2246 - The DJ Who Empowers Men Through Beats and Life Lessons with GoBundance Mastermind's Mike McCarthy

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0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, Mike McCarthy. Mike, you are the co-founder of GoBundance and FamBundance. The website is gobundance.com. Mike, it's great to have you. Thanks. Appreciate it. Glad to be here, Josh. Yeah, yeah. So before we start talking about the work and impact that you have in the world, I always love discovering what people are kind of into on the side or their hobbies or kind of what their interests are. What have you been geeking out on lately? Yeah, so my thing to geek out on is music. I'm an EDM DJ, so I do. I spend aggressive house trance and and love that music. I started vinyl when I was in my early 20s.

1:53So 27 years ago. And it's been fun to just keep as a hobby. But as that industry has grown, my talents in that area have become cooler and cooler. It's a pretty good party trick for my 40 plus year old friends to be able to throw down on some DJ decks. And actually, I've made some great entrepreneurial connections. And I'll be playing Electric Forest in a couple of weeks here in late June. I'm opening up the Honeycomb stage on Friday. and that's one of the biggest electronic music festivals in the United States. So that'll be fun. So it's a passion. My gosh, you had a big scale. That is so cool.

2:35So I've, um, so when I was in college, that was, you know, we had a wedding DJ business. I mean, that's what I did. I was, uh, did some DJing when I was in the Navy, U S Navy as well, like moonlighting. And, uh, you know, just kind of kept it as a, as a side hobby. I've done like, you know, church events and that sort of nothing, nothing paid once I left college, but you know, just, I do it because it's so enjoyable. It's so fun. And it's like, you know, and maybe you could talk a little bit about this, about like the skill and art of a DJ, you know, it's like to take these paints, right. If a song is, you know, is this color of paint, right.

3:10And you've got a palette with all these different songs that you can use. I mean, the artistry of getting that music to work together and then also just you know having the experience and um you know it's almost like a in in intuition right of like reading and seeing a crowd and knowing exactly what is going to be kind of perfect for that moment do you mind maybe just i mean that's kind of my layman's way of explaining that vibe do you mind talking about this sharing just a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it is, it's my, one of my favorite things to do is to go on to beatport.com, which is where most EDM music that DJs play is and pick 10 to 20 tracks and then just put them on my SD card, jump behind my decks, which the first thing you see when you walk in my house in our formal living room is a big art piece with DJ decks behind it.

4:09So I've got it like right in the center of my house. But what I'll do is I'll just go through the songs having never played them before, but I'll pretend that I'm playing to a live audience and just see if I can get the songs to work together. I'll put them in order of what key they're in and then just try to throw them all together. And I really love that freestyle nature of DJing. And I've always done more of a, not a pre-planned set, but sort of the vibe of the crowd. And there's a little bit of synchronicity, intuition, and then taking the sounds that I really love. I find that if I love the sounds, but also have a diverse amount of tracks that cover many genres.

4:58But if I love it, it translates to my joy in playing it to the crowd. And so, you know, I love to really emote. But we went through a really tough time, like with my 16 year old a few weeks ago. And I was playing a party for 125 people at the end of that week. But things have gotten so bad with my son that I didn't know I was going to be able to play this party. And it was a bunch of friends' birthdays. But the whole week I put together a set that was helping me to emotionally move through what I was going through. Yeah. I ended up getting to play the set. And because I carried the emotion and the preparation and then the emotion of the tracks onto the stage, like everybody went wild for it.

5:44It was, yeah, they can feel it. And, you know, and I just I'm so grateful for our musicians, for our artists, for our DJs. You know, these are these are just the bringers of joy is really kind of the way that I look at it. You know, my wife and I love going to see live music. You know, obviously, you know, love, you know, great DJ as well. But, you know, it's like when you're in that vibe in a world that sometimes wants to very hard to divide us, you know, it's music is this force. It really brings us together. And I remember feeling this at a it was a Metallica tribute band and a Pantera tribute band.

6:24But I was like looking around. I'm like, you know what? During the day, I don't know that we'd all get along. You know, there's probably a lot of differences here, but right now we are unified, you know, in just getting at that catharsis and just getting it all out. And it's just, it's such a great reminder that we all have so much more in common than what divides us. So thank you so much for the DJing you do. Mike, I want to, I'd love to talk DJing more with you, but we should probably talk about business. business. This is the first time I've ever talked DJing on a podcast. So thank you. I like that.

7:02Yeah. Oh my God. Maybe me too. So thank you for the opportunity. Let's talk about your work with GoBundance and who you work with. Because I know you get to work with an audience that, you know, I think men are at a really unique time historically. And I bet you could probably talk about the moment that we're in right now? Because that's primarily who you serve with GoBundance. Yeah, we have 900 members that are men that are high net worth and we lead and run that division. I have a CEO that does an amazing job, three partners. There is a women's division. So I do want to be clear that for high net worth women, there's a women owned and licensed version of GoBundance.

7:50But I'll tell you what I see happening with men and that I focus on a lot. I lead two calls a month for the GoBundance tribe. One is called Investing in Your Healing, and that's about doing inner work, trauma work, inner child work. And I find it's something that most of the guys avoid. And I'll come back to that in a second because it's part of what we deal with as men. And then the other call I lead is on legacy. And how do you leave a legacy and a family, a plan for your family that goes beyond just financial metrics? Like how do you actually leave a great culture and raise great human beings?

8:30And what's interesting is those are the two areas where I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs and men avoid. They don't want to face their own mortality. And they don't want to admit that they have problems and challenges and issues. And And here's the secret or the not so secret part of it. Josh is that typically high levels of success are driven by something that is in that person's upbringing that was traumatic. It's some type of response to wanting to prove, wanting to conquer, wanting to get outside attention. Not all of the time, but typically there's a driving force in there that is some unhealed part of that person.

9:15And it doesn't mean it's a bad thing because it can be a superpower. But what happens is if that's what's driving you to success, here's how you'll know. You'll get to a point where you should be really happy about the success you've created and you'll feel empty and you'll feel like almost like shit. Like, why do I feel so bad right now? And so we see a lot of guys in our group who just closed the biggest deal of their lives, but they don't feel happy or excited about it. So that's something I think is an epidemic with, with successful men and even just people in general is not looking at what motivates them truly.

9:54And then asking, is there something that could be healed to where I could use that as a superpower when I need it, but I don't have to let it unconsciously drive me to a place where I'm not happy or unfulfilled. I think what you're sharing, I wonder how often it's easy to identify what those rules or that role, you know, our big boy Mr. Business Pants, you know, that we're wearing, right, that we've taken on as our identity. I wonder how much of that is truly subconscious that might be harder to get at to figure out. And how much of it, like, do you know of a practice where we can start to, through our curiosity and through some digging, we could say, wait a minute, why do I believe like that?

10:43That doesn't serve me because I think it's easy, I think, for a lot of us intellectually, cognitively to say, yeah, no, I don't believe that. But yeah, we do. Because why are you depressed? I don't know. Well, could you be depressed because of this YZ, XYZ? I know that's been, you know, I've had a couple of recent discoveries on that. And it's like, golly, that's nefarious. Yeah, I mean, it's something where we have to get beyond whatever's at the surface. And, you know, to answer your question, I think breathwork is the access point. I've heard that. Yeah. Tell me more about what that is. You know, there's a lot of different types of breath work, but typically the holotropic breath work, which is really intense.

11:34You you get a little bit high. You kind of get out of your mind and you get fully connected to your body. Those sessions are usually like, you know, 30 to 90 minute sessions that are guided. You can find them on, you know, online. It's a little different than the Wim Hof style of breath, which is just oxygenating your body and then holding and then letting go. This is where you're really in deep breaths and oxygenating your body for a long period of time. And I think what happens is it opens up a space that gets you out of your mind and gets you into your body. And I think if you combine breath work with some coaching and some integration of somebody who knows how to work through that stuff, you'll discover like even if you had an amazing childhood, there was a point in time when you got left in the crib and you were crying and you felt abandoned.

12:32All of us probably had that experience. And a lot of these traumas are actually things that are not big T trauma, like, you know, sexual abuse or anything. A lot of them are just the regular growing up of a child and a teenager. It happens. And so I would do it in an imperfect parents that were probably doing about the best that they could at the time in an imperfect world. You know, I know for me, you know, kind of going from, you know, being raised by imperfect parents doing the best they can, you know, in a small town, then going in the military, then going into a high demand religious organization.

13:09I did like all of that stuff. I mean, that just leaves a residual that I think, Mike, and I apologize for interrupting you, but because I'm excited about this. topic because, you know, it's like we can cognitively shift from that. I think we can intellectually say, well, I don't believe that anymore. But, you know, it's, I think what we're talking about through breath work is like, you know, you can go top down, you know, kind of work from, you know, kind of the brain and the thoughts down and you can read a bunch of, you know, wonderful books that can cognitively tell you how to do that. But bottom up is, is, is quite a skill.

13:47Yeah, it's absolutely something that if we're guided through it and we're willing to touch those parts of ourselves that maybe are scary or look at them or admit that there was some type of pain or abandonment, it's feeling those things that actually heals those things. And so if we can go back and be willing to feel them and heal them, then it makes a big difference. And it's not just so you'll feel better, by the way. No. There is an ROI to this. I'm a big believer in that your business will only grow to the extent to which you're willing to grow personally. And so, you know, if you've reached a plateau or even the summit of the mountain and you don't feel good about where you're at, I, instead of doing more work on your business, my recommendation would be to do more work on yourself, like get a coach, get a breath work.

14:39And then once you've, you know, through breath work identified what it is you want to heal. There's something called somatic practices, and that's breath, sound, and movement together. And there are ways to just process what we're feeling and soothe ourselves. A lot of us reach for social media or alcohol or drugs or shopping or something to soothe that part of ourselves, or we're codependent with another person and we expect them to soothe us. The trick and the game of life that I've realized is the more capable I am of soothing myself and being with myself, especially when I'm sad or angry or frustrated, and I can really work through that without blaming or projecting it on other people, then I become sort of my own sovereign being.

15:30Yes. So when you become who you become, you won't have to force yourself to make... The decisions just are natural. You'll attract the kind of people that resonate with who you are showing for the world. And I don't want to say life just gets easier, but it kind of does. I shouldn't say easier. It gets clearer. The path just makes sense. So for me, you know, we've been shift, you know, making some shifts in my role as a CEO. And it's, it's not a, you're not making those decisions from the exterior to the interior. The decisions are natural because your interior just aligns with, well, wait a minute, I'm not that kind of CEO.

16:12I don't do that. So sorry, I'm not, that's not who I am anymore. Right. And it just becomes natural. And this is kind of, I think, the breakthroughs that you're talking about. Mike, can you tell me a little bit more about how you work with men? And again, I know you have a women division as well, but tell me about GoBundance, what that actually looks like. Yeah. So, you know, it was just four guys, three of my best friends hanging out, goal setting, going on adventure trips. And it blossomed and grew from there. We didn't intentionally intend to go out and create a thousand person mastermind. It just happened because we wanted to build the mastermind and the trips that we would want to go on.

16:57And we've stayed true to that. So there's an adventure component. When we do our annual events, which are our biggest events, one is in the winter and it's a ski trip. So we ski all day. And then at night, we bring in speakers and we mastermind. And all of our members are already successful financially and in business. and they will talk about that no matter what we do. So we don't really make it a pillar of our community. The pillars of GoBundance are all things that people give up on their way to creating business success. So it's age defying health, genuine contribution in your community, authentic relationships with the people you love most and cherish in your life.

17:40And it's also about showing up and still having fun in life. A lot of times we're so busy grinding and building, we forget that there's things like DJing and snowboarding and things that are actually fun to do. And so what we do is we try to help guys reclaim being what we would call a whole life millionaire and not being financially successful, but are you successful in every area of your life? And we don't buy into the fact that you can only be successful in a couple areas of life. We believe you can have it all. We've created the environment where you can do that. The interesting thing is that most people think they're going to show up to our events and it's going to be very heady, very masculine, very much about how much you make and everything is going to be like, you know, a bravado, chest pounding experience.

18:33But what you find is like you get there and you're like, oh, wait, these guys are just as messed up as I am. They have problems. They have issues. Yes, successful financially, but they also have issues. And we have a whole set of people who can't handle that level of authenticity, by the way. And so they run as fast as they can from GoBundance. But those who are willing to lean in on authenticity and be vulnerable and really admit where they're struggling and not just rest upon their laurels of where they've had success, then we're able to really help them through the community of GoBundance. Which really, because there's four founders, we don't have a guru.

19:14we don't try to act like any one of us has it all figured out either we always share our struggles just as much as our successes yeah so we try to be the guides on the side instead of the stages on the stages um in order to just keep it real and i think that's the beautiful thing about what we've created in go abundance it's fully authentic and if you lean in it'll transform your life yeah and i suspect a lot of the answers are probably just from within anyway i mean there's probably some very common patterns and just being in that peer group, it's probably very liberating for me as a man to be around another man and says, listen, I know exactly what you're talking about.

19:57And, you know, to then have them be very honest about, well, this is why I was showing up the way I was on social media. This is why I was the way I was showing up at work. And when I realized, You know, it's like hearing those stories over and over again makes it feel so much more normal. We're all, you know, kids just kind of trying to figure out this amazing world where we have unlimited creative potential. And yet we still want to feel safe. We still, you know, want freedom. We want to be with the people that we love. And so, Mike, how do I join? Like, how does someone become a part of GoBundance?

20:32Yeah, you can go to gobundance.com and fill out an application and then our team will make sure it's a fit, not just for us, but for you. We try to not take people that we don't think we can really help. And we actually have done very little marketing. It's been an organically grown group. Member referrals are typically how we do it, but we definitely open to whoever thinks that GoBundance might be able to serve them. Excellent. That website, gobundance.com. Mike McCarthy, your co-founder. And again, I know there's Fambundance and there's a few other brands. You have a personal website that we've also linked up in the show notes to our friend that's listening to our podcast right now.

21:16And that's gomikemccarthy.com where I have links to a lot of the work that you're doing. Mike, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much. This was just a really fun episode. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Josh. Great talking with you. and I hope the audience got some nugget of value.

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