Have you ever wondered what it truly means to live, not just to do? In a recent episode, I sat down with Mike Kitko—a leader who battled the weight of external success and internal emptiness—to explore how chasing dollars can steal your joy. What if you discovered that real fulfillment isn’t in the next promotion but in every precious "now"? Join us and challenge your beliefs: Are you living out of obligation, or are you truly inspired?

My first book was "The Imposter in Charge", and it kind of talks about, you know, that journey and being wildly successful on the outside, but feeling like an absolute fraud and an absolute imposter inside. Are you living a life of obligation or are you living a life of inspiration?

Welcome to the Exceptional Companies Podcast, a podcast for purpose led entrepreneurs looking to master the art of buying, selling, or optimizing small businesses. Your host, Chris Seegers, founder of Exceptional Companies and author of Selling Mainstreet, has over a decade of experience starting, buying, and leading successful businesses.

Here's your host, Chris Segers.

Chris Seegers: Welcome to the Exceptional Companies Podcast, where we explore how to buy, sell, and grow your business. I'm your host, Chris Seegers, and I'm so excited to introduce my guest today. Mike Kitko is the founder of Inner Wealth Global and Inner Wealth Mastermind. He's a mindset and business coach who helps you go from confusion to clarity, from pain to empowerment.

Mike, I'm so excited about this podcast. Welcome to the show, brother.

Mike Kitko: Chris, thanks for having me here, man. It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah, from fricking confusion, the, clarity and just getting a sense of purpose in your life. Just making sure that you're showing up each and every day. So, but thanks for having me, man. And I look forward to jamming.

Mike Kitko: Awesome man. So thanks for setting me up.

I was, I'm a marine vet, so I was in the Marine Corps for five years and when I exit, I was, had a very successful five-year stint rose through the ranks in leadership positions and just to really cut my teeth in the leadership world in the Marine Corps. But when I got out I joined corporate America and I started ascending the ladder, met my bride in abnormal psychology class, believe it or not.

And it didn't take long before we were connected and we were all in on each other. And then we had, we got pregnant and then we had our first daughter and we moved all the way across the country, a corporate move all the way across the country to Portland, Oregon.

Chris Seegers: Nice. What type of manufacturing.

Mike Kitko: Heavy industrial equipment. It was for a Stanley Black and Decker, let's just say.

Chris Seegers: Oh yeah, yeah.

Mike Kitko: The name. I managed a uh, hydraulics plan out in Portland, Oregon, and after about three years of uh, really successful, we turned me and my leadership team, we rebuilt that business and recovered a lot of the red into the black. I was recruited by a company to move to St. Louis, Missouri, which is where I currently live. So, this is, I had a lot of success, Chris, all the way up until we moved to St. Louis. And what happened was I lost myself in the process. My wife lost herself in the process. I was uh, 300 pounds suicidal, drinking toxic levels. She was in pharmaceutical addiction.

I was fit all the way up until we moved, but in terms of moving into a position, I had no rightful spot to assume it was just about the dollars. and

Chris Seegers: So let's, can I pause you there, Mike? 'cause you said something that's really interesting, so you lost yourself. And I feel like as we come outta Covid. There are a lot of folks that have lost their way in some form or fashion. I think there's some folks that are kind of operating in a brain fog. So walk me through a little bit of how you got to that path where you kind of lost perspective on your purpose and your core values and your identity.

And then let's go into how you started getting back into that. Because I think it's important also to, people are maybe feeling like, Hey, I can't relate to some of the guests. They're all crushing it and the reality is. We've all got stories. We've all had a bunch of successes and failures everybody does in life, but walk me through a little bit about that.

That was my identity, man. I was just somebody that was looking for the next dollar to ultimately try to feel successful or try to feel valuable or try to feel worthy or try to feel something. I was trying to feel something other than broken. And the reason I just chased money and the reason I just chased the next position or the next raise is because There was something so missing from inside of me that I was trying to, I was trying to get that from outside of me. I was trying to forge an inner internal state of, harmony by some external device, whether it be money, whether it be sex, whether it be a title, whether it be a diploma. I was always just seeking that thing, man.

And that's why I was. You know, that's why I was Abu. We lived in an abusive house, physical, mental, emotional abuse of my wife and my children, and sexual abuse of my wife in some cases and, you know, marital infidelity, and just so much freaking chaos because I. I was just seeking to feel okay.

I almost ended my life and I even failed at that. But. In the process of rebuilding me and rebuilding my life and rebuilding my family, now I get to help other people kind of either not get lost like I did, or if they do feel lost, if they do feel a little confused, if they do feel purposeless, just help 'em get back on track and connect with their purpose, their values and who they really are instead of who This mind sometimes tells us.

Who we are or who we aren't. So when I'm working with people, and you and I had a discussion when I'm working with people, I wanna make sure and you said, you know, in some cases I work with a lot of people in business acquisition and real estate investment. Those are two major industries that I work in amongst others.

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent.

Mike Kitko: It has nothing to do with business acquisition. Lights them up or they get excited about it. It feels like an obligation because they're trying to fix something that's disconnected inside or they're investing because they feel insecure and they feel if they just keep investing enough and getting enough money and add more commas, more zeros that, that they'll finally get this.

This soothing feeling of security and all money. And I love money, and money loves me, don't get me wrong, but all it does is amplify the stories inside of us. They don't solve the problems

Chris Seegers: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I'm finishing my second book called Buying Main Street, which is just a primer on how to buy a business. And the first chapter is on clarity. And the point is like if you don't understand your purpose, why you're doing it and it's gotta be a good purpose. And I can't remember what the exercise is called, maybe the five why's, but whenever you say hey Mike, why are you doing this?

So let's try to dig into, and my thesis, so I, I'm a person of faith. My thesis is at the core of everybody. Our why has to be somehow connected to serving other people. That is where fulfillment ultimately comes from, is service of others. Now, that doesn't mean you're serving at the expense of yourself and your family, and I think there's a whole, you know, downside to that.

I'm like, none of that matters if you don't have the right purpose. When you get through this really hard season, which business is hard, like it's so hard running a business, if you don't have that purpose really dialed in and in alignment, hopefully with your spouse and your kids and whoever's involved in that process, your team, you won't be able to get through that tough time and you will start looking for other avenues to find fulfillment.

I ultimately think fulfillment comes from our relationship with our creator. But I think, like you said. We're in our own heads and if we use, if we let external things, you know, influence how we feel internally, we've got an issue. And all of us struggle with that in some season of our life. So I love that man.

So I'm always living 10 years out. That's just my talent. I love thinking about the things that are 10 year out and then actualizing 'em. But I struggle and I think a lot of entrepreneurs and business folks do, or maybe just people in general struggle with, Hey, today is, today. All I have is today.

Literally all I have is this hour. Tomorrow I might get hit by a bus or I might have something happen. And if I'm not, I. Enjoying and being at peace and fulfillment and utilizing those days, then I'll be at the end of my life pretty quickly and realize, man, I just was in the future the whole time. So anyways, I wanted to tee you up, but let's talk a little bit about that and, and how you would coach clients and some of the tools and tricks that you found along the way.

Our faiths might look the same. They might look different but I, I think there's only one creator and we're all serving the same creator. But the point is. You know, I believe that we were built and we were created to experience a certain lifestyle, to experience a certain purpose, right?

It's kind of like our destiny. And the point being is we have this place that we're looking to materialize this thing, that we're looking to materialize, this lifestyle, that we're looking to experience this amount of wealth and success and happiness and love and freedom that we're looking to, you know, to harvest and to reap the rewards of.

We only live, we've only ever lived in one time. Do you know what that time is now.

Mike Kitko: right now? That's it.

Chris Seegers: percent.

You can only live right here, right now. And if you're not enjoying this now because you're trying to get there, or you're, you need to get there to feel okay. And if you're not living this now, then why would you, if you're not enjoying this now, then why would you ever give yourself permission to enjoy any now?

So since your whole life has been a progression of nows, but if you look back, you were always probably trying to get somewhere else. And if you are always trying to get somewhere else, that means you're not living now. And if you're not living now, why would you give yourself permission tomorrow to live then, even if you had an amount of money?

Maybe you didn't take time to enjoy that. You actually crushed your goal or whatever that was. You just, you know, nothing changed in your life, so you just moved the goal. So now you're.

Chris Seegers: hundred percent.

Mike Kitko: When I was, I remember being in in high school and I couldn't wait to graduate so I could not be in high school.

And then I couldn't wait to get a job. And then I hated that job, so I joined the Marine Corps, and then I couldn't wait to get outta the Marine Corps. And then I lived on the East Coast and, then we were getting ready to move to Oregon, and then I was, I couldn't wait to get there. And it was like, you're always looking for that next thing as a to get a sense that you finally arrived and there is no destination.

There is the, there's only one destination in this human lifetime, and that's the last exhale. That's it. That's the only destination. There's always going to be something else that, that your mind's gonna wanna experience. And I'm gonna get a little mystical here. The mind wants to want more than it wants to have.

Chris Seegers: Oh yeah, yeah I've, I've read some of those excerpts. It's incredible.

Mike Kitko: It's an amazing book, amazing book and the number one regret of the dying is I wish I would've lived a life true to myself instead of living for other people or what they wanted for me. And

Chris Seegers: percent.

Mike Kitko: like, I wish I wouldn't have worked so much. I wish I would've expressed what I really felt. I wish I would've stayed in connection with my friends.

And the last is, I wish I would've just let myself be happier.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. Yep,

Mike Kitko: What I want, Chris, is I wanna get to that last exhale and just go, man, that was awesome. Not I accomplished. And look what I.

When I come home, I'm serving. When I go to church, I'm serving, when I'm doing sports, I'm serving. When it becomes one thing and consistently applied through your core values and your character and your purpose and your identity, it makes it. Not so stressful to be like, oh, I worked a lot of hours this week.

And it's like, well, there's seasons where it's appropriate to work a lot hours and you need to work a lot of hours, but you also don't want that season to extend too long where you damage your faith, your family, your friends. But when it's one thing and you can tell your wife, one of my greatest mentors, I asked him that 'cause he coaches so many young guys and is just a wonderful human being.

Now, we just need to make sure that we have appropriate time in each of those pillars of life. But it becomes easier to say, Hey, it's all one journey. Like you said, it's not something where I'm like, all right. When I go to work, it's my work and it has nothing to do with what I love doing and my passion and my identity, and then I come home and that's, I'm a totally different person there.

So anyways, I love that man. Okay, so. Let's talk about bit as we come out of Covid, and I think we're still coming out of it. You and I had talked I think people are walking in a fog. Some folks to me are almost like robots where they are in some bad operating systems and they're not quite sure how to get out of them.

Mike Kitko: Yeah I think I was just having a, powerful discussion with a group yesterday and it was about obligation. Are you living a life of obligation or are you living a life of inspiration? So my wife and I, but going up the leading up to Covid and we love the travel. My family loves to travel, but you know, the date that we were gonna travel leading up to Covid, it was always the same date.

So. We lived a life of obligation. Like all of our current obligations were more important than experiencing the goodness in life and experiencing what we really wanted to experience. And there's a lot of folks right now, Chris, that are in a career, a vocation, a job, a business out of obligation, not out of inspiration.

And in some cases, covid knocked the crap out of people. So, you know, it shook them into place. And some people during Covid, they got even more paralyzed than they were before. But for some people, it sparked that thing saying, you know what? we could be on lockdown for the rest of our lives and if we don't get the living we're just gonna, we're just gonna wait around until we die.

And I remember Covid hits oil, price goes negative. Everybody's like, are we all dying or is everything going away? And I've got a whole team that doesn't know what to do. Right. And in Midland, Texas, where we lived, we had these crazy dust storms. It was like Fallujah, man. It was like literally you couldn't see half a block away the dust.

It was so brown out there. And I remember the office is empty, everyone's home because it was a march. So everyone's like. What the heck's gonna happen, right? We sent everybody home for a little bit till we figured out what was going on. I'm looking out the boardroom window, the dust comes in. I'm just like choking on it 'cause it was an old building.

And it was that moment of, that breaking point where we said. Enough's enough, and we created this architecture, this blueprint, we call it the Blueprint for Exceptional Life, to get us out of that. We're like, all right, we've gotta exactly like you and your wife. We gotta do this thing today. I mean, we listed our house and we're like, we're moving back to Colorado.

We're gonna continue to build our family offices, help people buy businesses. But how so? For people that didn't have that huge moment, because I think that's a lot of the folks that are coming out maybe just didn't have that. Maybe they were in lockdown, they had a good job and it wasn't that extreme, so it never shook them out.

So for people that didn't have that catalyst moment and are coming out of it being like, man, I'm still in that funk. What are you seeing, Mike? Like, how are you sharing some ways to kind of activate those folks?

But we get to play human for 80, 90 years, and there's not a reason to hate any second of it or to not be excited about any second of it. When I was coming out of the corporate days and I had gotten fired twice in 20 months, when I started trying to figure out what am I gonna do with the rest of my life?

Like, what's this look like? My resume was Swiss cheese and honestly, I wasn't going back to corporate. I knew that chapter had closed, like, what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? And I said, you know what, when I was in my corporate days, there's only one thing that I ever loved doing.

Like I'm not gonna waste a second of my life doing things that, that out of obligation or that I hate. I'm just gonna do the things that I love. And my wife fought against me so hard, Chris, I. She's like, no, you're gonna go back and you're gonna get a job and I'm fine. I'm gonna start a business. And she said, no, you're gonna get a job.

We need benefits. So I filed for divorce. Like, listen, I don't think you understand. I'm not living out of obligation anymore. And my wife and I are now very happily married. We've rebuilt everything and we've both gone all in. If it feels like obligation, we're out. If feel, if it feels like I have to, I'm out.

It's sexy right now, right? The acquiring businesses right now is getting a lot of glamor. It's getting, there's a lot of people out there doing, you know, teaching and coaching and mentoring. It's sexy as can be. Some people are doing it just because it seems like the thing that they should be doing, not because it's the thing that they want to do.

Real estate investing. A couple years ago, real estate investing was the, the hot, sexy thing, but there was people that tried to jump into that game that weren't built for it. It was nowhere near their purpose. They weren't excited for it. It didn't inspire 'em, they were just doing it because they were supposed to, and it felt like there was something wrong with them if they didn't.

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent. Can, Can I tell, sorry. Keep going, Mike. Sorry,

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent. I love that, man. You're true to yourself.

Mike Kitko: That's not something that lights me up. I could easily be successful in those, but I love what I do, and that would feel like obligation. Me?

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent.

Do you like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss an episode by clicking the subscribe button now and check out our website, www. excoadvisors. com. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you. Thank you for your support. Now back to the show.

Hey. If I say I wanna have integrity, which means I wanna be the same all the time, everywhere I go, that means I will or won't do certain things. But in marriage when you were like, Hey, I'm going this direction, I have to go this direction and you're like, I. Your wife says, I'm not in alignment with that.

So one interesting comment. So there's a great pastor outta the West coast Erwin Wick McManus, who's just a, he's a, just a tremendous thought leader, but he said something two weeks ago, I. That I found fascinating and I asked my wife about, he said, if you're a visionary and an entrepreneur, or if you make a cataclysmic change in your life, your spouse now has to fall in love with a totally different person.

Mike Kitko: Different version.

I'm always just like, boom, I wanna learn this new thing. I'm gonna go this direction. Okay, sweet. We've mastered that. Sweet, let's build a team around that. Let's go this way. But for me it was I was able to sit down with my wife and say, is that true? And she's like, oh my gosh, we've been married 13 years.

She's like, every year you're doing something totally different. She's like, I love it and I love you, but there's a certain catch up period. And I was like, wow, that's that. That's something that I want to be cognizant of as I honor my marriage and my wife to say, Hey here's another thing that I'm really passionate about that's in alignment with our vision and our purpose.

I wanna go explore this thing and not just assume. Hey, that's good, but say, Hey, let's talk through how that works. It impacts our family and our marriage because one of the greatest downsides and I've, been on a huge platform, is like, don't buy a business in real estate and do all these things at the expense of your marriage and your family.

And your fitness, like if your health is bad and your family's bad and your faith is bad, you could have the greatest. And just like you said, like losing integrity with who you are, you could be making 10 million bucks a year and commit suicide 'cause you're miserable. But I've really been.

Bringing that concept into entrepreneurship and some of the couples and just saying, Hey, guy, gal, if you're doing this crazy, huge growth phase, like keep in mind that there's some damage that's gonna be done to your marriage and understand where you may need to come and bring your spouse alongside and say, Hey, I kind of, I did change when I started.

Mike Kitko: Yeah. Yeah. All of that. And I've got a podcast as well, it's called The Inner Wealth Podcast and episode 100. My wife and I did an episode together, like actually talking about that, and Chris it's cool to hear you say that because we did talk about falling in love with. With the future version that hasn't been, hasn't even been, you know, envisioned yet, like this relationship thing.

We tend to fall in love with a version and try to keep, the person the same. But yet you ever seen that meme? I love this meme. It's a caterpillar and a, butterfly sitting across the table and the caterpillar says to the butterfly, you've changed. And the butterfly says, that's kind of the point. Right.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, a hundred percent.

It wasn't a very happy home that I grew up in, which is why I brought that into my own home. 'cause it's the only thing I knew. But I used to believe that marriage was two people compromising who they are so that they could like out of a, vow of integrity. Right? But you both, you were both miserable together and I created that but now it's like if one in one doesn't equal three in a relationship or in a partnership or whatever, if one in one pl one plus one doesn't equal three in some way, if it doesn't make the hole bigger, it doesn't really make sense.

I. Partnership, two people together creates results, multiplies the results, multiplies the love, multiplies the joy, multiplies the freedom instead of just, you know, two people being separate and unified. That's, it's not marriage and partnership is. So

Chris Seegers: absolutely.

I lost a hundred pounds, you know, over the six, nine months stopped. You know, I just stopped all the self abuse. My kids had grown up in a chaotic environment that was full of violence, that was full of chaos, that was full of pain, that was full of suffering. And when I broke out of that stuff, Chris, they actually tried to bring me back into it.

Chris Seegers: Wow.

Mike Kitko: It was unfamiliar, the peace was unfamiliar to 'em. They weren't used to, they didn't even know how to operate in that environment. So when my wife and I, like when we started to rebuild our marriage and peace started to take over this home, my kids couldn't function. They, it was too foreign for 'em.

Chris Seegers: hundred percent.

Mike Kitko: people like your wife and my wife, they understand that there is a catch up period and we get to leap fall in love with that next version I.

Chris Seegers: Yeah. The other thing that I've been really working on is, and I don't do it well, but I think it's important. I want to love my wife and expand her unique abilities. And I think generally me and probably a lot of married people are trying to make your spouse you, I. You're like, why aren't you doing the same growth?

Why aren't you doing the same disciplines? Why aren't you waking up at 5:00 AM? Why aren't you? And it's like, well, that, that has nothing to do with what they want outta life and who they are. And so really loving her as she is and expanding that. And same with me. Like she knows now I'm not the integrator.

But I think really loving them for who they are and not trying to make them the same person as you because they aren't. And when you release that, that control, you're like, Hey, I don't want to control you. I know you're not, I shouldn't put you in the same. Patterns as me and the same goals and vision, and I hope we have alignment with our goals.

That dude, that just takes so much pressure off your marriage and I'm still practicing it for sure.

Mike Kitko: Two forms of love. We think this is love. You need to be who I need you to be because I need to feel okay because I need to feel safe because I want to be comfortable because I want predictability, because I want familiarity because I can't operate without you because I can't handle your tendencies that are different.

So I need to control you and mold you into the person I want you to be. That's not, that's codependency.

Chris Seegers: Yep.

Even if that doesn't include me. That last part's really important. Even if that doesn't include me. I love you so much and I want for you what you want for you. Even if that doesn't include me. This is codependency and this is freedom. Why would somebody ever leave freedom? So I wanna extend what you just said, Chris, about not controlling or manipulating our spouses.

I would say the same thing about our children.

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent.

Mike Kitko: Like my, I was rubber stamped when I was a kid. I was told what baseball team to love. I was told what football team to love. I was told what political party I was gonna be affiliated with. I was told what religion I needed to believe. I was told all these things.

I was stamped and molded instead of no one in my formative years. Nobody asked me about me.

And when I started parenting, guess what I started to do. Here's our favorite baseball team. Here's our favorite football team. Here's our religion. Here's political affiliation. Boom boom. Until I went, wait a minute. They are sovereign human beings. Why don't I ask them what their interests are?

And that's when my kids started thriving, is instead of me telling them and programming them and conditioning them into who I wanted them to be, I started extracting who they wanted to be. And I helped them be that because why? Who just because they came through me and my wife, who says we own them. We don't, God owns them.

We're just the mechanism for them to get here,

Chris Seegers: man

Mike Kitko: stewards. But

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent.

Chris Seegers: I love that. I've got a great story on that. So last weekend we've got three kids. My oldest is gonna be nine, and he's a sports fanatic. We don't watch tv. Like we watch a movie or two a week. That's it. I mean, like minimal. So we don't watch sports at all, but he just loves sports. So we play, you know, we throw the ball, we do the lacrosse, like we're just doing.

Anytime I come home he is like, can we do this? You Absolutely. And so he's on a flag football team and last weekend I said, Hey you've got your last game of the season, but we have an opportunity to go see family and ride dirt bikes and be outside and like, you know. Both great options and I was a hundred percent confident he was gonna say, five football I gotta be there, I wanna be there.

And he's like, in two seconds. No, let's go. Let's go do the dirt bikes, let's go hang out with my cousins. I was like, cool, okay. Like, let's go do that. But I think like you have these patterns, even as a parent, even when you're allowing a lot of freedom to your kids where you're just kind of like.

Mike Kitko: Just tell No, just lemme, lemme just

Chris Seegers: Go for it.

Mike Kitko: I have two children, both girls. My older daughter when, well, actually both of them, we put 'em in tumbling when they were like four and six, and after a little bit of tumbling, you know, they, there weren't a lot of kids in tumbling. They closed the tumbling class down and they moved them over to cheer.

And they said, Hey we'll, keep you at the same price, but there's, you know, we will see if this fits. And after that cheer practice, the first cheer practice, my older daughter came over and she had the biggest smile on her face. I had never seen her that lit up. And I said, did you like it? And she was like.

And she would, you know, she was just, she was down in my basement and she was lifting weights and she was exercising and she was like, like taking care of her body and she just had this passion for cheer. Her school grades were. Not great. She was passing, but she always struggled. Meanwhile, my younger daughter was just like blown away any academics, but wasn't very like physically gifted.

And my other daughter wasn't athletic at all, but she was a athlete and academics wasn't even a challenge. And I'm watching my daughter on this mat and I'm like, holy crap. I thought they were both supposed to be math athletes. And I've got one athlete and one athlete man, and they're equal. And I cherished and I praised the academics.

But what I would do is I would just, I thought that. The a athletics was just a passing phase and I was critical of her academics and I didn't see the uniqueness that each of 'em had, and I didn't celebrate their uniquenesses. I still went through according to what they should be doing in school.

I hope

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent. No, I love that. Yeah, man I mean, we always say God has created everyone uniquely gifted. There's not another Chris Sears in the world. There never will be. And we believe if we don't. So I believe we're created as creators. We were built to build things. That doesn't mean a business.

That doesn't mean I, it's whatever you were created to build. Could be art, could be math, could be stay at home mom, could be business owner, could be real estate. When we don't put that creation into the universe is losing the universe atrophies. And that's really the activation and equipping is trying to get people to say, Hey, you don't need to buy business.

You don't need to. Unreal estate. You don't need like. None of that matters. It's really are you putting your creative energy into the universe, because that's what God created us to do was create. When you're not creating how you were uniquely gifted, you're creating for someone else's unique gifting.

Okay. So I want to totally shift gears. So our a and d advisory company helps people buy and sell businesses. We have really two paths. We have one that is, Hey we wanna help you grow your enterprise value, understand how to grow your business to be more valuable when you sell it. It should always be part of your output at some point or not.

And then we have business owners that say, I'm ready to sell this thing today. I'm tired, I'm not passionate about, et cetera. The interesting thing, and this, I wanna bring this back to mindset. I would say out of the clients, let's say if there's 10 potential consulting clients where it's like, Hey, your business is worth 2 million and we wanna help you get to five 10, whatever your goal is, whatever the goal is that's gonna support your personal goals, I would say two outta 10.

On the mindset side, some good questions. We could just a ask them, and we don't care if they do it or not, right? Like, we don't need the money. Our, businesses are successful. We don't need any clients. We want clients, we want the right kind of clients. But we've really been tailoring our questions to kind of ask about personal readiness, business readiness, ask the right questions to get them unstuck one way or the other.

It could be. Man, I hate this business. I need to sell it. Or, Hey, I love this and I want to grow it, or I only want to grow these pieces. Talk a little bit about that and some of the questions that have been useful to your clients and other business owners.

Okay. When you're talking about mindset, there's, I found that there's four reasons why somebody would set a goal. All right. Three of 'em not such a great reason, right? The first one's insecurity. They're afraid of losing something. They're afraid of not having. They're afraid of something falling apart, that maybe it's, they set a big financial goal because there's money, fear inside of them.

Okay? Insecurity is not an awesome reason to set a goal,

Chris Seegers: Yeah, absolutely.

The second is inadequacy. You're trying to prove something about yourself, or you're trying to prove something to somebody else. It means that you don't feel good enough right now. You don't feel valuable. You don't feel worthy. You don't feel deserving. you're trying to be seen in a certain way.

You're trying to prove something in this world. Does this make sense?

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent. Yep.

Mike Kitko: not an awesome reason to set a goal. Okay. The la or the, third painful reason is insignificance. You feel like if you get to this level, then you'll finally be somebody, like you feel insignificant right now.

Maybe you feel invisible, maybe you feel nobody sees you or nobody. Nobody respects you and you're just trying to do this thing and accomplish this thing so that people will see you in a certain light. That's not an awesome reason to set a goal, but the only awesome reason to set a goal is inspiration.

And intrinsically on fire to do the thing to rule the day on the path to getting there. It's not sacrificing your life so that you can finally get there. Because just like we said before, there is no there, man. You're never gonna get there. Does that make sense? So I wanna know the logical reason, gimme the emotional reason, because there's something you're after and I wanna know what that is.

Chris Seegers: A hundred percent. So the way that we approach it is there's kind of three legs of the stool when we talk coaching business owners, your personal side, your business side, and your wealth plan. All three of those should interact, but the business and the wealth plan should serve your personal why. And generally it's the reverse, right?

But we've really tried to shift folks because most of our clients are, you know, I would say like 50 to 70. Um, And so they got rubber stamp just like you did, where it's like, Hey, business is this. You need to provide for your family. You need to be able to buy that second home. You need to take the vacations, you need to pay for the college, for your kids.

And after you get there, that's when you can rest and relax and do the golf. And I'm like, hold on a second. Your personal purpose and mission should be served by all those other things. The, like, those should serve you. Your wealth plan should serve what you want to do and get out of life. And if it doesn't, throw out that wealth plan and create a new one.

We've got an amazing client. Wonderful business. And he is like, I wanna sell this thing 'cause I'm gonna play tennis. And I was like, okay. How many times do you play tennis a day? Well, maybe a couple times a week. Oh, okay. So how many, like when do you go to bed? When you wake up? Okay. At this amount of hours.

So like tennis is your purpose, like you're 70. Is your body gonna hold up if you're playing tennis every day? And he is like, well, okay. And I said, okay, well, like let's take a little bit of time and think through what ignites you? What, how do you wanna spend your time, your talent, and your treasures?

And it's like, if those are obligations, like you said, don't do 'em. If that is literally what fires you up, man, you should pursue that with all your passion. But we just have these things that we just like you said, rubber stamp and then they move on. And I'm like, hold on a second. I don't think you really wanna play tennis more than once a week.

Mike Kitko: But they're the shoulds of life. Right? It just makes sense. They're the shoulds. I mean, should, to me, should's a bad word, but I got two stories and I'm gonna, I delight in these stories. I love these, but I've got a client that, she's got an awesome business. Her husband has an awesome business.

They have all the money they're ever gonna need. They have time freedom. They have a beautiful home, you know? And one time she came and they're in their forties. And one time she came, she called, well, she's been a private client for about five years, but she said, Mike, I'm tired. I don't, I'm tired of, kind of tired of working.

Plenty. Are you ever gonna need another dollar? No. Okay. There's nothing wrong with not working.

Chris Seegers: Mm-hmm.

Mike Kitko: We are not beasts of burden. We are human beings, not human doings. We do not need to work if we do not need anything. And I think there's a misconception that if we're not working, we're lazy. But enjoying life can be like the greatest work that you'll ever do, experiencing and harvesting life.

And what happened, Chris, was she throttled back? She spent some time, she recovered 40 years of running hot. She recovered and one day she woke up and she said, all right, I'm ready to build something else. She just. She just needed that period of rest, man. And she just, she didn't need my, like, my permission to take that rest, but she just needed that recovery and rest time.

Chris Seegers: I love it.

Mike Kitko: Here's another story, and this is a, made up story, but it kind of shows you how we live, all right? And I see this a lot with people. They have everything they'll ever need in life.

They'll never need another thing, but they feel like they should be doing something different. They feel like they should be leveling up in their finances because that's just what you do. There's a story about a Mexican fisherman and this Mexican fisherman, he's on the beach and he's got a couple fishing rods out and he's got his nets out in the water and he's throwing and he's bringing his nets in and he's got buckets and buckets of fish behind him.

This guy's masterful of fishing. He knows all the spots and, and he's got all these buckets and they're full and they're overflowing. And this American businessman walks by. And says, holy crap, look at all these fish. You are an awesome fisherman. You're a genius. And the American businessman says, I got an idea.

We're gonna, I'll make you so rich and I'll make you so much money and we'll have so much success. You won't even know what to do with it. What would you do with your days if he was completely free and you could do whatever you wanted? And a fisherman looks at his buckets and his net and he says, I'd be doing this. And he was already living the life of his dreams. It was all already doing exactly what he wanted to do, but somebody with a different definition and belief of what you needed to do. And in this businessman it, you always needed to be leveling up and making more money and building another business. But, But this guy just wanted to fish and this guy didn't need anything else Sometimes.

Chris Seegers: Yeah, I love it. I'll share another story that just happened this morning. So, we call ourselves capitalist missionaries. We do mission work through business. We love it. And that's my passion. I love it. I could do it all day, every day. Not other people's passion, but I just met with a young man who runs a nonprofit here in Colorado Springs, and their whole thesis is getting disenfranchised youth.

Back into society. So homeless folks. Folks that fail outta high school is, once they turn 18, society just forgets about 'em and says, Hey. Figure it out. You're an adult now and you've never learned how to, you know, pay rent. You've never learned how to present yourself for a job. And so their whole goal is to create the skills, everything, the health piece of it, you know, the physical health, mental health, emotional health, and then also provide skills and training.

He is like, I just want to have a small group of kids that we can really journey with deeply and we can do that. Right? And he is like, so there's tons of other nonprofit people that are like, you've gotta scale this way, you've gotta do this thing, you've gotta do that thing. And he is like, no, no, no. I want to find the most disenfranchised kids.

Help them have an incredible life. It's not about growing this thing to a certain size and paying my si. He's like, I just wanna do that thing. And I was like, I'm in. I'm like, I'll help you however I can, because that's exactly right. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, we've gone long, which is, go ahead. No, you're good.

Chris Seegers: I love that man. Okay, so I'm really bad at this, so I always forget because I get so excited. Mike, tell people where they can find you and where they can interact with you, and whether they want to work with you or they just want to read your books or get your tools. Where are some areas that they can interact with you?

Mike Kitko: Well, thanks Chris. I appreciate that. My web, my business is Inter Wealth Global, and the website is inter wealth global.com. Pretty simple. On there there's some products. I'm an, I'm a published author as well. There's, There's products. I've got a blog on there if you wanna go and read a little bit if you're a reader.

Right now there's 188 episodes of some of it me jamming with people. But a few episodes of me jamming with people, but in a lot of cases it's just me, just we, my wife calls 'em mic drops. It's 20 minutes of me just spewing fire, just empowering you and just trying to make it so that after you're finished listening the episode, you'll just run through a wall because you're so fired up.

So Chris, I feel my mission here is on this planet is to empower people to just live the fullest, truest, most authentic life possible. Serve their purpose, be of value to themselves, be of value to others, and just like live from the inside out and just give everything you got before your last exhale.

Chris Seegers: I love it. Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show and hopefully I can come on your show and chat some more about this 'cause you're getting me fired up and I, I could tell you love this stuff. I love this stuff. I could talk about this forever. But appreciate your time man. Have a great day and a great week.

Chris Seegers: Sure.

Thanks for joining us this week on the Exceptional Companies podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or via RSS so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, if you found value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes. Or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show, that would help us out too.

If you like this show, please reach out through our website, www. excoadvisors. com for free tools to order a copy of Selling Main Street or to sign up for our free webinar on how to sell your Main Street business.