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Mike Kiett is the embodiment of someone who is not only an inspiration to many but an over comer who did not allow obstacles and setbacks to destroy his dreams!! The entrepreneur, life coach, motivational speaker and philanthropist recently sat down with Sheen Magazine to talk about his journey on becoming an entrepreneur, what inspired him to become a motivational speaker, life coach, upcoming projects and more.

What inspired your journey ? 

The first journey of being an entrepreneur came more out of survival. More I was pushed into that way. I was in college the plan was to go to Law School. I was studying to take the LSAT and I made a bad decision and then I was arrested for a firearm and I had to go to prison and I wasn’t allow to be a on a college campus for four years. So with doing that coming out of jail not really believing the stigma around being a felon. I tried different jobs and I will get them and then I will get fired because I was a felon. The only thing that they were offering were jobs that wasn’t going to take care of me or the goals that I still had so I had to change everything up. So, I went with entrepreneurship and I liked it! And that’s the start of the journey of being an entrepreneur. The journey far as the life skills coaching, the thing is I went through a lot a different avenues in life, from going to college to wanting to be in law school, to being a felon, to coming home trying to get back in the life and being not working to having to be back into the streets and taking the lessons that I learned in the streets into my entrepreneurship.

I wrote books, short films, features, plays, poetry. I went on a self development journey. First self development journey consisted of me going to therapy. When I was about thirty years old, I had came home from the last time being locked up, I went to therapy.  So I went to therapy and then from therapy I found out what I really loved to do and that’s how I got into life skills coaching. I was already doing it all the time anyway and I just decided to own it. I just mixed in the experiences I had of being an entrepreneur because I learned all the lessons the hard way. So I can teach you what to do because I did everything wrong already. I learned everything from different fields and makes me non judgmental and just thought that my story and the aspects of living a few different lives at once makes me a better life skills coach, life coach or business coach than most people who are one dimensional.

How did you get into motivational speaking and entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship what I did was I cleaned some basements, washed some cars, I just did a bunch of things I usually wouldn’t do saved of some money and brought my first car to flip meaning to sale. I brought it out of an insurance auction. When you buy them out of an insurance auction, whenever your car is declared totaled out, somebody get into an accident they have an auction for those cars and you buy them and fix them up to a point where they are now considered a reconstructed car, but it can be put back on the road. By doing that you get a chance to buy a car for a cheaper price and then sell them for a cheaper price. There is a market for that. So, I started there in entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship was all created out of survival because I refuse to accept working at McDonald’s and things like that. I went through a lot of re-entry jail programs and they were trying to teach me how to make resumes and do interviews. I was just studying trying to take my LSAT I didn’t need any of those. They didn’t have anything for someone like me. Some people are willing to get a job and there is nothing wrong with getting a job and live that type of life. I was already chasing something bigger. The lawyer was the only dream that I ever had. I didn’t have any other dreams. Once that was done, I didn’t know what else to do.  I went back to school and ended up being on the deans list, being president of the finance club, set on the board of the small business development program and still ended back up in prison from just doing things and that was a mistake. I ruined all the progress I had.

Once I realized that there was no way I was not going to be able to be a lawyer, I just went out of survival and after that I just looked at entrepreneurship as the closest thing to my dream I had before.. Entrepreneurship I can wear suits, it’s about my negations, how I talk, I can articulate myself now, I can be in different places, I can travel, everything I wanted to do as a lawyer, I can do as an entrepreneur. It filled that void, after going through therapy, I realized that what it was. That’s how I got intro entrepreneurship.

How I got into motivational speaking really stemmed from my mom. The first time I did motivational speaking was in high school. I asked my mom for graduation would she buy me a car and she told me  no. When I asked her why? She said it was nothing special about graduating high school. What was your only other option, not to graduate high school? The other way would have been a stupid decision. She didn’t reward mediocrity. She challenge me to figure something else out to do to be honored by graduation and if I did, she would give me money to buy a car.  So they had this one slot, I wasn’t going to get the cum laude because my grades wasn’t that good and I didn’t play any sports. The only spot was a graduation speaker. So I went and talked to the teacher in charge of the graduation speaker slot, I was two tryouts behind and I begged them to give me a shot. She did anyway and I was so much better than the other people and that she picked me. She trained me how to write a speech and project myself and I spoke my first motivational speech at my high school graduation.

From there, I used speaking only when I was trouble because I was still chasing who I was. I wasn’t really ready to talk to other people and give back. I refuse to talk. I use to talk at some high schools and people would ask me to speak more because they heard the way I spoke, but I would refuse because I felt like until I reached something until I overcome the mistakes I made, I couldn’t be a life coach because I could tell them what not to do but where is the result on what to do.

So that’s how I became a motivational speaker. Once I got to the point I where I wasn’t chasing anymore, I wasn’t trying to prove myself right anymore. That’s really what your doing your spending lot time with your own insecurities chasing something just to prove to other people or prove yourself that your good enough or that your successful. Which could be good its a drive bit of it’s done wrong it could kind of destroy you too.

So I wanted to destroy that until I was able to flip that and use that energy and just understand that it was molding me and not taking over me. So once I reached that status, I was able to go after my true joy which is talking and speaking and writing books. Everything comes surrounded to a lawyer. No matter what, it always comes full surface back to my original dream because that was the only thing I had in mind and everything correlates with that.

With so many life coaches and motivational speakers what sets your brand apart ?

Easy!!  what sets me apart is versatility, prison college, corporate world, nonprofit, streets, entrepreneurship, author, movies, poetry. Whatever world you come from  it is going to be very rare that I don’t have a story to relate to that or go with that. I was bullied. I tried to commit suicide when I was eleven. I have been through unimaginable pain, different situations and I can’t be judgmental. It’s not even possible for me to be judgmental. Sometimes people even though they mean good, they come off  judgmental by instructing people on what they need to do the way they say it should be done because it worked for them that way instead of learning the person and understanding what works better for them, what’s their insecurities and how to get the best out of that person. Because I have been in so many different worlds I can relate back to the core and back to the foundation of where this person is coming from. So, I think that makes my brand more relatable and more effective.

What else do you enjoy that the average person may not know?

I got this visualization thing that I like to do. I like to take a helicopter ride once or twice a month and like to take the headphones off and listen to the propeller blades and I take half and hour tour just imagine how I want to travel once I get to where I want to go. People probably would not know that about me. I do those type of things visualizations or real effects. It just keeps me inspired.

How do you plan to elevate your brand throughout the year?

So, of course we want to make a bigger presence on social media of course. I am going to start trying to change more lives as I go along the process and not just mental, do some more fundraiser things, bring more awareness to us, my biggest thing is this program called the “Glam To Greatness” and trying to launch that by hopefully the end of this year so we can go in to the new year. The Glam To Greatness Program is for me, I didn’t go out the city. I am from Philadelphia and I didn’t leave the city until I was thirty. So I had big dreams, at least I thought I did,  until I traveled and seen other places of the world and realized more I could do. It was so different in cities, you live in Philly, it’s a big city  you kinda think all cities would be like that but it’s not. So my goal is to take people who might be on the edge of really chasing their dreams and maybe show them the end results of that. Maybe a weekend we take a private jet flight, or helicopter ride, private yacht, nice dining dinner, nice car, you can feel the glam and greatness of it. But at the same time, whatever it is you say you want to do, let’s say you want to be a rapper. I put you booth for like ten hours and have different people play you beats, you sit there and rap for 12, 13, 14, 15 hours so you can see what it is like and how you have to live on a daily basis. So this what it would feel like if you were on your game and this is what the result would be of that. Just put you there in middle of it and I think that would just be a mind transformation.. I hope that will take my brand to another level.

What is one of the main obstacles you have faced thus far?

Trying to fit in. I think the biggest obstacles I had to face and overcome was trying to fit in. I spent so many years as a kid and as an adolescent praying and crying that I could become what people needed to be accepted or that one day people would accept who I was. I think that was probably one of the biggest obstacles I had to fix.

What advice would you give to your 18 year old self?

Best advice I would give is your talent ain’t good enough. You got to work hard. Your going to be bad before your good. So they got to laugh at you before they clap for you. The biggest thing that held me back as a kid at 18 and everything was I was afraid to mess up in front of people. I was afraid to be bad. I just stuck to what was good. Whatever I was good at, I stayed in that realm and made me comfortable. Everything that I wasn’t good at, I stayed away from, but it was the only thing that was accepted. When you grow up, it is only a few things that allows you to be a man is either you got money, you get girls, you can fight or shoot you play a sport. So being smart and those type of things really didn’t matter.

My advice would be just know that your going to be bad before you get good. So whatever it is you got that your enough and you got it.

What can we look forward to from you before the end of the year?

The Glam To Greatness Program definitely! I am trying to go speak at more colleges. So being looking for between August and November so I will be going on a heavy college tour. I spoke at Ohio State a month ago. Royal Oak, Virginia and I have one coming up. So I want to do more of that.

Speaking at colleges, I think that is a great place to intercept before they start to mess up, so definitely speaking at more colleges and The Glam To Greatness Program.

How can people connect with you?

On social media. Instagram is @mikekiett, Facebook is :Mike Kiett, Tik Tok: The Mike Kiett and they can email me at mike@mikekiett.com. They can just contact me through there. I always respond.