[0:00] If there's any chance that you could really use some motivation, that you would really love to have somebody inspire you, to pick you up, to get you excited about life again, well, friend, you've landed on the right episode.

I'm in the studio today with Mike C. Rock, and Mike is not only going to share his story, but more importantly, he's going to share his story in a way that it will mean something to you.

Leave an impact on your own life, because Mike is a guy here to bring the energy like no one you've ever seen before.

If you are ready to turn your obstacles into launch pads, if you are ready to start living the life you were meant to live, then my friend, let's dive in to episode 276.

[0:50] What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit, grace, & inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

Because friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, we'll consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

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[2:26] I was put into this world, into a situation where a lot of brokenness was around me, Kevin. I didn't ever know my parents together. And I did the every other weekend thing growing up and the child support battles, the custody battles.

And then you had step parents into the mix. And then you had step kids in the mix or half brothers and sisters into the mix.

And then my extended family, there was a lot of alcoholism and drugs and mental health issues and suicide.

And one thing I noticed is I started noticing a pattern that people were kind of causing and creating their lives, whether they knew it or not, or admitted to it, they were actually doing doing like something or telling a story or having a belief and then they would live out this this this movie and i started thinking to myself well that's interesting if they're doing this and i would call my family members out a lot of times and say you're you're telling me that you're an alcoholic or this and that because you grew up in this situation why couldn't you say man i'm successful i'm healthy as i've ever been i'm going in a direction where i keep getting getting better and better because I grew up in such a rough spot.

And I just started calling them out. That led to some resentment, I'm sure.

But I started to believe that if I tell people like it is and just call them out on it, either they're going to fix it or they're just going to get away from me.

[3:41] And listen, sometimes it's important to get away from people.

Sometimes it's important to have a repellent to negativity, to irresponsibility, to chaos.

And so I started to thinking to myself, well, if that's the case with them, if I start telling the story of why I'm going to be successful and why I am successful and why I keep getting better and better and better, let me see if that works.

And it did. And so I started living my life where I tell what was going to happen, basically being a fortune teller, and it would happen.

And so that's what drives me, is that I wake up every morning obsessed with, number one, inspiring others to really get them to understand that they are in the power and the control of being unstoppable to live in the life of their dreams.

Mm, powerful stuff, man. Powerful, powerful.

How old were you when you had this realization that you talked about?

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

Subconsciously, I think it was eight to 11 years old in that window when I was going through some things.

And then consciously, not consciously, probably not till I was 40.

[4:49] You know, I wrote a book called Rocket Fuel Converged Setbacks Become Unstoppable.

And while writing that book or right before, I started to realize, wait a minute, man, And why did I always excel out of the tougher situations?

What's going on here? And I came up with this concept I call the rocket fuel law.

And that is if you take, you got to understand that energy is what everything's made of.

And so good, bad, or what appears to be bad, everything has energy in it.

And when everything has energy in it, that means that I can take that energy and I can utilize it to my benefit and to the world's benefit.

And so the rocket fuel law that I came up with is, is if you take things and store it in your tank instead of your trunk, good, bad, ugly, pretty, everything.

You store it in your tank, not in your trunk. You will be able to convert it into rocket fuel and become unstoppable to live the life of your dreams.

But if you store it in your trunk, it weighs you down. It slows you down.

I talked to you before, I don't know how long ago it was, a month or so ago.

And you were telling me the story of losing your sight and the journey that you went through with that.

And you started to excel, Kevin, when you started to realize, wait a minute, I can take this and use it as fuel where I can put it in my trunk and weigh me down and slow me down.

And you decided to use it as rocket fuel. And now look at you.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. A whole new meaning to junk in the trunk, you know?

[6:09] Yeah. So I have to ask because you talk about kind of this, we'll say not the fairy tale well, you know, you know, childhood and stuff you, but I guess my question is, is I'm seeing where you are.

I'm seeing this mindset you have, where do you think that came from?

Why do you think that you didn't fall into that same cycle?

Like so many people do where they, they follow the same line, you know, that they were following as a kid because they saw what their family did head and they just fell right into the same trap.

Why do you think you didn't fall into that trap?

Well, I can tell you I'm a stubborn individual and I think stubborn the fact that someone stubborn doesn't make it bad. Stubborn is not a good or bad thing.

It's what you're stubborn about. So I just, again, it's an energy.

So I use that stubbornness, that hardheadedness to my advantage.

And so I'm not going to say that my life has been perfect and I took all the right roads and the right paths because I didn't, you know, I could have been a statistic.

There's a lot of people right now that are dying of fentanyl overdoses unintentionally because they don't realize fentanyl is in the drugs that they're doing.

I went through a party phase, Kevin.

And in that phase, you know, some of the stuff that I did They could have had fentanyl in it, but they didn't have that back then. Thank God.

Because I went through a phase of, in high school, I was focused on school and my grades, and I was focused on sports, maybe a little bit of girls.

[7:39] I came from a small town and it was a small selection. But when I went to college and I played football in college and I got on my own and I started seeing a variety of women and parties, and I was like, wow.

And I felt like, man, I could be the man. And I thought being the man was being popular and doing what everybody else was doing and having a good time with it and making a scene.

And so I fell into that for a little while. But what I also found out very quickly is it can get dark.

[8:11] And so I went through a phase where I was having a good time.

And then a lot of my friends were leaving after college and moving on with their lives and going back home to their hometowns. And I was not, I don't want to say stuck.

I felt like I was stuck. I was back in the college town where all my friends left and I was, who was left was the people that were doing the party and not really going anywhere.

And guess what? I was one of those people. And I'm sure I held people back, you know, being a part of that crowd.

[8:38] I'm not happy to admit that or excited about that at all.

And I look back at some of the things I did and I'm not really pleased with it, but I got out. Thank God I met my wife.

It gave me a renewed sense of purpose to be the best version of myself I could be.

And I felt like I actually started over again when When I first met my wife, I wasn't the best person that I could be, like everything that I was cracked up to be, so to speak.

And then I had to work and I've been working ever since.

I've been married almost 21 years now and it's been a journey for myself of rediscovering who I am and what I could possibly be, what I could do here and how I could impact many other people, including my wife, my kids, extended family, friends, and anybody I come in contact with.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. But what was that turning point that made you have the pivot from that life you were leading to getting where you are today?

Well, I started reading and I started paying attention to things and I started getting mentors and I started really identifying, like, first of all, who am I?

And I also started to identify who do I want to be or what do I want to do, accomplish, and who do I need to become to do that?

When I started paying attention to that, I started realizing the chaos that was in my life or any confusion I had in my life was self-inflicted.

And I realized that people live in chaos.

[9:50] That they create, despite them, you know, not taking responsibility for it.

And I started to realize, wait a minute, I can actually cause and create my future.

And so I started trying to make decisions that would lead to that.

And I started to realize if I can align my thoughts, my words, my actions, and the environment that I keep, the people around me in alignment with where I want to go and who I want to be, then that's what it'll be.

And I started to realize that anything that was going on in my life that I wasn't happy with, that I didn't like was my own creation and based on my thoughts, words, actions, and the environment that I keep.

So that was a kind of a turning point. And I've been on a journey making decisions that would lead me to where I want to go versus where I didn't want to go.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that.

So did you end up, did you finish college?

Yeah, I finished it, but I didn't graduate.

[10:43] I finished, I was finished. You know, I went into to the class one day and a teacher, you know, I was in a business school and a lot of the teachers were hard to understand.

They had accents and they were very difficult to understand.

And I would go up and ask questions and some of them would give me attitude about getting clarifications on some things and started to realize, wait a minute, this is not what I'm here for.

So I went to a class one day and my roommate tells a story. I went out, left.

He knew I had an exam to take. And I went out and took this exam.

Five minutes later, I came back and he's He's like, what?

That's the fastest exam that I've ever seen somebody take. And I said, well, here's the story. I went in. I sat down at the desk.

Looked at the test, the exam, and I made a decision. So I'm done.

I walked up to the teacher, the professor's desk. I put my exam on his desk and I said, I'm done. I'm tired of being tested.

And I left. And I was in the restaurant business at that time.

And I said, you know what? I'm going to be like Tom Cruise and I'm going to follow along with that movie cocktail.

And I'm going to create my own bar and restaurant.

And I called my mom and told her, and she said, are you crazy? crazy.

[11:50] And I said, I'm done. I'm done. And she said, you need to really reconsider and think about this. And I said, no, I've already done. I'm done.

And from that point, I went into the restaurant business, which is a very party-esque type of business.

You'd work in a bar, the bar would close at two, you clean up, 2.30, three o'clock, you're out of there. And then what do you do? You don't go to bed.

Somebody has a party, go to the party. And it led me down that dark road for a while.

Yeah, no, no, no. Wow. Now, what I what I want to say here that I think is really powerful is we're obviously going to get down the line of the successes you've had in life and what has got you to where you are today.

And what I what I want to mention about this real quick before we get past the whole talk about college is is the fact that I feel like Like, and you can tell me if you feel the same or different is, I feel like we've been living in a society where we are basically taught as kids, like, you have to go to college, graduate college, or like, you're going to be nothing.

Nothing and the fact of the matter is that you know i do not believe that to be true and i look at you and the fact that you didn't graduate college and i look at the successes you have.

[13:07] And i just want to make mention of that that i mean i think that's pretty darn awesome thank you yeah i don't think it's college i think it's just a journey that you have to go on of improving over over a trend line, because you'll have ups and downs, but you're always trying to get to the next level, get to the next level, and it's just in constant state of improvement.

And I think that's the crucial key. It's not college. Now, if you need to go to college to get a degree to be something that you wanna be, do something you wanna do, I should say, Then you got to do what you got to do. But I went down the path of, I'm going to figure it out.

And of course, a lot of people that get out of college, the thing that they go into is sales, which that's what happened to me.

So I went into in-home sales, cut my teeth in in-home sales, high-pressure sales situations, and did that for nine years.

I hated it the whole time. But looking back on it, some of the skills that I have now in being able to build rapport with people, confront things, be in uncomfortable situations.

[14:03] Communicate with people, even though I hated it, I started to learn this concept that if you hate something, lean into it. If it's hard, lean into it.

If you're scared, lean into it. And all of a sudden, it gives you control of that situation versus most people running from those things and shine away and then they become a puppet and they become controlled by whatever that thing is.

And I learned this important concept. And that's taken me everywhere I've gone in life.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Now, what ended up happening to kind of, you know, progressing you through your career journey? I mean, when did you start a career that maybe you actually enjoyed?

[14:47] Well, you know, for a short period of time, I got into real estate and then I got into the mortgage business.

And for a short period of time, I really enjoyed that because when I got into the mortgage business, a bunch of my buddies were making money and I was witnessing it.

And, you know, I said, man, let me get into that. If they can do it, I know I can do it and I'm happy for them, but I'm a, you know, unapologetic believer in God.

And I think if, if God did that for them, him. He's willing to do it for me.

And I jumped into it two feet first. I was driving an hour and a half each way to my office where my friends were working.

And it was like a cube farm, which reminded me of a team or locker room.

And it was a bunch of us hanging out, goofing off, but we were also working and making a lot of money. And I enjoyed that for a while.

And then the mortgage industry in 2007 to 2008 started to fall apart.

And they started to require licensing for mortgage loan officers. And.

[15:35] A lot of my buddies didn't want to get licensed for whatever reason, or they couldn't get licensed and a lot of them fell out.

And during that phase, the mortgage business and real estate in general took a hit and a lot of business went away and a lot of people went elsewhere.

And so I didn't have that camaraderie, that locker room feel anymore.

And so I started thinking, okay, I got to make a move here. I got to do something.

So I decided with my partner to start opening branches and scaling and building that camaraderie back.

And we did that. And in seven years, we took a company from scratch to eight figures, not knowing what I was doing necessarily, except for the hustle that fell apart and crashed.

And I started to realize the importance of culture and the importance of systems and processes.

And I started putting it back together. And darn if we didn't go back to eight figures in two years, which took us seven the first time.

And I started really realizing the power of intention, leadership, how it starts with me, core values, culture. And then that's allowed me to have the success that I've had to this date with other businesses besides the mortgage business.

[16:37] Wow, dude, that's incredible.

[16:40] I mean, I mean, talk about some massive success.

And what I like about listening to you talk about this is I catch this theme of mindset.

And I don't know if you call it mindset or have another cooler word for it.

But I listen to you and it seems like everything keeps going back to the mindset that you have through every journey you're on. Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

[17:09] It has to do with it has to do with the way you're thinking.

Remember, I talked about the alignment with your thoughts, words, actions, environment that you keep.

And I think it's more than just mindset. I think it's all of that.

And then, you know, when you get on to something, you accomplish something.

You have to be thinking future focus. OK, what's next?

What's the next level I can go to? Because here's the thing, it's not about being greedy and want more.

It's about continuously creating, causing, creating, and seeing how far you can take this thing that you've been given.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. So maybe shifting gears, I don't know, I don't know where it falls into play, but I got to ask you, where did you come up with the cool name.

[17:47] Of obviously take off your last name of C-Rock. Because, dude, it just sounds like you should be a radio DJ.

Well, when I was playing football in college, people started calling me C-Rock.

And when they saw me, they would say C-Rock. Then I got a license plate, a vanity plate that said C-Rock on it.

I put it on my car, my 1995 Eagle Talon stick shift.

And I started leaning into that. And then when I started getting into some mentorship and getting around people that were into branding and things, and speaking from stage.

And one time I said this, I stood up in front of 50 people and I said, I think Grant Cardone was there and a guy named Pete Vargas and Jared Glant from 10X.

And hi, my name is Mike Scirocco. My friends call me C-Rock.

And then they gave me feedback on that. And they said, man, you know, the power in what you just did was you made us all feel like friends of yours.

And I was like, wow. And there's a lot of Mike's out there. There's a lot of Kevin's out there. Right. And I said, you know what? There's not a lot of C-Rock's out there.

[18:46] Let me lean into this. And I started leaning into it. And when I started building my personal brand, I wanted to separate, differentiate myself.

I wanted to become that one.

And that one is a concept I've come up with over the last couple of years.

And it's about not being the best, but it's being the best of what you've been given and differentiating yourself, separating yourself.

And that's what sells in business is differentiation.

[19:07] And so being like everyone else, I started to realize being like everyone else is It's not the route to take.

Wow. Wow. I love it. Now, my question is, is for the person listening today, they're like, man, I love this idea of branding myself, but I ain't got the cool name like Mike C. Rock.

Is there words of advice of how maybe you went about it, how you would encourage

[19:32] somebody else instead of building a brand name, but building their own name as a brand?

Yeah. I mean, it's not as much about the name necessarily. It's about who you are, right?

It's important to find out who you are and not identify with what you're doing.

I was identifying for so long, Kevin, with the mortgage business and I was a mortgage guy and I was a...

Business owner and entrepreneur and I am this, I am that.

And then I started to realize that's not the route to take. The things that you do happen to be your vehicles, the vehicles that you drive to get to where your mission is.

And I started realizing, wait a minute, okay, so if I'm not what I do, who am I then?

And I started to lay out my core values of what's important to me, what my non-negotiables are, where I'm going to put my stake in the ground, how I'm going to be a fire, a big giant fire versus a little candle flame.

You know, I started noticing that wind, this is like, you know, taking everything that's energy and good or bad because things aren't really good or bad. They're, they're used for different things.

If you think about the wind, the wind would blow a candle flame out.

[20:36] Right. But if you're a big fire, the wind feeds you, fuels you.

[20:40] So I started thinking like, what are my non-negotiables? What are my, my standards? standards and that's who I am going to be.

That's my brand. That's who I'm going to be.

And so I started paying attention to that. And so if you're listening and it's not about the name necessarily, it's about what do you, what do you stand for?

And then when you're out there talking on social media and you're having meetings with people and building businesses with people and building relationships with people, it's more about who you are versus what you do. And then that's the key.

And I just leaned into that and, and, and that's what I teach people.

[21:07] Yeah, dude, I love it. So powerful.

Now, I don't know how far along the journey that I'm going to skip forward, but at some point in time, you decided to start a podcast and I believe maybe the book came after the podcast, but.

[21:25] Talk to me about the podcast. First off, how did that come about?

Well, when I started, I was in the mortgage business and I started to realize about 2019 that I wasn't aligned.

Something wasn't right. I was coming home. We were making a lot of money, but I would come home unfulfilled.

And I started to realize that the money was seemed to be a trap. It was like a handcuffs.

And I was confused and conflicted by that because I thought everything I grew up to know is like, Hey man, make a lot of money, take care of your your family.

I have a nice house on the water, beautiful wife, two amazing, healthy kids.

I'm blessed beyond anything I could ever imagine. Why am I still conflicted here?

And when I started to realize I was identifying with what I did versus who I am.

So I said, you know what? I'm going to go on a journey of self-discovery and self-awareness and really find out who I am. And then I'm going to get known for it.

And I'm going to get known on a grand scale because I was working so hard to get known locally in my regional market.

I've been on the cover of magazines before and locally, known by a lot of people locally. But I said, you know what? I'm I'm going to get known globally.

Matter of fact, I was starting to watch the television, CNN, and I started paying attention seeing they were talking about aliens and UFOs.

And I was like, I don't know if there's aliens or UFOs, but if there is, Kevin, I'm going to get known. The aliens are going to know who I am.

I want to think it was more of an expansion exercise. I wanted to go big.

I wanted to just expand the way I thought.

And then I said, you know what? If I do this, I can get a presence that's bigger than life.

[22:45] And when I was intentional about that and I started acting upon it, people would say say to me when they meet me in person, like, you got this person, it's like a bigger than life personality.

And I'm like, yeah, you know what? That works. And so I said, I'm going to get known globally.

And for what I do, which is I'm a performance addict, individual group performance, getting people from where they are to pushing towards where they should be, where they could be.

And I also know how to scale businesses and build brands. So I'm going to get known for that.

And so when I committed to doing that, I had no idea how I was going to do it, what the steps were that we're going to be.

That's what holds most people back. They don't know the how, so they don't even try. They don't commit to anything.

And I found out that when you set an intention and you commit, your intention...

Starts to go where your commitment is. When your attention goes there, you start to see opportunities that you normally didn't see.

When you see these things, it starts to give validation to them and create an existence to them.

[23:39] All of a sudden, some guy invited me on his podcast as a guest.

When I went on the show, I didn't even know what podcasts were.

This is about five years ago. I didn't even know what podcasts were.

When I went on the show, shout out to Chris Donaldson from Office Hours, I don't even know how I answered a lot of the questions because I was so in tune and aware of how I was feeling.

And I noticed my confidence started spiking, going through the roof.

And I was like, wow, hold on a second here.

If I can bottle this, if I could just bottle this confidence, I can accomplish anything.

And I started to realize, Kevin, that confidence turns hearts in favor of you.

[24:13] Without confidence, a lack of confidence will turn them against you.

And I said, you know what? If podcast guesting is what's doing this, I'm going to lean into this.

And I started going on seven to 10 shows a week. I told my assistant at the time, who's my ops manager now, my partner, Kim, I got to get on podcasts.

So seven to 10 a week, I did for four years. And to this date, I've done over 900 podcast interviews and it's changed my life.

[24:38] And what I learned was a couple of tips for those listening out there.

When you go on someone's show, like I'm on Kevin's show right now, when Kevin publishes this show, my name is going to go in the title.

What I talked about, the overarching topic is going to be in the title.

But the most important part through this time, I was worried about my website, MikeCRock.com.

I was worried about optimizing SEO, all this.

But I realized that when somebody publishes a podcast that you go on, guess what goes on their website?

Your name, what you talk about, your links, your social handles.

And so what's better than having your own website is being on thousands of websites, so that if somebody ever wants to work with you, partner with you, you're raising money and they want to invest in you, if they Google search your name, what happens?

And just having your own website is not good enough because that's your validation.

You're talking about yourself.

But if you're on podcasts and they see pages and pages and pages on Google of different people interviewing you, this is beyond having your own show, different people interviewing you, your credibility and authority go through the roof.

So I was like, wow, this is very, very important to lean into and take advantage of. So I did it.

Now, I'm going to tell you right now, I'm very impatient and I wanted things to happen right away.

And it wasn't moving fast enough for me, but I just knew that if I just stuck with it and was consistent, that it would grow upon each other.

Like the chip away effect would compound and I'd get an exponential effect. And darn if I didn't.

Five years later now, known globally, I've spoken on some of the biggest stages with with some of the biggest names, presidents, billionaires, super successful celebrities.

[26:08] And I feel like I'm one degree away from pretty much anyone on the planet.

[26:12] And it's changed my life. So in doing that, I don't know how much you want to get into right now.

But in doing that, I created that one brand, that one agency, because I blueprinted and documented the whole process with my team so that we could help other people do the same thing I did. And that's what that one agency does.

And we go out and say, hey, this is what we did. Look where I am now.

And if I'm a little ahead of the journey, further in the journey than you are, I would suggest you listen and hop on board with us.

And that's what we're doing now, Kevin. That's our focus.

[26:40] Yeah, dude. Amazing. I mean, dude, that's no joke. The number of podcasts you've been on. That's insane.

Yeah. You know, if I think that way, that would slow me down.

So I think that I'm just getting started.

[26:54] Oh, the mindset master at work.

[26:57] I love it. I want to talk to you more about that one agency in a moment.

But when you look back on this journey and let's look at it from today and you're looking back, what was the biggest struggle you faced that maybe tried to slow you down the most?

Maybe it was something personally, something professionally difficult.

[27:19] What was that one struggle that really caught you up?

I think it's my lack of patience at the time. And I've worked on that.

I wanted everything faster and sooner. But you got to realize that there's a journey that you got, you know, you have to go on.

There's building that has to be done and optimization and development and relationship building.

And I think that was probably the biggest challenge.

[27:42] And, you know, I was interviewing a gentleman who I've, you know, became, you know, acquaintances with now. His name is Brian Smith.

And Brian Smith is the founder of Ugg Boots.

And he told me about his journey. And he said, C-Rock, you cannot give birth to an adult.

Frogs have to be tadpoles first. And that hit me. And I was like, you know what?

I got it. I'm going to really embrace this journey and be present to everything I'm going through so I can get the most out of it.

And another guy, another gentleman named Tim Story, I interviewed one day and he said, C-Rock, I know you want it now, but you keep going on this journey and you won't have to seek out opportunities.

They will come looking for you. And so then I started to realize this concept of creating an attraction model. My whole life, Kevin, I've been chasing.

I was chasing good grades, chasing athletics, got to college, started chasing women, got into the business sales and all that.

I was chasing customers, chasing revenue, chasing employees.

And I chased my whole life. And I started to realize this concept of creating an attraction model. Now, I know how to chase and I think it's important to know how to chase effectively and still be able to when you need to.

But if you just imagine if you can create an attraction model where people come to you with opportunities and now your challenge becomes saying yes to the right ones and saying no to the wrong ones.

And so that's that's what that was the biggest challenge, I believe.

Yeah. Wow. Powerful.

[29:01] So before my next question, though, I would love for you to expand a little bit more. I know you kind of give us an overview of that one agency, but go a little bit deeper.

Talk to me exactly what you guys do for somebody who's listening today.

Well, I think it's important if you're in business, it's important to understand the concept of omnipresence and becoming a celebrity in your space, becoming that one in your space.

And I talk to a lot of people and they're like, yeah, I'm not really interested in being a celebrity.

And they go right to the fact of TMZ, celebrity, and everybody being in your business, and then the darkness of that, and how it leads people down the wrong road.

But they don't think about the impact side of it. They're thinking about the ego side of it.

I wanted to become a celebrity and become that one and become omnipresent for impact, not for ego.

And I think every business person should think about this. They should be thinking about, how can I become that one?

[29:57] The celebrity in my space, become omnipresent so that I can make the level of impact that I'm capable of, not where I'd be satisfied, but what I'd be capable of with the potential that I have. Yeah.

So that one is about taking people on that journey. First of all, educating them on the importance of it.

And then, okay, now they understand the importance of it. Okay.

How do I do it? What are the steps?

[30:21] Yeah, that's absolutely incredible. Incredible. Now, here's my next question for you is I keep listening to you, man.

And you got to understand that.

I mean, I have a lot of people tell me like, oh, man, Kev, you're so positive. You're so positive.

But then I meet somebody like you and I'm like, this guy is insane with not only just positivity, but your overall just energy, your vibe.

And what I want to know is is what is life like for you behind closed doors?

What do you do when you wake up in the morning to prepare yourself with the mindset to take on the day like you are?

Well, first of all, I have an intention to have an aura or an energy field around me so that when people step into that, they get very uncomfortable.

One, because my intention is to get people to elevate, to think bigger, to go further, go harder.

And if they don't like it and they're too uncomfortable, they leave that because I need people to be able to self-select out too because it's important for the alignment, right?

So that's intentional. And then from there, what I do every day, I wake up every morning, thank you.

As soon as I wake up, thank you for another opportunity to impact this world.

Thank you for everything that I've been given.

[31:37] And let's go be a hero today. Let's see who I can meet today. day.

And then from there, after prayer and meditation there, I go and who am I going to touch first?

Well, it's my wife, my kids. That's who's in my home.

That's the first step is I got to like, what kind of legacy am I going to leave?

What am I going to work on here so that my kids leave this house and then they do the same thing.

They have an aura about them where they can go out and impact others and others around them. They elevate other people.

So that's my first priority, my first intention of the day. And then from there, I control my day, my time.

So I set aside time in the beginning of the day.

[32:15] My day, my day really for business doesn't start till 10 o'clock Eastern time.

Prior to that, I'm focused on my family and then I'm focused on myself because I believe that I can't really impact people unless I sharpen and optimize myself.

So I take the first part of my day to do that.

Work out, eat right, read.

And then 10 o'clock comes and that's when my calls start, my meetings start.

I hammer away between podcasting and my business meetings.

And then I have a thing called a 15 mini that I do with total strangers that are targeted.

And I get about three to eight 15 minis throughout the day where I meet people and find out what they're working on.

And it's got their attention right now and what their vision is so that I can explore helping them.

And then at the end of the day, I do go back to the family thing again and pour into the family. and what do you call it when you debrief, debrief the day, right?

Find out how I can help them optimize what they went through, get everything out of the day that they went through.

And then I do an assessment. At the end of every day, I do an assessment. How was my thoughts?

How are my words, my actions, and the people that I had in my environment today?

Do they align with my mission of being unstoppable to live in the life of my dreams and showing other people to do the same?

[33:29] And then I make adjustments for the next day. and that's how it goes yeah talking about family aspect what do you hope that your your kids, when when they're and i don't know how old they are but but say they're they're at the age they're they're heading off to college you're done with college they're they're heading out into their careers what do you hope that that you were able to instill in them to help them succeed yeah leadership starts with me as one of my core values right and what i want in the world i have have to be first.

[34:03] So, you know, I think I do a lot of talking. Okay.

And I noticed that the kids don't respond necessarily to me talking and preaching to them.

[34:12] So I always make sure that I remember that I have to be an example for my wife, for my kids, so that when they see and experience me, they take that upon themselves and then they go out and they can elevate other people.

And when I drop my daughter off and when I drop my son off to school, when I used to drive him, he drives now.

But I always end the time together in the morning before school, right before they get out of the vehicle.

I tell him, be a hero and a leader. The world needs us. Hmm. Wow.

Wow, dude. So powerful. So incredible.

And you know what I love about you talking about just being a dad is you started our conversation today talking about you as a child and you've, you've gone on this journey that is just up and up and up and you, you turn your challenges into opportunities.

[35:05] You found ways to to just make good out of the bad.

And I can't help but think that you use that to just make yourself a better husband, a better father than if you had never gone through what you did.

Yeah, I mean, 100 percent. That's definitely the case.

[35:26] Definitely the case. You know, I'll tell you a quick story. So growing up, my dad and I eventually stopped talking or seeing each other.

And there's a lot of details in my book that I wrote about that.

And I'll leave it to that.

But I had a stepfather, thank God, stepped in my life when I was about eight years old.

And he became more of a father to me than going forward in my life.

[35:48] And in 2019, I got a call in the middle of the night.

My wife woke me up out of a dead sleep. And she said, your mom called.

I got a missed call from your mom. This is one o'clock in the morning.

And then I got a text from her and it said, George, George was my stepfather.

It said, George did. And she's like, I don't know what that means.

And, and, you know, this is one o'clock in the morning. I'm out of sorts, you know, waking up out of a dead sleep.

And so we called my mom and she answered and she said she was, she was hysterical and had to calm her down.

And she said, you know, George died and she, that's what she meant to tell you.

But she said, George did.

And of course it shocked me. And apparently he came out of the woods.

He was an avid hunter and fisherman, and it was wintertime.

He came out of the woods, and he got in his car after deer hunting.

He had a heart attack and died instantly.

[36:35] We didn't know where he was. My brother, at first, my brother had to go out driving the roads looking for him.

It was icy that night and snowing and sleeting.

Eventually, they called the state police, and they said that he was taken to the hospital, and he ended up passing away.

I guess 2019, I was probably about 42 at that time, and I realized something.

Something I've realized that, you know, life goes fast and you never know when it's going to end.

We hear this all the time, but about two weeks after George passed, I got this energy rush.

This thing came into me and it was like a passion. And I started to realize, wait a minute, man, I don't know how much longer I have here.

[37:10] I better step my game up. I got to act with urgency. The torch is mine to carry now.

And I got to be an example for my brothers and sisters and all those around me. And that's my duty. That's my obligation now that I have to do this.

[37:24] And so you asked me earlier what drives me. That really, at this point in my life, is driving me because I realized that George did a great job stepping in. I couldn't ask for a better father figure.

Someone that held my feet to the fire, held me accountable, was not easy.

He never laid a hand on us, but he was very hard on us.

Thank God. And him being hard on us and not letting us slip away with things and get away with things and not make excuses, turned me into the man I am today where I can do the same thing. And I have to carry that torch now.

And so what's that been now? What, five years now?

Five years. Let me tell you something, Kevin, when you're committed and you get a mission and you're on a mission, you can do a lot in a lot shorter time.

And so I've accomplished more in in the last five years than I've accomplished the prior 42 years.

[38:10] Wow. All because you have a mission. I love it.

For the person who is listening today and they think you're as cool as I do, and they're like, man, how do I get plugged into this guy's world?

Where do we send them? Yeah. The best place I think is Instagram.

Mikey CROC, Mikey CROC. Put a lot of free content out on Instagram.

I've invested well into the six figures in my content and pushing stuff out.

My personal development to be the best person for people to go to, to get inspired, to be guided by, to be inspired by.

And so I've, you know, go to Instagram and check it out. All right. Fantastic.

Well, of course, that will be inside of the show notes today.

Mike, dude, sincerely thank you for being here today for, for sharing your story and just totally bringing the heat on, And just reminding us that, you know what, we hold the key to our future.

And sometimes you just got to unlock it. You got to put in the rocket fuel.

You got to put the junk in the trunk and you got to get the junk out of the trunk. Oh, yes, exactly. Exactly.

[39:22] But but seriously, dude, seriously want to thank you so much, man, for for being here.

Oh, no, thank you. Pleasure. and I'm inspired by you, Kevin.

I know you inspire a lot of other people.

And I know when you're by yourself, you don't always realize it.

And you just got to tell yourself, keep going. Keep going. Let me see how far I can take this thing.

Yeah, absolutely, dude. I love it. For you listening today, my hope is always is you heard something, which my goodness, unless you had your volume turned off, then you probably heard a lot of things that could impact your life today.

Thanks to Mike C. Rock. Be sure, check out today's show notes.

I'm going to leave links to all of his information where you can find his podcast, find his book, find the Instagram, all the things.

And with that, get out there and take on the day.

[40:12] Music.