Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Cut the Tide Podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Thomas Helfrich. I am joined today by Mike Ciroc. Mike, how are you today?

Speaker 2: 0:07

Thomas, what's happening, man? Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:09

Listen. I appreciate you coming on. You have an amazing podcast, great following. Take a moment to introduce yourself and what it is you do.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Yeah, I'm Mike Ciroc. My friends call me Ciroc. I'm just an unstoppable being, 5'7" Italian physical form, but but my being, this can fill up a city man, maybe even beyond that, and I had to take time to become aware of that. And now I'm just out there serving people, helping people have several businesses, but at the end of the day, man, I wake up obsessed with helping people.

Speaker 1: 0:37

You and I are on the same trajectory of of kind of drive. I don't think anymore. I used to walk in a room and I felt like I had control of the room. I think that was my annoying ADHD hyperactive self thinking that now I walk in I'm like I think I'll hang back and figure out who to talk to. I don't know, are you one of those guys that walks?

Speaker 2: 0:55

around and be like man C-Rox here. Yeah, you know, there's an intention there to be a room tilter, so when you walk in the room, it's important to me that I change the temperature of the room if it's not where it should be. As far as I'm concerned and I really believe that vibes matter emotions are contagious so I'm very hyper-conscious of what I bring to an environment and also the people that are around me, and making sure that I repel the wrong people. And you can repel the wrong people without a verbal communication or even non-verbal communication. It's just the way you carry yourself and it's important for me to make sure that I'm conscious of that because your environment is so important. So, yeah, I'll go up to people all the time. I don't sit back and wait, but I know the people to go up to.

Speaker 2: 1:35

I'm hyperintentional.

Speaker 1: 1:37

Hyperintentional. I love that, and you can change the vibe of a room, and I think that's important. I think a good lesson to take away that right away is you can affect change of people's behavior by with a positive energy. The negative ones will tend to get around you, but then go away unless their partner, somebody throws more interest in and you than them. Anyway, that's a funny dynamic when that happens. Talk about your business. What is it you do, though, like what's the core business for you?

Speaker 2: 2:00

Yeah, my business, our core business, is that one agency. We are the number one podcast booking firm in North America. Our clients are some of the top people in their space and we go out and get them connected with the top podcasts, because we've built relationships with over a thousand podcasts in all different genres that are in the upper 2% globally ranked podcasts and we take a lot of pride in attaching ourselves to our client's mission and then continuing being a part of that to push them further, faster. So that's our core business.

Speaker 1: 2:28

Yeah, I mean, I think you answered the question of I always ask the power statement why people choose you.

Speaker 2: 2:33

Yeah Well, there's very few people that have actually done what we help our clients do. I've been on over 1100 podcasts as a guest, so I have an obviously unique perspective of that. I've cracked the code of podcast guesting and there's some things that I do that nobody else does after I go on a show. That really elevates the thing, and I believe podcast hosts are some of the most connected people on the planet, so why aren't you networking and showing interest in what the podcast hosts that just interviewed you, what they're doing, what their interests are, what their vision is? So we take a different approach. So we take a different approach. It's very transformational, non-transactional. We're not cold pitching a bunch of people. We may just to get attention at first, but at the end of the day, we're looking to be hyper-intentional, and that sets us apart from anyone else.

Speaker 1: 3:12

On your journey of success. What's the biggest tie you had to cut?

Speaker 2: 3:16

I was in the mortgage business. The biggest tie I had to cut was I was in the mortgage business for 20 years. I've been a large organization with my friends three of my best friends I grew up with since we were 10 or 11 years old. From Philly to Miami we had branches. We've had hundreds of employees over those 20 years and did very well, but I felt trapped because of the money.

Speaker 2: 3:34

I didn't like what I was doing. The business is very commoditized. When rates go up, your business goes down. There's not much you can do about it. As much as 50 to 60, 70% sometimes, and I didn't like that lack of control, but it was also not sexy enough for me.

Speaker 2: 3:47

However, I had this in my mind that I was trapped by the money. I was thinking to myself what else could I do to make this kind of money? I dropped out of college. I was just so limited thinking, but I hit 40 and I was like you know what? I can't do this the rest of my life. There's got to be something out there. I know I have power and ability and influence to be able to do this. My network is ridiculous, and so I basically started winding that company down, made decisions to start building my brand and getting known globally. I made a commitment even before I knew how to do it and I started hopping on podcasts seven to 10 a week, meeting people, networking, getting exposure, taking that content and repurposing it all over the internet and becoming focused on becoming omnipresent. So the people would see me everywhere, being interviewed by a whole bunch of different people, which raises the uh, the perceived credibility and authority of me through the roof to those people, those viewers.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 4:39

So you pre-set up.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Oh sorry, interrupted there. So you'd pre-set up not knowing what you're going to do next, only knowing that you need to get out there to be known.

Speaker 2: 4:47

Yeah, so I was in a chase mode, right? I think a lot of 90% of people are in a chase mode. They're chasing whatever they need, whether it's. You know, when I was a teenager and younger, I was chasing girls parties. Then I got into sales. I was chasing the next sale and where my next dollar come to pay my bills. And a lot of people are stuck in this chase mode just to get by, just to the next month, just to the next month. Chase, chase, chase.

Speaker 2: 5:08

And I found myself in that, and you can't live that way. Eventually you'll burn out, your health starts to suffer, your relationships start to suffer and your health, mental health starts to suffer. So I was just like I'm to get it, because I knew it was going to attract people, it was going to attract eyeballs, attention, it was going to attract opportunities. And then, once I create this attraction model, I'm going to be able to pick and choose what makes sense. And it's not always clear. I mean I've wasted. I don't want to say wasted, but I invested a lot of money that didn't go anywhere, but lessons learned. But eventually then we found out wait a minute, we're doing something here for myself already. If we're doing it for myself. We can scale this out. We already have systems process team. We can just scale this out and replicate and so, yeah, that's, that's kind of what we did.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So you, the tie you had to cut was was the, the belief in yourself. Is that fair that you might sell mortgage just because you didn't graduate college or whatever else?

Speaker 2: 6:01

Yeah, the ties I had to cut. By the way, I wasn't selling mortgages anymore, I was. I had seven to eight branches, branch managers, loan officers, whole teams. Right, I knew I could run a company. I knew I could run a company. I'd already cut the tie on the way up, right From being a loan officer, real estate agent, I don't know what manager, then to run in a branch to owning my own thing. But what? What I needed to cut the tie on was that particular business. I mean, like several ties were cut along the way, right, but that particular time it was I need to cut the chase mode tie, get out of chase mode, get into creation and attraction. And also, I was working under a platform. It wasn't my company, I wasn't building an asset and I wanted to start building an asset that was mine. And so, yeah, there's the cut. That you know. More independence, I guess too.

Speaker 1: 6:46

I mean side note, I owned a mortgage company during the heyday and I know what you mean that you get out and you're like, oh my God, I made so much money. But then you look back you're like didn't make that much. Yeah, I could make more someplace else. Well, do you remember the moment I'm going to? I got to get out of this.

Speaker 2: 7:03

Yeah, I mean, there was a time where I was working for my first mortgage company and building something underneath of it and we had some money conflict let's just put it that way. I don't want to get into a lot of detail, but there was about a million bucks that was supposed to be ours and it was not Okay and I knew I had to make a change, to go to a different platform, different company, and bring our whole team with us and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had 20, I don't know 22 employees at the time. We had lost, it was shrunk a little bit and I felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had, I had their, them, my team, my partners. I felt responsible for. I felt responsible for all of my team's family right and their kids and everything. It's just the way of the world.

Speaker 2: 7:44

So in 2018, I guess it was I felt like I was in the kitchen with my wife. It was the first time I ever broke down in front of her and I just hit my knees man in the kitchen and I said man, I can't do this anymore. This has got to change. I just surrendered and when I surrendered, it was like the biggest weight off my shoulders. It was like there's times in people's lives everybody has confrontation issues. They don't want to confront what they need to confront. And the longer you wait to confront something, the more pressure builds up and you're always forced to confront what needs to be confronted. It's just a matter of when you're going to decide to do it. The quicker you do it, the less pressure there is, and so, but it's a harder decision to make. But it's a harder decision to make, but there's less pressure early on. As you go further and further and further. It's not really a hard decision anymore because you're forced to do it, but the pressure is so big, man, when it gets released and you surrender and it's like the weight of the world off your shoulders. Everything gets brighter.

Speaker 2: 8:37

And I can tell you this I didn't just surrender to the situation, I surrendered. I'm a firm believer in Jesus and I have a great relationship with Jesus and I surrendered to him. And I'm just speaking from my experience. I'm not telling anybody what to do. All I can tell you is what it worked for me and I surrendered to the will of God and just trusted that. And when that happened. It just, it just. Everything lightened up and things were still hard at times, but I just was able to just move a little bit more freely and, not you know, I felt like I was fighting myself. And when you just release that, that surrender man, there's nothing like it.

Speaker 1: 9:14

It's amazing, that's beautiful. I'm on a small faith journey. I tell people I'm not going to be selling Bibles anytime soon on your front doorstep, but the underlying ideas of faith in many, many entrepreneurs' success is a beautiful story. And if you're not there, no worries, just do your thing and have fun. And if you're happy, awesome for you. For those, though, that are kind of stuck, I will tell you, trying to find something that you can believe in bigger than yourself, is not a bad way to go. It really unlocks a lot of the world.

Speaker 2: 9:43

Well, I got to tell you on this. I know you've got some other questions, but I got to tell you on this. So I was holding back sharing my faith journey because I was worried about those that would not believe and they would shun it and what have you? And then what happens is I left all those that are willing to listen to me. I left them disregarded and I started to think wait a minute, what about those that I'm disregarding? I should focus on them and the people that shun it or don't believe or whatever. That's fine, that's their timing. But my job is to share what my journey's been and what's worked for me, and I can't hide the biggest impact of my life. So I started sharing it more, more freely, not even concerning what people think it was. Hey, this is my story. If you like it, great. If you resonate with it, great. If you don't, you don't, and that's fine with me. But I want to change lives.

Speaker 2: 10:29

I had a podcast yesterday. I brought the topic up up. I was hosting and the lady texted me later. I wasn't sure she was. She was a spiritual lady. She was in more like the energy world and Hindu Buddhism and all this. Well, I got a message from her later and and she said hey, I, you know, our conversation really drew me to start thinking about Jesus more, and that's all I can ask for, and I, I don't have to do it, I just have to share and then let let God work.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Evangelize and I love the statement that God meets you where you are and it is so true when you are in need, and I say this on so many podcasts. Like, sometimes you're stuck in a rut. The left and right are people, some are kicking you down, some are lending hands. No one can pull you out. Sometimes you just got to look up and that's the way out.

Speaker 2: 11:14

Well, and stuck in a rut is just a state of being. That's the decision that you're making, and when you say I'm stuck, then you're going to continue to be stuck. So we're all moving. If you're not moving, you're dying. So you're not. If you're not dying, you're moving forward. You're not really stuck, you're just moving in a different direction. And you'd have to make sure that you're hyper stuck. Yeah, wait.

Speaker 1: 11:32

So at church last Sunday, one of the coolest statements I've heard is if you're coasting, you're going downhill.

Speaker 2: 11:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:43

I mean, I was like, that's so true.

Speaker 2: 11:45

And eventually you're-. Everything good is uphill man.

Speaker 1: 11:48

It is, Everything is worth climbing for. So summarize what's the lesson for the listener here.

Speaker 2: 11:54

Well, I mean there's tons of lessons here, right, but the lesson for the listener really is to you got to find out who you are. One thing that really helped me a lot is I peeled back the layers and found out who I was, and one of the darkest times in my life, and the darkest times of all the people I've ever interviewed, is when they stopped doing the thing that they were identifying with Pro athletes, veterans, super successful business people that have exited their company. When that thing stops, slows down, crashes or whatever that you were identifying you attach your identity to, because you didn't find out who you were, you lose your identity, you get lost, and so the biggest thing I want to make sure I get across to everybody today is really do some self-work on yourself. Find out who you are, what your non-negotiables are, what your values and clear mission, and then what you do is you hop in vehicles to achieve those things.

Speaker 2: 12:43

You hop in vehicles to serve and align with those things, and if the vehicle doesn't work anymore, you can hop out. You have permission from C-Rock. You have permission right now. You don't need permission, but you have permission from me. You don't need a license. You can change your mind and you can hop out of the vehicle that you're in, cut the tie, so to speak, and move into another vehicle that aligns with who you are. And it's so imperative that you do this because otherwise you're going to live a life of resentment, it's going to be toxic, you're going to be miserable when you come home, it's going to affect your family and relationships and your finances. Okay, so so know who you are, hop in vehicles that align with who you are, and what you're doing then is you're making binary decisions and eliminating chaos and confusion. You're either going towards your mission or away from it. You're in alignment with your core values and your non-negotiables, or you're not one way or the other and makes decisions very easily.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Yeah, and the more no's you can say, the more yeses you'll say to the things that matter.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Well, I think it's more important just to be able to say yes and no whenever you want to. So I'm not a big proponent of keeping score with it, but just being able to do either one Right.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Well, I love that. I find people tend to slip back, become more passive, fall back into more of a fear excuse cycle when they're not intentionally doing what they should be doing. And that's a lot of yeses, the stuff they should. They know they probably should have said no to.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Okay, yes is the stuff they know they probably should have said no to. Well, and that's the short back yeah, when you say no if it doesn't align with your mission and your core values, it's an easy no.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Easy, no Rapid fire. Who gives?

Speaker 2: 14:06

you inspiration? Well, obviously I read the Bible and I pray a lot, so that gives me a lot of inspiration. My kids and my wife, of course. I'm watching them at all times and observing their growth. And then anybody that I'm helping that actually takes what I say and implements it and gets some kind of advancement from it. Man, that's inspiring to me.

Speaker 1: 14:29

That is definitely inspiring. What's your favorite Bible verse?

Speaker 2: 14:32

Well, the book of James is my favorite. If you get into the book of James, it talks about how you should be in joy when you go through adversity, because that's polishing you, it's forging you. And so I got this freak, freak idea now that, like, when things start to get tough, I'm like, wow, this is awesome, man, what's going to come from this? Because when things are going good, you're just waiting for, like, okay, it's going to change at some point. Right, you know, I going to get down Because that's just going to keep the tough times longer. I'm going to stay up tone emotionally. I'm going to get real excited because I know something's going to come from this, because I don't stop, I'm going to keep going, and if I keep going, the light always appears at the end of the tunnel and it's always glorious.

Speaker 1: 15:08

That's awesome. I love that. What's your? What's the?

Speaker 2: 15:13

focus on top line revenue. Focus on growth in your income. You got to have income. It's the oxygen to the business. So many people worry about their offers and and make things perfect in their, in their websites and all this other stuff building their courses If they have courses and building their product services. At the end of the day, you got to sell something, so you got to focus. 95% of your time has to be on the focus of the bringing in revenue, promoting the business. Promoting the business and asking for money for the service, the value that you're going to deliver. If you don't do that, you're not going to stay in business law. You're not going to even have a business.

Speaker 1: 15:46

You're going to have a hobby at best. That's right. The uh, the book that you think most entrepreneurs have to read.

Speaker 2: 15:53

You know? Look, I mean it's. I got to tell you the 10X rule was very impactful to me and Grant Cardone became a mentor of mine. But there was one lesson in the 10X rule. If you don't know about the 10X rule, 10x means think bigger, but also understand that it's going to take more money, resources, time, energy, hard times 10 times that than you anticipate, so that you're not surprised when that happens.

Speaker 2: 16:15

But the lesson that really got me was when you're thinking big and you have a big vision and dream and then you start going after it or you start talking about it and doing it and people start chattering at you and then most of the time, it's the closest people around you when they start chattering at you. You're not crazy. I used to think I was crazy because of that the closest people friends, my partners, my partners, my family, whatever they would say Really that's what you're gonna do and they'd start making comments, which suppresses your dreams. But I thought I was crazy. The biggest lesson in the book, the 10X rule, is you're not the crazy one, they're just confused. And when I realized that I was like oh okay, that makes sense. I don't need a license from anybody to move forward, but I have a dream of going after it, and then I pushed the pedal down even harder. So that was the biggest lesson for me. Everybody should read that book. There's tons of books, but that's just the one that came to mind.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Yeah, that one's an excellent one. It's interesting. A very big theme of most entrepreneurs is that book and the other is 10X is easier than 2X.

Speaker 2: 17:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:12

That's like it's in the same theme of go big and focus everything into it.

Speaker 2: 17:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Otherwise you're going to get nothing out of it or very little. Do you have a favorite tool? Technology you're leveraging right now that you just you couldn't live without.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Yeah, we use. We use AI. I mean, I think if you're not using AI, you're not going to be able to keep up. I think at this point, if you haven't started already using AI, you're not going to catch up to the ones that have started it. And you know we use, obviously, chat, gpt and other other language models.

Speaker 2: 17:39

But really there's a good one that I use, called geniusai, and I like geniusai because I can load everything into it about our company, the personality, all of our landing pages, all of our sales copy, email copy. It goes through a questionnaire about what you're like, what you're about, and it finds out the owner's, the founder's personality and it also finds out the company's personality and it remembers it and then it creates content for you. Email copy for you helps you get through conversations with customers, employees, email sequences, text sequences, anything you need. You can just ask it and it pumps it out and it remembers everything that you're always doing. You can put your packages in there, your offerings, and ask to optimize it. You can say, hey, I want to raise my prices, what's the best way to go about that? I want to add more value, what's the best way to go about that? And you can have basically your own business strategist right there that knows you, and it's also like your personal assistant as well.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And that's geniusai.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Yes, and I don't have any connection with them, except that I'm just paying client.

Speaker 1: 18:34

You love it them, except that I'm just paying client. I pay monthly right. Just on that note, just curious, like it's that much better than, like, say, the GPT pro or plus models.

Speaker 2: 18:46

Yeah, I mean you can use those. I just to me it's like everything it's already like formulated in there. It makes it, it's just easier to move around to me. I still use chat GPT too, don't get me wrong. But and I think I've used chat GPT more now that it's gotten more advanced but geniusai was one that I've been using because all of our stuff's already in it.

Speaker 1: 19:00

So I got it. If you had to start over today, when would you do that and what would you change?

Speaker 2: 19:06

Well, if I had to start over? I don't want to start over, and so when would I do it? I don't want to. So that's the answer to that question. And what would I change? Well, let's say, if I went back, I would have not got into drinking. I didn't drink in high school. I was an athlete. I played football in college. I started drinking when I got to college, started partying, chasing women, doing all the things, and that took probably 10 years. I wouldn't say I was doing. Oh well, making more money, I can do that. That's the biggest lesson for any youngsters out there is that don't raise your lifestyle when you start making money. Start living off of 20 to 40% of your income somewhere in that range, probably on the lower end. Live off of that and then put the rest away.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Yeah, the formula that I was blown away by is both people are spend, save, give and you should flip that narrative of give, save, spend.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Yeah, of course, and given isn't always financial, you know. I believe that you can even actually give more, especially when you don't have the money at the time. If you're younger, if you're early on in your journey time, you can give more time and attention. Okay, when you start getting more money, then time becomes more valuable to you, and then that's when you start giving money. Yeah, so to me it's like money's not the only thing, it's a currency and also attention's currency, times a currency. And so when you, when you're not don't have the funds you can give, you still give some, but don't feel bad that you're not giving thousands, hundreds, thousands, millions, whatever. Start thinking about your time and your attention and how you can give that early on and then shift it. As you get, you know, your financial condition changes and then you can start to shift.

Speaker 1: 20:46

If there was a question, I should have asked you today, and I didn't. What would that question have been? How do you answer it?

Speaker 2: 20:52

Man, I think you did a great job there. Let's see what's next. What's the vision from here? I think that would be a good question to ask, because I think one of the most attractive things you can do in networking and in entrepreneurship is calls and creating futures for people. And how do you cause and create futures for people without knowing what their vision is and where they want to go?

Speaker 2: 21:10

So that question when people ask that question to me or I ask that question, I actively listen for connections. I can help help them with strategy, encouragement or maybe get them on podcast. They need to get on podcast and you get the brand out there Like I listen, actively listen with that question. So for me, I want to grow this agency and continue to be the best podcast booking agency, but I also want to look for other we also we do have other revenue streams. I want to build out other revenue streams for this company and build this into a large media company that has opportunities for other businesses. I mean, somebody asked me to buy this company the other day and I said I'm not selling it. You know it had to be ridiculous price because there's too many opportunities that come off of this besides the revenue streams, and I just don't want to give that up right now.

Speaker 1: 21:51

Yeah, that's a nice spot to be in your life. You don't have to worry about the money as much as the other things, the ancillary benefits that you may have dismissed earlier in life and now you're like, no, those are super important. Shameless plug for you. Who should get ahold of you and how do they do that?

Speaker 2: 22:04

Yeah, if you have a brand, if you're an entrepreneur, you're face of your company, you have books, you're a speaker, you know you're an expert in your space you need to get on podcasts because, just like AI, if you're not out there getting on podcasts three to five a month minimum you're not going to keep up with those that are doing it. It's a hack. It's the most efficient and effective way to get your message out there, build your brand, build relationships and expand network. So anybody that's interested in that can go to that one that the number one agency, dot com, and book a discovery call with us.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Wonderful Mike. Thanks so much for coming on today. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 22:37

Thomas, I appreciate you, man, my pleasure.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Anybody who is still watching and listening. You rock for getting here. Hit that follow button on Apple, spotify and if you're on YouTube, hit the subscribe. Get out there, go cut a tie to something holding you back and unleash your entrepreneurship.