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
Ep200. When the Old Life Dies: Angie Kitko's Powerful Transformation Story.
In this powerful 200th episode, Mike and Angie pull back the curtain and offer an unfiltered look into their shared journey—from childhood trauma and toxic beginnings to deep healing, transformation, and the co-creation of a purpose-filled life. It’s a raw, real, and riveting account of pain, persistence, partnership, and personal power. Angie steps fully into the light, sharing her story of unimaginable suffering and how she transmuted it into strength, wisdom, and devotion. This episode is a soul-stirring reminder that rock bottom can become sacred ground—and that rebuilding isn’t only possible, it’s divine.
Key Takeaways
- Your Past Doesn’t Define Your Future
Even the most painful, chaotic, and traumatic beginnings can lead to a life of beauty, depth, and divine purpose. - Real Healing Requires Radical Responsibility
The turning point came when victimhood was traded for ownership—when blame gave way to transformation. - You Can Rebuild Anything—Even a Marriage
After filing for divorce, the space was created to heal, recommit, and build a new relationship rooted in truth. - Speaking Your Desires Activates the Universe
When Angie voiced what she truly wanted—a better life, stability, purpose—the opportunities unfolded like magic. - Purpose Is Born Through Pain
Angie’s journey from pills and psych wards to real estate success and spiritual empowerment proves nothing is wasted.
Notable Quotes
- “I just knew that I always wanted better. I always knew that I wasn’t… that I was different.”
- “When you're addicted to chaos, peace feels like boredom.”
- “All an argument is, is two people fighting to see who’s the bigger victim.”
- “There’s no way we’d be sitting here seven years later with you still holding that space.”
- “It’s no longer Angie versus Mike. It’s Mike and Angie versus the problem.”
Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends
Join the Movement
This episode is an invitation to rise—into your alignment, authenticity, and spiritual power. If you’ve ever felt like something inside of you is trying to break free, this is your sign to let it out.
Want to Go Deeper?
Visit www.innerwealthglobal.com and explore tools, programs, and offerings that guide you back to your aligned life. It’s time to live from the inside out.
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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. All right, these are some of my favorite episodes. This will be the fourth time that we've done a podcast episode together. The first was at the Waterbury, second was Turks, third was Outer Banks. And here we are.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I guess we did the 100th episode up at Waterbury.
Speaker 1:We did, we did and we kind of had this planned a while ago that we were getting close to the 200th episode and we were going to jam together and we started putting ideas together of having it in a different podcast, a more professional. I guess this is our basement studio we were going to put in. But you know, we just wanted to get on here and jam and just have some fun. But welcome my beautiful bride.
Speaker 2:That's me.
Speaker 1:That's her, Angie Kitko. Today is our 200th episode 200. 200. That's a lot.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of talking.
Speaker 1:Every single week since August of 2023, I believe.
Speaker 2:No longer than that.
Speaker 1:Longer than that.
Speaker 2:Holy cow 2022,. I believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's 200 episodes one week, 50. That's four years, holy crap. That's a lot of podcasting and it is a lot of talking, and I don't have a lot of interviews, because I only have interviews with people that I really, really want to sit across and talk with about their life, and my wife I can't get enough talking about her life. So here we are again. Are you happy to be here? I am why?
Speaker 2:Because it's nice to hear somebody else. I'm sure it's nice to hear everybody else's voice once in a while Today, no, I enjoy doing this with you.
Speaker 1:They're a lot of fun they are, and I've got on my desktop and at some point we're going to rebrand this and it's going to be the inner wealth podcast with Mike Kitko and sometimes Angie.
Speaker 1:We're going to do that. I just I haven't rebranded that yet but we will, because and then we'll make it and sometimes Angie will make it more about us instead of just me and jamming, because I have a lot of fun just collaborating with my bride, my spouse, to celebrate. I had a couple ideas about how we were going to celebrate our 200th episode and you know it was going to be about talking about the. You know, every week, me creating content and you sitting there listening to whatever, and I was like that'd be boring. What we've never done before is I've never interviewed you solely to have you tell your story and help people understand who you are at a deeper level, because your story is fascinating and you are so freaking strong, you are so powerful, you are so brave, you are so committed and I want to help everybody understand how that all came to be and where we came from. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:I have no idea what he's doing. By the way, I got a brief.
Speaker 1:All she needs to do is answer the questions, and I'm going to do the asking which is weird and she's going to do the answering You're not going to answer for me.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I will. So I probably will, but I think we'll start where I think the best part of a story. If we don't anchor the childhood circumstances, I think everything else will be lost. So tell us about childhood, don't leave the really dark stuff out, right. And of course, if you want to add all the light, you want. But tell us the struggles that you faced in your childhood, where you came from, and kind of set the foundation.
Speaker 2:I mean I don't even know where to start and I mean, yeah, geez, that's, that's a loaded question like I could sit here and just talk for hours on that. Um, so my parents divorced when I was two, so I was born to a 19. My mom was 19, my dad was 21 um, both I don't know much about my mom. She died when I was really young. But that's, I can get to that, it's going to get there.
Speaker 1:How old were you?
Speaker 2:I was six when she passed away. She was 26. I was six so I don't even think I ever really lived with my mom and dad. They kind of gave me to my grandma right away. We lived right across the street. Half of our family lived on one block in alexandria, virginia, beautiful, cute little block. Yeah well, it wasn't cute then, like now it's cute because it's been all all the yeah, um. So yeah, they kind of gained my grandma and, uh, I lived with her most of my childhood up until my dad. Oh man, I know you were, this is geez, this is so much um this is the good stuff though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I live with my grandma and when I was I mean I grew up in again, grew up in Alexandria, virginia, and saw my dad get stabbed at a drug deal gone bad at the People's Drugstore on Monroe Avenue. Remember hitchhiking places with him and it was crazy. My dad was a heroin addict. I don't know what my mom was addicted to, but you don't have one heroin addict and then one sober person. So you know, I've always kind of created this vision of her being this perfect person in my head and over the past few years I've realized that's absolutely not true.
Speaker 1:There's never one toxic person in a relationship, there's always two.
Speaker 2:No, my mom was a bit of a hellfire. From what I've been told by some family members A lot of people they don't want to talk about her just because her death was so tragic, but she was a hellfire and she ran away from home when she was 16 years old and was with my dad off and on going underage at clubs.
Speaker 1:Been told I was a lot like her, and when you said, oh fire, I was getting ready to.
Speaker 2:That's about all I've been told. You're just like Carol Ann. So anyway, I live with my grandma. My grandma was my best friend. I remember she would go to work every day. My granddad was always really sick. He passed away when I was three. I remember waking up. I slept in bed with my grandma and I remember waking up to her bawling her eyes out one morning because granddaddy had died. And so after her granddad died she had to get to work and she was a housekeeper at one of the little motels in Old Town, alexandria. She'd get me on the bus to go to school every morning and then she'd get on the bus and she'd go to work. And I remember getting on the bus to go get our government cheese and getting on the bus to to go do all this stuff. Um, and that was only for a few years, and my dad met. My dad met someone else and and, um, they were going to have this great life together.
Speaker 2:So my dad pulled up in his little blue van one day to my grandma's house and took me away and um, there's emotion yeah, went to go live with him and my soon-to-be stepmom I can't remember if they were married yet or not, but anyway, and uh, yeah, my stepmom was, was just as you're addicted, as my father was and um, she came with a with a child already my, my stepsister and um, that's really where things got really, really bad, because they were both heroin addicts. They were both really bad heroin addicts and that just went on to years and years of just severe abuse and neglect and being kicked out of houses and in and out of houses and cars being repossessed and watching drug deals go down and just all kinds of it was just hell.
Speaker 1:Going from house to house, never really having a home of your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, stealing food. God bless my stepsister, because there were times we had no food and she would go and like literally steal food for us.
Speaker 1:You told me about stealing toilet paper.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know, I'd love to talk with her One day. Maybe she'll open up and she'll let she and I do talk about this, because we talked about a little bit of North Carolina like how we would, we'd love to kind of get some of this out. But yeah, we had no toilet paper and so we went to the little in Manassas Park, virginia. We walked into the little pizza shop. Summer without electricity, running water.
Speaker 2:Borrowing hot dogs Borrowing hot dogs from neighbors, and I mean, this spans years and years. This wasn't just. This was.
Speaker 1:But it was consistent right. There was always. There's always lack and always neglect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep. So yeah, just all the years of abuse. My father he allowed his drug dealer friends to molest us kids and just not knowing what was going on, walking in with the needles in their arms, watching my dad overdose. I mean I remember putting my dad overdosing, seizing on the floor, having to get him into cold water. I mean just a lot, it was just a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah just a lot. It was just, it was just a lot. Yeah, yeah, so fast forward it to 15, oh yep, so I don't want to talk about that because that's not my story to tell that part. Um, I found out some pretty disturbing secrets in the family and, again, that's not my story to tell. So I don't, I don't want to talk about it right now and I know the story and it's devastating and it's absolutely vile.
Speaker 1:what happened and what? Yeah what?
Speaker 2:one person would serve another person up to yeah, and see, I was 14 years old and I had just gotten—my stepmother was extremely abusive, I mean, she hated me. She hated me because I represented my dad, having previously loved another woman enough to have a child with her. So that's sure free. And I was pretty and I was smart and all the boys always liked me and and yeah, I just I everything just came easy to me. Everything always came easy to me. And I think and she absolutely hated that my grandma loved me so much and she hated the hat. She hated just, she just hated everything about me.
Speaker 2:And so I finally got sick. I got sick of this shit and I just knew that I always wanted better. I always knew that I wasn't. And my, my step-aunt said that they always knew that I was different from when I was. They met me when I was four or five years old and they said they always knew, they always knew I was going to get out, which is really cool. He doesn't say that and I always my step-aunt I don't call him my step-aunt my aunt Di.
Speaker 2:She was a very successful she is a very successful caterer in Washington DC and I remember we'd go to her house and she had like all these luxury down comforters and lotions and smell like everything always smelled pretty. I was like this is what I want, and even from like a very, very young girl when we go and stay with them. Like this is what I want, this is who I am. So I'm 14 years old. Left home, I had an older boyfriend. He was not me, no, not him. He same age as you, so he's six years older than me. So kind of weird.
Speaker 2:Looking back now, I was 14, he was 20 it's kind of weird uh, but yeah, I mean thank god for him because I, I, I paged him one day and he knew that the the code I paged him meant to pick me up from the bus stop in the morning and he picked me up and I said I'm never going back there and he said okay, and uh, so I stayed with him. From then on his um, his mom and I are still very, very close, very, we keep in touch. And uh, yeah, thank god for them because I, they, they took care of me for for six years.
Speaker 1:But then this guy came along and and I came along and I had almost nothing and he was rich yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:so when I say things came easy to me, this is this is a really great example of. So I left home 14 and I turned 15 and I had so my dad. When my mom died she worked for the Department of Defense, she was a secretary. So when she passed away I got her pension, I got Social Security benefits and there was something else. So there was some finances involved that my dad and stepmom got every month from me being in there. Well, when I left home and the government found out, they're like well, you don't get the money anymore. So my dad said you come back home and I said no, and then I tried to get him to sign me into school. He told me that I had to come back home for them to get his money back and I said absolutely not. And because he wouldn't sign me into school, so I started working.
Speaker 2:I was working at a little cafe in Bethesda, maryland, called Sutton Blaze Gourmet and this guy used to come in every single day and he would order cheese, bread and an espresso. And one day he started asking me. He said how come you're never in school? And something just told me to tell him. Tell my story. So I did. The next day he came in he had a letter and he slid it across the the counter and I opened it up and it was from his law offices law offices of miles and stockbridge in rockville, maryland, and mr james j dema esquire. They uh offered to represent me for pro bono in an emancipation case against my dad. And so, yeah, took my dad to court when I was 15, 16 years old, got fully emancipated, yeah.
Speaker 1:Emancipated at 15, 16. Yeah, and we met. So keep going, tell the story. When you know we met in abnormal psychology class, and tell the story and give some detail to that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am. Because I was an emancipated minor, officially an adult, under the Board of the State of Maryland, and I was able to take a college entrance exam. To get to college I didn't have to get my GED and took it, got in to Montgomery College and, yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just going to college, I was just taking random classes. I didn't have a major or anything doing. I was just going to college, I was just taking random classes, I didn't have a major or anything. And yeah, one day I bumped into a normal psychology class. I'm pretty sure I had platform shoes on and leopard print.
Speaker 2:And leopard print. Yeah, I probably just came from the club. To be honest, I was a total club kid with a coke problem. That actually came before it, yes. But yeah, I stomped into this classroom in my little platform shoes and somebody stole my bag that day from the bookstore. I came out, I just chomp, chomp, chomp into the room and I was, oh my God, somebody stole my books and it was my English 101 book and he said you can borrow my book, angela. I'm like who?
Speaker 1:Because you got a tag. You had your work tag. She was an intern at IBM, so she had her work tag and I just called her. What was on her tag? That's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I sat down in front of him and I remember turning around he had his little Chuck Taylors on. I said, where's Chuck Taylors anymore?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she didn't like me, like me and I didn't like her. It was pretty obvious that we weren't fit to be together.
Speaker 2:We were neither of our other. Our tied. You were my fellow snow.
Speaker 1:You were obnoxious I still am and I was quiet. I was a quiet guy in that class. You were also elderly in that class Elderly, I was 27 years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were all 19, 20 years old in that class. Because it was a 100-level class, he'd already had his bachelor's degree. Yeah, I just, he was just taking for funsies I was just burning some GI Bill.
Speaker 1:I took biology 101 and abnormal psychology 101 just to burn. I love science classes so yeah, I was just there for funsies and I was obviously meant to be. But the story I love out of that class is when we, when we turned in our papers at the end of at the end of the course I think of papers or or just an exam or something my paper and she went up to get hers and she said, yeah, I got a c and that kind of slightly set the tone for a long time.
Speaker 2:But the ninth grade drop out and I was getting b's and c's in college. I was doing pretty damn good. I was around myself.
Speaker 1:No, it was funny. Okay, now, every day at the end of class and when I was in the marine corps, what we would do is is we would have our work day and I worked in an electronics laboratory in the Marine Corps and and at the end of every day we we wrap up the day, we clean up the clean up the shop and we empty all the trash and then we'd all go to the club and the E club, right, the enlisted club and at the end of every class, in uh, abnormal psychology I would say anybody want to go out and grab a beer? And everybody would say no.
Speaker 1:And then there was this one day after the term ended, when I got a phone call.
Speaker 2:No, it wasn't. The term had ended because he ate the stuff.
Speaker 1:Because, no, we were nearing the end of the class.
Speaker 2:It was December 11th, no, and uh, yeah, it was. We were nearing the end of the. It was, it was December 11th 1999. And uh, myself and my ex-fiance then fiance and we were heading out for a night the club group and um, I said we had, literally we had walked out of our condo and I stopped and I said let me call this kid. He's been wanting to go out all semester, this kid.
Speaker 1:I wasn't that desperate.
Speaker 2:But I was just like. He's been asking me to go out all semester and so I walked back in, picked up the phone off the wall and dialed the number he gave me he was at work because he worked swing shift design and I said hey, we're going out to the Shark Club. You want to meet us? He had no idea where it was, so he had to meet us at the Exxon gas station on Connecticut Avenue and I went to the Shark Club and he bought me my martini. I first met him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just literally being innocent in all of this.
Speaker 2:I had no intentions, I just I thanked her for, you know, with a drink for for inviting me. Yeah Well, and we had been doing project, we had he had been on projects all semester together. So back then it was acceptable to to go and it was abnormal psychology. So it was acceptable then to go and we had to have a field trip to the, to the psychiatric ward.
Speaker 1:But there was, there was no spark at that moment. And at that time there was, there was no spark, there was no interest, there was no spark, there was no nothing. So it was just interesting how that that worked then. And then, when there's this whole story about a transfer and and and Well, I left, mike, he is in your Jeep Cause I met Exxon.
Speaker 2:You didn't know how to get there and so I jumped into the Jeep. I got you over to the club because it was in, but that's in Maryland. It's just a wonky little town Like. There's just little side streets and he doesn't know where he's going, even with GPS. And this is back in 99. Remember it was on GPS. So, yeah, we were leaving. There was an altercation in the. I had to go. I was going to get my keys from between me and my ex-fiancee at that point and he said if you walk away or not?
Speaker 2:don't you ever come back home? And I said something clicked and he said cool. So I jumped in his Jeep and I asked him to take me to my friend Dorothy's house. Dorothy wasn't home.
Speaker 1:She came home and never left, and that is the true story.
Speaker 2:True story of Mike and Angie.
Speaker 1:When I said there was a whole transfer. I don't know if we're going to get into that. I still remember the story, but the point is that she came home and never left and it was pretty toxic. It was pretty toxic from the beginning. I mean, we didn't have. We sat on a lot of well, we blacked out a lot, we did a lot of drinking and we did a lot of partying and we did a lot of. We went to a lot of ravens games and the very first day we was a week after we started living together because we never not lived together, really um, I took her to a ravens game and I was crazy drunk at the end of the game. We had a great time tailgating, but I had a. I was was completely obliterated, if that's a word, and I started buying Sambuca shots for the entire ball. And that's when she kind of took my card and called it the night.
Speaker 2:Signed his name on his credit card, received everything. Then he lost my car. I had to pay a little city kid in Baltimore to find my car. I remember the name of the restaurant it was parked near and that was it. So the kid found my car.
Speaker 1:And then we drove home Right, or back to my parents probably. But the point being is it started pretty toxic. This whole thing started toxic. And then, you know, we moved out of that apartment because it was a little beat up apartment that was mine, but we moved into a house, bought a house, bought a car first because her fiance wanted her car back. So I bought a car and gave her my old car. She said she was going to make payments on that car, but she never did and I guess I just let that go and overlooked that. Um, I think you made one payment and then never made another.
Speaker 1:You did, you made a payment I think we'll talk about that you made a payment, then you never made another one, and then we bought a house and then we got pregnant and it all happened pretty, pretty quickly and it was like you know, it know it was just a whirlwind and it wasn't always fun. No, it definitely wasn't always fun, because, I don't know, we weren't, there was no spark in class and I don't know for me if there was really a spark, it just felt, it was just a series of yeses, but there was no real connection, and I'm talking about soul connection. I mean, we were living together and we were doing life together, but there was no real deep, purposeful, meaningful bond but I don't know if either of us knew what the purposeful, meaningful bond was.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just looking back, I just remember what you used to say we're soulmates and I'm like are you crazy? We freaking argue all the time and we fight and all we do is black out, get black out drunk but okay, I do not get black.
Speaker 2:No, that was something you got, like you did a couple, a couple times, but um, sorry.
Speaker 1:So we're pregnant, yeah, and we have a kid, and her name is Caitlin McKenzie Kipko, and she is our older daughter and she just graduated college, like two weeks ago. So we have raised a whole ass adult human being.
Speaker 2:It's pretty awesome and she is the very first person on my side of the family to graduate college, so super cool.
Speaker 1:So Katie, katie's born in April of 2002 and we're sitting there at at our house, in our townhouse, and I remember this day and I remember we were in our bedroom and we were holding katie and and I remember angie saying you know it would be, and it was like I don't know if it was easter. I think it might have been easter and we went up to.
Speaker 2:It had to have been because she was born in april.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we went up to baltimore and spent easter with my parents and then we went up to Baltimore and spent Easter with my parents and then we went down to Alexandria and spent Easter down in with some of her family and her aunts. And we were at our townhouse in the bedroom and Angie said these words. She said, mike, wouldn't it be awesome if we just kind of like moved away and just focused on our little family and not had this chaos of driving all over and seeing all this family? And that was like a Saturday. And a couple of days later and you can't make this shit up A couple of days later I go to work on Monday and they pull us in a conference room and they say, hey, we're shutting this field office down because the home base for the company I worked for was in Beaverton, oregon.
Speaker 1:And they pulled us in and said we're shutting this field office down and we're going to move. We're going to ask some of you to move to Beaverton. And there was five of us that they asked and I was one of them and it was almost like Angie like just spoke that into existence why don't we move? And we got invited and they paid all of our travel and they put us up in a, in a little condo and and they, they gave us spending money and it's like they we couldn't have had a better right and we we got what we wanted. And when we we lived in oregon for 10 years, we basically raised our girls there and and that's what they knew was home, and he fell into a deeper depression. Yeah, in Oregon.
Speaker 2:Oh, in Oregon, yeah, it was. It was bad, not just, not just a depression. I mean, we, we had Katie, we were out there by our, by our, by ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had nobody we had.
Speaker 2:We had nobody. As much as I didn't want that, the hecticness of all the multiple family holidays and crap, we got out there and I was totally alone, totally alone.
Speaker 1:And I was working and Angie hadn't, didn't have a job right away. No, you did, you did, but then you quit. Enterprise transfer, jim, you as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So they gave you a position in the accounting office right, we're recruiting, I was recruiting, recruiting. So she went to work, but then she started having some health problems and that's when she became a stay-at-home mom, and that's when things really started to slow down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was definitely not good for me, yeah. And then I think that when it really started, when we lost, we had Katie. And then, when Katie was a year old, we got pregnant again and we lost our boy when I was six months pregnant and that was very, very, very difficult because when he passed away they still had to carry him for two weeks in the womb before they could get me in for surgery to remove him. And I think that was, I think there was a mix I was probably still dealing with postpartum with katie and then get pregnant and lose the baby in this tragic way, and then the the absolute trauma of having to carry your dead child and you and that wasn't the end.
Speaker 1:So you carried, you carried him and they did a. Basically, what is it called? A DNC? A DNC, but there's another word Extraction. Okay, that's the word I was looking for, and then they left some in there. So she went into labor again to extract, to eject some of the parts that they left. So it's like I don't, I don't know like I want to sum it up to this point. It was like one tragedy and one, you know, one hurtful event after another, and and it was like it wasn't getting any easier, it just kept getting harder and harder and it's like the all the stress and tension and struggle and all this turmoil just kept building.
Speaker 2:Well, and then after that they said they weren't even sure if I was going to be able to get pregnant again. And then at that point I was desperate to give Katie a sibling. And then we got pregnant with Megan. Yeah, we got pregnant with Megan, but then Megan's pregnancy was yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Megan, it was both of them. Both pregnancies were difficult. They weren't easy and we're not trying to make everything bad news, but it was. We didn't have an easy first freaking 16 years together, and before that you didn't have a very easy life. I don't think either of us did, but I didn't. At least I didn't have the freaking poverty and the addiction, growing up in the addictive state. You know circumstances the addiction.
Speaker 2:Growing up in the addictive state, you know circumstances and it was definitely all of that trauma compounded is what pushed me into the addiction piece because you know, at that point I was so mentally unstable and emotionally unwell and and not knowing how to deal with any of it, not even recognizing it as as as trauma and and just having you know I came from a very Irish family and just swept everything under the damn rug or you drank it away, and not knowing how to process or have anybody to process it with, or even us just having healthy discussions like we do now.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I think we had none of them. No, it was all about sports or drinking or just superficial shit, nothing really deep and meaningful.
Speaker 2:It's all compounded. So doctors kept prescribing me more and more medications and drugs and I was in and out of the hospital and in and out of psych wards and in and out of rehabs. It was just, it was a lot.
Speaker 1:I had to call 911 a lot to have her, like, removed from the house, taken to a psych ward. And our girls grew up in psych wards. They and we just had a conversation, probably a month or two ago, where Katie said I remember always going to the hospital but I didn't know there were a psych. They were psych wards. But yeah, that was we. Our kids grew up going to visitation at the psych wards and rehab and just everything else and at some point Angie was taking four to 500 pills a month. It was like crazy and but that's, that's just Oregon. Then then we, then we move. You know, once again I remember Angie saying hey, we, I don't want to live here for the rest of my life and if we are going to move, we got to move before the girls are in middle school and they were entering. They were like just a few months, not not long. It was like six months before, before, before Katie was was going to be graduating and going into middle school and by when Angie speaks something into existence.
Speaker 1:It tends to happen because my phone started lighting up with recruiters and we interviewed in San Diego and I I went to Connecticut or Illinois and Chicago and St Louis and we had a couple other options down in. You know other other ones in California and different, different recruiters calling Um. Cause I was. I was an executive leader in corporate America and I was. I had done some really good work at Stanley Black Decker, the company I was with. So I was being recruited by other companies that kind of knew what was going on, what was happening, and we had our pick and we chose St Louis Missouri, right outside of St Louis Missouri, and that's where we live today. So we've been here for 13 years.
Speaker 1:But when we got here it kind of got worse. When we got here, if it wasn't bad enough in Oregon, when we got here, it got worse before it got better. But Angie fell deeper into depression and I was going to work and we're still drinking. I remember on Fridays when I was pulling away from the plant and you would send me pictures of the two 12 that you had just bought and and you were home probably clean and usually cleaned on Fridays and and you had your music up and we were going to go drinking a lot after that. But the point being is she fell deeper into a depression and things just slid downwards even more until I got there was there was a lot of volatility in our marriage.
Speaker 1:Let's just say that. We're not going to go into deep detail. There was some infidelity both ways and and uh, we I got fired from my first position that that the energy company that brought us out to Oregon or to Missouri. And then, uh, and I was with those guys for about 18 to 20 months and then we had five months worth of severance. They they treated us really and then we had five months worth of severance. They treated us really well and they gave us five months worth of severance and we drank it all.
Speaker 1:We used to pick our girls up drunk from the bus stop at 2.30 and it didn't get any better. And then that severance was going to run out in January of 2015. And in December of 2014, I got a job offer. So we went into Christmas knowing that I was going to have a job after, after the holiday. So we drank a lot because and then I had that job for 15 months because she wasn't in any better shape. I wasn't in any better shape. Our marriage wasn't in any better shape. Nothing had been cleared, nothing had been cleansed, nothing had been healed.
Speaker 2:We were just we were making money, though, so we were making money, so that's all we really cared about you know, I there was. I never had a stable place to live. I one time switched schools I don't remember how many times in one year I had lived like nine to ten times because we moved so much. So like, oh, my girls have a stable home, they have a stable school, we've got money, they're not. Yeah, so I think you're doing better.
Speaker 1:And Angie thought when we hit six figures in my new book, she wrote the forward, the first forward, and she said we had a traditional marriage in that I would complain for what, he would go to work and I was a nagging wife at home complaining for more Right. And it's exactly what it was. It was like more, more, more, more. But we hit the a hundred thousand dollar mark and Angie thought and this was, I was in my thirties and Angie thought that that was going to solve all of our problems.
Speaker 2:When we hit that hundred thousand, I mean I used to go, we used to go and have to use our food stamps to go and buy a five cent piece of candy. So like 95 cents was a big deal back then and you know as a child in that serious you know that poverty stricken time and so shit, making $100,000 a year I'm like damn we made it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I thought that was gonna fix everything, but it's nothing and again that was back in oregon, but you didn't touch it and that. And then things when I hit the hundred thousand dollar mark, nothing got better. She sank deeper into it and into addiction. But anyway, then we were here, I got fired for the second time and that's when everything, that's when everything changed. You know, the first time I got fired it was like, okay, I used to have a boss. His name was Marty Schnur and Marty was awesome and he was the president of our division in Stanley and Marty I remember him joking. He said if you haven't been fired once as an executive, you're not a professional. So the first time I got fired, I'm like I'm executive, right, but uh, but the second time I was like, all right, something's got to change.
Speaker 1:And and I started going on this journey. I hired a coach and and Angie was like you're, and that was actually a school friend of mine, guy that I went to to uh, to grad school with, and he was doing some coaching, he was kind of new in the coaching space and I started paying him and she's like what You're paying your friend? You're paying him to be your friend, are you a therapist working out? And I started losing weight and I started reading and I started meditating and I started journaling and I started you know I've got books all over this house but I started leaving all these cool things that I was learning.
Speaker 1:I started leaving them like on sticky notes at the kitchen table saying, angie here, like, read this, read this, read this you know dog-earing pages and just leaving her writing things and just getting her to try to lean in a little bit and she wanted nothing to do with it and I was trying to bring her along and I'm trying to get her to learn what I was learning and to feel what I was feeling, cause I was finally starting to feel really good and in my body and kind of in my mind, understanding what was happening in my mind and my body, I started feeling really good. I wanted her to experience that too, and she didn't want that at that point. And I don't know, maybe, maybe that's wrong. You often say it's not that you didn't want it, you didn't think it was available to you, or that you were just, or you were worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was just. It was just again and I didn't know this at the time we talked about this on on episode 102 is I just didn't know. I didn't feel worthy of being the person capable of making those changes. So it was just, it was a self-worth issue, like you know. I think it was. Yeah, I think, recognizing all the the horrible things and the horrible person that I was for so long like there was, just didn't think it was available to me. I think I was worth it.
Speaker 1:Not anymore, you're not a horrible person anymore. And three months in, pretty awesome, and we did the best we could. We weren't even horrible, we were just doing the best we could. And a couple months into this journey, when she wasn't really opting in, in fact, as I started on like five interviews and I came up runner up in all of them and after a while I was like, okay, well, I guess that like whole job thing is closed and I decided to, you know, start a coaching business.
Speaker 1:Because, to be honest, when I was in corporate, the only thing I ever loved was developing people and developing teams. I didn't love the whole corporate thing and I didn't love the job thing, but I did love having somebody to develop and to coach and to teach and I love that. And I loved developing my organization, I loved developing my functional leaders. But there was an epiphany once I'm sitting there listening to him, I'm like he's doing exactly like my dream job and if he could do this, why can't I do that? That's kind of like when that whole thing started to happen and unfold and that's when I kind of committed, I told Angie, I said I'm going to start a coaching business and she said no, you need to go get a job.
Speaker 2:You work Monday through Friday, nine to five. We give you four weeks vacation, 401k insurance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need benefits. We need benefits, we need a job. And I committed and I was in but I filed for divorce. It just still wasn't good between us and there were lots of attacks and I mean, it's just that old life had expired but we were still living in remnants of that old life. But I knew that that chapter was done and I filed for divorce, not knowing that we were going to put everything back together.
Speaker 1:But I just made a post yesterday. I said when one person starts doing the inner work and the other person doesn't, one of the unintended sad consequences is growing apart. And when one person's doing the clearing work and spiritual work the inner, the mental, the emotional, the healing work and one person's not, it's just a matter of time before you're not going to be together anymore. And that's what I felt. I was like, okay, this is done, I'm moving on.
Speaker 1:And I filed for divorce and Angie was high when I told her that, really high when I told her pharmaceutical addiction, so not like street drugs. But when I told her I was high, she laughed at me and belittled me and the next day she was crying and we had long, long conversations and I was. I was still wasn't committed to rebuilding the marriage. But I put a pause on the divorce and I said let's, let's test your commitment, let's see if you're really committed to this. And from there we went to NA that night and there's been a couple of relapse. There were a couple of relapses up to like. This is 2016 and we're talking about 2017, 2018 2017 is the other books, so 2019.
Speaker 1:So shit, it's 1819. So anyway, there were a couple relapses and when that last relapse happened, it's like that was it? Yep, that was the one, yeah, yeah. And we just keep stacking wins and we just keep. It's not all like butterflies and unicorns and rainbows. I'm not easy to live with. No, you're not. I'm not.
Speaker 1:And I'm not either though You're easier to live with than you think, you make my life easy. The point being is it's not all butterflies and rainbows. We do have challenges, we do have obstacles. Our business goes up, our business goes down. There's still financial insecurity that creeps in every once in a while, but what's not present is a lack of commitment to each other, a lack of dedication to each other. We don't threaten divorce. We don't talk about ending our marriage.
Speaker 2:It's no longer us against us, it's no longer Angie versus Mike or Mike versus Angie. It's Mike and Angie versus us against the problem the challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and someone you know, you talked about that that when the unintended consequence of one person growing, someone on that post had said or you just create space for the other person, but that space is very limited. And that's what I think and that's where that's what you created that space for me, but it was. There's no way that we would be sitting here seven years later just with you still holding that space, because that's just, that's just not possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it there's. I think, and I know that, I know the, the comment, I think the assumption there is that the there's no attacking and you're both living your lives, because when you were attacking and you just kept attacking as I kept growing, you kept attacking more and I think it was insecurity. Right, it was just. It was just insecurity. Hey, even girls, even our girls, tried to get me to stop growing and stop doing the spiritual work that I was doing, because they didn't know who I was becoming, they were unfamiliar with who I was becoming. Suddenly I, you know, I started feeling like Zen and and I started doing like monk shit and and our, our operations assistant, cara Dossi, is like me, me monk Mike, because I sit in long periods of solitude and silence and with my eyes closed and just feeling like good. But yeah, that wasn't the old Mike.
Speaker 2:Well, when you're used to a life of chaos and peace feels like boredom, when you're addicted to chaos you said it, but when you're addicted to chaos, and peace feels like boredom when you're addicted to chaos.
Speaker 1:you said it, but when you're addicted to chaos, peace feels like boredom. So you tend to create some chaos in your life. But here's the cool part, and this is the part. This is where I was thinking we were going to go before we started this. Angie has gone from pound nobody knows a pound I'm gonna give him a baseball.
Speaker 1:Is that the first? No, no, no, that wasn't the first one. No, angie explored uh mlms and started working in network marketing and did that for a little bit and decided that that wasn't for her. Then there's pound class, and imagine a fitness program where you have two drumsticks and there's loud music and you tap and you move and there's a little bit of dancing and stuff involved. And she took some pound classes to learn how to lead that and she did a great job for a while and she had a lot of fun with it until she didn't.
Speaker 2:Well, COVID hit and then, yeah, there was no place to teach and we tried doing a virtual yeah.
Speaker 1:And now one day she said you know what? I'm going to go get my real estate license. And she got a partner in real estate, our good friend, katie Chatfield, who used to be our operations manager in Interwealth Global. They Her Wealth Global. They build, or they started, a real estate investing company. They walk houses relentlessly. They've made tons of offers, haven't closed their first deal yet, have come very, very close to closing the first deal. They will. But they are pros. They've become pros at walking houses. They're doing the work. I've worked with many people who said that they wanted to start a real estate investing business and they didn't take any action whatsoever. It was all talk, no action. But these ladies have freaking gone crazy with submitting offers, walking properties, education. Angie decided that she wanted to get a real estate license, agency license and she actually did that. She has her license. She's a licensed real estate agent. Now she just held her first open house this last Sunday. She crushed it.
Speaker 2:Do another one this Sunday.
Speaker 1:She's networking with real estate investors. She's networking with real estate agents at her brokerage. She's showing up more in the real estate space at her brokerage. She's showing up more in the real estate space. Her life and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be respectful about this and not demeaning. If you were to look at her life just a couple of years ago, it was really Mike Kitko and his wife, angie, because it's like when she walked into a room she was Mike's wife and I never wanted that, but that's, that's what, what existed. And now she goes places and she's Angie Kitko and they know her and she's her own brand and she's she's living in her own power and she's becoming known for who she is and what she does, what she brings to the table, not just as a plus one for me, and that feels really, really good for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it also feels good being Mike's wife. I always enjoy being Mike's wife.
Speaker 1:And I love when we go to real estate meetups and I'm Angie's husband.
Speaker 2:Yep Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause I'm there supporting you instead of you supporting me, and I think that feels really, really good is finally being able to show up to support you in something that you're doing instead of vice versa. It feels really good. It is so freaking fulfilled. I'm so blessed to have you just in my life and as my wife and as my support, my greatest cheerleader and it's finally good to be a cheerleader for you for once. Damn it, whew. So the whole point of this episode was to celebrate our 200th episode.
Speaker 2:And congratulations. Thank you, that's a huge accomplishment, hunter, thank you, I appreciate that that's a lot of topics. He'll say to me what should I do my podcast on? I don't know, if I had that type of creativity I'd have my own damn podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just say the same thing over and over a lot. So you know how a little bit ago you said, oh, we covered that on the 100th podcast episode. But when you record a podcast you assume that not everybody's listened to every episode and you unpack the stories, right, but a lot of the same things. But in a lot of cases they're the same thing, said different, right, so that you see them and you understand them from different angles. And we just keep.
Speaker 1:I just I have a bit of wisdom and I keep deepening my understanding of the wisdom and I keep sharing the deepening of that understanding of the wisdom and it keeps like growing in my life and people's lives. But the purpose, the secondary purpose, was to celebrate 200 episodes when we jumped on here. It's to help you understand Angie and her story that, no matter how much suffering you experience as a child you experienced as a child no matter how much suffering that got amplified in the second and third decade of your life, the fourth and fifth decade can be decades of rebirth and reinvention it's not too late. And re-reconciliation let's say that I'm looking for more re-words, but we can reinventself anytime we want and heal, but it takes. It takes getting into, uh, into a place where we get, we, we develop a healthier sense of self-awareness. Start to reshape our self-concept, because our self-concept is our own limitation and also it also means coming to terms with.
Speaker 2:You're not a victim. Yeah, and that was the thing that was one of the biggest things was I was stuck in such a heavy victim mentality. It's all these things that just kept happening to me.
Speaker 1:And we were both looking for a way to be a victim and one of my favorite books, the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. He said all arguing is is two people fighting to see who's the bigger? Oh, me too, me too. I'll say it again All an argument is is two people fighting to see who's the bigger victim? And when you frame it like that, it's a holy shit. I never want to argue, ever again. Little bitch right. So I hope you guys had fun here in angie's story. You have anything else you want to share?
Speaker 2:no, just again congratulations on on your future. I think that's the yeah, I'm very, very proud of you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, very proud to be your wife there's going to be another 200 episodes and then we'll do this more and at some point we're going to rebrand it to the Inner Wealth Podcast with Mike and Mike Kikko and sometimes Andy.
Speaker 2:Every time you say and some I feel like the cartoon.
Speaker 1:I think that's fun. But look, over the coming months we got some really cool stuff happening All right In. For a year I've been writing a book and I've written a bunch of books that never got, that are still on my laptop and never got published. But we are on August 19th we're publishing a new book and it's called. It's called inner world outer world and it's my soul project.
Speaker 1:When I when I released my my first book, the imposter in charge that book, it was good but it wasn't the one that I wanted to write. I wrote that as more of a marketing book instead of an expression of my soul. But this is an expression of my soul and Angie wrote the first forward and a lot of people that have read this book said that's actually the best part of the book. So even if you only get to the first forward, it's well worth it. But we've got that coming up. We've got the Choose your Destiny workshop. The next Choose your Destiny live workshop live intensive is August 22nd and 23rd. So we launched the book on August 19th. The 22nd, 23rd we had the workshop, so it's going to parlay nicely. We've got a retreat with our mastermind in September In Park City, utah Park City, utah. It was super. Those are always awesome. We've got an eight-bedroom house lodged in the mountains. It's going to be amazing.
Speaker 2:And as a current connoisseur of the secret lives of Mormon wives, I'm really excited to go to Utah.
Speaker 1:Here's something that is still in the formative stages. That I'm really excited about is Auntie and I are collaborating on something called Unbreakable, and what we're looking to do is take couples on a retreat maybe a three-day retreat get somewhere in seclusionlusion, in isolation, where it's just us and we take, we help these couples take a great marriage and make it even greater.
Speaker 1:We're not looking to be you're in crisis, looking to be a therapist, but we're just looking for people that are. We're going to be looking for people that have really, really solid relationships, that they want to make unbreakable Right. And it is going to be a higher end offering. It is going to be a premier retreat, so we're going to we're going to look to make this one big and really juicy, and I'm excited for that and that helps. You know, that is kind of what inspired me to say Hey's start talking about the whole story, not just bits and pieces of it On the last three episodes. Cool. So we're going to end here.
Speaker 1:Thanks for continuing Every single week to show up and listen to this podcast and watch the podcast and hear the same things over and over Again and to hear the same intro and the same outro, because I love consistency. But thanks for your followership, thanks for your viewership, thanks for your love, your devotion to us, thanks for your support, thanks for everything, because without you guys, we wouldn't have made it to 200 episodes, right, but you guys make it easier to make great content and to put it out in the world. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything that you've supported us through and all the love that you've given us. And this is the end of the 200th episode. And now we've got 200 more to make. Let's go, guys, until next week. Love you all. More to make. Let's go, guys, until next week. Love you all. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.