If You Can’t Win in 2025, You Can’t Win (and what you should be doing)

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In the green room, you started by saying something that I was like, all right, I got to hit record because I want you. I don't want you to waste all the flavor.
You said a lot of people are complaining that it's difficult to win today. And you think that this is one of the best times to win can you can you break that down for

us well i'll break it down the message from my 91 year old father who retired my dad worked until age 85 ryan so he's been retired for five years almost six years he said to me the other day when we were out on the boat he said you know son he says i don't have many regrets in my life hello everyone and welcome back to the show we have a tremendous conversation for you today with michael mclean michael is a former professional hockey team owner took a failing franchise in the junior pro division, turned that franchise around and six years later won the Barkley Cup. He then went on to purchase an insurance business, turned that business around, turned it into one of the most successful insurance businesses in the United States.
He now coaches men to find their power, to become kings, as he says. And we talk not just about what that means and why men need to reclaim their lives, but why it's also not just important for the individuals, for the men themselves, but for those they love, for those in their world, for those that they want to take care of, help, support, right? In order to be the best father, we have to be good.
In order to be the best spouse, we have to be good as men. And this is a dynamic conversation.
One warning before we move on to Michael, there is a lot of colorful language in this episode. So if you are offended by colorful language, you may want to turn the volume down just a little bit,

but I promise you will be motivated, you'll be inspired,

and by the end of this episode, you will be ready to run through a brick wall.

Guys, I love you for being here.

If you enjoy this show, we grow this show just by you sharing it,

by telling people, by posting on social media, texting the show to friends.

I appreciate you so much. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Let's get on to Michael McLean. In the green room, you started by saying something that I was like, all right, I got to hit record because I don't want you to waste all the flavor.
You said a lot of people are complaining that it's difficult to win today, and you think that this is one of the best times to win. Can you, can you break that down for us? Well, I'll break it down.
The message from my 91 year old father who retired, my dad worked until age 85, Ryan. So he's been retired for five years, almost six years.
He said to me the other day, when we were out on the boat, he said, you know, son, he says, I don't have many regrets in my life.

If you met my dad, Ryan, you would think he's 70, not 91.

Same with my mom.

My mom's 91.

She doesn't have any gray hair. He says to me, he goes, I have one regret.
He says, I should have worked to 90. And then my dad and I were talking about how this is clearly the greatest time in history to be alive, especially if you're a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, a founder, any of that stuff.
My dad started his businesses. He was an entrepreneur for 71 years.
He said, he goes, I started my business with the yellow pages. He said, you have the World Wide Web.
You have AI. You have the greatest time in history to be alive.
And this is the message that I'm telling my 12-year-old daughter all the time. You know, she has her own podcast.
She makes her own money, that kind of stuff. But, like, the men and women that I work with, they spend way, way, way too much time on rat poison platforms like the news, like, you know, politics is rat poison, and anti-social media.
I mean, it's okay to be on there for a little bit, but if you think that times are tough in 2025, you're in the wrong echo chamber. You need to get around better people.
You need to get around people who have actually won. People ask me what my business is now that I'm semi-retired.
I said, my business is the same as when I was in the hockey business, the insurance business, being a husband, being a father, I'm in the winning business. That doesn't mean I win all the time.
It means I lose a lot, but I mean, there has never, ever been a better time. And my dad's only regret is he said, I should have worked to 90.
He said, I would give one of my arms to be in the environment that you're in now. So that's my mindset every day that I get up.
And my dad mentioned on the boat the other day, he said, Michael, he says, if you can't make it in 2025, you can't make it. And that's the message that we need to be sending to leaders.
That's your, that's what you do. You work with some of the top leaders, unreasonable outcomes, but man, oh man, talk about the greatest environment in history to be in.
And when I say greatest environment, there's three things that really stick out. Number one, we are awash in wealth.

Trillions of dollars every single day.

Go stand in the river.

Go stand in the river.

Secondly, abundance like never before.

I mean, I pack up my family for half the year

and I get to live in the greatest country in the world,

America in the greatest city in the world, Naples, Florida.

And then for the other six months, I get to return and live on the lake in the second greatest country in the world which is Canada like the abundance is unbelievable and then of course what I mentioned the opportunity like literally the world wide web artificial intelligence whatever you want to talk about it but man oh man my dad said it the other day best ryan he says the good old days are now why do you think so many people live in a this perpetual state of anxiety and fear and and go down these negativity rabbit holes they're scared of winning when i was coaching minor pro hockey i own a couple of my teams. Then I got into the insurance business as the number one agent in the nation.
I've run barber shops, all this kind of stuff, tennis camps, hockey schools. And Ryan, when I was younger, I used to think that most people were afraid of losing.
And then as I matured and worked with the peak, peak men and women in the world, I realized what stops most people from getting moving is they're afraid of winning. And that was a light bulb moment for me because the thing is, is sure, we're all afraid of losing.
We don't want to lose. You should be sick to your stomach when you do lose.
And nothing is more valuable than losing. I tell my 12-year-old daughter, I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't learn anything from winning.
You win everything from being taken behind the woodshed and taught a lesson in sports, business, and life. That's where all the learning happens.
But I find most people that I work with, Ryan, they're afraid of winning in their subconscious or their conscious mind. If I do write the book and it's a smash success, what will other people think? If I start traveling and speaking like you do, what will my friends think? And this all goes back to the way we're hardwired into people-pleasing.
Like we need to be men and women on a mission. We don't need to be people-pleasers.
So when I run into people that are afraid of losing, but more importantly, they're afraid of winning, they sedate and they medicate by spending their time in these places where they watch other people live. See, living You're a man on a mission I know your deal You're a man on a mission But there's so many people That watch you Instead of doing their own thing Because they're afraid of winning I would love to be like Ryan But what if I became like Ryan And chased my mission What would would my wife think? What would my friends from high school think? What would my fuck old friends from college think? And it gets down to that fundamental where if a person cannot escape that mindset of people pleasing, if they can't, that is the number one crippling thing in sports, life, and business.
If you are a people pleaser instead of a man or a woman on a mission, you have no chance to live the life of your dreams. Why aren't we taught this? Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons that it's not taught in school, and you don't run into it a lot is because, I mean, the education system, as an example, I mean, we, I, we homeschool our daughter because I don't want her in the old factory industrial age, put up your hand to use the bathroom school.
So I'm raising an entrepreneur. I'm, I'm raising a president, not a poodle.
I'm raising a president, not a princess. So we focus on entrepreneurship in our home, whether she decides to be a vet or decides, I don't care long as she runs the show for herself.
because I think in 2025 and looking down the road in five or ten years,

there's no place for anybody but the founder and the entrepreneur.

Like, you're going to have a hard time commuting to work and sitting in a cubicle once AI gets going here. So we're preaching freedom.
I just believe the education system and society is set up in the hundred year old, we need workers. We need people to, you know, work in the factories.
We need people to sit in the cubicles. But unfortunately those days are all gone.
So in my daughter's particular case, she has six hours of private tutors a day and we accomplish more in six hours than she would in six years. But it's interesting because I hired the number one math teacher in America and here in Naples.
And what do they start every day with? They start

every day with fitness and movement, skipping rope, pushups, all this kind. She's been doing

this since she was five years old. So they get the body moving because the body is before the mind.

Then Ryan, she does old school mathematics. Like she's 12 years old, but she's at a college level of mathematics.
Because what is math? Mac is the ultimate problem solving. It's black and white.
It's not opinion based. It's hard and it's difficult.
And then she does cursive writing. She writes out the best advertisements in history.
So she'll write out a Gary Halbert ad. She'll write out an Ogilvy ad.
So that's cursive plus copywriting. And then the other thing that she does after that is she'll do something entrepreneurial, whether it's a lemonade stand or writing her book or whatever.
But the reason that this isn't taught is because they don't want it taught.

They don't want it taught. They don't want a world of top 1%ers or top 5%ers.
They want followers. So what you do is the exact opposite of what the 1%ers.
What does the world need more? You know this better than anybody. We need more leaders.
There's such a leadership vacuum. I always say to my daughter, I'm like, I'm with Dana White on this.
If your kids, and you have two of them, if they even have a speck of badass in them, they're going to own this world. And like I say to my daughter, I look at the other kids her age and I say, these are not your peers.
These are not your peers. And that's the biggest thing.
So just the fact like it's what happens at the kitchen table and in your home is more important than anything that happens in the White House. But that goes back to my initial thing about this is the greatest time in history because a guy like you is raising a couple of badass entrepreneurs who are going to run over people because they're going to be equipped for the new age world yeah we talk about this all the time we uh so my kids play a lot of sports i coach them i'm basketball and baseball and this summer we were driving home from a game and uh My son, my, uh, my older son, my younger son was in the car too.
Uh, my older son, um, Mr. Ground ball at shortstop, he plays shortstop and it ended up costing us the run that cost us that in the end of the game costs us the game.
And, um, he came off the field and, you know, I gave him, Hey, keep your head up. You got to hit, you know, whatever.
But he kind of stopped and looked at me and I was like, yeah, you should have fucking had that ball. Like, I knew what he was asking me with his eyes, which was and he kind of looked and went back in and, you know, did his thing.
And after the game, he said, you know, he goes, Dad, how come he was like, you know, you talk to me differently than other parents. I'm paraphrasing his question, but essentially.
And I said, it's because you fucked up. That's a ground ball that you can make, should make, and need to make as a starting shortstop of this baseball team.
It's not that I expect you to make every play. You're 10 years old.
That's not what I'm saying. But that was a ball that was in the range of things that you should be able to handle, and you didn't handle it.
And the reason you didn't handle it was because you were lazy to the ball. You didn't get in proper form, like we've practiced a thousand times, and you tried to, you nonchalanted it.
So the lesson is don't fucking nonchalant the easy plays just make them get the out all that matters is the out right don't you know you you you felt like it was an easy play you approached it like an easy play and you got your hat handed to you and it cost the team the game all right so he kind of ruminated on that for a second and then he said yeah but how come you're harder on me than other kids and I said I said the same exact thing to him I go you're not the kids on your team some of them might be your friends but they're not your peers in baseball like they're not your they're not you're not competing against them you're competing against the kid in Puerto Rico who's using a fucking leaf for a glove who would die to play on a real baseball field like you play on, right? That's who you're competing against. I said, and even if you never achieve that level of skill that that kid has, I said, what I need you to do to win at life is to understand that you only get prizes when you win in real life you only get prizes when you win yet you're you're so much of how it's why we send our kids to catholic school it's why we sent we're sending our kids a private catholic school for high school like is because this idea that you are talking about like like i'm I'm in a weird generation.
So I'm 44 years old. Right.
And thankfully I had 20 years with no cell phone. Very, very thankfully that I had 20 years of no cell phone, but then still in development from 20, you know, in the, in the early days.
Right. I got the world changed this more like socialist kind of everyone gets a prize kind of thing right and i said dude i've lived i've seen both sides of this coin like this whole idea that the effort you put in was is what matters is nice and a start but at the end of the day if you want to achieve you have to win and that's that's what you're trying and it doesn't matter baseball whatever whatever you do and you want to achieve, you have to win.
And that's, that's what you're trying. And it doesn't matter baseball, whatever, whatever you do.
And you have to get away from this idea that showing up is winning or just trying hard is winning because you can always try harder or like, you know, because you were nice, you won. No one gives it.
The universe doesn't give a fuck about any of those things. And it's just so incredible to me.
I feel like now that Trump is in office and our culture has swung a little bit back to a little bit more living in reality, all of a sudden there's this spotlight on the methodology, on this everybody's equal, everyone's the same, everyone deserves a prize mentality. It's like, you don't have a receipt.
Show me the receipt for that mentality where someone is killing it.

That's an honest question to everyone who's listening to this show.

If you believe in kind of modern liberal postmodern beliefs or more socialist ideals or, you know, whatever,

show me a fucking receipt for that methodology producing positive outcomes. That's all I want to see.
And then you can tell me that the way that I approach my kids in my life is wrong. Right? I mean, that's kind of what we're talking about here.
Like, it's crazy. There's no receipts for the other side of the argument.
You know, they got words they can throw at you. Bigot, you know, toxic masculinity, you know, whatever else they want to throw at you.
But not a single receipt for that methodology. And that's what fucking breaks me.
Yeah. I mean, I've been coaching youth sports for 23 consecutive years.
And the term I use similar years is ROI. Show me the ROI.
Everybody wants to be led. Everybody likes structure.
Everybody likes discipline. Show me the ROI of the other way way so you're right about the shift there's a shift happening here but man oh man people are responsible for their own and what you're doing for your kids is you're literally stacking the deck ryan you are i call it putting your kids on the power play you're putting an extra man on the field like my job as a father is to make sure my kid lives her adult life on the fucking power play and actually like i don't want to i want a loaded deck i want a stacked deck and to do that guys like us and and our wife have to work a long time but there's no competition and that's the other thing the man or woman in the glass like that, like that was Richard Williams 101 with the Williams sisters, where, you know, he didn't let, he didn't let Serena and Venus play in all these tournaments, even though the agents were hanging around.
And he's like, my kids are going to practice most of the time. And he's like, he kept telling Serena and Venus, they can speak five languages.
None of these players are your peers. Your mom and I want you to be artists.
We want you to be musicians. We want you to be athletes.
We want you to be good people. And if one of these things works out, fantastic.
But weaponizing your children goes back to what Brene Brown says, which is clear is kind, unclear is unkind.

Like I could tell you horror stories you wouldn't believe from my hockey,

coaching young kids in hockey, power skating, is the COVID kids,

especially the China virus kids, especially five to zero.

It's a culture of quitters coming.

Now, I'm not one of these guys who ever used to say, well the next generation I'm not saying that at all The China virus crippled what's coming So I'll start out Ryan With 50 kids In a low income skating program On a September By Thanksgiving I've got kids. That means mom and dad let 25 kids quit.
I'm not upset that the kids want to quit. Every kid wants to quit.
I want to quit every day. But the fact that the parents are so soft as fucking shit that they let these kids start quitting when they're two, three, four, and five, that's a crippling habit.
My dad calls it patronizing. So if you want to raise cupcake kids and snowflake kids and poodles, just lie to your kids all the time and patronize them.
And eighth place trophies, like you said, is the secret to this. Our kids are afraid of failure because of eighth place trophies.
Now you're doing the right job where, you know what? Bill Parcells said it best. When Bill Parcells, in my opinion, the greatest football coach in history, the scoreboard says who's best.
The scoreboard says who's best. And that's the way you can get better when the scoreboard doesn't say you're the best.
But you nailed it. Clear is kind.
Unclear is unkind. So when you have these cupcake parents, they think they're helping their children when actually, Ryan, they're crippling them for life.
Yeah. And for the guys out there that are listening who maybe you know you have people-pleasing in you, and I'm a recovering people-pleaser.
You know, most of the, when I look back at the places in my life where I've stagnated in my growth, it's because I allowed that side of my body. You know, I wanted to be nice.
I wanted people to like me. I wanted people, versus what had to get done, right? And it doesn't mean, you know, I think the way that this that this argument gets straw man is, Oh, well, you're just saying you yell at them and authoritarian.
And it's like, that's not, that is not what you just said. You said, be clear, not yell, not, not bash people over the head.
You don't have to dog people all the time. That's not what we're talking about.
It's not good leadership. It's not good culture building.
But you can have, by simply letting people know what they're responsible for, what they need to do, and how they're going to be judged on their work, just giving people those three simple things will change the entire culture of your organization. Because I guarantee most of the people listening to this, if you were to go survey, all of your employees cannot give you those three things.
Cannot. Cannot give you those three things that they have to do in their job.
And they get confused and they misunderstand. And you start having HR meetings about tonality and email messages.
And now your whole business is fucked and you're spending half your time dealing with problems instead of going out and growing the business. When what what people what I feel like so many are missing and I know this because because at different times in my life I've missed this is like what am I supposed to be doing you know how many guys I talk to I mean you know you know you do the same thing I do how many guys do you talk to that you can you can see the energy in them you can see that they're intelligent and talented at something.
Right. And you're like, like from your perspective, you see this aura of potential, you know, like around their body and they're like, but I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing.
Like I'm working this job, I'm paying the bills, but I really want to do this thing over here, but I don't know if I should. And, and, but then I really like doing this thing over here too.
So maybe I should start a business there. Or I watched this Tik TOK video and they said I could make a bunch of money in the Tik TOK shop.
So maybe you should start a ticket. And you're like, all of a sudden you're like, bro, like pick up in lane.
You know what I mean? And you know, that's a very hard thing. How do you, when you get someone who, who does have ability and drive and like, how do you help them start to harness it? How do people start to know? Like, they're like, Michael, I believe you.
Like, I believe in winning. I believe in get after it.
I'm not sure what game to play. I feel like that's a big part of the problem today is people just simply can't figure out what game they should be playing.
So when I have an elite man, a generous, a driven man come to me, buys my book, he joins my mastermind, whatever the hell he does, the number one thing, and the only thing, like one of your speeches, the only thing that I could, one thing to 10x his life, is the first thing I say, Ryan, like whether he was a pro hockey player, a pro football player, whether he's a nine-figure entrepreneur, a man without a mission is a man without balls. So we don't go any further than that.
And I get these men and some brave women in my program, and they think about when they get up in the morning, they pray about their mission. When they go to bed at night, they ask their subconscious to think about their mission.
When they go for a walk in the morning for an hour, half an hour outside without their phone, they think about their mission. They talk to their kids about their mission.
They talk to their wife about their mission. It's all about the mission.
Any great leader that you've developed that's gone from a people pleaser or one of these cupcakes or one of these poodles is a man or a woman on a mission. And a man or a woman with no mission, they have no mental balls whatsoever.
so when a guy like you goes to a barbecue or a ball game or to church and somebody walks up to you, you can instantly tell whether they are a man on a mission. You can see it, Ryan, in their eyes.
You can feel it in their voice, their high frequency, their high agency, their body language. They cannot not talk about their mission When they talk to a guy like you, you get chills and they get chills When they talk about their mission, it's like the hair starts to stand up on the back of our head And it's contagious And the leaders that are on a mission, all of a sudden they become magnetic to money.
Money quickly becomes no problem. Money loves a man on a mission.
They become magnetic to the opposite sex. They become magnetic to good fortune.
They become magnetic to other people because they're a man or a woman on a mission. But when my guys and gals When they finally And I call it something bigger than yourself

Because Because they're a man or a woman on a mission But when my guys and gals When they finally And I call it something bigger than yourself Because they say to me the same as you I don't know what my purpose is Michael I don't know what God wants for me And I'm like God wants you to be a man on a mission And if you'd put the cell phone down And you'd get off TikTok And you'd stop watching the NFL for nine hours a day, God's trying to tell you, your creator is trying to tell you, this is what I need you to do to serve other people. So my guys, Ryan, gradually, it doesn't happen in one hour, they gradually become a man or a woman on a mission that's based in service.
That's the secret. It's based in service.
They've literally for the first time in their life, find something that's bigger than themselves. And you and I are both doing this.
Like I haven't had to work since 2017. Here I am, you know, consulting with other men and women because I'm a man on a mission And I've found something bigger than myself And it took me months to find my latest calling When I bought my first hockey team My mission was to win a Barclay Cup When I got in the insurance business My mission was to become the number one agent in the nation I sell that, I start a barber shop The mission was to be the number one I in the nation.
I sell that. I start a, I start a

barbershop. The mission was to be the number one.
I've been on a mission as a husband for a while, as a, as a father. So some missions are a month, some missions are 30 years, but you have to be on a mission and it changes everything.
And you know, this better than anybody, less than 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%

of the people you meet today, whether it's at your kid's school or whether it's at the ballpark,

nobody's on a mission. But when you meet that man or woman who's on a mission,

you can just feel it. You're magnetic.
They cannot not talk about it. It's like me coming

on this podcast. I'm like, I'm going to go talk to Ryan.
I don not talk about it. It's like me coming on this podcast.
I'm like,

I'm going to go talk to Ryan. I don't do podcasts anymore because I like talking to men who are on a mission.
If you're not on a mission, I'm not going to talk to you. I'm a man on a mission and nothing comes before the mission.
So I don't participate in anti-social media. I don't follow the news I don't follow politics I built a seven figure company again Without even trying Because I'm on a man on a mission When my marriage is struggling It's when I'm not a man on a mission When I was a lousy parent in the first couple years of my daughter's life I wasn't a man on on a mission.
And it's normal to lose your way, but you have to continually bring yourself back to men on a mission. When Nick Saban went to Alabama and lost for the first three to four seasons, that's a man on a mission.
So now Saban retires and he goes on TV. That's the next mission.
You know, wherever Bill Pars went in the nfl to take over the worst team from the pet from the outhouse to the pet house man on a mission elon musk is a man on a mission like it's costing him billions of dollars it's costing him he doesn't give a shit he's a man on a mission trump has done the unthinkable trump is unreasonable you can't be president you'll never win he's a man on a mission and as you can see what those got margaret thatcher was a woman on a mission the williams richard williams earl woods those were men and women on a mission and you like you said it's's life, whatever, but it all starts and ends with the mission. Nothing becomes before that calling.
Yeah, I, I, I completely agree with that. I think that, I think that, I think there are a lot of people who have never fully given themselves to something.
Um, you talk to people, you hear what's going on in their lives. I fell into this job.
I started this and ended up here. I always wanted to be this, but, you know, need to make money.
So I did, you know, I took this job or, you know, I love to golf, but I never golf because I, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And you think about these

things and you, you know, and everyone's got problems in their marriage and, you know, they feel like their kids are disconnected and don't listen to them. And, you know, when you ask a simple question, well, like, have you ever just gone a hundred percent into that thing? Very, very

very

few people

will honestly answer that question yes. And, you know, I can't say that, you know, I think it would be disingenuous to say that I've always been 100% focused on the different things in my life.
I think you did a good job of outlining that, right? Like you said, the first few years, you weren't the best father. Then you went and you said, Hey, this is going to become my mission and change that.
Okay. So I don't, there's no requirement to always be at that level because you have seasons of your life.
Your life changes, your priorities change at times your interests change. Okay.
That being said, if you have never given a hundred percent of yourself to something, then you just simply can't relate. It's why I think people struggle so much with particular Elon Musk.
Like I can understand. I'm a big Trump fan, but I can understand logically why someone might not like it.
I can logically understand that. I cannot logically wrap my head around the Elon Musk hate because you don't have to, you could do one chat GPT or one Google search

or that. I cannot logically wrap my head around the Elon Musk hate because you don't have to, you could do one chat GPT or one Google search or whatever and see the amount of work that this guy has done, right? And the amount of value driving products and services that he like life changing, like societal, like humanity changing products that he has built.
And then we're going to say that he's working with Doge to steal our money. He wants access to our financial accounts like that.
When I hear that, when I hear that, that comment about him, that person has never, has never invested themselves as deeply into something as Elon Musk has. So they simply cannot relate.
You just, you cannot relate if you've never given a hundred percent of yourself to something. And if you're out there and you have never given a hundred percent, your next thing in life, stop listening to this podcast and go just for a month.
Just do something a hundred and see how you feel. It'll change your entire viewpoint on the world.
It'll change everything about it. And I just, I'm shocked at how few people have ever been willing to fully give themselves to a thing.
Well, that goes back to Ryan, afraid of winning. Sedating and medicating, now it's in your phone.
But here's a big point that I make with my athletes and my students and my daughter. Being passionate about something or curious about something isn't enough.
So a guy like you People would look at you and say You know, Ryan's really

Passionate about coaching

And to that I say, yes he is

But the next, what separates you from everybody else is you found a mission that you're obsessed with. I don't want anything to do with anybody that's not obsessed about their mission.
So I don't go to lunch. I don't go to dinner.
I don't go visit my sister. I don't do anything with people that aren't on a mission.
And I'm way, way too far gone to spend time with beta males and gamma males who talk about the weather or talk about Elon Musk or talk about, I'm like, tell me about your mission. So obsession, my dad said to me, so I walk into my dad, my dad says, you know, you're interested in taking over the family insurance business.
And this is way back in the day, 20 years ago, he said, don't you even think of buying this business unless you're going to take this to the next level 10x and this becomes your obsession don't buy it if you're passionate about it don't buy it if you're curious about it and don't buy this agency if you want to drive a nice car you better be obsessed or or before you start do something else so number one in the nation didn't take long because I was a man on a mission Then I walk into my dad's office Five years later, I said Dad, I'm going to take over this bankrupt junior hockey team Nobody can win in a small community He says the only question you have to answer is Are you on a mission? Will this be your next mission? I said, absolutely. He goes by it.
So this is the same thing is, is we just have to keep asking our creator, what's the next calling? What's the next purpose? And I'm sorry, but passion doesn't work. Passion isn't enough.
When I won a Berkeley cup with my hockey team in 2019, you want to talk about a force, a powerhouse, but we couldn't win for six straight years. We always lost in the finals, in game six and game seven.
I walk into my dad's office. I said, dad, I don't know what it is, but we just can't win that championship.
And he said, you need to fill that locker room with 23 young men that are on a mission. He said, you got a few guys in there that are, you know, they're curious about winning.
They're, you know, they've got some passion. But he said, you need to fill that locker room with room with trainers with coaches and with athletes that are sick to their stomach when they come up short and he said when you lost last night you know he said how many people in there were beyond how many people in there were suffering physically suffering mentally he says anybody that wasn't sick to their stomach when they lost, you need to upgrade and replace.
And that goes back to obsession. So you're a man on a mission.
I can tell it in your voice. I can tell it when I talk to you.
I can tell it when I watch a video, but you're not passionate about it. You are passionate, but you're obsessed.
And you're talking about going to speak. Nobody wants to fly.
Nobody wants to go to the airport. Nobody wants to live in a hotel.
Giving the speech is the 90 minutes of fun. But what gets you through all that other horseshit is the fact that you're obsessed with what you're doing and you're a man on a mission.
And this stuff is so contagious in your home Nothing drives me crazier than life balance talk

Are you kidding me? I grew up at a kitchen table where my dad and mom sat down and they talked about winning. They talked about losing.
They talked about the markets. They talked about marketing.
They talked about money. They talked about there was no doors in our house.
There was no, okay, we're going to now family. There's no such thing.
Life balance, seamless living. So your kids can feel your obsession.
Your wife can feel your obsession. And I tell my guys when they come to me looking for life balance, I'm like, you don't need life balance.
You need to become a man on a mission where there's no longer any doors in your life. There's no work life.
There's no personal life. It's just all one life.
And that's building your badass world where you build your business around your life, not your life around your business. But you can smell obsession and you can smell a man or woman who's on a mission.
Yeah, I use it on this show. We use the word harmony.
You need to find harmony in your life, right? You do need to have time for your kids. You do need to have time for your spouse.
You do need to take time for yourself. That could be working out or going for a walk, as you said.
But to me, what you're trying to do is harmonize your life, not balance it. Because harmonies flow, right? If you've ever been in New Orleans and listened to a jazz band, right? Like the melody, the beat, it changes, but it's always harmonized.
Always, right? So they're moving, they're adapting, they're morphing, they're picking up tempo, they're reducing tempo. They're moving from, you know front to another, someone else takes the lead, you know, they switch to a different style, always in harmony.
So what I believe that concept allows us to do is say, what took me a long time to realize, I don't think I really found, I think I operated from a place of passion for most of my life until I figured out something that allowed me to find my mission, which was I do not extract value from my own achievements. I don't, right? I love winning, love it Hate losing, love winning, want to win

But

I extract

Far more joy

From hate losing, love winning, want to win. But I extract far more joy from giving someone a tactic or an idea or holding someone accountable or just injecting energy into someone so they go out and do that thing and get pat and watching their success when I, others success.
And then once that set in my brain that like,

Oh,

this is who I,

then my mission became easy.

Everything I did was about helping people achieve their own success.

Right?

Like,

so I had my,

my own insurance agency,

been in the industry for 20 years.

Started in 2020,

seven days before COVID hit.

Right?

Put all this money in the business,

launching because surprisingly launching an insurance agency from scratch,

Thank you. started in 2020, seven days before COVID hit, right? Put all this money in the business, launch it because surprisingly, launching an insurance agency from scratch is not cheap, right? Launch this agency seven days later, entire country gets shut down, right? Whack, nothing.
No one's open. We're watching people in China drop dead on the streets.
We think life is over. Who knows what's happening? And I said from the beginning, my goal for this business is, you know, I had this goal.
I wanted to, I wanted to create 20 millionaires out of my business, whatever. That's just the number I had in my head.
I wanted 20 people who weren't related to me to become millionaires because of this business. Now we didn't end up getting that.
It's a different story, but that was the mission, right? So even though we were selling insurance, the mission was I wanted to create the most productive force that's ever been out there. I wanted these people to print money, not just for me, but for themselves, right? And to feel what that felt like and to really, you know, drive growth.
And then everything I've done since that moment has been, has been helping others become the best version of them. That's why, it's why the newsletter is called Finding Peak.
It's why the podcast, it's all about unreasonable outcomes. The newsletter is obviously about unreasonable outcomes too.
Helping unreasonable people achieve unreasonable outcomes. And to do that, it's the stuff you're talking about.
It's, you know, we have a philosophy on the show. One of the audience members actually created that little wood block back there for the people watching on video.
It's got the letters GNF stands for give no fucks, right? Like you cannot go through this world and be successful and constantly be thinking, what is he going to think? What is she going to think? What are they going to think? If you get yourself in shape, your drinking buddies are not going to be happy with you, but you will be in shape and you will have energy and you will be focused and you will be able to outwork them. You know, like I, I used to get asked all the time, um, in a, in a previous version of my life where, uh, like what, like, why do you focus so much on your fitness? Like I had someone ask me that, like, you know, why do, why is that such a priority to you? And I said, because when I sit down to negotiate across the table from someone who is fat, out of shape, doesn't have any, I am going to bury them with my energy.
I don't care how long they've been in business. I will outlast them.
I'll stall them. I'll outwork them.
I'll outthink them. I will just simply out everything them from purely a physical fitness standpoint.
Like I can sit in this chair and maintain focus longer than you can. And I know it.
I know it because your insulin's dropping or your insulin's spiking because you haven't had enough to eat. You're jacked up on coffee because you're fucking hungover.
Your blood pressure is high, right? Like you're just thinking about your next meal and I'm just waiting you out to find a crack to where I can negotiate my way in. Right.
And it's like thinking about these things through that lens is the only way to get there. Like in just, I, I, I'm dude, it is, it drives me crazy.
how many people just go through life. They don't experience life.

They don't, life. They don't push life around.
They don't even try to make a dent. They literally just exist.
They breathe air. They eat food.
They have sex until the day they die, and then they're gone, and they just never did anything. They never fucking got it.
They never had a big loss. Like, okay, you didn't have a big win.
Did you have have a big loss at least that shows you went after something right at least it shows that you tried right but like so few people are willing to fucking engage in this and we are such a blessing to be put here i just don't get it it boggles my mind well it goes back to mission like you anybody that comes to me or you ryan who has a problem with alcohol a problem with drugs a problem with pornography a problem with gambling a problem with their marriage all you have to do is ask that man or woman what's the mission because all that shit goes away all that just anybody that's distracted doesn't have a mission because mission Because I haven't had a drink in four years And the only reason I stopped drinking is because of my latest mission I didn't have a meeting with myself I didn't read a book about it Alcohol is not congruent with my latest mission And I didn't give up anything It's just not congruent with my mission as a husband, as a father, whatever. But everybody, like you just talked about the quiet desperation.
That's 99.9% now. It's not 1%, it's 99.
So if you and I meet 100 people today, 99.9% of them are living a life of quiet desperation.

They're afraid of losing, afraid of winning,

but they don't have a mission.

But when people come to me with all these vices and these distractions,

I'm like, you don't lack time or discipline.

You just aren't a man or a woman on a mission.

When they get that mission right,

then everything else falls into place.

And the big part of the mission they don't know, Ryan, is it's about building a legacy of service. So I don't care who you are, you won't be remembered in three generations.
I don't care if you're Elon Musk. In three generations, the way things are going, they won't even know who he is.
Nobody knows who Thomas Edison was. Nobody really knows what Reagan did.
Nobody knows other than a couple things, Winston Churchill. So get over yourself with the people pleasing.
Your great grandkids won't know anything about you unless you educate them on it. But if you want any legacy beyond 15 minutes after your funeral, you need to live a life of significance.
And a life of significance is a man or woman on a mission serving other people. And if you do not serve other people, whether it's coaching baseball or helping men or helping women or helping the Rotary Club, you'll be forgotten 15 minutes after your funeral.
Maybe your wife, maybe your kids will be teary-eyed for a couple days, but there's no legacy. So for my guys, it's all back to significance.
How can you serve more people? And it's interesting when you plant this seed in a person's head and they sleep on it and they walk about and they journal and they think about it, all of a, that mission will gradually come to them. This is the next mission.
And the mission can be writing a book. It could be publishing some of your music.
It could be feeding starving children in the third world. It could be winning a Super Bowl.
The mission can be anything. But a guy like you can't give a person a mission.
It has to be offended. Maybe you want to be the best husband and father in the world.
Whatever it is, it has to be that person's mission. And then once that happens, the quiet desperation vanishes.
My guys come to me anxious, depressed, medicated, sedated, living a life of quiet desperation, the second they find their mission, they are completely transformed as husbands, fathers. And it's amazing because like you do, their kids want to hear the stories about the mission at the kitchen table.
Their wife wants to hear about the mission. They're getting in better shape.
Their sex life improves. Everything improves because a man on a mission is the most magnetic person on earth.
I had a guy that I know from around town. Good guy comes up to me and lets me know that he's getting a divorce.
And I got divorced three years ago. And, you know, I could tell he was upset about it.
It was her decision. And he's a nice enough guy.
You know, and I'm just chatting to him, listening to him talk. And, you know, he didn't ask me for anything.
And I certainly wasn't about to inject my thoughts into his life. I was just letting him speak.
But in listening to him, one thing became very clear to me. And, you know, judge me for this thought or not, but I said to myself, I don't blame her.
Like, you've given up, dude. Like, you're 40 pounds easily overweight.
You dress like a slob. You kind of don't really do a whole lot you know what i mean like if you're a woman and you you are looking for a partner even an equal partner let alone a protector or uh whatever whatever role whatever role is your however your relationship is set up not trying to judge that right um you're you're none of those things for her.
Like, why would she come home? Like, you know, and he was bitching about like, you know, he made a comment about his sex life and very sparse. And I just was like, dude, I just, you know, in my head, I'm playing out what I would say to him, like if he was paying me, you know, if he was a coaching client.
But I was like, dude, I would have just said, hey, turn, stand up, turn around, look at yourself in the fucking mirror. Would you bang you? I mean that.
Jordan Peterson, I love Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson has pulled me out of some deep holes.
I'm a big fan of his philosophy. When he's talking about particularly men in relationships, I think his guys, this idea that we're discussing infiltrates and corrupts our relationship, particularly with other women, or with women, sorry, in so much as like, we feel it's our obligation, like our wife is obligated to have this connection to us, to give a shit about what we have to say, to have sex with us, to, you know, support.
And it's like, how about, and this is Jordan Peterson's take, how about you become the version of the person that she should respect and is attracted to physically and wants to support and wants to wonder how your day, If you come in and you're a dick or you're lazy or you're mopey or you have nothing to fucking say or you look like a slob or you're fat or you don't have any you know fuck mission like just have a little bit of passion in your body about something right like outside of cracking beers or getting high at the end of the night or stuff in your face video games god forbid i mean there are people my age who play fucking video games for hours at night like guys i hate to be fucking judgy but like if you have a problem in your life and you play video games at night i can give you one quick thing that's probably gonna help give you know what i mean like now if your life is absolutely perfect and everything's fucking amazing and all your relationships are amazing, your business amazing, and how you unwind is two hours of video games at night. Hey, God bless you.
But I don't think that's the case for most of the guys that are doing these things. And it's like, like you get to bitch when you, when, when you've done the things to put yourself in the position to be successful, and she still tells you to go fly a kite, I'll listen to that bitch.
Now, you still need to get past it, but I'll listen to the bitch. But I can't listen to a bitch from a guy who's essentially given up and then expects his female to stay with him.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, you didn't give her a reason. You didn't make her want to stay with you.
Like, you had the whole shot. You're the incumbent.
Like, just get your shit together. Like, be a little fucking passionate.
Go for a jog. Ask her how her day went.
Like, there's some simple things you could do here, but you said it wasn't his mission to be a good husband

and therefore he wasn't. And now he is getting divorced and it's sad.
You don't want to see it. The kid's a real good kid.
I hope he doesn't get fucked up from it, but it's like, dude, you put yourself in this position. Like, and that goes for everything in our lives.
If you're not happy with business, you can change it. Like it's there for you guys.
Like, listen to what Michael saying how many people have you coached thousands right like it's there for you your life you could be i don't care if you're 65 years old like you can change the course of your life but you got it as michael said you got to find this mission you got you have to get something and fucking get after it but just get after something and watch how it changes watch watch how it morphs into the other aspects of your life. It's incredible.
One of the sayings I have written on my home gym wall is, when the king does not rise, the kingdom dies. And that goes back, of course, Ryan to mission.
When the king does not rise, the kingdom dies. So I'll say to my guys that are struggling at home, maybe they've got no passion in their marriage.
Maybe they're disconnected from their kids or grandkids. When you walk in that door every night, are you a high frequency man or are you a low frequency poodle? And the majority of guys that are having struggles in their home The king is no longer rising And when you walk in there as a high frequency man With the body language, the breathing, the attitude, the storytelling You make yourself magnetic to the opposite sex You make yourself magnetic to your children, your grandchildren You make yourself yourself magnetic to money.
And the opposite, everything you just discussed, is what repels winning like nothing else. One word, neediness.
I call it men in diapers, men in diapers. So 99.9% of men are scared little boys in 2025, men in diapers, showing up as scared little boys.
And they're needy, needy, needy. Their body language, their breathing, their mentality, the cell phone use, the porn, the drugs, the alcohol, what you do.
They're men in diapers. So all you have to do is rise as a king.
And how do you rise as a king? You get on a mission that'll never end, and everything else trickles downhill from there. My younger brother, David, founded his own law practice.
Well, guess what? Guess what my younger brother deals with from time to time? Divorce. So I'll never forget at my stag 20 years ago, I was lying there in bed one morning.
I said to my brother, I said, what's the real reason that marriage is in 50% of the time, more now? And he said, well I'm going to surprise you He says number one which you know is Money people fight about money Problems that's why it ends but he Says number two you'll never believe And I could I said what is It he says he says The man stops growing And he's a Tony Robbins guy He's like the man is no longer dangerous As Dr. Peterson would say He's no longer weaponized He's now a needy little bitch And he's literally repelled his wife or girlfriend from him Because neediness repels Repels money, winning, luck The like nothing else you know and that's what men in diapers are they're they're needy little men so like you said you can instantly become a king you can literally decide to walk through the door at 6 p.m at night a high frequency man a high frequency man and you can start to work on your health you can start to work on your health.
You can start to work on your language. You can start to work on all this stuff.
And gradually you just rise a little more and a little more. And when my, when my marriage has struggled, my wife literally stops me, Ryan, at the Island in the kitchen.
When I start to, you know, not be a man on a mission from time to time.

And she always looks me in the face and says, just remember, I married a king. If you're not going to be a king, there's going to be lots of problems.
And this is where I become a needy little guy. And I'm like, I'm going to spend more time with you guys.
Let's do this. And she goes, we don't need it.
We need to be led by a king. And my wife is the queen, but we don't need any of that stuff.
We just need you to be a man on the mission, share your mission with us, include us in your mission. And when the king rises, the kingdom rises as well.
But that's exactly who you deal with. That's exactly who I deal with.
When the king does not rise The kingdom rises as well But that's exactly who you deal with That's exactly who I deal with When the king does not rise The kingdom dies Yeah I'm going to wrap up our conversation With this idea from Peterson Because I think it encapsulates what we've talked about Expanding on your Be dangerous thing He talks about there's no nobility and being kind. There's none.

Anyone can be kind. It's easy.
It's easy to be kind and soft and kind, kind, or maybe nice, be nice. Right.
We've been taught that the ultimate virtue is being nice, which is in my experience, the farthest thing from the truth that exists. What Peterson says, and I found this to be true in my life time and time again, the noble man is the dangerous man who chooses to be kind.
So when you listen to someone and they are spouting off at you about being aggressive or your masculinity or your tone or your energy, because I get accused all the time of having too much energy, too much energy, too much energy. And it used to bother me.
Now I'm just like, go fuck yourself. If you don't like the energy, then just don't hang out with me.
That's the way it is. Sorry.
But, you know, this idea that like you thinking you need to go through life being nice to everyone in the classic sense is you being noble is absolutely wrong unless you can be dangerous. You need to have the propensity for danger.
Can you, and I know that in our society today, people look at this and they can't handle it, but it's like, can you throw a fucking punch? If you, your wife and your kid are walking down the sidewalk and someone comes up and threatens you physically, can you even try to defend yourself physically? Right? Do you have the winning business mentality where you can go into a situation and sell something or negotiate someone or convince someone to come work for you? Or do you cave? Do you walk in and say, well, I'm tired today, so I'm going to take the day. That's not a dangerous person.
And when you're kind and nice, you are not noble. There's nothing.
It's not nobility. Only the dangerous who choose to be kind are noble.
And I think this is, I think that is in large part a result of having a mission and getting the fuck after it. Michael, this has been an incredible conversation.
I appreciate the hell out of you. For anyone who's listening and wants to get deeper into your world, how do they do that? Join my daily email, which I include a video.
It's just me out walking in the morning. Admittedly, my videos are not everybody's cup of whiskey, but BrassBallsVideos.com, Ryan.
That's BrassBallsVideos.com. That's pretty self-explanatory.
That's my email list. And I shot a video every day for two years.
I'm going to get back at it again. But it's my unvarnished morning walk around Naples or in the lake in Canada.
And I talk about different things that are on my mind that day. It's almost like a walking Rush Limbaugh or, you know, some time with Michael Jordan ideas, but mental toughness, everything that you and I talked about today.
I mean, you help leaders achieve unreasonable outcomes. I help elite men get their balls back.
And, you know, guys watch my videos every day or read my emails. They say, you know, I really needed that mental kick in the pants.
So, you know, there's nothing to buy brass balls videos.com. But if I think every king, I think everybody that's on a mission needs those mental kick in the pants every day.
Guys like you are serious students And that's because you understand That that force is against you

Gravity is against you in 2025. And if you want to be that top 1% of 1%, you got to be very smart with the inputs that you're putting into your body and your mind.
So if you're in a situation where you need to rise in your family and your business, brassballsvideos.com.

Michael, appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ryan.