Rewind: The Captivation Code To Building Your Audience, with Mike Koenigs

Gord Vickman: Welcome to the next episode of Podcast Payoffs. We're so glad you're with us. My name's Gord Vickman, here as always with my podcast partner, Dan Sullivan. We have a very special show today. We're joined by a good friend of the show, great friend of Strategic Coach, and Dan, one of your podcast partners for the show Capability Amplifier, Mr. Mike Koenigs. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being here with us.
 
Mike Koenigs: It's my pleasure. Always fun to play with you guys.
 
Gord Vickman: Mike, you're a bestselling author and you're someone that has the solutions and people have been going to you for many, many decades to help solve problems in the business realm, the entrepreneurial realm, and the marketing realm. I don't really know how to compartmentalize all that and summarize you in a few sentences because you've done so much and you're doing so much right now. Is there anything I'm missing right now that you could help fill in for those who may not be all that familiar with the work that you're doing?
 
Mike Koenigs: There's a couple things worth noting. One of them is I'm a small-town nerd from a farming community that figured out how to get out of that little town. I became a developer, a programmer first, and then a marketer second. The story I usually say is my first business cost me my first marriage. My second and third businesses nearly cost me my second marriage, my relationship with my only son, and my life. So along the way, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, we experienced dark nights of the soul. And what I've learned are two big things. One of them is I want to be trained and taught by people who've been through everything I have or worse, because what we're looking for as business owners are shortcuts and guides of trust. And something that I really admire about Dan is he has an operating system that revolves around a positive moving future and a positive focus moving future. And that's my goal is to live a life of simplicity, elegance, with the least amount of aggravation all the time.
 
Dan Sullivan: Mike, one thing that from my experience is sort of unique about your background, not that you started very early, you started in your teens, but you did a double dip because usually entrepreneurs start off selling something and it can be anything because they're looking for independent cashflow at a very young age. They're looking for financial independence at a very young age. And the other thing is they all start off with technology. They'll get interested in some sort of technology, especially in the last, you know, 30 years. So it's either selling something or technology. But actually, you started both exactly at the same time, the selling and the technology. So that puts you into a very pioneering, I think, very pioneering role right from the beginning. So could you talk a little bit about that? Because that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about audience building. You kind of sense something right off the bat that the selling activity has to be facilitated by the technological solutions, especially as they get more powerful.
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah. So from a background perspective, my first company was called Digital Cafe and we were one of the first digital marketing agencies in the world. And at that point that was pre-web. So one of the ways I got some of my big high profile clients was from Prodigy, Lycos, which a lot of people have never heard of that, Apple Inc., CompuServe, and then AOL a little bit later on.
 
Dan Sullivan: You're talking eighties.
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah, eighties and nineties. I started posting messages and showing examples of our work, which we were effectively creating, we called it branded entertainment at the time. So like we created screensavers and floppy disk-based—we'd put like a whole animation, a story on a floppy disk. Now this is one megabyte is what you have. So it was a black and white animation with voice and sound. It was almost impossible. So we had to really figure out how to be super efficient. And this is before there were CD-ROMs. And when CD-ROMs came along, it cost like $15,000 to have a CD-ROM burner, $10,000 to create a glass master. And then the next stage was online, but you had to design something for a 14K modem or a 28K modem, which was painfully slow. Our videos we could put on a website were the size of a postage stamp. We're doing movie promotions for 20th Century Fox and Sony.
 
So I think one of the tie-ins here is, you know, finding effective ways to use technology to promote market, create a movement, and create buying behaviors is always a moving target. And, you know, you got to avoid boring at all costs. So that forces you to take on whatever the cutting edge is without completely alienating the masses. So there is a very delicate balance there and there isn't much of a delicate balance anymore. You can brute force a lot of stuff, but the biggest challenge anyone has now is everyone's online. It costs nothing to broadcast. It costs nothing to make a podcast or broadcast video on social media. That was impossible not long ago in 2006, 2007, when we were starting to broadcast. It would cost me 15 to 25 grand to do a multi-hour broadcast show because there was no YouTube Live or Facebook Live or whatever.
 
Dan Sullivan: Our Zoom here, we can create really terrific videos with Zoom now.
 
Mike Koenigs: Totally.
 
Dan Sullivan: Pretty well for free, you know, really free actually.
 
Mike Koenigs: Exactly. And so now more than ever, you've got to be strategic about audience building because you can't do something. We used to call it spray and pray. And so you just all over the place, send out whatever and pray that someone's going to see it because it was unique and different. It happened. And being cutting edge then was different than now. It was hard. It was risky. It was expensive then. Now I don't think it's hard, risky, or expensive. But what you've really got to do is figure out how to go deep and narrow and have a meaningful conversation that's authentic because the world smells inauthenticity really quickly.
 
We're just so used to, like today, I got a text message that said it was from American Express, that a certain thing was approved, and I had to send the message to my bookkeeper saying, is this real? You don't know what is real and what isn't real now, and it's going to get harder as deepfake technology gets better and better. That, I think, is our next big thing. It's like, who do I trust, what do I trust, and how can I tell if something's actually virtual or real now?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think the other aspect about this, and Gord has quite a background in this, I was a copywriter for BBDO in the early seventies. So my trip to Canada 50 years ago was really to be a copywriter with the Canadian affiliate, you know, that had BBDO. But BBDO, you know, even today is probably in the top 10 of global advertising agencies. But we were dealing with very, very expensive radio space, very, very expensive TV space back then. And you were used to the fact that there was only so much frequency, and it was a monopoly, and it was essentially controlled by the government in some way. And I think that a lot of people, even though the internet is virtually unlimited, as far as I know it is unlimited, but the thing about that, I think that the mind that there's only so much space to go along, you only have so much access, you don't, you got unlimited access. But the rules that work for the scarce mediums, don't work for the totally abundant medium. It's a totally different approach.
 
Mike Koenigs: Yes. Yeah, right on.
 
Gord Vickman: When you think about it, there's only so many FM frequencies, there's only so many channels, and there were gatekeepers. Now, there's a good part to that and a bad part to that. And I mean, one of the things that's interesting is there are no gatekeepers, there's no limitations to anyone who can broadcast anything.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, individuals are the gatekeepers.
 
Gord Vickman: Yeah. And the listeners are the gatekeepers, because if you put out a show that sucks or you're doing something online that really sucks, no one's going to watch it. But that's one of the great things and one of the bad things about podcasting or YouTube broadcasting yourself is there are no gatekeepers. So wading through the trash heap to find something that's of quality is the new form of the gatekeeper. But Dan, when I was thinking about the way that you built Strategic Coach, I'll call it, you know, the strategy you had, because we didn't have the ability to do what we're doing right now. It was sort of boots on the ground. You were the one setting things up. You were the one traveling by yourself to various cities. Did it ever feel like a bit of a slog to you?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, no, because what were you comparing it to?
 
Gord Vickman: True.
 
Dan Sullivan: I mean, there wasn't something easier that you had come from. I mean, this was great. No, I never failed it. But when you begin to see that there's alternatives to what you're doing, you know, which I saw with Zoom five years ago before we were more or less forced to go to it, I said, gee, I wish there was somebody at the other end. I've kind of mastered it from my end, but there's nobody at the other end. And within three months after COVID became the rule and there was shutdown, all of a sudden the whole world was at the other end. And I was totally prepared to flip in 24 hours to the new thing. I've been waiting for it for five years, but I mean, one telephone isn't very valuable unless somebody else has a set too. I mean, you gotta have listeners on the other side. And that's been remarkable. But, you know, I mean, you talk about trash and everything like that. You know, I think nature kind of works on the principle there's only two things, there's seeds and there's manure, you know, and you just got to know which is which.
 
Gord Vickman: True. My background is terrestrial radio. That's where I came from. 10 years doing a morning show. And I got out because I looked over the horizon. I didn't like what I saw. And also waking up at 2:30 in the morning drives you a little bit bonkers. Walking around in a state of catatonic exhaustion at all times. I'm like, yeah, 10 years of this, it's time to move on. But we had a boots on the ground strategy as well. And one of the ways you build a traditional radio show is if somebody wants you to go do something to put your face out there in front of a crowd, you do it. We emceed every bake sale, every church bazaar, every community this—there's a hockey tournament, like, we were up on stage hundreds of times, every single weekend, every single night, anytime they wanted an emcee, because that's what you do. Because people are much more likely to listen to someone that they've actually met and seen in real life.
 
So we must have hosted over the 10 years, got to be 500 different community events. It was just boots on the ground. The station had been number six for 19 years. And within three years, it was number one. And all it was, was just we worked harder than everybody else. I thought we were a better show, too. We were more entertaining, but we just went out and did it. And it's different now because, of course, this is like early 2000s. We didn't have the ability to do podcasts. I remember getting audio on our website was just such a pain in the rear end. It was difficult. We had developers there trying to figure out, how do I put an MP3 on a website? And no one could figure it out. And then now look where we are. Here we go.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah and just to put things in perspective, Gord, you could be mining in Sudbury.
 
Gord Vickman: Right?
 
Dan Sullivan: So yeah, you've spent all that time mining in Sudbury. Mike could have been picking crops. I could have been picking crops, milking cows, and we're not, you know, so I think life's pretty good.
 
Gord Vickman: Mike, you said the word authenticity, and I came across this really neat article. I cannot pronounce this gentleman's name. I'll attempt, though. Renevas Rao, he has a podcast, and he's a longtime podcaster. He writes online as well. And he was talking about how to build an audience. And this comes up all the time. And that's why both of you, I'm gifted with two of the best audience builders probably on earth. And that's why I wanted to ask you, because I'm sure others would be interested. He's talking about how audience building has as much to do with your personality as it does the work that you're putting in.
 
So he said, you need four things. You need social intelligence, compassion, authenticity, as you mentioned, Mike, and generosity. And if you don't feature those and if those don't ooze out of your pores, you're basically sunk because people are going to recognize right away and they're not going to be interested. So social intelligence, compassion, authenticity, and generosity. Let's start with you, Mike. Do you agree with those or does anything kind of stick out as like, no, don't need that? What do you think of that?
 
Mike Koenigs: I think they're all important. And this is a really important thing that I've realized in people I work with is, you know, when you meet someone and you're blown away with their it factor in Hollywood, they say that person walks in and sucks the energy out of the room, or you feel them when they walk in to meet a true charismatic, You know, that's what we look for is someone who's got that raw talent and know that you can do something with it. And that's so attractive. It's sort of like, you know, the way people described a lot of the young rockers who all died at age 27. Whether it's Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison. Amy Winehouse. There's that interesting cycle.
 
There's two other things that show up for me. One of them is just that raw, they just know how to manifest and manage energy in a magical way. It's an energetic presence slash, they're like a sun, right? And sometimes these suns, people, I have described people like Tony Robbins like this before, and I've heard it about a lot of stars. They're like nukes. All the moths are attracted to the bright light, but if you get too close, you get fried. And that's oftentimes what happens when you work around these personalities. Another side of it, and maybe this falls under the category of social intelligence, but they understand the universal nature of momentum. And by that, I mean they have this ability to get stuff rolling. And I've watched it before.
 
So a fake way of doing this, for example, is for someone to hire a bunch of camera people and video people and follow them around. And it creates the sense of who is that? Who is that? And there's pictures taken, you know, like politicians do it. A lot of folks will do it, but they'll create this fake momentum. And eventually enough people believe it.
 
Gord Vickman: Is that an LA thing? ‘Cause Mike, you're in San Diego right now. Is that an LA thing? I've read about that service where you can actually hire people to follow you around and then people will assume that there's five photographers following you around. So you must be important. Is that a thing?
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah, it is, but it's not just in LA. I've seen it and you see it in airports, you know, and it's like, who is that person? Who is that? It's sort of like, am I missing out? Am I supposed to know this person? Kai Lopez did a really good job of that initially to build his platform and pretty soon he was showing up at basketball games and people were clapping for him at the same level of intensity as Kobe Bryant because he bought seats right next to the players. And suddenly when you show up everywhere and you're driving the fancy cars, even if everything's leased, enough momentum gets created. So, you know, and there's ways to fake it and there's ways for it to be real, but that is definitely an element. But I'm curious what Dan's read is.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I'll tell you a little story. And when I was 18 years old, I wanted to be an actor. Okay, so similar story to Mike, farm boy from Northern Ohio. And the truth is I have good acting skills. Any play I've been in, I've been good. I've been good in any play. I've probably been in, you know, 15, 20 theatrical productions. When I was just leaving high school, I moved to Washington, D.C. and I worked and I went to university, but the real star in both the movie world and also the theater world at that time was Richard Burton. Part of the reason is he was a tremendous actor. He had a phenomenal voice, probably one of the greatest speaking voices in theater or movie history, and had a tremendous amount of focused energy.
 
He had just signed the largest live theater contract in the history of theater, and it was for Hamlet on Broadway for $1 million. I mean, this was unprecedented. I mean, actors in England were lucky. In the UK, where he came from, we're getting $50,000. And they were happy for it. We're talking 1962 here. So dollars were different back then. I wrote him a letter. And about three weeks later, I get a three-page handwritten letter back. And I think it was real, and apparently he had a reputation for answering his own fan mail. But I had asked him several questions, and I don't remember everything I asked him, but every question I asked was answered in the letter.
 
And then he got to the last page. He said, but here's the deal. You got to decide something. He says, do you want to be an actor or do you want to be a star? And he said, if you want to be an actor, there's really great acting schools where you'll go and it's like a craft. You learn the basics of acting, you know, and you'll go through various stages and get more and more noticed and involved. And then you can go through regional theaters and then you'll gradually get to bigger theaters. And he says, that's acting. He says, star, what you do is you skip the schools altogether and you go to the smallest, most insignificant community theater, and you're the star. And then when you outgrow that, you find another one, and you go, and you're the star. But you're always the star. You're never a supporting actor. You're always the star. And then in the last paragraph, and this sort of told me that it was real, he said, by the way, I never wanted to be an actor.
 
Gord Vickman: He was a star.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. He was a star. And my sense is that before you decide who the audience is, you have to decide what you are. Are you a craftsman or are you a star? And I think it makes a real big difference what it is. I think I'm more inclined to the stars than the acting way of doing it. But a star in my own world, not a star in somebody else's world. In order to be a star, it took me 30 or 40 years to actually create the setting and create the structure and the support system. But I've always been inclined to be a star in the sense I didn't want other people telling me how to do what I'm doing.
 
Gord Vickman: Mm hmm.
 
Mike Koenigs: That is such a great distinction. So I have three things. I'll try to make them as fast as I can that correlate with that. The first one is what you've done, Dan, is you created your own platform. You've created your own theater. And Tony Robbins said something to me years ago that at the time I was pissed at him. I was like, what a jerk. And then I thought about it. I realized how genius it was when he said, Mike, I'm in the entertainment business. We were talking about transformation and stuff like that. And he goes, no, no, no. 80% is entertainment, 20% of it is content. And I was like, I just curdled. My hackles went up and I didn't realize how important it is because you can go to a place that's all content and it's boring as hell and there's no following. He knows the value of being an entertainer.
 
And I would just flat out say, Dan, you're a great entertainer. You know how to work the audience and make everyone feel you do something magical that great performers do. Tony does it. So do great musicians. They look at the audience just like 1.2 times longer than you're supposed to. So it feels like you have a personal connection and you have a way of creating that connection during our meetings, for example, and asking people's opinions, making them feel important and valued. And that is an authentic thing. It is both a presentation performance, in my opinion, as well as it is completely real. And Tony has that ability.
 
So that's one core distinction here. And when you talked about the concentration of energy, absolutely positively agree. Something else happened years ago. I met Richard Dreyfuss on a flight and I ended up spending a good chunk of time with him. And the short version was I saw him up ahead, seated in a seat ahead of me. And on the way off the plane, I was thinking, how do I meet Richard Dreyfuss? I want to connect with him and learn more and have a relationship with him. And I came up with a way. I handed him a book and I said, hi, Mr. Dreyfus, I have an idea to help you raise money for your foundation. And he turned to me and said, walk with me. Let's start talking.
 
And, you know, a week later he was in my studio. I was helping him out. I helped him on some consulting and did an interview. And, you know, he had a lovely time, but he said something. And this is the big lesson. We're talking about money. And he said, Mike, let me tell you something. I'm an actor, not a movie star. And the way you can tell is by what's in my bank account. And look, he's damn near 80 and he's still a working actor. And he's been in incredible movies, but he's never had the big payday. And if you look at someone like Madonna, Lady Gaga, they're stars, right? That's that distinction. And it's not just looks. You know when you meet a star, and you know when you meet a worker. And there's a big, big difference between that.
 
And the last, there's a great star story. It was B.B. King. He's about to go out on stage, and at the last minute, the bass player says, I'm not going on stage unless you double my salary. And B.B. opens up the curtain, he says, see that whole audience out there? The bass player says, yeah, and he goes, do you know who they're here to see and listen to tonight? You go, so you take your seat, you walk up on that stage and you play, or you'll never work in this business ever again. And that was the end of the story, right? And I don't know if that's true or not. I heard the story, I'm just repeating it. But I think the important lesson is always remember who's platform.
 
Dan Sullivan: If it wasn't true, it should be true.
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah, yeah, totally. Don't be blackmailing me. That story deserves to be true, you know.
 
Gord Vickman: It's funny you brought up Dreyfus, Mike. I watched Jaws last night. I literally watched the movie Jaws last night with Dreyfus and one of his, you know.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, this is highly individual, you know, which path you take. You know, there's a lot of circumstances that decide a lot of things, who you are, what time it is, you know, what's the period, you know, what's available to you. There's all these things. But one thing I want to add, you were talking about the entertainment and the content. But what I've really focused on is actually context. We actually talked about this, Mike, about a month ago on our podcast. And that is that all the people who I consider my audience, they don't actually want to know what I know. They actually want to know why they should know me.
 
We actually talked about this, and that is I'm a great shortcutter. I create enormous thinking shortcuts, communication shortcuts, action shortcuts. And all my audience are people who are looking for shortcuts. They're all entrepreneurial. So I'm very, very niched. People said, what do you think about the statement, the audience is always right? And I said, I think the audience is always right if it's the right audience.
 
Mike Koenigs: Hell yeah.
 
Dan Sullivan: The whole thing is that you can be saying really great things, but it's just the wrong audience for you. And guess what? That audience is wrong, okay? If they think what you're saying is bullshit, it's wrong, but it's not wrong because they're right. It's wrong because they're not the right audience for you to talk about. So I've really spent 30 years, 30, 40 years just saying, who is the person that what I have to offer is really right for them. In other words, this is what they're looking for. They don't want to go through five years of experience to get five lessons. They'd rather the person with five years of experience distill it down for them that they can learn the five things in a day or an hour. So my belief is that I'm very just specialized for a certain kind of person. And I think the audience building, look, you can't know from the start who your audience has got to be. There's got to be a lot of trial and error with this. I mean, you know, things you thought were right that weren't right, things that you didn't know were right and suddenly they become right. I just think there's a lot of trial and error to developing the right audience.
 
Gord Vickman: Let's wrap this episode with a big juicy question, and we'll start with Mike and then we'll go to Dan. So the X factor that we were talking about earlier, Mike, that, you know, moth to a light bulb, that person just walks into the room and the charisma and just the way they are. Are you born with that?
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I think it comes back to that question of authenticity. I know people who have faked it until it appeared as though they had it. And deep inside, they always kind of gave me the creeps. And it's because they wanted it so desperately that there's that embedded neediness. So I think it's just about the foundation. And then there's that bright, shining star. And I've seen kids who are like three years old who have the it, you can't take your eyes off them and you're like, where did that burst of pure starlight come from? It's as if you're seeing an alien wrapped in a human skin.
 
I'm going to just say I think there are people who are born with it. I think there is a time and there is a phase, I can't remember what it's called, but some psychologists and some astrological people know what this is and someone smarter than me will probably recognize this, but there is a moment of truth in anyone who's ever experienced this moment of mastery in their life, when something clicks and you find your it, to use Dan's language, your unique ability, and you're like, you know, and that hopefully will happen. We have multiple inventions and reinventions throughout your life.
 
But you've seen it before with like you meet someone who's like a hack guitarist and you go away for a summer and you see them and they come back and you're like, holy crap, they just had this thing and they're playing the blues or they're playing some music and you're like, they've got that it, like there are a few people, like Freddie Mercury. That guy had more it, and if you just watch the Live Aid concert that they ended up using in the movie, there's a guy with it.
 
And then another example, there's another musician that is a take your breath away moment, and I'm spacing out right now, but I'll just leave it at that. Was Freddie Mercury born with it? I think he just knew so much of who he was, he was gonna fight for it no matter what, until it either killed him or made it. And I think there's that hunger that determines. So I think if you activate the hunger and then you have that moment of perfect clarity when you meet your tool and something comes out of you, but there's just as much magic as there is discipline behind it.
 
Gord Vickman: Dan, same question. Are you born with it?
 
Dan Sullivan: I don't know whether you're born with it, but I know you die with it. No, what I mean is you don't retire from it. That when you die, you're still developing it. Okay, so that's my biggest proof. The other thing is that other people see it as a fight, but you just see it as no alternative. My second bankruptcy, I went to see a banker who was a nice guy, and he had probably taken somewhat of a professional risk. In other words, my failure actually gave him a bad grade card in that world. And he said, I know your background. You've given me your background. You're a writer. You've made good money as a writer. You've made good money as an artist. When are you going to stop this thing? And I was about 10 years into coaching, and you can be ahead of the world with what you're doing. And the world kind of has to catch up with what it is you're doing. And I can think of lots of people that they were just ahead of the world and it looked like they were failures. They were just early, you know. The only question is, can you hold out long enough for the world to catch up with you?
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah, that's right. Or where the world destroys you or they see it and feel it and you're such a threat. It's like the Nikola Tesla, you know.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. He's an example of that. Yeah. But I said to him, look, there's no alternative. I'm just not smart enough yet to be good at this. I'm just not smart enough to be successful. But I said, there's no alternative except to keep going what I'm doing. And so I don't see it as like, gee, I'm a failure at this and I'm gonna have to find something else. I think if it's it, you just keep going. Now the big question is, you can be a stupid it.
 
It was so funny, I had, by courtesy of Joe Polish, I had a real treat of spending about two hours with Alice Cooper and his wife one night in Scottsdale. He was a session musician, just like a lot of people were in Hollywood. They all had, you know, kind of suites in a hotel in Los Angeles, and Janis Joplin was one of them, and Jimi Hendrix was one of them. He met Shep Gordon, who was his manager. Shep Gordon was introduced to Alice Cooper by Jimi Hendrix. He said, this young guy, he says, you know, you're going to need somebody like this. He said, I don't know if I'm going to last long enough to need somebody like Shep, but he says, you will.
 
He's 74 years old. Okay. And he's really smart. And he was really smart in his marriage. He's got a great marriage and she gave him the, you know, you either stop doing certain things or I'm gone and I've got the papers all written up and the lawyer is expecting me. So you got to make your choice. And I think he was smart enough to know that he needed this. I feel smart in terms of teaming up with Babs. And I feel very smart in teaming up with all my collaborations. Mike is one of them. Joe Polish is one of them. Ben Hardy is one of them. I've got all these really smart collaborations. So my sense is that I've seen people who are supremely talented, but really stupid. And I've seen people who are supremely talented over time it develops, but they team up with the right people along the way. So that's my thought about that. It's a hard thing to know, you know, it's a hard thing to know, but I do know that nobody retires from it.
 
Gord Vickman: And as you've said in the past, Dan, there's no incentive like no alternative. And for those with the it, there is no alternative. That's the incentive.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and you're not seeing that, like, I just don't think you're tortured by the way that other people, well, did I choose the right thing? Is this the right path, you know? Is this where the money's going to be made? Is this going to make you popular? I don't think people who have it go through any of that thinking. They just want to know, can I be freed up enough to do this all the time?
 
Mike Koenigs: That is absolutely true. And can I get someone that I trust to manage all the noise so I can be in that zone all the time? That is the ruin of so many great creatives. It's like the story of Prince, for example, who, by the way, was another one of those people with an it that I think was he was so hungry to have it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Much more than Michael Jackson, by the way. I mean, just not a particular fan of both of them, but I see the one and the other. And you could just tell that he just dialed it in, you know, there wasn't any contrivance about it at all and everything like that, you know. It's hard to say, you know, it's hard to say. I mean, my all-time favorite pop entertainer is Roy Orbison. And Roy Orbison, you know, I have to tell you, he was into what he was doing when he was about five years old. But I have to tell you, it was a long haul. It was 25 or 30 years. And then he kind of hit a groove and all of a sudden these number one after number one just started popping out.
 
I mean, Elvis Presley was interviewed, and he said, you know, you have one of the greatest pop voices in the world. He says, no, no, no. He says, I'll tell you who's got the greatest voice of any pop singer in the world, and that's Roy Orbison. He says, we're all in agreement with that. There's not a pop singer that I know, if you get him in private and you ask him who's got the greatest singing voice of a pop entertainer of all time, it's Roy Orbison. You know, I mean, Katie Lang, who is a terrific singer, and she said, I was scared to death when I worked with him. He could start an octave lower and he could finish an octave higher. He just went up there and he never moved. If you watch him, he never moves. It's just, whoa. Yeah, no, he had a voice of an angel. And a thoroughly nice human being. I mean, everybody really, really liked him, you know, but it was Lon, you know, he died ‘52. You know, if he hadn't died, he would be singing in the seventies or eighties, you know, but he didn't take care of himself.
 
Mike Koenigs: Yeah. Yeah. I thought of one more who's worth looking at if you haven't reviewed them in a long time. Stephen Perry from Journey. They were another crazy journey and he went back, he was working on his uncle's turkey farm. He had given up on music and one of the guys from Journey found him because they discovered an old demo tape and said, give it a shot. And it was his mother who said, you know, go for it, because he had bills to pay.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Mike Koenigs: So he could have just disappeared. And that would have been that. And he wound up being one of the greatest rock and roll performers of all time with an absolutely angelic voice and went through the grinder as well. You know, the Bee Gees are another one of those. And all of them have the same story. They would have died getting there or it ended up killing them.
 
Dan Sullivan: So, you know, when it showed up early, you don't know because you don't necessarily know the story, but most of how they end up and when they end up is pretty well public record. And, you know, you don't retire to the golf club when you've got it.
 
Gord Vickman: End on a high. If you don't know if you have it, if the thought of retiring to the golf club makes you want to, you don't have it. Mike Koenigs, where can people learn a little bit more about you and get to know a little bit more about the work that you do? Obviously, the show you do with Dan, Capability Amplifier, you can find that on our network page, strategicpodcasts.com. Click that and you can find Capability Amplifier. But the work that you do, where can people learn a little bit more?
 
Mike Koenigs: First of all, just repeat that, which is Capability Amplifier is one of my favorite things on the planet to do. Magic happens every time we have a chance to chat, but it's just my personal website. And I'll give you somewhere to go to because I am a huge fan of storytelling first and foremost, and finding the fastest way to have someone experience a transformational journey and raise their hand and say, yes. And so if you go to mikekoenigs.com/funnel, you'll see a video that I produced not that long ago. It's all about capturing transformations. And I think that's really the secret, you know, tying all this together. If you're going to be a charismatic or you're going to be a star, you're going to be anything, you've always got to be looking for, how do I create a transformation, all the time. And I think that's where you create momentum. So that would be my answer.
 
Gord Vickman: Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. On to the next.
 
Mike Koenigs: Let's do it.
 
Gord Vickman: Thank you.