Michael A. Blunt of Energy Mindset School: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A Founder
An Interview With Doug Noll
You will only be as successful as the people you keep around you. Community is essential, which is why I’ve established an online community for Energy Mindset School where individuals can support and uplift each other. It’s a fact that you are the sum of the five people you spend most of your time with, which is why you need to make it your mission to create communities around you that fuel your passions and goals.
As part of our interview series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A Founder”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael A. Blunt.
Michael A. Blunt is an executive coach and mindset leader who has guided over 100 CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders in overcoming their limiting beliefs through his Energy Mindset School. His approach to transformation is very unique in the industry as he not only combines science and spirituality, but also focuses on how to use these elements to accelerate your business.
While privately battling anxiety and depression, Blunt, a former Johnny Walker marketing executive and Northwestern Kellogg School of Management alumnus, had a severe panic attack during an important meeting, leading him to reevaluate his purpose.
This moment transformed his life and from his hospital bed, Blunt embraced his new mission to empower leaders in liberating themselves from old stories that hinder their progress and created his signature business accelerator program, 21 Days to Energy Mastery.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Thanks for having me! Today I am an executive coach totally focused on my mission of helping entrepreneurs and business leaders transform their lives and unlock their true potential. But 10 years ago, my life looked incredibly different. After receiving my MBA from Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, I went into the marketing industry and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I was managing $1 billion accounts for huge consumer goods brands. On paper I had it all, but deep down, I was battling low self worth and feeling mentally stuck in life, which left a crippling feelings of anxiety and depression. It took a severe panic attack and a trip to the emergency department to help me find fulfillment and purpose, and today I’m so proud of the work I do with my students to help them bend reality and create their desired life.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
I’d say the panic attack and trip to the emergency department were my emotional rock bottom! That experience taught me that there were so many people like me who were experiencing burnout, exhaustion and deep unfulfillment with their lives. So many founders and business leaders suffer in silence and wear their stress and anxiety as a badge of honor. I know I did. This profound experience was a gift and set me on a decade-long journey of research on biohacking and subconscious reprogramming, a discovery that continues today.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
It was incredibly tough to realize that the dream I had of myself as a successful marketing executive in corporate America was no longer working for me. I was so fearful of how my friends from business school would judge me and as a Black man from a single parent household, I had already broken so many barriers and was really fearful of leaving that behind and letting my Mom down. But I knew I had to let other people’s perceptions and dreams of me die in order for mine to live. I knew that going in any direction towards my purpose was better than over-thinking and going nowhere. The deep satisfaction I feel in my work and the exponential transformation I see my students experience is the driving force that keeps me going. Having resilience and a stupid amount of self-confidence are the cornerstones of thriving as an entrepreneur.
So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
Energy Mindset School is the product of 10 years of hard work, both on myself and on my business, and I’m proud to have had the privilege to coach elite athletes, seven-figure CEOs and other leaders as they cleared the blocks stopping them from taking huge steps toward what they want. I tell my students that business growth is a reflection of the consistency of deep personal growth work, over and over and over again.
Listen, I was raised by a 19-year-old single mother and saw her work incredibly hard to achieve success in corporate America. I wanted to prove myself, but I never felt like I fit in a corporate environment and always felt like there must be something more.
Honesty is the first step towards progress. So fostering that level of honesty and integrity with my core values — freedom, community, and peace — has allowed me to experience an insane level of success in the second chapter of my career.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first started my business, I was providing wellness solutions to corporate clients because I had this fantasy of wanting to save corporate America by increasing employee morale and engagement.
As I was also coming out of corporate America and dealing with burnout and anxiety, I felt like this was the best solution. Subsequently, my very first hire was a very expensive lawyer and the lawyer cleaned me dry. Remember, I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do! YouTube wasn’t a thing like it is now, my Mom had no clue how to run a business, and everybody around me thought I was crazy for leaving a six-figure corporate job!
I hired the lawyer thinking he would protect me from getting sued by all these phantom big, bad clients, but I didn’t even have any clients. I would check my inbox for emails and literally call Verizon to make sure my phone was working. I had zero clients. So I went into the red very quickly.
What I took away from this expensive lesson is that you should never invest more than what you’re performing against! I had no idea how my business was going to perform, I just knew I wanted to save corporate America. After that moment, I made sure that any hires I made or any investments I made in the business came directly from sales that I have made or clients that I have.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I think so many men in the self development space push a really aggressive framework of just hustling more and being more hardcore just to make money. That doesn’t work for everyone. Inside 21 Days to Energy Mastery, we have balance, respecting the importance of men in their masculinity and appreciating women in their femininity, while allowing both the flexibility to explore either at the same time.
I work with men and women of all ages and backgrounds and encourage them to have a look at the trauma, beliefs and conditioning from their childhoods and early adulthood which keeps them stuck and playing small in life and in business. The changes are profound, long-lasting and really remarkable.
Also, I only hire and work with people who have taken 21 Days to Energy Mastery. We not only hire within the Energy Mindset School community, but also only promote the businesses of Energy Mindset School students. This fosters a “For Us, By Us” mentality and a code of trust that we use to strengthen our bond as students of self mastery. We are masters of our reality and have a minimal standard of self mastery that triggers 10x growth across anyone who is a part of the movement.
The first student I hired earlier this year wanted to start her own agency and become an entrepreneur. I had to fight her to let me hire her because she was at a point of really questioning her self worth and confidence. No seriously, we had a fight, she told me that she didn’t feel confident that she could help me, and that she would get back to me once she thought about it. She confessed a few days later that her self worth was so low after getting laid off and trying to start her business that she had to retake the 21 Days to Energy Mastery course to get back on track.I finally wound up hiring her and I continue to coach her today. Now, just six months later, she is on track to generate six figures of revenue and has a thriving business. The shifts inside our community and school are just that powerful.
Finally, we focus on only one thing: 21 Days to Energy Mastery. It’s not that we aren’t interested in doing more, it’s just that we are so intensely focused on doing better. We are only interested in enhancing the platform, improving the course material once per year, keeping my coaching engaging, and curating a high level community.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Having experienced burnout and having worked with numerous entrepreneurs facing physical and mental health challenges, I have discovered that all these issues can be traced back to a single factor: mindset.
It is too common for business leaders to deprioritize their health and mistakenly believe that working 18 hours a day is essential for achieving success. The underlying problem lies in the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves, such as feeling inadequate, untalented, or undeserving of the success we aspire to and are truly capable of achieving. By exploring these limiting beliefs, we can choose to create a fresh identity, adopt new behaviors that lead to significant action, develop resilience, and establish healthy boundaries around work that not only foster personal growth but accelerate their path to success.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My mother. She’s my best friend and business partner. She used to tell me that whenever I got hurt at school, she would feel the pain in her body at work and anticipate a call from the school office to let her know something was wrong.
My mother and I are soulmates. We’ve always known that her role from the beginning was to create an environment for me to break generational curses and to do better than her parents and her. I knew from the beginning that my role has been to take what she has shown me to the next level in order to set up my children for wealth, abundance and freedom. To say my mother helped me to get to where I am is understatement. She was made for me and built to foster my success.
She studied how I learned best — in front of the class or in the back, in private schools or public, with a tutor or self study — she researched which teachers would be the best fit. She forced me to express my emotions and cry about my absent father when I wanted to bottle them up about my dad. She made me create a budget during Christmas so I would appreciate money. She made me sit at the dinner table even if it was just me and her. She wanted me to be prepared to have a family.
As an adult, she would loan me money and make me pay it back with interest. She was preparing me to deal with banks and understand credit. My mother is 4’11 but stands 6’1. She’s scary, intimidating, beautiful, incredibly smart, and my biggest role model outside of my future self.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I have committed my life to service and want to use everything I have learned to help others. When describing 21 Days to Energy Mastery, I always tell people: “What I learned in a decade, I can teach you in three weeks.” There is nothing more rewarding to me than seeing a new student stuck in their circumstances, struggling with feelings of inadequacy, resignation and frustration, to getting really clear on where they want to be in 10 years and then confidently achieving that in one year. I turned 40 in January and as I reflect on my life’s experience, I can say that all the pain I experienced in my 20s and 30s has made it all worth it.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my company” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1 . You can start being successful well before the world thinks you are. This is something I teach my Energy Mindset School students every day. There is nothing stopping you from showing up in your life right now as the most powerful and successful version of yourself. How does that future version of you feel when they wake up in the morning? What do they wear each day? Who do they spend time with? You don’t need to wait for permission to start creating your dream life, you just need clarity on what you deserve.
2 . You’re never going to get everything right, and it’s never going to be perfect. Perfectionism is a huge thief of progress and happiness. So many people don’t take the 10x action they need to change their circumstances because they’re consumed with whether or not it’s the right time, whether or not they know enough, whether or not they deserve it. The best way to learn is by doing, so jump into the ring. You have to master your mindset and then everything else will follow.
3 . You’re never going to feel like you’re enough, and that’s when you’ll discover your inner beast! Everyone struggles with feelings of unworthiness. The secret of the most successful people in the world is not necessarily that they have superhuman confidence; it’s that they don’t let feelings of inadequacy hold them back from creating the business, going to that conference, or asking a friend or mentor for help. If you spend your entire life playing it safe, then you’re never going to see what you’re truly capable of. You have to do it scared, otherwise you’re never going to do it.
4 . People won’t remember your success or failures, so you may as well play your own game. The most iconic business leaders in the world have had spectacular failures. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple. Elon Musk’s Tesla was just weeks from bankruptcy in 2008. Nike founder Phil Knight was told he’d never make it. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying. So just go for it. People are typically so consumed with what others think of them that they’re paying no attention to you.
5 . You can be selfish and selfless at the same time when you’re living your purpose. One of the first exercises we do inside 21 Days is setting boundaries. When you know your value, you have no problem refusing to discount your services, or no longer associating with people who pull you down. For many people, that also looks like standing up to an abusive partner or parent. It’s okay to prioritize yourself and set boundaries and it’s here that you will find freedom.
6 . Your business will explode when you decide to stop being the person you once were. I wholeheartedly believe that any success you experience in business is a direct result of the work you are doing on yourself. Eating well, exercising, meditation and journaling are powerful tools on any entrepreneurial journey. Starting a business isn’t for the faint of heart. It comes with huge risks and amounts of stress. But by looking after your mental and physical wellbeing, you give yourself a solid foundation for success.
7 . You will only be as successful as the people you keep around you. Community is essential, which is why I’ve established an online community for Energy Mindset School where individuals can support and uplift each other. It’s a fact that you are the sum of the five people you spend most of your time with, which is why you need to make it your mission to create communities around you that fuel your passions and goals.
Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder?
Being a founder or entrepreneur can be an incredibly lonely and stressful experience. The decision to turn my back on a marketing career that I put so much effort into and let go of the image I had of myself as “Michael Blunt, MBA” was very difficult. I had to relinquish the security of a regular paycheck and health benefits and worried what people would say when I told them I was going to be an executive coach. This is the journey of every entrepreneur, but with the right mindset and support around you, it can actually be the most gratifying experience of your life.
In 21 Days to Energy Mastery, I teach my students that inner resilience and strength allows you to weather the highs and lows of entrepreneurship without it consuming you. When you are clear on your vision and your abilities, bad news or a market dip won’t have you throwing in the towel because you doubt yourself or your goals. Additionally, community is everything. My students have access to a network of other Energy Mindset School members and they are able to regularly celebrate their wins and ask for support.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’m working on that movement right now! My program 21 Days to Energy Mastery is the first course in which I am working to grow into a complete online university. It bothers me that there is so much untapped potential in the world. I believe that our education system needs huge improvement and our education institutions aren’t teaching people the skills that will set them up for successful, fulfilled lives. That’s why disrupting the traditional way of learning, and presenting a new bit sized approach to learning in a 21 day format for 30 minutes a day is going to be a game changer.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I regularly share bite-sized lessons on business and mindset on Instagram and encourage people to follow me at @michaelablunt. For founders that are curious about accelerating their path to success, you can sign up to my 21-days course online at https://michaelablunt.com/21days-special.
If you’d like some more information I’ve put together a great free webinar titled “How to reprogram your subconscious mind to manifest 10X levels of success” that you can access at https://michaelablunt.com/webinar. I share great information on my scientifically backed method B-TFA™ reprogramming method which sets my students up for lasting mindset transformation. Thanks for having me!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.
