The Untold Story of Earn Your Leisure and Invest Fest With Michael MacDonald

On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, sits down with Michael MacDonald, the behind-the-scenes architect of Earn Your Leisure and Invest Fest, to share the real story of how it all came together. Michael opens up about his early hustle designing flyers, the pivotal equity deal that taught him the power of residual income, and the bold moves that helped EYL grow into a global brand. He also breaks down the business strategy behind EYL University, the Mac Pack legacy project, and why Invest Fest has become the Black Friday for entrepreneurs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I said, listen, I'll build your website for free. Just
give me a percentage. Right.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is where I got the idea of like, do
something once and continue to get paid over and over
and over over again. I built that man's website, built
this whole infrastructure, his whole system. I probably was like
twenty four to twenty five years old. This is when
I built his website. I got a percentage of his company.
Would you believe I'm forty three years old. I'm still
getting paid from that company something I did twenty years ago.

(00:26):
When that happened, that changed everything.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Butter. I'm the host,
Brandon Butler found the CEO of Butter atl And today
got somebody special in the building, the one only mister
Mike McDonald.

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Up, eyl sir, how are you doing.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I'm doing great, I'm doing I'm blessed, even though you know,
it's been really crazy preparing for the investmentest and you know,
having two kids and a wife, it's been amazing. It's
been amazing. I'm definitely blessed. Hey, man, lookppreciate I appreciate
your invite.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Man, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
Yeah, man, you look like you look like a man
that's just been working.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Man.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
I could tell, man, I know that, I know that
new kid.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Look me out. We look man.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
For those who don't know, man, who is Mike McDonald?
I normally read people's you know, bios and stuff on here,
but I mean you were I started to do yours. Man,
yours are so long. There was so much stuff in here.
Oh my god, man, I mean it was coming back. Man,
Please tell the folks about you.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
I'm a husband, I'm a man of faith, I'm a father,
and I'm a brand architect for many brands that people
know and use today simplified it. And I'm from Greenberg,
New York.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Okay, all right, and now you're in atl right now
getting ready for invest feesh We're going to obviously talk
about that stuff, man, but look, tell us like you
you've been building brands for a long time.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
How did you first get started with all this?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
My first time, even the slighted bit of becoming an entrepreneur,
which I didn't even know I was the entrepreneur, was
when I started working on flyers promoters. So I would
make these fly designs and put them out do it
for promoters, and you know, make fifty dollars per flyer.

(02:10):
I knew all the promoters in my neighborhood. You know,
I was a kid outside. I'm from the projects, right,
so you know most of the people that are popping
are from those type of communities. And they were all popping.
They had the vibe and with the club. So I said, yo,
I see you going to the city.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Do these flyers.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
I could do them right here and you could sit
down with me. That was like the selling point. You
could sit down with me and tell me how you
want it. And I don't suggest that for nobody ever.
I know that things changed, but don't ever have somebody
sit down. But that was the way to get them in.
So I got them in. And I had like three
or four promoters that were doing weekly parties and I
was making like two hundred dollars a week, you know,

(02:49):
at fourteen, and I had a job at sport Time.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
I worked at an arcade.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Sport Time USA was an arcade in elmswhere, New York,
close to my community.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
So I was doing that. I was always I was
a hustler from day one.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I came out hustling, came out, came out, came
out the wom hustling, you know that kind of that
kind of got me into you know, brand, like the
idea of having a brand or having a being an entrepreneur,
and it just it just grew from there. I just
always I always wanted to Like, I was always optimistic
of finding out new things. So I went from flyers

(03:20):
to photography to web development, and I wanted to make
more money. I realized that I only can make bust
so much money in this space. Like when I went
to photography and doing nightlighte photography. There's people still doing
night life photigraphy when I was doing it twenty years ago. Right, no, no,
no shame to them. But you know, everybody's vision is different.
My vision was I want I want it all, and

(03:43):
I knew nightlight photography wasn't gonna wasn't gonna get me there.
That was to get me in the door, to get
me to get the relationships that helped us build on
your leisure. Actually, so I went back with those relationships,
all the people I knew in the night life industry,
the club industry, all those different people pr industry, I
connected with them to help us built early your leisure.
So it worked out in the long room. But I
knew that I couldn't be a night life photographer too long.

(04:05):
So I've always just thinked about elevating, like this is
my elevating season right now. You know, I'm elevating my
personal brand. You know that's a new elevation for me.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
So yeah, yeah, man, look as a person that you know,
I've done the same thing. I've done web design, I've
done you know, flyers and all that kind of stuff.
It's it's a good business, but it's a hard business
to scale. It feels like, especially like a lot of
service based businesses. And I think one thing I've even
noticed too is for a lot of black entrepreneurs, we
kind of fall into that space where we do service
based businesses. But a lot of times you kind of
become the bottleneck because people don't always like figure out

(04:35):
how to build a team or like scale it up.
When you started looking at that, like what made you
start seeing opportunities to kind of scale this up, because
like you said, you didn't want to just do photography
or web design, you want to kind of do other things, right.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yes, correct, So I always thought about see when you
say seven streams of income, you think it's just seven businesses, right,
And I never thought like that. I felt like, if
this guy buys a flyer from me, right, he pays
for me to design a flyer, that means he has
to have some type of website, or that means he
has an event that he's done any photography with. I
was trying to be the one stop shop and provide

(05:06):
every service for that one person. But now I had
three or four promoters that were giving me money every
single week, right, So they were they were you know,
they had they were used to giving me money. So
it wasn't a thing that, you know, why would they
pay somebody else to do photography when they when they
could pay me, They already giving me money, so it
was a natural, natural instance to just pay me more

(05:27):
money to do more things for them. And I was
actually really good at research, you know. So I literally
learned the camera by myself on YouTube. I learned how
to build websites with YouTube like I was using dream weaving.
I was dream with flash like. I learned that stuff
all of my own, just buying courses. It was I
think it might be around still, Lydia Linda Linda. I learned,

(05:51):
I learned all my stuff on like and I was
just really like I would lock myself in a room
for about a week and learn each different program. That's
how I learned Photoshop, That's how I learned Adobe Flash.
That's all on a dream. And I would just take
those skills and apply them to all the people I
already knew that needed the services.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
No, it's funny, man, I've had a very similar story.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Like for me.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
I remember when I was you know, I was doing
like tech support it all that kind of stuff, and
I was trying to evolve out of there. And I
remember I found this website I never forget. It was
called photoshop nerds dot com and it was the worst
looking website. It probably doesn't even exist anymore. I went
and downloaded a I went and downloaded a legal copy
of a Photoshop CS two itself a napster or whatever.

(06:32):
It was, linewhere, line wire, one of those sites I
remember I download on my work computer and like every
day for a month, I literally did every single.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Tutorial on that website.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Wow, and I just got literally a basic functional knowledge
of how to use Photoshop and then you just started
building on top of it from there. And I never
considered myself to be a designer, but like I knew
how to use the tools, right, it always came in handy.
You know, over the time you gotten better. But like
that's the thing right where people again we see opportunities
and one thing you talked about that I love is
you it's sounding like the landing span approach. It's like, yeah,
this person needs a flyer. They probably also need a website.

(07:04):
They probably also need something else. What I like to
kind of call it is also a marketing momentum. You know,
one thing I kind of learned earlier in my career
is it's hard if you're doing different things for different people. Yes,
but for example, with you being in the ninth life space,
you know those people know each other, right, and so
if you do one thing for one guy and now
all of a sudden you could refer to another person
in that same space, you can kind of take that

(07:25):
knowledge and kind of scale it. The example I always
kind of give is it's hard to go from building
websites for a for a dentist to a lawyer to
a restaurant because there's no real efficiencies in that. So
but if you have the opportunity to say Okay'm gon
go from dennist to dentist or I'm gonna go from
you know, this person and that person. There's efficiencies and
momentum that is that something that you kind of recognized earlier.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
On, Well, I recognize you know, the service based business, right, Yeah,
But I realized that, like I want more, I'm always
a person that it's a gift in the curse. I
never settle, like even now, like I want more. Yeah,
And people probably dream to be in a place I'm in, right,
But this was my dream at one point five years ago.

(08:05):
I was at that point. I woul probably dream to
be at that point. But now my my dreams are
are you know, escalated to different things, right, different heights
and evolved to different heights and realms. So so now
I was like, I'm tired of fishing, right, I'm tired
of fishing because I still gotta fish. I still gotta
you know, communicate with these people. Then I ran into

(08:27):
this one guy. I used to work at comp Usa.
If you don't know what it is us, it used
it used to be, uh, it used to be a
computer store, but I actually was. There were two Apple
stores inside of another store. It was my location in
White Planes and it was another location I think in
Jersey somewhere else. That was the first time they tried
to put Apple inside of a store. And that's what

(08:48):
I was ahead of, right, I was ahead of that.
And I had this guy come in and he was like, man,
I want to buy this laptop, but this computer, but
can you come to my house and set it up?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
I said, all right, I see it.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, that to being not only a longtime partnership, but
end up being a longtime friendship too. So I seen
what he was doing. He had this DJ business, and
I'm like, yo, bro, you're like recording only CDs and
da da dada. You could just put also online. You
don't have to do this. And he's making a ton
of money doing this. But he's busting his butt. I said, listen,

(09:22):
you know he's like, I don't want to spend twenty
thousand for a website. I don't want to do I want.
I got an idea. I'll build your website for free,
just give me a percentage.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
This is where I got the idea of like, do
something once and continue to get paid over and over
and over over again. I built that man's website, built
his whole infrastructure, his whole system.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
This is how important learning skills are, right, It's very important.
I probably was like twenty four to twenty five years old.
This is when I built his website. I got a
percentage of his company.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
His company was already making money, So I knew it
was going to work, right because he was already making
probably like forty grand a month at the time. Walking
into money, you know, profitable. I probably won't make ten
fifteen thousand right off the back what if y'all would
have made if I charged him up front, It'll probably
took me maybe six months to eight months to make it.
But instead of taking that fifteen twenty thousand up front,

(10:14):
I took an equity.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Would you believe I'm forty three years old, I'm still
getting paid from that company something I did twenty years ago.
That's when that happened. That changed everything? Oh yeah, man,
that changed everything.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
That's what you look at it again, like, yeah, people
see that kind of one time win, right, But it's
like sometimes you got to put it on the back
end and kind of continue to grow and build that thing. Now,
you said you were doing this, and you said you know,
doing the night life work and all that stuff led
to EYL, Like how did you you know, Rashad and
trying all those guys like get together because you've been
with them since day one? So how did all this
help you start EYL and help build that brand with them?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
So I'm gonna tell so, because I always tell a story,
I'm gonnaell a little diferent areas. I'm gonna add to it, right,
I'm gonna add to it, And this is exclusive. I
never told this. So Rashad did come to me. He
came to me and asked me to build. He wanted
to build his personal brand.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
He wanted to be the number one financial literacy financial
advisor in the world. Right, so he wanted to be
a celebrity financial advisor. I said, I cool, he knew
what I did. I'm building websites, I'm building all these
businesses like sus one I uhould das all these all
these different celebrities that I helped grow the business. Right,
So he's like, yo, can you help me build this out?

(11:22):
So I'm helping him building out right, and before like
earning your leisure, before the fame, before all of this,
he got offered to do a public access channel.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
He told him not to do it.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Because I realized, I'm like, if you take this content
and put it on YouTube, it'll build your YouTube and
you're you know, you'll start making money right away. Public
access was free, but it's a gift in the curse.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
He was training for what he is today, right because
he did it for a whole year and a half
and he was training himself and getting also content to
post on the social media. Plus he was getting the
content that we were making together, and he was getting
you know, all the content that celebrities that financial advice,
financial mistakes and showing you how to not make those
mistakes as and becoming an authority in the financial literacy space.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Right. So that's how it started.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
And then he got about to like forty thousand followers,
and then people were like, yo, do you have any
do you have a podcast?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Like where's your podcast? Why don't you have a podcast?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
And this is before podcasts was so like, you know
it before I heeart, before I heard had a podcast department.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Right, So.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
He's like, yo, what's the podcast? In my mind, I
think Apple made podcasts. I mean I didn't know about
podcasts until Apple made it. So I have a feeling
that I'm not one hundred percent sure, but Apple kind
of coined the podcast space, right, So I said, Apple
made it, but I could get it done because Gary,
you just came out with this app called Anchor. An
anchor could actually you know, you could put your podcasts

(12:56):
on there and they'll pay you right away. They'll start
paying you right away. So I was like, cool, let's
do it. So I set up the podcast of the thing.
He's like, I need a host. He hit Troy up,
Troy came on and boom, releash happened. Right, That's how
it happened. Did I tell her good enough? So that's
how it happened.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
What are you gonna remember about those early days?

Speaker 1 (13:18):
It was fun, The journey was fun. Man, it's not.
It's not fun anymore.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Right, It's really worked now, right, because so many people
are counting on us. So when we were doing it,
like even getting turned down from venues they didn't want
us to host the host our events because we were
doing events all over the country. Guests not wanting to
come on our podcast because they didn't really believe that,
you know, who we were, Like even guests that we
interviewed today turned us down yesterday. You know what I'm saying,

(13:45):
But now you know it just it just shows. And
that's a lesson too. Don't take nothing personal. Just because
somebody said no yesterday doesn't mean they're going to say
no tomorrow, right, And a lot of people take that
personal and don't want to reach out back out to them.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
We never took that personal. We just knew that we
had to work harder.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Like even me, right, if I do something and I
don't get enough tension, I don't get I don't get
what I wanted the reception, then I'm just it means
I gotta work harder. Yeah, you know, like if if
you go on a thing, you don't mention what I
was one of your best podcast guests, I gotta work harder.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
So that's that's that's something I learned in this journey.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
But the one thing I remember was the journey was
we used to go rent houses for months. Like we
went to La rented the house for a mom. We
went we went Mexico, rented the house. It was fun,
like we was just really like enjoying the journey. Now
it's become you know, I'm a family man, you know now,
so it's a little different. I'm not like I don't
have the freedom I used to have. You know, it's
just things change. But you know, it was definitely a

(14:46):
fun experience going through the journey.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, it's almost like you know, I always say, like
it's like when artists come out their first album, you
know what I mean, they always say like that was
our favorite ones. Were kind of sitting here trying to
get and figured it out and kind of build that
like nel. Obviously, things changes you grow, you know, even
those early days you kind of look back on them
like kind of fondly.

Speaker 5 (15:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
When you think about those early days, you think about,
you know, all the kind of lessons you learned. If
y'all had to start over today, Like what would you
do differently based on what you know now that would
have maybe made earn your leisure grow or be successful
even fastest.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Well, I had an opportunity to be faced forward on
the brand, and I turned it down in the beginning,
like just have like some type of like you know,
implementation into the brand, and I probably I said, no,
I just want y'all to to be And I probably
that's the only thing I probably would change because it
would it would have connected me more to the brand,
and it would help me build my identity, you know,

(15:50):
outside of because your Lisiua is trying shot right, everyone
knows him as trying reshot so you know, I I
bust my ass with that. That's that's my baby just
as much as them. And you know, if if they
want to go out and do what they want to do,
like and they don't want to do or Anglish no more,
I kind of have to start from just like, yo,
this is this is one of these brands I've built built,

(16:11):
you know, but it's kind of like starting over where
if I was attached to it more fronting, it would
have been a little easier for me to do more
in my own space, if that makes sense. Was that
intentional that you weren't it was intentional?

Speaker 1 (16:25):
I don't. I don't ever.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I didn't ever want to get in the front of
a camera. I like being listen. I like my life.
I like being behind the camera. I like just chilling
and doing living my life, like going to the mall
and not have to wearing a suit or being you
know in my best you know, look, so I do
I do enjoy I like my privacy right now. You
may say, then why you came out? Things have changed,

(16:49):
things have evolved. You know, I have a family, now,
I have different responsibilities now, you know, it's it's it's
it's a you know, I realized that as long as
someone else is is the person that providing the service
in the front, then I'm going to be the person
that I'm gonna have to rely on a client. As
long as I'm relying on a client, they're gonna be

(17:11):
paying my Billits right. So I was like, I got
to figure out, how can I continue to provide for
my family without relying on another person doing the service?

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah, No, it's absolutely. It's something.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
It's something I've remember struggling with, even like when I
launched Butter. You know, for a long time, I refused
to be on camera, and I was very much the
same thing. I was like, I'll build it, I'll help
run it.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
Everybody.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
You know, people knew that I was behind it, but
like I was very intentional about being like and that
was something I kind of siem I wish I had
done earlier, right, Like I would literally, you know, put
other people on camera. That was how we helped build
the brand was like connecting with people, but like I
would get you know, influencers and stuff to come host
and be on stuff.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
But the issue I always kind.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Of had was they would always, you know, they would
a lot of times use the platform to help obviously
grow their platform, and it was just more of a
promotional opportunity. And I kind of started saying, well, look like,
you know, and that's why I kind of started stepping
more out because I want people to also know that
the person that was behind the brand was authentic to Atlanta,
that really understood Atlanta, like there was no no games
and stuff like that. And it's literally just been something

(18:14):
I've started doing in the last two years. And that's
one of the reason why we started a podcast, is
to start actually getting on here and start being more
faced forward and start connecting people directly, because I don't
think people really understood who was behind it, and you know,
and a lot of these different you know, accounts and
all this stuff in Atlanta, people kind of like hide
behind them and so for me, that was always kind
of our differentiator.

Speaker 4 (18:31):
It was like, look like, y'all see this stuff you
were doing.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
But you also know the person that's behind it, and
so that's created kind of a different connection. Right now,
as you all kind of you know, you've built this
brand up, what were some of the inflection points, like
as you kind of look back on those times, like
what were the moments that you think kind of like
changed the trajectory of like where it was going.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind was London. Okay,
And we're in London for a total of like seven days,
but the first three days, you know, we're just enjoying London.
I've never been to London. And there's something I realized
when I was going shopping and you know, going around
the city of London, there was no black people. I'm like,

(19:12):
what the heck? So who's going to come in to
this event that we got in London. I'm a little scared.
Do we have a white audience in London? And I
would love to have a very diverse audience. You know,
I'm a man and dog, I'm black and white, So
you know, I don't think our information just helps black people,
helps all people. But then our event happens and we
got three thousand black people online, I'm like, where the

(19:34):
hell did these.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
People come from?

Speaker 2 (19:37):
The fact that we had three thousand people in a
different country. I was like, we got something crazy. This
is crazy. Like I dreamed of being like one of
the biggest in America. I ain't dreamed to be this big,
like in different countries. Yeah, so that was probably one
of those times well invest Fest when we had four

(19:57):
thousand people in six weeks. We had weeks to put
that event together with no out of pocket coust It's
one point two million dollars. So we paved that first
event out of pocket, took the risk, and we had
four thousand people show up within six weeks. During COVID,
that was another what we realized is that we came

(20:18):
at a perfect time. I don't think we did anything
that anyone anyone else didn't do. I think the timing
was really really good. I think the fact that we hardworking,
were very consistent, and we really believed in what we
were doing. Nothing stopped us from getting to the vision
that we see seeing for ourselves.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
Yeah, and again I remember those early days too.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
I remember them, you know, kind of being in a
conference room when it kind of started out and it
kind of evolved in my building. See you know what
I'm saying, and again I just love the fact that
like it was really about the content, Like y'all didn't
let a lot of people got kind of gotten caught
up in what kind of studio were we in it?

Speaker 4 (20:54):
What kind of it is?

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Like, Yo, we just need a camera, a phone, you
know what I mean, and good content we can reach
the world is kind of have the approach was.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Well, yeah, like at that time, education was was very important.
It was limited. We had limited access to education, even
though you really didn't if you knew how to use
an internet, but in terms in terms of our community,
we didn't.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
We didn't have people.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
In our space that looked like us, that was delivering
educational information that could possibly change your life. And that's why,
you know, like I went to Linda, they didn't how
I know, black people teaching me. It was all white professors, right,
But people didn't know understand those sites. So now that
was that was the time where we had a moment

(21:37):
where we could come on state, come on, come on
the front, come on the YouTube or whatever and teach
people financial literacy. And it was a perfect time because
the recession happened. You know, I'm not the recession, the
COVID happened where you know, stocks went ninety percent down,
a dummy could make money. But this is also that

(21:57):
you see everyone was talking about their stock profession. When
the market's ninety percent down, anybody can make money and
that and that climate right, So if you notice around
COVID it was a bunch of stock shows. Now all
those stock shows are going and not here today. You
know who's still here, Parking mondays, we're the real dad buddy.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah, because you know the game again, Like it's easy
to talk about stuff when everything's moving, but to be
able to fill that in and provide good content kind
of year round is a real thing. And like one
thing you talk about is education. I know you helped
launch Eyo University, Like how did that come about?

Speaker 1 (22:33):
So that's my baby? I was.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
I actually a real story about that, is that I
actually wanted to do it, like residual income, do something
once and can continue to get paid over. That was
taking a play from the first play I did with
the DJ site because he had a resigual income. So
that was my whole thing. Residual income. You know, predictable
income is the best type of income because now if

(22:55):
we want to sell eyl university to somebody. They know
that if we make one hundred grand a month, they
understand that that company's going to make one point two
million dollars a year. So it's easy to get evaluation
from that company because it's predictable income. So I brought
the idea to them and they're like, no, one's gonna
pay for this. I'm like, what are you talking about.
I pay for stuff like this all the time. Like
it was this guy that was teaching us how to

(23:17):
do intermitted fasting. I wish I knew his name. He
had a big fro. It was insane. He would eat
at midnight every night and eat like three thousand calories.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
But I signed up to it.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
I'm paying him fifty dollars a month to be a
part of his Facebook community because I'm getting information right
that could transform my life. And they're like, no, it's
not gonna work. I said, all right, cool, don't worry
about it. I built the whole site, told them everything
what they needed to do, and boom it blew up.
We got to like thirteen fourteen thousand members within the
first year. Oh wow, yep, So it was and that

(23:49):
was that was my baby, Like it's still my baby.
But EYL University was like something that I was doing already,
was other thing other companies, and I just wanted to
implement it into our structure and we put it together
before COVID and all these other communities came about. So
our community was like it was, it was jumping before COVID,
So it was like it was it was perfect for

(24:11):
like for the moment too, So that was timing as well.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yeah, what did you learn about building kind of an
online community and keeping them engaged to their whole process?

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Well, I mean, it takes a lot of work to
build a community, but once the community is built, it
runs on its own.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
That's the that's the easiest way to describe it.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Like we don't have to post it in the community
because people are already posting you know. It literally runs
it on its own and other people are promoting it
for you. We have EYL meetups, we have you know
that are are organized by other other members and things
like that, and it promoting our brand in our community
because it's so it's so good. Now we do put

(24:49):
you know, content in it, you know, because we want
to give as much, we want to over deliver as
much as possible for our people, right, so, especially because
they're paying members. Oh you know, but but the community
is you have to have a community. Everyone like Invests
doesn't have four thousand people without Ewy University. You know
what I'm saying, Because twelve hundred those people we're earners,

(25:12):
you know. So we got those twelve hundred ticket tickets
sold right away because once we announced it to them
that would and then we gave them a discount, they
came right away. So that's what you do. That's the
power of a community, you know what I'm saying. You
can literally do things like that. You can create events,
you can create products, you can create services. You have
people that already know you, like you and trust you,
that will do that, will buy from you right away.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Have you ever heard the true one thousand concept? No,
So it's an idea that they say, like any kind
of creator, any kind of maker, if you can build
an audience of one thousand fans that will support anything
you do, you can build a viable business about that.
Right And so again, you can have lots of fans
and followers. But if you know, for a fact, if
I'm gonna put this out, a thousand people are gonna

(25:55):
buy it, then you got an opportunity. So again, when
you think about to your point, you think about like
a Beyonce, Right, Beyoncet he has millions of people that's
obviously going to support her. But for a lot of
a lot of people that are business owns, I don't
think they really understand that. Like, yeah, if you're building
an online community, and I mean yeah, if you get
to like around like I said, five hundred to one
thousand people that will rock with you no matter what
you do, whether it's twenty bucks a month or fifty bucks.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
A month or whatever, there's a whole vibe.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
It's different. They treat you different. Like, for instance, you
deserve to be rich. Right, the book that now is
a New York Times bestseller. Right, that book doesn't probably
reach that status without eyl University. Why because we told
we gave them an opportunity. If they purchased a book,
they showed us proof of purchase, we give them one

(26:38):
month access.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
That's one hundred dollars value.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Right, one month access a one hundred and twenty five
dollars whatever it is at the time, one hundred and
twenty five dollars access.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
To our community for a whole month.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Troy's got all his option class, we got all our
investment classes, we got our real estate classes.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
They get access to.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
That, all that information buying a twenty dollar book. They
So we sold thousands of books just by doing that.
But that doesn't happen without the community.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
How do y'all kind of decide what content is free
versus what's paid when you're when you're doing something like that.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
So I just did it.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
So I have a coaching program, and I just did
something like this about I just showed how to productize
your your your skill right, and my high level coaching
program is basically a roadmap on how to become successful.
So I teach you this, then I teach you this,
then I teach you this, then I teach you this.
Right now, you have to have free content because free

(27:44):
content gonna give you the exposure. It's gonna get people
to know you, it's gonna get people to like you,
and then once people trust you, they'll go into the
high level high level coaching program. Now, in this high
level coaching program, it's the same information on a free
on a flee free platform, but it's scattered, it's not
it's not told in a step by step way. It's

(28:04):
I might talk about systems today, tomorrow might talk about sales.
It's not teaching you everything. And you would have to
go through every single video, organize it and put it
together and make it make sense, to make it worse.
But instead of spending all that time, you could just
pay me and get into my whole high level coaching program.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
And get it all right there. So that's the difference.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
That's how you you It's basically the same anybody's high
level coaching program. It's the same content they put on
on a free platform that they put on a paid platform.
It's just organized for you to be more digestible for you.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yeah, and this is this the macpack.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
This is the business engine. It's the business engine.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Okay, so tell us about the macpack.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Then the macpack is that's going to be my legacy play.
That's the legacy play, you know. So it's three levels
of this macpack that that I've been working on. I
have a curriculum that is in schools that teach middle,
middle school and high schoolers.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
It's in two schools in Detroit, and it basically teaches
these kids how to learn a skill and make a
business from that skill, preferably a digital skill. Right, So
whether you know, a lot of them like to do
clothing companies, We got a planting company, we got a

(29:18):
jewelry company. So but they love these different types of skills.
But I teach them digital assets to build on that
skill and make it a full business where they're making
money at like thirteen fourteen years old like I was.
So they're fortunate and like I was, you know, they
don't have to rely on their parents because a lot
of these kids don't have laptops, they don't have cell phones,
so they have to use all the resources they got

(29:39):
inside the school.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
So it was amazing. I went to an expo.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
We did an expo with all the kids, hairing their pictures,
hearing their businesses. We gave away hundreds and hundreds of
dollars to their business and they was able to sell.
They was able to do, you know then to become
a vendor and the expo. So it was a great experience.
But that's the that's the legacy play. Yeah, another player
is I have. This was the first version, so that's

(30:04):
two point zero one point oh. Is is the version
where I came out with I'm like everybody's like, I
remember how I learned how to use build a funnel.
I had to go through like eight eight videos four
hours of information to build a funnel. What if I
created a place where you know for sure it's not
there is fact, it's something that I use and I

(30:26):
did that I know is gonna work, and everything I
know I'm gonna teach and put into a subscription format,
very low subscription, not a lot, and they're gonna be
able to not have to waste time and get the
education they want instead of going through a bunch of videos.
So that was the first version, and that that did
pretty well. I took it all down when the curriculum

(30:48):
came because I have to separate it. I have to
make mac pac junr and things like that. Had to
separate it all these legal purposes. And I'm getting Once
you're getting money from governments and stuff, things change, you know,
you know, And that's the thing I'm not really I'm
not a component of getting money from people because they
kind of they want to control what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
I don't really like that. Sorrybro.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
I know more school is going to be joining, so
you can still try to make it work. But and
then the third seedon I had to This is why
I made three point zero. Yeah, I'm a parent, I'm
a new parent, and I do not like the fact
that when I send my kid off to school, I'm
putting his future into someone else's hands. So there, homeschool

(31:25):
has become really big now. A lot of people want
to homeschool their kids. So I'm like, I got to
build the same curriculum, but I want to make it
so digestible where any parent could teach it to their kid.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
And that's three point zero.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Okay, so you getting the schools, the parents, entrepreneurs, you
touching all sides of the Eagles' what.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
G is right? Yeah? I think I am, man, I
think I am.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
So that's so that's like the three point Like that's
the three versions of the macpack. And I got to
call it the Macpack because my last name is MacDonald
and everybody's rocking with the and were rocking as a pack.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
Absolutely for somebody that's like building a business or they
want to they want to get started, Like, what's one
system or process you would tell me need to lock
in before they do anything else?

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Can I give away something for free?

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Always?

Speaker 5 (32:10):
Man.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
So I did a I did a five day challenge, right,
and in this five day challenge, I taught I taught
how to create your business model. I taught how to
create the system for that business model. I taught how
to market that that skill, and I taught how to
get all those leads from that marketing, how to convert it.

(32:31):
And this it was like a five day challenge. And
then I had my my, my, my friend Marcus y Rosier.
He came in and gave a lot of game on
just like speaking in business. He's been helping me with
my speaking. Shout out to Marcus y Rosier.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Do you know him?

Speaker 4 (32:45):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
You gotta get him on your podcast.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
Yeah, let's connect us.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
I will.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
So, So what I could do is if they follow
me at Michael J. McDonald and my ch A E
L J M A C D O N A L
D they followed me and just send me a d M.
The don't gotta give me that email you all got
to do. Just follow me and send me a DM
butter and I'm gonna send them that whole thing for
freekn't They don't have to give me an email? That cool,

(33:10):
that's cool, that's good.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
We're gonna were gonna make sure you put that in
the capsul there right knows to hit you up on.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
There and butter but yeah, butter, yeah, all right, help
a spell.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
That's what's gonna Do's we go do it?

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Man, I look, and that's that's basically where I would start.
That's where I would start because that literally is the
foundation of your entire business.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
It gives you every single element that you need.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Okay, okay, Now a thousand dollars product for free, and
it's a real thousand dollars product.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
And that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
A lot of people want to get things away for
free that ain't worth nothing, that doesn't give you, Like,
so I'm giving.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
This away for free, right.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
What happens now that once someone gets this for free,
they didn't have to give me their email, They could
never talk to me again, and if they could unfollow me,
they could do whatever they want. But once they start
making money from what I taught them, you think they're.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Gonna want more.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
They definitely gonna they're gonna want more.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Right, Like, It's like if I gave you a dollar,
if you gave me a dollar and I gave you
two dollars back.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
You're gonna keep giving me dollars. So that's what that
that's what that is.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, you get them in there, you get that. That's
very important to give a valuable product. If you're gonna
give something for free, give a valuable product.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Right to get people in there and then see it
up front. Yes, and they know what they're getting cause
they're gonna trust me. Yeah, because right now there's all
this stuff going around. Everybody's like, oh, you could just
go spin up an ebook on chat, GPT and all that.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
Stuff, Like, oh no, you can't, man, you can't. Like
people don't see right through that.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
You can, but it's not gonna help you, right.

Speaker 4 (34:25):
Because it doesn't have the value for it. It's just
it's just regurgitating.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
And you know that's something again, like I think a
lot of people, a lot of people don't really understand
how they can, you know, monetize their knowledge in like
different ways.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
I mean, that's what I've been incredibly great at, how
to amplify your skill and monetize it absolutely.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Now, look, man, the big thing coming up is invest Fest. Yes,
and that's your other baby man, tell us about investvest Man.
You said that's like the Black Friday for entrepreneurs like
tell us about investments.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
So invest Fest this year is gonna be very special.
One is that we have the most vendors that we've
ever had. So I'm excited to see so many entrepreneur
get so much, so many people come through their front door.
And I say to Black Friday because a lot of
times businesses I used to work in retail, and a

(35:09):
lot of times businesses lose money throughout the whole entire year.
They make most of their money in the last three
months of the year. We've created an event that businesses
could actually make, you know, more than what they make
on Black Friday, more than what they make in those
three weekends. Because we have event goers coming to the
event knowing that it's going to be vendors there, and

(35:31):
they also see on the website who's going to be there.
They got it in mind. I want to go see them, them, them,
them and them.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
How powerful is that for a company that maybe sees
five hundred people a year, they're going to see over
sixty thousand people over the weekend. How powerful is that
to a business? I hear so many success stories from
people vending ad investors so I'm really excited about that.
A little scared because so many there's so many events.

(36:00):
I mean, we got like three hundred and ninety vendors.
The most we've ever had was like three thirty. And
then you know, sponsors. That's something where I don't really
mess with. But I think we have like a lot
of sponsors this year, and you know, I'm excited that
people are starting to you know, become aware of, you know,
that we are a brand was strong.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
I'm gonna give I'm gonna give my homegirl.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Katie some shout out, you know, she she did create
the best deck that I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
And that deck definitely that deck.

Speaker 5 (36:30):
Man.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
I did a whole class on that deck, a whole
class because what it did was it allowed us to
you know, talk to the brand more intimately. And that's
what we weren't doing. We were trying to talk to
him like chat to BT. But now we were able
to talk to them like face to face with the
and that's how powerful a deck is. So when you

(36:52):
talk to these brands, if you don't make if you
don't make it look like them with the imagery and
and things like that, So how it would look for them.
It's gonna be hard to sell them. But once you're
putting images of like Fideli in the booth and how
it's gonna look inside that deck, personalizing to them. Damn,

(37:12):
It's what I used to call for promoters. Stroking the ego.
You gotta stroke the ego. Very important. So shout out
to Katie. She she she she was the head of
sponsorship Lash and she created that whole entire you know, deck,
and and create the relationship.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
So, you know, shout out to her.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
God give her props. I mean, I'm a little mad
at her right now, but we won't talk about that.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
Look may look for invest face. I mean you oversee
lots of different parts of that event. Like what's one
of the biggest challenges in running an event and helping
the event that large.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
The team, like making sure everybody's in sync because the
team is so many people that are a part of
Investment Us that I'm making this happen. It's not just me,
it's not just Matt, it's not just Troy, it's not
just for Shot. There's a lot of people. It's not
just Tiffany who's doing the production. There's a v there's volunteers,

(38:14):
there's so many people, and everybody has to be in sync.
So the biggest challenge is being on a call every
single day. That's that's one of my biggest challenges because
I come from a place where I just be on
a computer, do my thing and get it done, So
I have to be on calls and stuff. So that's
probably my biggest challenge is getting everybody in sync.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, Now partnerships are a big part of that. Folks
like Steve Harvey have gotten involved and help y'all scale it.
Like what what does a good partner for invest Fest
look like a good partner?

Speaker 2 (38:40):
So, like, I live in Atlanta and I see like
invest invest invest code invest QQQ invest code to QQQ,
and I'm glad they're one of the sponsors this year,
But like, why wouldn't they be the sponsor? Why wouldn't
the mayor the city be a sponsor to invest Fest? Like,
those are partners that should be partners with investors. Why

(39:00):
wouldn't Coca Cola be a sponsor? Those are partners that
I still yet to not Microsoft has a building, Google
has a building. Why they're not sponsors? Those are anybody
who does business at a high level in Atlanta that
has headquarters in Atlanta. I think those are the ideal
to be a partner for investors because we have we

(39:20):
have very our audience base is high income earners, very intell, intelligent,
educated people that spend money. Like, we got a ticket
that sold out that it is ten thousand dollars. A
lot of places can't do that, right, But we also
got a ticket that's two hundred and fifty dollars. Yeah,
you know so, And look what you're getting for two

(39:42):
hundred freiy dollars. You're getting access to workshops. Katie, you
know she started that. She want to get that. So
you get access to all these workshops, getting direct one
on one with these brands that are giving you information
that literally could you know, give you access to what
they're teaching before they even teach it, but also give
you access to the people that are a part of

(40:03):
that brand, you know so, And that's for two hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Where are you gonna get that?

Speaker 2 (40:08):
And then you get twenty thousand people like minded people
that you could connect with and maybe do business with. So,
and that's not even talking about all the people that's
on stage right, Because you know, people think that they're
gonna meet them and it's gonna be pretty hard and
pretty challenging. But then you got people like me that's
in the like that's walking around, that's one of the

(40:29):
founders that you can literally talk to and might be
able to help you get onto investments or might be
able to help you change your life. So you gotta
look around and understand proximity is power. And the people
that are in that room, there's somebody you just have
to figure out who they are. And a closed mouth
don't get fed, so you gotta talk.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
No. I mean, look, that's the value with the right
kind of situations, right I think you know, Like there's
a place in Atlanta called the Gathering Spot.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
I'm sure you're familiar with it.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
I never heard, and I always tell people like one
of the most valuable things about that space says, everybody
in there is worth connecting with, you know what I mean.
And now they have their retreat now which are also
a member of it. It's the same thing like every
time I go up there, everybody you see in there
is somebody worth talking to. So to your point, proximity
is power, and I think people don't really understand when
they go to these conferences or events, especially if they're

(41:16):
like a high ticket conference or a high ticket event. Right,
you got to think about I remember when I used
to go to south By Southwest back in the day.
You know, I think my badge was like fifteen hundred,
you know, flights another five six hundred. I remember my
hotel one year was nine hundred and fifty dollars a
night for a Courtyard by Marriotte. Because they know that
all these corporations come down here. But here's the thing
I would tell people. I say, look, anybody down here

(41:37):
that's walking around is badge on. They're probably ten grand
in at this conference. There's somebody probably worth talking to.
And you never know who you're going to be, and
they're just in their regular clothes. You never know who
you're gonna meet. And so I tell people like, when
you go to these things, especially these conferences that are
high ticket, you got to build because you got to
ask yourself like how did that person afford to get here?
Like how much did they cost and invest for them

(41:58):
to get here? And so there's got to be some value.
They have to have an earner, they gotta have a
business or they gotta have some kind of corporation, corpor
relationship or some kind of value, right.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
And that's why we have we created a VIP night,
And VIP night is a place where you know, you
can let your head down a little bit, you can unwind,
you can really network with all those people that have
those types of badges, right, and you know, I love
VIP That's probably one of my favorite nights is VIP night.
I probably won't go out for the rest of the weekend,
not it'll be my go out for the week, but

(42:26):
VIP night is you know, you get entertainment, you get education,
and you get inspiration, you get all three of the
other things you need to transform your life.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, Now, everything y'all doing is growing between investmentests, you know,
Unger Leisure show, all the different things they have going on.
Like how do y'all balance you know, growing an audience
and finding new people while also making sure that you're
you know, keeping your existing audience, you know, happy, because
a lot of times folks are like, man, they changing
now or stuff's different, you know, And obviously things do change,

(42:58):
that's just the way business works, right, But like, how
do y'all kind of maintain that balance.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Well, there's no such thing a balance in my world.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
But I will say this, How can I say this
in a correct political way? I do think you always
the audience that made you who you are. You always
need to talk to You can't depend on them to
evolve like you are. Like market Mondays is totally evolved, right,
but those beginning shows are still there, right. So if

(43:27):
the information dig over your head, you do have the
opportunity to learn. Like when Ian was giving presentations every
single week with his suit on, that was valuable information
to teach you. Charts teach you how to identify a
business and how much money they have on hand, how
much that they have lose, the earning call. We still
do this most of those things, but it is on

(43:49):
a higher level. But then you have something called Euyle
University where you can go in and get a basic
learning platform to teach you how to get into stocks,
how to get into real estate. So I think being genuine, right,
the unfortunate thing about fame and money is Mark Cuban
said it if a person wins the lotto, it's just

(44:12):
gonna amplify the person you already were. You already was
it's not gonna it's not gonna change you. It's just
gonna amplify who you really was. Now, if people are
feeling like I don't think our host Troy rashada Ian
are different. I think I think they've become more confident
they can, but they become more solidified into where they speak.

(44:35):
And I think it rubs people the wrong way because
they just they want them to always be humbled. And
what happens is that people start to hate and it
causes animosity in the community. But the reality is is
that ego, like I said, stroke your ego. You do
have to show a person's ego when when when when
I talked about the brand. But ego can't get you

(44:57):
into trouble. But ego is is spread throughout all the communities, Black, White, Spanish, everything,
you know, And I could go into that with you know,
even shud Dore Sanders, that was the ego of all
the owners on that on that football team, their egos
gotten a way of losing a top pick, number two

(45:17):
pick right, he was scheduled to go number two. But
their egos allowed them to hurt their team. Their egos
allow them to hurt their fans and ultimately allow them
to hurt their pockets because their egos gotten away.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, from picking Sha door Sanders.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
So I would say, you know, people want to say,
you know, we got egos and it's getting in the way,
and nah, it's I mean, everyone has the ego, right,
everyone has a place, everyone deserves. But when you created
such an amazing empire, you're gonna have a different level
of confidence, and that confidence can come off a little arrogant.
And it's unfortunate that people feel like we change. But

(45:55):
you're supposed to change, right, jay Z said a long
time ago, You think I worked this hard to be
the same? No, right you just you getting You have
the ability to change with us, right you do?

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Now?

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I do think we should talk more to in my opinion,
we should talk more to the people that built this up.
And we do, like Troy and Rashat is still gonna
come on calls, like you can still ask them question.
You can ask some questions six years ago, still can
ask some questions this shit six years later.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
So we we do a lot.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
But what I realized is is never gonna be enough
and it's gonna be hate. So you can't focus on
Kevin o'larry said this about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was
so famous because he was able to block out eighty
percent of the noise, right. That means only twenty percent
of the noise is getting in. So when Rasha has

(46:48):
his rant or Ian has his rants, that's that twenty
percent that probably got in, right, But eighty percent is
going into research, eighty percent is going into the vision,
eighty percent is going into consistent see, eighty percent is
going into hard work.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
So while that twenty percent is.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Hating them, all them haters are hat in, They're still
in the same place, not evolving because they want to
put that energy into something that is not going to
help them by hating on the next person. So that's
what I would probably say. And you know, yeah, yeah, man,
look you said something.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
I had to.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
I had to.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
I had to go look it up because I've I've
talked about this in the past, and it's always interesting
to me. The idea I've always gonna said, I've only
ever heard black people tell other black people to be humble,
but I don't think people ever looked up the definition
of humble, and so I looked it up because I've
said this support humble means having or showing modest or

(47:40):
low estimate of one's importance and self worth. So when
you think about when you actually know the definition, why
would you want to show low, you know, modest if
you self worth?

Speaker 4 (47:50):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
And I think it's always so interesting to me how
we only kind of hear that in our communities, But
I tell people, like, if you actually look up the word,
like nobody would want to be defined as a well.
Now again, like you want to be respectful, obviously, you
want to you know, you know, you want to people
be comfortable with you, but like, there's nothing positive about
being humbled, especially when you actually look up the definition
of it. That's why I just wanted to kind of

(48:11):
look that up and read it because I've talked about
that in the past, and it's always so interesting to
me when people kind of talk about, oh, you know,
you got to be more humble, It's like, well, you
want to be respectful, but I also also am proud
of what I built, very proud of it took a lot.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
It took a lot. You don't know what it took
for me to do this, You'll know how a.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Lot of sacrifice a lot of sacrifice.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
You know, we've all lost time with our families, We've
all lost time with doing the things. I had a
whole business, Like I had mad clients that I was servicing,
you know, but I lost most of those clients because
I was working on our vision.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
I knew this was a bigger vision. This was going
to change.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Our lives, the people's lives and everybody around ours lives.
So I knew the vision was more important than you know,
what I was doing at the current time. So and
they had to sacrifice. He sacrificed his whole client base.
You know, he's not a find your Visa or he
retired from that, you know, Troy, Troy loses time with
his family. And I don't think people value that. People

(49:07):
don't see that. Like we don't have to do market
Mondays anymore, We don't have to do euil anymore, right,
But we do because one we love doing it, right,
We love we love helping people, genuinely love helping people, right.
And and two is that we know how important it is.
And I'm not gonna I hate saying just the computer
it's important to the world. Yeah, you know what global work,

(49:29):
global brand. No man look this, this has been an
amazing conversation.

Speaker 5 (49:34):
Man.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Before we get out of here, one last question I
got for you is, like one thing you always hear
people talk about is like mindset, mindset and perspective. Like,
what was kind of mindset shift that you made in
your life to kind of make the biggest difference to
your business and everything that you've built.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Guy's been teaching me patients, right, My patience sucked. I
used to explode all the time. And you know, my
wife has been helping me a lot on building me internally,
you know, fixing the traumas that I had in my
life and kind of repairing a lot of the things

(50:11):
that you know, she she grew up in a household
to a mom, a dad. You know, it was very
little trauma in her life. So she's been helping me
build that, you know, understand and identify behaviors that are
not normal. You know, having an outburst. I used to
think it was okay, I'm just having an outburst, but

(50:32):
it's not normal, especially for a grown man. So I
think the mind shift was, you know, meeting someone becoming
my better half and seeing the greatness in me that
I didn't see, and that allowed me to, you know,
even be on this platform today's speaking to you and
gave me the confidence to you know that I am,

(50:53):
I am somebody, I'm my voice does matter. So I
think that was the mind shift of that changed absolutely.
I hope that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
No, a tonnement. Man, Shout out to the guy.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
We're doing a community partner again with that.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Oh really, Oh that's dope. Yeah, shout to Ryan.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Shout to Ryan. He's been on here too. Man.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Oh yes, man, that's an incredible guy. I need to
call and tell him to stop making those videos and
getting in trouble alive because I'm like, yo, man, just
tell U do what you do?

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Man.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
I got a couple of phone calls up that last one.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean like that that party.
That's my man. I love I love Ryan. He's he's
a cool guy. Yeah know Ryan, Man, he's he's doing
amazing stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
I'm still waiting for my invitation to retreat.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Come on me, I'll bring you up there. Let's go,
come here, let's go. I'll be up here this afternoon.
But man, look, Michael, this is a great conversation. Man.
Appreciate you pulling up before we get out of here, man.
Please tell people how they can find you, how they
can get the mac pack out and get investments, like
give them all the things, bro.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
The best way to get any information from me is
going to Instagram and follow me on Michael J.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
Mac donal.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
If you're gonna put it on the screen and put
it in the subscript, that's the best way. I don't
know what I'm being. I don't really promote anything, but
you can find anything about me on my Instagram. That's
my that's my main channel. And it you know, and
someone's gonna DM you, not a robot. A person's gonna
DM you and get to know you know what you
what you want, like what do you want to get

(52:18):
out of following me? And I like to understand, you know,
people's gaps. And by understanding people's gaps, I realize I
can see if I can help them or not so
And my one thing I want to leave today is
what I've been doing this whole year.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Today is my last day on same.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Five hard seven five heart is really hard, extremely hard,
and I've become a lot disciplined in this. In this
last thirty five days, I stopped eating meat. I stop beating.
You know, I'm a vegetarian. Now I'm gonna work out
every day. I think it's become natural to me. But
what I realized is if you become one percent every

(52:55):
single day, that's gonna compound to you becoming the best
version of yourself in the future. So try just working
on one percent a day and it'll change everything.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
It's changed for me absolutely.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Man.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Well, look, this has been an amazing conversation. Man again,
Congratulations on everything.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
Y'all have built.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Y'all building dot com.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
One of the one of the most important influential brands
of the culture. It's definitely I've learned a lot from
it over the years. You know what I'm saying. I'm
sure millions of people have around the world, and y'all
touched so many folks and changing.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
So many lives.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Man.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Again, like y'all have made a real difference in the world. Man,
So thank y'all for all that.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
I appreciate. One last thing, k I just do one
last time.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
You know, if they listen, listen this long, they are
true listeners. So what I want to do is I
want to give a hundred tickets away if general to
my mission, tickets away to invest us. If you put
in butter and a coupon code, I'm giving a hundred
tickets away to your audience.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Kind of got this far, they got they got a
free ticket.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Hey man, look, I hope y'all listen to end because
that's that's a thing right there.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
Yo, man, appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
Man.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
The audience would love that again, Like this is about
the business of culture podcasts. People want to learn. We
have a lot of amazing entrepreneurs, business builders on here.
And so y'all go check out invest Fest again. It'll
change your life. Let's do it a man.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
And with that said, y'all we out. That's the pod. Peace.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
You've been listening to button Nomics and I'm your hosts
Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback, Want to be on the show,
Send us an email today at hello at butternomics dot com.
Butter Nomics is produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by
Ksey Pegram, with marketing support from Queen and Nikki.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
Music provided by mister Hanky.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and never
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