[00:05] Jenna: Hello, happy people, and welcome to Office ADHD. Welcome back to office. ADHD. I hope you've had a fabulous week. I'm Jenna, and I'm very excited to get back to the second half of our interview with Michael Stein. He's absolutely fabulous. If you want to know more about any of the episodes, including the part one to this episode, check out my website@www.officeadhd.com and consider sharing with a friend. All right, guys, as you hear the magic chimes, the interview will continue. Thanks.
[00:59] Michael: Yeah. You know what? That's another interesting point. I've had a long journey in personal development. I've done everything Tony Robbins has done. When I first started doing really getting involved in his seminars, I got one of his coaches, and I was doing stand up comedy, and I've done it off and on since I'm 19, and I said something. And comedy is set in a negative. There's a negative denominator with a first story and a second story that's shattered with a new assumption. So you have to think of negative things where personal development is based on maybe slight negative. And then, okay, what's great about this? What's good about empowering questions? What can I learn from this? All those type of questions. So when I said something negative, she's like, Whoa, whoa. You got to be careful because your subconscious is recording. If you know about hypnotherapy, if you know about meditation, your subconscious record those things. I had to kind of create something. I call it the third eye accommodate to where every time I have a joke, I'm like, there's a negative thing attached to it. I automatically have to trigger my mind and say, no, that is a joke. It's third eye. Let's move forward. It's okay. Now, the reason why I bring that up is an example of when certain people, when they get ADHD, I said, well, here we go. This is what I am. This is who it is. And now I got to how do you prevent the pattern of it deepening? When you talk to somebody and say, look, yes, it's a probable condition. There's tendencies, but this is not an absolute say, look, this is what you do to counteract that, but you don't have to have this the rest of your life. How do you navigate that?
[02:37] Jenna: Oh, so with ADHD, I think, okay, honestly, I guess we're kind of flipping the roles here. But I will tell you so when I first got diagnosed, I was actually kind of sensitive about it because, for one thing, my family didn't really respond as well because for a long time, they were like, ADHD doesn't exist. You're just distracted. You just need to work harder. Then it took a little while, and when I realized it was genetic, I was actually worried about having kids at first because I was like, oh, no, I'm going to pass this on. And then it took me a while to realize, wait, there's some good things about this. And it was meeting other adults with ADHD and them saying, you know what? You actually can do this, this, and this. No, you're not good at all these things that other people are good at. That's okay, because you're good at all these other things that they're not good at. And I think it was really realizing if you look at your body, what if your hand suddenly wanted to be a foot? That would be terrible. I need my hands, and I need them to be hands, not be feet. And the world needs people with ADHD to have ADHD and to use their ADHD and not to try and be somebody else. And that's one of the main reasons that I started the podcast and that I'm working on trying to make things that make the world an easier place for adults with ADHD is because it's not something that you should try and get rid of. Really? I mean, yes, if you need medication to help with the symptoms, totally do that. I mean, everyone's got to regulate things how they need to regulate it, but you shouldn't actually be trying to get rid of it.
[04:26] Michael: Right? That's how I feel. All right. I won't interview you anymore. I promise.
[04:34] Jenna: No worries. That's what we do. It's fine. We're good. Because I do want to know because since it's coming, especially from your perspective, I want to know what your I heard that you have a ten point recipe for success. I need to know your ten points.
[04:51] Michael: Yeah, it's very unlike my past. I kind of composed this after I did a deep dive into when that person said I got ****** when he said I had ADHD, I was like, that's funny.
[05:07] Jenna: It makes sense.
[05:11] Michael: Then I did an inventory of my past and an inventory of my successes and failures and all that. So the ten point thing is basically the first thing I do is whenever, let's say anything you want, do scope now. This is the antithesis of Ad, because you have to slow down now so you could speed up later. Which makes sense to me because growing up and even starting a business, I'm like, but you got to slow down now. So what I do is I ask myself, I get scope of a situation of when I want something. What's the scope of the situation? What's the who, what, where, why, when, and how? And Toyota does the why. When Toyota is building a car, they ask themselves, why is this, why is that? Why is that? They ask five times why. So I ask myself, I do what I call the who, what, where, why, when, and how, and I Toyota. That five times. That's the first thing I kind of started doing. That really give me an exponential understanding of where my starting grant is. Then I prepare. I prepare, prepare, prepare. So it's so crazy because spreadsheets never appealed to me, but that guy that was working for me that ****** me off. He actually got me into spreadsheets. What it does is compartmentalize my thoughts. So let's say I want to backdate something for like, two years from now. And I give myself more than enough time. I'll say, this is the date. Now, I put hyper focus in it and I say, here's what I need to do to get to that goal. And I do all the dates. So I prepare, prepare, prepare, and then I set dates at the same time. Congruently. Take care of your body, take care of your mind. I try to work out every day because this is a sport. So whatever you're trying to get I try to take care of my health. I try to feed my mind constantly. I try to be cognizant of the triad of emotions, which is a personal development Tony Robbins thing, which is your focus, your physiology and your words. So mind your words, what you say to yourself, and internally, because that's going to give you a result. It's just a recipe. Success is a recipe. So if you want to feel something, you want to feel powerful, you want to feel the antithesis of ADHD. You want to feel like you can accomplish anything. Well, what's the physiology recipe? Well, this is how Elon Musk would stand or this person. This is how I would stand when I'm powerful. This is what my facial muscles would be like when I'm powerful, this is the words that I would say to myself and other if I'm powerful, this is what my focusing what do I be focusing on if I'm powerful? So I got to go do stand up comedy and then I'm doing all these things, try to have these emotions. So that's really important. Then I also really get involved in six immune psychology because I need to know why I do what I do and why other people do what they do. Because I used to get upset. I'd get so emotional and so upset. It's like, wait, people do things for and if you believe in six human needs psychology, I think there might be seven. But Tony Robbins, it's mavla's six human needs or human needs technology, which has been around for almost a century. Basically, people do things for six reasons. They do it for significance, certainty, uncertainty, growth, contribution and love. Now, those last three are like a higher conscious level, but these are things that people do now, they choose negative vehicles or positive vehicles to getting these needs. So people do things to feel important significance, certainty, security, right? Uncertainty. It's a variety need, right? If I told you're going to go to the Dodger game, but it's going to be the same score every time and no one's going to be there, and you're going to be like, there's no surprise. There's no variety, there's no connection to people. So we need all these things so I try to be cognizant of that because that helps me deal with others and myself. So there's more, but those are some of the top five or six. And I can send this on my website if you want to see the rest.
[09:11] Jenna: Oh, yeah, send me the link. We'll put it on the website. It'll be great. I'll link it on the show notes. It'll be awesome.
[09:20] Michael: Those are the cornerstone. I do tell my daughters this all the time. I have a list of daddies. I say, Take care of your body, take care of your mind. Be a force for good. Be a happy person. Bring happiness to yourself and others. Mind your triad of emotions. And spend a lot of time on personal development. That's the most important thing I could tell you. Learn personal development.
[09:43] Jenna: That's beautiful. That it's like your daddy lives. That makes me happy. I have to ask you about something because it keeps popping back up in my head. You have to tell me about how because you said you stuttered and then you've become an actor and stand up comedian. How did you get over stuttering? Like, what happened there?
[10:03] Michael: Grew up in a big family and everybody talked really fast. So my brain was and I've had a doctor. Many people tell me, because your brain is still working so fast. My mom looked like Marilyn Monroe, but she had a personality like Don Rickles. So very sharp and fast. If you weren't quick physically or emotionally or verbally, you'd get eaten up. In my family, I was the youngest in a large family. So they'd steal things off your plate or it's just what? Wild animals. So I had this kind of weird stutter where I was trying to keep up with especially my mother because she was like the first comedian. I thought she's just freaking hilarious. So I would try to keep up with her speech. So even started when I was in high school, I took a drama class. It only came out when I was trying to do improvisational exercises or things like that because I'd just start thinking so fast. But I'd studied over the words because they wouldn't come out of enunciation. So the active teacher told me, he's like, take a cork and put it in your mouth and then do these exercise, do your monologue, do your stand up routine, do whatever. And I did this for about six to eight months. And sometimes I'd go back to it, maybe do it like, once a year. If I had something by the time I was like a couple of years after that, it was like a non issue because it trained my tongue and my mouth to kind of just kind of deal with tongue twisters and also for my brain to speed up. And it was just something that I worked the muscle again and got over.
[11:39] Jenna: I love that. I've heard of people that are trying to learn accents when they're learning new languages, putting something in their mouth so that they think about how their tongue is moving. But I'd never thought about that as just trying to build your ability to slow down when you're speaking and actually say things right. Amazing tool.
[12:01] Michael: And sometimes you're supposed to be tongue tied or you're not supposed to be perfect when you first like here's the secret a lot of people don't know about comedians, even Rob Williams, god rest a soul. Comedians will go over a routine over and over and over again. And when I first started doing stand up, I'm like, I can never do the same material twice. It's like, what? That's the opposite of what a comedian does. I've already done that material. I'll save it in a direct document. But I need to move on. You're going to be tongue tied, you're going to stumble over things, and it's not going to be perfect. But once again, isn't podcasting great for that? Talking and learning and listening, and it really helps you with that muscle as well.
[12:48] Jenna: Yes, it is. It's really great. Like I said, practice. If you have trouble talking to people, just go out and practice. You're going to mess it up, but it's okay because you just go along.
[12:59] Michael: The way, put in those wrench.
[13:01] Jenna: And you mentioned that you have the podcast Longshot Leaders. So where did that title come from? Why did you start that?
[13:09] Michael: Well, because like I said, I'm a long shot. I grew up with all these failure to success and failure stories with my grandmother escaping the Russian concentration. Habs. My dad was New York homeless street kid, and he became a multimillionaire. And then he lost it all again. He was homeless. I remember his business partner in the 60s in a tool business was a guy named Alan Smith. Then my dad left the tool business to sell calculators in the early seventy s and he made millions. And then he had like a crazy rock star lifestyle, blew all his money. And then in 1975, that old business partner they had, Alan Smith, he started a company called Harbor Freight, which is a multibillion dollar company, publicly traded. And I saw all these things happen with many other things happen. And I had some failure successes constantly in myself my whole life, failing, failing, failing, and then succeeding. And then I'm like, well, once you succeed, you're like, well that's it, I've learned my lesson. And then no, you fail again. But then finally with my business and many other things, I've learned to succeed. And that was my goal, to sustain success monetarily emotionally, not get a divorce, not have a trajectory of monetary success that moves upward because of my dad and all the pain and the cheating and the volatility and the drugs and the money loss of money, and seeing this. That's why I do a podcast called Long Sell Leaders, because I said if I was going to do a podcast, where's my worth? What do I know of do you do a podcast? I think that it's like stand up comedy. You talk what you know about and incidentally, I'm starting a podcast. I'm starting two new podcasts, one next month. It's called The Stein Time Show, which is just comedians and actors and filmmakers because Longshot Leaders was kind of getting a little too many of those because I wanted to kind of separate those. So we're doing that. And then I'm starting a new company we've been planning for the past three years called bulletor, which is an outdoor patented brand of products that's going to be hopefully very big. We're going to do the bulletor podcast where we have outdoor influencers and come on and talk about their outdoor adventure.
[15:15] Jenna: Stories like the tarps, but now all outdoor stuff.
[15:21] Michael: Yeah, we invented a product. I'll tell you what it is because I can tell because it's about to launch in about four or five months. We're going to do a Kickstarter campaign and then do an official launch. It's a backpack that's also a soft cooler that opens up to a tarp that's also a hammock that also has a drain on it for survival capabilities.
[15:38] Jenna: What?
[15:39] Michael: Yeah.
[15:39] Jenna: Holy cow.
[15:41] Michael: It's pretty cool. It's different and it's really cool looking. And there's several different variations of the product, different sizes. And we also have ancillary products like we have a bolo bucket, which is like a backpack that's also like a hard cooler that's a bucket which interacts with the bolo pop up tent and the bolo packs that I just told you about. So it's a whole bunch of products that are so we're doing that podcast though to talk to these outdoor influencers. But yeah, really excited about that coming out.
[16:08] Jenna: Oh my goodness. When you get the Kickstarter out, send me the link. We will totally add it on here. I love gadgets that do more than one thing. That's great.
[16:18] Michael: Well, you know, it's funny talking to you about that because once again, so I had a girlfriend. And this is why I made this product. I had a girlfriend. I was like in my early twenty s and next to her bed she had this black super large Swiss Army knife. It had tons of things on it. And I would just sit on that bed and I would open up all the things. I was like, this is the most entertaining thing in the world to open all these badges on the Swiss Army knife. And she's like, boy, you really like that Swiss Army knife. I was like, yeah, I just love it. Look at all these things on here. I'm so entertained. And every time I cover, I'd line her bed and I would just sit on Play on this thing. Now tell me that's not an ADHD.
[16:59] Jenna: I know. That's the best fidget toy ever.
[17:03] Michael: Oh my God, I never knew. I thought it was just special. I was like, yeah. And she bought me one for my next birthday. And I'm looking right at it. It's right across the room. And I got one for my daughter's boyfriend, too, and he loves but that's why I got the I'm like, I wanted to build eventually when I was going to patent and create a product. It would be kind of like a Swiss Army knife that has a lot of more than just one thing to entertain a mind that gets tired of the same thing.
[17:31] Jenna: Yes, because our minds want it to do all of the things. Because we want to do all of the things.
[17:39] Michael: It's so funny that ADHD like to stay. So here's the thing. I was with this girl. Tell me this is not an ADH thing. This is a 19 night. I was young. We're kind of dating friends with benefits. Really? Let's get real. All right? I was in my early 20s, so she just got done helping me promote for a big event that I did in La. For a nightclub event. I go to Las Vegas with her, and I said, we're going to go to Las Vegas, and I'll pay you back by help me out. And so we go to Las Vegas, and I'm in the hotel room, but I go to the lobby, and the brand new Almanac came out. This is before the Internet. So the brand new Almanac came out, and I was sitting on the couch before we went to didn't go down to the casino, didn't go down to the restaurant. I sat on the couch for five and a half hours reading the new almanac. I'm like, do you realize that there's more homicides in our nation's capital than any other city in the country?
[18:34] Jenna: Yes.
[18:38] Michael: What is wrong with you?
[18:39] Jenna: That's our time blindness and, like, our hyper focus. It's like something that Stickles the brain. Yes. That's our thing.
[18:50] Michael: There's so many facts and figures in here. It's amazing.
[18:54] Jenna: I know this. Have you seen this?
[18:57] Michael: Yes. Listen to this fact. I couldn't stop. It was like and then it got worse because I discovered on this same trip, I discovered craps. You know what craps table is like? Craps out of all the games in the casino, more than poker, more than blackjack, there are so many things on that long craps table. It is the perfect game for you. I was like, I swear to God, I went downstairs, and I start playing this thing, and inherently, I'm a good craps player because I can concentrate on, like, 50,000 things at once. And the more you do, the more your money you put on the field, the more you do on hard ways, the more you put on the pass, behind the pass. If you don't know the game, it doesn't matter, because the more there's so much activity, and I was there for, like I swear I fell like, we just got here. I was like, no, we've been here for 7 hours.
[19:55] Jenna: I know that's you using your skills right there, but yeah, that's our time blindness. Once you get into something, you'll look up and you'll be like, how did it get dark outside? It was morning.
[20:11] Michael: Yes, it's crazy, those two examples of going to Vegas. But I think a lot of people can get like that in Vegas. Like, you think of where the time go, but not with an almanac and maybe with a **** stable. But.
[20:26] Jenna: That'S definitely a huge ADHD trait. That's one of our things. We're like, oh, yeah, I know. So many times I've looked up and I'm like, why do I feel so tired? Oh, I didn't eat anything today. I should eat something.
[20:43] Michael: That poor girl. It was miserable what I did to her, because then we went on a double date with my friend and her friend and I said, Today we're going to watch because I had this neuroses with nuclear war. I said, Today we're going to watch Dr. Strangelove the day after and Miracle Mile at my house. They're like, Why? And they're all about nuclear war. And I was like, I need to know. I saw them. I need you guys to see this.
[21:14] Jenna: Oh, you need them to see it?
[21:16] Michael: I need you to feel the same neurosis I do. Or just no one's respecting the news behind. There's always like a news thing in the background and the husband and wife are arguing that kids are playing with their toys and it's like tensions rise today in Russia. I'm like, don't look behind you. It's on the news. It's going to happen soon. No one's respecting the news back there. They're giving you clues. You guys need to high till it out here and go to Australia.
[21:43] Jenna: Oh, goodness. ADHD is great. We're the best.
[21:49] Michael: Oh, man, speaking of, let me see. I have a podcast interview at 1030, which is in 12 minutes from now. Isn't that typical, though?
[22:02] Jenna: Oh, yes, so it is. That's the way we are.
[22:06] Michael: But that's a compliment to you because I think people with ADHD love to talk to each other because we get it.
[22:16] Jenna: Well, let me ask you my final question then, because one of my favorite things to ask, especially my adult ADHD guests, is what words of encouragement would you like to leave with the audience today? Especially those that are just figuring out their symptoms and they're just trying to figure out life.
[22:34] Michael: Slow down now so you could speed up later. Because I know you want to go fast and just go, go. Because I know if you're anything like me and you're impulsive, but slow down now so you can speed up later. Get involved in personal development. I know if money is an issue, just try to start to just listen to audiotapes. Audio tapes are good with me too, because if I don't listen to it the first time because I read something and I'm like, wait, what did I just read? Because I got the ADHD but I have audio tapes. Get yourself an audio tape on something with personal development. Understand and don't put limits on yourself and realize that whatever those weaknesses are in ADHD, be cognitive of that third eye of, like saying, look, I'm cognitive of it, but I'm not going to abide by the rules of it. It's a muscle and I can work my muscle out of this. Just believe in that even though it might be a long journey, believe that that's a possibility. That's all I have to say.
[23:32] Jenna: Thank you so much and thank you so much for being a guest. It has been a genuine pleasure.
[23:38] Michael: Likewise. Thank you so much and thank all.
[23:40] Jenna: Of you out there for listening and I hope that you have an absolute amazing week. Thanks so much for listening. To learn more about anything we talked about today, head over to officeadhd.com. Remember to like subscribe and share and have a great day. We'll see you next time.
