseller, and then turn your book into a money making tool. And if you'd like, I can give you two big tips. The first one is how I wrote my first book and what it did, and the second one is how I, how I've been writing books, and it's a real shortcut to how to get it done really, really quickly. You want those quick lessons? Yeah, yeah, please, please. OK, so first, the story, how I wrote my first book. So going back, I told you the REL story and everything you should know about publishing, publicity, promotion, and building a platform. My shame for 10 years was I created this amazing product with this amazing woman who had worked with all these authors. My wife had written 2 books and I had never written a book before. The truth was I didn't know how to do it. I was scared and back then you needed a publisher. Well, right around 2012 is when Amazon released and created what they call their KDP, their Kindle Direct Publishing model, and. No one really knew about it. No one really knew how to how to use it, so that was opportunity. But the second part was I got diagnosed with cancer and you and I were sharing a story a little while ago, but I was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer, went through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and there was a chance I was going to die or at least be horribly affected by the surgery afterwards and I'm like. I want to write a book in case I pass at least do something, but I also want to understand this. I want to learn it. So I sat down and I wrote my first book while I was sick with cancer, literally I had less than an hour of strength a day, so I wrote my book by speaking it into my phone. And um and here's the funny thing I wrote a book about how to write a book and how to publish it on Amazon. That was the the whole uh deal because I figured well I'm gonna use the model to sell the model and do it. And so as soon as I got out of my treatment, uh, one of my goals was to turn every book I'd ever write into a million dollars in 100 days or less. So what I did is I published the book. It got me on stages. I released the product then on how to write books and publish them on Amazon, and then I created an event around that too. And of course, not only did we earn more than a million dollars from that product launch, but it became a $7.5 million franchise to this day. So that's hopefully a little bit of inspirational speak. So if I could do it while I was getting zapped in my rear end. Um, and taking chemo, uh, with less than an hour of strength a day, waking up literally in a pile of my own hair, anyone can do it. That's, that's, that's step one, OK? You ready for step two? Right, yes, yeah, that's, that's fantastic, yeah, let's see, let's hear step 2. Alright, so step two, I'm, I've been working on a new book right now and one of my other goals is I always wanted to write the book and publish it. And have it make it a best seller in less than 30 days and um. One of my books I wrote called Money Phone, which is also a really good one. I'll give everyone access to that for free on this at the end of this interview if you'd like. Um, I wrote that, published it, made it a bestseller in 4 days and you'd be like, how in the hell can you do something like that? So here's the key. First of all, you gotta say what's the problem? I know how to solve. That's also my superpower. And or what's a something I wanna learn about and make it a superpower if you don't have a skill, you know, I interviewed other people, but in this case I wanted to teach something that I knew how to do. So, um, and I'll give you another real life example. So I wrote a book, my, my last book, my 13th that I wrote is called Cancer Preneur. And it's all about the subtitles how you, your marriage, family, and business can survive and thrive through cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery. Long ass subtitle, but the whole point is I, once I had cancer, I started meeting a ton of other people who are entrepreneurs and business owners who also had cancer and they're like, and, and or people who knew that I survived would say, hey, someone I know just got cancer, just got diagnosed. Uh, would you talk to them? And I always said yes, but pretty soon I was talking to like 5 or 10 people a week, and I always had to answer the same questions and so I was keeping notes of what they asked, what they needed to know, but also my own story of how I survived. So I created a bulleted list. All I did is I just opened up a Google doc. Put down all the things I thought someone would need to know or that they asked about surviving and thriving, OK, and then you know how to deal with medicine, your marriage, your kids, exercise, um, a spiritual relationship if you have it, painkillers, recovery, addiction, all those things. And what I did is, uh, what inspired me to write the book is one of my best friends. Her name's Pam Hendrickson. She worked for Tony Robbins for the past 30 years creating all of his products. She got diagnosed with breast cancer, so. Well, I knew that she needed support and help, and I turned on my camera. So here's the secret. You write, you create a bullet list of everything someone needs to know about a topic. Each one of those bullets becomes a chapter. And then you imagine one person that you're going to help. In my case, I knew Pam Hendrickson needed to know how to survive and thrive a cancer diagnosis with her business and marriage intact. So I spoke the book as though I were speaking to Pam and I looked into the camera eye and every chapter was 5 to 10 minutes long, me just talking. And then I took that file and I had it transcribed. And then I hired an editor to edit it. Now in my case, I did it in such a way that while I was recording, I was sending the file to rev.com, which is a transcription service, and then I hired an editor who would take that audio as it was being transcribed in real time and then edit it while I was recording the book, and I literally did that whole book in 4 days, start to finish. Wow, that's incredible. So can you do it by speaking to one person. That's amazing. That's, that's really, I mean, uh, you know, like a lot of people have a lot of knowledge out there and they're thinking, well, um, OK, I have a superpower. I have something I know about, um, it might might be interesting, um, starting, starting with that outline and really just. Uh, talking, right? Just, just laying it out there sounds like. It's all relationship. That's the secret. It really is. It's just like help one person and you know, if you go back to Tim Ferris, the 4 hour workweek, he wrote that book to solve a problem for one of his friends who uh who was struggling. It was actually two people, but, um, the best books are written. You're either writing it for you or you're writing it for um. Uh, or someone you wanna support and help. Yeah, that makes makes total sense. It's just, uh, you're, it's like you're having a, a, uh, an interview with someone, right? You're, you're how do, how can I help? uh, and I, I know that one of your formulas was, you know, uh there's a, I won't give it away because it's in the book, but you have a specific formula about how to create your your table of contents, your, your outline first, right? And, and then, and then work towards that. Is that that's a formula that you, I think that you developed to help you create the content um that's in Publishing profit, right? So, so that's it's an awesome book publishing Publishing profit and you know I would certainly recommend you everywhere now and of course the latest book Cancer Preneur, you know, we all know people who have who have cancer and need need some support and guidance and help and. Um, how, how did you, uh, how did you muster up that energy how to in that in your one hour a day to say this is, this is what I wanna do with that hour. Well, I was motivated by a couple of things. One of them was Just imagine if you had. 40 or 50 employees. You're burning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month that that you've gotta earn and you find out you have cancer and your doctor says. I own your ass literally and figuratively for a year. You should probably just shut down your business and focus on survival. And my mindset was. Why do I have to do only one of those? What if I could survive, thrive, and my business continue to run? So Uh, You know, basically burning all of your cash and uh going bankrupt or bankrupting your company wasn't in the cards for me and I figured all right if I'm gonna make a run at this SOB I'm gonna kill cancer I'm gonna survive it. And I'm gonna make some money. While this is happening, I'm going to take care of my family, and even if I die, something's going to be left over for them. And by the way, I haven't written a damn book yet, so I'm going to do all this stuff and that fire, I think it kept me alive. That's the honest to God truth is the best way to stay alive is have a mission, have a purpose, have a reason, and that's really what happened. And, and so at the end of the day. I realized as I was doing it, there's a lot of people who want to know what I've figured out how to do here. There's a lot of people that need this kind of help, so I'm going to turn it into a course and an event too, and unfortunately I had a great team to support me, but at the end of the day I put the book out there, made it a bestseller, and people are like. OK, this is cool. And then we just whipped up a quick sales page and we sold like 40 or 50 people came to a live event for $5000 where the goal is we're going to show you how to write, publish, promote a book, and then make it a number one bestseller too. We're gonna do what I did in 30 days except we're gonna do it faster. We're gonna do it in a weekend and that became a course. That I did for years after that until I decided to sell that business. Fascinating stuff, Mike. I really appreciate you coming on. We're we're running short on time, but I want to let everybody know that they should, they should look up all of your products and check you out. What's the best way for our listeners to learn more about you? OK, I got two things for you. First of all, you can just hit my personal website, which is my name Mike Koenigs.com or the easier way to remember it is just paidforlife.com. That's number one. The next thing is I promised a copy of my money phone book. Just go to Gomoneyphone.com. That'll bring you to a page where you'll get a video and um you can download the book for free. And that is a book that teaches you how to access people in your network, your database through your phone, how to send short video messages and text messages that make them want to work with you, and you can either do this for you or other businesses, but it is literally a strategy I used to make millions of dollars a year. And it's super easy. You'll learn it in a couple of minutes. It's incredibly powerful. So that's the gift I have for your audience, Bill. I sure do appreciate it, Mike. It's really great to talk with you and I've been looking forward to this interview. It's they always wrap up too quickly, but I really appreciate you coming on and taking some of your valuable time to talk with us today and look forward to the next time we get to talk. You got it. It's my pleasure. Good luck, great, great job doing what you're doing. Keep on spreading the word and spreading the wealth, my friend. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.