Mike Stewart: I think that anybody who is on this planet who can do something to make it better for everyone else is a hero. My hero that I feel like is a mentor to me is Thomas Edison. If you think about what he did, he is an example of persistence; his example helps other people to better their lives. I think it was Emerson who said this but he said “If one person can breathe easier because I am here than I have succeeded.”
Mike Stewart: Forgive me if it wasn’t Emerson who said that but I remember the quote and I think that is why Thomas Edison is my hero because he invented so many things that has saved lives an helped people, you know lighting and electricity, the telephone.
Mike Stewart: There wouldn’t be 911 on a telephone to save peoples lives had Edison not improved the telephone. I know Alexander Gram Bell invented it but I know that Edison was involved.
Mike Stewart: So many things, the phonograph, the recording industry, the recording and audio industry all stem from his vision in 1876. So he has been my life long hero.
Mike Stewart: I usually use him in my presentations because of the examples he has set has empowered my life and made my life better and I think to be a hero you have got to pass that on. Heroes can be of all types.
Mike Stewart: Generally we think of heroes as people who win in battle and most definitely people in the military but there are other types of heroes too. I like to recognize people who have changed the world for the better as being heroes just as well as those who were brave in battle.
Mike Stewart: So that is my definition of a hero and I don’t want to slight the military out there, the veterans and so fourth I just want to put my definition as in addition to.
Ralph Zuranski: Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with life’s difficulties?
Mike Stewart: I wouldn’t say it was a secret hero, I would say the people that I talk to on a regular basis, even though my father has been gone four years now he is still a hero to me and I talk to him frequently in my mind and I ask him “What should I do” and I actually talk to Thomas Edison, I go “Tom what should we do?”
Mike Stewart: So these are not secret heroes, I don’t have an imaginary secret person. I think about the great mentors of my life occasionally and those are the heroes that I think of in my mind. So I guess secret wouldn’t be the word for me, it’s about remembering the great works of people.
Ralph Zuranski: What is your perspective on goodness, ethics and moral behavior?
Mike Stewart: How that affects my life, I mean obviously I think it is important. I don’t think people should, could or do succeed if they don’t bare those qualities.
Mike Stewart: I am a firm believer of what you reap you sew and if you sew those types of characteristics than the goodness will follow as oppose to if you don’t have those characteristics, call it karma, call it reap what you sew, you can’t go a whole life time without having to pay for your actions.
Mike Stewart: The Golden Rule, you know all of the things exist because they work and so I try my darndest to think that I can be as ethical as possible, be as fair, be as honest an you can become prosperous and successful maintaining all of those characteristics and you don’t have to hurt, cheat, steal, lie to succeed in this world. There are opportunities.
Mike Stewart: I think it is also all cause and effect when you put out good returns to you and if you choose the other path it seems like you can create a life of difficulty for yourself just because of the law of cause and effect.
Mike Stewart: So I would recommend for any hero, any successful person to definitely choose those characteristics over any other alternative.
Ralph Zuranski: What principles are you willing to sacrifice your life for?
Mike Stewart: Well you know I have never been confronted with that decision and it is hard for me to speculate. Obviously my children, my family, my wife, if my freedom was taken away which it never has I would imagine you would be willing to give up your life, if it was obvious that you were going to be oppressed.
Mike Stewart: So the things that are of true true value in your life, if those were threatened to be taken away I would be willing to sacrifice my life for those things.
Mike Stewart: It is hard for me to relate because in my fifty-one years on this planet I have been very blessed and I have never had to confront such a prospect. Mike Stewart: My family has, my mother has had that and fortunately she didn’t have to become in harms way because of it but my father went to World War 2 and I would have done what was expected of me if I were asked to and I think that is what the cost of freedom and the cost of having the joys that we have had in this world are expected of us, but I don’t wish it on anybody.
Mike Stewart: I wish we did have utopia where there was no issues of people having to sacrifice anything just to live peacefully and just to live as if it should be like a heaven where there isn’t conflict but we don’t live there, we live in a world where there can be situations where people do have to make ultimate sacrifices and if that was my lot, if that were cast to me then I would have to respond in a responsible and ethical way.
Ralph Zuranski: When was the lowest point in your life and how did you change your life path to one of victory over all obstacles?
Mike Stewart: I have had several points in my life and I don’t know which one would be lower than the other. Years ago I was a young father with two young children and their mother decided to leave us all and that was a low point and I decided to do the best I can and run a business and it was just a mental persistence. Thinking about Thomas Edison in saying you just don’t give up.
Mike Stewart: You never fail as long as you keep trying and I had to just keep thinking about that, I have got to keep going because I have a responsibility to these children. So that was a low point and the fact that I kept moving forward things did ultimately turn around and got better.
Mike Stewart: Then a few years ago I made some poor financial decisions and poor business decisions which was a low point because it set me back quite a bit financially. Rather then admit defeat I was determined that I was going to find out the information that I needed to turn it around and ironically or not ironically, maybe I think, part of my belief system is maybe it wasn’t irony, it was destiny; an old friend, and I even say this during my presentation on stage but an old friend twenty-five years ago told me to buy the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
Mike Stewart: And I had read it yet never did comprehend it. Back in this low point in 1999 where I was over 100,000 in debt I was in Borders Book Store and noticed the Think and Grow Rich was setting on the shelf and almost called me like “Buy me” and for whatever reason I bought the audio CDs of the Think and Grow Rich book in 1999 and that became a complete inspiration for a business that five years here later has completely turned around all of that negativity.
Mike Stewart: So like I said I think that that low point was a blessing of lessons I had to learn, but it also made me realize that I couldn’t learn as a text reader, I was an auditory learner which has now become a world wide business for me. I proudly can say I did not declare bankruptcy and I paid all of that debt off.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you have a dream or vision that sets the course of your life?
Mike Stewart: It is primary, it is mandatory, dreamers get things done, dreamers who dream and take action. Dreamers alone who don’t take action are just dreamers but dreamers who take action change the world.
Mike Stewart: Going back to my hero, Thomas Edison, people told him he was crazy, “You can’t make an electric light bulb, you failed, you tried 9,999 times to make a light bulb and you failed” but then he said “I found out 9,999 ways not to make a light bulb and I knew eventually I would run out of things that didn’t work.”
Ralph Zuranski: Do you have the courage to pursue new ideas?
Mike Stewart: Yes, whatever ounce you can muster up. I can remember many times my brain saying “don’t do that they are not interested” and I had to have a conversation with myself saying “don’t listen to that” and that is all the courage you need is to have enough energy to say “I am willing to do something that is uncomfortable and accept the end result may not be as devastating as my mind might think it can be.”
Mike Stewart: It is scary to get on stage and speak in front of people, to this day I get butterflies but I am so glad I do it. It build relationships with all kinds of people I never would have met, it creates all the things I am trying to create in my life. Mike Stewart: There are so many areas that took a little bit of courage but not a lot of courage to just not let your mind convince you to procrastinate and stop. Another point, you can not listen to any negativity of any kind.
Mike Stewart: You have to write down what you intend to do and you have to read it out loud daily and you have to put on blinders to any negativity that you hear as input from other people. I look back on my life on all the people in my life who said “You can’t start a business, you can’t do this, there is enough of that already, oh there are too many people doing that, there is no way you will succeed.”
Mike Stewart: That is an opinion, there is no proof of that until you take action so what happens is that if you do nothing I can guarantee you your results but I can not guarantee your results if you take action.
Mike Stewart: I love what John Reese told me one time, “If it works keep doing it, if it doesn’t stop.” If you just do something and see the result you will get a whole list of things that will be successful for you, and the final thing is when you surround yourself with like-minded people you will start losing contact with the negative people.
Mike Stewart: You will get to a point where you can not tolerate any negative input. I think the best suggestion is, one guy said one time “You are the average of your five closest mentors or friends” and Brian Tracy said “If you intend to fly with eagles you can not hang with turkeys.”
Mike Stewart: So, I feel that you and I Ralph we are in a good circle of very successful, influential mentors that just give me ideas on a daily basis, whether it is through the internet or conversation or seminars.
Mike Stewart: It takes courage and energy to go buy a plane ticket and show up somewhere, but you know what if you don’t I can guarantee your result, you will stay right where you are and if you are content with that I am not critical of you but if you don’t like where you are and you do nothing about it then you have no one to blame but yourself.
Mike Stewart: You know people like to be victims, they like to blame. I have so many people I can blame for my downfalls in my life. I accept responsibility; I created them all but at the same time I have a choice to try to do different things differently and I haven’t met anybody that has said “Oh I can’t believe you believe that garbage in Think and Grow Rich, that is all fairy stuff, that is all hocus pocus, nothing in there is real.”
Mike Stewart: Well you know that is an actual quote from a partner of mine. I don’t want to document the reports but things are different, because of attitude.
Ralph Zuranski: How were you able to overcome your doubts and fears?
Mike Stewart: I remind myself I can start over tomorrow. I try to evaluate why I may be feeling the way I am, escaping to a happy place, I love the lake and the boat, getting reenergized by other people that are full of energy and full of positive energy, all of those things and the better you get at it the more it seems to happen..
Mike Stewart: Right now I think is the best my business life and me and my wife have been in my life and now my biggest concern is trying to give my children this gift which at their age they are at that skeptical time but one of my kids is starting to catch on, Michael, and my other two I can see some of the other stuff starting to seep in to their “I am invincible and daddy you are crazy” brain.
Mike Stewart: What is the old joke… “My dad was the dumbest man alive when I was sixteen and when I got to be twenty five I was amazed at what he had learned in ten years.”
Mike Stewart: They are at the “I know it all age and why listen to you.” So the only concern that I have in my life these days is just that I want the best for my children, I wish it was a requirement for all young people to read Dale Carnegie and to read and learn Napoleon Hill, to understand the principles of cause and effect and understand the master mind principle.
Mike Stewart: There are so many things that are successful mentors, Thomas Edison, one of the things that impressed me about Napoleon Hill was Thomas Edison, my hero for what ever reason, was in that book.
Mike Stewart: Napoleon Hill got to meet and interview Thomas Edison, that just gives me chills thinking about things like that. So I think for what ever reason the school system should include that kind of learning and that kind of positive goal setting and energy to help this be a prosperous nation. Collectively we are very prosperous but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you readily forgive those who upset, offend and oppose you?
Mike Stewart: I think forgiveness is mandatory. When you can’t forgive that eats away at you and destroys the momentum that you have for yourself. You can choose not to associate, you can choose not to partner or do business with people that you have had experiences of negatively with, I don’t think it is wrong to say “I detach myself from that individual” but to hold resentment, anger and venom and want revenge ultimately destroys your good.
Mike Stewart: That is why I think, at least from my belief system is do my darndest and the natural thing you want to do is get even and the natural thing you want to do is be angry and blame.
Mike Stewart: I was in a business with a partner that didn’t do what I felt he should do and it was the demise of the business and it put my family in a terrible financial result by the decisions that I made but it was real easy to say “If he just would have just done what he was supposed to have done this would have never happened” but I had to get beyond that and I realized that forgiveness was a big part of that.
Mike Stewart: I totally forgive and still love him as a person. I would never want to be in partnership with him again, and that is what the beautiful part is, you have choices.
Mike Stewart: I can choose to work with this person and I can choose to never work with this person, I can choose to build a relationship with this person and I can choose to co-exist with this other person without an active relationship but for me to hold resentment with somebody they don’t even know it.
Mike Stewart: If I was mad at him right now he wouldn’t even know it, the only person that would get a body reaction is me. So forgiveness is mandatory and is a difficult thing to control but you are a better person for it if you can start working on it.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you experience service to others as a source of joy?
Mike Stewart: Sure. I love getting paid, I love prospering but I really delight in people being empowered with something I knew that they didn’t know.
Mike Stewart: So yes it is energizing, it is delightful, it is rewarding for somebody to go “I didn’t know that I could do that” or for somebody getting back to me and saying “You know what, I took what you showed me and I did this and it helped my family in this way.”
Mike Stewart: That is empowering to me so yes I enjoy service but I can’t do everything for free. I have to do some things but what happens is I think that money is a by-product of the right attitude.
Ralph Zuranski: What place does the power of prayer have in your life?
Mike Stewart: It is extremely important. I think that even in Napoleon Hill, communicating with the infinite intelligence which I prefer to call God is prayer and the prayer of Gebeeze is basically where you can say “Help me be able to do this” because I heard this and I can not take credit for this but God does not want poor people, God does want rich people because they can help people who have not seen how to become prosperous.
Mike Stewart: There is infinite abundance, there is not a lack and only prosperous people can help the others.
Mike Stewart: I give back and I pray because I just don’t believe that we are all alone and this is the end.
Mike Stewart: There is a creator and there is a whole lot out there that we don’t totally understand but when you communicate with that kind of power and energy of the Universe, God, then you connect and good things can happen for you.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you maintain your sense of humor in the face of serious problems?
Mike Stewart: Humor sure does make life go a lot more fun. That is why I love music, I go play music at a lot of the events you have been at not because I expect to get money or pats on the back but the fact that I am seeing people have fun and laugh and forget about their woes for a while.
Ralph Zuranski: Who do you think are the HEROES today that are not getting the recognition they deserve?
Mike Stewart: I am sure there are, I don’t know if I could identify anybody in particular right now but anyone who has the goodness and the ethics about themselves to make anybody breathe a little easier are heroes and they may not be famous, they may not be well known or may not ever be known, it does not make them any less of a hero.
Ralph Zuranski: Why are HEROES so important in the lives of young people?
Mike Stewart: Because those are their formative years and if they don’t have role models to emulate in a more positive way than we just create more negative issues on the world.
Mike Stewart: The terrible things such as teaching hatred that turns into terrorism or something like that. It is not out balanced, there is a lot more good in this world than there is negative but the negative makes the news.
Mike Stewart: So the more we can show positive and the more mentor role models that young people can see, maybe love can conquer hate.
Ralph Zuranski: How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet HERO?
Mike Stewart: I am very honored. I don’t think of me as being a hero but if that is what I can be labeled as then I take it graciously, accept it humbly and want to maintain a relationship with you and the world to maintain that status.
Mike Stewart: I just enjoy telling people what I know and hopefully they see tremendous return on their invested time and money that they have done with me and it brings back to them ten fold what they put into it. So my wish is for people to see what is possible if they don’t know what is possible and benefit from it.
Ralph Zuranski: How are you making the world a better place?
Mike Stewart: If I empower people to improve their lives, several of my customers have left jobs they hated which improved their lives and increased their income, built relationships with new people they did not know, enabled them to travel and experience Gods world.
Mike Stewart: It is kind of like every little piece influences the next piece. I don’t know much about the butterfly effect but hopefully my positive vibrations of excitement and passion when saying “Look what this can do for you” and people taking action with it just replicates that.
Mike Stewart: So I am hoping that I am making a difference. I know some people personally that has made tremendous strides with what little bit I have shown them and I have had comments like “I made my money back the first day. Thanks for showing me what I could do.
Mike Stewart: I made twenty times that money the first month because of what you showed me. I got to quit my job.” My wife got to quit her corporate job that she didn’t enjoy. She can sleep in till ten o’clock everyday if she wants to. All of that, hopefully that is the improvement that I can make a change with people is just showing them things that will allow them to get what they want out of life.
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 Stewart: That is a heavy one. John Lennon said “All you need is love and love is the answer and all of those problems are the result of greed, hate and negative energy and if we can overcome negative energy then maybe more and more of that will dissipate. I don’t have a definitive answer other than love.
Ralph Zuranski: If you had three wishes for your life and the world, that would instantly come true, what would they be?
Mike Stewart: I am living my wishes. I wish there wasn’t the fear of the negative things going on in this world.
Mike Stewart: I wish I could eradicate the bombings in London and 911, those kinds of things and the boys getting killed in Iraq, those kinds of thing sadden me on a daily basis. I wish we didn’t have that but for me personally I am on a journey that I am enjoying.
Mike Stewart: I could be shallow and say I want my lake house but that is a dream of mine and I am going to achieve it and it is enjoyable to work towards it. I don’t think it would be that much of an accomplishment if I didn’t have to work for it, if I could just snap my fingers and it be here.
Mike Stewart: I have to visualize it now and take the action to manifest it by doing good deeds for a period of time, but not a long period of time. I can see things now coming about faster then I did five years ago.
Ralph Zuranski: What do you think about the “In Search Of Heroes” Program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?
Mike Stewart: I think it is a powerful idea that you have come up with Ralph. I think anything of this positive nature is going to make a difference in this world. You have just got to keep your eyes on the focus of what you want to accomplish and I know personally first hand of your persistence and that persistence will make to be what you have en visioned it to be.
Ralph Zuranski: What are the things parents can do that will help their children realize they too can be HEROES and make a positive impact on the lives of others?
Mike Stewart: Basically all I know that parent can do is they have got to live by example. They can not say one thing and do another; they can’t say don’t do drugs and do drugs.
Mike Stewart: They can’t say don’t lie, but then call in sick to go play golf. The example that they show is one that they have got to expect their children to follow. Mike Stewart: If the parents do things that are of a negative nature, even though you tell the children not to do something they are still going to do it.
Mike Stewart: Creating the example that you expect them to do, if you believe that they should have spiritual nourishment then you should do something to show them an example, don’t just send them to church or teach them of a spiritual nature and then do not act it yourself.
Mike Stewart: Setting the example and doing things together, having dinner is one of the things that has been lost, the family dinner is time for family bonding and things and I would like to see us get back to that.
Mike Stewart: We struggled for many years to get our kids together for dinner because they all want to do things on different time schedules and it was important for us all to sit down together and now they remember that those were some really good times and a lot of good bonding happens.
Mike Stewart: So the examples that parents do, they have just really got to pay attention to what example they are setting.
Mike Stewart is an internet marketing consultant, trainer and coach. He is a music composer and provide original music for online video and audio. He builds WordPress websites and teachs 15 strategies that help small businesses of all kinds convert more strangers to customers by understanding what works in local online search and the power of online video and blogging.
Specialties:Wordpress, Royalty Free Music, Audio and Video software and training, Google Places, everything online marketing for Local Businesses
President
Soundpages.com Inc.
January 2001 — Present (12 years 7 months)
Soundpages Inc. and our website http://www.WebsitesYouControlYourself.com works with local businesses to enable them to get more customers and make more money using internet search combined with video, email marketing, QR Codes, WordPress website content management, and using internet marketing strategies that get results