Interview with Daven Michaels

Editor:

This time, we're chatting with Daven Michaels, an entrepreneur who left behind the music business to become wildly successful with multiple business ventures. These days he's arguably best known for 123Employee, which is a virtual employee centre based out of the Philippines. Now, alongside that, he's also become one of the world's leading business coaches and public speakers. We're going to talk all about all of that and so much more, but for now let's welcome Daven Michaels.

Daven Michaels:

Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Editor:

Well it's great to have you with us. Now for those people that haven't perhaps come across you before Daven, maybe I could start by asking you just a little bit more about your background, where you're from and how you also discovered your entrepreneurial streak.

Daven Michaels:

Yeah, sure. Mine is an entrepreneur's story. And if you're an entrepreneur and you're listening or reading this, you probably have one too. And I used to think that mine was so unique until I started speaking and teaching and empowering and making a difference in entrepreneur's lives that I realised that all entrepreneurs really have a story. Mine starts at the tender young age of 15. I didn't have any brothers or sisters. I was an only child. My parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted it to do. All the dumb ideas I had, they encouraged me and I had a few smart ones too. And so at a very young age, I started doing entrepreneurial things. It was something that drove me. I was excited.

Daven Michaels:

I didn't like high school. I just wanted to get out there. I want to make money and see my way in the world. And so my very first business, I was designing clothing for music groups, and it was in the early '80s. And quite frankly, I had no clue what I was doing. I was working with these bands. Most of them were playing their garage. I was designing their costumes. So most of them were playing their garage or very small venues.

And then an amazing thing happened. MTV came on the air and it changed the face of music and changed my life. So I was working with some of these bands that had nothing going on. And within about 90 days, most of my bands had record deals. Within about a year, they were selling millions of albums. And I rode that wave and found myself working with some of the biggest bands of the '80s and '90s, Prince, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper . Over on your side of the world, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, gosh, you name it, so many of those bands.

Daven Michaels:

And it was a blast and it was especially incredible touring with these bands, especially at such a young age. And it literally happened overnight. We would play these small venues. They would bring us to the venues. We'd come in through the backstage just before the bands would go on. And I remember there were 600 people in the room, a thousand people in the room and then 5,000, 10,000, 20,000. And within about a year, we were playing stadiums and it was a wild ride. And that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial career.

As you alluded to, most of my businesses were around entertainment communications. From there, I wanted to be a recording artist. Well actually let me back up a second. From there, I had a telecommunications company and then I became the biggest electronic music event producer in the US and I'd throw parties eventually for about 15 to 20,000 people a night. Because I had that built in fan base, I actually had a short career as a recording artist, went on tour for a while. I did a couple of albums and then I started writing and producing for others. And that took off. And I was working with a lot of big bands. My partner, Layla discovered Tupac, which plummeted me into the hip hop world. That was a wild ride. And I really had a good run there.

And quite frankly, I would probably still be in that business today, except Napster came out and there was about 50 million people downloading free music. I saw the writing on the wall and I bounced. And the only thing I really knew how to do was produce. And so what seemed like the next step for me was producing television. And it was right at the beginning of reality television. And I hired a huge staff and unbeknownst to most of them, they were actually training me how to do television same time I was paying them. And we didn't really have any big successes in television because I was only there a few years and then my outsourcing business took off. And we can talk more about that.

But as you said, that was 123Employee. Started off a small shop with about 10 employees. And today we have nearly a thousand of them. It's been just an incredible ride. Today we work with entrepreneurs all over globe, some of the biggest thought leaders on the planet. We do all the busy stuff or BS, busy stuff in their business, everything from internet marketing, social media, telemarketing back office tasks, inbound and outbound voice. It's basically virtual assistant services for small businesses, customer service for larger companies. And our mission at 123Employee is to rescue lifestyle starved entrepreneurs, give them their time back and their lives back. And we've been doing it for well over a decade and it's been a lot of fun.

Editor:

I was going to say it sounds like you've done so much in quite a relatively small amount of time. To hear that you've rubbed shoulders with the likes of Prince Madonna, Duran Duran and so on. That's impressive enough as it is. But then to go on to have this wildly successful business as well. Was that always part of the plan, would you say Daven? Or is it something where you just got lucky, would you say?

Daven Michaels:

What I've found over the years is that most entrepreneurs or successful people will take credit for their success. They'll take credit for their luck. And I believe wholeheartedly that luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. Luck doesn't just fall typically on your lap. You get to that point where you have good luck. You build a network. You become proficient in business. But I have to say that if you've had any level of success, you had to have had luck in your life. And I've met plenty of people that worked hard that had the qualifications and didn't achieve what they wanted achieve. And a lot of that is luck. A lot of it is being at the right place at the right time.

I have a dear friend of mine that is a perfect example of luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. He hustled in the real estate space for decades. For decades, he paid his dues. But on top of that, he happened to be at the right place at the right time. Today, he's making insane money. But it's a combination. He worked, he paid his dues, but there's plenty of people who've paid their dues. But then he was at the right place at the right time. But if he didn't have that network and those skills, he probably wouldn't have taken that very far. So anybody, I believe that's had any level of success, definitely there is luck in the mix. And then of course there's skill and there's resources and there's everything you built over the years.

Daven Michaels:

And the reality is I have had a lot of success and when you zoom out on it, it looks incredible. But if you zoom in, there was trials and tribulations and it wasn't over that short a period of time. The reality is I'm old. I just look a lot younger than I am. And so it was several decades really. But I was fortunate enough to have some early success, which definitely helped out a lot. But it's a process and being in business for yourself is full of ups and downs. But eventually you get to a point you've been doing it long enough, you can zoom out and go, "Look at all my success."

Editor:

It's true. It's true. And how do you balance your family life? Because with 123Employee being based out of the Philippines as you mentioned, does that mean you have to in normal times travel a lot?

Note from the editor:

 This is a bridged version of the full interview which is available to listen to separately. Just message me if you like to listen to the full audio. You will get a link without subscribing to anything or giving me your email ;-)