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Founder@ Interview
Interview with Michael Brian
Credit @ Onlaurens
“Believe in yourself, even if no one else does, believe in yourself and your own dreams and you’ll do just fine. .” – Michael Brian
Today we feature Michael Brian, the founder at Michael Brian. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
Well, the fact that I’m even here doing this interview is something of a miracle, I was born with a debilitating condition, later in life I was also diagnosed with another condition and at one point my life expectancy was 24.
I’m sat here today having recently celebrated my 30th birthday, having exceeded that life expectancy.
I’ve definitely beaten the odds and I’ve achieved many things already, I’m an award-winning entrepreneur, launched my own foundation and I’m a best-selling author. I do multiple things, I’m a multi-passionate founder. My primary focus is my own podcast but I also help others create, launch and grow their own podcasts.
I do this through my own podcast, events, training, and courses that I offer.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
I guess it’s a little hard to pin point when I really became a founder as I’ve run my own business for as long as I can remember now. Straight out of university I was working as a personal trainer and tennis coach, I’d actually been a tennis coach since I was 16, it’s through this work that I decided to embark on my journey of being a founder.
I enjoyed my work as a personal trainer but I knew there was a deeper level of work that I wanted to do. I felt that I was often only making a difference on the outside for someone and sometimes temporarily, I wanted to be part of a bigger impact in the world.
I decided to look further into personal development coaching and I signed up to do a coaching course when I was 21. This is when I really stepped into the founder role and was the foundation of the business I have these days.
My business has evolved over the years, what started out as a life coaching business slowly developed into something much bigger.
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It evolved into where I am today partly through the work I did when setting up my own podcast. Being visible as an introvert was something I really struggled with and yet I knew it was something I needed to do if I was going to excel in the way that I wanted.
And so I started to shift my mindset and grew my confidence with content through doing daily Facebook lives. From there I launched my podcast and that’s when things really changed course for me and when I really unlocked what my bigger passion was.
I didn’t just want to help people I wanted to help them make their own impact, reach their own dreams, have their own voice. And that’s what I do today.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
I’m based in the UK currently having just returned from a period of living abroad but my business serves clients worldwide.
We help people gain the confidence to be come visible, to share their own voice and then we also help them create, launch and grow their own show platform, which for most people tends to be a podcast.
We will also be launching a podcast agency in 2022, where we’ll also be able to manage their podcasts.
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
I don’t think I can call it an aha moment as such, but I knew that traditional employment was going to be difficult for me and I also felt that I was here to do something bigger. Given my medical conditions and how temperamental they can be, it was going to be really difficult for me to work full time in traditional employment.
I needed something flexible and even though it would have been really easy to not do anything, I knew I was here to do something with my life.
I guess you could say being a founder felt like the best logical option for me given my conditions. It’s obviously not always been a straight path, there’s been a lot of mistakes and some moments where I’ve battled with my health a little too. But my business and goals also gave me strength to continue, which is likely one of the biggest secrets behind my success.
I don’t see obstacles, I see ways around them, when others would stop, I keep going. I don’t take the easy route and that really does show in how I’ve got to where I am today.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
The biggest struggle for me has always been around my self confidence, initially if I didn’t think or believe something would work or that I could be the one to make it work I wouldn’t do it. Which of course resulted in a lot of nothing happening and no action being taken. I had to really change my own self worth, self confidence and change how I saw fear to move forward.
Instead of “but what if this doesn’t work and this bad thing happens” it was changing it to “but what if it works and even if it doesn’t work, will anything bad actually happen, do I have proof of that?”
I think when you grow up knowing you’re different to others because of your conditions and then have this repeated to you again whilst in school it leaves a lasting effect of what you feel you can do, what you have confidence in doing.
Whether that’s because you’re afraid of being singled out or because you were prevented from doing so much when younger.
Our biggest obstacles in my experience are often the ones we create in our own head vs any that actually appear physically in front of us.
It’s not about what you’ve been able to do before but it’s what you believe you’re able to and willing to take action to achieve. So many people define what action they take or what they can do based on what they’ve achieved before, if they’ve failed at something that’s proof they can’t do it again where as I disagree and I wish I’d known it before.
Most people who eventually succeed at something did it several times over failing first.
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t become an entrepreneur! No I’m joking of course, even though there are definitely days where I doubt taking this path but then that’s the life of an entrepreneur. We can be all sunshine and rainbows ready to take on the world in the morning and a few hours later feel like throwing it all in. But we wouldn’t, it’s almost a way of life for us.
The advice I’d give my younger self is to not allow others opinions of myself to form the value I see in myself. I was bullied badly in high school and for a while it really defined me, one of the biggest battles I had in wanting to be more visible was the feeling of fear if I was more visible or that I wasn’t valuable enough to be.
Which stems of course from the bullying I suffered.
So I’d tell my younger self that what they say doesn’t matter, what they think doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t define my own value and that I am worth something in this world and I am someone.
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
I like to keep things simple and so you won’t see too many fancy apps or tools in my business. The main app is Calendly, which means that I can keep track of all my meetings and also podcast interviews, as it connects to my calendar my team is also able to see easily when I’m available and when I’m not.
Next tool is Zoom, which means I can connect with anyone where ever they may be in the world and it’s easy so it works for me.
And oddly enough EarPods, the sound quality is much better which means I can take calls whilst I’m moving or running errands which means I can also be much more productive.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
It’s not about what you’ve been able to do before but it’s what you believe you’re able to and willing to take action to achieve. So many people define what action they take or what they can do based on what they’ve achieved before, if they’ve failed at something that’s proof they can’t do it again where as I disagree and I wish I’d known it before.
Most people who eventually succeed at something did it several times over failing first.
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
This is a tough one, it would be a toss up between winning Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award or when my I published my first book “The Introverts Guide To Being Visible” and it became a best selling, knocking some of my own idols off the top positions.
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
I really want to grow my philanthropy work, I think it’s so important to be able to give back and leave a lasting legacy. I’d really love to be able to say that I contributed something to this world, something I’m of course passionate about is finding a cure for the conditions I have.
So my biggest goal would be being able to play a role in making a cure for Cystic Fibrosis a reality.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
Believe in yourself, even if no one else does, believe in yourself and your own dreams and you’ll do just fine.
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Michael Brian”
To learn more about Michael Brian Visit www.themichaelbrian.com
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