359: Sell Liberty with Jeremy Todd (Guest: Mike Abramowitz)

Brian  
Faced with an uncertain future many business owners and technology professionals don't have the time needed to invest in their business technology strategies and as a result are afraid of their technology getting outdated and putting their company and customers information at risk. The digital future is already here. But with all different choices in the marketplace, it's difficult to know which one will be the best fit for you and your strategic vision. Imagine having the peace of mind that your business is backed by the right technology investments that are tailored for your specific needs. Hi, I'm Brian Nichols and I've helped countless business owners and technology professionals just like you helping you make informed decisions about what technologies are best to invest in for your business voice bandwidth, cybersecurity, business continuity juggling all the aspects of business technology is messy. Let me help at The Brian Nichols show.com forward slash help and sign up for a free one on one consultation with yours truly to dig deep into where you see your company heading and how we can align your business technology towards those goals. Again that's Brian Nichols show.com forward slash help to get your simplified Business Technology started today we can become great at doing the the things that we do well the things that we focus on like I'm I think our audience is great at selling Liberty I think we have been amazing at doing that. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show Your source for common sense politics on the we are libertarians network as a sales and marketing executive in the greater telecommunications cybersecurity industry. Brian works with C level executives to help them future proof their company's infrastructure for an uncertain future. And in each episode, Brian takes that experience and applies it to the Liberty movement, you started to ask questions that pique his interest and get him to feel like okay, this guy's actually got something that maybe you can help me out. And then in your asking questions and trying to uncover the real problems build that natural trust. I know it wasn't a monologue there man. Instead of focusing on simply winning arguments or being right, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and their application in the world of politics, showing you how to ask better questions, tell better stories, and ultimately change people's minds. And now your host, Brian Nichols.

Jeremy Todd  
Welcome in everybody. Sell Liberty show. My name is Jeremy Todd, and I am so excited to be here tonight with of course Miss Lauren. Liberty Lauren, how are you doing this evening?

Unknown Speaker  
I'm good. How are you?

Jeremy Todd  
and Lauren say something nice to the people because I'm having some audio issues. There we go. Alright.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for bearing with us. We do still have some things that we're working out on the show. But it's not a real podcast if you don't have a couple of glitches, right?

Jeremy Todd  
That's right. That's 100% correct. Okay, let's see if I can get my headphones to work now. Very excited to bring on our guests tonight. He is for colleague of mine. As we as I discussed with spike last week, we I kind of got my start in sales with Cutco. And so Mike was a district manager is a district manager for Cutco in the in the Tampa area. And as far as Mike goes, he is currently district. A district manager for vector marketing and Cutco in Tampa Bay has a great story about his team's success while he was basically living in the hospital. He's the founder of an organization that feeds the homeless called pb&j for Tampa, and the founder of grab tomorrow. Mike so educator he speaks to a lot of different schools. He's a graduate of the University of South Florida with a degree in Industrial Engineering. He's trained over 4000 individuals and sold over $14 million worth of product he's provided 80,000 meals self published nine books is the list goes on and on. I'm so I could not be more excited to bring on Mr. Mike Abramowitz. So, here's Mike. How's it going? Mike.

Unknown Speaker  
Hey Jeremy, doing well, man, Thanks for the introduction and setting the stage. I appreciate that.

Jeremy Todd  
Absolutely. You're ready to talk a little shop.

Unknown Speaker  
I'm ready. Ready? Let's let's do this thing I got my job app on. So let's turn around.

Jeremy Todd  
Excellent.

All right, Mike. So, uh, through getting to know you a, what, um, for our audience, we were discussing earlier about our culture in vector and Cutco of really seeking out personal growth, development and ways to improve ourselves. And you had kind of come up with a little mantra, or a practice called tiny actions daily. And it's really made a big difference in your life, and I was hoping you could share the strategy of tiny actions daily with us.

Mike Abramowitz  
Sure, it's as simple as it sounds, tiny actions daily and I started if you if you really go back to the original birth of doing small, tiny, simple actions, obviously, being in sales, since I was 18 years old, we're always taught like, make a few phone calls, you know, do the small activities that create the larger results and then taking that outside of sales and bringing that into other parts of my life. With fitness, I used to be 250 pounds, you know, I was, you know, taking into relationships and giving the I love you and the thank you and I'm saris, you know, the tiny, small actions and relationships and, you know, and sending a little gift here and there, you know, to, you know, anything in business, anything money, you know, just tracking my expenses every month. So it just was like this, this tiny, small thing that I was doing for myself, that I never really shared publicly, it was just kind of helping me. And then I went to a Tony Robbins event back in 2012 2013. And heard my message, my message that's really stuck with me, I've walked across the 1400 degree burning hot coals and grab my journal and just journal the time and I crafted my message. And that's the birthplace of grab tomorrow, where the end of that book is five things daily, where if you do five things every day that are aligned with your goals, then you'll have 1825, checkboxes over the course of a year. So it really the birth of this idea of Tad kind of came just from my own prognosis of myself of what was helping me take complexity, and just break it down into simplicity. And a lot of really cool things that come from that. And obviously, we could jam on that. But you know, that's, that's really

Jeremy Todd  
well, you know, one of the things when I was in leadership with vector that is sort of the first thing you learn as an assistant manager. And really, I guess from your first, we used to call them personal consultations, or PCs, but basically, your first one on one with your manager, was to start big with a goal, and then break it down into Okay, well, in order to meet this sales got this, even even this, in order to make this purchase, that I have a desire to do, whether it's buy a house or a car, I move out of my parents place, get an apartment, whatever it may be, and then break that down into Okay, well, then I'm going to need this much money in commission, which means I need to sell this much, which means I need to do this many appointments. And if I factor in people who won't buy versus people who will buy art than I need to schedule this many appointments, and then break it down into how many calls per day I needed to make. So that makes a ton of sense. What do you think is the most powerful piece of that whole idea of eating the whale, one bite at a time? Is that the satisfaction of the checklist and sort of the dopamine hit that you get? Or is it really just what do you feel like is the most powerful piece.

Unknown Speaker  
But I think the most powerful piece is is making sure that the tiny actions are aligned with the goals. So if we're breaking down that goal, like you said, where I want to buy that car or want to buy that house, you know, we got to start with the end in mind where the activity that we're doing is putting us closer to the goal that we set. So it's important to make sure that those are aligned because if I say I want to buy the house, but my tiny action is spending money on Kapolei every day, then my tiny action is not aligned with my goals. So the alignment between my activity and the goal is probably the most important part of biting the whale making sure that I'm biting the correct whale, if you will, that I'm moving in the correct direction. I think oftentimes people get so distracted by things that are around them, that they actually forget if you know I call it the drift It's kind of like when we're in the water at the ocean. And we're just kind of chilling out hanging out and we're drifting, drifting, drifting, we eventually look up, and we're like our blankets all the way hell over there. It's like, my blanket, it's like no move my blanket, it's that you were in a drift baby and feel like you were in the drift. So making sure that our tiny actions are aligned with those goals would be my answer to what I think is the most important part of biting that whale.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, it's that I'd really love that ocean analogy, because it's almost like, if I'm not intentional with my tiny actions, tiny actions are going to happen to me. And you know, it's sort of like, you really don't have a choice to be stationary and standstill in this world. If you want to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish, or even just stay, something is going to be on the outside acting upon you sort of like that drift in the ocean. So if you're not intentional, I think that's really interesting. Is that built into grab and the best year ever? And how does that build on what it what does that look like?

Unknown Speaker  
So grab tomorrow, your best year ever was the first book that was my number one bestseller that I launched. And that book is literally, it was number one, in short reads, it's under 100 pages, it's designed for someone to be able to do like on an airplane ride or, you know, just kind of sit down in one sit, read and do the exercises to thrive. But it just kind of takes you through your past reflections on the past of like, what did I do to succeed? What did I do? What were the challenges I experienced? And then the future? What are my goals, and what are my aspirations, and then breaking that down to some specific outcomes, specific actions that I could take towards those outcomes, and then putting the tab the tiny actions daily, or the five things daily into actual practice. And it's really so simple, where you just pre meditate the list of activities that are aligned with the goals, make the list, and then pull a few of them from the list. So therefore, we're taking thinking out of it, we've already pre meditated. So as an example, if someone says, I want to run a marathon, well, they would just make a giant list of all the activities are in alignment with running a marathon, like running, running a mile or stretching or you know, whatever it might be. And then they just look at the list like, Alright, I'll do that one today. I'll do that today. So that's kind of the concept where it's like, make the list, pluck from the list. And then that's where your tags come from Zoo tags come from premeditated, a premeditated activity plan that came from reflections from the past, that worked and habits from past that work, lessons from the past that didn't work. And also the goals that you want to, you know, create moving forward.

Jeremy Todd  
So one of the things that when I left vectoring Cutco that I always kind of longed for in other worlds, but I couldn't find was that almost instant gratification of the sale right was ultimately, it's a pretty short sales cycle for us. And then I started getting into longer sales cycles. And I would get really discouraged, Mike, it was really kind of difficult and frustrating. What are some things you've learned about tiny actions daily and working towards these big massive goals, whether it be you know, kind of a big sale that you're working on, sort of the longer things where you don't get that sort of dopamine rush of data, right? When you're having to do the grunt work day in and day out. But the payoff is almost too far away to see

Unknown Speaker  
I'm so glad you asked that Jeremy, it came an affirmation that helped me a ton currently today and in the past is focused on the activity that produces the result and who I become in the process, you know, focused on the activity that produces the result and who I become in the process. So in order to be unattached from that outcome, I would be attached to the activity that produces the result and who I become in the process. So therefore, the dopamine hit is coming from exactly that. I'm becoming more courageous, I'm becoming more confident, I'm focused on this tiny small activity that's moving me forward and making progress so by me affirming that and then following through on those tiny actions, I'm reworking my the the dopamine in my brain where I'm like, I'm unattached from the outside world because I'm programming myself in the inside world to to give myself those dopamine hits, because that's where self confidence comes from self confidence is going to come from me holding the agreements that I keep to myself. So as long as they continue to hold the agreements that I keep to myself, I'm going to continue to get those dopamine hits, continue to get my self confidence continue to making sure that I keep moving forward and making progress because the result is on is is irrelevant. And obviously we could go down even a deep dive on belief systems, but on how to rework those belief systems, but It does take some level using the word you said intentionality. And the more intentional we are with what we're feeding our mind, the more intentional actions are because the actions are a byproduct of the thoughts that we have first.

Jeremy Todd  
Absolutely. And that's, that's so good. That's a sound bite. If you guys, I hope you didn't miss that. Um, so for those of us out to the audience, if you're live right now watching us on YouTube or Facebook, hop in the comments and chats, we're going to do a q&a section at the end with Mike. So get some questions in about some things that maybe you're struggling with, you're looking for some advice on, and Mike's going to be sure to tackle those a little bit later. So a best year ever was the first in the series, the best seller, and then you kind of took it on a little different path with stories. And I've found personally one of the most powerful things that we can do in persuasion, and motivation. All of those things where we are trying to influence the world outside of us is to be able to effectively tell stories. I got Can you expound upon the rest of the grab series and, and kind of what you've learned about the power of stories?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, I spent a year crafting my message I did over 300 hours of speaking, I influenced and spoke to over 20,000 students in the school districts here in the area, just kind of crafting the concepts for the books and crafting my message. And through that process, I would just interact with so many different people, obviously, with in sales with, you know, working as a district manager, I meet so many students, and I hear their stories. I mean, I've now trained over 5000 at this point, and hearing their story, but then also hearing the story of their upbringing and their parents story. And it just got me so curious. I think that's a key word there is curiosity when hearing somebody stories, and when I launched the book, I had a buddy of Chris permisos had a podcast that it was that he never actually publicized or launched. But it was about tell your story about it was called story GM theater. And it was really cool concept. And it just didn't quite take off. And he just kind of pivoted on some other other endeavors that he was into. But it stuck with me because everyone was really excited to hear these stories. So I kind of put two and two together, I learned I figured I had a story. I hear all these other people's stories. So I just kind of put some feelers out there, just to see if somebody if some people wanted to tell their stories. And it was remarkable. I got flooded with stories. So the first book real stories, real people, the original, I didn't know it was going to be a series, I just launched an original real stories, real people. And it was people that just had really cool stories. So from there, a lot of these stories were there they were they were pretty powerful, powerful, not only for the reader, but powerful for those that wrote the story. And

Unknown Speaker  
from from that, from the birthplace of that book. I mean, we're kind of jumping around a little bit, then I kind of took that book and that got specialized in and started thinking about demographics. That's where we launched redefining life experiences, which is this one here. And redefining life experiences came after that, where it's like individuals who had something happened to them, and just changing the paradigm of like, there was one story in the book, Ariane, who witnessed, he key walked in to the house and was the person who found his father who committed suicide. I mean, something that a kid should never experience. Right? just awful. And for him in his story, he tells the details of that. But the most remarkable part about arion is he was able to channel what he experienced and express themselves through yoga, and meditation and found himself and found his purpose and now helps tons of people with a lot of trauma based upon his life experiences What a beautiful story so that's kind of this book, redefining life experiences. And then from there I was I was having a lot of different individuals reach out to me I had someone give me a story about being an independent, strong, independent mom, like a single mom raising her kids and holy shit if you want to read a story. Your story in that book was unbelievable. I mean, absolutely incredible. I mean, she was she got essentially knocked up the cliffnotes version she got knocked up. She decided to leave the relationship because he was abusive, but said are at all at least let him introduce I'll introduce my daughter to him. And he kidnapped the both of them, kidnapped her daughter, tied her to a chair and would sell her out to his friends and she lived in this situation for years, absolute years. Until She found enough courage and found the help to get out of the circumstance and flee and fled. And now that daughter is now 18. And now she has another daughter who's younger. She has three girls. Now she's launching a movie about her story, found herself through yoga, meditation has a whole movement she started helps tons of people. I mean, it's remarkable, Adrian, this is Adrian's book, Adrian reverse story, lala land and now she turned her story into fiction. She took her nonfiction life, turned it into fiction literary literary book. I mean, she went from worry to literally launching a novel. And my goal is with Adrian is to turn it into a best seller. Because you know, it's her message is so amazing, and really needs to get out of there. And by the way, her if you're watching it, Adrian, you know, there you go. Alright, so really just awesome. So I know it's kind of a long winded response. But there's so many great stories of people from weight loss and death of loved ones, and overcoming obstacles and situations like Samuel treecko with cerebral palsy, and now he's a life coach and helping people overcoming just so many obstacles. So yeah, I know it's, again, long winded response. But people have

Jeremy Todd  
to know that you're absolutely right. And what I find most interesting because you you have all of this experience in sales, your entire life revolves around sales and how you can use stories to be persuasive. But that's not what is most interesting about it to Mike. what's most interesting about stories to Mike is the Curiosity factor of other people telling their stories. And being able to hear other people's stories is one of our big things that the Big Show, Brian Nichols and I talk about, we did a four part series on empathy, and the word curiosity as we explored the word curiosity just kept coming up. And you mentioned going into the schools and you have an interesting story yourself about how you were kind of went on this curiosity, trail of freedom and, you know, personal liberty and, and things like that, would you mind telling us a little bit about what you learn from teachers and, you know, your exploration and trying to understand the world

Unknown Speaker  
why, you know, originally when I went into the schools to teach and to speak, it started with, I just wanted to, I really wanted to go and just help get the word out about our business and recruiting some students. But the first teacher, Mary diamond, who invited me in to speak, it was to a lower income school and and Gibbs high school and she was bringing me into the class and she said, 50% of the kids, you're going to talk to 50% of them are going to graduate, and the other 50% are probably going to end up in jail. That's the statistic of the class you're going to go speak to. She said, none of them are going to go to college. And she started giving me a list of like, She's like, one of them lives in an attic with three of the cousins, another one, the parent ones, the one the dad's in jail, the mom works two jobs has to stay at school is the last one to leave school until he has to be sent home. And then he tries to avoid the gangs. And just just makes do and these are like the situations and circumstances as some of these kids. So this was my first time speaking and I got hooked on that the challenge was is I went from this passion of just kind of serving and, and maybe even recruiting a couple of people to then hearing some of the teachers talk about, you know, what they would complain about in the lunch area. So I would be in the lunch area. And they would i would overhear them say things like, um, I can't wait till I hit my 10 years. So I could, you know, get the hell out of here, stuff like that. I would hear them talking about bartending jobs, you know, Friday, you know, Friday and Saturdays just to make ends meet. And they just got like, I knew teachers didn't make a lot of money, I understood that. But it really was painting me to know that these kids that are victims of these crazy circumstances are being influenced by these individuals that can't even like pay their bills or like are just doing it for a different purpose. So it just again, using that word curiosity just made me curious of like, Well, why are they paid? The what why? Why do they Why are they paid the way they're paid? Why is it so what is it? Why is it so shitty, the way the structure set up that now entertainers can make millions of dollars and athletes can make millions of dollars but those that are teaching, the future leaders of our societies in our communities are making such a little amount of money, where they're like, stressed out, and then I was also dating someone at the time who was a fourth grade teacher, and she would always come home and she's like, I can't hang out with you. I got to do my lesson plans. And she was like the state testing is coming up. And if I don't have a certain number of students pass the state test, then my job is on the line. So it's She has to teach them towards the state testing, which also suck and then she's also getting paid very minimal and also bringing her school plans home where she's not even done at 7am to 3pm she's working late at night for such a minimal pay. And it's just like, this sucks this this sucks. Why is it like this? Why is it set up like this? So, um, you know, from there, I just kind of started getting even more curious figuring out like, Okay, well, not only Why are they paid so little, but then it was like, our law enforcement, they're paid really pretty little for putting their lives on the line. Like, they, you know, they get shot at and you know, protect, you know, protect us and like, why did they paid so little? And then just started getting curious of like, well, if the people that teach us are paid real little, and the people that are protecting us paid so little, what types of individuals are being attracted to those types of jobs? Right, right. So then it's like, is the set like, you know, when I was growing up was like, go be a doctor, they make a lot of money, go be a lawyer and make a lot of money. I have my engineering degree to go be an engineer, because they make a lot of money. But it was like, it was like, go to be a cop. If you want to protect and serve, go be a teacher, if you want to educate and you want to make a positive change, or, like, I don't know, it's just like, an interesting paradigm that was being portrayed growing up and what I've seen around me so

Unknown Speaker  
and it makes you wonder, where's the incentive for these jobs? Right? Where's the incentive to to do your 150% and give the most because those are important jobs. And like you said, These are the people that are shaping society and shaping our future. Real quick, I just want to note, Jeremy dropped out. He's back. I'm going to bump him back up. So thanks for not even skipping a beat on that. Like,

Unknown Speaker  
Oh, good. I know to roll roll with the punches, right? Yeah,

Jeremy Todd  
that's right. Thanks for thanks for the heroic work there. Okay, did we did we get an opportunity to talk about pb&j yet one of my favorite things? We did not not yet. Oh, man. Okay. So one of the things that libertarians really value is, we we, we realize that we don't really like the government doing things because they're ineffective, inefficient, they're pretty bad at it. And so we as individuals have to step up and fill that gap. Mike has started an organization for feeding the homeless, and we're up to 80,000 meals now. Right? 9000 89,800.

Unknown Speaker  
So we're at, we're closing in on 90,000. We really look we'd love to hit that 100,000 meal mark, by the end of this year is our goal.

Jeremy Todd  
Awesome. Tell us more about how you got started doing that. What was the inspiration behind it and ultimately, how we can help finish close that gap?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, talk about Tad, I mean, he literally, we had a one of the Cutco students I was working with he his him and his girlfriend just broke up. And he's I told him, I said, you got to get off self and on purpose, dude, like you're totally stuck in your head. You know, we heard that so often, it's like off self on purpose. So from there, I said, Why don't we do something? What could we do to get yourself off selfing on purpose? He said, I don't know. I said, What if we went out and donated money to you know, feeding some people? He's like, I don't know. I said, What about a canned food drive? He's like, I don't know. I said, What if we made peanut and jelly sandwiches and like pass them out to people underneath the bridge and he's like, Alright, I can get behind that. I said, cool. Let's Let's enroll some of the sales reps and just see what happens. So we had like, six or seven people come out we asked customers in a zip some donations for people for jars of peanut butter and loaves of bread. We made the sandwiches and we went out to the community. We had a bunch leftover so I called I googled and shelter in the area safe harbor in Clearwater and he said, Hey, we have a bunch of extra sandwiches, can we you know, donate them, maybe even pass them out and meet some of the people there? They said absolutely. Come on over. So we passed them out. There's like five or six or seven of us that went out, pass them out to all the you know, it'll kind of look like a prison almost. I mean, it was, you know, housing shelter for people to help them get off drugs, they help them get up, you know, jobs and whatnot. And just hearing some of their stories was cool to just kind of do on our part. And then from there, we ended we, you know, took a photo, he said, What do you guys think you want to do? And again, they said, Yeah, let's do it next month. So then we'd made 500. So we made 350 sandwiches the first time that we made 500 the second time, and then it just we started getting momentum. The kid Jason who I started with, he ended up moving away, but I kept this thing going every single month, every single month, Sunday morning, once a month 90 and we just got a crew together. I posted it up on Facebook and ran some random people started showing up and it was like we got a little we got some momentum now. We made about 7000 sandwiches that first year. And then they wrote a press release in the newspaper about us and then it was Like, Oh shit, this is starting to pick up steam and then the news station picked up the story. And then another news station picked up the story and I was like, oh, we're heating up now. So then I had to change the name to pb&j for USA because we had someone in Texas and Minnesota and Arizona and Pennsylvania and you know all these different states were starting to do some feeding frenzy was like this is pretty sweet. So um, that's that's really it's just started tiny, small, simple, just consistency of getting donations getting some people from the community we've now had hundreds of volunteers come out. And what's interesting enough here's what's interesting Jeremy added the hundreds of volunteers that come out from ages three to age 73 all different ages, and you could watch any of our Facebook Lives or any of the interviews I've done with this and they and a lot of them say the same thing. I say what brought you out here on a Saturday morning or on Sunday morning to make sandwiches and they always say like something under the umbrella of I just want to do my part. I just want to do my part. I just this is just so simple. And it just makes me feel good doing my part. And I think about that so often of how many people I don't know if you can relate to this anybody that's listening that says I want to do my part but I don't know where to start 100% I want to do my part but I don't know where to start so know what people do is they fucking complain. That's what they do. They complain, they talk about oh, I don't like how so and so does this, this politician sucks that fucking asshole does that. And it's just they're complaining. And they think that's going to do something. All right is not going to do anything except stir up more emotion and more rage, it's going to get you even more upset. You're not going to draw the people in it sucks. The biggest thing you could do is if you say I want to create positive change in something, whatever it is, you do your part, what is your part? Join, join a movement or start your own it didn't take much but that movement, it created momentum. And here's the best part Jeremy those hundreds of volunteers. I would say probably 70% of them never even passed a sandwich out to a homeless person. Wow. 70% of the people who've made a sandwich never even distributed sandwich they just wanted to be a part of the movement more so than the actual cause. And that's I find fascinating as well.

Jeremy Todd  
Yeah, it really is because like you said, everybody there is this internal desire that is unavoidable to pursue purpose like it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs once you've met you know all the bottom ones but the the top one is like fulfillment of purpose. And it's it's really interesting even in like spiritual world. I'm a Christian who cusses uh, but it's, it's really interesting. One of the things that I've spotted in very, very successful churches is they put people on a path to be involved in do like you said they're part and you know, it, what do you what does it fall on us as leaders? And if, if you're not surrounded by leaders who you can just plug into their vision, what is what is really important to do to overcome that hesitation to take that first step that overwhelming like, well, it's got to be perfect, or whatever it is, what are some keys to taking that first step that you learned on that journey?

Unknown Speaker  
Found it. So this book, this is Bobby Lewis, who did the new story on us finding joy beyond the headlines. He's also a Christian, big church goer. And he's the one who did the story. So he put a book together of all this feel good stories, and I did a Facebook Live. I don't know a couple couple of weeks back, and is the chapter is called ambition. And in the chapter called ambition, a sticky feeding frenzy is the is the name of the chapter and he did a chapter on us but what he did was he like he would put up like a proverb like Matthew, Matthew 2534 to 40. And he put that in the chapter of the book saying this that's that's what churches churches and going and go into Sunday and standing you know, going and praying and then going out and sending all week and then repenting on Sunday, he says, This is church church and he has his he took his children to the feeding frenzy. So this is what it's about. It's about going out into the community and being a part of the change creating some change. Maybe you're not going to change the entire world. But I could change someone's world I can do one thing. And it starts there so so if you're listening to this right now what's what's your one thing that you really get passion about me? It was it was it was the education system I just gotten. So just off about all of that, and that's why All right, I got to do my part and just at least creating curiosity amongst the future leaders, because my kid James, my son is going to be raised by these individuals, these going to be raised by the other people in the school system right now. So if I don't do my part in helping create a better community, then then what is What message does that send to my son? What's that? What message does that send to my lineage and my legacy and what I stand for, it's probably not a very powerful positive message. So

Jeremy Todd  
absolutely. And so, now to the the the part I've been really excited to hear. I mentioned last week, I'm a new dad, one of our prominent figures in the Liberty movement just became a new dad and his, his son was born with a heart defect had to go under the knife, the moment he was born, these tiny little things that that are so heavy on our lives, Mike, you have an incredible story with your son, James, and I just want to get, you know, kind of step back and tell us the story of baby James. Because I think there's this natural thing amongst people when they hear Oh, yeah, everything Mike is telling me is great. But then something happens, right? I run into an adversity that I think is too big. And I would just love to hear your perspective on the adversity. You, your wife, and baby James faced, what you learn from her what you learn from him. And once you learned about yourself, that these things work, even in times of trial.

Unknown Speaker  
Well, Jeremy, I, with your permission, I can share. Can I share? The for the first time, something that I haven't shared publicly? Yeah, at all? Yeah, so I've been keeping a video vlog for myself a private one during this whole journey, because the journey did not start with James. The journey started back in when Lindsey my wife, and I decided that we wanted to start a family after we got married, and we couldn't get pregnant. So she went in for all these tests thinking was her, but it turns out, it was me. So I went out and got a semen analysis, and the average man has about 20 to 30 million sperm and semen. And I, my analysis came back as double digits. It was 36. Wow. And at first denial is like not now that I missed the cup, that I went in a second time. Yeah, it was still 30 something. And then I went in a third time it was 16. So I struggled a couple years ago with this feeling of being broken. Because like know what, not me, I'm a man, you know, this male infertility thing is not real. But affair. Apparently it's actually an underground coal men of quiet desperation, who experienced this and you know, it's becoming a lot more popular, unfortunately amongst men, and it's like an unspoken truth. So we had to go through IVF and IVF have we is essentially my wife had to get injections every single day, and sometimes twice a day, that we had to do progesterone shots and estrogen shots into her every single day, essentially just putting a bunch of bullshit chemicals into my wife because because of my circumstance, that's what she married into and dealing with the pain and the insecurities that showed up with that, during that process was was was challenging in itself. And then we finished IVF we get pregnant the first round, it was $30,000 that we had to pay for. And at 20 weeks, we find out that baby's not going to make it and unfortunately, that was Hannah, our first Lindsey how to give a birth to our stillbirth stillbirth to Hannah who didn't make it. And that was devastating not only because of all the injections, not all but only because of the emotion not only because of the financial burden, but just everything was just so devastating to my wife and myself, that I really was in a valley and this was transitioning. This was 2019 fall of 2019.

Unknown Speaker  
I went got myself a hotel room that December and I said Lindsay I just need to go get my own. You know that December the miscarriage happened, or the stillbirth happened around October and I sat down with myself. No telephone, no nothing and I just journaled in journal and journal and read and journaled and revisited my purpose and revisited why I'm here and what I'm called to do and how what what is in my control, what is in my control what is not in my control, if it's in my control, I can do something about it. If it's not in my control, I just need to accept it. And there was a resentment brewing in our relationship because she felt like I wasn't doing Anything about this male infertility, which was creating engine like, I went in for all the tests, I went in for all the exams, I went in for everything and there was nothing that there they said I could do. So I started looking into natural remedies. I did three years of cold showers, I started taking vitamin C, I was a vegan for seven years, I compromised that to start adding eggs in and then I added seafood and then I added meat and slowly I started drinking a gallon of water a day, I started taking zinc, I started taking ashwagandha. And I just did literally there was a drop down in your acupuncture, like there was a drop down menu of all these possible natural remedies that I could do. And so I just started doing them all I literally did them all change the underwear I wore, right. And then we went through a second round of IVF. And that's when James we got pregnant with James. And through the process of getting pregnant with James, we find out at the same 19 week ultrasound that he was diagnosed with endocrine neoplasia, meaning that dwarfism so at the 19 week ultrasound, they thought that James was not going to make it either. So devastating news at 19 weeks and and just to go through that again from the week from 19 weeks. December at 2324 weeks, Lindsay gets diagnosed with preeclampsia, and her kidneys start to shutting down. So they had to do an emergency c section and cut her open and deliver James at 26 weeks. And he was one pound four ounces and they did not think he was going to make it but they had to deliver him because Lindsay's life started getting compromised. The deliver at one pound four ounces, he was about the size of my hand from his butt to his head. And he was you know an incubator Lindsay couldn't hold him the first time she hold them held them was Valentine's Day. So take six weeks for her to hold her hold her baby. And we essentially she was in the hospital 24 hours a day would not leave the hospital. And I took 150 days out of the business I didn't touch my phone I was just there with with Lindsay and James. And then at some point I said I really you know, she's not going back to work, I really need to get kind of get back into the groove of busy summer season that's coming up. And I would run my business from my phone from my computer, I would come home, I would go to meetings, I would go back to the hospital we would take shifts so that way she could come home for a couple of you know, to grab food or whatever, she could go downstairs and we took these shifts, we just kind of got into a rhythm. And we were in the hospital for 252 days. So eight months living in the hospital and supporting each other and and just being able to find find a way to be present today to not worry about his worries of if he's going to make it of the future and to not worry about anything that's out of our control just be present with the moment. And through the process I got

Unknown Speaker  
in January, I went in for my semen analysis and it was up to 750,000 so one from 16,000 so it's still below and then I went in and it went up to 2 million so now I'm still low but it went from originally 36 to now 2 million focusing on what's in my control it was uncommon when a lot of the things I did but it's but we're on the up and a beautiful and sad is we tried when Lindsay got her period she oscillated we tried and she got pregnant, but unfortunately she had a miscarriage at seven weeks just a couple of weeks ago. He's miraculous it's just absolutely miraculous the whole journey that we've been on and we're not through the weeds by any means Jeremy right. But the reason why I'm going into the details of the story is because the listener anybody who's listening you could draw out that it's not all sunshine and rainbows I mean it is it is a fucking mess. It is a shit show. And around that shit show I've still been able to run the movement and still provide pb&j sandwiches to less fortunate I've still been able to run my business and we're nationally ranked we won five national titles in the last couple of years. We're we're are we're gonna be we're over 1.5 million in sales this year is our district team sales. So it's like I'm still running business at a high level. I just started two other businesses a coaching business and, and an events business that we're launching. I mean, the reason I'm saying this is not to be impressive by any means. It's to say, if you know your purpose, and if you know what you want, and you You are very clear on exactly who you are. And you're very clear of what your potential offers you. There's no fucking way any type of circumstance is going to get in the way. Maybe a winter season is gonna come through and you got to kind of weather that storm, but you're capable you are 100% capable and if I know of the shit that I've gone through, what if you read any of my books from death of my mom 20 and Death of my college roommate losing $130,000. In the market collapse, I had three rental properties when I was 23. And by 27, I was near bankrupt. So if you really understand my story, this concept of Tad, this concept of knowing yourself and believing in yourself, of pressing forward of doing these tiny, small things that are in your control, you can create whatever life it is that you're looking to create. So I know it was a very long way of answering your question, but I know that when I shared all the details of that was that that's

Jeremy Todd  
phenomenal. And I've loved following James's story. But to hear that it was a much bigger story was inspiring to me. And just a clear cut reminder that no matter what you are capable of accomplishing these things that you've been set out to do. And I think the thing that I'm going to take away, you know, one of the lessons I always learned was, what nugget Can you pull, it's that no matter what you you were, where your feet were, be present in your feet, were in that hospital, so you were 100% intent on being in that hospital and being there for your family. And then you were able to switch gears and figure it out, but you were always present and where your feet were. Because you you knew, and I this goes all the way back I'm gonna I'm gonna drop a an O nine reference here, taking life head on with how l rod and one of the things from that book that stuck with me the most is that if you're stuck in traffic, just turn the radio up and be happy about it because you're not going to get being mad isn't gonna move traffic, so you might as well enjoy it. Um, so that was that that was phenomenal to hear. Mike, I really appreciate it. If it's cool with you, I think we've got a couple questions. And so it's time for q&a with Lauren liberty.

Hardy, Hey, how are you here?

Unknown Speaker  
So um, I did actually have a couple of questions that I had thought of while you were just talking. And first and foremost, I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your story with us about, you know, the infertility as a woman and somebody that struggles with infertility, and I know plenty of other women who have struggled to conceive it is very often it just kind of comes down on us like as the person that bears the child, that it's something wrong with us. And it and I don't know if it's just a pride thing or you know, an ego thing that the other half doesn't always get looked at as potentially being part of the equation. So I think that that is huge. I think that it takes a lot of guts to even talk about it because it is something that is so shameful for so many people out there. So I think that's wonderful. Thank you. One thing that I had wanted to talk a little bit about was your pb&j program. I think that is also something that's fantastic I think it is so prevalent in society right now with this the state of just the world economy you know people not working the prices of food skyrocketing and everything I've read is showing that it's going to continue trending upwards what is do you have sort of any kind of plan for if food becomes even more scarce for continuing this program

Unknown Speaker  
you know, it's so inexpensive for people to be able to you know, I mean think about how much how expensive is a loaf of bread gonna get I mean, I don't I don't know the answer to that. But you know, a jar what I mean put it this way one loaf of bread is essentially 10 sandwiches, one loaf of bread 10 ounces, or 15 ounces of peanut butter and 10 or 15 ounces of jelly. I mean we could feed 10 people with just that. So it's like even even if we raise the same amount of donations like for me to answer your question, Lauren, every dollar that I make from my book sales goes towards donations for pb&j for Tampa Bay. So so the proceeds go from book sales go towards that so as long as people are buying books, then we're going to be able to feed some people. Same thing with find your bobby Lewis every book that sold he donates for meals. No it's you know, it's we could we could literally make a sandwich for 25 cents. So even if the price per sandwich goes up to $1.25, which would be a 500% increase in inflation, which I don't think that's the case. But even if it did, I think we could still Provide, you know, less fortunate people a sandwich that shows that they're seen. I mean, it's really not even about, you know, hey, you're not forgotten, you know this, your circumstances suck. And, you know, here's the sandwich hopefully, you know, it helps.

Unknown Speaker  
It's amazing that you say that because Jeremy and I just had a very long conversation about that. I'm from New York, so like, poverty, homelessness, you know, people who are on drugs, or it doesn't bother me, I'm used to that. As long as they're peaceful, and they're not, you know, harming you, they're literally not harming you. So now I live in Arizona, I work in Phoenix, there's a lot of homelessness there as well. And sometimes if you are approached by someone, just treating them as a fucking human being, don't talk down to them Don't look down to them don't like just maybe they just want some human interaction, because that's maybe all they have left in this world. They have no possessions, and they just want a nice interaction with another person.

Unknown Speaker  
I just wanted I want to mention something on that real fast. Absolutely. We were there was one specific time early on in the pb&j movement. And there was a pretty attractive girl like she you know, like, sometimes you see some people you're like, man, like, you know, you're kind of attractive, put together. And I have is so curious. I said, how, what, like, What's your story? And she said, Well, I was in an abusive relationship. But both my parents were deceased, I was the only child. And I couldn't get out of the relationship. And then every time I tried to I was threatened. Then one day, we got pulled over by a cop. He had possession and he had a firearm in the car. And I was guilty by association. So I was kind of put in jail. felony on my record, lost my job, no one would hire me. No one would take me in because I didn't have any family. So that's how I got here. And I thought about that the circumstances that it wasn't the stereotype of addictions, it wasn't stereotypes of you know, just you know, an ephah who's just you know, flowing around and trying to be a freeloader. It was just like a couple of bad dealt a bad hand, and now just dealt a bad hand and that sucks. Yeah, and granted, there's a bunch of knuckleheads to like I'll pass the sandwich out. It's like you don't have strawberry I'm like no, it's definitely grape jelly now I only strawberry jelly like you're fucking homeless like what are the jelly is on the sandwich take the sandwich dude. You know but who am I to judge right

Unknown Speaker  
right? Yeah, absolutely. Mike

Jeremy Todd  
I'm here in in Phoenix are you doing that well Wes is West sort of yertle leader he

Unknown Speaker  
wasn't we he didn't want he didn't want he was our one person in Arizona. I want more I mean we really want it's so simple. It's the easiest thing to do but people think it's so complicated that they're like oh, I gotta like really plan this out I'm like no, you need to just set a date raise if some donations before the date get together make the damn sandwiches call a local shelter and drop them off is so simple. Okay,

Jeremy Todd  
yeah Lauren let's let's do this. I really want to 100k in Phoenix is going to be a part of that

Unknown Speaker  
and we're gonna need 20 locations do 500 in the next two months we do that we'll hit 100k by the end of the year.

Unknown Speaker  
I'm in and I love your answer about you know the increase in costs I do think that it is brilliant to use something as simple and basically a staple that it's almost always going to be affordable as peanut butter and jelly right I just It doesn't get any simpler than that. And it's almost nostalgic to like school lunch type of thing you know,

Unknown Speaker  
the fun part is making the sandwiches to I don't want to I want to make sure that doesn't get overlooked because Jeremy Lauren you get together and you invite you know 10 people you know maybe five of them show up but they bring a for a couple of American friends so they're strangers you would have never met so now you have strangers in a room along with people you know, you're conversing you're chatting The music's playing we usually listen to like some classic rock or you know listen to some pump up music we're just making the sandwiches stomping our feet have in common What do you do for work? Oh, networking, having good conversation like that is awesome. Yeah, I want to make sure that that gets known that that aspect of strangers getting together and networking and having good conversation is something that is also very lost in our society as well. So it's not only that we're doing positive when we're you know, giving the sandwiches out and helping homeless we're also helping people just get unstuck and me and get out there and and forge relationships and partnerships with other human beings which is also a very important component of the which what we call a feeding frenzy. So it's a lot I

Unknown Speaker  
love that that's cute.

Jeremy Todd  
Let me I want to highlight something for our audience. That makes sense. Here, libertarians tend to be a group that views influences as something that only happens on large scale. And we depend on the heroes of the movement, or the people with audiences or something big to happen. No, it's tiny, small things and community, you know, each one, teach one, be around those close to you guys. We've got to get out there and create community. And like Mike said, people are going to bring friends in conversations are going to happen. And this is an opportunity to use the things we talked about with spike to listen, be curious, find out what values matter to them, and show them how our values as libertarians can meet that. So that's really good.

Unknown Speaker  
Yes, absolutely. voluntourism is a huge part of what we you know, kind of, I mean, if you want to take the state out of the equation, then you have to replace it with something else. And voluntourism is one amazing way of doing that. So instead of you know, people, depending on the state, or soup kitchens or whatever, if there's more people out there doing something as affordable as making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handing them out, think about how many people's lives can be changed just on that one simple thing,

Unknown Speaker  
change 100% begins with us, it 100% begins with the people and maybe your passion isn't homelessness, maybe your passion is the education system, like it was for me go speak, maybe your passion is, you know, litter and trash, cool, you could do a cleanup, maybe your passion is, you know, sustainable energy. Cool, you know, go, you know, go figure out ways to, you know, use corn, you know, go you know, do do something like I that's not my passion, I want to be able to instruct you. But, you know, you get the point. Like, if you have a passion that you're excited about that really gets you juiced up, great. Ask yourself, what's in my control? What's not in my control, not in my control, I can't fucking end world hunger. So therefore, I need to accept that. And the sooner I can accept it, the sooner that I can move on with my life. What is in my control? While I can feed some people in my local community? Yep. Cool. Let me go do that. And I'll do my part. But we're gonna change at a time, okay, out on something that's out of our control or out of our reach. You're wasting your damn time and you're wasting everybody else's time. Stop complaining and start doing some data if you're really passionate about it.

Unknown Speaker  
Yes, absolutely. More questions

Jeremy Todd  
for me, Laura.

Unknown Speaker  
I think that's it. I'm gonna hop out of here, but it was really wonderful talking with you, Mike. Thanks so much.

Jeremy Todd  
Awesome. Well, folks, it is time for mics.

And our videos aren't playing. about that. So Mike, final plugs, where can our audience follow you on social media? websites? And then I think you got a few things to announce and tell us about?

Unknown Speaker  
Sure. So if they, if they want to follow me, I'm all on social media, Mike Abramowitz on LinkedIn, Mike Abramowitz on Instagram. My grandma's on Facebook. I have a YouTube channel. That's Mike a speaks. But you know, right now, you know, I would love to give your audience a gift if that's okay. Yeah. So I have, I have a couple of gifts I'd love to give away, just just to help them on their journey. So first is your best year ever, the book I referenced, if they text grab gra b 266866. They'll get the ebook version of this. And I'll also give them the original real stories real people ebook as well, which is this one up here. So I'll give them that one as well. And then if they want to go to Mike abramowitz.com Mike Abramovich calm and they just enter their first name and email address. I'll also send them this guided journal. It is my top 50 journal questions whenever I feel stuck, that has had that have helped me get unstuck and kind of kind of work through them. There's also some thoughts for Mike, the grab your thoughts journal is about 25 bucks on Amazon. Your best year ever is like 15 bucks on Amazon, the real storage where people are 10 bucks on Amazon, I'm gonna hook you up with all of them for free, just, you know, go to Mike Abramowitz calm and also you know, join the text list. And then I also have a blog, you can feel free to check that out and, you know, feel free to follow the journey. As you know more stuff is coming up. I'd love to, you know, support you.

Jeremy Todd  
Phenomenal and I heard a rumor that you have two spots left on this retreat. fill us in on this and how somebody can be a part here in the next few weeks.

Unknown Speaker  
So one of the companies I work with is called better than rich. I'm a partner with Andrew Biggs on and we put on events We did an event in Orlando, Florida. Back in March, it was a winner about 40 to 50 people, there was an awesome, impactful experience. We wanted to do something a little bit more intimate, a little bit more exclusive. So we have 12 spots. And to my knowledge earlier today, we already filled 10 of them. And I think there's two left and we are doing this retreat in Riviera Maya, Mexico, we have thought leaders from all across the country coming in where you are, I have a private chef coming in, we have this ridiculous Airbnb right on the water, we put 10 grand down on this place, we are going to do the Mayan ruins and have a conversation around legacy. Like one of the questions that we're going to pose and really workshop is Do you remember who your grandfather's grandfather is? And most people don't? So it's like, well, we're going to be that person to somebody, how do we need to leave our leave this place better than we found it? How do we need to lead our lives in order for us to have that deep level of impact, and just really workshop and through that through an immersive environment of strengthening our purpose, strengthening our vision, getting a better relationship with our identity. So it's a three day retreat, you know, food is included, we have the Airbnb included, and it's going to be a very intimate space with some awesome, awesome people. And you know if any of your if anybody is interested, they could send me a direct message on Facebook would probably be a great way or they could just go to forest through the trees comm we did have an early bird that I think just ended for $500 off. But if you say that you heard it on this show, I'd be glad to honor that $500 off for you. You know you would fly in the king Kuhn you would join us in Riviera Maya airport transports included foods included all the excursion returns, you zip line, and we're doing cold plunges and some snow days, the underwater caves, we're going to, we're going to do some deep dive purpose stuff, we're going to use some adventure. And we're gonna have an entire workshop on tiny actions daily as well, to help you kind of leave into some sort of activity. So it's going to be a fantastic experience. If it's up your alley, I'd love to, you know, see if we can help you It's November 16 to the 18th. So it's coming up coming up soon, we will do another event in March in Tampa. But that's going to be a little bit of a different style. But this one is like more of a treat. The other one is going to be more on like system systemising your business because like I mentioned, I left my business but it still was able to produce about 1.5 million in sales from me and not being in the hospital with James for eight months. So talking about systemization and automation and leading through people and leading your system. So that's going to be the march event. So

Jeremy Todd  
in credible stuff, Mike, I hope our listeners take advantage. This is just being on Mike's email list following his website is gonna help you form your best year ever become more productive, and be inspired to become something bigger than you ever thought you would. So I Mike, I can't thank you enough. I'm leaving this far more inspired and ready to go. I hope our listeners take advantage of everything you just threw out. Thank you so much again for the time and thanks for sharing.

Unknown Speaker  
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate you for doing what you're going to keep selling selling Liberty that's

Jeremy Todd  
right on liberty, my man. Thank you, Mike. And folks, if you enjoyed this make sure you like comment, subscribe, interact, follow us cell Liberty on Facebook. I am Jay Todd 601 on Twitter. We are on The Brian Nichols Show. Thanks and shout out to them. And a special shout out to our homie Brent Ritter who started this organization. We are so proud to carry this for you. Thank you guys for tuning in tonight and giving us your time. Have a fantastic rest of your

Brian  
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