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Today, we’re thrilled to welcome an exceptional guest, Michael Bernoff.Image may be NSFW.
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Michael is a master of human communication and NLP, renowned for unlocking human potential. As the founder of the Human Communications Institute and the bestselling author of “Average Sucks,” Michael has dedicated over two decades to transforming leaders and entrepreneurs, guiding them to reprogram their mindset and optimize their language skills for heightened success.
In this engaging episode, Michael elucidates the hidden power of language and its profound impact on shaping our reality. Michael embarks on a journey through his personal and professional experiences, from embracing his potential in Scottsdale, Arizona, to influencing elite athletes and top industry leaders worldwide. He shares how understanding human communication can propel one past limitations and open doors to endless opportunities.
This episode is more than just a conversation; it’s a toolkit for breaking free from the self-imposed barriers that often confine us. Michael’s insights aren’t confined to theoretical paradigms; they are practical strategies designed to help listeners take control of their lives and businesses.
In This Episode
- The transformative power of language in achieving desired results.
- Uncovering and overcoming self-imposed limitations.
- The four critical areas driving personal and professional success.
- Strategies to build enduring habits and foster genuine growth.
Join us as Michael Bernoff imparts the wisdom needed to harness your true potential and transform both your personal and professional life.
Are you tired of paying too much in taxes, gambling your future on the stock market, and want to learn about hidden strategies for making your money work for you? And now your host, Dave Wolcott, serial entrepreneur and author of the best-selling book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode on Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Today’s episode is all about unlocking your full potential, breaking through limitations, and transforming the way you communicate—not just with others, but with yourself.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your business, your wealth, or your personal growth, today’s conversation will be a game changer. Joining us is Michael Bernoff, a master of human communication, NLP, and high performance. Michael is the founder of Human Communications Institute and the author of the best-selling book, Average Sucks, a must-read for anyone looking to push past their own limits and achieve more in life. Over the past two decades, he’s worked with top entrepreneurs, elite athletes, and industry leaders to help them reprogram their mindset, optimize their language, and unlock new levels of success. In this episode, we dive deep into the hidden power of language and how changing just a few words can transform your results, why most people unknowingly operate within self-imposed limits, the four key areas that drive success, how to create lasting habits that actually stick and shift your identity for real growth, and lastly, the real reason most people struggle with money, relationships, and personal growth.
Michael doesn’t just talk about high performance—he lives it. And today, he’s here to give you the tools and mindset shifts you need to take control of your life and business. And if you find this episode valuable, please choose one person you can share it with to make a difference for them. And on to the show.
Michael, welcome to the show.
Well, Dave, I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
Yeah. I am so excited to have you on the show, Michael.
Your genius has really made a profound impact on my life ever since I’ve heard your work, and I’m just really grateful to have you here today to share that wisdom with our audience and really help them get some new insights—and really some new ways to think that they might not have been thinking about in the past. So why don’t we kick things off with just a bit about your origin story, how you developed your superpower, and how you got into this space of neuro-linguistic programming and, really, high performance and self-improvement?
Yeah. It’s interesting you bring that up. I think, imagine being a kid, like, all little kids think they’ve got a superpower, and then I’m an adult.
And I’m like, you know what? It worked. I got my superpower, which I truly believe everybody has. So there’s a lot of ways to attack the origin story. I would tell you I could start at the beginning, and I live in Scottsdale, Arizona now.
I grew up in New Jersey. Just to give, like, a geographical explanation, I moved across the world. So I grew up in the seventies, child of the eighties in New Jersey. And I think the biggest way all of this began was I realized there was a duality out there. There was the way that we lived, and I would see these other people.
I lived in, like, middle-class USA and Little Rockaway, New Jersey, Morris County. And then I’d go to these malls, and I’d see these people. They live differently. I’d see people. I’m like, what are they doing that I’m not doing?
And I’d ask my parents who lived with me—wonderful parents—they lived with me. I’d ask them, and they—oh, they’re business owners. They’re this. They’re that.
You know, if you want that one day, work hard, be a good person. I never really got great advice. So my biggest shift in my life happened when, randomly, I, after high school, I was gonna go to college because that’s the thing that we were told to do—go to college. That’s what my parents told me to do. And it’s kind of funny.
I’m, Dave, I don’t know if you got this, you’re this generation, but I’m that ADD generation. Did they push that on you as a kid?
Oh, yeah.
Like, it was like, we have nothing else to sell these people.
The teachers suck. We’re just gonna tell all the kids they got ADD. So I wound up with, like, a special little counselor, and my parents paid, like, $3,000 in nineteen nineties to find me the perfect college that I could go to that would give me extra time, help me learn, do my thing, and they wound up sending me to Arizona. And I didn’t realize until two years in that she meant to send me to the University of Arizona, and she sent me to Arizona State, which is, like, the largest party school in the world. And why I tell you that is you wanna get a kid that can’t pay attention, send them to ASU.
Yeah. Absolutely insane. Where the story goes is simple. I didn’t do very well for my first couple years. I wound up going to community college because I was invited to not come back because my grades weren’t good, and they said, come back after you get good grades.
Here was the coolest part. The difference between Arizona State and the community colleges—the community college, I could take business classes. And all of the teachers and professors owned businesses, and I was in thrall. I’m like, this is amazing. One guy owned three spaghetti factory-type restaurants.
Another guy owned carpentry, and they taught us sales and business. And one teacher said, if you wanna get ahead in life, you gotta read. And you heard the class go, I don’t wanna read. Right? And he goes, I’m gonna give you a different list of books.
And he offered everything from—I mean, he offered, like, books on mark—on, like, capitalism, communist manifesto was on there. And one of those books was How to Win Friends and Influence People. So picture this, Dave—a nineteen-year-old guy, single, influence people, Arizona State, round college. This is great.
I can influence people. I’d never understood till that day that you could learn yourself—Internet—but picture the nineties. I never realized you could get a book, and you could get better influences in something you were born with. So long story short, I get into business, struggle with it for a bit, and that is where I met a guy while I was doing an event. I’m sure a lot of your clients have been there before.
You’re pitching, and you halfway believe in yourself. Business is not doing as good as you need it to. And a dude comes up to me at the end, and he basically said, have you ever heard of neurolinguistic programming? And he goes, I’ve been working for the guy that invented it and a guy named Tony Robbins for doing AV for them for ten, fifteen years. And, man, you’ve got a lot of potential.
I think you could be great. I ignored him off the bat. And after enough time, he sat me down, and he goes, when you learn how to communicate differently, you can have anything you want in this world. And what’s crazy was there’s a guy that sold pet safety for a living, changed my life. Got him—Tom.
And that’s the guy that woke me up, and then I wound up meeting Jim Rohn, and the story goes from there.
Yeah. What an amazing journey. I grew up in a similar time frame, actually, in Connecticut, so in the Tri-State area as well.
That’s why I like you.
It’s really fascinating, right? Because part of my journey was all around—you know, it was the same thing. We were all taught to go to school, get good grades, you’re gonna get a job, life would work out. That’s kind of the recipe.
Yep.
But, you know, meeting folks like yourself, once you get out into the real world, the reality is that it’s really about breaking free from conventional wisdom and thinking. It’s about trying to think differently, understand your unique abilities, your superpowers, and how you can apply those into the world to create value. That’s where you really shine, right? And I know that’s huge to try to teach our kids and other generations, but we’re kind of stuck in this system.
It’s almost like this machine that’s holding us back. Even think about the eight-hour workdays in offices and schools, right? Eight hours—that’s from the industrial age.
You know?
Now it’s all about a performance-based economy, not time and effort, right? But we have these old paradigms that we’re under, and they apply to everything in your life if you can break free from them.
Yeah. It’s fascinating because I’ve learned that there’s probably about four or five things that we need to learn in life, maybe four or five total that work for everybody, and there’s nine million things that probably will never work. The majority of people are fighting over the nine million things. If we could just assimilate what those four or five real things are—it’s not how much time you put in, it’s not these average things that they’re telling us. And that’s what I want to make certain your team understands today because now, if I fast forward from that, the gap in the middle was twenty-three years of working with the highest-performing human beings on Earth.
Everything from UFC fighters to top influencers to business owners to folks like yourself, people in the financial world. I get the biggest phone calls in the world, helping people over major issues. After the shooting in Columbine, I worked with the kids dealing with PTSD. I’ve seen it all.
So why is this kid that didn’t do very well in school, that never got past C grades, that had ADD and struggled—why are top financial people asking him to come up with how they communicate? That was the last twenty-three years.
Yeah. So let’s unpack that, Michael. Let’s talk about the four things that we need to learn.
Yep. I wish it was four. I don’t know. It’s four.
I love it.
I threw a number out there, but I think it’s four.
If you can put a framework together and I only have to do four things, it’d be awesome.
I’m going to tell you—well, actually, I will tell you that there is one very simple word that everything comes down to in life. And this is the most important thing of all that everybody may not understand. Immediately when I say it, people are like, “Oh, I already do that.”
You know what I mean? But they don’t know what I mean by that. So give it the podcast to understand what I mean by that. One central focus that all of us need to get better at—when I invented something called human interaction technology, that is our version of what people would call NLP back in the day.
That is the version of language and psychology that we teach. Human interaction technology teaches one thing—check one thing before anything else in life, and that’s called your communication. The number one place to check in your life before you check anywhere else, before you spend a dollar, before you go to a gym, before you do anything, is check your language first because it controls every single thing in life, period. And from there, there are three other things that I’ll cover in a minute, but that’s where it starts.
That’s where it begins. That is your issue in your relationship with your children, with getting their homework done, with your ADD, with your depression, with your anxiety, with your worry, with your concern—all language-related from the get-go. I can go very deep on that if you’d like, but I will tell you why people make the amount of money they make in this world has more to do with language and communication than anything else.
Yeah. It’s really a fascinating topic, and I think the one point that you should emphasize is probably what’s coming to people’s minds, right, is communication with others.
Can I communicate with my spouse better at work and things like that? But you’re that NLP expert. You know, I would believe that all the communication actually starts with that conversation in your head, right, that you’re having all the time, and Tony talks about it. Right? What is the story that you’re telling yourself literally every day?
Yes. And all of us have to understand that the words that we use are a filing system inside of our mind. And whenever we say anything to ourselves, it’s crazy. So let’s just take a prime example. This doesn’t solve everything.
It gives you a more solvable problem. And a lot of us have to realize that whether it’s a challenge or a problem, the one you currently have is not being solved. Okay? So you either have to look at it differently or create a different one. So I’m gonna tell you, if you’re always gonna have challenges, you might as well have solvable ones.
So have you ever heard anybody say, “Man, I just can’t stop eating that. It just attracts me. I love it. It’s just like I’m obsessed. I need it”?
Have you ever heard that before? Yes. Okay. So major corporations in the world spend a lot of time, like Starbucks, getting you to love Starbucks, getting you to love yogurt. I mean, Ben and Jerry’s wants you to love ice cream.
Right? That is their goal. The second most powerful word in the Bible outside of God is love. Period. Do you know what I’m saying?
Now if you don’t do Bible in your relationship, love is going to be the thing we’re after. If you’ve been to any Tony events—I haven’t been in twenty-five years to one—but one of the things I learned years ago is relationships are people’s biggest issue, people’s problems. We’re a genius network. It is always a relationship with our kids, our family, ourselves. Period. That’s the problem that leads to the challenges.
So why I say that is this. A human being that says, “I love cheesecake. I love Red Bull.” Of course, they’re gonna drink it because they’re using their oxytocin, which is attached to the word love since we were born and applying it to a product, which is something else. Imagine that same person said, “Cheesecake is yummy.”
Yummy is not gonna make you break a rule for it. Yummy may make you take a bite. Love, obsessed, have to have, necessary—we speak in a way that makes us do certain things. I could take this as deep as we need.
And what’s fascinating about it is it’s like even with working out. Most people work out. It’s a neuropathway in their brain that means “something I do for two weeks then quit.” Well, if that’s what you think, that’s gonna be the same next time. You’re fooling yourself. So instead, why don’t you change the word and say, you know what? I’m gonna start doing.
I’m gonna start training. I’m gonna start exercising. I’m gonna start moving my body. I’m gonna start respecting myself. Try any other word first—and I say try because you might fail—other than attempting to do the same thing and, again, expecting a different result.
Yeah. So let’s give a relevant example to the listeners out there. You know, we’re often talking about, basically, wealth and your money mindset, right, and really kind of creating that. So what have you thought? Money mindset.
Let’s talk about that for a minute. I mean, we’ve got things to different people. I’m asking you, Dave. What’s a money mindset?
That is a scarcity.
What’s that?
I think a lot of people have scarcity around money for sure.
So do you think people have scarcity, or do you think—when you tell someone they have scarcity, those are what they call therapy words. What they do is they get you hooked to therapy.
Words like scarcity, words like authentic, words like abundant—the challenge with the word scarcity is you tell someone they have scarcity, you’re just reapplying their scarcity. And I understand why we say it because it gives us context. But instead, the way that we’re communicating with ourselves is not getting us what we want. That is very different, and it’s not as injected.
So do you think people have scarcity, or do you think they have an auto program in their life to do what they’re currently doing? Because I don’t think they have scarcity. I think they’re absolutely consistent as all get up. I think they are so consistent that they make $182,000 a year, nine years straight. They’re as consistent as they wish any athlete would be.
They’re the Kobe Bryant of making $182,000 a year. I think people are consistent. I don’t think they have scarcity. I think they’re massively consistent at doing what they’re doing for a very particular reason most people don’t know.
Yeah. Good point. And what is that then?
Well, it’s simple. And I’ll get back later to those other three things if you remind me.
Now we got everybody in an open loop. This is good. Okay? So here’s what happens in people’s lives.
I’m gonna draw this out so you can see it, and I believe it’s gonna make sense. How long have you been an entrepreneur?
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty years.
Did you have a job prior?
Yes.
Okay. Good. So you worked for someone else. You one day woke up and said, “I’m never doing it again,” correct?
Yes.
Okay. Everyone has a day in their life when they say, “Never again.” We’ve all done this, correct?
So we say to ourselves—what’s funny is most of the things we do have nothing to do with what we’re doing currently. They have everything to do with what we used to do. Now pay attention to this because what I’m about to share with you will only help you, potentially your children, your friends, your family—not just your business. So it’s big. So every one of us has a day where we say to ourselves—we’re gonna say these words—I don’t want.
We say it over a toilet bowl if we drank too much. We say it after food poisoning. We say these words: “Don’t want.” And in that moment, immediately, we say this: “What do I want?”
We don’t think it through, but we say it. Like, “I don’t wanna work for anybody else. I wanna be my own boss. I wanna be my own boss. I don’t wanna work for anyone else.”
“I want this. I don’t want this. I want this and don’t want this.” In the financial planning world: “I want really great returns. I don’t wanna lose money.”
Correct? In the wealth management world, it’s like, “I want the highest commissions.” Does that make sense? “And I don’t want bad clients.” People have wants and don’t wants.
We created that on a day we weren’t thinking. We were pissed off. We were bothered. Some people say in their marriage, “I don’t wanna be hurt anymore.” So what they do is they say, “I want them to love me all the time.” They build these models for themselves.
They live in the middle. They never actually get what they want. So I don’t think people have scarcity. I think they have outdated programming. Let me add to this.
Then what happens is we identify as a person that doesn’t actually have it but wants it. Like, “I really wanna make a million bucks a year, but I make $360,000. I make a million. I wanna make $20 million.” I have clients that make $100 million that have the same problem.
Okay? I got people I work with. So what happens is we build an identity on a regular basis that is obsessed because our unconscious mind is obsessed with getting us what we want. So we’re saying, “I don’t wanna feel broke. I don’t wanna play small.”
“I wanna have my own business.” So now we identify as a person with their own business that isn’t working for someone else. We didn’t really pick the right thing we wanted. We’re just better off than where we were. And then this is where it gets crazy.
We recruit. We tell stories, and we recruit people in our lives. Every one of us has recruited all of the people in our lives—that brother-in-law, that assistant that keeps quitting, that brother-in-law that drives you nuts, you married into the relationship, that house you live in near the pizzeria so you can overeat. Whatever it is, we’ve got just the right people in our lives, says people, my bad handwriting, identity, who we are, what we want and don’t want, and we live in the middle. So what happens is most people identify as a person that makes $182,000 a year.
My daughter’s in figure skating. They identify as someone that can’t do a certain jump. Some NBA players identify as second-line players. They want to be on the first line. They don’t wanna not be in the NBA, and they complain to the people in their lives about the thing they want. They have enough cheerleaders and people to support them to actually facilitate the life they have. So here’s the crazy part.
People don’t have scarcity. They’ve designed what they have themselves, and they have to realize how creative they were. They’re not where they used to be, but they’re gonna need a different plan to get to where they wanna go. And what’s nuts is when you’re selling—this is a sales model—most people try to sell people what they want and what they don’t want.
That’s not what moves them. What really moves people is their identity and the people in their lives. So if I was selling people a financial package, I wouldn’t say to them, “Well, what do you want?” Of course, we know we want better returns. “What do you not want?” “I don’t wanna be broke.” It’s the people in their lives. So I’d say, “Let me ask you a question. How are people gonna see you in your family identity? How are the people in your family gonna see you differently when you start being a very, very financially astute person that does very well financially?” Or, “Outside of you, who are the people in your life that are gonna benefit most from what we’re about to do?” They’re gonna say, “Well, that’s my wife and my kids.” Well, great. Let’s do this for them. So let’s make the entire rest of this conversation about them.
Now we’re changing their want, Dave. So I gave you a piece of it, but this is what happens to people. I don’t think they have scarcity. I think they live right here in their average. That’s why I say “average sucks” all the time—it’s that we live inside of here, and this is our problem.
Yeah. That’s really powerful. So what are some basic recommendations you can give people to kind of change that path to transformation?
Number one is we need to really take stock of our language. Every word that we say impacts everything that we do.
This is not positive thinking. This is taking responsibility for your language and really understanding that the words we use are influential. They’re massively influential, and they change our biochemistry and what we do. So we can either work really hard to try to get out of that box, or we can accept that we’re always going to be in one, outgrow that one, and walk into the one we need to be in. Part of this starts with language.
Let me ask you a question, Dave. You started your business eighteen years ago, correct?
Yes.
Okay. So I’m going to ask you this. I don’t know how old you are now, Dave. Are you able to tell me how old you are?
54.
Okay. So, 54 years old. Dave, when is the last time a 54-year-old man who’s run a business for eighteen years, has a great family, a great life, and every reason to do well, who’s part of incredible groups and has incredible friends—when is the last time that guy put a plan together for the next steps?
Pretty recently.
Very good. And that’s why you’re able to do it. Great answer. Do you realize most people are trying to solve a problem going backward? And what I mean by that is, I knew you were going to answer it that way, and I love it.
When I was working on writing my book, I realized I was having trouble getting it done. I wasn’t having trouble because I wasn’t capable—I spoke all over the world. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t do it.
Here’s why I couldn’t get it done: a nine-year-old boy that wanted to prove a point that he was good at school wanted to write the book. A lot of us don’t realize how successful we really are in bringing ourselves to the plate. So let’s say someone’s been in business for five years. Let the person who’s been in business for five years, has 35 clients, a net worth of a few million dollars, and a house—when is that person going to sit down and make their next plan? The problem is, their plan was made by someone years ago, and that’s the challenge. Which was you.
Not talking about you, Dave—talking about people listening.
Yeah. No. That’s really a great way to look at it for sure.
I’ve got more, but I’d love to take this in whatever direction you’d like.
Okay. Why don’t we go back to number two then? This is of the four things that we could learn.
Yeah.
So one’s communication.
One is communication. Number two is language. And the reason we’re going to call it language is there are three things we need to focus on: word choice, intensity of the words, and the tone we use with those words. For instance, a lot of people get stuck because the words they use are very intense. Words like scarcity, depression, and anxiety are intense.
You should use those very infrequently because they stop you from doing what you’re doing. They’re built into our minds. Our job is to start learning how to trigger ourselves with language.
Instead of saying, “I need to cold call,” have you ever heard people say they hate cold calling?
Yes.
Why the hell do they call it cold calling? Have you ever met anyone who liked to be cold?
No.
Seriously, have you ever met anyone who liked to be cold? No? So why are we calling it cold calling? Now we don’t want to call it warm calling either because that’s lying. It’s not warm. Right? So what if we said, “Why don’t we spend some time tomorrow getting better at communication, calling some people we don’t know yet, and seeing if we can build relationships?”
Would that be very different? 100%. But that’s not how it’s explained by a manager, is it?
Basically, they’re saying, “Let’s go stab ourselves in the eyeballs and be miserable for a couple of days or years cold calling,” versus, “You know what? Let’s get ahold of some people who didn’t know we existed, let them know we’re alive, see if we could build some relationships, and, over time, do some business.”
Yeah, that’s excellent.
But because we feel there’s more value in pain—because we’re tough, stubborn entrepreneurs—we want other people to go through the same stubbornness as well. That’s part of it.
And the other thing is, when it comes to the way that we communicate, there’s more stuff we can explore. At the last event we were at, I explained that, as entrepreneurs, we often have insecurity about ourselves. This means we want to feel important to people, so we try to show them how much we know. But why not make that other person feel incredible and empowered instead?
Why don’t we be so confident that we don’t need all the confidence—that we give them the confidence? Why don’t we give the person we’re marketing to all the confidence? Say to them, “You’re going to be great at this. This is awesome. I’ll do my best to explain it all, and anything in the middle, you can figure out.”
By empowering other people, that’s where things change. So that’s language, my friend.
Yeah. How about another example, let’s say, with something like family or health?
Well, this is one I’ve been showing recently that’s very, very empowering. I have a client that I was on a podcast with—very successful. This is LO. This guy’s got 900 loan officers underneath him.
And he looked at me and said, “Michael, forget this business stuff for a minute. How do I get my kid more motivated?” I asked, “What do you want to motivate him to do?” He said, “I want to motivate him to, like, want to do better at basketball.” “I take him to practice. He doesn’t seem motivated.” I asked, “Does your son even know he could be good?” And I paused. He said, “Well, maybe.”
I said, “Well, have you ever let him know that he could be better? Because most kids don’t believe their parents. They either believe them too much or they don’t believe them enough. So have you ever sat down with him and asked him, ‘Would you like to be better? If so, I can show you how.’”
And I said, “Here’s what I want you to do—and I encourage everybody to do this that’s listening. Tomorrow morning or anytime, your family or kids or teammate, I want you to look at them, catch them off guard, and just say, ‘Hey, if you ever want to get better at this basketball thing or better at something else, just come to me. I know a few things that could work. Just come to me. Not now. Just come to me later.'”
If they say, ‘Tell me now,’ you’re going to force your confidence on them, and they’re going to feel insecure because they don’t know something. And when someone doesn’t know something, they feel insecure even if they just asked. When they come back the next day—this guy said to me the next day, ‘Michael, I don’t know whether I hate you or love you.'”
“I knew what happened. He said, ‘I asked him if he wanted to get better. I said to come back the next day, and he did. Now I’ve got to get him a coach.’ Why I’m saying this is this: We have to position things for people in a way that they can get better and also in a way that matches how they actually process.”
Have you ever seen this before, Dave? Has anyone on your team ever done a great job?
Yes.
What do you say to them when they do a great job?
I try to give them the respect they deserve. You know? Publicly put it out there. Awesome job, great job, rising to the occasion, following our core values, right, in the company.
You took the two biggest chemicals in the world that are powerful—serotonin, which is the decision-making confidence muscle, and oxytocin, which is love—and you give it to them, letting them know, “I’m going to give this to you.”
Here’s what most people do: Most people facilitate a relationship with the inner child. What I mean by that is the little boy and girl that want to be told “Good job,” versus the adult who truly believes in themselves. Now what I do when somebody does a great job in my family, in my life, and in my team—when you come to me and say, “Michael, I closed the big deal,” or “Michael, I did something great,”—I don’t say, “Great job, Dave,” because then you’re like, “Oh, Michael likes me.”
I go like this: “Of course, you did, Dave. That’s why you’re on this team.” And then they get the grin that you just got right there—this thing like, “Yeah, that’s me.”
Yeah.
My kid will say to me, “Daddy, I’m so proud of myself. I got a 52 at skating.” I say, “Of course, you did. That’s what you do.” And then she does that and goes, “Damn straight, that’s what I do.” I want more confident people in my life, not people that need me. If you want them to need you—if you want them to always need you and control them—tell them how great they are.
If you want them to be independent, powerful, and incredible in life—to be the best asset and leader you could ever have—you do something a little different. You say, “Of course, you do. That’s why you’re on the team. It’s the thing I saw in you.” You make it all about them.
Yeah. That’s gold right there.
It’s lightning. I called my wife the other day. I was at an event. I said, “Oh my god, I crushed it. It’s amazing.” She goes, “Of course, you did.” She didn’t say, “Good job, honey.” She said, “Of course, you did.” Then I get this grin and think, “Yeah, of course, I did.”
I get yeah. I actually had the opportunity to see Michael’s daughters and family at an event recently. And one of his daughters—how old is she? The skater?
The little one? She just turned 13. She was 12 when you met her.
She got up in front of a room of almost a hundred people and just talked about what she’s doing in terms of competing in figure skating. The maturity, the level of communication, how grounded she was—it would make any parent just melt to have that. It really proves, Michael, that verbal communication and setting that foundation at an early age is massive for someone. It can just continue to grow.
Yeah. I’ve never told my daughter in eight years that I’m proud of her. I learned eight years ago not to say that anymore. I now tell her, “You should be proud of yourself.” And she walks around the house saying, “I’m so proud of my practice today.” She knows I love her. She doesn’t need me to be proud of her. I am proud of her, right? But I don’t tell her that because I want her to be proud of herself.
Recently, I woke up in the morning—I don’t push this on my kids. I don’t sit here and go, “You have to read books,” right? But we were at a competition the other day, and she got up early. She listened to Kobe Bryant—watching Kobe videos. I’m a hockey player. She found Kobe. She’s listening in the morning before a competition. She goes, “Daddy, I think I get it. I either have to identify as a skater trying to figure it out or as the one that does what it needs to do to win.” I said, “You pick the identity then, girl. You pick.”
Nice. Yeah.
It’s exciting. Yeah, that’s really good.
So how do you think that could apply to someone? Give us an example. How could that apply to someone who feels like they’re at some kind of ceiling in their life—whether it’s money, career, relationships, something like that?
So ceilings—the word ceiling is designed to cap us. First off, we need to say, “If I say…” Let’s just say to me, this is how I would work with you, Dave. You hired me to work with you, and I do one-on-one coaching with very high-level people. You’d say, “Michael, I feel like I have a ceiling.” I’d say, “What color is it?” They say, “I don’t know.”
It’s not really there. Great. Now we admit it’s not there. The second you say “ceiling,” the reason we say ceiling is to get attention from ourselves and our insecurity or from other people. It is therapy talk.
The reason I say this, I’m so adamant. I had Ryan Moran in here the other day, capitalism.com. Do you know Ryan?
Clik here to view.
I didn’t know Ryan. Yeah.
Ryan came in, spoke in here. We did a podcast together. He’s in the building, and I’m explaining this to him. He’s like, “Man, I’m scared of what to say around you.” A lot of what we say is to get attention from people.
So the first thing I’m gonna tell you is if you tell me you have a ceiling, I’d say, “What color is it? What is it made out of?” And you’re like, “Well, I don’t know, Michael. It’s not really there. I could just feel it.”
Got it. So you’re feeling more stuck than you want to feel? Okay. So now we’re actually having a different problem that’s solvable.
Just like the guy that says to me, “Michael, I have anxiety.” I said, “I can’t help you.” “What? I thought you help people with anxiety.” “No. I only help people if they have emotions they don’t want to feel and shift it with other ones. But I can’t help you with anxiety.”
Because if you have anxiety, I can’t help you. Could it possibly be that when you react a certain way, you feel the way you don’t want to feel? He goes, “Well, yeah, it could be that.” “Well, if it’s that, I can help you. But I can’t help you with anxiety.” Obviously, I help with anxiety, but I need to reframe it first.
So first thing I do is reframe it. Is there truly a ceiling? Quite possibly, you could be with a company that does have a max-out in your current role. Currently, the way you do things may have a limitation.
Correct? But there isn’t a reason you couldn’t go to your employer and say, “I’d like to bring more to this company. I’d like to be a bigger part of the firm. If I were to be one of the…” Without being annoying—a lot of us have the ability to walk up to people on the team and not bring them a problem. Because if you bring people above you a problem, you’re annoying.
So what I would do, Dave, if you were my management or the owner, I’d say, “Dave, I’m looking for a solution on something I think would be amazing. I have more gas in my tank. I want to bring more to the company. I believe I could bring millions more to the company. How do you feel we could do that or I could do that with you and help me grow?”
But a lot of people go, “I’m unhappy. I’m upset. I have a ceiling.” Now you ruin the relationship. You’re annoying. Other people feel like they have a ceiling because they keep on doing the same thing. My whole book is about this concept called your average. Have you read it, Dave?
I haven’t read it yet, but I definitely want to get to that.
If you want to change your life, stop saying “I have to”, and start saying “I get to”. It shifts everything.
It is so simple because it explains that we have this average that controls us and we feel boxed in. But a lot of it is we set the plans for our lives a long time ago versus now. So if someone had a ceiling, that’s the first thing I’d say. Give me an example of a person with a ceiling. Give me an industry or an example.
I think that’s a really good one. I think people put artificial limits on themselves in terms of income or net worth.
It is—or it has to be a certain way.
Yeah. It’s like a barometer kind of for them.
I know this does sound silly, and you’re gonna beat me up for saying it, but a couple of years ago, for a few years, you could get 5.6% CDs. Do you know what I’m saying? People are out there in the world going, “I can’t figure out how to make money.” You could double your money every nine years with that. Do you know what I’m saying?
Whatever it is—I was confused why people were thinking they couldn’t make money or open an account and just get started with something. So people do not realize that they have their income, and then they need to really decide if they want to be wealthy. I think a lot of people don’t want it. I don’t think a lot of people understand how it works, and are they really fully committed to making it happen?
So the first is, I don’t think anybody really has a ceiling. I think their current plan has limits, but what they need to do is reevaluate that plan.
Excellent. Alright, let’s go to number three.
Number three is patterns. Most of us have patterns, and patterns are probably our biggest challenge. We all have a pattern of the things we do. We get up, we do the thing we do, go about our life, and do the things we do. I don’t think anybody really has any major issues; I think we have patterns. Man, I can’t find good people out there.
You have a pattern of finding ones that don’t work. And I truly believe when we could understand patterns and people could get obsessed with the patterns people have… We have patterns of wealth, patterns of growth, patterns of happiness, patterns of depression—everything is patterns. So if you ask me, “Michael, what are you good at?” I’m good at patterns of language, patterns of communication.
Take any example—give me a challenge people come to you with, Dave, that you hear often or that they bring up.
Yeah, I mean, most people are really looking for, I would say, freedom of time, right? They feel kind of handcuffed to their jobs, so they want to create passive income so they can become free to have more purpose and more time in their life to do what they want to do.
So we have a pattern of how we currently spend our money. Am I correct?
Yeah.
Do you believe all people are investors?
Well, they should be.
I think every human being in the world is an investor—even if you don’t have an account. You invest in Starbucks, you invest in Vegas, you invest in partying; we’re all investing. The question is, in what? What pattern are you using?
I believe everybody’s an investor. I believe everybody is creating what they’re creating. So the question is, what pattern are you creating in your life? For a lot of us, you have to look at what you’re doing. If you looked at your week or your month, it’s a pattern.
It’s absolute. You get about the same amount of time. You cold plunge or don’t. You take your shower for the same amount of time. There’s an average you have.
All of us have a pattern. If you adjust one of those things, you start creating a new pattern. In a new pattern, things start… Have you ever, like, moved and felt better, Dave? Or got a new office or new furniture? Yeah.
You changed your biochemistry. Your chemical composition changed in your body. That’s why I just moved to Florida a couple of years ago. Immediately, it changes, doesn’t it?
Yeah, for sure. Energy shift. No doubt. Dan Sullivan likes to talk about that—basically, life is like a series of habits. Those can be positive habits, or they can be negative habits, right? But if you’re constantly creating… Actually, we’ve created a habit of creating habits. Every day, we’re trying to identify a new habit so we don’t get stuck in the same pattern, and we can always be growing.
Yes. We’ve got to figure out the patterns and habits we need to do the thing we need. Then people are like, “I’m just gonna start working out.”
Okay. Let’s stop right there. Let’s analyze that for a second. One last thing I was gonna say about language and patterns—let’s talk about that for a second.
You ever had people that have trouble with their diet? Yes. This works with money too—you can figure out how to use this quickly. Years ago, people said, “Michael, how do you lose weight?” I said, “You need to start talking to your food,” and then they think I’m nuts.
And then I say, it’s like a relationship. Everything in life is a relationship. Money is a relationship. Your relationship with money has got to be a really good, loving, caring, respectful one. You’ve heard that before.
Correct? Your relationship with food has got to be a good one. So if you’re gonna put it inside of you for the next twenty years—the food and yourselves—you might as well find out a few things. What its name is, what its intentions are, and how it actually makes you feel. Think about that for a second.
Years ago, I started teaching this to people. I said all food is these three things: nutrition, entertainment, or addiction. That’s it. You eat a salad, your steak, or whatever—not a bunch of garbage on it—nutrition. You go out to eat; automatically, if you let them make it for you, it’s entertainment.
Let’s get real. You have dessert—it’s more of an addictive behavior. A couple of Doritos is entertainment, but eat the whole bag, and it’s addiction. So imagine, before you did something, you’d say to yourself, “Got it. I’m about to have some entertainment.” You’re honest with yourself. Or you’re about to drink. You’d say, “I’m actually gonna make myself more comfortable today but feel worse tomorrow.” I promise you, you’re not gonna want the third or fourth, fifth drink.
You might think you do, but you’re being honest with yourself. Hangovers were put there because you were a moron last night—not for something you want to repeat. Hangovers are the body’s way of saying, “Don’t be dumb.” They’re not designed for us to think, “I’m gonna drink more water, take some Rolaids, and figure this out.” That’s what they’re designed for.
I’m bringing this up because when you do that long enough, I remember doing this with my daughter—my little one—when she was seven. We played this little game, and we were at Disney.
Disney was entertainment, addiction, entertainment, addiction. By the third night, my daughter goes, “Can we order a salad? I feel like I need something healthy.” The reason is, if you know what you’re doing and how it feels, you’ll actually do something about it.
So here’s the deal. Admit to yourself, “I don’t like to work out, and I don’t wanna do it. Just say it: I don’t wanna do it. I’m gonna do it.” Admit it. “I don’t like working out.” Just admit it. But here’s what I do: I like being healthy, and I like having more energy. So I’m gonna do a couple of things to achieve that. “I’m only gonna exercise one day this week.” That’s it—just one day. What’s crazy is when you tell someone they can only do one day, they’ll want to do ten. But I’m gonna tell you only to do one day. The reason is, we’re building what’s called a new pattern.
What most people don’t recognize—I’ve taught people how to get wealthy this way—is to transfer $100 a week automatically from one account to another. Just do it. Then, when you cancel the NFL package, take $85 and transfer that. Builds… We’re so lazy as people. If you have ninety-five transfers going, you’re not going to be able to close them all down.
I’ve been doing that for years. I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in little $25 and $12 transfers moved into an account that eventually invests in something. I’m telling you that because as silly as that is, we need to find an approach that works with us. Human beings will typically do less than they’re asked to do, and we always procrastinate. So you might as well tell yourself, “I’m only gonna do one day this week.”
That’s it. Next week, I’ll do one day. By the third week, you’re gonna wish you could do three days. But only do one. Eventually, I’ll let you do two. And what’s fascinating about it is you’re building a new habit—a new pattern.
Clik here to view.
Right. Love it. How about number four?
Well, number four is simple, and this is the state. Our number one value in our company is called “state first.” It’s really to check what state of mind we’re in. Most people are in a very insecure emotional state when we decide that we need to change. We’re usually pissed off, bothered, or upset.
And then all we want to do is take anything better than where we currently are. The first thing we need to figure out is: what state of mind are we in currently when we’re about to do the things we do? People say to me, “Michael, what do I say when I get on the phone?” Wrong question. A better question is, “What state of mind am I in, and what am I saying to myself currently before I even pick up the phone?”
Most of us have to do what’s called a state check—like a “fly check,” checking your fly if you go on stage. We’ve got to first ask, “What state of mind am I in? I’m pissed off, and I’m bothered. Good. You’re not allowed to set any goals because you’re going to set the wrong ones.”
Yeah. How many times have we done that?
Financial independence isn’t just about money-it’s about the freedom to live life on your terms.
Oh, yeah. God. “I can’t stand this person. I’m just gonna do this.” You shouldn’t be making any decisions that way. It’s really about the management of state and also understanding the state of another person. So if we’re selling, what state of mind is the other person in?
I worked with mortgage people for years. I always told them, “Do you realize that person is uncomfortable, annoyed, and frustrated? Even if they want that house, you’re annoying to them. You’re frustrating. You’re making them reveal their finances.”
Even in the financial planning world, when somebody wants you to send them all your paperwork or transfer IRAs—it’s vulnerability. It’s scary to this other person. The first thing we’ve got to do is make them comfortable. We’ve got to look at them and just say, “Hey, listen, before we even get into any paperwork or anything, I just want to commend you for setting up this meeting. A lot of people talk about changing their finances. It’s not easy what you’re doing, and I just want to commend you. Be proud of yourself, my friend.” Now they feel good, and now we can talk. We’ve changed their state.
Yeah. That’s really so good, you know? I think one of the things I do in terms of my morning routine—I don’t like getting in the cold plunge, but I know it’s good for me. So, I exercise, do breath work, meditate, and I do all of that before I actually start journaling. I put myself into a peak state, and then, when I’m journaling, everything that comes down on paper is just me in a peak state, very aspirational. Right?
That’s kind of the ideal setup.
That’s beautiful. I love how you do that in that order. That’s a pattern that works.
Yeah.
What if you were to say this to yourself: “I actually love cold plunging, and I’m working on getting used to it”?
Yeah. No, it is true. Actually, now I don’t even think about it. It’s become a pattern, so I don’t really think about it. I just get in every day and hit it.
How many minutes are you doing right now?
I usually do about three, sometimes five. One thing I’ve learned that’s interesting about that is—so I do a lot of high-intensity cycling. Sometimes it’s not good to throw stress on top of stress. You need more recovery time, so I may sometimes tone it down, or not do it every day, like if I have a really hard ride or something.
So do you do it right after the hard run?
I mean, usually, but I’m trying to change. Like Sunday, we do this—it’s a 50-mile basically race with a bunch of guys. A lot of testosterone going crazy out there, and I get my heart rate up to 190, you know, during a two-and-a-half-hour ride. So sometimes it’s really not advisable, I think.
Yep.
To actually jump in right then because my body—I can’t bring my heart rate and my HRV back up during the course of the day after that.
So do you listen to something while you’re in there? The reason I’m asking is I started listening to, like, CT Fletcher or someone saying, “You gotta go for what you want.” Then the three minutes fly by.
I was in the Marine Corps, Michael.
So, Devil Dog! Yeah.
I’ve done a lot of hardcore stuff. So, I just turn on my watch and just go, you know?
Awesome. Yeah.
Three minutes seems like nothing now at the 40 degrees that I do. The hardest part is the first minute. Once you get in, you get used to it after that.
Yeah.
My pattern—I’ve noticed it in my pattern—is I very quickly pick up the water, splash it on the back of my neck and face, and then I go down. I’ve realized if I do that, it’s easy.
Yeah. Nice. Okay. Did we get to four?
I think we covered everything. Number one’s communication. We’ve got to work on that. It’s crazy because there are so many directions we can go with this—language, really checking your language on everything, the patterns we have, and the state of mind you’re in and the state of mind they’re in.
And the coolest part about it is it’s the same with everybody. The language somebody uses, the state they’re in, the patterns they use, the way they communicate with themselves—it’s really only four things. Everything in life comes down to those four things. I can’t think of anything else I’d need to change.
Yeah.
No, I really love that. Why don’t we just touch really quick on your book, Average Sucks. Talk to us about what “average sucks” really means to you. What is that construct? How can we think about it?
It’s funny. It’s really good from a marketing perspective. We own the brand, so I own the brand. I own the phrase. You can’t even say it. I had a conversation with some very well-to-do people who told me, “You can’t say that anymore.” So, I own Average Sucks, which is great. It’s really cool because it does two things. It gets a group of people that say, “Yes, I get it. Be better than everyone else. Don’t be average.” But it’s not at all what it means.
What it really means is we have an average in life, which you could call your ceiling, your standard, your box, your plateau, thermometer—whatever it is. We all have an average in life. That is our middle ground. Most people talk about their worst day and their best day.
Our life is controlled by our average day. Our average investing portfolio is bigger than our big chunk. Our average slot machines bring more to the casino because they run all day long, right?
So, it’s our average that controls what we do. It’s about how our average sucks. Everyone has one if we’re willing to accept it. Once we adjust what our average is, it’s our unconscious go-to. We change that unconscious go-to, and we learn how to actually control it.
It’s that feeling you get—like, my whole book… When I wrote it—did you know Tucker Max was with our group?
I do. Yeah, I know Tucker well.
Tucker’s a great friend. I sat on his couch. His publishing company worked on our book, and he helped me with it. Very good friends. He told me, “You have two types of books you could write, Michael. One that makes you feel important or one people will actually read.”
So, I wrote it to be read. It’s really a story of how I spent my life believing—I guess you probably got a lot of this in the Marines—believing I couldn’t do things.
I play hockey. I’m still 47, and I still play hockey. But from age 10 to 39 years old, I believed I couldn’t score goals. I could shoot. I’ve got a hard shot. I could hit. I could do all the stuff, but I left that up to other people.
And one day, I thought, “Why am I doing this?” I still play with very advanced players—I’m a pretty talented player myself—and now I get one or two goals every single game that I play.
The reason why is I had no idea that I’d invented a person or invented an average that I would do everything in my power—and convince everyone in my life—to remind me that’s not what I do.
The book is really about breaking out of the ceiling you have.
Yeah.
Well, I’m not going to say that anymore.
No, I can say it now. Now that you said it, I’ll say it. You don’t have a ceiling, Dave. Other people might say they have one. We’ll break them from it. For sure. Well, this has really been amazing, Michael. I can’t thank you enough for all the wisdom you’ve shared today. If you could give just one piece of advice to the audience about how they could change their communication skills and really level up their life, what would it be?
I’d say the first thing is really accepting the power of your own influence.
You’re a very influential person. I want everyone listening to know: You’re very influential. The question is, what are you influencing people to do?
If you’re overweight, you’re influencing people to be overweight. If you’re not making a lot of money, you’re influencing people not to make a lot of money. If you are doing very well, then you’re influencing people in that way too.
So, I would say, number one, really accept the power of your own influence and realize, “Got it. I am influential.” And number two: Ask yourself, “Is that enough?” And if you want to change that, you can ask yourself, “What do I want to influence people to do?”
You don’t even have to influence people with your words—just influence people by the way that you live. Instead of getting frustrated, really think about that. That would be one really big piece of advice that changed my life. It got me to stop drinking in February 2016. I didn’t have a problem, but I stopped completely because I realized, “Wait a second. I’m giving other people permission to do that. I don’t want to be involved. I’m influential.” So, I’m telling everyone to accept: You are so powerful. You are so influential. That feeling you have inside is real. Accept it and use it.
Love it. Yeah. Really fantastic.
I’d like to encourage the audience out there to definitely check out a copy of Michael’s book, Average Sucks, and please do him a favor by giving a review on Amazon. I can’t tell you how much it really helps other people discover the book and understand what’s in it for them and how they can apply it to their lives. It would mean a lot to Michael for you to do that.
Appreciate you guys for that. And, if people want to learn more about the Human Communications Institute, the different trainings and offerings you guys have, or follow you on social, what’s the best place?
I’m all over social. Definitely check us out on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Instagram is the spot everybody’s at now. You can find me pretty easily—Michael Bernoff. You can see the spelling right there: B-E-R-N-O-F-F.
I started doing this thing a little while ago. For those listening who are very serious, or for those who are just testing the waters, I’ve got something easy for you. You can send a text message to 202—it kind of sounds like the government—but (202) 759-4210.
I’ll give it to you one more time: (202) 759-4210. You can either text us, say hello, or text the word “influence” by itself. I’ll send you three or four really cool videos that are a minute long about how to use influence.
So, Dave, you’ll love these too. Text (202) 759-4210 and just text the word “influence.” If you want to know more—take a class, coaching, whatever—just ask that.
A real human runs this. It’s not AI.
Excellent. We’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. For listeners out there, if you want to check out the diagram Michael was talking about, don’t forget you can check this out on YouTube to see the full visuals during the conversation as well. We’ll provide all the notes, an article, and a full link back on our site too. I want to thank everyone for listening. We hope you are well, and we want to empower you to live a better life.
Appreciate you, and I appreciate the courage and confidence of the people listening. It’s very rare—very special. They should feel wonderful.
Awesome. Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like to get a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. That’s holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, please visit pantheoninvest.com. That’s pantheoninvest.com.
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