Business and cancer recovery AMA - ask me anything!
hey there guys mike here from sell your service and as promised i figured i'd do a little bit of an ama video which it means ask me anything i don't want the whole channel and all of my content to be about having cancer but it has impacted the business in a pretty significant way for example i'm going to do this video and we're going to try out clarence as our editor which i'm very excited about but it also means at the moment i'm just not able to produce the videos that i was producing but then well we'll talk about this in a bit do i need to produce that level of videos anyway i put a post out asking people to send me some questions i've been getting quite a lot of questions via email social media messages like forums uh so i figured i'd try and round them up and we're just gonna go through them there are time codes below for each question if you wanted to skip to a particular one or maybe there's one you're asking if you do have any more questions by all means just put them in the comments below and we'll get around to it lawrence asks how do you readjust your focus when the [ __ ] really hits the fan how do you tackle the crisis but are still able to recognize the need to as you've done keep on with something like your fitness now this is this is a an interesting one because it was a big crisis that i had when i was sat there in the ward and they were like oh yeah we need to operate on your kidneys a bunch of times so for a quick update i need to have two more operations on my kidneys they think maybe one may probably two looks like the cancer's all gone which is great but i still need to have a round of chemotherapy i didn't know this but chemotherapy massively affects your kidneys they're going to hold off on the chemo and it would only be one round just to top it off but they think that it's pretty much gone how do you focus when you're having all this stuff going on it was really a question of what's the ultimate huge priority what overrides everything what's the most important thing and the most important thing is family my number one concern was that i wouldn't be able to support live i was like how's the business gonna do what's gonna happen how does that work when it comes to live and i have a mortgage she has a job life is expensive we don't have we've only got one car that kind of works out my number one priority was that then i started thinking back on like how could i continue to run the business from my bed i went extreme and i was like how could i run a business for an hour a week if i could only muster the strength for one hour's worth of work a week how would i run that business and luckily when you're on a ward you have a lot of time to think and so i did just think about how am i going to run a business for one hour a week on the the fitness side i think i went too heavy into it i think i was a little bit in denial and was like i can pretty much go back to doing what i was doing and i couldn't i could barely walk i could barely move my core and my stomach had taken such a huge battering that it was silly of me to think that i would be able to kind of get back to where i was but i know that movement is extremely important a lot of people try to get better after being ill i was in a really good position where i was in pretty good shape before getting ill and hopefully that'll speed up the recovery and i think we are seeing evidence of it speeding up the recovery but the kind of mindset towards what do i prioritize it came back to what's number one what's most important and most important was family and i was just really more concerned about making sure i could help them and making sure i could you know work with them the business was a big worry as well because we've got a team we've got people we pay and people we employ and i wanted to make sure that everyone could continue to have a job my priorities weren't necessarily about myself as i think most people find in these situations they think what do i need to do for other people but luckily everyone else kind of rallied around me and yeah we've we've begun pulling together and i think they've done an outstanding job so i hope that answers that question beth livingston asks how is liv handling your illness is she doing okay liv's doing well i think it was a huge shock for her obviously it was a huge shock for my mom as well they were both pretty pretty upset about it but they're both strong pragmatic thoughtful people they did a little bit of the i won't show mike how worried i am like i could see that and so they've had their own little mini support networks around them but she's good she is keeping me on the straight and narrow making sure that i don't do too much and helping me with the things that i do want to do but she's been outstanding but yeah she's good i think it's easier in a way when you're the person going through it because i think your family you kind of just accept like well this is what i've got to do whereas your family and your friends they're the ones who have to put up with the consequences i think so yeah but she's good yeah she's all right thank you cheers beth elena my managing director asks how has the setback changed your mindset moving forward has it shifted your focus and purpose what did you miss about work what i missed about work was creating content and talking to my team and you know other funnel builders i love that i love the fact that every day i get to just talk to people who i love working with and solving their problems and helping them i really miss talking to my team they're such a like a smart group of people and and i was just so far but i couldn't even like all the drugs and stuff meant like i couldn't even focus so i couldn't even catch up on things that i wanted to catch up on how has the setback changed my mindset moving forward in a funny way i don't think it has i'm sure it has i'm sure i'll discover longer term how it has but i am quite a stoic person i think i'm quite pragmatic i thought well if this is the hand i've been dealt i can only affect what i do and how i deal with it what it has done has made me think actually [ __ ] i can make a business work without me at the center of it previously a lot of my work has been me creating the content doing the coaching creating the products and basically i texted my team and was like hey guys just to let you know i've got cancer and i've got a ruptured kidney so i'm going to be out of action for a little bit and obviously they were like that's awful but then they were like okay fine and they went off and did the coaching calls and created products and did the videos and stuff and i was like maybe they don't need me maybe i've made myself redundant from my own business what that did was show me actually we do have the capability to create a business that doesn't rely on me being at the center of it that was a huge huge shift and i was like it's my own self-limiting beliefs that have said to me that i have to be at the center of it and i have to be in control of everything because actually we found that elena who asked the question has is capable of running the business day-to-day kate is capable of organizing and running coaching calls it's not that i didn't think they were there's a little part of you that thinks but if they are capable of doing it what does that mean for you for a couple of weeks i had a real sort of identity crisis as to being like well what do i do now another interesting point was that a lot of my and i'm just speaking i'm trying to speak like empirically a lot of my personality and online persona and stuff is built around doing stuff working hard being focused being productive and moving making difficult choices this kind of stuff and that's taken away from you immediately and i was like i don't have anything else to offer that was my identity and it was taken away from me and as dumb as it sounds that was a huge huge worry for me i was like well what are people going to know me for if they don't know me for working hard and that kind of made me reflect and think well actually maybe that's not what you should be known for i don't know elena also asks also being self-employed you don't have much to fall back on other than those around you are there other safety nets you would put in place for future situations i'm thinking taking time off because you want to don't do this again yeah i don't plan on getting super sick ever again but you never know it happens legally speaking technically i'm not self-employed i have a salary with the limited company that i work for and that's always been an interesting distinction for me because technically speaking it's legally speaking i'm not self-employed but the reality is yet i always joke that as an entrepreneur i can choose to not earn money anytime i want and of course you do have safety nets when you're employed i think even after only a few months your employer can offer you sickness pay and things like this you take that risk though as a business owner you take the risk that you are going to create something ultimately bigger and better and more not just more money but is closer to what you want than a than a salary job or a working job but in terms of safety nets the three big things that i have taken away from this is having this gonna sound like a pitch and i apologize having scalable products that can be sold without you it's those take time to produce and you have to sell a greater volume typically but having a couple of courses or a course that you can sell for one or two thousand dollars means that you can just focus on selling at scale and that can take a huge chunk of the the revenue that you could potentially lose out on so having scalable products things like recurring revenue products and affiliate products we've really heavily invested in those it's not necessarily a case of are there like savings and stuff because you could have savings and eat into them we've got family members who have had savings and they've just disappeared for one reason or another but actually making sure that you can continue to generate income without you being there you have to start thinking that way that to me is the number one thing i've taken away from this and that's probably the kind of crusade that i'm gonna go forward with is trying to help people create income streams that don't rely on them and don't need them to be there i don't believe in passive income at all but i do believe in scalable income and that can make a massive difference michael mcginty asks hey michael how you doing who also had a a crazy time recently as well so we had a lot in common about this hey michael how prepared were you for this unexpected enforced time away from your business when you get back to work what things will you put in place in order to be prepared if lightning strike twice it never does again thank you and lastly now that you've had to take time out and let your team run the business do you see an opportunity for you to work fewer less hours and delegate more when you get back ding what is going to be different from mike killen and what's going to be different for sell your service you may well have gotten an insight into what it would be like to be you at 60 and looking to slow down or reduce your hours great opportunity to make plans yeah 100 who was it who said ask a sick man what he wants and there's just one thing yeah ask a healthy man what he wants and the list usually goes on for a long time 100 uh hard to beat good health hopefully appreciate more when you get back to it hopefully that'll be soon thank you very much so yeah appreciate your thoughts there michael and you're right it was i had plans to take september off i love the paralympics i love the idea that someone can be differently abled and still absolutely dominate an athletics or a sports i the the focus and the commitment there's something about the paralytics that i absolutely adore so i want to take september off and just watched the parallel paralympics and paralytic i think i said as in drunk paralympics so the plan was to put in place a trial for us to do that in september essentially doing what i'm doing now but in september have the content sorted have some coaching sorted and the big shift i realized is twofold first of all if you have a very clear objective in our case help funnel builders make more sales and actually the core purpose of the business is to increase the confidence of all entrepreneurs but we focus specifically on sales training for funnel builders and the core kind of mission that the team had was make sure mike has time off to recover that was the core mission that was the goal right that's the the objective that they've got and as soon as they had a clear objective everything else kind of took place everything else kind of fell into place and the second thing was i've hired the right people frankly i've had some real duds in the past but i'm happy to say that the team i have around me at the moment is just world class outstanding they work hard they're intelligent they communicate with each other and there was a bit of a case of because they knew they couldn't get in contact with me well they could but they would be waiting a long time and i couldn't really do anything about it anyway they just kind of got on with it and did it themselves so there was a funny thing of in the future then why can't we just do this going forward so basically this has been a test bed for how i want the business to run moving forward it's not even just a case of me taking time off this has been an experiment in how do we get the business to run more effectively we have seen time and again the more we remove me michael from the business the better the business runs a sell your service without michael killer could be the best sell your service out there we want to find out what my role is and we believe it's partnerships which is why i think my new title or role would be cpo or chief partnership officer elena as the managing director would run the day-to-day clarence as our online specialists are the cogs of the business and a lot of the content as well and then kate has come on board as a head coach working not full time because that we don't have that many people but being able to manage that community there's a huge amount that the team are bringing to the table because they had a really clear objective and because i trusted them and i've hired the right people and i said you don't have a choice i need you to kind of take care of this and weirdly i think we've actually found that this could be the best thing that's ever happened to the business i am seeing this as a huge opportunity so if you ever see the business as a massive success all you have to think is that's a good thing that might caught testicular cancer there we go colleen gratzer thank you so much for the board game by the way colleen um tiny epic galaxies i absolutely love it i've been playing it solo lots and with liv as well and a few other friends so yeah i love it really really good shout out i appreciate that did you have disability insurance in place to help with these kinds of situations so the short answer is no the question that colleen asked was also followed up there's a few people in the chat i think yeah christina romero and christina also asked great question i'm curious the difference in the us and the uk there's a few ways to answer this first of all we don't need insurance to get any kind of healthcare i just rocked up to the nhs and they just they take care of everything all my chemotherapy all my drugs in the uk we do have to pay for like prescription drugs uh but even then because i have cancer now technically i'm disabled which is insane so i get my prescriptions for free or free for the next five years or something that side of it was taken care of the health care side like you could be you could earn zero money and get the best health care in the uk that you could possibly get based on the nhs you'd have to pay a cent in terms of revenue we didn't really see a huge dip and if anything i was kind of like well this is a chance an opportunity for us to figure out a way for me to continue to generate revenue without having to be in the business there are insurance packages available it's based on your salary my salary is very low i think it's like the minimum no it's at the maximum tax threshold but the majority of the money i take out of the business is or profits from the company we do have that available i didn't have it for my situation but in some respects i didn't really need it and also we don't have huge outgoings so it wasn't really that big a deal i hope that answers that question kate townley smith our head coach asks how are you working to stay positive upbeat through the pain of physical therapy and recovery i've been very impressed with your videos and ability to have such high energy i'll let you in on a secret i am not high energy and positive and upbeat all the time liv has had to do a lot of work with me in terms of me being able to vent my frustration first of all above all else i know that at the highest possible level this is an opportunity i'm extremely lucky to be surrounded by the team and the family and the friends and my loved ones who are able to support me through this but my frustrations were born from the fact that i was in good shape and within the space of 24 hours all of a sudden i could barely walk it was really funny being on the ward because i was on the ward with some much older people and they were able to walk up and down and they were like what's this [ __ ] kid doing in bed he just seems to just lay there all day and when i tried to go to the loo i was like hobbling and i've had to have a walking stick so that was a big shock and then as i mentioned earlier the second big shock was my identity was taken away it's easy to work hard and frankly film yourself working hard and talking about that stuff and that becomes what you're known for but when you're not able to do that anymore you then think what am i known for so there's been some really interesting introspective things i've had to do to think about who am i like what's the role i play within the business and things like that physical therapy has been tough again because i'm just so weak i've gone from doing whatever i was doing to barely being able to lift and even not allowed to be able to lift things my core is super weak breathing because you breathe through your diaphragm you can even see i'm slumping a little bit in the seat this is a long process a few people have called it lovely imogen allen called them little beetle steps which i completely agree with i think they are little beetle steps but then you look at what beatles can produce over a long period of time and hopefully that's what i'll get back to you have to also remember that youtube and facebook and stuff is curated it's a highlights reel it's not reflective of real life so any of the material i've put out has absolutely been my best of moments and i've put myself on the mindset to do that recording this video will [ __ ] me for the rest of the day but above all else i think it's a choice i think we decide to interact or be how we want to be we decide how we want it how we want to act and there's an interesting dynamic about is it victim perpetrator and savior or something and those that three like relationships dynamics and if anything i i'm on the savior side which is not healthy so yeah i think it's choice and i think you just decide to do it it's as simple as that yeah i hope that answers the question asks if you had to start your funnel business all over again what would i do first of all i would choose a niche and the second thing is i would set my price for 25k and i wouldn't do anything lower than that i would only do work for 25 grand plus and i would just look for four projects a year i spent way too long doing low quality work for kind of anyone and everyone but i that's the thing i would do i would say we're only going to build funnels for online summits something like that and we would just go and do that i would just smash that out non-stop and create a load of content around that i would also hire people as quickly as i could or at least develop partnerships whereby if i had work come in i would be able to pass work over to someone so that i wasn't having to do the delivery work as well really good question christopher woods asked first i want to say hope you're doing well positive vibes your way i will take them thank you thank you so much what's your income goal for 2021 our income goal originally was i think 150 000 pounds so it might still be around that but because of this it might have shifted slightly we're having a look into it i think that's what we're going to try and aim for still is 150k everyone knows 2020 has been a crazy time for people so yeah that's the goal having said that our biggest goal is actually to make more profit if we kept the same revenue but we had higher profit levels that would actually be what we would really want to aim for at least that's certainly what elaine is aiming for my job is yeah let's go for 150 grand see if we can do that this year yeah cool so that was the ama thank you so much for your time guys i hope that was useful let me know if you do have any more questions down below there are a few other things like are you worried about testosterone levels or the ability to have kids as far as i can tell my testosterone levels are still the same it's an interesting one because i did have this from a lot of guys reached out to me are you worried about testosterone if your testosterone drops so to not put too fine a point on it an orchidectomy is they remove one of the testes so i've had one taken away which only leaves me with the two now it's a joke typically your testosterone levels stay the same your ability to have kids stays the same it's actually the chemotherapy that can drop them both which is interesting but interestingly most people already assume that they have high testosterone i got this question from a few people and i was like what are you doing with your testosterone now like i've seen your lifestyle i've seen your diet and frankly i've seen the shape you're in i don't think you're doing anything with the testosterone you have now so why would you be worried about losing testosterone because you're not using what you've got now and also it doesn't matter some of the top athletes in the world have low testosterone signified by things like lack of body hair but they are still huge or muscular or fit or extremely healthy so the truth is it actually doesn't affect your life that much and it looks like as far as i can tell my ability to potentially have children if we wish to do that in the future hasn't been affected nothing really seems to feel different i can't really tell the difference but yeah that was a really common question that came up as well thank you so much for your time guys massively appreciate it and i will see you on the next video have courage commit and take action
2021-06-04 05:10
