Success isn't just measured by revenue.

In this special "Best Of" episode, we revisit two of the most impactful conversations in the Soul Proprietor archives with Meaghan Likes and Michael Hinderliter. We unpack the hidden costs of entrepreneurship.. from the responsibility of leading employees and the myth of passive income to protecting your marriage, mental health, and sense of purpose.

What They Talk About:

• Meaghan’s story about raising $250K for a Kenyan well, a corrupt official, and the moment she realized she stopped making money for herself (02:05)
• Why hiring your first employee means you start working for everyone else—and what that does to your head
• The weird guilt trip of making more than your employees (and why that mindset is so hard to shake)
• Chaos addiction: why some founders just can’t sit still with a “boring” business
• Spouses as Saints: painful confessions about coming home with nothing left in the tank (08:45)
• Meaghan’s six failed partnerships (“thank God none were my marriage”) and what actually makes partnerships so tricky
• Is “passive income” real? Megan’s candid take on why it almost never is for most business owners
• Michael Hinderliter’s brutal honesty about divorce, depression, and how chasing success can leave your personal life in ruins (17:20)
• The surprising truth about self-awareness and why it hurts (in a good way)

Key Takeaways:

• The real test of growth isn’t revenue—it’s how much responsibility and obligation you’re willing to shoulder for other people
• Partnerships almost always get messy unless you face the awkward questions about time, talent, and treasure up front
• There’s no such thing as truly passive income for most people; anything worthwhile always asks for more of you
• Mental health isn’t just a side note—if you’re not right in your head, nothing in business or family works
• Self-awareness means seeing yourself the way others do, not just working on yourself in a vacuum

Timestamps:

• 02:05 – Meaghan in Kenya & “stop making money for yourself”
• 08:45 – The toll on family and real talk on marriage support
• 12:20 – “Passive income” as myth and the reality of business partnerships
• 17:20 – Michael’s story: ambition, divorce, and depression
• 28:45 – Self-awareness, abandoning victimhood, and what real growth feels like

If you've ever wondered whether building a business is costing more than you expected, this conversation offers an honest look at the tradeoffs every entrepreneur eventually faces.

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Welcome back to the Sole Proprietor Podcast. It's Ivan, your editor and by default, your host. If you tuned in last week, you know my wife Jeanver had to physically confiscate the microphone from me because my pod boss God complex got a little out of hand. Well, the sunglasses are off, the ego has been dismantled, and I am back to being the grounded, humbled guy who just wants to make good audio. As for Mel and Kurt, we actually still don't know when they are coming back. This vacation is starting to feel like a permanent relocation, but until they return to claim their thrones, I am here to keep the ship afloat. Today we have a massive, heavy hitting episode featuring two incredible guests. We are diving deep into the true cost of success, the myth of passive income, and the mental toll of entrepreneurship.

Let's get right into it.

Welcome to the Soul Proprietor Podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

For the first half of today's episode, we are revisiting some incredibly raw moments with Mega entrepreneurship completely changes your relationship with money and responsibility. In this first segment, Meg shares a jarring story about a trip to Kenya, a corrupt official, and the exact moment she realized she had stopped making money for herself the second she hired her first employee. She and the hosts also unpacked the chaotic, exhausting reality of building a business, battling imposter syndrome, and the weird addiction entrepreneurs have to constant chaos. Let's listen.

I don't know if I did any good. Like, I, I don't know how you define good or impact or what, but what I do remember is there was this man named William and we had raised like $250,000 to install a well. And William was in charge of running the. It's called a cbo that was going to organize the community that was going to benefit from the well. And we went through a bunch of red tape to get this well piped to three schools. And we decided the schools would be the stewards because children are the future. And so we go and we turn on the well. And this is like the white privilege part of the trip that I don't know how I feel about.

I don't. But in the meantime, we went to 19 schools that we didn't give water to. We saw all this, like, need and we had, I mean, I've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars just in this teeny Tiny community in Kenya. William, bless his heart, he's corrupt. Just about every other Kenyan that I have worked with, except for my sister and the do Gooders, but he's a Rotarian. He's the chair, and he asks for a bribe as we're leaving to turn on the well to bring. It was 11,000 people who were impacting, and I am, like, struggling with the greed of. He wants personal benefit.

Like, how do we. In Rotary, you're not allowed to pay rides. Like, this is a Rotary fund admission. And now I'm talking about publicly. I've never talked about this publicly. I don't know how I feel about all of that. We did navigate it. The water got turned on.

Everything was fine. But it was a really intense moment for me. And the way William changed my life was not by asking for the bribe, not by pissing me off, not by. There's a whole bunch of other fun stories about that trip that we could talk about.

I'm getting pissed right now.

When we get loaded up into the van to leave, he puts his hand on my shoulder and he said, megan, go home and make money so that you can come back and help us more. And I, like, looked at him and I was like, you selfish jerk.

Yeah. How did you not break your middle finger as it flew up as fast as it possibly could?

First of all, I'm a woman traveling in a developing country. I'm in an area of Kenya that's polygamous. So, like, we don't even. It's like a whole thing. We're not gonna get into any of that. But that comment, which I'm gonna repeat because it's worth repeating, is, go home and make money so you can come back and help us more. Changed everything for me. And I realized when I came home, Jeff wasn't on this trip.

So I came home to my darling husband Jeff, who I love, that Melody knew before me. That's a very classic thing for me in the window cleaning world. He's the famous one. I go home and I'm telling Jeff, and Jeff goes, well, Megan, we stopped making money for ourselves a long time ago. And, like, I thought about it, I was like, holy cow. If you think about it, the first time you hire employees, probably make less.

Yeah, that's true.

Anybody listening to this? The first time you stopped doing the work and you shift from being the doer to the owner, you stopped making money for you, you started making money for others. And my husband, he's. He's like a simple guy when it comes to the things that I tend to overcomplicate. He's really good for me because he just keeps me anchored in my feet on the ground, and he calls me on my shit. But I was like, you're right. We probably stopped making money for ourselves back in 2010. 2010. Since 2010, I've been making money for other people.

Whoa. That's crazy. I think I had my first employee in 2004 when I bought my window cleaning company, and I definitely did feel the pressure of making money for somebody else. And I've felt the pressure ever since.

It's a real pressure. It's a real feeling. Like now when I think about the number of families that I feed personally, I think obligation, right? I have a moral obligation to grow or not. Or just go back and, Megan, stop pretending to be an entrepreneur and just go be an employee. Because I never wanted the window clean business. If you guys remember that story. Like, I told my husband, no, I said, no, we're W2 people. That's what I said back in 2007 when he wanted to start this.

Can you imagine? No, I can't even imagine. He's a W2 person.

Do you think that the tension lies in the fact that once we move into that obligation, we start feeling like we can't be a good person and make a ton of money because we're making money for others and that that's the proper role? Where are you pinning that tension? Like, there's a fulcrum point, right? Because some people are, like, not about you.

As soon as I make it about me, then I feel selfish. It's not about me.

Yeah. Well, I was thinking when you first get employees and you're still maybe working, but you're not making as much because you got this employee.

So was true for everybody. For the record, you're listening to this. That is a very normal cycle of entrepreneurship. That first hire, you're going to take a little dip. Personally, I don't think I've ever seen it where that's not the case.

Well, what ends up happening, or at least for me, is I felt bad if I was making a lot more than the person I was working alongside of, even though I was providing them with the job. And I've seen that with other people as well. But that was a mindset thing very early on, but it stayed a lot longer than I would have liked.

And we live in a place where, like, that's not a bad thing and that's not illegal, and there's, like, no cap. It's weird.

It is weird. Why doesn't everybody just do it then?

Because it's hard. It's exhausting. And we have imposter syndrome, and we have a hard time with discipline and focus. Like, I have wanted to burn down that course every year for the past seven years, and it is like a stubbornness factor that I don't. It's boring to me. It is not sexy. Every time I do it, like, yeah, I like this, but I'm like, I don't want to do the same thing again. I want to go build something else.

I want to go do something else. He's feeling attacked right now.

He. No, no.

He can relate to that.

It's like she's talking to me right now, Everybody.

I do say that Matt and I have an agreement right now that I'm allowed to have one business for now, since I've always had multiple businesses. And for Matt, and one business is a lot, and then putting another business in it. But the way that I did business was probably part of that chaos.

It is chaotic, and people say, I'm addicted to chaos. And I'm like, okay, I'll just embrace that. Of all my vices, I guess that's. I do have to protect. Last night. I had a moment. I had an intense, hard, very long day yesterday. And it was one of those days where we were eating dinner at 10:45pm

Building on that exhaustion Meg just mentioned, we often don't talk about who actually pays the price for our entrepreneurial drive. Usually it is the people waiting for us at home. In this next part, Meg opens up about being an introvert and how her husband often gets the absolute worst, most drained version of her at the end of the day. From there, the conversation shifts from the personal toll on spouses to the professional mess of business partnerships. Meg breaks down why passive income is mostly a myth. Her history of failed partnerships and the complicated math of valuing time, talent, and treasure.

Fun fact about me. I am an introvert. People don't know that. They don't believe that. But I. I know. I know.

I believe you, listener.

I'd like to do my disclaimer again. Do not fall into the black hole she is planting in front of you right now.

Anywho, I am drained. Beyond drained. Rung out. Beyond rung out. And I, like. I'm on my phone. We're having dinner. We haven't talked all day.

We haven't, like, seen each other. And I, like, put down my phone, and I look over and I go, you're a Saint. Like, you get the worst version of me. Like, he gets the rung out. Do not want to say words. Do not look at me. Do not talk to me. Do not engage with me.

It's like that part of business-ship Melody from Matt's perspective. Like, our spouses. Oh, Kurt, Rachel. Like, our spouses are saints.

They really are.

Yeah.

Level of tolerance they have for our baloney and our crazy ideas and our crazy adventures and our. Honey, I got a great idea. Like, the fact that Jeff still talks to me is shocking. Like, and he's excited to talk to me. He gets to talk to me for, like, three minutes a day without me wanting to kill him and be like, I need space. Let me be quiet. Please go away. But I love him.

Like, of course I want to talk to him. I just gave all my energy to the rest of the world, and I'm done.

You're speaking the story of my life, for sure. Matt and I go to the gym now, together at night, which is the worst time for me to go. But I'm doing it. And that is our one moment of connection for the day that I'm like, okay, it's multitasking. I can get on board, and I barely ever do it. I've gotten five times in the last three weeks, but that's still something.

Hey, five times in three weeks.

Jeff and I take classes together. Together. We love taking classes together. Like, we'll take a class and learn something new together. And we do that regularly. And we have dinner together every night. That's a very important thing. And he's really good about planning dates.

Oh, that's a really good skill to have.

We'll have family dinner each. Each night. Typically, all the kids are all here, but it's the date night where Rachel's like, okay, you want to catch me up on what happened this week? Like, lady, I'm exhausted. You want me to relive all the reliving?

Yeah.

Well, here's the thing. You can see in her head. She's, like, getting ready to ask the question. She's like, do I dare? Can I do it? Do I feel like he's got enough gas in the tank? And I'm like, I can see what's happening right now. She's like, so, do you want to maybe catch it? Is it cool if we do it tomorrow? Like, can I have, like, a good night's sleep tonight? Passive income, real or mostly myth?

Everybody would want to know the answer to that. Like, why you think that's mostly a myth? Or how you know that.

Well, probably because of culture. Right. I recently started a partnership, actually, technically I started over a year ago, but it really got a lot of money. We're talking about money for good. It started making a bunch of money this summer unexpectedly. And everybody like, that's the best case scenario. Well, it wasn't really, because I never intended it for it to make that much money. It was going to be like a passive venture.

It was a business in a box that it had sitting on a shelf that somebody needed a job. And so I gave them a biz. Like it was like a whole thing and then it turned into a whole thing. And money can complicate it. And partnerships are complicated. Fun fact. I've had six failed partnerships. Six, thank God, none of them were my marriage.

And I hope that I can keep choosing that and he keeps choosing me. And it's not. That is not the partnership that fails, but six, I am not good at everything. There are a lot of failures here. So this partnership, we did not do all the soul searching about what does it mean to be a good partner or what does it mean to be an equal partner? And we got stuck. Oh, gosh. And I'm in another partnership right now. Partnerships are messy, they're tricky.

We got stuck on this idea of what is contribution? And it turned out that this partner that we'd started with thought that it was a passive business. And I don't know how to do a passive startup. And we had to talk about what does it mean for contribution in a startup of a business. And we're not talking about like the startup culture of Silicon Valley, we're talking about the startup culture of like bootstrap strapping, which I think is most of your listeners, right? Like this is on your blood, sweat and tears. Now you add another person in that element. And in my head, partners contribution are defined by time, talent or treasure. So you have to either contribute time or you have to contribute what you're good at, your expertise, or you have to contribute your money, you have to make a capital contribution. Now, if you are in a situation where the only thing you need is a capital contribution, the person that gives you that capital contribution, you, if it's written correctly and it's written right, that could be a passive investment opportunity.

But I think the majority of your listeners are not in that place where they're able to just have discretionary income or discretionary wealth that they can put into passive opportunities. I think the second part of that is really evaluating what does passive mean. We started a Short term rental this year. And short term rentals are not passive. I pay 20% of every dollar to a property manager. I have everything else automated. Like, it is still not passive.

I mean, even if you were investing in a business, though, Megan, like, if someone came with treasure to put it into a business, we learned that the silicon bubble. But if that's what they're only going to do, we learned the silicon bubble that when entrepreneurs know that the person giving the money is just going to walk away and there's. There's not going to be any active enforcement or accountability or anything like that, that business will go to zero in no time.

That is my whole job now, Kurt. That is my entire job is I have all these Wall street guys trying to come onto Main street. And I am like, now on this bandwagon of helping Main Streeters understand that if all you want is money, then let me help go get you funding. Do not take their capital investment.

Yeah. I've also had a couple failed partnerships, and it's painful every time. For me, it's been very painful. But. But I've learned a lot. I went to a divorce mediator with my last contract write up because I wanted to know all the things that could go wrong. It was a good investment. I have that for any future partnerships as well to think about.

There's a really good book called if you're in my office, it's too late, and it's written by a divorce attorney. Kurt. I'm also terrified of the D word.

Well, honestly, the D word has become a lot less scary to me once I have realized that, like, it is an option, like, there's a rip cord to pull. And if my wife started becoming aggressively angry at me all the time and could not be consoled in any way and was sabotaging our marriage. And the same would be said for Rachel, like, if I started treating her like an emotional pinata or, you know, physically, you know. Right. Like, she needs to know that, like, getting away from me is the healthy, right decision for her or the kids for. Well, for her. Like, just she needs to. And divorces that properly used tool for somebody who stops choosing the marriage.

And if only one person is choosing, it just doesn't work. I know you're the one unpacking this, Megan, but, like, one of the things that is really resonating with me right now is the idea that if someone comes in with time and talent and the other person comes in with treasure, and they decide up front that that's a 50, 50 partnership that means that all the time and talent I apply from this point forward will continue to be asked of me at an infinite rate, and I've agreed to that. And your finite contribution is going to always be equal to 50% of this business. That can get really tricky because the contract doesn't have emotions. They just sort of live there. These are not things that a lot of people think about at the very beginning of it. And where capitalism might get a little bit of a bad name is that, well, you took advantage of me when I really needed this opportunity, and you put in this trite amount of money that was, at the time, a lot for me and made it possible to get the dream started. But I am no longer as thankful to you.

I'm not 50% thankful to you anymore

because I know more, because I'm different. Right? Like, this is what's happening for everybody, Right? And it's a money question. Like, money complicates it. How do we value treasure? How do we value time? But most of the time in partnerships, how do we value talent? How do we articulate value of talent? How do we define value of talent? It's tricky.

For the second half of the show, we are shifting gears to an incredibly vulnerable conversation with Michael Hinderliter. Michael understands the dark side of ambition better than anyone. In this segment, he talks openly about the relentless 247 drive that ultimately broke his first marriage because the pressure was simply too high. He then takes us into the realities of mental health, describing depression as being trapped at the bottom of a pit and how the realization that you cannot run away from yourself forced him to fight for his mind and his family. Here is Michael.

So when you got married, you'd obviously been going since high school for your own company. What was your entrepreneurial life like being married? And then also maybe what was. If you could speak a little bit to the appeal of, you know, your wife when you, or I guess you've been your girlfriend at the particular time when you decided to get engaged.

I love that question, actually. So from a very young age, I wasn't one of those guys that, like, was running amok and didn't know what they wanted to do with their life. My earliest memories was that I wanted to have a child when I was 19 or 20, and I wanted a girlfriend early in life so I could make that happen, but it just never happened. And my mind was always focused on being able to provide and to build wealth and have something so that it would be easier for my kids, it would be easier for Us as a family. And that's why I work so hard. And it's always in my mind, like if I could get, just get to this point or this point, at this

point, those are the lies I tell myself as a dick all the time. I have the same liar in my head anyway, go ahead, sorry.

And so just always be like, okay, if I could get here then, then I can focus more on the personal life. Then it gets to that point, you know, you're 20, you're 26, 25 or whatever and haven't really had any long term serious relationships out of college and you're like, oh, now I don't run into people that often because I'm working all the time. So it becomes challenging and then it just, you know, for whatever reason, this family moved in across the street and I started dating the daughter and things went from there and you know, it was lovely. We dated for two years and got married. And it was very pleasant because she was such a happy person. She knows she's always in a good mood and I enjoyed being around their family. It was just a different experience from what I had because they were all very social all the time and got together and I craved that family time. So it was very pleasant.

So was she entrepreneurial? Like was she risk averse or was she like cool with like going all

in, risk averse and various blue collared? So my entrepreneurial drive, and I guess the terminology today is, you know, a high value man, you know, But I use that term loosely because it's just the drive. And if you're a person that's not used to being around someone who has that constant drive because the drive isn't 8 to 5, the drive is 24, 7. It doesn't turn off. That's not a switch that you flip.

That's a truth bomb. I felt that one.

Yeah, yeah. And you can't help it really. I'll rephrase it. You can turn it off for short periods of time and it can be relaxing. But you know, probably around the two week mark, at least the two week mark. I mean there were times where I was off and I was about to lose it at two weeks. I've taken some three week breaks now that I'm older and it's, it's not bad. But younger at two weeks, man, I couldn't handle it.

Like I was so ready to get back to work and just push. But anyway, we didn't have that, you know, when I'd come home at night, you know. Well, she worked with me. So we were together 247 for. I think we were either married seven or eight years before our daughter was born. So we were together 247 and daughter's born. We. And I was like, we're bringing her to work.

She's going to come to work with us. Holy cow. And at lunch, you know, lunch was my favorite time. We'd take her to lunch, come back from lunch, and I would take a nap in my desk chair with my daughter on my chest. And we had a public wash bay at that time, so drivers would come in and the drivers all knew us as the couple with the baby, and everyone knew us as that young couple that owned the truck wash. So that was pretty cool.

That's a ton of 24 7. Bring your daughter to work. That's a lot of time for people to be in that pressure cooker together. So just kind of putting a little pin in that right now.

There were some challenges at times, but for whatever reason, the dynamic shifted. Where she stopped respecting me or didn't want me to be the leader anymore, where she wanted to be in control. And, you know, eventually it was like, okay, well, you're going to stay home because her daughter's getting older, she can't stay in the office and sleep in a crib or staying, you know, cooped up. Well, you know, she gets to be about three to four years old. So then, you know, that separation happened. And when that separation happened, the dynamic and security in the relationship, at least for her, it didn't so much for me, but for her, went away.

So was she working still in the business with you up until Caitlin was about three or something, or.

She worked full time in the business up until Caitlin was about three and was, you know, getting around a lot more. You really couldn't keep her cooped in office. She needs to go do stuff.

And children shouldn't be raised in an office, Michael.

No, I agree. I totally agree.

And outside, this is young, Michael. So we know I was a different breed.

I totally agree with that, though. And so, you know, we parted and so kind of what happened was I would take Tuesdays off to stay with our daughter, and then she would go to work and do the books on Tuesday and she could get it done. She was sharp. I mean, she could learn stuff fast. I always felt like her talent was. There's so much she could have done with her talent if she would applied it in any kind of career or business. She's such a smart woman. But that wasn't her drive.

It wasn't what she wanted to do. And still today, that's not who she is. You know, of course I push that, and I always try to get her to do a business and be more like doing the things that. But it always failed and it always met with frustration for both of us.

Yeah, I can't imagine getting Matt. I mean, even if I say, come do business with me, that is his horror. So, yeah, I don't see that happening.

So, you know, I kind of made that a long story. But eventually it ended in divorce. I had a lot of high expectations. And, you know, for any woman that's listening to this, if you find yourself. And even for a man with someone who's highly driven and motivated, you know, for achieving goals outside of, you know, how that operating the family, there's a lot of expectations that are going to be put on you because you're going to be held to a very high standard, and that can break people.

How long did it take you to understand your role in. You know, because I imagine that must have been very difficult for both of you as you went through that divorce. Were you feeling at the time like, were you able to understand?

No. I mean, I think this is important to say, too. She will deny it, but she was caught having an affair. But there's reasons those happen and you're both at fault. And I think the first time I heard that said, it really bothered me a lot. I was really upset by it because I was like, no, that's not true. But if you start thinking, you know, at a deeper level at your relationship and how well you bond and stuff, if you're in. In it like you should be in a marriage, that would not happen.

Do you want to take a minute to just sort of describe what your life trajectory was like in terms of happiness and maybe fulfillment or all that?

Just quick, you know, I talked about divorce. I went through another marriage of divorce, taking over my dad's business, dealing with the industry, and then me, my dad became estranged. And that was all challenging. But talking about depression, depression, people talk about time being your most valuable asset. And I completely disagree. Your mind is your most valuable asset. And keeping your mind in a good space is the most important thing you can do because it affects your time, how you enjoy your time. It affects everyone around you.

And so anything you can do to get your mind in a good space and keep it healthy, I think is extremely, extremely important. And the way I describe depression, it's like being in a pit and you're looking up. You can't get out. But you just feel this pressure on you that hold you at the bottom of that pit. And you want to reach up and grab the edge, but you. You can't grab that edge because it's so far above you and you think you're never going to get out of it. That's how I visualize it and see it in my head. And this is going to sound funny.

I had a music teacher in second grade when we first moved to Burleson. My dad started the business here. And you're going to know the answer to this because I've said too much. But she would say to the students in the classroom, like, first time she said, is, because who's the one person you can't run away from? You know, in second graders, the police know you can run away. My parents know you can run away. God will know that God doesn't count as not a person. And she goes, you can't run away from yourself. And at two years or in second grade, I thought, that is the stupidest ass thing I've ever heard.

I remembered it because I thought it was so stupid. I was in my 20s or 30s before I understood what she was trying to tell us. And that's kind of where your mind, you know, and the whole thing comes in. She wasn't saying it so much as it had to do with keeping good mental space as it was in. Which does relate to this, and that is be a good person. Because when you do bad things, they follow you and they live in your subconscious. They stay there. And if you lie to yourself about things and try to cover them up, they stay there.

They keep eating at you until you face the truth and you deal with those things in a healthy manner to help you let go.

Can I ask a question about. It's going to go a little tiny bit back, but it's something that I hear so often from men who are entrepreneurs, which is the I'm doing it for my family. You know, when your marriage broke up, I'm imagining up until that point you had had that messaging of, I'm doing this for you guys, you know?

Yeah. Yes.

I'm assuming that you have made a shift in that belief system, but, like, how did you get to the point where you understood, like, it was deeper

than that, you know, because that's purpose. Your purpose gets broke, and then when your purpose is broken, you want to give up. When I went through the first divorce, I had to keep reminding myself that I had to be there for my daughter. I couldn't give up. Not only did I have to be there for her, and, I mean, everybody has, like, glimpses of suicide when they're depressed. But, you know, acting on that, there's a totally different thing. But if you try to hold on to things that try to get that, you don't want to work that out of your head.

Yeah, you make it about other people, you know, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. It can either be like, nobody wants me around. I'm a big burden to them. But the other side of that, and this is true for me as well, is I can't let all these people down. That's what would get me out of bed in the morning.

And it has to be. You can't let people down that you truly care about. It can't be like, oh, I can't let down all my customers. You know, that's a pride thing. Right? That's not real. It has to be more like your family, like my daughter was to me at that time. And that's what really pulled me through and helped me get out of it.

To wrap up today's episode, we are pulling together the final pieces of Michael's journey toward true growth. This last segment is a masterclass in accountability. Michael breaks down the painful difference between superficial self help and true self awareness, which requires seeing yourself through someone else's eyes. He talks about the absolute necessity of abandoning victimhood and taking total responsibility for your life. Finally, they discuss the complex dynamic of men showing emotion in business and how regaining his emotional joy finally gave him the energy to stop hoarding his ideas and start executing them.

And being self aware, I think, is a very important thing. And so the terms used loosely, self. Aware. So y' all can take this however you want, but I'll be curious what your interpretation, because I know there are going to be people that listen to this podcast. When I say self awareness, they're going to think that self aware means the things I do to make myself better. I'm aware of what I need to work on. That's not real self awareness. Self awareness is when you can see yourself through a third party's eyes and know how you impact that person, how you come across to those people.

That's self awareness.

I think it's both.

It is both. It is both. But it's two different levels of self awareness. Believe it or not, my daughter pointed this out to me about six months ago and never thought of it that way.

What did she point out?

Well, I would call the first level is self Improvement where you see how to make yourself better, like physically and whatnot. But self awareness, real true level self awareness comes from seeing yourself in other people's eyes. And that's when that's another level of self improvement that you're able to work on yourself and be who you want to be in other people's eyes.

Well, I would say it a different way than what you just did. And I think maybe you can tell me if it's the same. But when I look at the people in the industries that I've worked in, I look at, there's so much self development that people do. They read the right books, they're always trying to learn and grow. But it's very superficial to be really self aware. It's painful and it doesn't feel good all the time because you're going to see yourself sometimes in light that is not like who you would want to be.

And sometimes those companies hurt.

Yeah, they do. Yeah, that's the real growth. I feel like we're probably saying the same thing, but I didn't realize that until I really did some work last year. Thinking about it and realizing, oh, we're always reading the same books and people are doing 75 hard and they're like, you know, there's always like I want to grow my mental, my mindset. I think it's shows signs of growth when your thoughts change over time. And I don't always see that in people, you know, when they're just at that surface level of self development and

the social reel looks so great.

Yep.

There are definitely some things that I want to kind of talk about that happened to me over the past two years. You know, I find myself in a space mentally where I have the energy and the drive I did in my 20s and 30s for my business again, I wish I had it. I wish I had that 15 years ago. But I didn't. And I didn't because of all these things that were planning on repeat in my head. I didn't realize, you know, I told myself that they weren't and that I was over it, but it would still come up. And when you do that type of negative repeat or ruminating, you're really in a victimhood mind state. And it's important to get out of that victimhood.

And, and I hear people say, well, you gotta speak to yourself in a good tone. You have to talk and do these things to help you move through it and kind of kill rumination. But I found the one thing that helped me really kill that ruminating Is I'm responsible for where I am. I'm responsible for this place I am in my life. I'm responsible for everything that happens to me. And I posted that on Facebook a while back, and a couple of people kind of argued with me, and I was like, no.

Was I one of them?

Surely

I knew you were being funny, but here's the point. I mean, bad things happen to everybody. It's how you choose to respond to those situations and how you choose to think about them afterwards, which makes a difference. And if you choose to see it as not about you, because if you make it about you, that's your narcissistic mindset coming out. And if you try to tell yourself that I'm so good and I'm better, and that's your narcissism playing into play. And so. And the first time I heard someone say that, I was like, that's just the craziest thing I've ever heard. But it really is.

We think that we're so above or better than those things that can happen to us because they happen to everybody. And the difference between people who are successful in life and those that aren't is how they choose to respond. Because we all have success. Similar things that happen, we all have ways to react to them. Well, the other thing that I started is start romanticizing the things that happened to me, right? Even if they were negative. Romanticize it. You know, make it something that. Look what I learned from that.

Look where it took me. Look where I got over the past couple of years.

Interesting. You call it romanticizing it.

Look how these awesome experience I just went through and I survived it, and the people I met and the things that happened during that time that were good and even though it went in a negative way and didn't end the way I would like it to be, and I missed some of that. I'm not a victim of it. There's something in there somehow that I could train it to. And you could even say external things that could happen, like you're in a car crash. I'm just going to use that because I actually know someone. Like that car crash can handle it unbelievably well. And it's when you see stuff like you start realizing how important it is, how you perceive and start thinking of yourself in different ways. And so, you know, talk about these words of affirmation and glorifying things and romanticizing it.

I think that. Because I really like what you just said, but I think that as you progress in life and through Experiences, you start to realize that the strong. Plant your flag. Be on this straight, narrow path when it comes to emotion, you know, rub dirt on it for men, is that we had this concept that at least I did. And it wasn't until probably about 15, maybe 20 years ago that I realized I didn't have all the answers and I needed to start showing more emotion and I needed to be able to let people see that I was real. And when I started doing that, people connected far more with me than they did before. And there wasn't the disconnect that was there. So.

And it in starting to. So I'm glad to hear you say that. I think what learning when you should and when you shouldn't do it. Because there's dynamics in relationship where you want to show emotion, but if you show the emotion, you come across as weak.

But do you care?

I do care. I care because I don't want to lose respect.

Interesting. This is a very, very male perspective.

No, it is. And there's definitely situations where if you show in certain relationships with women that if you show too much emotion, women lose respect because they are the emotional ones. They would need a strong figure. But there's also times where you have to be emotional and you should show emotion because that means you're real, you're human, and you need to connect in that relationship. And those vary with different people.

That's true.

And God grant me the serenity to know the difference between the two.

I love it. That's kind of where I've come to be, is that I don't. You can't be the same with everybody all the time. I don't focus on words. I focus on emotion. And everybody talks about this. Like, what do people always remember? They remember emotion, they remember emotion. So I started moving myself into this mental state of finding emotion, finding emotion during those periods, along with the prayers I would have and the things that I was doing so that that emotion would come back.

And now, like I said, I have this energy and this drive and this joy that's like. It's in my soul again and almost like a purity of like you remember when you were. Not everybody has this. But when I was in my early 20s, I was like, oh, the world is mine. It's my. You know, it's my. Did not have that clay. Right.

I've got all this time. I'm going to make all these things. And I kind of feel that way, even though I know I'm toward the end of my years. You know, it's I've got a lot of assets that I can manage and do things with, but I feel that joy again. And I remember when I first took the business over from my dad, I was so upset, so mad that I had to do it. And I never really put my heart and soul into it. And I look back at it now, and now I'm. And I had ideas.

There were things that have been developed over the past 10 years I thought of 15 years ago. And I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just saying that I had the ideas. I just didn't implement them because I thought, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. Oh, no one ever figured that out. And I'll just hold that. I'll gatekeep that information until I'm ready to use it.

Kurt, you've done that too, right?

Well, I'm listening to this and I'm like, those are so cheap. They're so cheap.

Yeah. Yeah, me too.

Exactly. They are.

Yeah.

I met people that just like, that's all I do is sit around all day long and blow out ideas. But if you don't know which ideas develop and to run with, you know, that's what makes a difference. But I knew these ideas were valuable ideas.

Wow, that is a lot to process. No jokes, no God complex, just massive gratitude to Meg and Michael for being so incredibly open about the things most entrepreneurs try to hide. If you want to hear the full context of these amazing conversations, you absolutely need to dive into the archives. The first half of today's clips with Meg were pulled from episode 18, Meg likes money, but it's not about the money. And the second half featuring Michael came from episode 29, Michael Hinder the Cost of Success. As for next week, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Mel and Kurt will finally emerge from their mysterious vacation. Or maybe you will be stuck with your humble editor for one more round.

Either way, we will have a great episode waiting for you. Thanks for listening.

Thanks everybody for joining us at the soul proprietor podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us. We're wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, it would mean so much to us. We really do read each of these reviews and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this and so many others. If you want to engage with us at our website and maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear on the podcast, feel free to go to soleproprietorpodcast.com and share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.