When Mike Brcic started his mountain-bike tour company, it was slow going at the beginning.
The first year, his company Sacred Rides had one client. In year two, the startup experienced 100% growth — two clients.
Fast forward, however, and Sacred Rides became a complicated business doing 7-figures in annual revenue with investors and lots of employees — operating in over 40 countries.
Fantastic right? From the outside it would seem so, but Mike was far from happy. Very far.
What he found is that pursuing scale for scale’s sake is ultimately deeply unfulfilling. Most of the time it’s an ego’s hungry quest for recognition and validation.
So Mike carefully planned to remove himself from the business, and eventually sold it. He had already started the business that would become Mastermind Adventures, a new but intentionally much smaller business that fulfills his sense of passion and purpose.
Now, Mike is inspired by asking bigger questions:
• If the purpose of an entrepreneur isn’t to scale, then what is it?
• What does it mean to live a good life?
• Can a company remain small (and profitable) forever?
These are the questions that essentially drive the creation of a 7-figure small business. Tune in to hear the answers in the context of Mike’s evolving entrepreneurial career.
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Transcript
When Scale is the Opposite of Success
Jerod Morris: Welcome to 7-Figure Small, the podcast that brings you the stories and strategies that are driving the growing number of solo businesses achieving 7-figures in revenue, without investors or employees. Here is your host for this edition of 7-Figure Small — serial digital entrepreneur, Brian Clark.
Brian Clark: When Mike Brcic started his mountain-bike tour company, it was slow going at the beginning.
The first year, his company Sacred Rides had one client. In year two, the startup experienced 100% growth — two clients.
Fast forward, however, and Sacred Rides became a complicated business doing 7-figures in annual revenue with investors and lots of employees — operating in over 40 countries.
Fantastic, right? From the outside it would seem so, but Mike was far from happy. Very far.
What he found is that pursuing scale for scale’s sake is ultimately deeply unfulfilling. Most of the time, it’s an ego’s hungry quest for recognition and validation.
So Mike carefully planned to remove himself from the business, and eventually sold it. He had already started the business that would become Mastermind Adventures, a new but intentionally much smaller business that fulfills his sense of passion and purpose.
Now, Mike is inspired by asking bigger questions: if the purpose of an entrepreneur isn’t to scale, then what is it? What does it mean to live a good life? Can a company remain small (and profitable) forever? These are the questions that essentially drive the creation of a 7-figure small business.
Stay tuned to hear Mike and I discuss the answers in the context of Mike’s evolving entrepreneurial career.
I’m Brian Clark and this is 7-Figure Small. Thanks for listening.
Before we dive in with Mike, I want to make sure you’re subscribed to the Unemployable newsletter. Each week, we deliver the best resources from around the interwebs for freelancers and entrepreneurs. Plus, you’ll be the first to gain access to our free audio course, Next Level Seven. This self-paced information will give you valuable insight into getting started with your own 7-figure small business. It should drop by early February.
To get both, all you have to do is head over to Unemployable.com and sign up with your best email address. Again, that’s Unemployable.com. Okay, let’s chat with Mike.
Mike, thank you so much for joining us on the show. How are you?
Mike Brcic: I’m great. I’m super excited to be chatting with you again.
Brian Clark: Yeah, it just seems like it’s been a few weeks since I was hiking with you repeatedly in the Eastern Himalayas, which was a memorable trip to say the very least.
Just to recap a little bit, for those of you who saw me allude to my trip to Bhutan, that was thanks to Mike and his company Mastermind Adventures, an amazing group of people that Mike put together. I only knew one person, Jordan Harbinger, going into it. But I feel like I made some really good new friends including Mike. So, Mike, thank you so much.
Mike Brcic: Thank you, thank you.
How Did You Get Here?
Brian Clark: Okay, so I want to kind of go back in time a little bit and figure out: how did we get to Mastermind Adventures? Like most entrepreneurs, it’s a long and convoluted path with highs and lows and it’s a fascinating story. And you did share that with us on the trip.
I’ve got to say I was greatly touched by it. I hadn’t quite put all the pieces together. Before we were in Bhutan together, I knew that you had a prior company. I know that it was successful. I know that you decided to go a little bit smaller, which is a recurring theme on this show.
But let’s go back, back to — where do you want to start? Birth or college?
Mike Brcic: A small fishing village in Eastern Yakutsk. Yeah, why don’t I start as I was winding my way out of the previous business and winding my way into this new business? That seems like a logical place to start.
Brian Clark: Okay. But tell us what the former business was, of course.
Mike Brcic: Yeah. My previous business was called Sacred Rides. The company still exists now under a new owner in the same brand. I started that straight out of university, moved from Toronto to a little ski town in the Canadian Rockies and started that company my first spring.
I got fired from my first three jobs and had a bit of a head-scratching moment and decided, “Maybe I’m not the best employee.”
Brian Clark: So, unemployable, we have proof.
Mike Brcic: Definitely unemployable. And the town (it’s called Fernie) at the time was starting to become well-known for its winter scene, its skiing scene, but that wasn’t really carrying over into the summer. But it had this incredible mountain-bike network there and this great mountain-bike scene and people building and maintaining trails.
And I thought, “It’s only a matter of time before that growth in winter tourism extends into summer. And there’s this great opportunity to take people and guide them on the trails around here,” because it was a hard network to get around if you didn’t know it.
So I convinced a friend to join me. He ended up leaving about five years later to become a chiropractor. But we took out a $10,000 business loan, bought a fleet of bikes and hung up a sign on the highway. Our first year, we had one customer and then the next year, we had massive, 100% growth and we had two customers. And finally in year three, when we started offering overnight trips, week-long overnight trips, things really took off. So I ended up in that company for 22 years. I just exited in February of 2019.
But going back to 2013, I think it was the first time I took on investors, brought on outside investors. I took on a whole bunch of bank debt and other debt and really I kind of got impatient with our growth rate and wanted to ramp it up. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I ended up doing two more rounds, raising more money, just under a million dollars between the three different rounds, and really scaled up all over the world. By the time I was done, we’d expanded to about 40 countries around the earth. And we had massive staff all over the world.
And where that got me today, going back a few years, I thought all this growth was going to be really enjoyable and make me happy, and then validate my existence on this planet. Funnily enough, it didn’t do that.
I started to become really disenchanted with that business. It had been a nice lifestyle business that I messed with. And instead of being a mountain-bike company that I was running, I ended up, most of my time was spent dealing with investors, signing shareholder agreements, dealing with lawyers, managing HR issues, looking at spreadsheets.
Scale at What Expense?
Brian Clark: Isn’t it interesting? Because when you read the typical media account of entrepreneur stories, it usually would have stopped right there with, “So I took $1 million and we went to 40 countries.” There’s this rosy picture that ignores reality.
I mean, with my own story, I bootstrapped it to 8-figures and no, that’s not where the story ends. That’s when I looked and said, “What the hell have I done here?” Did you have that moment?
Mike Brcic: Absolutely. I was probably buried in some spreadsheet and thinking back to when I started the company and I was guiding and cooking and driving and running the marketing and kind of doing everything. I was doing a lot, but really enjoying it.
And then I was looking at some spreadsheet and trying to run a six-month cash flow projection or something like that while dealing with five HR issues and angry investors and whatnot. And I just thought, “Geez, how far away from that original vision I’ve taken it and that original joy.” I think that’s the story you don’t hear.
I know a lot of entrepreneurs and I know a lot of very successful entrepreneurs. They scale their business and they’ve got 100 employees, 200 employees, and I often ask them the question, “Are you enjoying your company more now than back in the early years when maybe it was just you and half a dozen other people?” Invariably, the answer is generally no. And often, they’re left in the same kind of head-scratching moment like, “How did I get here?”
When I think to my new company, and I’ll get to that in a sec, but I try to question the dominant narrative in entrepreneurship, which seems to be “Scale, scale, scale,” and “Growth, growth, growth.” It’s akin to the conversations we have around our economies. We feel like our economies have to grow in order to succeed.
In the context of economies, we’re talking about a finite system, which is our planet and economies that use resources. Obviously, that conversation needs to change. I think also in the world of business, there’s a time and a place for scale. I don’t apply a blanket statement like, “Scale is bad,” but we also have to question why we’re scaling a business.
Of course, in the early days, you’d have to scale it to the point where you can afford to feed yourself. But when you’re at the point you’re earning a comfortable living, do you need to keep scaling a business? And that’s sort of an unquestioned narrative in the world of business. And I want to question it, because most people…
The Selling Process
Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s exactly the question I asked myself. My original intention when I started Copyblogger, I mean, if we’re being honest, all I wanted to do was work that I enjoyed and be able to support my family. In the back of my mind, I wanted to get to 7-figures. Nowhere did I want 65 employees, an 8-figure company. And I certainly didn’t want to get to private equity, which is the choice I had to make — either that or sell.
You actually did go the investor step. I knew it would make me miserable. I had enough knowledge of myself to know that it was just going to suck. How did you, essentially, because when you told the story in Bhutan, it was almost like, “So then I just decided and that I was going to sell the company and do something else.” And I was like, “Wow, that…okay.”
But from my personal experience, that can be tricky and it can be a process. It requires an entirely different level of focus that has nothing to do with why you started the company in the first place when you’re trying to sell. Right? So talk about that.
Mike Brcic: Well, I may have glossed over that part a little bit, partly because I didn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of what’s involved in selling a company. Like you said, it is a whole other beast and it was a multi-year process. Part of that process involved me just completely hitting the wall and being burnt out and stressed out by my business and just working too much.
The first decision was, “Okay, that’s it, I’m not putting my foot on the gas anymore.” Eventually it got to the point where I put my foot on the brake. But I just made the decision I was going to stop pushing growth like that, because it wasn’t leading anywhere positive. And it was compromising all kinds of other things that were more important to me like my relationship with my wife and my kids and my friends and stuff like that.
The first step was really I needed to get out of the day-to-day of the business, because it was wearing me down. I had enough tools and resources and people at my disposal that I knew how I could do that. It was essentially about maybe a seven or eight-month process of just building in systems and process and all that kind of stuff that I knew I wanted to do, but I just never got around to doing it, because I was pushing my foot on the growth gas, so to speak.
By the end of that process, I was down to about three hours a week of meetings on Tuesdays. And all the systems and everything were in place so that it could run really smoothly without me. That was the first part of it, because I knew if the business completely relied on me putting in 50, 60 hours a week, that wasn’t going to make it very attractive to a buyer.
Then I spent maybe six to eight months trying to get that sale process going on my own and I reached out to a few people and those conversations didn’t really go anywhere. I got introduced, I just kind of put out the call, and I’d never sold a business before. I just put out the call on Facebook, just looking for help. A friend ended up connecting me with a fantastic broker who specialized in the outdoor and cycling industry. And I was like, “Okay, perfect fit.”
And then he took over the process from there. So from hiring him to actually selling the business was about a 14-month process from start to finish. And in the end, the sale didn’t have anything to do with him.
Brian Clark: Oh, that’s interesting, because I was about to say we hired an investment banking firm and did all the dog and pony shows, and it effectively went nowhere. Part of that was because as a bootstrap company, we did things in order to fund our own go-forward development. It’s a different story than when you have a war chest of cash, and subsequently I think that resulted in a very scattered story.
As you probably know, the investors are acquirers. They just want that perfect PowerPoint story — makes sense, it’s all tidy and wrapped in a bow. Now, our business made sense to me, but then again, one would hope so.
How Did You Sell?
Brian Clark: But yeah, it turned out that it was personal relationships in two different acquisitions of lines of business, as opposed to the entire company. Did you end up selling through someone you knew in the industry or how did that come about?
Mike Brcic: Yeah, so working with that broker, I don’t want to discount the value that he brought. He certainly helped me market and present the business in the right way and put together all my due diligence documents. I ended up signing a letter of intent with a company that he brought to the table, spent about two months in that due diligence process. And they tore me a new one through that process. That was an interesting experience.
At the end of that process, it more or less fell apart and we just couldn’t agree on terms. And then we went back to some of the other companies that we were talking to before I signed that letter of intent.
For those people out there who don’t know, a letter of intent is just basically saying, “We want to continue this discussion and we want to continue it exclusively for you.” Basically the terms are “Stop all the other conversations.”
So once that deal fell apart, we went back to a bunch of the other companies and they’d kind of lost interest by that point. And this is September of 2018. After two months of that really awful process of due diligence and having that fall apart, I was just kind of crushed and feeling pretty hopeless about the whole thing. And I thought, “Back to the drawing board. I’m just going to put another year in and really focus on boosting our numbers and making the company as profitable as possible.” I was really unenthusiastic about that plan, but figured that was the only option.
Then about a month later, I get this email from a guy I had met at a conference maybe five years prior, four or five years prior. It’s just a quick email — “I heard your company’s for sale. Is it still on the market?” And I responded to him, 20 minutes later we were on the phone, and we spent about two hours on the phone. By the end of that call, he said, “I’m really interested. I’m going to prepare an offer.” Within maybe a couple of weeks, we had agreed on terms.
And then the next two months was the lawyers duking it out and that got super frustrating. But in the end, we ended up signing the deal on my birthday. And that’s February of 2019.
After 22 years of putting everything I had into this company, it was the most anticlimactic end of that process. It was a three-word email from his lawyer, and it just said, “Executed documents attached.” I wanted to be excited, but my first reaction was, “Dammit, can’t you even spare an exclamation point or an emoji or something like that? This is 22 years of my life.”
Anyway, it was just a relief after all of that. And I’m super happy with how it all turned out and things are working well for him. I have zero regrets.
Of course, I had this other company that I’d been spending more and more time with. I think where a lot of entrepreneurs get into trouble is they really can’t conceive of what their life is going to be like after exiting. And either they exit and they’re left scratching their head like, “What do I do with myself now?” Or they’ve got a multi-year earn out and they’re working for the acquirer. And after 5, 10, 20 years of working for yourself, all of a sudden somebody else is calling the shots and telling you what to do. And you may not agree with how they’re running your company, but you’ve got to just grin and bear it.
I count myself lucky.
Brian Clark: I feel very fortunate that number one, there was no stipulation that I stay on board. My partner Brian Gardner did with one of the acquirers and I thank him to this day. And the other thing, what you mentioned earlier, is I had side projects that made no money, but they were things I really, really was into. And I knew that if I somehow sold or was no longer involved in the business I had, that this is what I was going to do.
And I think you’re right, that’s a blessing, because other than the time I forced myself to really kind of take a sabbatical, there was no drop in purpose whatsoever. It was like, “I know what I’m going to do next. It’s just whether I’m rested up enough to tackle it.”
When Did You Start Mastermind Adventures?
Brian Clark: I was doing the math in my mind. Chronologically you started Mastermind Adventures before this was done?
Mike Brcic: Yeah, well before. I did my first event in September of 2017, and that was just meant to be a one-off. The feedback from that was so good that I decided to do more of them. It was very much a side gig. And I’d managed at some point in 2018 to remove myself almost completely from Sacred Rides and there was a nice little sweet spot there for a little while where I wasn’t working too hard in that and I was able to give time and energy to Mastermind Adventures.
And then when I hired that broker and started that process, that became another full-time job. Then it was a bit of a juggling act trying to juggle these two businesses. But I was free and clear from Sacred Rides within, I don’t know, four or five weeks of the sale just because I had made it so turnkey.
If there’s one word of advice I would give to people looking to sell their business, it’s spend some time really putting in the time to develop those systems and processes and whatever you need to do to get out of the day-to-day. Because A, it makes the business harder to sell. Nobody wants to buy a company that they feel like it’s going to consume their lives. And B, you’ll have to spend less time in the business after it gets acquired.
Brian Clark: Yeah, even if you’re not going to sell, my advice is put those systems and processes in place. Because worst case scenario, you have a profitable business that doesn’t consume your life. I think that’s kind of the pull.
Mike Brcic: Exactly, or you get to the point where you can choose how to spend your time in the business, and you can choose to put it where your energy is highest and your motivation’s highest. And those are generally the areas where you’re going to provide the most value to the company as well. Because if you’re spending time on putting out fires and doing all kinds of other crap that just drains you, you’re not going to provide a lot of value to the company.
Brian Clark: Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way. My first three businesses were, I mean, compared to what came after, relatively tiny, and yet they drove me into the ground. Because I tried to do everything, I didn’t delegate, no processes. I was really good at marketing, Mike.
But then I tried to manage everything. And then around 2006, I learned, “Don’t do that. Do what you’re good at and let someone else do the other stuff.” And that was the most valuable lesson that I think I can share with people.
What is Mastermind Adventures and Where is It Going?
Brian Clark: All right, so I guess that’s a good segue into what exactly is Mastermind Adventures and where do you see it going?
Mike Brcic: Yeah, I would say it’s fairly different now from what it was in the beginning. In the beginning, I was attending these different entrepreneur events in North America primarily. And they all followed the same format, which was typically two or three days in some hotel conference center, whatever. Lots of speakers, lots of workshops, stuff like that.
All of that was great, but the real value I got out of these events was connecting with other entrepreneurs, and I didn’t really feel like it was the best setup for that. I had to really work to be able to do that and squeeze that in between speakers and stuff like that.
And so, having been in the adventure travel industry for almost 20 years at that point, I knew that when you take people and you put them outside and you’re doing challenging, fun things together, people tend to come together pretty quickly. So I thought, “Maybe there’s an opportunity to inject this adventure and outdoor and fun component into this.”
My first couple of events in British Columbia and Utah, respectively, were like a mix of a conference and just an adventure. We were out mountain biking, we were out hiking, rock climbing, whatever. And then there was a bunch of workshops, speakers and stuff like that.
It’s really morphed since then. I think particularly over the last couple of events, it was becoming more and more apparent to me these places we were going further field like Patagonia and Fiji and Bhutan, that it was having a significant impact on people just by virtue of being in these different contexts and being exposed to different cultures and different ways of viewing the world.
By going far away to some remote location — what I do is I just typically book out an entire lodge for ourselves and it becomes our space to explore. People are getting out of their regular day-to-day, out of the office, they have time to reflect. And noticing that it was having a pretty significant impact on people.
So that’s something I’m really trying to lean into now with the events is just creating — I’m not looking to be some Tony Robbins guru type person. I just want to create a context where people can explore some of the big questions that might be nagging them in the back of their brains, but they’re never really taking the time to listen to or respond to those questions.
And if I can expose people to other ways of being and other ways of thinking and of viewing the world, then hopefully, they can take away something positive from that and bring it home.
So Bhutan’s an example where, as you saw, we were learning about Buddhism. Bhutan’s very much a Buddhist kingdom. We were spending time with some of the most badass monks in the world, people who lock themselves up intentionally for three years and just meditate. It’s a different worldview. And, hopefully, if it’s done in the right way, we can all take away something from that and look at the world with maybe a different set of eyes and incorporate that into our overall view.
Brian Clark: Yeah, from my perspective, when I found out about the trip from Jordan, the first draw was the adventure. First, going to someplace like Bhutan, but also because it was the Himalayas and I knew we were going to be doing some hiking and there would always be a temple or a shrine or a Buddhist monastery at the top.
I mean, it was just so right up my alley, the leap of faith. And the thing that took me out of my comfort zone, of course, was spending a week with 25 people. I am a notorious introvert.
Here’s what really changed my life, because I think part of my introversion is in the normal world. I don’t think I relate to people well. And then you put me with 24, plus you, entrepreneurs, and I realize, “I’m just like… or they’re all just like me.”
I mean, that was really surprising to me and maybe it shouldn’t have been. But topics of alienation and not feeling like you belong in the normal world makes total sense that we would all share that. And yet, I thought it was just me. That’s just one example of the personal growth I got out of the way you structured that. Never mind the fact that you wouldn’t tell us what we were doing from day-to-day. You took my need for control and you just stepped all over it, it was awesome.
Mike Brcic: Well, that’s part of it too. Part of that equation is I just love surprises and I think experiences are better with surprise. But also, with this type of group where it’s a lot of high-achieving entrepreneur types — as entrepreneurs, we’re used to having a high level of control. We set the vision for our company and the strategy and we tell people what to do. Part of that strategy was to hopefully help people get comfortable with letting go of a little bit of control and just trusting what’s going to happen.
It’s super interesting to hear your feedback about that other stuff, because a lot of that is part of the agenda, like really just create a safe space for people to just share what’s going on.
And not only can you maybe get direct assistance with some of that stuff, but as you realize everybody’s kind of messed up, then maybe you don’t feel so messed up yourself, because you realize everyone’s messed up. This is just part of the human condition. You don’t have to layer on that sense of shame and guilt on top of whatever it is that’s messing you up. You can just realize, “Hey, this is what I’m struggling with. Everybody’s struggling with something and this is my particular struggle.” And you may also encounter people who are sharing the exact same struggle.
Brian Clark: I was shocked at how often people said the same thing, had the same emotions. And you know everyone’s messed up and you know everyone’s struggling with something. But I think for me, it was like, “Okay, you may not be like everyone in the world, but you’re a lot like these people, and that’s important. And relationships are important.”
I think for many years I have just told myself I didn’t need relationships. And that’s crazy when you say it out loud, but I think it’s something that we, as entrepreneurs who put our heads down to create stuff, we channel everything into that. And then, as you mentioned with your last company and same thing with me, relationship with my wife and kids, it was suffering and that was a big wakeup call, because what’s worth losing that?
Mike Brcic: Exactly.
Behind the Scenes of Your Business
Brian Clark: So I watched you probably more than you realized I was, because I’m kind of fascinated with the job you did and you did excellent. But obviously, you’ve got many balls in the air at all times.
Take us a little bit behind the scenes on how you design the trip and then how you execute on it, because it’s a fascinating business that you have. And yet, of course, all entrepreneurial ventures take quite a bit of work. And this is a particular type of work of organizing and coordinating and also crowd control. Talk a little bit about what’s your process.
Mike Brcic: Well, first off, I really appreciate that you appreciate that. Because if an event goes off smoothly, it tends to just feel natural and things just happen. And maybe when things all go poorly, then it becomes more obvious how much work is involved.
But there was a tremendous amount of work that went into that before. I think I shared that with all of you. It was about nine months’ worth of planning and working out logistics. I probably had two or three dozen Skype calls with Bethany, whom you met, who was my contact with the local operator there.
But my process, and I’m starting this process now for my 2021 events, is I start with this broad list of destinations I might want to go to and then I’ll open it up for suggestions. For me, I’m always looking at destinations where I think there’s something valuable to be taken away from the local culture. Of course, you could learn something from going to Ohio just as much as you can from Bhutan perhaps. But I’m looking for very specific examples of that. So that’s the initial phase, just kind of throwing darts at a dartboard and thinking about where do I want to go.
Once I’ve settled on a location, then there’ll be a scouting trip there to check out different lodges. Like I said, I like to book out entire lodges that we can have to ourselves, so that has to fit 20 to 30 people roughly. And it has to be close to great options for activities and adventures and culture and stuff like that. Sometimes there’s a follow-up scouting trip if I need to do some additional scouting for what’s available.
And then the first step is just putting together a basic itinerary. “Here’s where we’re going to be going day-to-day. Here are some of the things we might be doing, like hiking or visiting this village or whatnot.”
Then, about a couple of months before the event, I send out an intake form. You remember filling that out. And that’s really just trying to get to know all of the participants on the event. Who are they, what are their companies, what are they struggling with, what sort of value can they provide to others in terms of knowledge or expertise, stuff like that.
And then all of that gets kind of mish-mashed together and that informs dinner seating arrangements. It informs trying to make sure you got a little card that says, “I think you should connect with this person for this specific reason. And I think you can provide value to this specific person.” And then just trying to customize a little bit for each person.
Then the end result of all that is I use Airtable for my event planning. It’s basically like Google sheets on steroids kind of thing. I’ve got probably 25, 30 different sheets set up in that. It’s a day-by-day — every day that itinerary is broken up into 15 minute chunks. It’ll say, “Breakfast at 7:00 and at 7:45, the guides are waiting at the van. And at eight o’clock, we load everybody into the van.”
It’s very granular and it sounds kind of anal as I talk about it. But it also includes a lot of flexibility in there. What I know from running events is if you’re fast and loose with timing, then you just get this ripple effect where it’s like, “Okay, you leave 20 minutes late, and then the next thing you’re 20 minutes late, and all of a sudden you’re having lunch at three o’clock in the afternoon and dinners at ten o’clock. And maybe you have to skip an activity because now there’s no time for it.” So I try to be very precise with all of that.
All of that gets stuffed in there and whatever people — whether it’s the guides or whether it’s Bethany or other people, they get that stuff shared with them as well. So everybody knows where they’re supposed to be at any given time. And then, hopefully, if I do that, then everything flows smoothly.
By the time the actual event rolls around, I hopefully don’t have to do too much. So hopefully that came across — I wasn’t terribly stressed during the event, because I just felt like, “I’ve done everything. I’ve done my part.”
Brian Clark: I didn’t notice what you were doing because things went poorly. I noticed because it was so well done that I was kind of like, “How is this all working?” Bethany was great, the guides were great. I mean, you’ve got to get good people. It’s like any other business.
Mike Brcic: Yeah, and actually, I switched providers after about two weeks. I was working with one company out of Bhutan, and then I was introduced to another company and had a few chats with them and was just super impressed. It was a tough decision, because I was letting this other company down, because they thought they were going to get a nice, big chunk of business. And I ended up giving them sort of a severance package so to speak.
I’d already put a lot of time into that relationship, but I just thought the best thing going forward is to work with the people that I think are the best to work with. And that process extended to the guides as well. When Bethany brought the guides to me, we had suggested these guides, I had conversations with all of them just to make sure they were the right people. And, thankfully, they were all fantastic to work with.
Brian Clark: Yeah, for those who don’t know, when you visit Bhutan, you have to have guides in some capacity, and we had a group of guides the entire week. I don’t think it’s too much to say that we felt like they became our friends. We’re all Facebook friends now. Isn’t that great? You’ve got Bhutanese guides on your Facebook friend list and it’s awesome.
Mike Brcic: Also, I don’t know if you are, but I’m friends with Lama Namgay who was the head monk at the monastery.
Brian Clark: I saw that. I thought that was a bit much for me to reach for. He was the greatest.
Mike Brcic: Yeah, he’s one of the most wonderful humans I’ve met. So it’s kind of interesting to be connected with him on a platform like Facebook.
Brian Clark: Yeah. I saw a picture that the monastery got its first heavy snow. Jordan had a big part in this, but we brought them socks and hats. I mean, these little kids, they’re orphans, and the monks take care of them until they’re of age to make their own decisions about what they want to do. They live on the top of a mountain and it’s cold, really cold. And it’s not like they’ve got central heating up there. So it was good to see that they looked a little warmer when that first snow hit.
Mike Brcic: One point I want to make is the road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. There are all kinds of examples of well-meaning Westerners, wreaking all kinds of havoc around the developing world through their good intentions.
That particular thing was really a conversation with Lama Namgay and just saying, “Listen.” And it took a little bit of convincing to get him to open up the monastery to us for an overnight visit. But it was really convincing them that we’re coming there in the right spirit, in a spirit of curiosity and openness and connection, but that we also wanted to contribute to them as well.
So it was just a question to Lama Namgay, “How can we help the monastery?” And that was his response to us, “I’ve got a lot of monks here and we could really use socks and hats and warm things like that, because we’re missing a lot of this stuff.”
It’s been a lovely partnership and I plan on going back to Bhutan, maybe possibly on an annual basis running events there and maintaining hopefully a long-term, really beneficial relationship with Phajoding Monastery and supporting what they’re doing. Because he’s doing amazing stuff out there and he’s very under-resourced.
Brian Clark: Yeah, you could probably sign me up for that. I know you’ve got 2020 Mastermind Adventures in Greenland, which I wanted to go to but couldn’t make the dates work, in the Amazon. I think they’re both sold out, is that right?
Mike Brcic: Greenland is sold out. I’ve got a couple of spots left for the Amazon.
Where Can We Find You?
Brian Clark: All right, Mike, tell people where they can find you in case they’re — I mean, the Amazon, come on, that’s fantastic. But tell people where they can find you, so they can go check that out. Do we know anything about 2021 yet?
Mike Brcic: I do.
Brian Clark: Well, that you can share.
Mike Brcic: Where people can find more information is mastermind-adventures.com. From there you can navigate to Upcoming Adventures, and you can find out more about the Amazon event.
I’m particularly excited about an incredible guest I have coming by the name of Wade Davis, who’s one of the most knowledgeable, fascinating people on the planet. I describe him as kind of like Canada’s Indiana Jones, except he makes Indiana Jones look like a desk jockey. He’s lived the most incredible, fascinating life. So I’m super excited to spend the week with him and just learn more about him and his particular body of knowledge.
2021, all I will say about that is one of the events will be in Africa and I won’t say where. And it’s going to be in a very… well, I guess it’s an up and coming destination in Africa. But it’s quite an incredible destination, and I think there’s so much to be learned from this region and also just beautiful, beautiful scenery and wildlife and all that kind of stuff. So I’m still figuring out what the other 2021 event is going to be. So stay tuned.
Brian Clark: Well, that could be Bhutan I guess, if you’re going to make it annual. But you’re being surprise Mike again, and I get it.
Mike Brcic: Bhutan will probably be in the mix there as well. But there may be a third destination as well, because hopefully all that work that I put into Bhutan, I’ll only need to do about 10% of it, because I’ve got all those spreadsheets and everything’s there. So it won’t require the same amount of work. And so, yeah, there you have it.
Brian Clark: All right. I encourage all of you, if this sounds like something that is appealing to you, the intersection of adventure, a different culture and a bunch of like-minded people, it’s probably one of the best things I’ve done. Not only for my own personal growth, but it’s also within the context of my business. And yet, it’s so much more out of the box in that I’ve never been the type of guy who would go to the typical mastermind things.
Like I said, it was kind of a leap of faith for me to do this, but it was excellent. Mike, I appreciate it and thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with us.
Mike Brcic: Thank you. And I appreciate that you’ve joined me, because I appreciate our friendship now.
Brian Clark: Excellent, and I’ll be on another trip. You’re not going to keep me away.
Mike Brcic: Great.
Brian Clark: All right. Take care, Mike.
Mike Brcic: Thanks.