Michael McLean

Well, I'll break it down. The message from my 91-year-old father who retired. My dad worked until age 85, Ryan, so he's been retired for five years, almost six years. He said to me the other day when we were out on the boat, he said, you know, son, he says, I don't have many regrets in my life.

Well, I'll break it down. The message from my 91-year-old father who retired. My dad worked until age 85, Ryan, so he's been retired for five years, almost six years. He said to me the other day when we were out on the boat, he said, you know, son, he says, I don't have many regrets in my life. If you met my dad, Ryan, you would think he's 70, not 91. Same with my mom. My mom's 91.

She doesn't have any gray hair. He says to me, he goes, I have one regret. He says, I should have worked to 90. And then my dad and I were talking about how this is clearly the greatest time in history to be alive, especially if you're a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, a founder, any of that stuff. my dad started his businesses. He was an entrepreneur for 71 years.

He said, he goes, I started my business with the yellow pages. He said, you have the worldwide web, you have AI, you have the greatest time in history to be alive. And this is the message that I'm telling my 12 year old daughter all the time. You know, she has her own podcast. She makes her own money, that kind of stuff. But,

The men and women that I work with, they spend way, way, way too much time on rat poison platforms like the news, like politics is rat poison, and anti-social media. I mean, it's okay to be on there for a little bit, but... If you think that times are tough in 2025, you're in the wrong echo chamber. You need to get around better people. You need to get around people who have actually won.

People ask me what my business is now that I'm semi-retired. I said my business is the same as when I was in the hockey business, the insurance business, being a husband, being a father. I'm in the winning business. That doesn't mean I win all the time. It means I lose a lot. But, I mean, there has never, ever been a better time. And my dad's only regret is he said I should have worked to 90.

He said I would give one of my arms to be in the environment that you're in now. So that's my mindset every day that I get up. I'm like – and my dad mentioned on the boat the other day, he said, Michael, he says – If you can't make it in 2025, you can't make it. And, you know, that's the message that we need to be sending to leaders. That's what you do.

You work with some of the top leaders, unreasonable outcomes. But man, oh man, talk about the greatest environment in history to be in. And when I say greatest environment, there's three things that really stick out. Number one, we are awash in wealth, trillions of dollars every single day. Go stand in the river. Go stand in the river. Secondly, abundance like never before.

I mean, I pack up my family for half the year and I get to live in the greatest country in the world, America, in the greatest city in the world, Naples, Florida. And then for the other six months, I get to return and live on the lake in the second greatest country in the world, which is Canada. Like the abundance is unbelievable.

And then, of course, what I mentioned, the opportunity, like literally the World Wide Web, artificial intelligence, whatever you want to talk about it. But man, oh, man, my dad said it the other day, best Ryan. He says the good old days are now.

They're scared of winning. When I was coaching minor pro hockey, I owned a couple of my own teams. Then I got into the insurance business as the number one agent in the nation. I've run barber shops, all this kind of stuff, tennis camps, hockey schools. And Ryan, when I was younger, I used to think that most people were afraid of losing.

And then as I matured and worked with the peak, peak men and women in the world, I realized what stops most people from getting moving is they're afraid of winning. And that was a light bulb moment for me because the thing is, is sure, we're all afraid of losing. We don't want to lose. You should be sick to your stomach when you do lose. And nothing is more valuable than losing.

I tell my 12 year old daughter, I'm like, are you kidding me? You don't win. You don't learn anything from winning. You win everything from being taken behind the woodshed and taught a lesson in sports, business, and life. That's where all the learning happens. But I find most people that I work with, Ryan, they're afraid of winning in their subconscious or their conscious mind.

If I do write the book and it's a smash success, what will other people think? If I start traveling and speaking like you do, what will my friends think? And this all goes back to the way we're hardwired into people pleasing. Like we need to be men and women on a mission. We don't need to be people pleasers.

So when I run into people that are afraid of losing, but more importantly, they're afraid of winning. They sedate and they medicate by spending their time in these places where they watch other people live. See, you're living. You're a man on a mission. I know your deal. You're a man on a mission.

But there's so many people that watch you instead of doing their own thing because they're afraid of winning. I would love to be like Ryan. But what if I became like Ryan and chase my mission? What would my wife think? What would my friends from high school think? What would my fuck all friends from college think?

And it gets down to that fundamental where if a person cannot escape that mindset of people pleasing, if they can't, that is the number one crippling thing in sports life and business. If you are a people pleaser instead of a man or a woman on a mission, you have no chance to live the life of your dreams. Why aren't we taught this?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons that it's not taught in school and it's not, you don't run into it a lot is because, I mean, the education system as an example, I mean, we homeschool our daughter because I don't want her in the old factory industrial age, put up your hand to use the bathroom school. So I'm raising an entrepreneur. I'm raising a president, not a poodle.

I'm raising a president, not a princess. So we focus on entrepreneurship in our home, whether she decides to be a vet or decides. I don't care long as she runs the show for herself. Because I think in 2025 and looking down the road in five or 10 years, there's no place for anybody but the founder and the entrepreneur.

You're going to have a hard time commuting to work and sitting in a cubicle once AI gets going here. We're preaching freedom. I just believe the education system and society is set up in the hundred year old. We need workers. We need people to, you know, work in the factories. We need people to sit in the cubicles. But unfortunately, those days are all gone.

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