IAM920- Executive Coach Unlocks Human Potential

Michael S. Seaver is an award-winning executive coach, author, keynote speaker, and podcast host. He’s on a mission to unlock human potential to help people uncover and live their purpose, and live a more meaningful and authentic life. Michael offers no-nonsense strategies to help people find confidence in their life’s narrative, commonalities across generations working today, and ways to communicate with emotional intelligence.

• CEO Hack: Breaking the habits that are not helping me accomplish my goals and being open to learning
• CEO Nugget: Know your core values
• CEO Defined: Responsibility to lead by example. Authentically sharing your highs and lows

Website: https://michaelsseaver.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsseaver
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelScottSeaver
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelsseaver/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelsseaver
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SeaverConsulting

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Transcription

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00:09 – 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.

00:38 – 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 Michael S. Siever of Michael. S. Siever.com. Michael, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:47 – Michael S. Seaver

Thank you so much, Gresh, for having me, man.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Michael so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Michael is an award-winning executive coach, author, keynote speaker, and podcast host. He's on a mission to unlock human potential to help people uncover and live their purpose and live a more meaningful and authentic life. Michael offers no-nonsense strategies to help people find confidence in their life's narrative, commonalities across generations working today, and ways to communicate with emotional intelligence. Michael, are you ready to speak to the  I AM CEO community?

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01:23 – Michael S. Seaver

Most definitely.

01:25 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here. How do you guys start, Could you take us through what I call your kCEO story? Will you have started with all the awesome work you're doing?

01:34 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah, I'd love to. And thanks, Gresh. So I was born and raised in a small West Michigan town of about 2,500 residents. And so from age 12 until 24, I worked in my family's landscaping, law and maintenance, and snow plowing business. And, as awesome as that was to work in the family business, there were also pieces and components of it that were challenging because of the way that my grandfather and father ran the business, I kind of felt like a robot in the business. I could never really truly be me or do the things that I desire to do.

So in 2003, I got married and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and have been here since. But back in 2003, I worked in hospitality for about 4 years and what got to be late 2007, or early 2008. And my wife at the time, she left me. And so I lost a house, I lost some money, and started an MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, basically all on the same weekend.

So 2008 was a year of big change for me. But the thing about Thunderbird that was really a big blessing to me was that it was the first time ever that I was given an opportunity to coach people. And so as a second-year MBA student, I was allowed to coach first-year students with resumes and cover letters and interviews and LinkedIn stuff. And I realized that I really wanted to be a coach later there. I just really lost track of time. Like I felt like I was always in flow when I was helping people. So when I finished the MBA, I went to a large healthcare entity and I served as the director of talent sourcing for a couple of years. As I was going through that experience, I realized I was working a lot, but I really didn't feel like I was using my degree or really truly living my life's mission.

I wasn't really coaching a lot so I felt disconnected in the latter part of 2011, I did start my coaching practice Michael a Sewer Calm, and started coaching people just on resumes and cover letters and LinkedIn profiles interviewing things. And I really wasn't making a whole lot of money at the beginning. So I was also teaching classes at Grand Canyon University and eventually stopped doing that and started to coach working professionals at Arizona State University, all while building my business, right, nights and weekends. And then, thankfully, in 2015, my business got to a point where I was able to work it full-time. And so I was doing a lot of communications training and personal branding coaching. In 2016, I was able to join the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters, which is a great mentoring organization across the nation that meant a lot to me.

And I think in 2018 is when I truly became an executive coach and was able to focus a lot on organizational change consulting And that really meant a lot to me because, like I said, when I was raised in that small town, I was really a robot then. As I got to 2018 and 2019, I really felt like I was able to be my true authentic self and help others become their true authentic selves. And it really culminated at the beginning of 2021 on January one, I published a book called I Know, it's really just a bunch of psychological research and stories from myself about my life and my clients and 9 processes that anybody can use to awaken to what's within and become their most authentic self. And so I'm really, I feel very blessed to be doing the things that I'm doing for sure.

04:38 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you're blessing, you know, so many people as well too. And I love that phrase that you use when you know, you first started doing the coaching, you said you felt like you were in the flow, you know, and kind of juxtapose that with, you know, the robotic feel that you felt earlier. And I think so many times we can feel or be around or have that, you know, robotic feel in our lives, but to really be in the flow where you don't realize, you know, so much time has passed is really where we're hoping to be because that's when you really start to, not only I think to succeed, but also give a tremendous amount of people in the world as a whole.

05:11 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah, very well said. I completely agree.

05:14 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. And So I know you touched a little bit on your book. Can you take us through a little bit of that, a little bit more on how you work with your clients and of course your podcast and all the awesome work they're doing there?

05:22 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. So really my time gets distributed, I think, in a couple of different ways. And 1 would be executive coaching, right? So I coach folks by the hour or I have VIP days or month-to-month agreements. And, really I have like a 6-step process through each of those and coaching engagements that I try to help people uncover their personal mission or know what their core values are, or to help them find ways to communicate their brand more powerfully, or to find new ways to really assert their influence in the world. And so one-to-one coaching means a lot to me. But the second thing I get to do is team training and team development, organizational development consulting.

So helping teams be better at communication emotional intelligence employee engagement or strategy and change development. But what I love about that is that I'm always trying to create these grassroots efforts of employees being empowered, right? Creating those feedback loops and finding the right meeting structures to let every employee in the business have a voice. I really want everybody to have a voice. So I also have on my website, I don't spend quite as much time on this, but there are online courses on my website. You of course mentioned my podcast, it's called Equal Chance to Be Unequal. And again, it's really me just genuinely want everybody to have equal opportunities that they can.

Once a month I do a free webinar and it changes every single month, but it's just my way to be able to get more information out to the people. And I love to be able to write material, right? So I've been featured on your website, CEO Blog Nation a couple of times. That means a lot to me. So thank you. I've written pieces for medium.com authority thrive Global Forbes and Phoenix business journals. There are a number of places that I feel blessed to be able to help, but I really love one-to-one coaching and I love team training to really uplift people in a powerful and meaningful way.

07:03 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. We appreciate you, of course, for contributing and providing so much value to our site as well. And I think what I love about the different ways by which you communicate with clients and help serve them is that there are so many different ways and people take in content and information in different ways. And I think you being able to have, you know, the, the webinars or the book, the podcast, but also the one-on-one coaching provides people the opportunity to learn those lessons that you've learned and that you're allowing people to, as you said so well, uncover sometimes some of those things that we don't sometimes realize is within and sometimes gets blocked by the, the noise or the, I guess, the things that are just going on in life.

07:43 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah, like completely great. Yeah. There's so much activity that occurs in society and so many distractions and interruptions and how do we turn all of that off to really take that quick step back and check in with ourselves and know unequivocally that what it is we're about ready to do is the right path forward?

07:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely And I think so many times it's so noisy. We forget that we have to take those actions to do that. So I love that you empower people, to be able to make that happen in their lives and their businesses and their professional lives as well. Yeah, thank you. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. So this could be for yourself or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? Sure. You know, like I mentioned when we first started, right, it was a robot in my family's business all those years ago. And so I've come to this place in my life today where my number 1 core value is authenticity, right? My personal mission is I unlock human potential. And what I think is, is that what makes me unique is that I really think that humanity has been duped into thinking that being busy equals success.

So what I try to do to try to break people from that is I offer insights for CEOs on how to blend a spirituality, a consciousness, a level of humanity into the business setting. Or I teach CEOs how to slow down and trust the voice in the back of their head, or I give CEOs an unemotional or objective framework to know where to distribute their time so that they're not constantly taking action, taking action, taking action with undesirable outcomes, but really genuinely focusing in on the thing where they can add the most value to their own lives and the loved ones close to them, but also to the organizations they work for and their team and their communities. And I really want people to find that mix between, you know, spirituality and their own consciousness and being a human being, but bring that into the workplace.

09:29 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted 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?

09:41 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah. Yeah. This, for me, has become a daily practice And so maybe it's journaling, maybe it's meditation. But what I constantly ask myself is, how can I recognize how I'm unknowingly repeating my parent's behavior? And what I mean by that is that Dr. Bruce Lipton has discovered since I think it was 1971. He's been kind of understanding the human brain and how it works. And there are 5 brainwave states. And what he discovered is that from birth to age 6, all human brains are in something called the theta brainwave state. And in that state, we are like sponges, right? Everything that happens around us, we learn, and it gets baked right into our subconscious.

But then after age 6, our brains go into the beta brainwave state. And so we, in beta, are pulling all of the information from our subconscious to then live life day after day after day. It just so happens through Lipton's research that the subconscious processes 400 billion thoughts per second, but our conscious mind can only process 2000. And when I started to read that and learn that I said to myself, I have to find a way to hack the 400 billion thoughts per second. And so I really looked at the things that I learned from my parents when I was really, really young.

And I said, is repeating their behavior, is it really genuinely helping me live my life's mission today? And so I started to kind of break those things down and move those things around. So for everybody listening today, try to think about those things that maybe your parents taught you all those years ago. How do you break some of those habits that are really not helping you accomplish your goals? And if you do, your life is just going to explode in a really powerful way.

11:19 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Yeah, I love that. I love the practicality of that, but also the science part because so many times we forget and sometimes we'll repeat phrases that our parents have said to us not realizing the influence that they have, things that came to mind, money doesn't grow on trees, just certain phrases you hear all the time. And I love how you said, it isn't necessarily good or bad, but you take a look at it and see, does this help me to get to where I wanna be? And is it in alignment with who I am and what I wanna stand for? And you really start to measure those things, you start to look at it critically. And it gives you, as you said before, that empowerment feeling that you get to control or be a little bit more aware of those things that are happening.

11:57 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah, totally agree. It's Abraham Maslow in his hierarchy of needs, right? At the very top of the hierarchy is this need for continual growth and development, but also this contribution to those around us. And so if we can kind of stop those blocks that we might have in our lives and really truly open ourselves up to learning, That just means that there are more opportunities to maximize the learning and opportunities to benefit others. I just, I just want everybody to be able to do that.

12:23 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And being able to provide the tools in order for that to happen is absolutely a phenomenal hack. So I wanted to ask you now 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 happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:40 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah. Turn back the clock to cutting grass and shoveling dirt all those years ago. So one of the things that I spend a pretty fair amount of time today with clients or teams is having each person know his or her core values.

12:54 – Gresham HarklessFFAwesome, Awesome, Awesome. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Michael, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:05 – Michael S. Seaver

Wow, that's being a CEO is an enormous responsibility to lead by example. And it really means authentically sharing your highs and your lows.

13:16 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate you for reminding us of that and for inspiring, you know, so many people, out there and all the work that you do. And so Michael, what I wanted to do was 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 it can get ahold of you, get a copy of the book, subscribe to the podcast, and find out about all the awesome work you're doing. Right on.

13:34 – Michael S. Seaver

Yeah. Thanks, Gresh. This, this came to mind, for me, kind of, as you were saying what you just said Gresh, and it, the thing that I want to kind of close with is, is the phrase, be the person you needed when you were younger. And, all of us, right? All humans go through some sort of challenge in our younger years. And then in our late 20s and early 30s, we probably overcome the challenge. And then our life's work in the latter years of our life is how we help others overcome the exact same challenge we overcame for ourselves. And if you look at the world that way, then it just becomes this really strong ability for all of us to really uplift and help 1 another. And so if that really resonates with you and You want to learn a little bit more.

Gresh was kind enough to mention the website on the front side of our talk today. But michaelsiever.com is the website. And the book that was just published is called I Know. And it's on Amazon Barnes and Noble Apple Books Google Play and quite a few other places. But you're welcome to visit the website to learn more about it some of the media mentions or the podcast or some of the ways that I might be able to help you or your organization. And I'd love to be able to speak with you and see if I can do anything to help. So thanks again, Gresh.

14:45 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Thank you, Michael. You've definitely been a great help. And I think the phrase that always, you know, we always hear a lot, sometimes a business is scratching your own itch. But I think you brought it, you know, a lot deeper because that person that you needed, you know, when you were younger, you have that opportunity to do that. And I think we sometimes live in a vacuum and think it's just me or I can only, you know, help myself.

But a lot of times by helping yourself, you're helping so many others. So I think when we turn that within and we make sure to have that as kind of a North Star in our life and in our values, then we start to really create phenomenal things and have a tremendously positive impact upon the world. So I appreciate you for doing that and reminding us of that, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of

15:24 – 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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