Welcome back to the show My fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guest, we have Mike Mumola. 

Mike is an attorney, serial entrepreneur, investor, and motivational public speaker, as well as a personal business coach and mentor. He regularly represents and advises clients on a variety of personal, legal, and business decisions. 

He’s a personal and professional source of insight, influence, and inspiration to a number of highly successful athletes, celebrities, and businesses. He is currently invested in companies including personal business development, technology, e-sports, sports entertainment, event festivals, and more. 

He’s also a founding father of the thriving New Jersey-based law firm Caleb Russos, Mumola Hartman Atlanta. In addition to all of this, Mike practices mindfulness and meditation as a means of integrating health into his work and personal life. He’s a jujitsu Competitor and a multi-athlete yoga practitioner, actor and host, and an emcee focused on physical, mental, spiritual, and financial health. 

Mike is what I would call an extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have him on the show. Mike, are you there? 

I am absolutely here. Nice to meet you. Thanks for the intro. 

Mike, I’m really honored to have you on the show. I know that you are a serial entrepreneur. You’re an investor and you’re a personal business coach. Can you tell me and the audience a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

You know, I think I had that entrepreneurial spark ever since I can remember being a young kid, you know, my mother would give me some money to go, to school, to buy lunch, and I would stop at the deli on the way and I’d buy some little pieces of candy with the money I had for lunch and then get to school and resell that candy and have enough for lunch. And then a little bit of a margin on top of it to make a couple of extra dollars. I did that when I was a young child. 

That flame never died and so for as long as I can remember now, I’ve always been involved in some sort of entrepreneurial endeavor, whether it was representing artists and musicians and monetizing that or up and through becoming an attorney, being the founding partner at my law firm, and then investing in other companies and being a part of those companies to the extent I was able to add value.  

So, it’s always been a part of who I was. I love the idea of creating something out of nothing and then helping to build those things with others. 

I mean, I know you’re really successful in terms of entrepreneurship and you’ve founded a bunch of companies. Can you tell the audience what the process is like, what is the overall arching goal of your career, and what is the inception point that got you into where you are today? 

So, let’s start with One of the focal points and operative words that you used there when you said. So, for me that became really the most important thing in my life, right? Like most people, we want to be successful. I had a certain definition of what that was, you know, growing up, we didn’t have a lot. My mother worked very hard. Single mother worked three jobs to raise my sister and me.

And so, for me, money was always extremely important. As it is for most people, and that was in many ways my definition of success, but where I am now with the things that I’ve done and the people that I’ve done them with, I’ve really changed my definition of success. So, when you say a successful entry. It means something different to me today than it did 10 years ago. And So, what it means to me today is that I’m working in a way that serves my purpose and helps the purpose of others and helps us individually and collectively as a species.  

So, the successful aspect of that, you know, has a financial component. But it also has a physical, mental, and spiritual health component to that. And so, when I look at companies that I’m getting involved in, whether it’s as an investor or whether it’s as a consultant or an advisor or an active executive role, these are companies that are moving us forward in some way, either in health and Wellness or technology or combination. Of those, that’s really where I’m spending most of my time right now.  

And so, when I look at that and thank you for saying that I was successful. I do like to think about it in terms of whether I am really successful and how I gauge that. Or how do you, and others gauge that? Am I able to bring value to myself and to others and am I happy doing it? Am I serving my purpose? And am I feeling like I’m living a fulfilled life because I think there are a lot of people whom we look at in society and we say that they’re successful, maybe because they, you know, they have a lot of money, they live in big houses, and they drive fancy cars? But we really have to, I think at this point in our lives, step back and gauge what we truly mean by the definition of success, and so by all of those metrics, yes, I’m focused on those. And those are the kinds of people and the kinds of companies that I’m interested in working with. 

So, Mike, I find it interesting that he mentioned that success is different in different times of your life. And like I think a lot of. People find success. To be purely in monetary terms, but what I’ve noticed from you. Is that success? Is it more than just a monetary thing, it’s more like a Fulfillment kind of thing, or whether you’re making an impact, am I right in the asset? 

That 1000% and it’s you know that comes from, hey, you know, a lot of time… I know that you spend a lot of time on self-reflection. That’s how you and I met and originally kicked off our conversations, but it comes from doing that and it comes from the recognition that without your physical health, without your mental health, without your spiritual health, and I don’t mean that in a religious sense, it could be if what resonates with you, but without those other three components, financial health really doesn’t mean much of anything. You have to have all of those things inside of you so that you can share them with others. If you don’t have them, you can’t give them. It is to others. And if you don’t have either of those, any of those, all of the money in the world doesn’t matter. I know people who have more money than they can spend in 500. But if they’re mentally unhealthy and can’t enjoy it because they suffer from clinical depression or PTSD, or because they’re physically unable to do things because of some sort of injury or another congenital defect, none of those matters, so I think it’s really important to keep those in balance. I was just in Miami, and I spoke about this, and I talked about the way I envisioned this… It’s really four legs of a chair. Right. It’s physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial health. They’re all legs that are equally important. And if you don’t have one of them. You know what happens when you sit on a chair that has a bad leg? 

That is amazing, Mike. I now actually remember the conversation we had, like a few months ago and that was the conversation I was like; I needed to have Mike on my show. Because it’s an important thing that America needs to know, right? 

So, I come from India personally and their spirituality is a big deal. But the problem is like until recently they weren’t making many advancements in the material realm; and then when you go to the West, you notice the opposite issue where a lot of people are relatively financially well off, but they’re like when it comes to mental health, they’re they don’t have that much of A spiritual nature. 

But what I noticed in you was perfect, like, a relatively perfect balance between the spiritual world and the material world where you’re successful… Extremely successful materially, but you also have a deep keen interest in the spiritual world.  

So, could you tell the audience a little bit more About how to have a balance between the mental, spiritual, and financial realms altogether, because most people have a difficult time doing it? 

Thank you for that. And it’s a great question. It comes back to what we were just talking about in terms of that self-reflection and really understanding your purpose on this planet. And for me, you know, I think a lot of people because of (at least the people in the United States for example) focus on a certain way of life because we are bred to believe that that’s the only path that exists for “success”. 

Not understanding like you said, being raised in India and other parts around the world. There are ways. An existence that really resonates harmoniously with nature and with our intended purpose on this planet is equally important. And I would say at this point in my life perhaps more. So and so it becomes important to find, like you said, that balance. How do we do it? It’s different for everyone. 

For me it became very, very obvious when the more I started to meditate and I wasn’t a meditator historically, you know, I was the guy that if 15 years ago you told me I’d be here on a podcast talking about meditation, I would have spit beer through my nose laughing at you because I would have just said that that’s not me. And now here I am and it’s so much a part of it because it’s that reflection, it’s like. When we talk about, you know, there’s so much noise around us, right?  

There’s so much distraction in everything, whether it’s social media, the news, music, or people all around us talking, we’re bombarded by external stimuli in the form of noise every waking moment. Unless we’re not. 

And in order to not be, we have to intentionally give our time, give ourselves time to have that time out, and so if we don’t give ourselves that moment of reflection, that moment of pause, it’s all just noise. But the difference between noise and music is those brief moments of silence in between. It’s those moments of silence that turn noise into music. Otherwise, it’s just chaos. 

But if we can create those moments where we can just have that pause, then all of a sudden, we start to hear the song of our lives. It’s that reflection. What am I doing? What really resonates with me? Am I serving my greater purpose? What is it about this life that is most important to me, and what is it that’s guiding me? And it’s that recognition for me, you know, with regard to spirituality, it was that recognition, that admonishment that I, that acknowledgment of something greater than myself.  

And so whatever that that may be for you or for whomever individually, it’s that recognition and that following in the pursuit of that thing, whatever it might be, that will help you get there while simultaneously recognizing all of the things that were probably important that got you there in the 1st place, all of the things, the academia, your career, the material things that you, you know you held so much value or put so much value into it. And now realizing that there’s something more important than there’s something that really in so many ways, can change your life. 

And I was just having this conversation the other day, where I have… I’m in a motorhome now and we have. We’ve been traveling the country, and my wife and I have these two beautiful mountain bikes that were on the back of our bike rack traveling the country with us and we jump off and we ride well. We came out the other morning and somebody had cut the three steel cables and the bikes were gone. Somebody stole our bikes and for a moment there I was like, wow, that’s painful. It’s just another one of those universal lessons that we get in life. And so, it’s a reflection of what it is that really makes us happy? What is it that really is happening in this universe? There’s something much more powerful, something much more important.  

So, it’s not about the bikes. It’s about the idea that somebody needed them more than we did and that’s a painful lesson for us. But it’s also the recognition that everything happens for a reason, and the more you can settle into that; the things that feel good, the things that feel bad, that the moment when you have great triumphs and success. The moments that are very painful, that all of these things are happening in a way, and they’ve been happening for billions of years, long before you got here and long after you’re gone the way that they’re supposed to. Acknowledging all of that and bringing that into the material world into this dimension. That’s where the harmony starts to happen. 

Mike, I’m really glad that you’re actually bringing up this conversation because normally the perception that people have of really successful entrepreneurs and capitalists whenever they talk with them is like they’re pure money only. Like, talk to me in purely monetary terms. This is all philosophy nonsense. I don’t want to hear it. Like, that’s what. That’s the idea that people have. Only like capitalists and like entrepreneurs, like people that are, that are successful in business and all that they, they don’t really think of in terms of having a deeper thing, like you’re one of those rare types of entrepreneurs that also is into spirituality and a lot of people conversely are into the spiritual subject, but they’re not really entrepreneurs. You’re somehow at the junction point, and I want you to tell my audience like. What is that like being at the junction point between these two worlds?

It’s really beautiful, you know, it was challenging early on because like you said, a lot of my business partners and or associates just didn’t understand it. A lot of them would come to me and say, like, have you lost your mind? And they said, no. I actually have found it. 

That is, that is awesome. 

Yeah, and now more and more of them are coming back around because they see the level of happiness they see, the lifestyle, they see the joy and the bliss that I’m surrounded by, and they want it. I can’t tell you how many people I know have hundreds of millions of dollars and they’re not happy. Like what good is that? What good is it like happiness is an inside job, right? 

It comes from inside and it should be that way. If you’re looking for an external stimulus to make you want to get out of bed in the morning to bring a smile to your face and make you want to dance with your wife before you go to work, it’s not going to happen like those are the things that have to come from inside of you. The more you can cultivate that the more you exponentially increase your success. The likelihood in life.  

And so, for me, it’s been really now it’s at its. At a great point, because people see it, they see me on social media, and they know what I’m up to. They hear me speak and they want it at first. They think a few years ago they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand it because, in their defense, we don’t learn that, especially in America. We don’t learn that that’s not a part of it, it’s. You know, go to school, go to college, get good grades, get a good job, make a lot of money and you’ll be successful. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

It’s actually doing all of those things. I did all of that. I was a product of all of that. I found I wasn’t built right and was born ready to go to law school and build my own law firm. That was never in my plan. I didn’t expect that. I thought I was going to make pizzas my whole life.

But I did it and I said OK, let me do what everybody’s told me. I need to do this in order to be successful and once. I did it. It’s like when you get to the top of the mountain, and you look around and you spent 20 years climbing that mountain and you say OK. I think I’m on top of the wrong mountain. What do you do? Well, you go climb another mountain. And so that’s what I’ve done. And now that’s what other people are seeing me do. And they’re like, I want to be over there on that mountain. So that’s what it’s been like. 

So, Mike, I wanted to ask you this right, so like what was your motivating factor at the beginning like in your early 20s versus your motivating factor now like what was the process and the transition part? Because I know you mentioned that 15 years ago if somebody talked to you about spirituality. You’d have laughed at them, but What was your motivating factor then and what was the transition moment that changed to like where, and what is the motivating factor now?

Back then it was money I wanted to make as much as I could because that’s what I placed the most value on. And today it’s time because that’s what I placed the most value on. Like am I doing what I want to do right at this moment? I’m on this podcast with you right now because I want to be, not because somebody’s telling me I have to be, not because I’m getting paid a lot of money to do it. I’m here because I want to be on this podcast.  

And so, every day throughout my life, I ask myself, “Am I doing what I want to do right now? Something that’s serving my purpose, something that’s serving humanity? And if I am, then that’s where I want to be. Ultimately, the reason that I’m here is that I went that other route and I realized that that didn’t result from the kind of life, the type of lifestyle that I wanted, and so I made that change. I literally, you know, was doing very well as a founding partner in a law firm, and I was invested in other companies. And, you know, money wasn’t an issue, and houses, cars, boats, vacation homes, and travel whenever all of those things.

My wife and I built a big, beautiful dream home. And I was lying on the couch looking up at the 24-foot ceilings of one of the nicest homes I’ve ever seen, and I just had this profound feeling of happiness. Like I’m not happy. Wait a minute. How can this be? I just spent the last 20 years doing everything that everyone told me I needed to do. In order to be happy and I’m not.  

And so, I went back, and I just reverse-engineered everything to learn an entirely new skill set and an entirely new way of life. Started waking up at ashrams and studying with shamans and meeting people around the world That were involved in meditation and mindfulness and plant medicines and all of the different ways of biohacking for superior and optimum performance. That’s what really makes me get out of bed now. 

Wow, Mike, like, I’m really glad that you’re mentioning this because I think a lot of the viewers in my audience need to know this, and like, like basically in American culture right now, they want to like their idea of success, at least of my generation, GEN Z is basically the first half of what you. Mentioned to get to those mansions and roads and vacation homes and all that like that to them, is the ultimate peak or pinnacle of happiness. 

But what you’re saying right now is that that is not the pinnacle of happiness. And then you did 20 years of that, only to realize that does not lead to happiness, which is really interesting because right now my generation and the generation after me are basically thinking of the first half of what he said as the idea of success and happiness altogether. 

And I think a lot of people do and don’t get me wrong. For some people, you know, maybe that’ll work. I think most people find that it doesn’t. For some, maybe it is like if that’s your definition of success and what makes you happy, then great. But more and more I find that that’s not the case. The pendulum has really been swinging back in the other direction.  

We live in a different state of consciousness now than we did 20/30/50/100 years ago, and that new consciousness is waking us up to the fact that we have a bigger purpose and a better way of life. There’s a better way of enjoying our lives if there’s more opportunity to do it in other ways. And so, you know, when I and that’s one of the reasons I mentor people and I coach and work with people. It’s because you know I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. And I don’t want to see people go down that same path just to, you know, go to college to become what their parents want them to become, in order to have a “good job” in order to be happy, only to find out that they’re not. If that works for you, great. But you really have to sit back and ask yourself, like in your audience, I would ask them like, why? Do you want a lot of money? Why is it a good thing, right? Depending on what you do with the money. Like if you just blow the money on ridiculous things, then what’s the sense? Unless that makes you happy.  

But if you can use the money to have the opportunity to buy time in the sense of being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, with whomever you want, then that’s good. And there are ways of getting there that most people aren’t aware of.  

And so, for me, that’s what’s most important. It’s like, how do we spend that time? Money is valuable, but it’s finite, right? Time and its way of making our lives exponentially more valuable is infinite, but it’s also finite. We only have a little bit of time. What do we have 80/90 years, 100 if we’re lucky? Like what are you doing with it? And if you’re going to spend that time trying to make a lot of money with the hope that you’ll enjoy your life more later, I don’t know if that’s such a great approach. 

So, it’s interesting when you say that Mike, because most people are doing jobs where they’re trading their hours for money; like they would definitely want to know how to get time freedom. But like in their minds, they think that it’s really hard to get so, like if somebody had to ask you, how do you go from just being relatively poor or middle class to get to where you are? What is one or two nuggets you would have to get from zero to 100? 

And the easiest and most effective way that I’ve found is to find something that you’re incredibly passionate about and do everything you can to monetize that. That’s what you need to do, and it’s not like just, you know, most people that are not most but a lot of people that I’ve worked with or met that have gone to school for something they’re not necessarily extraordinarily passionate about. Once they get to the job place.

When I was running a lot of what was happening at my law firm, I used to get people that came to me every day to say I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a lawyer and say, why do you want to be a lawyer? Well, I want to make a lot of money. Like, that’s the wrong motivation. That’s not the right motivation. The most people, the most successful people that I work with now, whether it’s in tech or entertainment or finance or health and Wellness. Their people have been relentlessly focused on what they’re passionate about and then monetized it.  

And it takes a lot. Man, you have to be willing to sacrifice. You have to be willing to put them in the. Then you can get into the more traditional methods of realizing like you said if you’re working, you’re trading your time for money that there’s only so much of that you can do, but then you can, you know, by building your own company, you have other people working for you, trading their time for money that ultimately helps you generate more revenue and wealth. 

And then taking that money that you’ve made by having others work and invest that money. So having your money work for you in addition to having people work for you, there are a lot of different methods to doing it, but it really starts with finding something that you’re passionate about, because then there you’re not really, you know, it’s the old saying of if you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life. That’s true in so many ways. And now with the access that we have through technology and other things, you can monetize things in ways that we’ve never been able to do. 

It’s amazing that you’re mentioning Mike, because a lot of people have, like their passions or like they have their hobbies and all of that. But they don’t really know the art of monetizing their passion or all that they’re passionate about, or what their hobbies are. And turning into a business. Like if you go to anybody anywhere like you asked them, like 9 times out of 10, they’ll have no idea how to do it. So, if you had to, like, explain to somebody and like, just like the gist of it, how would you, like, monetize something that you’re passionate about or you have a hobby about while you’re doing your job? 

It depends on what it is, but the easiest answer is to find somebody that’s done it. You know that’s the power of like when I talk about mentoring and coaching, everybody should have a coach. Everybody should have a mentor. They should probably have more than one. And there’s no excuse today to not have somebody that can help you figure out how to monetize what you want to monetize or how to figure out what to do in the way that you want to do it. 

It’s everywhere now. There are coaches, there are mentors, and there are companies. There’s a lot of opportunity to learn these things from people that have not only done it. But I want to help pay it forward by teaching people, getting people interested in what they’re doing, and helping them show them the path to monetization. 

That is awesome, I do agree I think mentorship is a very key and important thing. You have to have a mentor that has already been successful in their field. And I think one of the things that people fail at doing is like getting the right mentor. They try to do everything by themselves, but a mentor can reduce the amount of time by half, at least. 

Yeah, and that taps into something else that’s really important that I think your audience should learn about. And I had to learn this the hard way because there weren’t a lot of coaches and mentors when I was in my 20s, just didn’t exist. It’s everywhere now.

But I see so many young guys and gals, you know, getting a decent job where they think they’re making a lot of money because they’re making whatever they’re doing and the first thing they do is they go out and they buy a car, and they take on a $400 or a $600 a month car. And then they go out and they get the Fendi bag or whatever, the Gucci bag, and the shoes to go with it.  

The Balenciaga and all of this stuff, and that’s all great. If you need that, if those things are tools to monetize whatever your business is or whatever it is that you’re doing to monetize things great. Otherwise, their liability, most people don’t understand the difference between an asset and a liability. And spending money on things that are not going to generate a return for you is infinitely worse than the opposite.  

So, the mindset has to be there, like instead of spending $1000 on these clothes, maybe I should go to this conference where I’ll have access to these individuals who can help change my life. Because if you start doing that in your 20s or sooner or even in your 30s or 40s, you could change the trajectory of your life overnight. 

People don’t think about it that way in the sense of wow, you know, I would go to that, that conference. But that’s $1000 or that’s $2000. There’s a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong. You might have to save up for that for a while. But what’s the potential that could come out of that? It’s a lot more than a few car payments, like driving a car that’s not as fancy and investing your money in something that’s going to give you a return. Like it’s changing that mindset. 

No, couldn’t agree with you more Mike. That is awesome. So, Mike, there’s one thing I wanted to ask, like from your perspective, what is the biggest challenge you had during your entire career and how did you overcome it during your career doing multiple businesses? 

Yeah, there’s a new challenge every day depending on, you know what you’re doing. It’s the way that you overcome. It is tenacity that sticks to fitness you have to and that’s why it’s so important to do something you love. Because it’s challenging. You know, I talk about this whether you’re a plumber or you’re a tech guru. Life is difficult. You wake up every morning and you’re going to get punched in the face. It just happens. That’s part of it.  

And so, if you’re doing something that you love, it makes it that much easier. So, it gets you through. It is tenacity, tenacity, that ability to keep going, to keep going. Mike Tyson talks about it, he says. Discipline is doing something that you hate in the way that you would love something. And that’s what it’s about. But if you could do something that you love, you’re already ahead of the game. You’re already there. It’s really hard to get through things when you’re doing it to get to an end. That doesn’t resonate with you if you’re doing it to get to a place that’s really important for what, whatever that thing may be. Then it makes it that much easier to get out of bed every morning and to keep doing it, especially when it gets tough. 

So, Mike, I wanted to ask you this question because since you and I are on the same page regarding the balance of spirituality and finances, you know the American identity, one of the core identities about the relentless pursuit of happiness, right? So, from your perspective, so far everything you’ve learned in your life so far, how should Americans go in terms of pursuing happiness? 

You know, I don’t know that it’s Americans. It might be people in general. In my opinion, it might be different from others. I can tell you how I approached it and what’s worked for me. It’s by doing exactly what I said. It’s by valuing time more than anything else, because of its limited ability that it’s given to us. It really defines our existence on this planet, and so that happiness is really based on me… Am I doing what I want right now? Am I doing it with whom I want, where I want in a way that I want?  

And I think that’s when people think about happiness. You don’t think about it on that level, but when you break it down, that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? Like if you’re doing what you want, if you’re with your husband or your wife, or your friend or your cousin, and you’re where you want to be. And you’re there because you want to be there; chances are you’re going to be happy.

And so, you know people often chase money because they see that as the path that provides us with opportunity and time. And that’s true. And so, if you could do those things in a way that not only correlates to that but with other things, then you’re in a really good place. You’re, you know, you’re ahead of the rest of the group. 

I see and like so in your experience how mindfulness and meditation help with regards to having more mental peace or reaching happiness from your perspective. 

It gave me a better sense of who I was, of what was really important to me, and how to build more on that rather than like all of that noise that we talked about, the external stimulus because we live in a consumer-based society. Right. We reward the consumption and the production of goods. That’s how most people operate, but what if there’s consumption and production of other things that come from inside of us that we can share with each other that results in happiness?  

You know, one of the biggest life lessons I ever got didn’t come from college, didn’t come from law school. It came from being in my wife’s village in Portugal and she’s Portuguese and she took me. You know, when we first got married. This is going back 20 years or so to her village and I met these people who materially don’t have a lot. But they smiled a lot more than a lot of people, and they laughed, and they spent the time doing things, you know they had to farm and, you know, raise the crops, and do all that. 

But they just lived differently, and it really showed me a different side of existence and how people could live. And I started really thinking about that and for me, it took a while to set in, but once they tried to balance that with who I was and what I wanted out of life, that really was revealed to me through the meditation, through the mindfulness and through the people in that space. So, I started working with it. 

So, Mike comes to like the pursuit of happiness that is connected to it. So, a lot of people believe, like, a lot of Americans believe that the American dream and achieving it will lead them to a lot of happiness. And for them, it could be a house with a white picket fence like with two cars, and for some others, it’s just like the mansions and like the yachts and all of that stuff. 

So, from your perspective, right after everything, you’ve like experience, what do you think would be the ideal American dream for you? How should Americans go about realizing this? The fantasy of the American Dream spurs them on. 

What you want when you want the way that you want because there are people who I know who make 40,000 dollars a year. They’re very, very happy and they’re very content with their lives. Again, if you look behind that, it’s based on the opportunity to do what you really want while you’re here serving our purpose, that’s all related to it, right? 

Money is just energy. It’s current. That allows us to kind of navigate to where we want to go hopefully. And so, if you could tap into that currency, if you could tap into that energy that you are, then there’s a likelihood that you’ll be able to get there in ways that you hadn’t thought about previously. 

Are you really right about that? A lot of people look at the economy and they’re looking into external factors. And like, you know, like us as entrepreneurs, we know that like you should not focus on the external, but like they look at the economy and then that’s where they’re basing the American dream and their understanding of happiness. And all of that so. It’s interesting that you’re saying that. 

There has to be a switch. I think that happens inside of you going from a scarce mindset to an abundance mindset. And when I say mindset, I also mean heart set. Because if you can have that synchronicity between your heart and your mind, that obviously is ideally where you want to be. 

So, if you can come to life from a place of abundance, hey, my bike got stolen. That really sucks. But you know what? Somebody, if they were willing to risk their well-being and they were willing to risk their freedom because they could have gotten arrested when they stole them if they needed them that badly, then I hope it gets them where they need to go. If you can approach things that way from an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset, how could they steal my bikes now? I’m not going to be able to do this now, I have to spend more money on the bikes.

And that applies to everything and applies to relationships in your family with you. It applies to things at work. All of these different things. The more that we can approach those things with an abundant mindset and heart set as opposed to a scarce mindset and heart set, the more likely it is that we’re going to have a blissful, meaningful, purpose-driven existence. 

No, that’s amazing that you say that because like Mike, like right now in the American economy, you know, like it’s got in the last year itself, there was a lot of inflation, and a lot of people complain about consumer debt and that they’re in debt and is staggering wages and their inflation. So, what do you think an American perspective should be from your perspective? Since you have been very successful? Regards to your business. That is like how they should view the entire concept of debt and inflation. 

So, it depends on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with debt can be a very, very good thing for myself personally and others whom I’ve worked with, we use debt to our advantage, right? So, it depends on what kind of debt you’re talking about. I think most people don’t understand it. They think of it in terms of what we talked about car payments and different liabilities.  

So, if you’re smart about it, if you go out there to some of these conferences or go online and learn about it, you can really use debt to your advantage. The same thing with inflation. You know, it provides a tremendous opportunity. Everything is just a cycle. And if you could follow these cycles, you start to learn when to do what and when. And so, the more you learn about it, the more people spend time like, you know, when you look at what people are doing online, when they’re on different forms of social media, what are you researching? Because you can, you know, if you type in valuable ways of using debt, you’re going to learn a lot. You could spend 15 minutes doing that, or you could spend 15 minutes, you know, watching people fight at an intersection in whatever city you pick on social media. How you spend your time is up to you. 

That is also Mike because I wanted to talk about this, talk about it because a lot of people see death as a negative thing. But if you use strategic debt for acquiring assets right, like which a lot of high-level entrepreneurs do and it’s like the difference between 99% and 1% like we can change the way we look at it and like. 

Most people are into consumer debt. Instead of getting into consumer debt, we get into strategic debt and like we understand how that works, that can really change the ball game in our finances. So, it’s the reason I wanted to bring that up, you know. 

Yeah, that’s why you and I, you know, like to have the conversations we do because I’m so impressed by you like that. You understand these concepts. At your age, I didn’t understand these things and it’s great that you do and it’s great that you’re sharing them with people. That’s why I wanted to come here. 

No, I mean, thank you, man. You’re flattering, but yeah, it’s just because I’m, like, learning from people. And I can always, like, do more, you know, but thank you, Mike. 

So, Mike, I wanted to ask you about your company. I know you have a company called Universalism. Can you tell me in the audience a little bit more about that and the premise of how you got started about it? 

So, Universalism is a consulting company that we founded a few years back. And it was based on the concept that everything I had done as an attorney ultimately resulted in consulting with individuals and helping guide them and counseling them through whether it was legal or business or private matters that they were dealing with. And so now a lot of what I’m doing over the last almost a decade now is really focused on helping individuals that way.  

So, providing consulting services for various individuals and various companies that need it, depending on what they’re doing. And so that’s led me to some really exciting companies that I’m working with now as an executive or as a consultant or an advisor. 

And so, you know, it gives me the opportunity to have some of the skill set that I have and have the relationships that I have to intersect that allow me to work with various organizations that are meaningful to me. 

In other words, are they doing some? Think that’s likely to result in something very positive for themselves, their company, and for us, because there has to be an important aspect of that for me to get involved right now. 

I see Mike, that’s awesome. And so, Mike, is there any other project or work that you’re doing right now that you would want the audience to get a glimpse of? 

I mean the two companies that I’m working with right now that are very exciting to me. The first one is called WebDelics. WebDelics is a company that’s spun out of Adventure Studio. I’m a part of WebDelics in the health and Wellness sector, and we’re focused on Psychedelics, as a form of therapeutic treatment.

And so we are positioning it to be the WebMD of psychedelics. Nobody’s captured the consumer brand on global education for psychedelics. In other words, how can psilocybin help with dementia? How can ayahuasca help with PTSD? WebDelics the website is up and running, we’re getting a lot of traction and a lot of attention. The podcast is going well. So that’s one thing that I’m very excited about. 

And the other one where I serve as the Chief legal officer is the company called Cosmic Wire, which is an agnostic blockchain-based web three and. Adverse company that’s doing some extraordinary things globally, so really excited about them. We’re working with some names and companies that you’d immediately recognize in the entertainment music space. So, both of them are very exciting, and again with both of them, there’s an aspect to them of helping individuals on a much broader level than individually. And so that’s again really exciting to me. 

So, I look at technology, whether it’s human technology or computer technology individually or the convergence of the two of them as something that we’re going to be seeing a lot of moving forward. And so that’s where I’m spending my time right now with these two companies. 

Mike, that’s awesome. What you’re doing is great and it’s amazing. And like I completely support it because I’m into, like, the understanding of, like, seeking truth and spirituality. And also, like finance as well. So yeah, that. So, Mike, so Mike, how can my audience connect with you and also get? To know more about what you’re doing. 

Check me out online. All of my socials are at Mike Mumola. So that’s on all of the social media platforms at my website, mikemumola.com Hit me up. Love to speak to whoever helps however I can. 

That is awesome, Mike, and I’m really grateful that you took the time and I know your time is really valuable, that you took the time to take part in this interview and like, give nuggets on how to be successful. And I really appreciate it. And I would definitely want to have you back on the show at a later time. 

Let’s do it. This is a lot of fun. 

I want to conclude this show by telling my fellow extraordinary Americans that, hey, there’s an extraordinary within each and every one of us and it’s our duty to awaken it and unleash it until the next time bye for now.