The Inner Wealth Podcast
Mike Kitko is the Founder and Creative Director of Inner Wealth Global, a personal and professional development company that helps business owners create aligned wealth, success, freedom, and deep fulfillment—without sacrificing themselves in the process.
As an author, speaker, podcaster, and coach Mike guides visionaries and impact-driven entrepreneurs to align their inner world with the life and business they are truly meant to live and create. His work helps you master your mind, energy, and emotions while building intense personal power so that wealth and opportunity flow effortlessly.
Through coaching, training, and transformational content, Inner Wealth Global helps business owners break free from unnecessary struggle, trust their path, and create a life deeply aligned with their soul.
The Inner Wealth Podcast
Ep184. Work-Life Integration: Designing a Business That Fuels Your Soul with Mike and Angie.
In this heartfelt and inspiring episode, Mike and Angie share reflections from the Turks and Caicos, where they’re living out their dream life of integrating work, travel, and personal growth. They delve into their journey from chaos and struggle in 2016 to building a life centered on intentionality, clarity, and commitment to their vision. The couple explores topics such as overcoming societal conditioning, shifting perspectives on work and income, and creating a life of joy, freedom, and alignment. This episode showcases how dreams can become reality when you release fear, stay committed, and trust the creative power within you.
Key Takeaways:
- Clarity Creates Your Dream Life: Mike and Angie emphasize the importance of getting crystal clear about what you want. Their dream life began with a clear vision developed during a three-day workshop in 2016.
- Work-Life Integration is Key: Instead of seeking balance, they focus on blending their passions, business, and lifestyle seamlessly, creating harmony rather than separation.
- Letting Go of Fear and Doubt: Releasing fear and limiting beliefs is crucial to stepping into your full potential and manifesting the life you desire.
- Commitment Drives Success: Staying committed to your vision, even during setbacks, is essential for seeing your dreams through to reality.
- The Power of Inner Alignment: Your external world reflects your inner beliefs. Aligning your thoughts and emotions with your vision allows abundance, freedom, and fulfillment to flow naturally.
Notable Quotes:
- "Vacation used to be an escape from life because we didn’t love the life we were living."
- "Clarity is the first step to creating anything you want—without it, you’ll stay stuck in survival mode."
- "Every time fear or doubt shows up, it’s an invitation to release it and grow stronger."
- "Your business and life should feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside."
- "When you trust your inner creative power, you can create anything in this lifetime."
Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends
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Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.
Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? Do you ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running you? I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are that you'll get excited just to wake up. I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, welcome to the Turks and Caicos. We've been here for a week. We leave tomorrow and we just kind of wanted to invite you to share this with us for a little bit. And when this, when this episode publishes, it'll be Thursday, february. Was it fourth or fifth? Anyway, the date doesn't matter, but it'll be Thursday and we'll already be home. But on our last full day here, we just wanted to share some time and share some uh, share a story with you guys. So, um, we haven't. We've done a couple of these so far. Um, episode 100 yes, episode 100.
Speaker 1:And then I did one my on my own with lee schultes so this is only my third time being being on your podcast and this is four, because you were on, you and I did an episode one time. That was it wasn't on. Uh, we didn't go and do a big production, we just sat next to the microphone and just jammed. It was a good episode too.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was the one where you said we talked about how well we knew each other. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's right, great episodes. But I do a lot on the podcast. I do a lot of what I call mic drops, where they're little 20-minute segments and they're just some teaching and some, you know, just just me pouring into you guys, and I love those, uh. But I get a lot of positive feedback when people like Angie or Brian Schroeder are on the podcast, where, where I'm, I'm opening up my you know, my, my space to people that I love and people that I adore. So, uh, we're going to do this together and we're going to tell you a pretty cool story about what it's like to be awesome travel partners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the uh, the the important thing to mention is with this, this episode, is that this was our dream years ago. This, this was, this was in our. The first vision we created together was, was a life of travel and and not separating business and life and integrating not work-life balance, but work-life integration. So I thought when I I made this suggestion to Mike hey, let's, let's do a podcast while we're on the road and just to, to, to, to inspire you that that it can, it can be real and that we've done it.
Speaker 1:So create anything you want. So, going back to in 2016, if you listen to this podcast for any episode, you probably heard the story 2016,. Our life fell apart, and I'm talking about our health, how we created income. Our savings started to dwindle, our home was in complete chaos, our family was in it was just a combat zone and we hit the reset and we we kind of like, uh, went to our neutral corners and tried to figure out our own shit, because I was bringing a lot of pain to the party and Angie was bringing a lot of pain to the party. So we kind of went back to our neutral corners and healed and resolved our own, you know, inner conflicts.
Speaker 1:When we came back together, we got a chance to put everything back together in just a magical way, and it kind of started where we built this dream. We built this vision. It started at a conference where we spent three days trying to figure out the perfect life that we wanted to live together, and in that session, we designed what our health was going to look like, what our business was going to look like the beginnings of our business, what our travel was going to look like, how we were going to experience our home environment. You want to talk a little bit about what happened for you in those three days or over the course of those three days.
Speaker 2:So I think that over those three days is I had course of those three days, so I think that that over those three days is I had evidence that that was actually possible. So up until that point it was a little bit difficult to to really think that oh, I can, I can create this dream life, because I was hearing people sharing their visions and what their lives, uh, what they wanted their lives to look like. And not only were people sharing what they were, how they were designing their life, but I was able to see people that were already being being, they're already modeling their that vision and modeling that it can come to fruition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think for me it started by just challenging the norms, challenging the conditioning and challenging the programming. That you know that I needed to work for somebody else to have security, and that that you, you know, you vacation was, you know, two, three weeks a year where you got away from this miserable life that you got, you had to live and and, instead of going somewhere just to experience a different place, you actually escaped your old life. Because that's what, that's what vacation used to be for us. It used to be an escape, not an adventure, but it used to be an escape, and sometimes we'd go for and we would dread coming home and I think that.
Speaker 1:That's the that we would dread going back to our home because we didn't love the life that we lived, and vacation for us was escaping that life, going somewhere else that we wanted to be, and then, as the week went on, or we took our girls to Cancun one time for 11 days in a row, and at the end of the vacation you just kind of regretted even wanting to come home, because back at home there was combat and there was violence and there was drama and there was fighting and there was just, and then I had to. You know, I, I went to work somewhere I didn't want to go, and so to do something I didn't want to do, and and it was just like we dreaded every aspect of our life, except when we were on vacation. But we, wherever you are, there, you are right. Wherever you go, there you are. We often took our drama on the road with us, so it's not like the drama stopped and then we were like in this happy, loving place, we just found a way to be in that same drama.
Speaker 2:To be miserable in paradise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we sat down in that weekend, in that three-day session. We sat down and we designed a completely different life and I was in the early stages of building a coaching business. And what one thing that I didn't want anymore from you know, I guess, moving forward in that in that session, I didn't ever want life to start or stop and business to start or stop. I wanted, I wanted to build a business and I wanted to do business. That I love, that I look forward to, that I get to, not that I had to and I never wanted to. I never wanted to have to stop my work. I just wanted to enjoy my work so much that it was just part of my life and that's that's what. That's what I, how I experienced our business. What do you think that's?
Speaker 2:how I experience our business. What do you think? No, I think you said it exactly. That's what we've been doing. I mean, last year we traveled 15 times in 2024. And there was only one time we missed a group coaching call, and that was in the Dominican Republic, and it was because we didn't have signal.
Speaker 1:It was Wi-Fi. Yeah, it was a.
Speaker 2:Wi-Fi-related issue, but we've been here in the Turks Republic and it was because we didn't have signal. It's Wi-Fi. It was a Wi-Fi related issue, but we've been here in the Turks and Caicos for a week and we've really. Everything has stayed on track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shoot. Going back to this month, this month we've been in New York City for New Year's Eve and the ball drop. We went to New Orleans to celebrate the, the engagement of a dear friend of mine, ours. I went to Sedona, arizona, with Brian to have the Brian Schroeder, to have the game of money retreat, and that was an awesome time. And then here we are in Turks and Caicos, and that was just January.
Speaker 1:You know, here it is February, I don't know, like I said, february 4th or 5th, I'm not sure, but you know it's just, it was just January and we had already traveled. I had already traveled four times. You traveled three, cause you didn't go out to Sedona with me. But on all of those, uh, in all of those sessions and all those trips, we still maintained all of our business calls without separation. And you know, we we did come down here for a week. This time this is a little longer trip than we normally take, um, but one of the reasons is because it it takes a little longer to get here and to get back. So we just added more, added more time on.
Speaker 2:And you know, I just just to to the, to the, everyone who's listening or watching this. I want you to be really envious, because our next trip that we have scheduled in March is a speaking engagement in Columbia.
Speaker 1:Missouri. So it's not like it's not like all of our work activities are in these awesome destinations. But Columbia is pretty cool, but it's not like it's the tropical resort island of Columbia, Missouri. But yeah, I mean, but I look forward to those two because I get to jump up on stage and I get to do my favorite thing in the world, which is like light souls on fire.
Speaker 2:I think it's funny we're going from Turks and Caicos to Columbia Missouri.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but after that we're you know we're, we're our older daughter graduates college this year. Um, she'll have her bachelor's degree and, and you know, I guess, as a, as a congratulations, we're, we're, we're going to pack up the family and go to Belize. We're looking at Belize for a week and celebrating that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was a 2020 grad, so she kind of got screwed out of a lot of stuff for her high school graduation. So I feel like she deserves this and she's worked hard. And before that, though, even before that, we have our group, our group mastermind retreat in the Outer Banks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we pick awesome destinations so that we can get our mastermind family away and get them in a, in a house so we could pour into them. So we can, you know, continue inspiring and encouraging and, like we did in that three-day workshop back in 2016, 2017, we like to do that with our folks so that they always get their inspiration relit and rekindled, so that they never leave the same as they got there. But you know of this, to say that we're living this life now that we was only a dream in 27. It was, it was just a dream. And 2017, I said 2016, 2017, um, we were just on our our, uh, interwealth community call, upstairs, in the um upstairs, in the hotel room, and what I shared with the group is that every single dream and every single creation, every single thing you do or have or experience in your life, it starts from within you. The creation process takes place inside of you and the materialization process, the realization process, takes place in the physical world. But if it's not true for you inside, then it's not going to be true for you outside, because everything starts from within and this is the creation process. When we have, when we have our, our, choose your destiny vision, intent or a live intensive.
Speaker 1:And I talk about the creation process. It's getting clear about what you want letting go of all worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, anything inside of any belief, any story inside of you that says that it's not possible, and becoming certain and then remaining committed to your vision. Remaining committed and just continuing to take step by step in the direction of your clarity and this life that we're living. It started off as a dream inside. It was clear inside and, over time, as we let go of worry, we let go of doubt, we stopped focusing on what we didn't want and focusing on that old life and we started focusing on this new life and we just remain committed. I mean, it's taken, it's taken a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say that it was saying when, when, when we talk about staying committed it. You know this this vision, dream life came.
Speaker 1:We was developed in 2017 and it wasn't until 2023, two or three years ago yeah, that it was the full extent of it started really coming and we saw little glimpses of it along the way, but it's like in 2022, 23, somewhere in there. It's like everything opened up and we just started traveling like crazy, and some of that had to do with with COVID.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Talk about that. Yeah, I mean because there were. There was so often. Like Mike said, we, we would go to Mexico every single year, we would take our girls, and he always wanted to go to Europe. I was still stuck in that that a vacation is going to the beach, mindset, and so Europe later, this'll be later, this'll be later, this will be later. Well then covid happened and I freaked out at the thought of later never coming. So, uh, when covid was list, when covid started to calm down, we went full steam ahead. The first thing we did was go to europe. Yeah, yep, we.
Speaker 1:The first thing that we did when, when travel was, travel restrictions got lifted, was headed to scotland and paris yeah, and you know, I've got a lot of really, really extremely wealthy friends and I say we're blessed, but we don't have that level of wealth. We just we have built a business that funds the lifestyle that we want to live, and it's just a. We're on a mission. I'm on a mission, I'll speak for myself. I'm on a mission, I'll speak for myself. I'm on a mission to never hate any aspect of my life, and that includes how I earn money, that includes how we build wealth, that includes how we run our business. I'm on a mission to not dread any second of my life, because I dreaded the first 43 years.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I love is helping people understand that there's so many ways to make money in this world and there's so many ways to create income and oftentimes, based on conditioning and programming, we default back to getting a job or doing things that we hate, or doing things that other people say you should do to create income. And I, you know, I, I like to. I like to help people understand that inside of you there is a money making method that is so authentic for you and it feels so good it's almost, at times, going to feel like you shouldn't be taking money for it because it feels so good, because it's so easy and it's so effortless for you and people. Oftentimes they want to pay you for it because it feels so good, because it's so easy and it's so effortless for you and people. Oftentimes they want to pay you for it because they they see the genius and they see the power in it and they see the love and they see the passion that you have for it and they oftentimes want to fund your dream and I, I believe that's what I've found Um, I, it feels, sure, feels like that to me when I'm speaking.
Speaker 1:We're making money. So, whether it be the podcast, whether it be in front of an audience or at a workshop, and it's not always like linear growth, there are other things at play that come in and sometimes our income goes up and sometimes it goes down, and the main thing we need to focus on is not freaking out when the income goes down, but remaining true and remaining committed to that I was going to say that's the whole point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wealthy and successful people focus on what they, what they want, and unsuccessful people and people that struggle with money focus on what they don't want. So it's remaining committed to what you want instead of what you don't want. And by doing that, we travel. Like I said, we're 15, maybe even more last year, and we're actually starting to kind of downshift a little bit, because the last two years have been so hectic and so volatile and we've traveled so much. It's almost like, okay, we live that part of our dream and now we're trying to find that. We're trying to find that, that equilibrium where we don't feel exhausted because we're living the life that we want yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 2:That's a fair point yeah.
Speaker 1:So this, this whole thing and it it all it comes back to we can have anything we want in this lifetime. We can experience, we can create, we can live whatever life we want. If you can dream it, we can live it. And it comes back to just trusting the God force, creation power that you have inside of you, inside of your soul. But we also need to realize that there's this ego part of us and it's that fear-based part. And if we let that fear-based part speak too loudly and the ego-based part is going to tell you that you don't have enough, you're not good enough, you're not worthy enough, you don't matter, you need to prove something to somebody else, you need to prove something to yourself.
Speaker 1:That ego based part, if it screams loud enough, that dream and that soul will get. Your soul will get squashed in. That volume will turn down. This process has been about really realizing what my soul is trying to experience, at the expense of my ego and at the expense of security and at the expense of trying to become adequate, trying to become, you know, significant in the world. Just let that part like dissolve and and if anybody else connects to that and tries to, tries to impress that upon me, letting them have that and going about living, living through my soul and the increase in volume there. Sometimes it gets a little scary, is that true? Oh, absolutely, talk about that.
Speaker 2:I mean with with being business owners and being self-employed and being responsible for the sole generator of your income. You know, like you said, our income goes up and down and certainly at the times where it goes down and it gets a little scary, but it doesn't again, it's remaining committed to the process. It's allowing the fear, and we talked about this the other night when we were having a discussion and I said to Mike that there was when I get scared. Every time I get scared. Every time I start to feel that fear, it just gives me an opportunity to release another layer of it and clear it out and the fear becomes more quiet and it becomes less. The frequency lessens and the loudness of it lessens, the duration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the duration and the loudness and the volatility, and I really wanted you to unpack that, because that's the process of becoming certain right. Every time that fear starts to creep in, and every time you know it's too good to be true and you start to get worried or anxious or you feel like it's going to fall apart, that's when the certainty and that's when the letting go and I've done lots of episodes on releasing and letting go that's when you really get in tune with what's inside of you and start to let all of the disempowered beliefs and disempowered thoughts and disempowered emotions let them go. Um, if you're spending any, any time, any considerable time, with beliefs that disempower you, with thoughts that disempower you, with that emotions, with disempower you, you are literally suffocating yourself and choking yourself out from the inside out. And again it goes back to really successful and wealthy people focus on what they want instead of what they don't want.
Speaker 1:They don't spend a lot of time with those disempowered beliefs and thoughts and emotions, and when you do that, you get clear about what you want. Let go of all that internal resistance and garbage and remain committed to the process. You find yourself living the life of your dreams and and and then um. The process of evolution means, when you experience the life that that you dreamed of at some point, you're going to be challenged to dream a new dream, a higher level dream and evolve. Dream because we are here to evolve and change and grow, not to get to a point and stay there for the rest of our lives. Is there anything else you want to add?
Speaker 2:I'm melting, she's melting, I'm melting.
Speaker 1:It's pretty warm out here and she burns really really easily.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have several Bernie's Bernie marks.
Speaker 1:Bernie marks really, really easily.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have several Bernie's, Bernie Marks, Bernie Marks On me right now, but we definitely wanted to record this in this beautiful background. We've got million dollar yachts behind us. I mean this is just beautiful and I want to do more of these as we're traveling.
Speaker 1:I love this. This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'd like to, I'd like to, to. I think that maybe our next travel episode we'll talk about what it's like traveling, what it's like being perfect travel partners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great idea and I think that was part of the plan today, but we never really got there.
Speaker 2:Well, no, because you changed the plan.
Speaker 1:I did. I always change the plan. I always change the plan. So we are back in St Louis tomorrow, which is Thursday, which is two days, which is a Wednesday. We're leaving, we're going back to St Louis Thursday. This episode will drop. Um, that means we'll be back home when it drops. Uh, tonight, which is Tuesday, we are going on a we've. We've got a private reserved yacht we're going to. We're going to go out and have a sunset cruise. I didn't?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Well, yeah, boat it's a boat it's a boat, but it's a private. Oh, here comes the catamaran, and right now yeah, yeah, it's a boat, it's a boat, yacht I don't know what it is, but just for the two of us, and we're gonna go island hopping on our last night here and watch the sunset and you can call it a boat, I'm calling it a guy.
Speaker 1:I don't care if it's a rowboat, I'm gonna call it. We're going on a private yacht adventure. But really what it is, it's about just being together, experiencing our last sunset here before we come home and just spending some time together celebrating each other.
Speaker 2:Would you be mad if it was a kayak?
Speaker 1:No, I'm still going to call it a yacht. It's our yacht. I refuse to give up my identification that this thing that we're going on the water is a yacht.
Speaker 2:Well, I can't wait to see it. So anyway, thanks for letting me be part of this again all right guys from the turks and keikos.
Speaker 1:we'll see you soon. All right, if you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.