Ralph Zuranski: I as so impressed with Butterfly Marketing I wanted to use it as a means of generating income for all the Heroes Programs in all the different communities so that there’d be plenty of money to fund the necessary programs in communities where there is no funding. How are you doing today Mike?
Mike Filsaime: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me here Ralph.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you think that maybe you could tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you came up with Butterfly Marketing?
Mike Filsaime: Sure. I’m 38 years old. This is April, 2006. I was born in 1967 in Long Island, New York. (Born and raised) In 1990 I got into the automobile business. That’s the same business my father was in.
Mike Filsaime: I worked my way up from sales to finance manager, then sales manager then general sales manager then eventually to general manager. Over that 14 year period I learned a lot about marketing as it pertains to the automobile business.
Mike Filsaime: In 2002 I got into online marketing. I stumbled across it and started learning as much as I could and started building an e-mail list by using a great auto responder service to capture names and drive traffic to pages where the call to action was to get the name & e-mail address.
Mike Filsaime: That started taking off so well that 2 years later in August of 2004 I was able to leave the car business and go full time on that. I was on-line for about three years and started to brand name my own style of marketing. I called it Butterfly Marketing.
Mike Filsaime: I launched that home study course in 2006. We originally had 1500 of that course. We sold all 1500 units at a $1,000.00 in 25 days. We brought in 1.5 million dollars in about 25 days.
Mike Filsaime: Butterfly Marketing is based on the theory of the chaos theory known as the Butterfly Affect. The Butterfly Affect states that the single flapping of the butterfly’s wings produces tiny changes in the atmosphere that can dramatically affect the future outcome as compared to what it would have been had the butterfly not flapped its wings.
Mike Filsaime: So, basically anything that goes on whether you are waving your hand or a car driving by or you’re just walking through produces tiny changes in the atmosphere. That makes it very difficult to predict weather past 5 days. Newscasters will only give you a 5 day forecast.
Mike Filsaime: There are so many butterfly effects going on that we can’t measure or predict accurately what’s going to happen after 5 days. Recently you have seen movies like the butterfly effect where they go back in time and just say one word different. The next thing you know you’d come back to the present day and there’d be a completely different outcome on the way the world was.
Mike Filsaime: You also saw things like that in the movie “Back to the Future” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I was always fascinated by the butterfly effect. I always looked back at my life and said “Wow, if I didn’t get stuck at that traffic light I wouldn’t have walked into the hotel room at that point and met “so in so” in the elevator.”
Mike Filsaime: You look at when you met that person in the elevator and what a dramatic effect it had on your future and everything that happened after that was a ripple effect. I started looking at that in the way of marketing.
Mike Filsaime: I coined the phrase of Butterfly Marketing. That means there are small things you can do that are seemingly insignificant changes that you can do in your marketing that will have dramatic effects on your outcome in the future. Good or bad because you can make small mistakes and it will have a dramatic disaster.
Mike Filsaime: If you do some small things right you can have incredible success. Just to give you some examples. It took me about a year and a half when I first started building a list to get to 40,000 optimum members which is pretty good. But in the year and half after that I was able to get 200,000 optimum members when I stared putting the Butterfly Effect into my marketing.
Ralph Zuranski: That’s amazing. In looking at your program it’s one of the most impressive that I’ve ever seen and it’s geared to help people generate income. I’ve been to so many different conferences and so many people have spent so much money and never generated one cent of income. It’s kind of pathetic when people are out there selling stuff that doesn’t work. Have you found that to be true?
Mike Filsaime: Yes and what I see that as Ralph is there’s an abundance of information out there and the problem is that people don’t know how to bridge the gap. Those that are having problems getting success they don‘t know how to bridge the gap from knowing to doing. That’s one of the things I wanted to do with Butterfly Marketing is not only to show you or tell you what to do but I wanted to tell you and provide the tools to do it in a step by step format.
Mike Filsaime: I don’t like generic 101 marketing that tells you things like “You need to set up an auto responder, etc, etc. Then you need to go to Google and learn about Google ad words then you can put ad sense on your site.” That’s all a general overview type of course. The way that I like to give my type of course is getting “down and dirty” case studies that you saw in Butterfly Marketing.
Mike Filsaime: When I changed this in my one time offer the percentage of conversion went from 3.5 to 4.5 and things like that. So I like to give case studies and examples of the success that I had rather than just talking in theories and things like that.
Ralph Zuranski: I really appreciate your perspective of “all for one” and “one for all” that nobody gets left behind, the people that invest in your program and through the forums & the training and special bonuses you can help everybody be successful if they just apply what you teach them.
Mike Filsaime: Yeah, that was our motto for private members forum to let everybody know that no one would be left behind. If we left anyone behind then we didn’t accomplish our goals. We wanted to let everybody know that our attitude was “all for one” and make sure that bought the package would have the success they wanted when they hit that auto button.
Ralph Zuranski: What is the worthy ideal you are pursuing with honesty and integrity?
Mike Filsaime: Well, Steven Covey says “To live. To love and to leave a legacy.” So when I was in the car business my frame of what I wanted in life was to become a general manager. But I didn’t realize how miserable I was. I was working 28 days a month and almost 70 hours a week and constantly working on my day off and my cell phone always ringing.
Mike Filsaime: I thought I had achieved success because I didn’t think outside the frame. I didn’t determine my own success based on what I knew. Getting into online marketing really allowed me to take that whole white board approach and erase everything I thought I wanted and clearly define the goals I wanted in life.
Mike Filsaime: That really is to live, to learn, to love and leave a legacy. I want to live a better life. I want to have a great relationship. I want to learn and continue to grow. And finally to leave a legacy and be able to pass that experience on to other people.
Mike Filsaime: That’s the phase I’m in right now is to try to teach people not just how to make money but also to have all those things that we just mentioned
Ralph Zuranski: What do you want out of life in ten words or less?
Mike Filsaime: Oh boy, that’s a good question. I want to live a long healthy life and I want to change lives. As I said I want to leave a legacy. I don’t want to be something a thousand years from now where you’re not even a mark anywhere even in a record book.
Mike Filsaime: I want to put a nice legacy on this world and really change lives. And leave a pattern that can be duplicated for centuries to come.
Ralph Zuranski: What is the dream or vision that sets the course of your life?
Mike Filsaime: The dream that sets the course? I would probably say the power of positive thinking and trying to keep all the negative poisons out of my mind. Napoleon Hill says “Whatever the mind can conceive it can achieve” and I’m a big believer in that. I believe that the things you dwell on you are going to pull into your life.
Mike Filsaime: I think that the mind cannot distinguish between imagination and reality. That’s why the mind doesn’t know the difference between what you’re thinking and past memory. If you can envision something and not just set a goal that says “I want to make a million dollars” but actually envision you have with that. Like what you’ll be wearing, what you’ll be smelling, what your house will be like and what it’s like to drive that car.
Mike Filsaime: Also what it’s like to be with the person you love. If you can truly envision that in your mind I believe that you will actually attract that into life very quickly.
Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to stay focused on your primary goal?
Mike Filsaime: Staying focused is something we’ve been talking about a lot lately and I’m going to give credit to a very good friend of mine Stephen Pierce. I’m going to give an example that I saw him talk about in Australia. Basically what Stephen says is “Imagine if there was a young child that you knew very well and you were standing at a garage maybe at a bar-b-que. In the street was a young child maybe playing with marbles or something right at the corner of the driveway on the street.
Mike Filsaime: Between you and the child were several of your friends and relatives holding a drink in their hand and behind them was a wagon wheel, a big wheel, a bicycle and other kids playing. You noticed up at the top of the hill that somebody just parked their car and didn’t put it in park and didn’t put the emergency brake on.
Mike Filsaime: It was very slowly running down the hill towards this young girl. So I’ll ask you the question, Ralph, if you saw that car coming towards the girl and you had all these people in front of you but you knew you had to get to this child, what would you do?
Ralph Zuranski: I would do what you would do Mike. I would do anything it took to get to that girl before the car got there.
Mike Filsaime: Anything it took, right? What about that bicycle that’s in your way?
Ralph Zuranski: I would leap over it and knock the people aside and not let any obstacle stand in my way.
Mike Filsaime: Exactly. It’s what bicycle at this point. You have a goal and you’re not going to let anything get in your way. Now here’s what happens when you turn that scenario around. As Stephen mentions, you take that young child and you turn it into a car. Now at the top of the hill coming down in stead of a car it’s a shopping cart.
Mike Filsaime: You see the shopping cart coming down and you still have all these people in front of you. So now you’re entire intention shifts. Your perception has just shifted So what you are going to say as you see that shopping cart coming down as you’ll probably have a little of the deer in the headlights look, you’ll probably say “Hm, this is going to be interesting.”
Mike Filsaime: I think that’s what happens sometimes with people with the project they are working on. They don’t have that serious focus where they put the blinders on like a horse in horse racing. They say “That’s my target goal. I don’t care about the bicycle or the people in front of me. There’s nothing that’s going to stop me from getting to my target goal.
Mike Filsaime: If you start looking at that with the product that you are working on it’s pretty much the same thing. I think what happens is people get stuck in this syndrome of “Oh I’ve got another great idea.” A great idea is probably the biggest poison that anybody could have when they are working on a project or trying to focus on something. What I tell my students and people that I work with is to take their ideas and put them into a separate book.
Mike Filsaime: Write down that idea in a little paragraph then put that book back in the drawer. When you are done with your current project open up the idea book and find the ideas that you can work on that you can immediately leverage quickly and bring to the market place or whatever you want to do to complete it. Brad Fallon, a good friend of mine talks about working on four different projects at the same.
Mike Filsaime: Let’s assume that each project takes you one month to do and you’re working on all four of them at the same time. Simple math would tell you that it would take 4 months to get these projects done. So what ends up happening is that you work on one project one week, the next project the next week, the next project the following week and you’re moving each project along kind of like pushing up all these little magnets up on a board.
Mike Filsaime: But what ends up happening is if you had been focusing on one project, in one mo nth you could have that project making money for you after 30 days. Then you can fully focus on the next project. Then after 30 days your 2nd project is making money so now you have two incomes coming in.
Mike Filsaime: After the 2nd project is done you work for 30 days on the next project you complete it because you were focused. Now you have three projects that are making you money. After that you start the 4th project and all the while you’re working on the 4th project the other three projects are making you money.
Mike Filsaime: Not only are you in a position that you are working on projects, you are completing projects that are making you money. The mistakes that people do are trying to work on all these projects at the same time are that none of these projects are making money because it’s being spread out over 4 months. So it will take you 4 months to create one single dollar. Then that poison comes in again right before you’re about to finish the project and says “Oh I have another great idea, and another great idea.”
Mike Filsaime: So you start getting to 90 & 95% on all these other projects then you start another project and move them up to 90 to 95% then project #7 comes along with this great idea and you never complete anything. One more thing, assuming you were working on 4 projects at the same time, as I said at the beginning of this conversation about this, that simple math would tell you it would take 4 months to get these projects done.
Mike Filsaime: What happens is that when you are multi-tasking and not focusing, you can multiple that factor times two. It will actually take you about 8 months to get 4 projects done because you are multi-tasking and not able to focus on one thing at a time.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you follow your hunches & intuition?
Mike Filsaime: Yes I do. Pretty much like you just said, you have to be careful with your ideas. That’s where out sourcing comes in. If you can find people to manage the projects you can put other ideas out there on the back burner and move them a little bit closer to the front burner if you understand how to out source.
Mike Filsaime: There’s a great expression that says “money likes speed” and I agree with that. If you do decide to take action on something, do it very quickly. Because money likes speed and money attracts speed. When you work fast you can get into this great zone where you can start bringing things to the market very quickly.
Ralph Zuranski: What specific philosophy or philosophies guide your life and decisions?
Mike Filsaime: I believe in principles so certainly that are a lot of things I’d like to do to be a better man, to be a better husband and be a better marketer. One of the specific things that I like to do is to let go and stop thinking or ever believe that I know everything.
Mike Filsaime: I’m a big believer in continued learning. Again Stephen Covey & another one of the seven habits, Habit #7 says “You must continue to sharpen the saw.” So even if you start to learn and you sharpen that saws & it’s the best saw in the world what ends up happening is that months or years later that same saw built on great knowledge becomes dull if you continue to use it every day.
Mike Filsaime: You must continue to sharpen the saw. I recommend that everybody be a student of learning and learn from the masters, those people that have blazed the trail. Sometimes and in most cases you have to pay for that information. But you’ll find that anything you pay for when learning from the best will come back to you tenfold.
Ralph Zuranski: What is your perspective on goodness, ethics and moral behavior?
Mike Filsaime: Again, those are life principles. Those aren’t things in my opinion that one person can say “Well that’s your view on ethics.” Fundamentally there is a difference between right and wrong. If you are even questioning it then in some cases it probably can be wrong.
Mike Filsaime: We know deep down in our hearts what the right things to do are and what the wrong things to do are. I believe that in anything that you do it will attract that same thing to you. If you live an ethical life you will find yourself surrounded by ethical people.
Mike Filsaime: You will have an ethical business and you will have ethical customers working with you and everything like that. Anything that you try to kid yourself with or try to resist is going to push back at you in the same way. If you’re working and you are doing things unethically it will come back to bite you. It’s just a terrible way to have a mindset to think that you can take advantage of people. You really need to just cleanse your soul and know the right things to do and live your life in that direction.
Ralph Zuranski: What place does the power of prayer have in your life?
Mike Filsaime: Well you know Ralph this something that I’ll talk from the heart and say this in a way as to not offend anyone or any faith. I will say it in some generic terms. I believe in a higher place and a higher person.
Mike Filsaime: I do have a God in my life and have a very good relationship with him. In terms of quote “religion” or would I say I am a religious person? No and again I don’t want to offend anybody but I’ll speak my heart here for a second.
Mike Filsaime: I think sometimes people get confused between the difference of the words faith and religion. I believe everybody should have faith. I also believe that what is religion? Religion means doing things religiously. Sometimes those rules were given to us by man not by what we believe our God is or the book that was written by God.
Mike Filsaime: I believe in faith and having a relationship with God. As I said before, you know what’s right and you know what’s wrong and you know what God wants from you. So I think you need to walk that life as close to the way they wanted it as best you possibly can.
Ralph Zuranski: What principles are you willing to sacrifice your life for?
Mike Filsaime: If you truly believe in your heart that the soul goes on then our time on this earth is so miniscule that it can’t even be measured if we talk in the terms of eternity. I think we have a purpose here on earth to do what’s right and to live a life in the way that God would want us.
Mike Filsaime: So what that means is that anytime you are faced with a situation and deep down, sometimes it’s very subconscious & you don’t know what to do. Your subconscious takes over and you just do what’s right. I believe that anybody listening on this call would go into a house and save a child if they knew there was a life in there, a precious life that needed to be changed whether it was a stranger or their daughter.
Mike Filsaime: I think that’s I inherent in all of us. I love to see those types of stories where you see average, ordinary everyday people do great things. That is something I think is unique to the human spirit. I think that it’s blessed to see those things.
Ralph Zuranski: Are your goals consistent with your beliefs?
Mike Filsaime: Yes they are. I think they go hand in hand. Again I think when we talk in the terms of the power of positive thinking you are talking about your beliefs and your goals. When you set your goals you need to believe that you can achieve them.
Mike Filsaime: Then talking abstract about all the different beliefs in your life like your faith and things like that I believe everything needs to be congruent in order to have symmetry in your life & to achieve exactly what you want out of life.
Ralph Zuranski: Are your actions consistent with your beliefs?
Mike Filsaime: These are all great questions and I’d like say yes. But I’m not perfect but I try to be. I know my faults and I try to work on them and I try to be humble. I’d like to say Ralph that yes I try to make most of my actions as close to my beliefs as I can. We know everybody has sometimes lazy tendencies.
Mike Filsaime: Some of the things I struggle with are living normal hours as most people in the world would see as normal. I tend to go on these weird patterns where I’m working normal hours then the next thing I know I start working till two, three or four in the morning then get up at 11:00 am. Then the next day I work until 4:00 in the morning and then the next day get up at 12:00. The next day I work until 4:30 in the morning then I end up sleeping until 1:00 in the afternoon. Then I have to hit that reset button & say “Wait a second.”
Mike Filsaime: I can’t even get up and get to the bank on time and get my hair cut. (Laughter) So those are some of the faults I have. To answer the question some of my actions are not 100% of what my beliefs are but I try working on them.
Ralph Zuranski: Is it valuable to have highly charged emotions about achieving your goals?
Mike Filsaime: Oh yes! Absolutely! And those are exercises that you can do. I recently saw a great movie. It’s really a documentary that I recommend to everybody watch it. I’m sure some of the past speakers mentioned it and some of the future ones will as well.
Mike Filsaime: You can see it at thesecret.tv. That documentary talks about the power of positive thinking but you need to be a visionary and you need to envision these goals that you set. There are certain things you can do. You can have a cork board that you call a vision board.
Mike Filsaime: You can cut out the home that you want or how you see yourself looking professional in a suit or the watch that you want or the car that you want. Or the family type of icon that you want or a picture of your church to see where you want to be associated with. Group photos of people you love and family and friends.
Mike Filsaime: If you start to put these exercises into place then that’s how you can start setting up exercises to attain your goals. I think one of the mistakes people make when they make a goal Ralph is they say things like “I want a million dollars.” No you don’t. You really don’t.
Mike Filsaime: Ralph if I gave you a million dollars what does that do? That is just a means to getting what you really want. What you really want is to help children. Or what you really want is to have better health or raise your kids the right way or send them to the right schools.
Mike Filsaime: So setting a goal on money is ok. I know a lot of people do that but you really need to realize that the money is just the means to what you really want. You have to really ask yourself “What do I really want?” I even caution people sometimes when they say “I want a million dollars.” or “I want this business or I want do this type of business per day for a month.”
Mike Filsaime: Sometimes you have to say to yourself “What will I have created if I say I want an Ebay business that makes me a million dollars a month?” Do you really want to be shipping boxes out of your house? Sometimes by really defining what it is that you really want I think you can have a more clear understanding of what you want & how to get there. Rather than putting up an abstract and saying “I want a million dollars.
Ralph Zuranski: Is it useful to take a positive view of setbacks, misfortunes and mistakes?
Mike Filsaime: Oh yeah. To answer that directly I think we all need to learn from our mistakes. What I was talking about before about being a student of higher learning I would rather learn from other peoples successes than learn from my own mistakes. We all have to know that being an entrepreneur is that we’re going to have more failures than we do successes.
Mike Filsaime: We need to be able to understand that when we have a failure that negative people are going to welcome that. Saying “Oh you see that, you tried to join that thing and it didn’t work. Well you’re still stuck here in blue collarville.”
Mike Filsaime: The true entrepreneurial spirit will not allow those negative people to effect us. It will understand that we made mistakes and we can ask “What did we do wrong?” Let’s look at the success principles and see what we did and find out where we went off the tract. Then get back on the horse and try it again.
Ralph Zuranski: Is optimism valuable?
Mike Filsaime: Yes. It’s all in that circle Ralph of positive thinking. If you are pessimistic you will achieve pessimistic results. If you are optimist you will achieve optimum results. All going back to the power of positive thinking, the energy you put out there comes back to you in the same way. The entire universe is built on energy.
Mike Filsaime: The reasons why you are sick or if you’re healthy are based on energy. So when you put out positive energy that’s what that is, is optimism. When you put out positive energy it will come back to you in positive ways.
Mike Filsaime: If you are pessimistic, that glass is half empty. I know entrepreneurs and I know you. We believe that the glass is half full. A lot of people believe that the glass is half empty. When people start thinking half empty the sooner or later the glass will be completely empty.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you maintain your sense of humor in the face of serious problems?
Mike Filsaime: Oh absolutely! Probably too much. You know Ralph when I was in the car business I was the joker. I knew when it was time to be serious but even at the most serious points like if I was getting mad or if we had a meeting or something like that I would always throw in a tidbit of humor.
Mike Filsaime: I think it keeps us real. I think it bonds people with you. It’s one of the best qualities you can have is to have a good sense of humor and a good wit. Being able to laugh at yourself but still knowing when business is business and how to put business together.
Mike Filsaime: I think it’s important to create a work environment where people have fun. There’s no place they’d rather be than working with a group of people that they are with. If humor is not somewhere in there then I think the workplace will suffer.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you invest time into daydreaming about what your life will be like when you attain your goals?
Mike Filsaime: Yes I do. I tend to night dream or day dream at night before I go to bed. I’m sure you’ve had that Ralph. Some of the people listening may be racing in their mind and get to bed at 11:30
pm then all of a sudden they look up and the clock says 12:50am. They saw “Wow! I’ve got to get to bed.”
Mike Filsaime: Or you may say “Wow, if I can get this site up tomorrow and get this interview up.” Then you look over and its 2:30am and it’s like you can’t shut your mind off. But that’s healthy. That means that you are thinking in the right terms. Again whatever the mind can conceive the mind can achieve.
Mike Filsaime: That is why Ralph it is so important that people don’t daydream on the negative things. So it’s best they don’t say “Oh my goodness I didn’t do my taxes yet and my car payment is 60 days behind.” You are attracting that negative energy.
Mike Filsaime: If your car payment is 60 days behind and that’s all you are thinking of then you are thinking in wrong terms. You need to think in terms of “I want to gain financial success.” When you think in terms like that you will attract those things and the car payment issues will go away.
Mike Filsaime: Yes I do tend to daydream quite often about my business and always think in terms of positive ways. Sometimes the negative things work their way into your thoughts and there is nothing you can do. You can’t shift on positive things so just don’t think of them at all
Mike Filsaime: Just start thinking of clown feet (Laughter) or something like that. But if you can’t think of anything that’s positive at that time then almost go into a state of denial and just block it out because it’s not going to do any good to dwell on it or the negative.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you feel it is important to make positive statements about yourself…the type of person you are and the your goals?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, those are affirmations. You need to not only say the affirmations but you need to envision the affirmation. Like I said before it’s been proven and it’s a fact that when your mind and in your imagination & you think in terms of the past & look back in your memory bank & you imagine things the mind looks in the same exact place that it does for memories.
Mike Filsaime: The mind cannot distinguish between imagination and reality. So all you have to do is imagine the results that you want & you will suddenly start to live that life. I know I keep on saying that same thing but I believe so strongly in those things that we are talking about right now.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you take time out of your day to feed your subconscious positive thoughts about you, your goals and dreams?
Mike Filsaime: That’s something I believe I should do and something I believe everybody should do. But I can’t tell you that I do that. I think it has become so conscious that once you start living a life of positive thinking you are just on auto pilot and thinking g positively all the time.
Mike Filsaime: However, I believe that meditation is good. I think you should have some type of time where you are doing meditation. Whether you are doing sub-conscious learning programs, any types of hypnotic programs or subliminal programs or anything like that.
Mike Filsaime: I think those things are great to super charge the mind. I don’t actually do it, Ralph. I do research into it. That’s one of the things I said before. Do I actively do everything I know that’s right? No I don’t. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not right. I don’t do as much as I’d like to.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you have the courage to pursue new ideas?
Mike Filsaime: Oh yes. The easiest way to get your family to get behind you is to prove them wrong in the first place. When they start telling you, “Enough already! You have a job already & that’s where the food comes from. Why don’t you go out and get a real job instead of chasing these Mickey Mouse dreams and blah, blah, blah? I’m sick and tired of hearing about these names you keep talking about.”
Mike Filsaime: That’s negative energy and you have to put your force field up. You have to do what the entrepreneur spirit inside knows you can do. Then all of a sudden when that check comes in of $34,000 then you’ll see how quickly the friends or people in your life say “Oh wow, that’s great! How can I do something like that? Can I have that to go buy something?”
Mike Filsaime: You just have to do what you know is right and they’ll come around when they see the success or they’ll get out of your life. Sometimes you need to fire your negative friends & fire the negative people in your life. If you are married to a negative person you have to understand that you can’t change people.
Mike Filsaime: I would never endorse people to fire the negative people in their life when they are their kids and their spouse. All you can do is be who you can be. Be the best you can be and what will happen is that hopefully they can see the type of person you are and want to be more like you.
Mike Filsaime: You can’t change somebody and keep trying to change people from who they are. They can only change themselves. They do that when you stop batting heads with them. You just have to sometimes say “This is the life I want to live.” Either they are going to come along with you or they won’t. But you can’t forcefully try to change them.
Mike Filsaime: We are talking about everything we’ve spoken about on this call. It’s about honor, ethics, faith and knowing what’s right & believing what’s right. Sometimes we get into a position where we did get involved with the right person in the beginning.
Mike Filsaime: That doesn’t mean it’s over. It means they have to realize that you are the right thing in their lives and they have to walk towards you. Sometimes you can’t force them to do that.
Ralph Zuranski: Were you willing to experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dream?
Mike Filsaime: Absolutely, Ralph. Absolutely. Like we were saying before sometimes you need to fire your negative friends. The expression is that your income is the average of your five closest friends.
Mike Filsaime: You can find anybody out there whether they are making $300,000 or $30,000 a year or $15,000 a year I will venture to say their income is the average of their 4 closest friends with them making $5,000.
Mike Filsaime: If you look at the two people above them and the two people below them they will probably make more than two people and less than two people and they are the average of those two. I think it’s important to understand that if you want to give yourself a raise you have associate yourself with a better quality of people that think in the way you think.
Mike Filsaime: If you can please repeat that question there Ralph. I wanted to tie that in but have kind of lost my train of thought there.
Ralph Zuranski: Are you willing to experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dreams? I was talking to Tom just the other day and he was talking about it’s like increasing the size of your muscles. The muscles to be successful and the muscles to be empathetic where you have to stretch your abilities to the point of breaking. It’s uncomfortable to do that. Do you feel that’s important?
Mike Filsaime: Absolutely! Again that’s the frame that you define yourself for or align yourself with. In my opinion I don’t think that somebody should just quit their job today even though their job is creating pain in their life. You can’t just quit your job and say “Well I’m going to go out and be an entrepreneur.”
Mike Filsaime: That’s good if you have $50,000 in the bank. If you have nothing in the bank then you have to morph into the next thing. You have to work at your current job and leverage that income and time where you’re not working there into building the new business that you want so that you can walk away.
Mike Filsaime: As an example, when I was in the car business I was making good money. I was making $150,000 plus per year. It was killing me but I knew I had to stay there in order to build the foundation of my business that I wanted to build on line.
Mike Filsaime: It was difficult to run both. It was very, very difficult to run both. Then when the time is right it will come. It came to the point where I was talking to the owner and we just decided one day it was time for me to move on.
Mike Filsaime: I took the leap. It was the scariest thing that I’ve ever had to do Ralph. I actually cried outside of the dealership. My other sales people came up to me and said to me “Hey don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be ok.” I couldn’t believe he gave me an ultimatum saying “You work for me or work for yourself.”
Mike Filsaime: I took the choice and stuck my hand out and said “Thanks it’s been a great five years. The other people were saying “How could you walk away from this making $150,000 a year?” I was so emotionally upset that I was one of the best managers in the auto group and that he would actually be so upset that I was trying to better my life in a non-conflictive way that he made me choose. I was so emotional I couldn’t talk to the guys. I was saying “I don’t care this is…”
Mike Filsaime: One of the reasons I was crying is that the chains just let go. It was an emotional charge. They saw the tears as me being upset but more than anything it was that anger and that happy emotion that came out. It was that happy anger of breaking free of the chains.
Mike Filsaime: I was saying, and in not so polite of words so I’ll tone them down, “Screw that. He doesn’t understand what he just did for me. He doesn’t understand that he gave me a choice. I didn’t have the strength to ask him myself. This is a celebration! This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Mike Filsaime: Then I had to get home and tell the family that I no longer have a Toyota Forerunner demo. I no longer have medical benefits and an income or all these things. But to me it was liberation. Because of that I was able to go from $150,000 to making $850,000 last year.
Mike Filsaime: So far this year I’ve made over $3,000,000. Sometimes you have to be able to be willing to “break or cut your wrist” or almost shave the skin off your arms while you are pulling your hands out of those things that bind you.
Ralph Zuranski: Is it beneficial to make decisions quickly?
Mike Filsaime: Yes absolutely Ralph. As you’ll see you’ll be talking to a lot of people and we all quote famous people and successful people. Especially quotes from Napoleon Hill.
Mike Filsaime: Napoleon Hill teaches that one of the habits that he notices about all the successful people he interviewed was that successful people are decisive in nature. Successful people make decisions very quickly. And they change them slowly.
Mike Filsaime: Unsuccessful people make decisions very slowly and they change them very quickly. I saw that in the car business. What that means is if I ask you “What color is a blue shirt?” You say it’s blue because you know it to be true.
Mike Filsaime: Sometimes we know the right answer but we were brought up to say “Never make a decision right away. Always sleep on it. Always think about it.” That’s a bunch of nonsense but we have to look at the people that taught us that. They were people that lived their structured life where they made $472.63 a week
Mike Filsaime: Those are the people that are teaching our kids today. I want the kids listening today to know that when they know something is right to make the decision. Stick with it and make it through and focus on that decision you made because you knew it was right.
Mike Filsaime: If it turns out to be the wrong decision then we go back and we talk about what we learned from our mistakes. I will venture to say that 19 times out of 20 your gut instinct is right and you know the right decision. The mistake that people make is they say I’m going to sleep on it.
Mike Filsaime: It’s like me saying “Here you give me $5.00 and I’ll give you ten tomorrow.” Then you say “Well let me think about that.” And the next thing you know you end up saying “I remember when Snapple came out. My friends bought it but I decided not to buy it. I remember when Google came out and I was going to but the stocks but I didn’t.”
Mike Filsaime: Because they knew it was right but they didn’t act on it. What ends up happening is that when they do end up making a decision they say “Everybody bought Google. I waited a year and half and I’m going to buy Google now.”
Mike Filsaime: They buy Google for $110.00 a share and tomorrow it goes to $109.00 a share. Remember unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change them quickly. It took them a year and a half to make the decision then all of a sudden they say “Oh wow, I just lost a dollar. Let me pull my money out of the market place.”
Mike Filsaime: Next thing you know as they pull their money out of the market place it goes up to $115.00 and they lost the opportunity when they had the right decision to begin with. So that’s an example that I can give you.
Mike Filsaime: To answer question in a nutshell when you have a decision should you act quickly? I believe the answer is unequivocally yes.
Ralph Zuranski: Are you slow to revise or reverse an important decision?
Mike Filsaime: That’s correct. Yes I think that when you believe something is right in your heart, don’t listen to everybody. Take everybody’s advice into consideration. That’s a good question. You see we are on a ship and we are going to the new world. We don’t know exactly where it is but we know it’s there.
Mike Filsaime: We have our captains and other people that are helping us and telling us “Our calculations show us that the wind is blowing us this way. We need to shift our direction two degrees.” That doesn’t mean you have to stand firm with your feet dead in cement once you’ve made your decision.
Mike Filsaime: You want to stay along the same path and make small changes along the path that you believe is right. But don’t just do a complete 180 degrees because at that point you are going to get lost in the ocean and just sink.Mike Filsaime: Ralph Zuranski: How were you able to overcome your doubts and fears?
Mike Filsaime: They tell you whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You have to confront your fears. That’s easier said than done. I have things that I struggle with in my life. I have the fear that there are things I need to take care of that I work on. It all comes down to knowing what’s right.
Mike Filsaime: If you know what’s right and you have faith you need to just confront your fears. You can not let anything control you especially not a fear. If you can confront the fears and ask yourself “What’s the worse that’s going to happen?”
Mike Filsaime: If you are a 16 year old boy and you want to take that 16 year old girl out to the prom and remember about being decisive in nature, well if you take too long to act on that you are going to do it in 3, 4 or 5 days then you finally build up the courage to do it. As you’re doing that the other kid is going to walk up and ask her “Hey would you like to go to the prom with me?”
Mike Filsaime: She’s going to say “Yes.” and just like in the movies she’s going to look over and see you 3 lockers down and say “Boy I wish he would have asked me first.”
Mike Filsaime: So if you have a fear to ask a girl or whatever the case is to go to the prom you have ask yourself “What is the worst that can happen? She’ll say no.” Is that really the worst thing in the world? No brush yourself off and say “Her loss.”
Mike Filsaime: Guess what’s really going to happen? She’ll say yes. You have to take action on the fear that you have. As long as you know the worst and best case scenario it’s better to make a decision and go with it.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you readily forgive those who upset, offend and oppose
you?
Mike Filsaime: I am so forgiving to a fault. I think that’s the Scorpio nature in me. I was born October 26. I almost go into everything that I do with the expectation that I’m going to do everything I can right. I hope this person does too but if they don’t then so be it.
Mike Filsaime: I try not to hold a grudge. I’ll kick and scream sometimes and say “Oh man I can’t believe this guy did this to me.” But you have to get over it. If you are going to dwell on the negative things and in the past think instead of what you could be doing if you are working on a project and moving something forward.
Mike Filsaime: I’ve been burned so many times. I could basically tell you on a weekly basis how I get burned. But look where I am in my life because I let it go.
Mike Filsaime: I say “Ok you know if that happened and this & that got shut down or this person did this & that then I hope in my heart this person changes their ways so they can be a better person. Because if they don’t they’ll only have bad things happen to them.”
Mike Filsaime: I don’t wish that upon them. There was a person recently that we didn’t get along with each other in Butterfly Marketing. Remember I said you may have fire your bad friends, well this guy wasn’t behaving. I had to fire him as a customer and refund him.
Mike Filsaime: So he now is going around in forums and tongue & cheek beating me up a little bit. I’m not going to play down to that game. I sent him a very polite email and apologized that we got off on the wrong foot.
Mike Filsaime: I said “We can do better things in this world if we both put positive energy out there. I give you my word I’ll never say anything bad about you regardless of what you continue to do to me.
Mike Filsaime: However, maybe one day we’ll meet and let’s not have any uncomfortable feelings when that happens. I always believed that if you don’t have anything nice to say about people then don’t say anything. And right there, do I have faults with that? I’m sure I do.
Mike Filsaime: I’m sure there are times I may have a cup of coffee or a drink with somebody and a topic will come up and I’ll probably talk in ways that I shouldn’t about somebody. But publicly you should never do anything like that. Without a doubt you have to be able to forgive people and forgive yourself.
Mike Filsaime: You have to know when you’ve made faults. You have to say I’m sorry and apologize to people and reach out to them before they reach out to you if you believe that they may be upset. You have to let it go and don’t associate with those types of people but you can definitely forgive them.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you experience service to others as a source of joy?
Mike Filsaime: Yes. It’s not about the money. Money is a byproduct of doing good things. If you can create good products and good services then that’s what life is all about.
Mike Filsaime: It’s about good products and good services. What your doing In Search of Heroes, is a good service. I definitely believe in putting a good service out there and everything else you want in life will come.
Ralph Zuranski: When was the lowest point in your life and how did you change your life path to one of victory over the obstacles you were facing at that time?
Mike Filsaime: I’ve been fortunate Ralph that I haven’t had, knock wood of course, and I will (Knock, knock), any deaths in my immediate family. My parents got divorced when I was in my mid-twenties so that didn’t affect me the way it could have.
Mike Filsaime: Maybe it would have affected someone who was 8 years old. I lost my grandfather. We knew each other but we didn’t know each other well. So “knock wood” again there hasn’t been any type of tragedy or anything like that.
Mike Filsaime: However, I had financial tragedy and stress back in 1998. I was in the car business. I left the car business for 6 months to get involved with a real estate investor who turned out to be nothing more than a con man. He took me and about six other people in on this con. It was a con by driving a Mercedes and having a house that wasn’t his and all these other things that we believed were his.
Mike Filsaime: His intentions were good. His intentions were to use our credit and our money to buy houses and repair them and flip them. What ended up happening, remember what we said about taking on too many projects, he was trying to buy too many houses at a time.
Mike Filsaime: While he was trying to put all this construction in and collecting the mortgage payments and when the cash flow went negative he started keeping the mortgage payments and putting it in his own pocket.
Mike Filsaime: Several months later we found out that the whole project went bankrupt. Since it was our credit and our money he lost nothing. We had him arrested and we filed charges and put all that stuff behind us.
Mike Filsaime: What it left me in 1998 was $70,000 in debt and 3 foreclosures and 3 repossessions. One was for a Mercedes Benz and one for a Ford Exhibition and a Harley Davidson. I had signed for all these things for him under the business name.
Mike Filsaime: Also the credit card machine and three foreclosures were in my name so I had no choice at that time but to file bankruptcy. They were coming after everything I owned. If you look at all these successful people out there like Stephen Pierce, Mark Victor Hansen, Armand Moran and Joe Vitalie there’s one thing you can be comfortable in knowing.
Mike Filsaime: The school of hard knocks happens to all of us. So we must stop with the self-pity. Everybody’s got their own story. I heard recently that everybody is going to tell you “My parents left me when I was three years old and I was put up for adoption.” Ok, well so what, everybody’s got a story.
Mike Filsaime: Let it go. Stop holding on to it and let that be an inspiration to people when you’ve overcome it. Start thinking positive and stop dwelling on it on that. Eighty-five percent of the people in the US have grown up in a dysfunctional family.
Mike Filsaime: You are not alone. So stop thinking about that you were given these bad things. I think that 9 out of 10 successful people that are multi-millionaires in this world have gone through major tragedies or bankruptcy or financial tragedy.
Mike Filsaime: It’s ok to let those things happen. You can’t be embarrassed and say “Oh I don’t want anybody to know that I went bankrupt.” Hey, it happens. We’ve made mistakes in our life. We have to learn from them and move on.
Ralph Zuranski: Was there anyone who helped give you the willpower to change things in you life for the better?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, my dad. My dad’s nick name for me when I was a kid was top shelf. I wrote about that in Butterfly Marketing. My dad is my hero and my mentor. My dad always used to talk to me in positive ways.
Mike Filsaime: He brainwashed me a little bit. He never told me I was better than anybody else. He told me I could be the best and I can run with the best. I never realized what a difference that made until someone that you look up to in your life says negative things to you.
Mike Filsaime: Maybe holding a beer can and saying “You are nothing but a piece of garbage. You are going to turn out to be nothing just like your grandfather on your mother’s side.” Kids are impressionable.
Mike Filsaime: I watch some of these movies these days where you are a hero to run around with a gun and drive a Hummer and talk about “popping caps”. And sayings like “get rich or die trying” and other things. Again these kids are impressionable today. As much as those things may be entertainment they are really poisonous to the youth of our society.
Mike Filsaime: Get rich or die trying is a terrible, terrible thing for people to look up to. And these young kids actually look up at these stars and say I want to be like this person.
Mike Filsaime: The messages in those movies are horrible because those people end up having success at the end of the movies. So it’s telling you that you need to be a thug or die trying. Man, it just bothers me. There are so many better heroes out there to learn from.
Ralph Zuranski: How important was it to believe your financial dreams would eventually become reality?
Mike Filsaime: You set your goals and I have to be honest with you, I’ve been setting goals all my life and never achieving them but it sent me in the right direction. I set a goal years ago that I wanted to be a millionaire.
Mike Filsaime: Sometimes you say to yourself “Well that’s a great carrot to go for.” What ends up happening is that when you get there you have to re-evaluate and set new goals. You have to start thinking bigger and thinking more philanthropic.
Mike Filsaime: You want to start thinking how you want to affect lives and help people achieve success and dreams they want out of life. Of course I can still make money doing that. There is nothing wrong with charging money for mentoring programs.
Mike Filsaime: If you believe in what you are doing and that people will spend $5,000 a year and it can bring them from making $5,000 a mo nth to a$100,000 a month, well they’ll pay you 10 times for what it is.
Mike Filsaime: Sometimes you have to pay for information. Like I said before you have to be a student of learning. So those are some of the things we are doing right now. I believe in higher learning. When you ask that question about positive thinking and achieving goals, I think it all boils down to having a positive attitude.
Ralph Zuranski: Why is it valuable to know exactly how much money you want to have in your bank account and when?
Mike Filsaime: You need to have specific goals. The more abstract something is the harder it is to envision it. There are people that have taken a $100.00 bill and written three zeros at the end of it and they have taped it to their roof of their bed so every time they woke up they would see that they wanted to make $100,000 a year.
Mike Filsaime: They take their bank statements and they white it out and they type in the number they want to see in their bank account. It’s just envisioning what they want and by doing that they manifest it.
Mike Filsaime: It can come true and I believe it will come true if you start living the life that needs to be lived in order to achieve those things. You just can’t say “I want a million dollars.” and continue to work at the bakery and not do anything about it.
Mike Filsaime: I will tell you that when you start focusing on those positive things you will attract those opportunities into your life. When you are decisive in nature you will take action on those things.
Ralph Zuranski: What is your definition of heroism?
Mike Filsaime: A hero to me is a mentor, a person that has unconditional love for the people that they are working with. I don’t see heroes necessarily in terms of Babe Ruth. Those are icons.
Mike Filsaime: I don’t want to tell people to change the way that we can talk in this country. You can have sports heroes but the true heroes need to be the fathers and uncles and the teachers.
Mike Filsaime: Those are the heroes of this world and people like you with what you are doing with young kids. I think a hero, has to do with some type of adult figure working with a young child.
Ralph Zuranski: Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with life’s difficulties?
Mike Filsaime: When I was a kid I was a Superman fan and I don’t know if Superman helped me deal with any difficulties but I used to put the towel on my back and run around the house in my underroos and fly around. I had my little Superman expressions and things like that.
Mike Filsaime: It was good to have those fantasies but I think the real heroes I had was my dad. He’d get home late like 11:00 pm at night. He’d sometimes wake me up and I would be there sitting there at the kitchen table.
Mike Filsaime: He’d be putting cheese & jelly on saltine crackers and we’d talk. Any problems that I had I’d talk to him about.
Ralph Zuranski: What were the qualities and attributes of your secret hero or your real life heroes when you were growing up?
Mike Filsaime: I guess what I always liked about Superman was
that he was the most powerful super-hero out there yet but what was great about it was he had his Achilles heal which was kryptonite. As powerful as he was there was always a way to take him down and he was able to overcome it.
Mike Filsaime: With my dad he was just my dad so I had that unconditional love from him. He’s still around today and we talk all the time and we have an incredible friendship.
Ralph Zuranski: Who are the HEROES in your life now?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, the marketers that I have great respect for. I almost don’t want to name them because I’ll probably forget some. I guess if I have to name some they are some of my good friends like Tom Beal, Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox and Stephen Pierce and Armand Moran. Frank Kern was an early hero of mine.
Mike Filsaime: Brad Fallon is a very good friend of mine. If anyone is hearing this I probably could list another 50 but those are some very good friends and heroes. Chuck Smith is a very good friend of mine. A young man coming up that really has a good heart and I like what he’s doing is Sterling Valentine.
Mike Filsaime: I think he’ll be a hero for a lot of young kids for years to come. Those are just some to name a few. As I said there’s probably another 50 I could name.
Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to have trusted friends or a master mind group to bounce your ideas off?
Mike Filsaime: It’s extremely important. In the terms of the Napoleon Hill mastermind I don’t know if it’s that easy to structure a mastermind that well. The closest you can get to that the better.
Mike Filsaime: Like I said before your income is the average of your four closest friends. If you want to give yourself a raise you have to start associating yourself with people at higher levels that you want to be like.
Mike Filsaime: That’s what happens with the mastermind. You don’t want to associate yourself with the mastermind of losers because you will become a loser to the tenth degree. If you associate yourself with a winner in a mastermind and that’s not really the scope of this call, to talk about what a mastermind really is.
Mike Filsaime: But, just so if any young kid is listening if I could explain the power of the mastermind. The mastermind is a result of what happens when two or more people get together. Ralph I could have one idea that’s a very good idea and you can one idea, so together we have two ideas.
Mike Filsaime: When you and I get together and we talk about that idea we can say “You know what we should add?” You say “How about we do this?” and we are working together. What results in that is a third idea. Now two people can achieve a third better idea than the two we had by ourselves.
Mike Filsaime: That’s the power of the mastermind. It’s the result of what happens when two or more people get together. When you get 8 to 10 people together in a mastermind that exponential formula I just gave you is what makes the results become exponential.
Ralph Zuranski: How do they make a positive difference in your life? Who do you feel are the real heroes in our society today that are not getting the recognition and rewards they deserve?
Mike Filsaime: The teachers and the pastors and the kids that are working with the youths in the YMCA & the Big Brother Program and things like that. Those are the real heroes out there today.
Mike Filsaime: One thing I really want to talk about is those people that are serving this country over seas. Some of them are so young they don’t even realize how important they are or even what the cause is that they are fighting for. But they are real heroes.
Mike Filsaime: As a mastermind unit together they build up and defend the strongest country in the world and give us the freedom we might take for granted.
Ralph Zuranski: Why are HEROES so important in the lives of young people?
Mike Filsaime: We need people to look up to. Part of the human spirit is knowing that we can’t do it alone. Having a negative person in our lives can be detrimental.
Mike Filsaime: Having a hero helps us to block out everything. We want to work with that hero because a hero believes we can achieve our best. The hero sees us with crystal clear glasses. They can see the future. They don’t judge us. They love us and they see the best part of us when a lot of people don’t.
Mike Filsaime: They bring out the things in us that we don’t even see. So it’s very important for a young kid to have a hero to work with because sometimes that hero is all they’ve got and can bring the world out for them.
Ralph Zuranski: What are the things that a parent can do that will help their children realize that they too can be heroes & have a positive impact on the lives of others?
Mike Filsaime: The first thing a parent needs to do is lead a life by example. You can’t be a hypocrite and tell your kids they shouldn’t smoke weed when you indeed smoke weed. Kids are smarter than what parents give them credit for.
Mike Filsaime: Even if they don’t consciously see it subconsciously they pick up on things. A parent needs to live their life by example then they need to let their kid know how much they love them. They need to share that and express that and let that kid know that they are the best thing that’s ever been put on this earth.
Mike Filsaime: When the kid starts to understand that they need to instill the properties in these kids of the laws of reciprocity to know that when you have what you want or when you’re going through that point in your life & trying to achieve what you want you have to always make sure you help other people get what they want.
Mike Filsaime: As you are always a student looking up to your hero there is always somebody looking up to you. So you have the dual role of the student and the hero. When people look up to you as a hero you have to be there for them.
Ralph Zuranski: How do people become heroes?
Mike Filsaime: By just living a good life. People look up to you when you do things right. That’s a simple answer for a complicated question. How to become a hero is simply just living the life that you know is right. Then people will look up to you.
Ralph Zuranski: How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet HERO?
Mike Filsaime: Oh I’m honored. It’s something that’s difficult to put into words. I am honored to be on this call and as long as I know what I keep on doing what’s right in my heart I know I can be an example for others & not let anybody down.
Mike Filsaime: If I do let anybody down it’s because I’ve made a mistake I can acknowledge it and apologize for it and move on. You can’t live the perfect life because you want to be the perfect life for other people. Along as you go out everyday with good intentions most of the time you’ll end up doing the right thing.
Ralph Zuranski: Why do you think you were selected for this unique honor?
Mike Filsaime: I look good in photos. (Laughter)I think that you and I Ralph had an opportunity to build a very good friendship over the last year and a half. We’ve had an opportunity to see each other and we both know that we want to do what’s right in the world.
Mike Filsaime: I think everything we spoke about in this call about attracting negative and positive energy is that you and I both put out positive signals. I think it was just a matter of fate that we had an opportunity to meet and do this call today.
Ralph Zuranski: How will being recognized as an Internet HERO change your life?
Mike Filsaime: As long as I can realize that I can continue to help people then my life gets changed as I see other people’s lives get changed by any influence I have about it.
Ralph Zuranski: How are you making the world a better place?
Mike Filsaime: By helping others. Teaching people what I know and teaching people how to take action. I know that these butterfly effects that we are having with other people like Jason, Dennis, James and Keith is making them able to become heroes to other people.
Mike Filsaime: That butterfly effect is now becoming a ripple effect and those people they are helping will become heroes for other people. It can go on for years and years to come and that’s leaving a legacy.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you have any good solutions to the problems facing society, especially racism, child and spousal abuse and violence among young people?
Mike Filsaime: Yes, I will say a statement that will shock a couple of people. Racism will probably be around for a long time. I don’t see how you can have so many different people that can grow up in different cultures and unfortunately there’s negative energy in this world and those people are going to see differences in other people as fear unfortunately.
Mike Filsaime: I would hope that one day as Martin Luther King had this dream that everybody can let go on the differences and understand that those differences can bring us closer together.
Mike Filsaime: If we understand that there’s racism in this world just as we understand that there’s hate. There will probably always be hate and there will probably always be love. Of course there will always be love.
Mike Filsaime: As long as we know the right thing to do. If we focus too much on the racism and look at these leaders that are fighting for racism lets go back to the 1960’s. There were two major leaders out there.
Mike Filsaime: It gets very tough when you start talking about faith, religion and politics and things like that. I’m not going to talk about the one leader that spoke about racism and did it in terms of anger.
Mike Filsaime: I’ll talk about the one that did it in terms of love and that was Martin Luther King. What he did is everything that we are talking about today. If you have debt and you focus on how I can get out of debt then you are just going to get more debt.
Mike Filsaime: If you have debt and focus on how I can have more success then you’ll have success and you’ll get out of debt. So it’s the same thing that Martin Luther King realized is that there is racism in this country. But don’t go out there and focus on the problem and say “There is racism. We need to do this and to do that and they need to recognize us.”
Mike Filsaime: No, talk about the positive things like love and talk about getting together. Then all those things will automatically go out. To answer your question a little quicker is not to dwell on the negative things.
Mike Filsaime: There is racism out there and a lot of bad things out there. All these kids are seeing it in their schools. There are bad kids in every school.
Mike Filsaime: Some have it worse than others. But if you focus on the positive and align yourself with the positive students in the school and you can overcome it. Focus on the good and you’ll have good in your life. Don’t focus on solving the problems by looking at the problems. Focus on solving the problems by looking at the solutions….
Ralph Zuranski: If you had three wishes for your life and the world, that would instantly come true, what would they be?
Mike Filsaime: I just want to live a long healthy life. I want it to be prosperous. I want to leave a legacy by helping as many people as I can along the way.
Ralph Zuranski: What do you think about the In Search Of Heroes Program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?
Mike Filsaime: I think we are blessed to have people like you in this world Ralph that get heroes together out there to work and speak and to help young kids. We need more things like that in the world and I’m so glad to participate in a program like this. I know that you’ve created some butterfly effects that will change people’s lives and young people’s lives.
Mike Filsaime: They’ll look back and one day they’ll do an interview with a successful radio show or television station. Someone will ask “What was it that changed your life?” They’ll say it was a program called In Search of Heroes and they’ll talk about it.
Mike Filsaime: I think you are leaving a legacy here Ralph and I want to commend you and applaud you for what you are doing for young kids. It’s the most selfless act a human being can do. I am very proud of you.
Ralph Zuranski: I really appreciate your time and thanks a lot Mike.
Mike Filsaime: Thank you very much Ralph. I appreciate it. All the kids listening out there today remember whatever the mind can dream up it can achieve. You can conceive it and I know that you guys will all have a good life and you are very lucky to be working with Ralph and being part of this program. Thank you Ralph.
Ralph Zuranski: Thanks Mike and have a great day.
I was born on October 26th, 1967 and raised on Long Island, New York, which I love because of its four distinct seasons.
I especially like Long Island for its beaches. In the summers, I love to drive out to the Hamptons and Montauk Point. Since I live about an hour away from NYC, I can shoot the other way (west) and see a Broadway play in Manhattan. I like to travel, golf, play racquetball, and Foosball, Call of Duty (xBox)
I am also a cat lover and I have cats at home and at my office.
My first job as at Pathmark, a local Supermarket, where I worked in the frozen foods department at the same time I attended New York Institute of Technology.
In 1990 I changed careers and started a new profession in the automotive business. Over the next 14 years I would managed some of the largest auto dealers in the USA. I handled many of the advertising for my dealership. And, in the past, I was the head sales trainer for a 13 store auto group. I have taken many courses on sales, negotiating, and phone selling skills.
I loved working in the car business and it was tough to leave when things started to take off online. But I don’t miss the long hours. However, I do feel a learned a lot about influence factors that make people take action during my years in top dealerships.
I have been able to apply many of the sales and marketing tactics I learned over the last 14 years and implement them into my Internet marketing. My online success has come very quickly.
Turning Point to Fulltime Online Entrepreneur : August 5th, 2004
On this day on 2004, it was time for me to leave that automobile sales profession behind and seek out new opportunities that lie ahead with the new frontier of Online Marketing. This was the day I decided to quit the car business and work for my self fulltime. It was a good choice. I became a Millionaire in just 3 years in early 2006.
I started Internet marketing in October of 2002. My first purchase was a product called Instant Internet Empires, which taught me how to get started and was really good for the newbie. But, I had to learn many of the other techniques on my own. I am a student of How-To and self improvement books. I am always looking for that edge to take myself and my projects to the next level. So, I encourage you to be brave enough to purchase quality products that you come across that will enhance your life.
In January of 2006 we did our first Million Dollar product launch. Since then, the business has grown from a spare bedroom to 2500 square foot office and a staff of 21 people that help me run our 10+ Major-Brand sites.
To me, the most important thing now is quality of life. A nice income makes it easier to have, but if you leave no time to enjoy it, you could be worse off than when you started. At one time we were doing close to $10 Million per year with 75 employees. It was not fun. As always, the 80/20 rule (the Pareto Principle) applied and we decided to focus only on the 20 percent of our products that resulted in 80% of our profits. Life is a bit more simple. We are designed more as a small business with goals of $3 to $4 Million with more profits with $1 Million in overhead.
Also in 2013 Mike Filsaime and Hector Yague, the creators of EvergreenBusinessSystem.com launched a new marketplace called DealGuardian.com. It is a review based marketplace. What the App Store is to the iPhone, this marketplace is for Internet Marketers.
Click on these links to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
Click here to learn more about the company.
Sincerely,
Mike Filsaime