About

I’m here to help you blow up your one-person business (without burning out).

Hey! I’m Mike Leip! So great to meet you!

A few things about me:

➤ Full time entrepreneur since 2008
➤ I’ve created apps with over 20 million downloads
➤ I’ve created and sold over $29 million of my products online
➤ I’m a TEDx Speaker
➤ I sold my company (Panda Planner) in 2023
➤ I am going to build a billion dollar one-person business (more on this below)

But a few years ago,
I burned out really fucking hard.

The stress of managing over a dozen full-time employees as well as the complicated logistics of a physical product business were wearing me down. I was really struggling. So I decided to sell the company and get to work on building a one-person business & personal brand instead. But here’s the thing:

Building a successful one-person business is really hard.

I mean…I had a great track record: I had over a decade of entrepreneurial success and I’ve sold tens of millions of dollars of my products, so I definitely know more about business than the 22 year old influencers on twitter with over 200k followers.

But I still struggled to get going online.

At first, I couldn’t commit to a niche.

I couldn’t find a topic I could commit to talking about for the next several years, so I just kept changing my mind.

Eventually I’d pick a niche and spend hours agonizing over content creation. Then I’d finally post something online only to see it flop. Hours and hours invested, only to be met by the sound of crickets.

I didn’t know how to stand out online.

So I’d give up on this topic and choose something new. This process would repeat itself. More and more hours of agony on content that didn’t stand out led to more and more crickets. The thing is, I was well aware that it can take a long time to get traction online, but…

I didn’t care enough about the topic to stick with it long enough to find success.

I was already burnt out when I started this process, so this vicious cycle of failure only drove me deeper into depression. I started questioning everything, leading to a full on existential crisis, where I asked myself:

What the fuck do I want to do with my life?

To try and answer this, I did what anyone would do: I bought a motorcycle with a sidecar for my dogs, shipped it to Europe and traveled around for 10 months looking for divine inspiration to strike.

...But it never did. Eventually, I realized something important:

Life purpose isn’t something you “find”, it is something you choose.

So I created a process to help me choose a meaningful direction in life, and that was the start of my personal transformation.

After I returned home to America, I took a hard look at my lifestyle and realized it was holding me back. The years of hustling and grinding as an entrepreneur had led to some pretty bad habits that were sabotaging my efforts to get ahead. Things like:

➤ Spending way too much time on my phone (3.5-4 hours/day)
➤ Avoiding & pushing away discomfort (repression/suppression of emotions)
➤ Having too many priorities in all areas of life and spreading myself thin
➤ Always moving 1,000 miles an hour (never being present)
➤ Always looking forward to some future scenario when things will be better than they are right now (outcome focused)
➤ Trying to chase what I thought was the best opportunity rather than doing what I truly cared about
➤ Constantly giving into any impulsive thought (no self discipline)
➤ Among other things…

The combination of these bad habits was completely destroying my mental health.

I realized, if I wanted to build a successful one-person business and live a life that I love, I needed to make some changes. So with the motivation that came from my clarity of purpose, I got to work:

➤ I simplified all areas of my life
➤ I reduced my screen time from 3.5 hours/day to 30 minutes per day
➤ I learned how to sit with discomfort and make room for the full spectrum of life’s experiences
➤ I learned to slow the fuck down
➤ I learned how to be disciplined (still a work in progress, but holy shit is it better than it’s ever been in my life)
➤ I built a brand (based on my life’s purpose) that is different from everyone else and helps me stand out online

The new me is almost unrecognizable from who I was a few years ago.
And it all started with PURPOSE.

This is why purpose is so important for creators today. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that:

Trying to build a one-person business without knowing your purpose is like doing it on hard mode.

Which brings me to my purpose:

My purpose is to create and do things that help others have more fun and live more meaningful lives. In short: my purpose is to create things that help.

As a practical goal, this means…

I’m Going To Create a $1 Billion Dollar One-Person Business

My ultimate vision is to create a one-person entertainment studio. I want to create fantasy worlds and beloved characters, and turn them into books, toys, games, and animated feature films; kinda like a mini-Disney or an American Studio Ghibli. I want to do this because…

I want to positively impact the world through storytelling.

I really want to help improve people’s mental health and do what I can to combat the growing trends of division and cynicism in our culture. I believe that story is going to be the best way to do that.

So why is the goal $1B?

Well, because impact is hard to measure. I look at it like this: the only way for a company like this to be worth $1B, is if that company owns stories and characters that are loved by millions and millions of people. So in this sense, if I have a $1B company, then it means I have achieved my goal of making a positive difference in the world; money is a proxy metric for measuring my impact.

You can read more about my roadmap to achieve this here. But for now, my mission is to help you:

Turn Your Purpose into Profit, Fast.

To achieve this, I am determined to create simple systems that will allow you to:

1. Know your life purpose (Purpose Canvas™)
2. Pick a niche that makes you stand out (Purpose-Niche™)
3. Turn that into a strategic plan for RAPID growth (Viral Brand Strategy™)

For now, I’d love it if you signed up for the ‘Modern Creator’ newsletter

This way we can stay in touch and I can keep you updated on my path to $1B. Plus I’ll share with you everything I’m learning so you can grow your brand as quickly as possible!