Michael Mackintosh
Think about who do you want to help. Who do you want to help? Because that’s actually the most important thing in business is who are you helping? The more you understand the people you’re helping, the more you care about them, the more you love them from your heart because there’s going to be a good feeling. Then, you now actually want to go to the extra mile, you actually want to serve. And then you can start thinking about what can you do, practically, to help them.
Michael Mackintosh
That might be creating a podcast, it might be writing an e-book. You might be writing a physical book, you might mean doing a bunch of videos or an online course or coaching or whatever it is that you want to do. So you need to think about what do they need. And then you create your content based on that.
Announcer
(Announcer) Welcome to Juice Guru Radio for entrepreneurs. Firestart your own health movement. And now your host, founder of Juice Guru Institute and bestselling author, Steve Prussack.
Steve Prussack
Hello and welcome to another edition of Juicingprenuer Radio. I’m your host Steve. It’s so great to be with you because I’ve got one of my favorite people on the Earth with us right now. My good friend, Michael Mackintosh. He’s an internationally renowned author of over 10 books. He’s a spiritual teacher, entrepreneur and mentor for thought leaders and game changers. He’s perfect for the show because he helps next generation, evolutionary leaders to reawaken their visions, unlock their genius and systematically transform ideas into tangible income, impact and freedom without stress, worry or confusion.
Steve Prussack
Let’s welcome to the show right now, Michael Mackintosh.
Michael Mackintosh
Steve, what a blessing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here and for creating this show.
Steve Prussack
And Michael, when I created this show, you were actually one of the 1st- I wanted you to be the 1st show, and I’m glad it’s happening now. Because this show kind of awoken from the conversations you and I have had through the years. So, thank you for being here and this is just going to be an extension of 2 friends talking that everyone gets to listen in on.
Michael Mackintosh
That’s beautiful.
Steve Prussack
So, I thought we could talk about your entrepreneurial journey, which of course I know, but talk about a little bit what that journey has been like.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, it’s quite a wonder. What a wonder. Such a beautiful journey. And I think, we all have our own unique experience. To me, it was a bit unusual, like most people’s actually, that I wasn’t planning to be an entrepreneur. I never really had that intention, growing up. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. In fact, my life was mostly ‘drifting,’ as we like to call it, just drifting about doing whatever is going on, not really thinking what I wanted to do, not really taking initiative for many years, in my teenage years.
Michael Mackintosh
And I ended up feeling profoundly lost and depressed. Actually, as a teenager, just doing drugs and going to parties and doing whatever other people were doing. And then after a while, I started realizing that the drugs don’t work, as the song goes and I was open to something else. And my mother was a meditation teacher and she have been trying to get me to do meditation for years, and I was never interested. I used to see her going- waking up in the morning meditation as I was coming home.
Michael Mackintosh
I’d becoming home around 4 o’clock in the morning and she would be getting up for her meditation. And we used to meet on the stairs with this funny, funny moment. And I knew that getting up early and having a good life and a clean life and doing good things was better than what I was doing, going to bed at 4 in the morning. So finally, I decided to start one of these classes with her. And in my 1st meditation class, I had such a powerful experience where I was literally pulled out of my body without realizing what was going on.
Michael Mackintosh
And I had a vision of my future. I never had anything like that happen to me before, and I could see into the future. It was really a profound experience, and I had to make a decision in that visionary realm of which path I was going to take. Was I going to continue down the road I was going or was I going to take this new path, that had opened up, a path of peace, the path of rest. And I made that in a choice. And then when I came back in my body, I really felt like I’d become a different person in some way.
Michael Mackintosh
A very profound shift had happened. And then from that moment on, I started changing my lifestyle and started doing meditation and started to be of service to others, to share with others. And as I started experiencing more peace and more lightness and more joy, I was able to impart some of those good vibes on other people just through my presence and through sharing things that I’ve learned. And after a while doing meditation, I started thinking, ‘Well, this is such a beautiful feeling, such a beautiful experience. But…’
Michael Mackintosh
Here I am, this 20 year old kid. I was at college and I didn’t know what I was going to do afterwards. And I wasn’t sure really where my life was going to lead, practically. And I realized that, I needed to figure out how to have a lifestyle, a style of living that was aligned with me because I saw many people who were spiritually minded, but they had these conventional jobs, maybe working in a real estate office or as a nurse or something like that. That’s fine.
Michael Mackintosh
But they used to complain that they wanted just to do something else and they had to go to their jobs to pay the bills. First, I think well what can I do that is enjoyable and pays the bills and something that I can sustain long term so that in my spiritual life and my physical life, they’re aligned. They’re not these separate things. So then I discovered about online business and the idea that you can work from home and help people all over the world and get paid for it.
Michael Mackintosh
And I thought this is absolutely a remarkable idea. This is back in 2004 where- looking back now that seems like the old days. Doesn’t it, Steve? 2004, like it was almost the Wild West.
Steve Prussack
Yeah and that’s around when we became friends, too because we’re both doing it.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, exactly. So this was like way back in the day when this is an unknown thing. But some of us decided to give it a go. You know, why not? I think it takes that initiation and that openness to just try things out. That’s really important to bear in mind. But being willing to try something new, even if it doesn’t work, I had no idea what I was doing. The first course I bought, I think it was called something like ‘The Rich Jerk.’ Did you ever hear about that, Steve, ‘The Rich Jerk?’
Steve Prussack
Oh, yeah. Who was that?
Michael Mackintosh
I have no idea who it actually was, but it was just called ‘The Rich Jerk,’ might have been John Colton, but there was nothing else really around. This whole thing, it was a terrible, terrible thing. I mean, it’s not my style, ‘The Rich Jerk.’ I mean, that’s what I wanted to be. But you couldn’t find anything else about online business back in those days. So I had to take what I could. We were trying to build websites and having to learn HTML and all these. So it was really tedious, back in the day.
Michael Mackintosh
Nowadays, you just click, click, click, click, click and you have a website. Back in the day, you actually start from scratch and figure everything out from the ground up. And it was really, very, very difficult, but willing to try it out, create these really bad looking, plain websites. So we started off with no idea what we’re doing. Also got into making chocolate and co-founded a chocolate company in England, which I’m no longer involved with. But that company has gone on to make millions and millions of dollars, pounds as it is in the UK, in sales and millions of chocolate bars. It’s a very successful company.
Michael Mackintosh
So that was great to get that started and start the recipes and start the design and everything. But it came to a point where I left England, moved to Hawaii. I’m not going to get into how that all happened. But after that, I already started taking the online business stuff more seriously and bought a course. Back in the day, we didn’t have any money. I just want to mention this because people listening might think- you know, nowadays looking at me and you, Steve, they might think, ‘Well, you’ve got the money and you’ve got the success and you’ve got all these things and I can’t do it.’ That’s often what people think, ‘That’s not possible for me.’ But I literally was living in a house with 3 other roommates, and it was the equivalent of about $300 rent a month, which I think is hilarious how cheap that is.
Michael Mackintosh
I didn’t have any money, really. Barely pays even that amount of money. And the 1st course I bought on Internet business was something around- the 1st was ‘The Rich Jerk,’ the other one was like $300. And that to me, was a really big deal because I didn’t have the money. So we started off with nothing, with no money, no experience, no idea what we were doing. But what I realized over the years is that, the key thing to success in business is to love and care for the people that we’re serving, that we’re helping.
Michael Mackintosh
But this actually isn’t mentioned in most of these courses, for some reason. And I think it’s the most important thing, is that instead of studying business, we need to study people and what they need and what they want and how we can help them. Because when we care about somebody and we want to help them and we’re willing to do the work, to be of service, to think about how we can make their life better, then they really appreciate it. Because most people don’t care about anyone else. They just care about themselves and they just want to make money and they want to screw people over and they’re not bothered about the consequences.
Michael Mackintosh
But when someone meets the person who actually cares, who wants to help, it’s so refreshing and that’s very attractive. And then that creates a conversation, it creates an atmosphere, it creates a relationship. And that relationship then builds on itself. And then the money and the wealth and the success and all the rest of it come after that. So this is really what I’ve been doing in different ways for the last 15 years or so, is just listening to what people need.
Michael Mackintosh
We’ve done loads and loads and loads of surveys: What do you need? What do you want? What were your goals? Because the more we understand people, the more we understand where they’re coming from, what’s causing them sorrow, what challenges they have. Then we can spend our time thinking, how can we help them? What ideas do we have? What methods do we have? What can we recommend them? Even things that we don’t offer, but what other things would help them. So that we help people make their lives better. And to me, seeing other people happy and joyful and peaceful, it really is more important than the money.
Michael Mackintosh
I mean, I appreciate the money. I like the money, but seeing someone changed their life, going from disturbed and stressed out and lost and confused to feeling peaceful and joyful and relaxed and being able to have mastery over their lives. That change is so inspiring. And that’s really- when I go to bed at night, those things that really light me up the most, that make feel like I’m making a difference in the world.
Steve Prussack
And I know, because when we look back to when we were building, you know, as an entrepreneur, there’s always the struggle. How am I going to pay the bills? Am I reaching people? Like, what is the best way to reach them? And like you said, getting off- I don’t think I read ‘The Rich Jerk,’ but…
Michael Mackintosh
Oh, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Steve Prussack
But finding your voice, too. A part of it- and I guess when you realized how important it is to serve. That it’s not even about us. Well, that was an awakening as an entrepreneur, right?
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, it really is. I was actually having a conversation with one of my friends from Hawaii, the other day. And she was asking me for some advice about business. I actually told her that, ‘Ironically, it was when I stopped following the business gurus, and I just started helping people that we started making a lot of money and helping a lot more.’ So the funny thing is, even though I think studying courses can be useful, and I’ve definitely learned some things from studying, but in the end, we have to- like you said, find our own voice and find out what it is that we’re uniquely good at, what our unique specialities are. Because each one of us, every single soul in the world has at least one speciality, one quality, one virtue, something that we uniquely do.
Michael Mackintosh
And when we do it, it really is of service, it really helps people. And there’s oftentimes, it’s a lot more than one thing but we all have one main thing or maybe two, one or two main things. And it could be things like being cooperative, that sounds a little bit abstract. But when someone is really cooperative and they’re not coming from their ego and they’re thinking, how can I be of service? And what can I do to connect people? Or someone else may be really good at bringing people together, or someone might be good at taking complex ideas and simplifying them.
Michael Mackintosh
There’s so many different things, so many different souls. When we find what it is that we’re uniquely good at and it takes a little bit of time to think about this. Oftentimes, other people can tell us more than we know ourselves because they see it really clearly and we’re not necessarily sure. When we find that thing, we start using it. Then it starts to grow, and then other things come as well. It’s almost like a flourishing that starts to occur. The abundance starts arising.
Michael Mackintosh
So everyone has at least one thing. And I think this is one of the best places to start, if you’re starting a business is, what can you do? What is it that your good at that people praise you for that you don’t even think about? That’s always a good sign. If you do something and people say, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m really, really grateful for that.’ There’s a sign there, that’s something to pay attention to. Because whatever you’re doing, in that case, it might be worth looking at it and doing more of it.
Michael Mackintosh
So, this is just a good thing to think in the back of your mind. What is my speciality? What is my speciality?
Steve Prussack
And we’ve talked about it, what’s going on right now with, you know, lockdowns in place in lots of States, some of its lightening, some isn’t. But people are finding- with the loss of jobs in the level we haven’t seen in our lifetime, but you could say that everything’s falling apart, or you can say there’s a lot of opportunity now. Where are you on that?
Michael Mackintosh
Absolutely, yeah. This situation with this virus has really shaken things up. And there’s millions and millions of words written about how bad it is and there’s also the silver lining, the blessings in the curse. And how I look at it is the- in life and by the way, there’s going to be other things to happen. I mean, this isn’t like the end. It’s not like the virus came and then left, and there’s not going to be any more problems afterwards. There’s going to be more problems. So I think it’s just worth bringing that to mind. I don’t want to freak anyone out, but it’s good to be aware that this is a precarious situation, and we live in a precarious world.
Michael Mackintosh
There’s going to be more bizarre things happening, if we’re willing to be radically honest with ourselves. And so, we need to learn how to discover the secret benefit in situations. One of the laws of the universe, when we really study spirituality and we study life and we look at things very deeply, we realize that there truly is benefit in everything. Benefit in everything.
Michael Mackintosh
And the skill is how do we discover that benefit quicker rather than later? Because in retrospect, when we look back on this virus, when we look back on other challenging things we’ve gone through…You know, think about it, Steve, to yourself, can you think of the time where you went through a major problem? Really, really difficult. Where you’re thinking of giving up or you just like going through- just everything was falling into pieces but then as you look back on it, that turned out to be extremely important and really, really, really helpful. Can you think of something?
Steve Prussack
Oh, I could think of a million. Well, I could think of one because I’m talking to you. And I remember when we first launched Juice Guru, and I remember at the beginning how hard it was. And I remember a lot of times just wanting to give up and I remember even reaching out to you. You were in Hawaii on a retreat or no, you were in India, actually, on a meditation retreat. And I track you down in India and I said, ‘Michael, I’m going to go back and be an occupational therapist because I was making over 6 figures a year, I had vacations all through the year, summers off. Why am I doing this?’ And that was one of those crossroads.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, it really was. I remember that scene I was sitting on a swing, bench swing in the sun, on this retreat looking over the mountains. And I talk, talk Steve off the ledge. ‘Come on Steve, it’s- easy, easy, easy. Put the gun down. It’s going to go right.’ It was quite amusing. Obviously, it wasn’t amusing to you, but I’m glad that I could help you through that, because you do great work. And I’ve seen the time and energy you’ve put into this over the years and your hearts in it.
Michael Mackintosh
And I mean, I’ve had the same thing myself sometimes. When tough times have been tough in my business over the years and thinking, ‘Oh, I should just give the whole thing up.’ Then I thought, ‘What would I do instead, realistically?’ You know, ‘What would you do instead? When we think about it’, when it’s something that we want to do, we started it for a reason, then these challenges actually help us to remove, and this is important to remember, they help us to remove things that no longer serve us.
Michael Mackintosh
The Coronavirus is actually, in many ways, helped a lot of people remove a lot of things. I’ve spoken to so many people over the last few months who have said they’re relieved about this because of the virus. Because before it happened, they were charging around constantly, no time to themselves, driving here and there, here and there, going in and out different shops and different things and eating food that wasn’t good for them and just being in a state of stress. And now they’re kind of stuck in their house. Of course, that isn’t pleasant to be there the whole time.
Michael Mackintosh
But the benefit is that a lot of people are eating their own food that they make with love in their heart, which is much, much better for our health, to make our own food. They’re spending more time connecting with friends or family, whether it’s online or in person where possible. And you know, they’re thinking about what’s important for them, they’re reading more, they’re getting more rest. I mean, a lot of people are actually healthier because of this virus, ironically. And a lot of situations that were unpleasant for people have been taken away from them and now they’re benefiting from those things.
Michael Mackintosh
So on a physical level, I think- and oh, the other thing, I think is quite far is I was in Whole Foods, the other day, and wandering around and they’ve got all these people, like following everyone and spraying the fridges and like spraying the handles and spraying the products. It’s almost humorous, how over-the-top it is in Whole Foods. But at the same time, America and the world is being cleaned, doesn’t it? This is like this major cleaning. So the whole thing is getting more cleanly, more hygienic than it was before, which is good overall. There’s probably going to be less illnesses or for other reasons because of that.
Steve Prussack
Yeah, that’s a good point.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, I’m just giving a few things but there’s- when we look into our lives, there’s always opportunities. We’ve been living in a world of profound abundance. America’s economy, just before this happened, was as far as I understand, the best that ever happened at any time, in terms of the numbers. And that’s remarkable. So now things are being scaled back a bit. There are some people who, of course, are living around the edge anyway, so they’re the most affected. And of course, our heart goes out to them because I know what that’s like being right on the edge. I remember not being able to pay my bills and not sure where my next meal would come from, back in the day. So I understand that.
Michael Mackintosh
And at the same time, what I personally found when I was in a similar situation was that, those challenging times forced me to rethink my priorities and to go to a higher level in my work and in my life and saving money and being more responsible. When I’ve personally gone through these challenges, they’ve kicked my ass and have crushed my ego and made me think, ‘Right, what do I need to do to re adjust myself, to refine my life, so that I can be in a better position?’
Michael Mackintosh
And so, this virus is helping a lot of people to kind of make those adjustments. And of course, it’s unpleasant. I mean, I’ve gone through it. You’ve gone through it. It isn’t enjoyable. But the benefit of it later on, is that we end up with more savings, more money, more freedom. We have better health. So there’s huge upside to it. And what we have to do in life, is to learn how to focus. Focus. Focus is one of the most important things we have as human beings. Our attention. Giving our precious, precious attention to the things that benefit us and benefit other people.
Michael Mackintosh
And move our attention away from the distractions, the relentless distractions and all the negative things that are basically a waste of time. Pull us into negativity and fear and stress and anxiety and lead us worse- into a worse place, worse than you were before. This is very, very important because the media, social media and so much of the world is designed to distract us in a negative direction. And the result of that is that we feel worse than we did before and we’re none the better off for it afterwards.
Michael Mackintosh
And this is something that we have to realize that, it’s in our control to decide where is my attention going to go. I’ve got a book here which I recommended to you to use. I don’t know if you read it. It’s called ‘The Attention Merchant.’ Do you read that book?
Steve Prussack
Yeah, I’ve got the audio.
Michael Mackintosh
Golden book! I highly recommend everyone reads that book. Just so you understand the massive system of attention merchant that’s Facebook, Google, and all the media channels. I mean, the whole Internet is just run by attention merchants whose entire goal is to harvest our precious attention so that they make advertising money, basically.
Michael Mackintosh
And all of the attention that we’re giving to these attention merchants is at the cost of the price of our own happiness and peace and our own success. So we actually have to learn how to wean ourselves off of that stuff. And instead focus that precious attention on things that will elevate us and allow our lives to be more successful. Because as we focus our attention on those things, then we’re moving away from problems and focusing on solutions and solutions lead to transformation. So if you got a problem, fair enough, we’ve got loads of problems in the world, but focusing on the problem just makes it worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
Michael Mackintosh
But we need to go, ‘Okay, fair enough. They are our problems. I have problems, you have problems, the world has problems. There’s loads of problems. Fair enough. What are we going to do to solve it? What can we do to make it better? How can we resolve it?’ So people who give their full focus to how can we solve the problem, are going to be fine. They’ll figure out a method.
Michael Mackintosh
I mean, in America in particular, I love America. America has such a great work ethic. Overall, it has such potential. So many wonderful systems, wonderful people. And so, people who focus on solutions can solve pretty much anything and America has done such wonders in terms of technology and systems and wealth. So people who focus on solutions are going to be fine. They’ll figure it out. But we have to wean ourselves away from this wasted time on all these other things, so that we can get the solution.
Steve Prussack
Yeah. This is a wake up call, like nothing else, because Michael and I used to talk about, you know, the addiction to social media and smartphones and where this was all going. And then this pandemic thing hit and it really has forced people to live in the now, too. I mean, we’ve talked about the power of now and how either people are in the past or they’re living for the future, and they’re not in the moment. Don’t you think there’s been a sort of urgency to awaken to reality?
Michael Mackintosh
Absolutely. This is one of those things where we can’t avoid it anymore. We have to discover what’s actually important and what isn’t. And living in this strange, altered reality that is the Internet, because the Internet isn’t real. I mean, it is a real thing, but when you look at new stories or social media, it’s not the same thing as our actual experience. I mean, mainly Steve, I ask you the other day, ‘Do you know anyone personally who has the Coronavirus?
Steve Prussack
No. Not yet, no.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah and I also don’t know anyone. And I’ve asked loads of people personally, ‘Do you know anyone?’ And they all said, ‘No.’ I’m talking about people I know personally, like people who live around here, like my family, clients, friends. Everyone says no. Then I went on Facebook, just out of curiosity and I said, ‘Does anyone else know anyone who’s died?’ And Facebook- I had hundreds of comments. It’s a bit surprising how many I got. I don’t use Facebook very much. And people say, ‘Yes, I know so and so and so and so and people died in.’
Michael Mackintosh
And so, Facebook says there’s all these people who had the virus, but I don’t know anyone personally and neither do you.
Steve Prussack
No or our parents, even my parents who live in an old-age facility- a development. I should say, not a facility but an old-age development in Florida and my wife’s parents who live in a similar kind of community in New Jersey. Like these hot spot places and not one case, in either of those communities or anyone that they know except somebody in their 90s, somebody in their 90s but that person had health issues, as it were.
Michael Mackintosh
Exactly. And I’ve heard a lot of doctors are being inspired to put things down as Covid-19, if it’s another health issue. You know, it’s a funny calculating system going on there with the numbers, anyway. But the fact is that we don’t know anyone, they don’t know anyone. I mean, 1 or 2 people we hear like on the peripheral from 3rd- or 4th-hand information. Facebook is all 3rd-hand information. ‘Oh, I know so and so so…’ I don’t know if these people even saying this were saying people they know personally or people they’ve heard about on the Internet themselves. That wasn’t clear to me.
Michael Mackintosh
The point we’re making here is that the Internet, if you look enough for anything, you’ll find something that you’re looking for. So if you ask the question, somebody knows somebody who knows, somebody who knows somebody that died of something at some time. But that’s different from our own life, practically speaking. And what the Internet has allowed to happen is that we can be aware of all the negative things happening in all the obscure places in the world that aren’t actually related to us.
Michael Mackintosh
And then we can start to get freaked out about it. And then, even though we’re wandering around and our life is basically fine, we think it’s worse than it is because we’re aware of bad things in faraway land or faraway places. And this isn’t healthy. It’s not healthy at all. There’s another book which is well worth reading about this called, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death,’ which is a fascinating book. And it’s talking about how the Internet and television and the news and entertainment industry is- it’s got so completely out of control that we’re no longer connected to reality anymore.
Michael Mackintosh
The guy was asking a simple question that we should ask again and again and again every day: ‘Is this directly related to my life?’ Or in other words, ‘Can I use any of this information?’ So you go on the news, let’s say you watch the news, we can ask ourselves, ‘Is this information something I can use?’ And the answer and almost consistently is, ‘No,’ It’s not useful information. It’s just nonsense, most of it. And most of it is misinformation, disinformation, and you could even say propaganda, some of it.
Michael Mackintosh
So, we have all this junk information that isn’t actually useful to us, and that’s taking our precious, precious attention away from the things that we can actually do. We can make our lives and our community better. Because ironically, if the Internet and television and all that were turned off, we would have to look around and say, ‘Where do I live? What’s going on? And how can I make it better?’ We would connect with people and we would make our unique situation better. Help our people around us, neighbors, friends and it will be better.
Michael Mackintosh
But instead of that, we’re focusing on all these faraway things that aren’t relevant to us that we can’t do anything about. Like, let’s say someone dies of some horrible thing in Pakistan, I mean, of course- we don’t want to have bad things happening to anyone. But what can I do about that? What can you do about it? What can anyone do about it? So, if we’re basically feeling disempowered about the world we live in. ‘Oh, there’s nothing else to do about that. This terrible thing happened and I can’t do anything.’ This terrible thing happened and we start feel that there’s all these horrible things somewhere we’re unable to be of service. We’re victims of our world.
Michael Mackintosh
But that’s because we’re aware of information that’s not useful to us. Information is actually only useful when it can be applied in our life. So, we’ve got a situation where we’re bombarded with useless information. Most of it is negative. And the result of absorbing negative information is that we feel bad. And the result of us feeling bad is that we act in disempowered ways and that ends up actually harming our life. So, rather than the information helping us, make our life better, it ends up making our life worse and doesn’t help any of it get better at all.
Michael Mackintosh
If we’re doing something and the consequence is we’re worse off afterward, then we have to ask, ‘What is that- really, is that really the best use of our time?
Steve Prussack
I was wondering. Like, if this happened when we were growing up before the Internet and it was the same kind of thing. Well, then I guess it would have been just through the TV and radio that we would still experience similar things. Although, I don’t think we would have been as distracted as we are now because it comes at us in all ends. These messages come everywhere. You turn on your phone or you turn on the TV, or even if you don’t have a TV, it’s just everywhere.
Michael Mackintosh
Exactly, yeah. And this has been designed by these companies. Because every time we look at our screen, they’re getting paid advertising dollars. Or they’re making money off tracking our devices and where our location and there’s various other ways they make money from our using this- their devices. So, they want us to be looking at this stuff over and over and over again so that they get paid. So there they are, sitting in their Silicon Valley, little white castles, marble castles on the hill, if you like. Demanding that we spend more and more time on their services so that they make their millions, billions and trillions.
Michael Mackintosh
And leaves us feeling bad, addicted, stressed out. And as a result, wasting our time away from doing things that could actually make our life better and make us feel better. So, that’s why what I personally do- this took me 5 years to figure this out, I’ve been thinking about these things since 2015, and what I do now, is I only check the Internet or cell phone to have Internet box. I unplug the WiFi and I put this- I’ve only got a cell phone between me and my wife, which we share one, and I take it, unplug the Internet, put the phone in this special little thing and then into a box, walk out onto the garden and put it under a tree in a plant pot.
Michael Mackintosh
And I only use it twice a week. So for 5 days a week, I’m offline, completely offline. And I feel massively better, more productive, more happy, more joyful, more free. I’ve created a wonderful garden. I’ll show you some pictures, Steve. It’s a beautiful garden with loads and loads of flowers and roses, jasmine and everything. And none of that would be possible, if I was looking at those things again and again and again. So all of a sudden, the whole world opens up and all these new opportunities open up. If you think clearly, you can feel better, you can take care of things around the house, have conversation.
Michael Mackintosh
I’ve got a landmine, so I can have conversations with people. So it’s all much, much, much better and I’m not wasting my time in negative stuff. So I’m more productive, happier, and more successful. I think honestly, that might sound a bit much for a lot of people taking 5 days a week offline. But I run a successful Internet business, online business, and I can do that. We have people working for us to take care of customers, but it makes a huge difference, a huge difference.
Michael Mackintosh
So I highly recommend if people want to discover the benefits of this Covid-19 and start improving their lives, one of the most effective ways to do it, is to turn off all that negative stuff, and then you’ll start thinking about practically what can you do to make your own life better than it is now.
Steve Prussack
Some great advice on Juicingpreneur Radio with Michael Mackintosh here on the show, eye-opening information. And I won’t even go into the other directions, because some of what I’m hearing about the technology is that they want to put tracking apps on all the phones so that with the Coronavirus, they could track you and anyone you had contact with and all these other ‘things’ that you hear. I mean, I’ve heard these in press releases here in LA and not to mention, the drones that are able to monitor heart rate, temperature and things like that. Where does it get to be too much with all this technology, Michael?
Michael Mackintosh
It’s only going to get worse. The aim- and this is something that the tech companies themselves have said. Mark Zuckerberg is a very, very key proponent of this. What they want to do is they want to give us chips, microchips in our body. This is a very inspiring thing for these companies. They want us all chipped up so that we can be monitored where we are all the time. And in Sweden, I don’t know if you realize this, Steve, in Sweden, they’re already doing this. A lot of people have already paid willingly to have chips put into their wrist. Did you know that?
Steve Prussack
I thought Sweden was like one of the few places that didn’t do a lockdown? I didn’t realize this about the chips.
Michael Mackintosh
Yeah, lots and lots of people. So they can open their doors with their hands because they got this chip thing that resonates with the locks and they can pay with it, there’s all sorts of stuff. So this is already have- people are already being chipped willingly, thinking that’s a good idea. Zuckerberg wants to put contact lenses in our eyes so that we are seeing virtual things, super imposed on 3D world. So you might be wandering around in your house and you might look at your bookshelf and it monitors all the books and it says- and it’ll have a little thing that pops up and says, ‘Oh, you’ve got this book. Do you know, you can get the Kindle version of that for $2.99. Click here and get it or you could get the other book that comes with this.’
Michael Mackintosh
And you start seeing all these other things superimposed on your vision, it’s extremely intrusive. And they also want to monitor our thoughts. One of the aims of Facebook- Regina Dugan, her name is, well, who works for Facebook. She has been working on a program since 2017 to monitor our thoughts. Because as far as she’s concerned, putting down the phone is too much of a nuisance, people should be able to send text messages and Facebook messages and WhatsApp messages and everything else through their mind. And they’re working on this technology for the last 3 or 4years.
Michael Mackintosh
And they’re going to do it. So they’ll be able to- in other words, they want us plugged into the Internet 24/7 in our body, and then they’ll be monitoring our mind as well as our heart rate and everything else. And I’m not making this stuff up as trying to free people. This is what they say themselves. You can watch the videos about this from Facebook and Elon Musk wants to do the same sort of thing. They’re all into some version of connecting the internet to our body and our vision and our brain, monitoring our thoughts. And they’ll say it for some other reason, like it has to do with safety, you need to have it because otherwise and so and so and so. They’ll have some other reasons or they’ll have it that old people need it or who are elderly need it or they’ll have some reasons for it that sounds reasonable to some people.
Michael Mackintosh
And then, this will start gradually becoming more mainstream. And then people who don’t have it will be penalized and might have to pay extra money if they don’t have it, or they can’t fly on planes or there will be some funny business connected to people who don’t have it. Just like if you don’t wear a mask nowadays, you’re seen as some sort of monstrous person.
Steve Prussack
It’s not just that. They did the same thing with the smart meters because we had one. We had it taken off our house because of the radiation, and we just didn’t want the smart meter. And all of a sudden, our bills started going up and escalated. We hadn’t changed anything. So we’ve contacted the electric company about this and they give you a lot of runaround where it just came to the point where we had to put the newer smart meter back on, not the old one that doesn’t have the radiation because of how they were inflating the bills month after month to a point where it was just ridiculous. And there’s no one you could reach out to. There’s no one that can help.
Michael Mackintosh
This happened to us, actually. We realized they swapped out our meter for a smart meter when we weren’t home. We called them up, a couple of- a week ago and they came and swapped it. We said, ‘We don’t want to swap smart meter. We want one of these analog meters that doesn’t have radiation.’ They said, ‘All right, fair enough. So you have to pay money to get it done. And then you have to pay extra on the bill.’ They came while we were out again. We didn’t know. We weren’t there so we didn’t see him came back and they put this other meter on.
Michael Mackintosh
And we went online and it turned out- so funny. They swapped the smart meter with a different type of smart meter that we had to pay for. I just thought, this is hilarious. It’s like saying, somebody, ‘I don’t want any cocaine.’ So they say, ‘Sure, we’ll take away the cocaine and give you crack instead.’ And we had to pay for it. So we’re going to have to call them up again and say, ‘Take off the 2nd smart meter and put the meter on that we want. The one that doesn’t have all the radiation.’
Michael Mackintosh
And the 5G, of course, this is a whole another topic. The thing is, why do we need to be plugged in to the internet? Absorbing all this ridiculous information that’s bad for our health, bad for our brain, weakening, unrelevant to us, wastes our time. And there they are rushing to give us faster internet and more of it more and more and more. It’s very, very, very, very suspicious and extremely unhealthy. And the more you unplug and realize how much better your life gets, the more you see it for what it is.
Steve Prussack
Yeah, that’s so true. It is sort of like ‘The Matrix’ that movie, ‘The Matrix.’ If anyone has seen that where you’re able to see or that movie, ‘They Live’ that came out in the ’80s where you put on these goggles and you’re able to see who’s really running things and the messages that’s in the advertising and that came out in the ’80s but it is the same kind of thing. When we unplug, we start- we get the truth goggles, don’t we?
Michael Mackintosh
We really do. You start to see things more clearly when you get away from it. You can’t tell. It’s like the frog in the pot. You put the frog in and you gradually turn up the water and the frog thinks it’s all fine, it’s all fine, it’s all fine. It gets hotter, and hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. It doesn’t jump out because it adjusts to the temperature. And then he reaches a point where it’s a dead frog, been boiled to death. And we are those frogs in the pot and it’s just been turned up very slowly and we sort of adjust a little bit, adjust a bit more, adjust a bit more. But it’s causing mental illnesses.
Michael Mackintosh
The WHO says that the biggest- 2 biggest problems in the near future are going to be mental illness and psychosomatic illness. And this is, I believe, largely based on excess amounts of Internet and cell phone and social media. And too much information, information overload, negative information being absorbed into our minds for 8 hours a day or more. Days after days after days. Of course, is going to have an effect to us. Just like if we watch a scary movie at night and then you have nightmares, there’s no doubt it has an effect on us.
Michael Mackintosh
If you listen to a song and get stuck in your head, that’s having an effect on us. But when this is going on for 8 hours a day, day after day, week after week, year after year, it starts to really mess with our heads. And a lot of teenagers, especially the teenage girls, are suicidal because they’re comparing themselves to everyone else and unfavorably. Then they’re never good enough and they’re never as cool as the other people on social media. They think there’s no point. They get bullied and they take their own lives.
Michael Mackintosh
It’s just shocking. So, we don’t need it. I personally- my style nowadays, because I really thought about this for 5 years, and I’ve been doing a lot of research about it. The 2005, roughly, 2005 technology, I think is good enough. That’s my rule of thumb. Because 2005, I’m not saying it’s like a magic number or anything, but we had cars, we had GPS, you could watch DVDs. If you wanted to watch a good film, you could pick it out consciously and not be forced to binge-watch it on Netflix or whatever it is, nowadays.
Michael Mackintosh
We had all these different things, but it wasn’t in our face all the time. And it’s just become more and more and more in our face, more and more and more addictive. And we have to remember that these tech companies are masters. I mean, I give them 25 out of 10 for their level of genius. Do you know what I mean?They are absolute geniuses at gleaning attention, harvesting attention, getting people addicted, making us feel that we need it. In terms of mastery- because I’m a big fan of mastery and doing things really, really well, in terms of mastery, these people Facebook in particular, absolute, absolute geniuses.
Michael Mackintosh
The problem is, they’re evil geniuses that are causing a lot of harm rather than a lot of good. But you got to give it to them for being good at it. You know, I appreciate anyone who’s good at anything. No, genuinely, I think but God bless them.
Steve Prussack
No, I mean, Julie got to the point. She deleted her Facebook app. She couldn’t take it anymore. And mainly it was about the division, too. There’s a division happening on social media, like never before. Politically and whatever the stance is on what’s going on with the pandemic and the stay at home. And some people are saying, ‘Stay the hell home.’ And some people saying, ‘You’re going to get people sick, if you go outside your door.’ And there’s a lot of anger and I’m sensing it in the streets, too. I was driving my car and people honking. A lot of anger everywhere I go. And I’m wondering if that’s related to all this social media war going on, too.
Michael Mackintosh
It’s destroying people’s peace, and it’s destroying their common sense. And it literally becomes mob, mob mentality. And whenever you got a mob involved, people aren’t thinking for themselves. They’re not thinking rationally and calmly and logically. This whole situation, this pandemic has not been dealt with rationally. It’s based on mob mentality. There’s a huge amount of nonsensible, emotionally-based, emotionally-driven decisions. You know, of course we want to feel good, but we need rational, clear thinking that actually makes sense. And that requires a certain peace of mind and a certain freedom to think properly.
Michael Mackintosh
And when you’re in the mob, being brainwashed constantly and being told you’re an evil person and being told you have to do this and then it’s no longer rational. It’s just this mob rule. It’s like a bunch of people trying to lynch somebody or people with there, like coming after people in the middle of the night with their lamps, more mob burning down someone’s house or something. This is the sort of thing going on. This is the atmosphere online. If everything was just stopped, people would calm down. They’d look around their house and they think, ‘Well, maybe I should just clean up my house.’ And you take up the trash and take care of a few things and clean this.
Michael Mackintosh
And they’d start focusing on sensible, practical things. Instead of that, we’re being whipped up into a frenzy. And the reason for that, is because social media has algorithms that promote content that gets more engagement. And they’ve figured out the content that gets the most engagement is primarily, outrage. Outrage is the number 1 type of content that social media prefers because it gets the most engagement of all.
Michael Mackintosh
Good feelings- content that creates good feelings does not generate the same amount of engagement and shares and likes and clicks or whatever else as outrage. So, social media is sort of an outrage machine that is designed for outrage. That’s why Julie is seeing all this nonsense because it’s designed- I’m not sure they do it on purpose, but basically, the algorithm says, whatever piece of content is trending and gets more engagement, more people looking at it, more people clicking on it, that’s what the algorithms push to the top so you see that on your news feed. That’s how it’s designed.
Michael Mackintosh
And it just so happens that outrage is the thing that gets the most engagement of all. So we end up seeing more and more outrage, which means we see more outrage because outrage works. And you see more and more, more and more and more. Then people get addicted to outrage psychologically and physically. Then they see more of it, more of it, more of it. And then you start craving outrage. And it’s turned into this absolutely absurd and actually dangerous situation based on essentially nothing. Because it’s whipping people into a frenzy that they really don’t need to be in.
Steve Prussack
Being observant, staying aware. Turn on, tune in, unplug! We’re here with Michael Mackintosh. Michael, this is important. We’re talking about growing your own health movement, reaching more people, living your passion, living a life of freedom. This is the time for that. Anything to say in closing to those that are new to this, that want to reach more people, that have a message. What advice would you have for those just starting out in all this?
Michael Mackintosh
The number 1 thing is to actually- like, we were saying here, take a bit of time offline. The reason I’m saying that is because, then you can think for yourself. Create some time. We need time- time and attention to do new things. Anything new takes energy, takes concentration. Your passion deserves time, deserves energy. And so it’s worth taking a bit of time out. So you can think for yourself and you can focus on other things, apart from the outrage culture that we’re dealing with. So that’s going to help you to start to focus your attention in a different direction.
Michael Mackintosh
Then, once you’ve done that, start considering what is your speciality, what do you like to do? What do you enjoy doing? What brings you joy? What do you do that allows other people to feel good? When you’ve been praised for things, when people say ‘thank you,’ what are they saying thank you for? What do you do that makes you happy? These are really important things to consider.
Michael Mackintosh
And then, think about who do you want to help? Who do you want to help? Because that’s actually the most important thing in business is who are you helping? The more you understand the people you’re helping, the more you care about them, the more you love them from your heart because there’s going to be a good feeling. Then you now actually want to go to the extra mile, you actually want to serve. And then you can start thinking about what can you do, practically, to help them.
Michael Mackintosh
That might be creating a podcast, it might be writing an e-book. You might be writing a physical book, you might mean doing a bunch of videos or an online course or coaching or whatever it is that you want to do. So you need to think about what do they need. And then you create your content based on that.
Michael Mackintosh
And once you really care about people, when you put content out, they really appreciate it. Because instead of it being this endless outrage, nasty, negative stuff that surrounds the internet, finally, you put something out there that’s a ray of light, a ray of hope, a ray of good feelings. And so those people who you’re here to help, are extremely grateful, who have received your wonderful work. So, may you have a beautiful business and feel really good about it and help those souls who need you to step up and shine.
Steve Prussack
Michael Mackintosh right here on Juicingpreneur Radio. Michael, what’s the best way for our listeners to follow the work you’re doing?
Michael Mackintosh
Probably the best way is to go to our main website, Awakened, a-w-a-k-e-n-e-d academy.com (awakenedacademy.com) and then, you can access all sorts of free courses and emails and podcasts and whatnot from there.
Steve Prussack
Well, he’s doing incredible work. Michael, we definitely want to have you on the show again. There’s so much we could have talked about today, but we’ll have you back again. Thank you so much for the work you’re doing. And thank you for being here.
Michael Mackintosh
Thank you, Steve. Keep it up. Stay happy. Always a joy to connect.
Steve Prussack
Much love. Michael Mackintosh on Juicingpreneur Radio. I’m Steve Prussack and we’ll see you next time. Thanks for being here.
Announcer
(Announcer) Thank you for listening to Juice Guru Radio for entrepreneurs. Visit juiceguru.com to learn more and start building your health empire today.
