Michael Margolis on How Family Relationships Change With Age

In Chapter 7 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, educator and entrepreneur Michael Margolis answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing as You Get Older?"  Margolis notes what has led to an increasing amount of acceptance and reduced conflict levels over time.  He shares experiences from a previous marriage that caused family friction and how things have changed and improved since that time. 

Michael Margolis is founder and president of Get Storied, an education and publishing platform dedicated to teaching the world how to think in narrative.  He earned a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Tufts University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Michael Margolis: A lot less conflict in my family relationships. I would say it’s interesting, it’s been a much greater sense of acceptance of my parents and my brother and likewise the way that I feel with my parents and brother, you know, accepting me as well. Yeah, it’s become a lot easier as time has gone on. I mean, the last relationship I was married for a few years and during that relationship I was with a partner that took a very antagonistic sort of place with my family. So, that I think is something to be very sensitive to and you don’t even realize it because you're trying to please your partner and all the issues that they have with your family, you sort of take it on and I probably created more drama than necessarily needed to be there. 

So, it’s helped to also have a partner now that is far more -- a far calmer disposition in one that she gets along really well with my family and I get along well with hers. So, it’s just been a place of easiness. You know, I never forget though one of my favorite sayings that somebody taught me in my mid-20’s was, you know “Michael, if you think you're enlightened just go spend a weekend with your family”, right? So, all of those patterns, it doesn’t how old you get, you will always be your parents’ child, right? You’ll always be your, you know, I’ll always be my brother’s younger brother.

So, those dynamics are always there but I think as we grow older there’s just, at least for me it’s been a mellowing and a greater sense of acceptance of each other and being able to just spend time appreciating each other. 

Michael Margolis on Improving Online Info Product Marketing

In Chapter 8 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, educator and entrepreneur Michael Margolis answers "At This Moment in Your Life, Where Are You Seeking Advice and Coaching?"  Margolis shares how coaches and advisors have been useful as his business has marketed, launched, and grown his online info product business.  He shares how advisors have helped him grow as a leader to help his business refine its culture and value framework for future growth. 

Michael Margolis is founder and president of Get Storied, an education and publishing platform dedicated to teaching the world how to think in narrative.  He earned a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Tufts University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: At this moment in your life where are you seeking advice and coaching?

Michael Margolis: There’s a few things I'm really focused on with growing my business right now. One is really the internet marketing playbook for product launches and info product creation and so last year we designed and rolled out a program called The New About Me, teaches people how to reinvent their personal bio into a story. Basically, how do you talk about yourself without sounding like a douche. And, it’s a really fun cool product, people love it, it’s this whole curriculum online and just learning a lot of the fundamentals of not only designing a curriculum or info product but how do you market it and how do you bring in affiliates and joint venture partners and all the various different things for doing a product launch and we’re now taking that to the next level for this Reinvention Summit that we’re doing. 

So, I've got all sorts of coaches and advisors on that that are teaching me about Autoresponder series. We just shot a free video series on storytelling as part of our product launch for this and just seeing all the little devil in the details, which I used to kinda geek out with a little bit and realizing that there’s sort of an exponential curve of where we can take things. So, I'm getting a lot of support there. The second big area is really around editorial. So, we all know the adage content is king. So, in my case, you know, the niche of storytelling is a really unique niche and one that, you could say storytelling is a really hot business trend right now. Everybody’s interested and curious about it especially how it relates to branding and marketing and innovation and social media and culture change. Those are some of the big buckets. Everybody is looking at the storytelling stuff and so I have a lot of opportunities that have come my way for not only creating content but syndicating that content or creating content series and so really getting a lot of support there as well for how we build, get storied into more of both an online destination, right. Sort of an online magazine for the business of storytelling.  And then how we also create sort of key segments or key content series for various different niche audiences whether it’s the self-publishing audience, whether it’s an entrepreneur audience, whether it’s a marketing audience and so on. So, those are the two big buckets from a business perspective. I'm getting lots of coaching and advice from -- on the personal front, it’s really been about sort of a new maturation for the business, which is about growing an organization.  

So, even though there’s an aspect to where we’re at we get story that’s still very much a startup. But now there’s a real team in place. So, I'm really conscious of we’re creating a culture whether we’re consciously thinking about it or not but the decisions that we make are shaping a culture, right? We’re instilling certain set of values. Saying this matters over this. Saying we stand for that. Some of those choices are things that I'm getting a lot of feedback from and inputs so that, you know, I can support as CEO really create the right environment to really empower the development and the performance of all the different people on my team.

Michael Margolis on How to Be a Leader by Taking Care of Others

In Chapter 9 of 17 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, educator and entrepreneur Michael Margolis answers "What Does It Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?"  Margolis references the book "The Book of Destiny" and builds upon Mayan leadership lessons to discuss leading in the gift economy. 

Michael Margolis is founder and president of Get Storied, an education and publishing platform dedicated to teaching the world how to think in narrative.  He earned a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Tufts University. 

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?

Michael Margolis: I read this book that’s actually about the Mayan prophecies, and it was written by a Mayan elder and there was something really remarkable in there that talked about leadership and had a definition of what makes a leader. We often forget to ask that question like, “What makes a leader? What makes you a leader?” We often think about it in the political context or we think about it in the corporate board room and it’s about power and it’s about who’s in charge and all of these things that are often times more about ego and self-appointedness and a whole bunch of other things but this book defined leadership in such a brilliant beautiful way. It’s called the Book of Destiny, by the way. Really cool book. And it said real simply, “You become a leader by taking care of those around you“. It’s that simple? Wait a second, well, if you take care of those around you really well, what happens? Those people naturally turn to you and look at you as somebody who is looking out for their welfare, looking out for the needs of the community, of the tribe, of the village. 

So, how do we become a leader, well it’s this notion of taking care of others, right? Which is why you have to bring that spirit. This is the power of the internet, of the gift economy. The gift economy is something that is actually hard wired into us as human beings. This is my background as a student of anthropology. We think about gift economy, it goes back to the times when we were out hunter-gatherers out on the savannah and you might have a good day, you might have bad day hunting. Well, so if you came back to the village and you had nothing to share but your friend Joe just brought in the wooly mammoth, well gift-economy means you’re gonna share what you got or what Joe got rather.  He’s gonna share with others because Joe knows he’s gonna have a bad day some point down the line. As that evolved over time, the notion of being a leader was the privilege for instance if the village would come together for a big feast. There was no greater privilege and honor than to be the benefactor to feed the village. It was a signal of your power and position but it was also a responsibility. It was a privilege and responsibility. 

So, that notion of gift-economy actually is what fuels the internet, right. It’s why people talk about free. The power of free on the internet. So, the notion of having a gift to be able to start a relationship from that place. It’s like going to a dinner party without a host gift. Dude, don’t be that guy, right. If you’re gonna go over to somebody’s house, you bring something whether it’s a bottle of wine, a fruit basket, some chocolate in my case but you bring something. It sets a tone. It acknowledges, hey we’re entering into a relationship. So, that’s a really powerful way. Simplest way to become a leader: is 1. Take care of others and 2. Think about what are the gifts that you have to share, not just in abstract terms but literally create a gift. Create an e-book. Create an info product. Give something away for free that is of high perceived value. Not some nickel and dime little thing but something that people go, “Holy crap. This thing just changed my life and you just gave that away for free?” If you are able to give that away for free I can’t even begin to imagine how much more you’ve got behind the curtain. What else do you have? Sign me up. What can I buy? I wanna go deeper. So, that’s I think the power of being a leader. Becoming a leader is having some gifts and not being afraid to share them.