102: When the Machine Consumes You: Leadership, Clarity & Reclaiming Your Life with Michael King

In this episode, Sean sits down with Michael King — an executive coach, keynote speaker, and founder of Teams.Coach, where he helps CEOs and senior leadership teams transform strategy into execution. Before coaching, Michael spent years as a recording artist, worship pastor, and executive pastor within some of the fastest-growing churches in the country. His background blends organizational leadership, systems design, emotional intelligence, and real-world business execution. 

Michael opens up about building large-scale church systems, leading massive volunteer and staff teams, and eventually burning out inside the very machine he helped create. He shares how he walked away from full-time ministry to save his family and rebuild his life, what leadership clarity really means, how AI is impacting organizational culture, why saying “NOPE” is essential for purpose, and how shame—not failure—robs leaders of their ability to dream. 

This is one of the most honest leadership conversations you’ll hear this year.

⏱️ Chapter Markers

00:00 — When the System You Built Starts Consuming You

00:46 — Who Is Michael King?

01:22 — From Recording Artist to Leadership Strategist

02:05 — Building One of the Fastest-Growing Churches in the U.S.

04:48 — “The Machine Ate Me Alive”

08:26 — Leadership Is Love & Emotional Proximity

11:05 — AI, Mass Layoffs & the Myth of Optimization

14:03 — Authentic Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence

18:26 — Scarcity vs. Abundance in Leadership

22:12 — The Power of NOPE

25:22 — Arby’s and the Deep-Fried Hamburger: A Lesson in Clarity

29:51 — Leadership, Discipline, and the Right Constructs

35:38 — Failure Doesn’t Steal Your Dream — Shame Does

38:26 — Losing Everything and Starting Again

41:12 — Living With the Residue of the Past While Building the Future

43:23 — Where to Find Michael King

📌 Resources & Links

• Michael King: https://michaelkingjr.com
• Teams.Coach — Leadership & Organizational Consulting

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
What happens when the system you helped build starts to consume you? When the structure meant to serve people begins to suffocate them? In today's conversation, I sit down with Michael King, a leader who's lived both sides of that equation from building one of the fastest growing organizations in the country to walking away from it all to rebuild his life.

Michael has discovered powerful truths about clarity, love, and the courage to say no. We dive into how leaders can protect their focus, lead with humanity in the age of AI, and reclaim their ability to dream after failure. This one is raw, real, and full of hard-earned wisdom. Let's get into it.

Sean Patton (00:46)
Welcome to Nolan Leadership Podcast. am your host, Sean Patton. I am very excited today to have a good friend of mine, Michael King. He's a renowned executive coach, keynote speaker and founder of teams.coach where he helps CEOs and senior leadership teams transform strategy into execution. He's known as the executive's team's coach. He's guided hundreds of organizations to align vision, structure and culture to drive results. He's also a former executive pastor turned to leadership strategist and

Michael brings such a rare blend of organizational psychology, emotional intelligence, and real world business insight to every conversation we have. Michael, thanks for being here today,

Michael King (01:22)
Sean, it's great to be here, man. And you're looking better than ever. Man, you're so, like, you are so on it, man, all the time. Let's go.

Sean Patton (01:25)
Yeah

I'm trying.

I'm excited, dude. I'm just trying. I'm trying to stay in the fight, dude. But I'm really excited for this conversation. I feel like every time we have, you and I have a one-off convo just between us, it could be a recorded or should be a recorded podcast episode. But you have a very interesting background. So if we start with Origin's story a bit, I don't want to spend too much time, but

you were in the ministry and pastoral world and then transitioned into executive coaching. What drove you in that direction and maybe what were some of the challenges or some of the exciting parts about that?

Michael King (02:05)
You know, so I was a recording artist and worship pastor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So, and I'd been in the mix for a while and I wasn't necessarily planning on landing in the Omaha, Nebraska area. I had re-upped.

my recording contract and I wanted to be in a church that was the music kind of reflected a little bit more of the stuff that I was making on a Sunday morning, you know, and so I was coming from a place that it was a family run ministry and it wasn't that life wasn't good. We had created this ridiculous story in the Minneapolis area. So we were in this suburb called Princeton and we were in a town of 2,500 people and the church had grown to be over a thousand people in this town of 2,500. So like if I was just looking for a story,

That's a good story, right? But I wasn't content. It was a family-run ministry. I kind of felt like I just wasn't being stretched enough. I felt a little bit bored. Have you ever been there before, by the way?

Sean Patton (02:57)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Michael King (02:58)
So, an opportunity had popped up for us to be able to take a leap. so this opportunity came up for us to be in the Omaha metro area. And it was a downgrade in the size of the church. The church was about 300 people from the time that we got there. And within five years, we were in the top 14 fastest growing churches in the country. And I was not looking for an executive pastor role. I was looking for, you know, like an artist in residence slash worship leader, musician role type of thing.

but I fell in love with leadership and I was the system strategy structure guy. And I always have been in the case of working at these churches. Like I just became the best friend of the lead pastor, became a systems guy, became a structure guy. And I just didn't really know that I was great at building systems. It just became natural to me. So I decided to explore it a little bit. went and I started to, went and got my master's degree in organizational leadership and executive coaching.

The next thing you know, I'm like traveling and speaking on stages instead of playing on stages, which freaks the crap out of me. You know, that wasn't the plan. Like I was supposed to be, you know, on the top of the billboard charts as a recording artist, you know, but, but I got to do both in this space. I got to, I got to be creative. like our music teams grew to where I had over, over 300 people just on my, in my music teams alone. had a thousand people in in my, in my volunteer leadership pipeline.

And I had a staff of about a hundred people. So, so period over the time, the machine kind of ate me alive and I kind of lost myself in the middle of it all. And I didn't really even necessarily know what I was going to do next. I just knew that my season there was coming to an end. ⁓ so I decided to take, take the leap of faith and quit just cold Turkey and wanted to save my family, wanted to save my life and never walked away from my faith.

I think I saw too many things that were behind the scenes in in Megachurch world that disenfranchised my heart and made me feel incredibly alone. So I made some changes to ⁓ my life.

Sean Patton (04:48)
Yeah, it sounds like you had helped build this exciting church, this amazing organization. And then you mentioned the machine started kind of eating you alive. And you don't have to go into specifics, but I think that there's maybe a lot of people who can relate to that or are in organizations and that when you say that.

Can you kind of explain what that felt like for you and what that experience was like?

Michael King (05:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, was actually, we just had a team in here today at our company, teams.coach is the name of my company, but we had a team in here today from an architecture firm.

And I find myself in the middle of these conversations and almost having like a PTSD moment to where I start to remember the pain of what I experienced. Because, because here's the thing is, is like, whenever you, whenever the level of responsibility, it starts to outweigh the level of authority that you actually have, you start to live through what we call like this anxiety paradox, to where like all the decisions and everything is starting to be made out of triage and everything's starting to be made out of reaction.

because there's nothing more painful than having high levels of responsibility with limited authority. And one of my values that I lead by even to this day, like, and whether you agree with me or not, that's really not the point. The point is, is that even statements like this that I'll make, so if you're in ministry and you're listening to this, one of my values is always friendship before ministry. There's a personal implication there.

Like I was expected to do a lot of things, but I wasn't expected to be your friend. And now I'm sitting here, I'm building this machine for you, but yet you're not willing to be in the trenches with me. No, I'm not, I'm not here for that. Like that, that ended up creating isolation. And when you're in church ministry and you can't be transparent with the things that you're struggling with because everything is coming from one pool. Like your spiritual, your spiritual

Feed is coming from one pool. Your relationships are coming from one pool. Your paycheck is coming from one pool. Like everything is kind of coming from this, from this one spot, right? I was just at a place where it's like, dude, I mean, I'm being a, I'm, I'm scared to death to tell you about the things that I'm struggling with that. Like my marriage is struggling. Like my, my, like the way that I'm making decisions in my life, I'm struggling. And I can't be honest with you about this because if

If I tell you, I lose everything. Like everything, right? Like all my friendships will go away. Like, you might fire me. I don't know, but I can't be honest with you. So that's, that's where it's like that whole idea of like friendship before ministry. It just can't be optional. And so the same thing in the business context, I tell senior leaders this all the time, man. If you, if you got people on your current executive team that you can't be friends with, don't have them.

It is so stinking unfair to have expectations for high level performance. If you can't actually go out and have a beer with somebody or take them out to dinner. You know, like if, like I have, I have one guy that I just had this conversation with earlier today. I'm just like, the guy's been a CEO for a company that you founded 20 years ago and you're just now finding, finding out that like he can't do everything because he's got these crazy expectations at home and he's got some

crazy dynamics with the person that he married and the step kids that are in his life and all this stuff. And you're finding out a year later after you brought them onto your team that there's these dynamics at place. Dude, somewhere it's like.

I think you've probably heard some of these things before, but only 54 % of organizations on the planet actually know what their values are. That's huge. The second thing that we know is that organizations who lead through their values, they make a lot more money than the organizations that don't. But the third thing is, that leaders who love their people always win. So friendship before business, friendship before ministry, I'm telling you, like, it'll save you so much heartache if you just simply...

will choose to love the people that you're with.

Sean Patton (08:26)
⁓ I love the fact you brought up love because in my mind, I remember one of the first keynotes I gave at a major conference and they probably, maybe they didn't expect it. They hired the ex-Green Beret to come up and talk to them about leadership. I lied with, at end of the day, had a big slide, leadership is love. it was just, I'm sure they expected that, but you're right. It's every relationship.

leadership is about relationships and about loving your people and loving, the very least like you have a love for humanity, right? Like there's a base love for the human being and for life and valuing. I think for me, it just comes down to, I believe that life itself is precious and has inherent value and therefore human beings have inherent value. And so leadership is really pouring into people to expand their

experience of this like sacred thing that is life.

Michael King (09:15)
Absolutely. I call it the practice of emotional proximity. you know, because if you think about this, like even with how I'm leading my team and the people that are on my team, I kind of almost take it a personal offense that if I don't know how you're doing and how you're feeling, then I feel like I'm a failure. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that tension because I feel like it's a baseline expectation for me with our communication cadences on a week to week basis. But at the bare minimum,

Like in the raw and in the real, I want to know how you're doing. I have that with my friendships and especially my team. And I feel like that that's where sometimes, especially like with how AI has come into the workspace, it's like we value speed and autonomy and results more than anything. But we have to remember that these increased expectations that we're putting on the exact same people who got us here in the first place, eventually there's a stress threshold that's going to make the machine fricking break.

And if you don't have the right support systems in place, then you're going to burn.

Sean Patton (10:08)
And, you know, such a conversation because, know, was just today, actually, there have been a ton of press releases about major companies, you know, with mass, mass layoffs due to AI. And so you will have essentially in the future, right? Companies doing more with less people, putting more pressure on people, expecting people to be more high, I think more high agency.

higher expectations and there's a ton of ramifications for that. But to your point, every business is a human business. so as leaders, as we move into this and the world does keep moving faster and change keeps happening and the transformation happens with AI. What are some of the challenges you're seeing leaders face and how are you seeing them in your opinion? What is the right approach?

to create a resilient organization and team of people to not just survive, but thrive in an age where transformation is happening faster than ever.

Michael King (11:05)
You know, I just read a news article that said that Amazon is going to be firing 14,000 people in the next few months or whatever it was and replacing them with AI. And in full disclosure, I don't coach Amazon. I coach companies that are at that level.

But Amazon's not a client. So Amazon, if you're listening, I would be more than happy to help you get you out of this mindset and out of this trouble that you're about ready to walk down. But I'm kidding, but not kidding. Here's the reality is that because the motivation behind all of this in 2025, I think the motivation is really key on this because it's not about efficiency. It's not about optimization. It's about outputs. We want to get there faster.

and we want to produce more and we're willing to do it no matter what the cost. That's what you're telling me. That's what the world is hearing from you. And it's an easy play. The reality is this, is that if you don't have the right people on your team in the first place,

Replacing them with AI is only exposing that you made bad decisions in the first place.

And so good on you for figuring out that you can figure out a cheap way for you to be able to fix your bad decisions. So good on you. The second thing is this, is that it's not an issue necessarily of whether you've hired the wrong people, but you would be surprised. And even through our metrics dashboard, the main problem that we fix is finding out what are your people great at? Do we actually have them in the right seats in the first place? And is there a culture?

of clarity that exists within your organization to help you perform better than you ever have before. You have to remember this is that leadership is all about clarity. You get this as being a former Green Beret. Leadership is all about clarity and clarity for who you are, clarity as far as what you do better than anyone else, clarity as far as who's responsible for who, clarity for who is responsible for what, and clarity as far as what's expected of me tomorrow and what's expected of you tomorrow.

And it's surprising that we have some of the highest performing small businesses that are knocking it out of the park with that type of stuff. Surprising that we have some Fortune 500 and even some Fortune 100 companies that are absolutely clueless when it comes to their commitment to clarity. so yeah, when top line revenue and when profitability become our constant motivator,

on this, yeah, it's like AI gives us an opportunity for us to be able to fix some of the problems that we should have been fixed. These are foundational issues that should have been fixed in the first place. But I promise you this, is that AI, it's kind of like the whole garbage in and garbage out thing. Like if you don't take care of some of these foundational issues before you start implementing AI, the only thing that AI is going to do is going to exponentially multiply your crap.

That's the only thing it's gonna do. You're gonna go further, you might go faster, but eventually what you're gonna find is that you're gonna lose your identity in it and it's all gonna come back to bite you. So you just gotta be really super careful. Like it's still at the end of this. I think I wrote a little bit around this idea as like, man, what would happen if we actually replaced like the term artificial intelligence in AI with authentic intelligence? And lead with the idea of like, man, our pursuit.

is that we are in pursuit of finding out who we really are in the middle of all this.

Sean Patton (14:03)
That's such a good point. I love that term. I think of the leaders that are in maybe these companies like Amazon or other. mean, think every company, AI is a conversation piece. It's affecting us in some way. If nothing else, there's at least a conversation of like, how is it impacting us as a market or should we implement? But it's getting implemented everywhere. And as they start to transform more, we're having a bit of a conversation around support for those leaders.

and have people in our industry and the coaching industry worried about replacement for coaches. But if you think about what you just stated there where like, if you're the wrong direction already, if things are transforming and you're falling behind, you don't have clarity of direction, clarity of value inside of that chaos and you just pour gasoline on the chaos, talk about a time where it's more important than ever.

to have a great leadership team and I would argue a great coach next to you to make sure that you're steering this thing in the right direction because I think of it like land navigation in the military, right? Like we would do a land nav course and you'd be walking and you can be one degree off, not a big deal, walking a couple hundred meters. You walk for six hours one degree off.

you're in a different county, you know, like if you just keep going the wrong direction, a poor morse can go faster. You're just going the wrong direction faster. So I don't know. What is your take on the we talk about AI and transformation and leadership when it comes to the coaching, the coaching space?

Michael King (15:33)
Well, you got me distracted for a second because that one degree off thing, think it's Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great. I think he talks about the one degree type of idea is that the one degree off, if you're doing a straight line from LA to ⁓ DC, well, one degree off takes you to New York City.

Sean Patton (15:37)
Yeah, we can stick with that.

Michael King (15:53)
But it's that exponential increase of that one degree off, right? So when you start off on that, so one degree off starting off that way, it's just like, yeah, it gets us into this whole thing. But.

Sean Patton (15:58)
Mm-hmm.

Well,

and I to call that too, like you mentioned systems. like if we stay on that, you know, what I've seen, I'm just going to take on this is like how important then it becomes to have those checks and balances and systems and reviews so that you're only going a little bit and you're one or two degrees off and you have a system in place to reorient, right? And get back on track and quit and you pivot and you reshoot your azimuth so you can stay on track over the, over the long haul. But

you're going a million miles a second with algorithms running everything, it's pretty hard to do that.

Michael King (16:37)
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know, what's, what's kind of, it's, it's kind of surprising to me just because again, so me being the team's coach and then optimizing teams, I get brought into these conversations a lot. And so it's really surprising because of the fear factor right away was like, AI is coming onto the scene and AI is going to eliminate all these jobs. Right. Here, the reality is, that like, I haven't looked at

like top line profitability reports for Amazon or any of these other companies or Apple. But the conversation was, it shouldn't have been the fear factor. The conversation should have been the opportunity. The conversation should have been, rather than Amazon laning off 14,000 people because they can, because they're going to replace them with AI.

conversation should have been, hey, what more of an impact can we make for the world because we can optimize these 14,000 people to make a greater impact than they've never made before. Right. But the reason why we're not having those conversations is because these companies, they look at those 14,000 people as people that should have never been here in the first place.

So that's why they can replace it. but again, it's like, man, I want to be at the table with people that are willing to expand, that are willing to scale, that are willing to break world records, that are willing to look at the opportunity and say, okay, now that we have these tools that are now accessible to us in a very accessible, easy way, okay, what can we do to be able to make our people happier? Because happy people produce better, right?

What can we do to be able to help somebody become the best version of themselves? Okay, what are the areas of expansion that we can do for our business? Maybe go into a vertical that was on our dream list that was 20 years away, but guess what? We can now bump it towards only two years away now because it's that much more accessible, right? Are you seeing what I'm saying here?

Sean Patton (18:26)
Yes. Yeah. It's a, it's it's an abundance versus scarcity mindset.

Michael King (18:30)
Absolutely. And there's no reason for us to be living in the United States of America in 2025 and for us to be scared because a computer now can do some thinking. It just doesn't, it doesn't make sense because still at the end of the day, our companies are made of humans. And if you weren't interested in actually investing in human capital in the first place, you should probably have never started.

been running a business. And that responsibility is very real. And it kind of shows me who you are and your character and who you are in the first place. But don't get me wrong, like if there are efficiencies that we should discover and we should downsize, etc. Great, like sometimes those conversations come up in the executive coaching process. That's why you need to have a certified proven expert running alongside of you making sure that they can advise you in ways to where you're making smart decisions and eliminating risk for running your business.

Yes, that's all part of it. And so if we find out like, man, your human capital percentage of your budget is significantly higher than it should be for the amount of money that you're bringing in, we have to make some changes. Those conversations are very real. But if you're a company like in Amazon that's making billions of dollars in profitability, I can promise you that your percentages aren't out of whack. But maybe your vision scope, as far as what type of impact you want to make, it needs to be dialed in just a little bit different.

Sean Patton (19:46)
Yeah, think, you know, it's interesting. think of leadership, right? As leadership itself is in my mind, amoral, right? It's agnostic. It's just about you're a leader if other people want to follow you, right? If you're, if you're inspiring people and you can, we've seen historical instances where that can go terribly more wrong from a moral standpoint, or it can go terribly right from a moral standpoint. But you're, I think it comes down to you mentioned at the beginning of this about like,

values and impact and mission. Like why do you exist and what impact you trying to have in the world? And we run into real problems when yes, you know, shareholder return, let's say, right, or net profit is a result of you creating that impact in the world. But when the priority of that gets switched to where net profit or shareholder return,

supersedes the mission for the world you had ahead of that, we start to run into real problems.

Michael King (20:42)
if you can kind of just repeat that last section.

Sean Patton (20:44)
Yeah, no problem. So I was

just saying that if

that in my mind, people start a company and you we've got, Amazon has these big grand visions of like how you want to impact the world. We created this company because we want to do something, right? We want to have an impact in the world and that's our mission. And then as a result of that, we create net profit or shareholder return. Then we can stay sort of aligned, but things can go very askew when you start leading a company where net profit at all costs, right? Shareholder return supersedes

the mission and vision, the reason that you exist in the first place.

Michael King (21:16)
And that's where it's like, that's, you know, so taking time and just making sure like, who's actually holding you accountable to make sure that you're staying on point with your vision, your mission, your values, the behaviors and the attributes of your organization. And we always start there in the first place is because whatever you make visible is what you attract. And guess what? Just like in the cases of being a coach, being smart,

and being a coach is no longer a differentiator.

People can manufacture smart all day long, you know? But what sets you apart? Like what's the thing? What is it? know, like what's your true north? What's your values? What do you live by? What do you make visible? Because whatever you make visible is what you attract. So come on, like keep it out there. And who's helping you ⁓ stay accountable to that pursuit? But in the same space of being a business, okay, your true north.

simply it's not good enough and it's not a differentiary enough just to say that you want to be profitable, that you want to make money. That's not good enough anymore.

Sean Patton (22:12)
I agree. know, along with those lines, another reason why, you know, not this whole conversation is just about like coaching, but the, one of the concepts that you've brought up that I think is important as we talk about this, how fast things are moving, how we're trying to make decisions in this, this transformational world and sort of like be the master of chaos here. As you talk about the power of Nope and how that, I think that

is becoming ever more critical as opportunities to do a multitude of things are in front of us. And then also as maybe we're starting to expect our people in some cases to, you know, we're getting rid of their 10 person team, taking it down to four, but we still expect the same output. So as we're in that sort of world, can you explain what you mean by the power of Nope?

Michael King (23:00)
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the thing that you're known for is the true north. It's like what attracts people to you and your brand, but it also helps you make decisions. And I think specifically like in today's landscape, like there's just so many options for us. Like if you're not careful, like next thing you know, you have 35 different subscriptions coming into your monthly.

you know, costs for running your business and you're, you're trying this, you're trying that you're experimenting with this and blah, blah, blah. And, you can just get kind of exhausting or, know, it's like, it's like when my wife says to me that she wants to go to dinner and she says, Hey, can we go to Chick-fil-A? Guess what? I'm pretty sure she wants a chicken sandwich. You know, but if she said to me, Hey, I think I want to go to this Greek restaurant in town. Well, there's a possibility that she wants a Euro. It's a possibility.

like she's gonna order a Euro. But then when I get to the restaurant and the menu is like 75 pages long, and there doesn't necessarily seem to be like the thing that they're famous for, et cetera, you can see the idea, right? It's the idea that it's like, okay, like there's so many things and there's so many different ways to get confused. And so the power of NOPE is that sometimes like,

Even for me, like the most powerful nope and the hardest nope that I ever had to say was, was like exactly what I told you before was like when I said, finally said no to actually walking away from church ministry as being paid. I didn't walk away from my faith. I want to be really clear about that. But when I did walk away from being a full-time pastor, because I just felt like, man, this is a one-sided relationship. I'm giving way more than I'm getting and it's not doing me any good. So I need to be able to say no to that. Like I need to be able to say no and

and kind of go, okay, like, let's hold on for dear life. But I think sometimes like we cheapen our yeses so much because we say yes to too many things. I want for you, Sean, even like, I want the next thing that you say yes to to be the most powerful yes that you've ever given. But the only way that you can actually get there is for you to embrace the thing that you're willing to say no to today. What's the thing that you're saying no to that's distracting you, that's sucking the life out of you and is keeping you away from the thing.

that's your true calling and your true purpose. And I think that businesses, it doesn't matter how big or small they are, you know, it can get distracting, you know? It's kind of like the idea of Arby's serving a hamburger. Did you ever hear about this, by the way? It's great. The story cracks me up. So one day I actually tried it just because I'm like, I'm like, how did Arby's pull off like having a hamburger?

Sean Patton (25:13)
No.

Michael King (25:22)
Like the thing that they're known for is roast beef, right? I'm like, I don't even think they have a griddle. I don't think they have a grill. And turns out, guess what? They don't have one. They don't have a griddle. They don't have a grill. You know how they make a hamburger at Arby's? They deep fry it.

I'm not kidding you. They de-priced. I'm standing there and I'm asking these questions to an Arby's manager saying like,

How do you do it? Will we deep fry it? Do you know who came up with this idea? They're like, well, our food testing people. they, so I ordered it. Guess what? It wasn't actually, it wasn't bad. It was actually pretty good, but I don't even want to know the calorie intake. Yeah, exactly. But, but again, it was like, okay, somewhere along the way, somebody that's in a corporate office, they're like, Hey, the boutique hamburger brands are going nuts.

Sean Patton (25:52)
Right?

Yeah, a deep fried hamburger. ⁓

Michael King (26:08)
Like there's all these like, like, so people are getting behind a gourmet burger, like more than anything we're missing out. We're, you know, like the whole FOMO thing kicked in. We better kick into place and we're going to guess what? It's the lowest performing thing on the Arby's menu. Why is because people don't go to Arby's for a hamburger. They go there for roast beef, you know? And so in some markets, I think they're still like running and testing it out. I don't know, but I just think it's pretty hilarious. Like how, like in order to say yes to that, how many of our things did we have to compromise?

in order for us to make that reality. But there are things that we say yes to all the time in our businesses, in our lives, in our personal convictions that in order for us to do something, we have to compromise something. And that's a really good sign. And we're barking up the wrong tree. It's not for us. It's not the thing that we're called to. So that's where the power of no comes into play. It's like, okay, what are you going to say no to? That's gonna be your most powerful no that will make sure that you're staying committed to the thing that only you can do.

Sean Patton (27:00)
Why do you think so many leaders struggle to say no, even when maybe intuitively they kind of know that they should, they should say no?

Michael King (27:09)
I think FOMO, you know, I think especially right now, like fear of missing out. You know, I think even right now it's so hard to get caught into the comparison trap of like so and so is doing this, so and so is doing this. You know, like ⁓ it was really funny. Like John Michael Morgan, who's a friend of ours, he's one of my coaches. I think he's one of your coaches as well. That's how we know each other is when we belong to the coaching tribe with John Michael.

Sean Patton (27:28)
Yep.

Michael King (27:32)
He was saying, like, so I was revealing some of the stuff that we're doing, to where my creative director came to me about a, five or six months ago. he was like, bro, you need to combine your music brand in with your leadership brand, because like, this is stupid. There's no other coaches out there that have a recording contract and also is a legitimate coach. And I didn't, I was, my first question back to him was like, is this legal? Like, can we, is this, is this something like to where we can, and guess what? He wasn't wrong. Like it actually, for me,

Sean Patton (27:52)
Hahaha.

Michael King (27:57)
It works really well. and like my, my record labels behind it, they, I came to them and I said, Hey, I want to write music that's specifically designed for the high performing leader. So our, my first singles kind of drop in November, ⁓ called through the haze. And I John Michael see this combination video of how we took this music video concept and then combined it with thought leadership and kind of broke the fourth wall.

And his first thing was, that he hopped on the call with me last week and he was like, he was like, dude, he goes, I want to, he said, he says, I just want to be honest with you. He goes, if anybody else would, he goes, I was afraid to watch this video. Like you, sent it to me. And he, he was like, there was just something inside of me. He goes, this is going be horrible. And he goes, he goes, but this is brilliant. He said, nobody else is doing this.

He goes, but if anybody else comes to me and says, Hey, I want to pull off what King is trying to pull off. I'm going to tell them no, because that's what he said. He goes, he goes, nobody else should even try this. He goes, this is dangerous, but you nailed it. It's awesome. And, ⁓ it's so, it's so, so funny, but, but yeah, but I think it's again, there's like that idea of like, I've done that in which I've seen other people do things.

And I'm like, well, maybe that's for me. Maybe I should, maybe I should scale doing a group program. Maybe I should scale doing this way. No, no. Okay. What is the thing that only you can do? That's the thing that you say yes to. What are the things that you're passionate about? What is the thing that you love? What is the thing that fills your heart? What is the thing that you're called to? Like, what is the thing that only you can do? Dude, say a resounding yes to that. Chase that fricking thing down. Say yes to that. But anything else that competes that or is anti that.

which means sometimes it's relationships. Sometimes it's the people that are on your inner circle. Sometimes like you surround yourself with people that are even advisors and they're actually distracting you. They're putting the wrong energy into your life, but you don't know how to say no to that. That's the thing that's destroying you. So say no to those things.

Sean Patton (29:51)
I love that ability and saying really coming back to you like that leadership is clarity, right? Being very clear about who you are, what you're about, what you're trying to accomplish. And then, you know, the word that comes to mind when you were just mentioning about the people is discipline, you know, and I have, um, some interesting, just like thought leadership and just work too on with some companies around self-discipline and organizational discipline and sort of redefining, uh,

a thought around discipline, right? Because what I found is that what, you know, with my background where I've spent, you know, my entire young adult life, 18 to 32, in the military, places like West Point, infantry and special forces. so self-discipline is obviously like a quarter of a quarter stone of my life. But what people are really surprised for me to tell them that like, even on those elite teams, what people think self-discipline is and what it really is.

is are totally different things because people think it's just about like willpower or like grinding through the pain or forcing yourself to suffer every day. But really what self-discipline is, is it's design, right? It's setting an environment and surrounding yourself with people that are aligned with who you're becoming with, with your vision. And if you set your environment, the people you surround yourself with, your habits, if you surround that, you set that up,

then discipline should be easy. It's about creating a system that makes the right thing the easy thing.

Michael King (31:18)
Absolutely. And we're saying the exact same thing, but we say it a little bit differently, but it does come down to self awareness though. And even just like your internal belief system. Because of this is that I tell people this all the time and because this is how it translates into my life is that the higher level of talent that you believe you have, the more constructs that you need to have in place in order for you to develop that talent.

Sean Patton (31:41)
Tell me more about that.

Michael King (31:41)
Because exactly what you just said, like the systems that you have in place. like, you know, like, like for you, because of the life that you've experienced being in the military, being a green beret, and even being in martial arts, like, right, because like you're kind of a ninja, right. And, but you've recognized, like, what you can push yourself to and what the obstacles are that could stand in the way. But you've really what you've what you're consistently finding out is like the idea of like,

Okay, what is it possible to be Sean Patton? Like, what can I do? And how can I push myself? You know, like what is possible? Right? But in order for you to ask that question of like, what is possible, you had to come to an understanding that like, you're kind of a badass. Like you kind of and I'm saying this in a complimentary way. Like for me, I came to the understanding that like,

I'm a world-class musician. I'm a world-class recording artist. I'm a world-class saxophonist. Well, in order for me to be that and speak into that, I'm a world-class coach. Okay, well, that means that I'm have to surround myself with some pretty amazing coaches and an amazing community and amazing self-disciplines. I'm gonna have to get a private instructor. I'm gonna take lessons. I'm gonna teach. I'm going to practice daily.

for 45 minutes to an hour every day, even when I don't feel like it, right? The higher level of talent and awareness that you have for your life, the more constructs that you need to have in place in order for you to develop that talent. It's kind of like here in, I live in Omaha, Nebraska, and the states of Iowa and Nebraska are separated by the Missouri River. Now, if you're a part of the Army Corps of Engineers, you'd understand our dam structure with that river is because the dam structure is built because the river is fricking powerful.

It is deep and it's freaking wide. And if it doesn't have constructs there to be able to manage the flow that's coming through that, it's going to self-destruct and destroy the land. And next thing you knew, it'd be like, you I don't know. It'd be horrible, right? You have to look at like your potential that you have in your life and what your type of impact that you're going to make is if you were just some sort of like mighty river.

And you have to have these constructs in place in order for you to actually develop and to manage the talent that you already have. And the reason why you don't have like the impact or having the type of outputs that you have in your life is because you're not being responsible to develop the things that are already in you. You haven't actually embraced the idea that maybe you're freaking amazing and you just don't know it yet.

Sean Patton (34:03)
All of the power of constructs as you brought that up, because, when I've heard, a lot of times with different creatives in different space, whether it's entrepreneurs or musicians or artists around that is like how constraints are, are almost necessary for creativity to thrive. Like you could be more creative because you, there's constraints around it. If you could do anything with anything, it's, it's almost harder to be creative, right? But saying no, we talk about that.

We bring it back to self-discipline. We bring it back to creating constraints and recognizing I'm going to create this vision of like, what am I capable of and head there and like, what are the right constraints to set up for yourself to do that? I think it's such a powerful metaphor. And one thing I want to get to before we end is as you do that, as you move forward and you chase and start asking yourself the question of, there's a there's a powerful question in a group I'm...

part of called Novus Global, call it MetaPerformance is moving from high performance of how do I be the best to MetaPerformance of what am I capable of is continuing to push yourself and dream and be creative as you fail because you will, as you push yourself, like it's inevitable. And I've had some major failures in my life. And I will tell you that when that happens, you...

that survival mechanism kicks in and you get stressed and you get scared and you feel like, it's hard to dream big. And that's something you've talked about. And so I'm really interested in your take on as you try to achieve that and live your, maximize your life and give your talents to the world. And you inevitably hit these, these failure. How do you, what's the mindset or perspective to continue to dream and push through failure?

Michael King (35:38)
Well, I think the number one thing that disappears when you experience failure is your ability to dream. And because you think about that, right? Like you hit your head on the ceiling, like you stumble, you fall and you stop dreaming again. And I think the number one thing that happened for me was it's not failure that steals your dream. It's shame. It's not about them. This is about you. And

long story short is that when we when I did finally say yes to saying no to the church, leaving leaving Omega Church on good or bad terms, it's always going to be painful. But in this case situation here, it was it was going to be it was was painful. You know, like I didn't know what to do next. Just, you know, like I knew that on Christmas Eve.

that that was gonna be my last night ever walking up to that stage of again leading worship for multiple Christmas Eve services across all of our campuses, right? And I just, told my silent prayer between me and the Lord is I had my guitar strapped onto my back. I said, if you can show me a way that I'm gonna pay for my family and to make sure that we survive, I will come and I'll quit tomorrow.

And I had this guy come up and walk up to me in the lobby. And he was a former Nebraska Cornhusker football player that I had mentored. And he was coming home for Christmas services just to see his family. And he came up to me to show me that he pulled his life back together. And he was so excited about the trajectory. He was making great money. he was working as finance manager at a car dealership.

and he was looking for some new people to join his team. So he pulled his paycheck out of his pocket to show me that he was bringing home like 20 to $30,000 a month. And he just wanted me to be proud of him. And then he said, he was like, yeah, if you know of anybody that's looking for a job, I'm hiring. And I was like, you jerk. You gotta be kidding me. I'm like, I literally just said this. I'm like, so I just humbly, was just like, I was like, you know what? I guess I'm looking for a job, PJ. Let me know.

So December 26th, I went in for my first job interview that I ever had in my life. On December 27th, I quit my job. December 28th, I lost a thousand friends. You know? Like we'd never hear from people ever again. they, like it was like one of those things to where it was just like absolutely humiliating. and so, but.

I started the dream again. literally had to, the first thing that I had to do is I had to surround myself with the right people and eliminate the wrong people and recognize that dreaming has absolutely nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with me. And as soon as I kind of embraced that one single step, the sky was the limits. Like, but I had to be honest about where I had been.

But more importantly, where am I at today? And what do I need to shift so I can make some of these things change? Because dreaming is absolutely essential for you to be able to make a momentous impact. And it's part of the human condition. you're robbing it, and you're robbing yourself if you're allowing other people to impact that ability in your life.

Sean Patton (38:26)
Hmm. Man, that hit such a powerful story. Hit home to me. My first business when I got into the military, I was dreaming big, failed, went through a bankruptcy. went from, you know, you met, you know, Green Beret commander, West Point grad, like Captain America could can't miss to business owner, like, oh, wow, look at him to. Bankrupt and lost everything, you know, to.

Taxi my girlfriend like hey, can you then owe me money so I can get dinner at the grocery store right now? And it was And and so You're right like trying to Kind of grieve through that and then get to a place to allow yourself to dream again to and and what you really hit was to me was that you mentioned how it's It's really this feeling of shame like I didn't put I didn't put that word on it before but it was this sense of

Michael King (39:10)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Patton (39:14)
shame and lack of identity that was such a hard place to dig out of. And when you work with leaders who you're trying to help them rebuild belief and momentum after something like that, or maybe someone listening right now is in that place, what are those first few steps for them?

Michael King (39:32)
Identifying where the shame is coming from in the first place, you know Because failure is actually essential and I'm so glad that you experienced it But that you're but you bounced back, you know, I'm so glad for that. I'm glad that you're here today in this but But if you think about it in high-performing leaders only one of out of every 36 of their ideas are actually going to get traction and going to work

That's just the way things work. So the difference between somebody who succeeds and somebody who fails is just literally their ability to get through their failures faster than anyone else. So if you're experiencing failure today, recognize it as a gift and move on as fast as you possibly can. know, shake the shame off, but recognizing where the shame is actually coming from in the first place, you know, because there are some things that hold us hostage. It could be relationships. It could be environment. It could be financial commitments. It could be the business model in the first place. It could be business collaborations.

But where is that shame coming from? And if you do have areas of your life that's actually putting shame, or even if it's yourself to where maybe you're doing some internal shame, do whatever you can, get some counseling, talk to a therapist, work with a coach or a spiritual advisor, somebody to help you actually get through eliminating internal shame so you can actually get moving to some of the outward manifestations. Because that's the thing, even to this day, because shame is a...

shame is a mother effort. If I can say that it is it is so destructive. Because here's part of that story, right? So I was told that they weren't going to give me a severance package unless I actually moved away from the community that we were living because they were afraid that my influence in the town that we lived in would somehow have a ripple effect that I'd still be making a mess or something like that for the people that stayed at the church, right? And but the only thing that I knew for my true north was that

Sean Patton (40:50)
too.

Michael King (41:12)
I wanted to have time with my kids. And so I was, I was committed to making sure that I made a normative experience. Hardest conversation I ever had in my life was when I went into my daughter, her name is Chloe, went into her bedroom and told her like, Hey, everybody that you've ever grown up with, all your friends that you know, the people that you've loved deeply, you're never going to see them ever again. Hardest day of my life, bro. And, God, ⁓ that's rough. And, and so I chose to not move.

I chose to stay in the town that we live in.

Even though it's a smaller town, it's a town of about 5,000 outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, where we were pastoring at. even though I've maybe had five minutes of conversation with the guy that I helped build his church.

Rarely had any one-on-one, never went over to his house for dinner. You know, it was a complete transactional relationship that burnt me out. ⁓ but even still to this day, like, like I find that I'm a better version of myself. That's why it's like you and I know each other because like when I come to Nashville, like I have full communities of people that I'm impacting and then I have full community of people that I belong to, like they're.

Same thing in Dallas, same thing in Las Vegas, same thing in Chicago, in Toronto, in New York. I tell my wife this, I'm a better version of myself when I'm on the road than I am when I'm at home. Because when I go to Starbucks, because when you have a church that was that big, making that big of an influence, I go to Starbucks and half the people in that Starbucks are former congregants. And somebody will come up to me and they'll be...

following me on Facebook or whatever, and it immediately pulls me back to Mike, you know, circa 2015, right? And I feel like there's like little points of shame that pop in where I have to start to tell them the story of like, yeah, here's all the cool things that I'm doing now, blah, blah, blah. I can't, it's hard for me to live in the moment of like, man, yeah, God has been good to me, Like, here's how my kids are doing, here's how my family's doing.

Like I get to coach with Fortune 500 and Fortune 100. I just got back from Sturiname South America speaking at a global marketing conference and I got to share my story and it impacted people and gave them hope. Like I have the best life now that I ever could. But like in those moments, shame steals the reality of the great things that you're currently doing. And you got to get, you have to do whatever you can to get rid of it.

Sean Patton (43:23)
And, thank you for the work you're doing. Thanks for your vulnerability, man, and coming on here. Um, means a lot to me and I know it probably, it's going to impact, you know, all the people listening. So just, yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Um, if, we'll, we'll put, you know, links to, you know, teams that coach and all that stuff, you know, below, uh, and show notes. But if someone's like right now, it's like, okay, where do I go right now to, you know, get more Michael King or to learn more, where should I

Michael King (43:35)
Yeah, you bet.

Absolutely. Well, we've been putting a lot, a lot of work in on my personal brand. So please check out michaelkingjr.com. We have a new leadership film that we just launched that's there as well. That kind of combines what we're doing with creativity and leadership. So make sure to check that out. We have a new release coming up as well in November that you definitely have to check it out as well. So michaelkingjr.com for all the links and all the things. And if you have an event that you're looking for a speaker for, I'm currently booking our 2026 keynotes and 2027 keynotes as well.

Sean Patton (44:14)
Beautiful. Thanks so much, brother.

Michael King (44:16)
Thank you so much, man. Appreciate you.