Today, our special guest is an international speaker, customer service expert, best-selling author, and coach, Michael Heppel. I've had the pleasure of knowing Michael Heppel now for over a year, doing some work with him, learning from him, and growing with him. So I wanted to share him with my audience and talk to him about the new normal and some really cool things that he's got coming up. So let's not waste any more time and move on to Michael Heppel.

The Success Story of Michael Heppel Michael had a thriving business as a speaker, working with business owners, traveling and making speeches, and working with businesses on site. However, it changed rapidly. In 2019, which feels like a long time, he was away from home. He’s very fortunate. He’s traveled with his wife. She does all my event production, and she also co-writes with him and coaches him. His wife does lots of great stuff.

Michael got to that Christmas that year, and his wife said, “Sweetie, please, promise me that we can travel less next year.” And he answered, “Christine, I put my hand on my heart. We will travel less in 2020.” It happened. They traveled less in 2020, but it was because the COVID19 pandemic started that year.

The challenge was he made his living by standing on stage in front of people and doing live training events and the like. So he never thought he was just going to sit and twiddle his thumbs. So it has become his new normal to be in his room. And Michael thought, if he’s going to present there, he would like to be done on Zoom, he’s going to be really good at it.

Then, he learned a lot of techniques. He bought a kit and the latest technology for playing sound and music and tried to replicate what he did as much as possible. Besides that, he also started a group in January. He didn't even think that it would take off at all, called “How to Be Brilliant.” He got over 3000 members, and it became this real beacon of positivity. People were saying, “You know, this is the place to go.” Everybody's supportive, and they're encouraging, and there's hope. People aren't moaning and groaning about what’s going on.

He really threw himself in. He answered every single comment as much as he could. But he made a big mistake. He forgot to fit his own mask. So he was doing it for everybody else. Then, suddenly after about two months, he had a bit of a wobble. It was because he was exhausted, spending time just in front of a screen just commenting and doing stuff and doing lives.

He was doing lots of live stuff, and he thought he needed a little break from it. Maybe, he should create a pop-up group and do something a bit different that will entertain himself and the people in the group. So he sent out one of those Google forms. He just sent it out to 1 to 25 people and said, “What would you like to know more about?” So he received three suggestions.

One was time management. Michael wrote a book called “How to Save an Hour Every Day,” teaching how to save time. The second was customer service. He’s the UK best-selling author for customer service books, and he then sold a lot of copies across the country. The same thing goes for “How the Best Get Better,” which talks about the idea of constant improvement.

Then, just at the last minute, he wrote: “How to Write a Book.” He sent it out, and 75% of people came back, and it ticked, “I want to know how to write the book.” So he created a pop-up group called “Write that book.” After that, 444 people joined, and they did a masterclass, and 75 people joined that. It was just the most incredible thing to do in spring last year.

So many people have gone on to publish their books. They got 30 published now and over 60 in the pipeline. He has been talking to some of those authors who will be on that course, and it’s the best feeling ever for Michael.

After that, his wife, Christine, encouraged him to write a book because he hadn't written anything for about six years. Hence, Michael came up with this idea and wrote the book “17.” He wrote it in 17 days and sold copies after three days. Then, he had 17 minutes of interviews. He also has massive action projects where they take things and take it up to the next level and get stuff over the line. They have groups who come together and do stream 17.

Every month, there are three different streams happening, and they're real specialist subjects in different areas. So they do all of that. The brilliant thing with this, of course, is when they bring these communities together, people like yourself get involved. So it becomes a combination of lots of people all wanting to share and all wanting to help each other, and that's the real beauty of it. If you've got one person who wants to take stuff. Get two people who want to take stuff, and it becomes a bit more difficult. If you have 100 people who won't want to take stuff, it doesn't work. If you've got 100 people who all want to give, now you've got 100, multiplied by 100, multiply by 100, multiply 100. And that's what makes a massive difference.

The Power of Relationships It’s the power of having groups of people and the power of the relationships that have been built beyond just the meetings. During the pandemic, especially when people were locked down real hard, it was an outlet that people had. It’s because they didn't have anywhere else. It was more like a family meeting of a hundred people on a Zoom. Everybody got to know each other, and it was a brilliant process.

That’s the idea of Michael. Why would you want to do a good drill when you can just do that little bit more, and you can even make it brilliant. That's what Micheal always wants to do. He always wants to make things brilliant, wherever possible.

For those who want to be a member of “17”, they can do so. You only need to contact Michael Heppel through his socials and his official website: michaelheppel.com/team17. The team is nearly full, but they can still fill in the remaining available slot if someone gets interested in joining in. Besides that, Michael continues to do coaching in his team via Zoom now. He’s doing it with three people at a time so that he can focus on them well and achieve his objectives in every meeting he handles.

Plans on Writing Another Book Michael said that the last book he wrote happened almost by accident, the next book he will be writing would be much better. So they started one in the autumn. One of the things that they do with “Write the Book” is that they have a group called the masters. These are the best possible people at the top of their game in the world of writing and publishing. They then interviewed Rory Scarfe. He's the head of the agency for the Blair Partnership, and the Blair partnership represents JK Rowling. His expertise has just been absolutely amazing.

Where Do You See Your Business Going Beyond 2021? Michael said that they wouldn't take any events until September. So they're not doing any speaking work until then. That was quite deliberate because people were booking stuff and then canceling and booking and canceling until this whole thing gets itself sorted out.

The other thing is the idea of, “Oh, well, we'll do an event, and we're going to have 300 in the room. But now we're gonna have 50 in the room, and they're all going to be spaced out.” For a speaker, that's hard work. So they have to develop new ways to present their rise to the challenge. They'll make it work.

They are taking bookings now from September onwards. So that's interesting to see what's going to be happening with that. They also think they will travel less for work because Michael really enjoyed spending time at home.

They live in the north of England, a place called Northumberland. He hadn't realized quite how beautiful the place was until he had to spend a whole year there, looking at that window every day. In fact, just right from his front door, he’s setting the dairy. It was a farmhouse and used to be the dairy where they bottled milk. So he’s really enjoying being at home.

Michael also thinks what's going to happen is that a lot of hybrid stuff is going to be happening more and more where there will be a mixture of people going into the event, some people being beamed into the event. Some people being there live at the event, and other people from the organization watching on video feeds. So that's a new challenge. It's quite exciting. There's a couple of really big events which are going to be happening in 2022. So he’s looking forward to that, looking forward to walking on stage with bright lights and a big crowd because that's probably what he was born to do.

What’s the Next Plan Right Away? Michael will be writing the book because they have a free pop-up starting. It's gonna open on the 1st of June. So a lot of fun and excitement is happening. Then, they have the challenge, which takes place on the seventh. They’ll teach people everything during that challenge, from developing ideas to creating how to write. So people want to read a whole bunch of stuff that is going to happen then. And then they’ll launch the next master class on the 14th of June.

Michael had one person who joined a couple of days ago, and she said, “I'm not quite sure what's going to be the right thing for me.” “So, what are you writing?” “So it's a fiction book.” He said, “All right. Okay, what is it?” And she said, “Well, it's basically an erotic fiction for the older generation.” “Really?” She goes, “Yeah, think of 50 shades but 50 plus.”

Michael then asked, “Have you got any idea how you're going to sell it?” She went, “Yeah, I've already sorted it out. I'm going to partner up with SAGA.” But, if you have SAGA in the US, it’s an organization that does holidays, insurance, all that type of stuff. It’s only for people who are 55 plus. That's the only age group that they work with.

So she's already looking at her target audience and how she's going to market to them. Michael then said, “You don't need to write that book.” She said, “I do. I just want to learn. And, if I can share ideas, I want to do that as well.”

What a Facebook Pop-Up Group is? The Facebook pop-up is only going to be there for two weeks. So you join, you do something, it closes. That's what's going to happen. So this real sense of they're all moving towards something. Michale loves the fact that some people come along, and they go, “Oh, I'm going to write a business book on such and such.” And by the end of the week, they're writing a children's book. Because that's their real passion, and you've got to find your passion.

There's no point in writing a book on what you think you should do. You've got to write a book on what you must do because it's in there. That's the secret.

Last year, Michael had this pop-up when Dan participated among 200 people. There were 150 people posting their writing samples. Other people could make their suggestions and critiques. Dan found it so inspirational because, in effect, it was a mini masterclass with 200 instructors. It was brilliant. In fact, some of the ideas were absolutely fantastic. It’s great to see how people start off with one original idea and share it with other people.

The Bottomline The classic thing always in life is if it's important to you, become dissatisfied with doing a good job in that area and choose to be brilliant. Always remember that the most important thing in your life, you are not born to be mediocre. You were born to be great, so embrace your destiny.