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Miha Matlievski is known as The Fail Coach.
Miha Matlievski is a business coach has forged his approach to helping entrepreneurs and business executives by using a monumental personal failure and eventual redemption to help get others where they need to go to find their personal success and fulfillment.
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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.
With us right now. We've got Miha Matlievski. Miha, thank you so much for joining us. You are the host of the podcast Below Zero to Hero- The Brain Dump by The Fail Coach and you can actually find this by just going to braindumpbythefailcoach.com and of course you are known as The Fail Coach, which is great branding. And you know what, you've got the background you to back this up, don't you?
1:03
Well, hi, Josh. It's super, super nice to be invited to your show as a guest. So thank you for that. And hi to everybody listening to your podcast. Yeah, I do have a substantial amount of experience in the failure to back up that claim that I am the failed coach.
1:25
So take us back to and people need to know what kind of level you play at. So he kind of give us just a quick overview of your bonafides
1:41
Okay, sure. I'll give you a very quick intro into the story and then you know, feel free to just jump in wherever you want me to dive deeper in Sure. Um, so I started by failing High School and I'm a high school dropout and I started my first entrepreneurial journey when I was 18, in my father's company, and then over time, I created more successful companies. And I think by the time even before I was 30, my personal network at that time was roughly around 15 million US, plus the companies and you know, all that other things and everything was going nice. I was just doing a lot of mistakes. And I wasn't careful. A lot of failures happened along the road, but I wasn't learning the lessons. And then eventually, it all led to the financial crisis. In the US it was in 2008. Europe, it came in 2009. And there was this one Monday morning, December 7 2009. I got a call from the bank. One of my companies was in real estate doing this huge real estate project. And we were like in between, in the middle and suddenly because of the drop in prices, the project was not viable anymore. I mean, I would build the cost of me building the, the thing would cost me more than how much I would be able to sell it for. And the bank said, Okay, we're done. We're not giving you any more money, we want our money back. It's better to, you know, cut it short right now than to go all the way to the end and make even bigger losses. And so that was, you know, a phone call on a Monday morning and then on Tuesday, because all my other companies, all my other assets, were, you know, co signers to that agreement that loan. They started just bankrupting everything that I owned and taking everything that I owe. And on Tuesday, I was $5 million, approximately $5 million in personal debt, because I was personally co signing a lot of those things and yeah, I'm in Europe. If you If you can't pay taxes if you can't pay paychecks, you can't do personal bankruptcy and because all of that happened literally from one day to another, I, you know, they took the bank took all the money and I wasn't able to pay suppliers. I wasn't able to pay employees taxes in my other companies. And I felt like I owe half the country. And naturally I went through into into depression into anxiety. Everything crumbled. For me, I there was just black. Everywhere that I looked inside of the outside of me. I felt Not that I failed, but like a failure like this is it this is my life from now on. It's this it's just suffering darkness. No light on the other side of the tunnel. Nothing can after you know every morning I would wake up to calls hundreds of From angry people, and those who are not, you know, cool, it's like, oh, I'm going to sue you it was more like a mafia called you. Oh my gosh. And, and so my mind was like nuclear reactor, you know, like, it was just constantly racing back and forth, back and forth. And I just wanted some some silence and peace of mind and because of that the idea of suicide started, you know, almost I was almost romanticizing the idea, you know, like, okay, you'll suffer for a second, if you throw yourself from a balcony might hurt for a second, but then it's over. And then, you know, it's this complete silence and that silence was so inviting that Yeah, a few months later, in 2010, one night was rough around 11pm. And I just found myself on the other side of the balcony, fifth floor, and I was just, you know, holding myself with one end was like literally, I don't know, 10 1520 seconds away from from jumping down. What was going through my head was you know, like, Oh, can I at least do this properly and not end up on a wheelchair with you know, today? It's funny, but at that time, that was my reality the reality of my life. At that moment, I said something to myself out loud. I probably all the neighbors heard it, I guess but I don't know. I mean, it's like this, you know, it feels like it was just a second but who knows? Maybe I was there for 10 minutes, I will never know. And it was me haha, you f fail. I don't know if I can say the F word. So I'm not gonna but you know, new failed. And and hearing myself say the word you started a process. You know like that movie. When you know your life is ending how you everybody talks about it. You know that movie that goes back where it was like that same feeling. Going back, I made that decision. I chose that business partner, I went for that project I and it was really the first time when I really took responsibility for not just the good things, but also for all the mistakes that they made. But suddenly that was so freaking empowering. Because, you know, I realized, oh, if I learn if I choose better if I make better decisions, if I spend more time dating people before, you know i partner with them, or take them as employees and so on, I can build something even greater if I did all those mistakes, and I still came to 15 million. If I don't do the mistakes, How big can I grow them and, and it was almost like suddenly, you know, that light, I saw the light.
7:52
And then I climbed back, sat down, made a huge list of everything I need to change and learn and so on. The first thing in the morning, I started calling people I owed money to, you know, the ones that usually called me in the morning. So I'm calling them that was like, you know what I mean? Like, let's, let's solve this right now. Either you do your thing. So you know, grab your gun, whatever, this is where I am. Let's end it all now, because it really doesn't make sense for you to call me every freaking day and tell me all those face because I just go into depression. And it's not like I owe you guys like, you know, five grand and I can just get a job three months, bam, I repave. I mean, I have to create something huge to repay all that death, right? But if you want your money back, let's make a deal. I'll call you once a month. I'll update you on my progress. But for the rest of the month, I don't want to hear you I need peace and quiet to work on something new. And they all magically agreed to that. Some even started opening certain doors for me so it was yeah And then the whole journey started, you know, personal development first because there was so much that I had to change on the inside. And then business development, learning about, you know, not just winging it, how to, you know, do proper business development, how to, you know, lay down the foundation for scaling and so on. And then in 2014, taking all these lessons, I started a new startup. I scaled it to multiple eight figures within the first year, and then had a successful exit, repaid all my past that even I was able to exit without having to remain in the company, which was really, you know, fine, thanks to all the foundation that I created and the processes and all of that. So I was seen as the least important person in the company. I was able to walk away and I went on a long vacation came back was born, what to do Then I realized that being an entrepreneur is not just what I do, it really became who I am deep down inside me. And so I started helping him entrepreneurs, I love doing that. And more and more companies started calling me. And then one day I became the field coach. It was, you know, me and my friend, we had a few beers. I was like, Whoa, how do I name this whole thing? Like, you know, what do I want to be success or success ninja LMC or, you know, ideas like that. And then he said, I mean, like, you always, always mentioned all your past failures. You always talk about the lessons that you learned from them. I mean, failure is is what you talk about all the time. Why wouldn't you just be failed code? I went online check if the name is available. It was and I never looked back.
10:56
Wow. Okay. So here's, here's some things that I picked up on that, on that story. The first thing that I think was this spark is that there was this sense of where you could separate yourself from where you where you were. And you were able to kind of step back and identify, you know, and be able to speak almost like third party about your current set of circumstances. So you became, in a sense, the observer. And the observer has so much more objectivity and clarity, when we look at our current set of circumstances. And, you know, I think there's a there's a quote that I love, I remember when the secret came out. And he said, You know, people look at their current set of circumstances and they say, this is who I am. That's not who you are. That's who you were. And we're always living in this residual of where we came from. And you got objective about what led you to there? And I think he said, Well, listen, it's, I'm not here because I'm a horrible person. I came here because I made this decision and this decision and this decision. And, and and, and then what you did is you, you, you, you figured out what can I learn from having made that decision and, and those lessons are so incredibly important that you know, you think about how valuable it is like, you know, I've, I've been through bankruptcy I've lost two houses myself, I've failed in business six times. And, you know, you can't learn that in college. You can't learn, you know, that grit and determination, or, Oh, I remember when I did this, and this happened, like experience is the best teacher and so me hot then that's, that's the first thing I wanted to point out. I just think it's just so brilliant and called inspiration, call it you know, whatever it is like flash of light. It's amazing. It's truly amazing what you experience. And then the second thing that you did, I think it's just again, it's brilliant. And it helps in being the observer is that you took pen to paper. And a lot of times when we're overwhelmed, and we're depressed, usually there's multiple things going on in our life. And our brains just cannot handle that kind of capacity. So many different pieces of bad news that are all stacking up, and we can't make order of that. And so the best way I found and I remember being I was in the US Navy, and I had a real rough patch with relationships and family and job and I was getting in trouble for showing up late to work and they were threatening to, you know, put me in the brig. I don't know I was I was really depressed And the only thing I could think to do was just make a list. Like, I'm going to make a list of everything that's going wrong in my life. And then then once I've got it all listed out and my brain starts zero going crazy, I just look at the list is that no, I've got it on the list right here. And then I think what you did is that you started problem solving. And you started thinking about, well, what can I do with this, which which some some things you just can't solve right away? It's going to take some time, and I really love me, ha, where you also identified that there are some things that I need to become. It's not just a matter of, here's a problem. Here's a tactical solution. But you identified that there was personal development, that like in order for me to solve this problem, I'm going to have to grow as a person. Mia, that's just I am so So honored and touched and like inspired by your experience with that, I mean, in all honesty at that
15:07
time, I knew, you know, like that. And I think it's Albert Einstein who says it, like, if you keep doing the same things unexpected things will change. That's the sign of insanity. And at that time, you know, I just knew like, if I remain the same makeup, I will get the same result. And because I I went so deep, I failed so deep on every level, I mean, that was just the business part. They also got divorced, I lost most of my friends and I really, really ended up being all alone with just my mom in the whole wide world. And I knew that I have to really just reinvent who I am like just, you know, like, build myself. From zero, like, forget everything, because all those things together led me to where I am, take the good things and rebuild all the bad ones. And, you know, in all honesty, if I look back in time, it's not the same media. So you know, whenever I'm talking with people, I and they asked me like, you know, in relationships like, would you do this? Would you do that? And I always say, well, which means Are you asking the one before or or the one?
16:32
So the great part about this podcast is it's very short and allows you to be introduced to amazing people doing amazing things. The bad part media, like we're just getting started with your story here. There's so many things I could ask you right now. So we're gonna do what we give my the audience the person is listening to us right now. You got two assignments. Number one is go on your podcast directory right now. And I want you to find the podcast, brain dump by the failed coach. Go search that in your podcast player right now. So you can hear more of me has story. And then of course me Hi, you're also on the web at fail dot coach and so people can learn how they can be inspired by you. And my guess is that you probably take people through the process of being comfortable with failing.
17:34
Absolutely laying down the foundation. But yeah, the biggest part is developing healthy emotional relationship with failure.
17:43
Amazing. All right, we have we're gonna have to have you back for sure. There's so much more I want to know. Well Miha Matlievski, again, you are known as The Fail Coach on the web at fail dot coach and of course your podcast is Brain Dump by The Fail Coach. Thank you so much for joining us. Can't wait to hear more about your story. Thank you.
18:04
Thank you so much for having me.
18:07
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