IAM877- Media Master Helps Clients Create Premium Brands

In the words of Tony Robbins: “Mike is an extraordinary man. He’s brought me insights on how to reach people on the Internet that are so valuable. This is a man you should deal with. Take advantage of what he has to offer.” Mike is known for being a media master who knows how to help his international clients get attention, create premium brands, and elevate their status in days. Mike has had four business exits, two to publicly traded companies. His first, Digital Cafe, one of the first digital marketing agencies in the world, sold to IPG, The Interpublic Group. His two SaaS companies, Traffic Geyser, and Instant Customer, were sold to a publicly-traded company. His most recent was You Everywhere Now to a private buyer.

• CEO Hack: Money Phone
• CEO Nugget: You don't know when your time is going to come up – build a business around your life
• CEO Defined: Being accountable to your team and clients and a distinct set of values you won't compromise

Website: https://www.mikekoenigs.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeKoenigs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/MikeKoenigs/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/koenigs/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MikeKoenigs/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MikeKoenigs
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/MikeKoenigs/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:29 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Mike Canings of mikecanings.com. Mike, it's awesome to have

00:38 – 00:43
Mike Koenigs: you on the show. Great to be here, Gresh. It's been looking forward to this.

00:43 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely, super excited to have you on as well. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Mike. So you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And in the words of Tony Robbins, Mike is an extraordinary man. He brought me insights on how to reach people on the internet that are so valuable. This is the man you should deal with. Take advantage of what he has to offer. Mike is known for being a media master who knows how to help his international clients get attention, create premium brands, and elevate their status and days. Mike has had 4 business exits, 2 to publicly traded companies.

His first Digital Cafe is one of the first digital marketing agencies in the world and sold to IPG, the Interpublic Group. His 2 SaaS companies, Traffic Geyser, and Instant Customer, were sold to publicly traded companies as well. His most recent was You Everywhere Now to a private buyer. Mike, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:36 – Mike Koenigs:

I sure am. Thanks for that.

01:38 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Thank you for doing all the awesome work and to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you got started because you take us through what I call your CEO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

01:48 – Mike Koenigs

Yeah, well, the short version is I grew up lower middle class in a tiny town in Eagle Lake, Minnesota. My dad was a barber. I'm the oldest of 4 kids. And when you grow up in rural Minnesota, it is cold and there isn't a lot to do. And I didn't have a lot of mentors. We certainly didn't have money. So I had to figure it out myself. So I started working, you know, doing everything from shoveling to doing paper, paper routes and all that. And I started working full-time at a local gas station. When I was the day I turned 16, that's when I could legally work. And also taught myself a program when I was 14. And that, I felt, was my gateway out. So I taught myself how to write video games, eventually did that, and then started Digital Cafe.

And we ended up doing branded video games and promotions for the movie industry. So my partner and I were just 2 kids from rural Minnesota who started doing business with Hollywood and found our way into working with big brands. And eventually, we wrote a video game that shipped in 6000000 boxes of cereal for General Mills. And when we sold that company, made a feature film. That's when I discovered online marketing, direct response marketing, studying people like Dan Kennedy, and taught myself how to make information products. So my first info product was called the Internet Infomercial Toolkit. My second was with a woman who is a publicist for Oprah, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Neil Donald Walsh, and Louise Hay from Hay House Books.

Huge luminaries at the time, and we created a product called Everything You Should Know about publishing, publicity, promotion, and building a platform. So it was basically how to make money as an author. And that stuff led me to start Traffic Geyser, which was a digital marketing platform, Instant Customer, which was a two-way interactive mobile text marketing platform, sold those in 2015, and then it just went on and on. I've always been fascinated with how you get attention. How do you build an important, like a celebrity class reputation or profile, and then how do you monetize it? So it's building audiences, monetizing audiences, influencing, persuading, and finding the hacks and the shortcuts to get there.

And so now, when I sold you Everywhere Now, we helped 1800 people become bestselling authors. We taught them how to do info products and how to get attention, how to speak, speak, and sell. And we media trained too. I built a big studio And I realized I wanted to go narrow and deep and build an ecosystem with fewer people, with more value, and simplify. And that's really what led me to where I am right now. Instead of being wide and shallow, I went narrow and deep. And that really, I find that a lot more interesting. And I love the depth of the relationships that I have with my clients now or before. It was transactional. So I went from transaction to transformation.

05:01 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely, you know, love that. And I'm literally listening to the audiobook Deep Work Now, and it talks a lot about being able to go deep as I'm starting to kind of leaf through it or listen to it, I should definitely say. It's great to hear that you've been able to do both sides of the coin, and you seem to be able to find a tremendous amount of value and be able to do, that deep work, so to speak. So could you take us through a little bit more on the work that you're doing how you serve your clients and what exactly that looks like?

05:28 – Mike Koenigs

Sure. Well, I think the first thing is we all enter into the world transactionally. In other words, you get rewarded by school for getting good grades, and always learning someone else's stuff and repeating it back to them. Being a good little girl or a good little boy, and you get grades for that. And if you get a job, you get paid to do things. Do, do, do, pay, pay, pay. And you're at, you're a commodity. You're subject to a market value for transactional behavior. Now, if you move up a little bit, you might go to school, get advanced education, get a degree, get, get, get, get, get, but you're still basically a cog in the system and you get paid for knowing. And some people are stuck in paid for doing their whole lives.

And I'm not judging it, it's just a reality, right? Then there's paid for knowing. A knowing-doing business might be something that is related and has some very unique skill sets. But the third tier is getting paid for being. And that's when you reach celebrity class when you are no longer commoditized when you decide who you want to work with and someone will invest in you simply because of who you are, not what you're doing or knowing for them. And I spent an enormous amount of time, years thinking about that and thinking about how you create a being person where in a being business, a being economy, a being ecosystem.

07:09 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And kind of sounds like that's part of what you feel like kind of sets you apart and makes you unique in that is that ability to see that being and who a person is. Often I say if you run your race, you can never lose because you're running your race and just being and being able to kind of tap into that and help people to get their name, their story, what they do to be themselves really out there.

07:33 – Mike Koenigs

Yeah, and that's what we call the superpower accelerator. That's the business name, because really it's figuring out and finding out what is your unique superpower that can clearly differentiate you. What are the transformational stories that seem to be following you around?

07:49 – Gresham Harkless 

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:02 – Mike Koenigs

OK, my biggest one is something I call Money Phone. And I wrote a book about this years ago and I'm updating it right now. And it's evolved into a sales system. But here's the basic premise behind it. Anytime I meet someone, I always take a picture with them. Or if it's happened virtually, like, you know, we've been living in the land of Zoom, take a quick screenshot, and then try to start a conversation that I know I can provide some value. So I'll ask someone about their business, their life, or whatever it is. And I'll follow up right away with an idea. And basically, I pull out my phone and I say, hey, so and so following up from blah, blah, blah. And I've got a couple of ideas that I know are gonna help you with your business and your life.

Let me know if you and I might give away one of them I'll say one of them is blah blah blah but the other one will maybe take a little bit of interaction because I might have to capture a little more information first. I send it to them. And then, you know, who gets those and who sends them? Not too many people do that. So they immediately follow up. I'll schedule a conversation and that'll create what will lead to an enrollment conversation. But the same is true. Let's say I have a sales conversation, or I teach my salespeople how to do this as well. After we're done, someone might say, hey, can you send me a proposal? And I'll say, how about I answer all your questions right now and create a video that describes everything that this includes that you can also share with the other decision-makers or anyone who may have some objections?

And I'll find out what if there's someone else who's involved in the decision, who is it and what would their primary reason why you wouldn't move forward be? And I get a list of those and I literally will make a short video with them present and follow up and the whole idea is number one, I don't write proposals. Okay, if someone wants a proposal, they have to write out a check for $10,000. But I'll answer any of your questions, I'll give you the video proposal now because it's much more nuanced. The net-net is by using this money phone strategy, you're going to increase the intimacy, the connection, the size of the transaction, the speed at which the transaction takes place, and the depth of the relationship you have with the decision maker and some of the other influencers.

That would be my number one CEO hack that has brought me an enormous amount of income, wealth, and deeper, more meaningful connections too.

10:48 – Gresham Harkless 

Absolutely love the money phone hack. And so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:01 – Mike Koenigs

I'll pre-frame this with my first business cost me a marriage and my second 2 just about cost me my life. I had stage 3 colorectal cancer 8 years ago and it just about killed me at the time I had a ten-year-old boy who's now 18 and fortunately, I got some great care And I married an amazing woman. We've been married now for 20 years. And just 2 days ago, I was on my electric bike on a trail and I hit 2 rocks. I fell down, I landed on my shoulder and I broke my collarbone. So I'm talking to you right now and as long as I don't move, I'm not in excruciating pain, but holy cow was it a reminder.

And here's the lesson. You don't know when your time is going to come up and you've got to build a business around your life not your life around your business and there's nothing worse than being a wealthy successful person where your children hate you and you don't know who they are and they don't know who you are, you don't know who they are.

12:11 – Gresham Harkless 

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Mike, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:21 – Mike Koenigs

I think being a CEO is being accountable to your team, and your clients, and having a distinct set of values that you won't compromise.

12:36 – Gresham Harkless 

Truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold view and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on

12:50 – Mike Koenigs

Well, honestly, I didn't know what questions you're gonna ask me today. So Here's what I have. I have a little gift one of the things I did a few years ago is when I wrote Moneyphone I've got the book. I also made a video, a step-by-step video of how to do it. It's right here. You can get the book and the video for free at GoMoneyPhone.com. And then I've got 2 podcasts that I do also. I do one called Capability Amplifier with the amazing Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, but also another one called The Big Leap with Gay Hendrix, who wrote the book The Big Leap, which is all about getting past your upper limits and challenges as a person or as a business leader. He's written 37 books, really brilliant.

Both of them are amazing souls that I have the great honor of spending time with. So, you know, Take the free stuff, check out some more podcasts, and keep on filling your brain with good stuff.

13:51 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can get a copy of the book, and find out exactly how you execute it here. Of course, the awesome podcast that you have as well. So Mike, truly appreciate you, appreciate all the awesome work that you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:19 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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