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DREAM. THINK. DO.

The DREAM THINK DO podcast gets YOU the stories, science and strategies you need to DREAM bigger, THINK better and DO more of what you were put on the planet to do! With guests like Brendon Burchard, Lewis Howes, Sara Haines, Michael Hyatt and Paula Faris, as well as deep dives from D.T.D.’s creator Mitch Matthews, you’ll be inspired and equipped to take your work and your life to new levels. Please subscribe below and leave a rating and review!
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DREAM. THINK. DO.
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Now displaying: September, 2018
Sep 25, 2018
Back in 2005, my guest, Shawn Askinosie left a successful career as a criminal defense lawyer to start a bean-to-bar chocolate factory and he's never looked back. Askinosie Chocolate is a small batch, award-winning chocolate factory located in Springfield, Missouri. They source 100%  of their cocoa beans directly from farmers across the globe. Askinosie Chocolate was recently named one of the 25 Best Small Companies in America by Forbes and Shawn himself was named by "O," Oprah's magazine, as one of the 15 guys who is literally saving the world. Very cool. Shawn and his daughter, Lawren, who is the Chief Marketing Officer for Askinosie, recently published a book together called Meaningful Work: A Quest To Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul. One reviewer wrote, "'Meaningful Work is not only a book about saving the world, it's about how businesses can and should solve problems in the world, and how positive change begins with individual action." I love it. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Meaningful Work Book: http://bit.ly/2NU9KNc Website: askinosie.com INTERVIEW: I knew when I heard his story that I had to have Shawn join us for an episode. Shawn, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you, Mitch. Appreciate the intro and I'm looking forward to this. Me too! You know, I look forward to every interview, but some I look forward to just a little bit more than others. I've been really, really excited about this. Many DREAM THINK DO-ers, have navigated a career change, or are contemplating a career change. How did you go from defense attorney back in 2005 and decide you want to make chocolate? The way it started, I loved my job and I think a lot of your listeners can probably relate to what I'm about to say, but I loved it and I loved it for a long time. I did it for almost 20 years. I never lost a criminal jury trial. Wow! I specialized in super serious felony cases and built my reputation in the defense of murder cases. To say that comes with a little stress would be an understatement. No kidding! When you love what you're doing, it doesn't feel stressful until you stop loving it, and that's what happened. I stopped loving it But I didn't have any hobbies, I didn't have an idea of anything else to do. I'd always wanted to be a lawyer. The real struggle for me in this transition, which was five years long by the way, was a struggle of choices. I just didn't feel drawn. I didn't feel called. I couldn't find my vocation. It seemed as though the more desperate I became, the further away it was from my reach, so to speak. Then it was just like this vicious circle of, "What's going to happen?" I really prayed a very simple prayer that went like this: "Dear God, please give me something else to do." I said that, sometimes many times a day, but I said it every day for almost five years. It was just a simple prayer, one born of desperation. I had no hobbies at first, so I started some hobbies. I bought a Big Green Egg grill and did all the meals on the Big Green Egg and loved it. Then I started baking, making cupcakes. I made thousands of cupcakes. Then I started making chocolate desserts and I had no idea where chocolate came from, zero. But one day, I was driving to a distant relative, driving to her funeral, and it was out near my grandparent's farm about an hour from here in southwest Missouri. I just had this idea. "Hey, what about making chocolate from scratch?" I had no idea where it came from. Yeah, where does that come from? Yeah. And this is the doing part. Within three months of that light bulb, I was in the Amazon, learning how farmers influence the flavor of chocolate by how they harvest the cocoa beans. Then I started to wind down my law practice. I bought equipment from all over the world, completed my last jury trial, and here we are. That's incredible. I love that. I know we've been back and forth a little bit,
Sep 18, 2018
My guest is Frank McKinney. Frank is an Ultra-marathoner, he's and actor and a speaker, and he's a “philanthrocapitalist.” That's right, he spends a whole lot of time giving back. In fact, he and his wife founded the Caring House Project Foundation, which is a non-profit that provides housing, and self-sustaining existence for homeless families in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Indonesia, and here in the United States as well. For example, at the end of 2017, they finished their 24th self-sufficient village and sheltered over 10,000 people in Haiti alone. How cool is that? Frank has been featured on Oprah, 20/20, CNN, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel. He’s been featured in 2,500 plus TV and print stories. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: The Other Thief Book: https://amzn.to/2NR26jv Website: frank-mckinney.com INTERVIEW: Frank, welcome to DREAM THINK DO! You know, make that 2,501. Yes, exactly right, and extra hash mark! Hey, folks, I'm honored, I'm excited. I'm coming to you today from my oceanfront, tree house office. Too bad we're not on video because I'd spin the camera around and show you. I'm sitting 25 feet above sea level with 12 windows surrounding me in this tree house that I work from. Yes, this is where I wrote all six of my books, where I design my houses, and where I'm talking to Mitch today. Not because of DREAM THINK DO, but because of Mitch Matthews' smile. The guy has the best smile. I appreciate that greatly, and I wish I was sitting in the tree house with you. And gang, he's literally up in a tree in a beautiful, beautiful office. It's the coolest. Literally. He showed me before we hit record. He showed me his ocean view, which I do not have in beautiful Des Moines, Iowa. So, I love it, man. We met years ago, I was trying to think of the year where Dr. Molly Marty invited us to both speak at her conference in Chicago. The more I've learned from you and gotten to know you, the more I've been impressed. So I've just been so excited to have you on. I finally get to ask you some of these questions I've wanted to ask. How about that? I'm ready man. That's the whole reason I have a podcast, to finally ask the questions I want to ask. Let's talk about this, now, because I know, you know, DREAM THINK DO-ers as we talked about before I hit record, these are rock stars around the world. These are entrepreneurs, and leaders, and globe changes. A lot of them are fighting back from tough starts, right? They haven't just been given an easy life. They've had to really take a stand and really make a mark wherever they're at. And you are one of those people. You are one of those people who has truly shaped a life that's ... it's trite to say, but it's outside the box. You've blown up the box. But you're doing great things, you're building these million dollar homes, you're helping people all over the world. It almost sounds like you're royalty, but you didn't grow up in royalty. You grew up in pretty humble beginnings. You didn't grow up in these million dollar homes doing philanthropy as a kid. So, give us a little picture, a quick snapshot of Frank as a kiddo. What I want to hear is what was at least one moment where you decided, "I'm gonna do something different with my life." Well, first of all, let's start with asking the question, why does there have to be a box at all? Right! Either inside the box, or everybody says, you work for a nine-to-five, and you've got a job, then you must be inside the box. There's such a thing that's called and intrapreneur. Somebody who has entrepreneurial but they're inside a company. But they're in a box. But then you've got an entrepreneur who's outside the box. Forget the box. No box. We don't have a box. But back to my childhood. I mean, I was in juvenile detention multiple times before I turned 18 before it got real. When I realized if I kept it up I’d end up someplace other than a little fu...
Sep 11, 2018
My guest today is Mike Michalowicz, who has just written another great book, and it's going to disrupt this nasty cycle of the grind. The book is called Clockwork. Here's the thing. Mike can be trusted. If you've read any of his other bestsellers like Profit First or The Pumpkin Plan, you know he's hilarious, wildly transparent, and incredibly strategic, especially as he talks about his adventures of building and selling multiple million-dollar businesses as well as helping many entrepreneurs around the world. I have appreciated his wisdom and strategies, especially in the area of making your business more profitable, so when I heard he was going after the subject of time... I knew I had to get him on the show. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Clockwork Book: https://amzn.to/2wOwpkn Profit First Book: https://amzn.to/2M1bH5F The Pumpkin Plan Book: https://amzn.to/2NoQKpM INTERVIEW: Mike Michalowicz, welcome to DREAM THINK DO, buddy. Thank you, Mitch, so much for having me on your show. Absolutely. All right. The new book is called Clockwork. There’s some timeless wisdom in here, but especially for entrepreneurs, helping them to build a business so that they can actually breathe, so they can actually have more of the life they want, all of that. Why go after time? What was the catalyst for you to say, "All right, it's time to go after this subject?" It's time to go after time. Right. I just noticed that I did that, right? I was going to break into Time After Time, but nobody wants to hear me sing, so… Good song. Yeah, right? A good song. Anyway, I had a realization when I was reading about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Basically, he said there are these foundational needs we have, which are like food and water, and it builds up to shelter, and belonging, and self-actualization, but if we are missing a base function, like if we don't have any food or water, we will ignore everything else to get that priority. That's the base need of all of humanity. Well, I believe there's this Maslowian hierarchy of needs for business, for entrepreneurs. I think what the base is, the oxygen, if you will, is sales, meaning we need sales coming into our business to sustain. If there is no inbound revenue, nothing else matters because our lives are in jeopardy, our corporate, our business life is in jeopardy. Once we have some degree of sales, then the next level up, what I consider the nutrition, the food, and the water, is profitability. Sadly, I discovered something about my own business that I think applies to entrepreneurs in general: When I didn't have profit, meaning there was no money going into my pocket, I thought the solution was more sales, so I'd actually push harder to sell more. In fact, if sales is oxygen and profit is food and water, I was starving to death but instead of getting nutrition, or profit, I was trying to breathe in more air. I was gasping for air, more oxygen, more sales. What a business needs to move up this hierarchy of needs is sustainable sales. We need predictable profit. That's the next level up in the hierarchy of needs. Once a business achieves those two, then the next level of needs is time. Many entrepreneurs work simply to sustain the business, and that's it. It's a perpetual work. The demands on us are ridiculous. We compromise any form of life. We just work, work, work. Now, once we have sales and profit, now it's all about capturing time so we can bring back a balance so that we can live life the way we want, and we can work in our business the way we want. Instead of doing everything, we can become selective. That's why the subtitle for Clockwork is Design Your Business To Run Itself which, in turn, frees you up to do what you want, when you want in life and in business. That's beautiful. As I was reading through Clockwork, one of the things that struck me - I've seen that in businesses that are struggling,
Sep 4, 2018
My guest today is Bernie Swain. Bernie is the founder of the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, one of the most successful and well-respected speakers’ bureaus in the world. Since launching in 1980, the bureau has represented US presidents, prime ministers from Great Britain, countless American and world leaders, business and economic visionaries, authors, media personalities, sports legends. Bernie's bureau represents some of the most successful people and well-respected minds in the world. He knows their well-told and well-known stories as well as many of the behind the scenes stories too. Recently he put all of that in a book called What Made Me Who I Am. In this book, Bernie does an incredible job of collecting a series of lesser-known stories from well-known people. Tales of grit, determination, sometimes involving love, sometimes involving luck, but great stories of real people doing extraordinary things. So I wanted to have Bernie on to talk about his story and some of his favorite stories from others as well, so let's get to it. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: What Made Me Who I Am Book: https://amzn.to/2NapMPn INTERVIEW: Bernie, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you, it's great being here. I appreciate the time you're sharing with me. It’s an absolute honor. Often when I have people on for DREAM THINK DO, they walked out a dream and sometimes it was a lifelong dream. Something they dreamed of doing as a little child, but if I'm understanding your story, you weren't five years old dreaming of someday having a speakers’ bureau. No. It sounds like this started in a completely different fashion. It was totally different. In fact, I was in my early 30s when the change took place. No one in my family, to give you an idea of where I started from, and maybe this will tell the people that are listening to the podcast, that no matter where you begin from, you can succeed in life. No one in my family ever attended college before. In fact, my mother and her family were farmers who grew up in Central Virginia and basically lived off the land. My father, with five sisters, a brother and assorted relatives, grew up in just a two-room house in the poorest of mining towns in West Virginia. When my grandmother couldn't take care of him, he spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. So, when I was in high school, there was never really any conversation in my home about my going to college. That wasn't a given. Yeah. My family, I think, expected me to do well and find a job and succeed and be happy, but there was never any conversation. I had a teacher in high school. He was the athletic director and the football coach and he encouraged me to go to college. In fact, I would have never gone if it hadn't been for his input and influence in my life. I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be something as a football coach or an athletic director or teach physical education. So, he set me on this path and I went to college and graduated from college. My first job was the football coach and the junior high school ninth grade phys ed teacher at the junior high school I had previously gone to. Wow. I spent a year there and went back to school to get a master's degree and then went on to become the intramural director at George Washington University, and then the assistant athletic director. I was months away from becoming the athletic director at the university when a friend of mine sent me a copy of Fortune Magazine. In the magazine was a story about this lecture agency called Harry Walker. In the article, it told how Harry Walker went to the Gerald Ford White House and signed Gerald Ford, who was the president at the time, Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig to speak for him after they left office. At the end of the article, Henry Kissinger is quoted as questioning the high commission rate that Harry Walker wanted to charge and says, "Why don't I simply sign with one of your comp...
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