The Michael James Way

In 28 years of running a remodeling company, Michael James has seen clients frustrated, angry, and a few who fired him outright. Every one of those moments traces back to the same cause: somewhere along the line, communication broke. This is Pillar 4 of 3 Million and Beyond, the final episode of a four part series on scaling from one million to three million and past it. After mindset, impact and...

For a long time, Michael James thought culture meant team lunches, company meetings, and people treating each other well. Then he watched employees who loved their coworkers, who called it the best team they had ever been on, still end up discouraged and defeated. They had camaraderie. What they did not have was clarity. This is Pillar 3 of 3 Million and Beyond, a four part series on what it actua...

Ninety seven percent of business owners in America never get past three million in revenue. Michael James was one of them. He sat at roughly $900,000 believing that if he just worked harder, the grind would eventually carry him to a hundred million dollar company. It did not. What changed everything was building a compass. This is Pillar 2 of 3 Million and Beyond, a four part series on what it act...

Lisa Kessler's father used to call her a princess. He was not being sweet. She is a sixth generation Native Hawaiian whose family traces back to the Kamehameha line, and if the monarchy had continued, that is what she would have been. That is the first five minutes. From there Lisa walks Michael through a life that does not fit in one story. Diving with the Cousteau family off Cocos Island, surrou...

Josh "Cuddly Bear" Copeland has fought in the UFC, the PFL, and Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship. He's entered a million-dollar tournament as the eighth seed and knocked out the man who beat his best friend. He's also the guy who once opened a gym door, saw who was inside, turned around, got back in his car, and cried. Days after his last fight, Josh sits down with Michael James to talk about th...

Hugh Evans just produced the first halftime show in World Cup history, for an audience of two billion people. At fourteen, he spent a sleepless night on a concrete slab on top of a garbage dump in Manila. This conversation is about the line between those two nights. The co-founder and CEO of Global Citizen tells Michael how a school assembly became a 40-hour fast, how that fast sent him to the Phi...

In 2008 I lost my marriage, my business, my house, and my truck. My kids were five and three. The only thing that brought me any peace at the time was getting on my bicycle and riding. I wasn't training for anything. I was just riding. But what I didn't realize was that I was getting good at it. I ended up racing on weekends, and a coach told me to go race Nationals and see what happened. I finish...

Michael James hired a coach before he rode a bicycle across the United States. Early on she told him something he did not believe and almost quit over: you are going to have five times you are going to want to quit. She was right. And every owner scaling past a million dollars hits the same five. This is Pillar 1 of 3 Million and Beyond, a four part series on what it actually takes to scale from o...

Michael has told the story of riding his bicycle across the United States dozens of times. He had never asked his kids what that summer was like for them. In this episode Brianna and Jasper James answer the questions their dad has been avoiding for almost 20 years. What the divorce felt like at seven and nine. What it was like to lose the house, move into a friend's basement, and sleep on an air m...

Two years ago a client got on a Zoom call with us, and we could not hit her deadline. She was pregnant, she needed a bathroom finished by a date we could not promise, and she hired somebody else. Last month she signed a contract with us for a kitchen close to two hundred thousand dollars. In this episode I break down why we never wrote her off, and why the client who cannot afford you today is ver...

In 2016 my life looked perfect from the outside, wife, kids, white picket fence. Inside, it was falling apart. So I booked a one-way flight to San Francisco and rode a bicycle 3,500 miles across the United States to figure out who I was. 42 days. A tent I set on fire. A 50-foot fall into a ravine outside Telluride with what I'm pretty sure were broken ribs. A relationship with my father that I'd w...

At 6,500 feet, Michael said something that reframed the entire show: "The reason why I'm up high is because there's safety in altitude." This is the first episode of Podcast in a Plane, five cameras mounted to a single-engine aircraft, one conversation, no cuts to a studio. But the plane isn't the point. Somewhere over north Georgia, a conversation about camera mounts turned into the clearest expl...

I lost $65,000 in a single crypto transaction. I still don't know exactly where it went. This is the conversation I wish I'd had two years earlier. Ryan Horst got into crypto in 2017, watched the 2022 collapse take 95% of his company's monthly revenue, and rebuilt from there. Today he's co-founder and CEO of Altcoin Pro, one of the largest crypto education companies in the country and one of the f...

Michael hit rock bottom, no house, no money, living in a basement apartment with his kids, and bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco with no plan to get back except riding a bicycle across the country. In this episode, he breaks down the ice-fishing detour, the coach's warning about the five times you'll want to quit, and the cyclocross race that taught him how to actually win, and how every on...

After 30 years of watching the James family from the front pew, Cora Varvell sits down with Michael for a conversation neither of them fully expected. She saw the man his father was at church, and heard from Michael's mother what he was at home. In this episode: the childhood that made Michael call church "a fraud," the cross-country bike ride that broke him open, the father who became his biggest...

Dr. Tom Incledon, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Causenta Wellness, a cancer treatment and performance center in Scottsdale, Arizona that sees patients from 90 countries. His story doesn't follow a straight line. Raised by a single mom two standard deviations below poverty, accepted to medical school as a young teenager, a self-made millionaire in computer hardware before 21, and then he walked aw...

This episode wasn't planned. Michael opens up about something most business podcast hosts never admit: while teaching frameworks for success, he's been battling self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and mornings where he doesn't want to get out of bed. What follows is an unfiltered team conversation about what a hard season actually does to you, and what it's for. Inside this episode: Why Michael says "I...

Before Michael James scaled his remodeling company past seven figures, he made a decision that mirrored something he'd done years earlier on a solo bike ride across the country: Push all the chips in. No turning back, no plan B, all in. In this solo episode, Michael reflects on the parallel between that cycling trip and the journey of building his business, from a million dollars in revenue to mul...

Description: Luis Barraza didn't grow up dreaming of remodeling bathrooms; he went to college for business administration. But six years after co-founding Blue Wave Home Improvement in Central Virginia, he's built a company specializing in kitchens, bathrooms, basements, and a particular passion for turning "ugly bathrooms" into something beautiful. In this episode, Luis sits down with Michael Jam...

Zack Clayton got the call to wrestle for AEW with three days' notice. No warning. No runway. Just show up or lose the shot. In this episode of The Michael James Way, Zack breaks down exactly what it takes to be ready when opportunity doesn't wait: the decade of grinding underground shows for "a hot dog and a handshake," the uncomfortable truth that the people cheering you on will eventually start...

What do you do when the worst possible thing happens, and then something even worse follows? In this episode of The Michael James Way, Michael sits down with elite endurance cyclist and coach Michelle Grainger, the woman who coached him across the United States, for a conversation that goes far beyond cycling. Michelle has raced across America, biked solo from Florida to Alaska, and competed at th...

Most of us wait for perfect conditions to take action, but what if the secret to a breakthrough is burning the ships and committing fully? In this episode, Michael James shares the transformative lessons from a 3,500-mile cycling journey across America that reshaped his mindset and business. When he committed to riding from California to North Carolina, he discovered that the real journey begins o...

Most of us will never bike 3,500 miles or traverse 42 days of hardship, but the lessons from that grueling journey apply to any goal worth chasing. In this emotional and inspiring episode, Michael shares the powerful story of cycling across the United States, despite flat tires, broken ribs, and a fire that threatened to end it all. His adventure culminates in a symbolic crossing into the Atlantic...

What if the key to reaching your goals isn't just about intensity, but knowing when to pause? In this compelling episode, Michael shares the deeply personal story of conquering 280 miles on a bicycle while revealing the quiet power of listening to your body and support system. When push comes to shove, who you are in the moments you stop might just be what gets you across the finish line. Imagine...

A lighthouse doesn't chase you. It just keeps shining, trusting that when you're lost, the light will find you. I was 39 days in. 3,200 miles behind me. And I was done. I had already started planning it out in my head: rent a car, throw the bike in the back, drive home. Nobody had to know I didn't finish. I had crossed the United States. That was enough. Or so I told myself. But then I crossed int...