Mike Budny

What up?!

I consider myself just another guy living life with his own spin. Born and raised in Portage, IN. I was brought up by two kick-ass parents (Bob & Anita) – My dad was a hardworking, never-miss-a-day, faithful steelworker. My mother a hairdresser committed to raising her kids close, opened her hair salon from the spare room of our childhood home.

Early on I was drawn to being a “business man” complete with suit, tie and all the trimmings. At the age of 8 I MADE my mom take me to Walgreen’s and buy a pair of non-prescription glasses (fake glasses?) If that gives you any odd sense of my early geeky perception of “success.”

In any event, I went through all the motions, and found myself at Purdue University. SAD and DEPRESSED. I intrinsically knew that getting a degree in business wasn’t going to take me down my best path. So what did I do? I BEGGED THE UNIVERSE for a sign, another way, hell at that point I was open to anything but staying in that feeling of despair.

It came to me in the form of my first business opportunity, Network Marketing. It felt so right, so good, I jumped right in – left Purdue immediately (not without first taking a nice fat loan to help fund my business – college funded my first business, go figure!). This experience paved the way for my future communication, sales, and leadership building skills AND I learned how to cold-call like a champ!

This led to my relocation to Stockton, CA to mentor with a highly successful speaker/trainer which I facilitated intimate, powerful workshops with and eventually launched and ran two profitable companies with. One an internet lead generation company and the other a direct mail marketing company. What a life changing experience it was for me! Grateful I am, but I completely exhausted myself out of that situation by “burning the candle from both ends.”

I took a break and a much needed one at that! I didn’t know what I was going to do but I didn’t care. I just needed to get up, get on, and figure it out. I moved out to Denver to stay with my brother while the dust was settling and about a month later a really good friend called to let me know she had a potential opportunity and wanted to know if I was interested — uuuuhhhhh yeah! (timing is just wild sometimes when you surrender to it)

A couple weeks later I found myself in my car, relocating to Houston. I invested the next 3+ years of my life remodeling, restructuring, and co-running a successful direct sales company. It was FREAKING AWESOME. I got to make high level decisions, work with BIG BUDGETS, and execute my creativity every step of the way. Sure, I had to “play the game” on the corporate side, but it was well worth the opportunity to be completely hands on with a thriving company oh and did I say how awesome it was?

That awesome-ness ran out when reality set it:
This is not my company
I was working on it like it was (but it clearly wasn’t)
Too much shit I didn’t want to put up with (I have a natural tendency to rebel against authority)
I stopped loving what I was doing
Ect…

So, in typical “Mike fashion”, I quit – I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I did have three things going for me:  a great relationship with my girl friend in San Diego, a potential business partner there too (there are no accidents), and a unrealistic unbreakable self confidence in myself and my abilities. If those aren’t the three best reasons to quit your job, I’m not sure what is!

Fast track just four months later and I’m building my dream business (Mightclub) with the most RIDICULOUS, rock-star style, maverick partner in the world (those who have met him, undoubtedly agree) but most importantly I’m healthier, happier, and wildly burning on fire about who I am and what I’m about.

Thanks for reading about me – I hope that you’ll subscribe to my blog and share your story with me some time. I’d love to hear it.