About  

Teacher, Trainer, Author and Arbitrageur, Mike Highstead has made separate fortunes in real estate, the stock market, online marketing, and in several different businesses. He is currently focused on life and business coaching – helping people improve their quality of life, by showing them how to make better choices regarding their own health, wealth and happiness.

As a seasoned business coach, Mike can help you and your team get the results that you desire, regardless of your industry or profession. And as a peak performance expert, he will provide the guidance, training and support to personally help you become happier and more effective in all areas of your life.

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If you are looking for Life or Business Coaching, send Mike an email describing your current challenges and he will help you assess your options.

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Email: mhighstead@gmail.com

Phone: (720) 222-1333

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The Story So Far…

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Born and raised in Canada, the oldest of four unruly brothers. As a kid, I was caught in the middle of my family’s constant fighting. Parents above, brothers below. Back then, there were two things I wanted most. Freedom and happiness. It felt like I never had much of either, so I grew up with one question always on my mind: “How can I make things better.”
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With that question as my focus, I became independent very quickly. As a young adult, I achieved a lot of great things both personally and professionally. I enjoyed tremendous good fortune in business, real estate, and the stock market.
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On the flipside, by never feeling satisfied, I also experienced a lot of pain and suffering. Back in the nineties, some truly devastating losses set me on a path to find some truth I could rely upon. Eventually, I was forced to re-evalute the way I defined success, and came to understand that “Success is the attainment of purpose, without compromising core values.”
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Orienting my life around my values, I now work as a private consultant helping people make the most of their own personal and professional resources. Of course, each of us has our own ideas of what it takes to be successful. But there are some basic principles that are universally effective for getting our best results. While I consider myself a teacher, perhaps I am best described as an Optimizer. I help people do whatever it is they are doing, better.
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O.P.E. is the new O.P.M

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Back in the 80’s, the magic formula that my partners and I used to make millions of dollars in real estate, was something called O.P.M. It meant using “Other People’s Money” to finance our investments. Now, more than twenty-five years later, having made, lost and re-made several different fortunes, I’ve learned a thing or two about the value of experience.
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These days, there are a lot of people talking about the importance of having a personal coach or mentor. And I totally agree. While it is great to have good credit and money to invest, the real wealth comes from utilizing O.P.E. – Other People’s Experience.
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To understand what I mean, let me tell you about the time that I had tea and cookies with my mentor. I promise it leads back to the stuff about making money, which I know a lot of people are struggling with.
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My story begins in a small New England town, where somehow, I found myself sitting in a yogi’s living room. It was around thanksgiving, 1996, and I was sitting there having a conversation with the most extraordinary person I had ever met. An American yogi named Gurucharan Singh Khalsa.
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Dr. Khalsa is both a healer and a scientist. A brilliant man of unparalleled distinction. And while I am certainly blessed to have him as a personal friend and mentor, what I love about him most, is that he is someone I can rely on to always speak the truth. At the time of our first meeting, I was very unhappy with my life. Even after spending tens of thousands of dollars on books, tapes, seminars, counseling…
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I remember feeling really frustrated because for many years I had been trying to change my life, and I still wasn’t getting anywhere. In fact, in many ways, I was more miserable than ever. So sitting there in his living room one day, sipping yogi tea while pondering my plight, Gurucharan asked me a very startling question. He said:
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“Do you want to change, or do you want to improve?”

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For me it was a critical distinction. Change implied experiencing something different, but not necessarily better. Improvement, however, meant moving in the right direction, and getting some good results. An improvement was something I knew I could work towards, and immediately feel better about achieving.
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As if that wasn’t enough to think about, the yogi taught me 3 incredible things that day. And so now I want to share my experience with you, and tell you about these 3 amazing things I learned, that have helped me live so well.
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1. Never mind the hype. What is your essential purpose?

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What are you here to do?
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Your true purpose isn’t some fancy-pants mantra that you must always reaffirm in order to convince yourself it’s real. In your heart, you already know what’s real. So just be quiet for a moment. Breathe. Breathe deeper. Long, slow, deep, diaphragmatic breathing. Until you feel totally at ease. Safe and secure within yourself. And then ask something like: “What is my purpose here?”
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It’s actually very simple to see if you will just shut up and listen to yourself for a second. My answer was “A Teacher.” That’s who I am, and it’s what I’m here to do. Being a teacher is “The Truth of My Identity.”
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But damn if it didn’t take a decade to figure out what I was supposed to teach! And then one day I discovered it wasn’t really necessary to define it any further. I saw there was no reason to limit the subjects that I teach. And now I am simply the kind of teacher that helps people do whatever it is they are doing, better!
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While being so capacious might not be good for marketing, it certainly feels better to my soul.
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2. You Missed A Step

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So of course, back in that living room all those years ago, the Yogi and I began talking about what I was going to teach, and I guess being a poor student that lesson had kind of slipped my mind, but I can remember telling Gurucharan that “I want to train trainers”.
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Back then, I had been working as a personal coach with Tony Robbins, and valuable as that was, I felt a need to empower people even further. So the yogi said to me “Well, you’ve missed a step.”
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And I kinda sat there with a stupid look on my face. “Huh?”
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“Yeah. In order to train trainers, first you have to train! You’ve missed a step.”
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DAMN!!!!
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3. The Truth of Your Identity.

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Sometimes, being tutored by a mentor is a lot like taking a drink from a fire hose. There is just way too much information to take in all at once. Sure enough, since that day in the yogi’s living room, more than ten years of life experience has now flowed like so much water under my bridge, and it wasn’t until today, in the moment that I decided to sit my ass down and write about these things, that I’m remembering we did indeed talk about something I was supposed to teach.
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I was supposed to teach people how to live really well.

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But I guess first I had to train. I had to learn how to live really well myself. Because even though I had enjoyed tremendous financial success, until I actually lost everything I had worked for I never really understood that it’s not about the money!
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Working as a daytrader we used to have a saying that “Some guys learn by listening, some guys learn by watching, and some guys just gotta piss on the electric fence themselves!” That was me. Not only did I get to live through all the pleasure of making a lot of money, I had to go through all the pain of losing it to really understand that It’s not about the money. It’s about who you actually become, and how well you live in the process. The way I see it now is, I had to both gain and lose everything I thought I ever wanted, in order to finally come to terms with what I valued most.
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From this much healthier perspective, I can now give new meaning to all my previous tragedies, and turn them into triumphs. I can now look back on all my personal failures, all my pain and suffering, all my broken promises, all that loss, hurt, anger, fear, hunger, disappointment and despair…
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I can now say that the reason I had to go through all that crap, was because in order for me to teach people how to live better, I needed to learn how to live better myself. I needed to learn about love. I needed to learn compassion. And I needed to figure out what truly matters most.
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Listen. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning you choose to give it. So what meaning can you give it, to take the actions you must, to get the results that you desire?
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Send Mike an Email:  mhighstead@gmail.com

Find out more about Life or Business Coaching and see if you qualify
for my Millionaire Mentoring Program.

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