Ella Magers, MSW:

Hey Mike, so great to have you here. Thank you. Such an honor.

Mike Brcic:

Likewise. The honor’s mine as well. I’m excited to be here.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, and I really feel quite connected. Connection is, I think going to be a theme today, what we’re talking about, but with your message, with your business and its mission for so many reasons on so many levels, and it was kind of serendipitous that on the Wayfinders website you have the Rom Dass quote, we’re all just walking each other home right at the start, in part because the last 179 days, I’ve listened to an episode of the Rom Dass podcast. Most of them are lectures of his or clips of lectures. So every morning for the last 179 Mor mornings, I’ve started my day with Rom Dass and it’s brought me so much peace. It’s been just a really wonderful day, way to start my day. And I’m curious what that quote means to you and why those are the first words you wanted people to see on your site.

Mike Brcic:

Thank you. That’s a wonderful starting point for our conversation as a lot of my work is centered around connection. And for me, that work started around restoring human to human connection. Something that’s obviously got exacerbated quite a lot by the pandemic, but that predated the pandemic as we get into this conversation. I can talk about statistics around loneliness and all that kind of stuff, but that was a starting point for me, for my work. But it’s expanded since then to this wider definition of connection and helping people restore their connection to their self, helping them restore connection to the natural world, helping people restore connection to a sense of something bigger in the universe. And that quote to me, that ramdas quote sort of sums all of that up and that coming home to me is coming to that place of connection and not this sense of disconnection or isolation that we experience profoundly on so many different levels and how can we get back to that place and how can we walk that journey together? Yeah, I think it’s just such a lovely poetic way to, to say all that in just so few words.

Ella Magers, MSW:

It really is. It’s a hard thing to sum up in so few words, and he does a lot of things quite beautifully. So before we dive deeper into this idea of connection and loneliness, can you kind of share for our audience the creation story of Wayfinders, how that came to be, how it was conceived and born?

Mike Brcic:

Well, the genesis of it is a little bit different than what it is now, and it’s taken a very interesting journey along the way. I, I really just started it because with my previous business, and I’ve been an entrepreneur for many, many years, my previous business, we operated high-end mountain bike trips all over the world. And there was a period from 2013 to about 2016 where I was rapidly scaling the company and I was bringing on investors and building up the team and scaling all over the world. And as I was doing that, I was encountering all kinds of new problems I’d never faced before as an entrepreneur. And when I finally got over my own hubris that I knew had all the answers, because I quickly discovered that I didn’t, I started attending different entrepreneur events and joining different entrepreneur communities. And what I noticed was that a lot of these events were the same, where there’s a speaker on stage and then you go to a workshop and then there’s another speaker and all kinds of great information.

But the real value I got out of them was the connections I made there. And yet, the format wasn’t really great for that because it’s hard to connect with people when other people are, you’re supposed to be paying attention to them. And so my first event, it wasn’t meant to be a business, it was just a one-off thing. I wanted to invite some friends out to the Canadian Rockies and go mountain biking, do some hiking, do some fun stuff outdoors. I knew that connected people when you’re being challenged together and doing fun stuff outdoors and then throw in a little bit of content, some workshops and stuff like that, but keep the focus on focus on connection. And people loved it. They asked me to do more of them. I was also in the process of getting kind of disillusioned with the previous company. So I spent the next couple years kind of bouncing back and forth between the two businesses, ended up selling that business about four years ago and focusing on, and as I started going farther and farther field to places like Fiji or Greenland or Uganda or all over to these remote places, I noticed that people just, the very act of taking people so far away out of their usual context and exposing them to these very radically different cultures where people have a very different interpretation of how to live human life, that was really impactful in people.

And in the process, creating these experiences where they have an opportunity to, and for some of these people to sit in silence for an hour for the first time in years, and to sit in silence with a journal for half an hour and reflect on some things I might share with them. And that created an environment for people to start reconnecting with themselves, parts that may maybe they’d forgotten about. And also connecting with the natural world in these beautiful environments. And so it’s taken all these twists and turns, but it’s been really beautiful. I just actually got back last week from an event in Uganda and just the people that we spent time with, there are just some of the most beautiful, incredible people I’ve ever met. And everybody attended that event, was deeply touched by the interactions we had there. So yeah, it’s a lovely journey.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Besides maybe a lack of, I mean, being an entrepreneur, right, is tough, especially for us solopreneurs or people with not a huge team. It is a lonely place to be sometimes. So I love that you have the people that you’re taking out primarily are entrepreneurs. Can you paint a picture of some of the maybe common struggles or challenges that the people that you are taking on these trips come with and where they need to be in their journey to take such a leap? This isn’t a weekend long trip out of town. These are pretty intense trips from what I understand. What are some of the themes of the challenges that these people are working through and hoping to get? What are they hoping to get out of this experience?

Mike Brcic:

I think I would say if there’s one unifying theme is that everybody attends is in some kind of transition. And sometimes they don’t even know they’re in that transition. They’re being called to that transition, but maybe they’ve resisted it or they’re not aware of it. In some cases, they know for sure that they’re in some kind kind of transition, they don’t know how to navigate it. And that could be they’ve been running the company for 15 years and they’re just not aligned with it anymore. Or in a relationship that they don’t feel aligned with anymore, or just not aligned with life in general. And I think it, it’s in a state of transition and they are wondering how to, or they’re confused by it. They’re not sure how to navigate it. And so I try to create a context in which they can explore that both on their own and in the company of other people. And I think there’s huge value in people coming together. I tend to use a process that’s based on deep questioning and deep presence and listening rather than people giving each other advice. I default to the premise that people have already have the answers they need. They just have a hard time accessing them, and then other people can help draw that out of them.

Yeah, I mean, the actual struggles run the gamut, but it, it’s generally summed up as some sort of transition or a doorway between one state and another.

Ella Magers, MSW:

So last year, about a year ago, I experienced myself burnout and really kind of went down the burnout rabbit hole and ended up feeling really called to go to Peru and do a 12 day ayahuasca retreat at the temple of the way of Light, which happens to be the spot that Gabor Mate recommends. And he talks about going down there and actually was going to be a facilitator, and they ended up kicking him out the shaman. Yeah. And he talks about that story. And I’m curious, so that’s a very defined, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go down and I’m going to do psychedelics and then talk about it. What do you do to help facilitate some of those same types of breakthroughs without the use of plant medicine? And I don’t know, do any plant medicine ever, or is that not a part?

Mike Brcic:

I’ve certainly done plenty of my own. I don’t really facilitate it for my group. I certainly connect people with the resources. I’m a little bit wary of getting involved in that world directly. And I think that’s sort of a personal decision for people to make, whether they’re ready for that work or not. But in terms of what I do, it takes all kinds of different forms. I touched on a few of them, giving people intentional, solitary time. And so one of the things I tend to do is sort of like a mini vision quest where I take people out to these wild spots and I’ll leave them alone somewhere for a few hours where they can’t. And in Uganda, we did this in the jungle where everybody got their own little piece of jungle to sit in quietly. And for a lot of people, like I said, that’s the first time they’ve done that in years. And the responses to that run the gamut from pedestrian, like, oh, it was nice, peaceful experience to, I don’t know what happened, but the forest spoke to me and I heard, I saw visions and I heard things. And so it runs the full gamut.

Also, there’s a lot of exercises that might involve journaling and accessing the subconscious practices that people might not otherwise have. And then there’s a lot of facilitated, just facilitated connection with fellow participants, usually in small groups, but also facilitated exercises designed to create presence. And so there’s deep presence and deep listening between people which can then create breakthroughs for people because when somebody is in full presence with you, that can reflect a lot back to you that you might not otherwise be missing. And I also use this one exercise that I board from the Quakers called the Clearness Committee. And it’s really just an exercise of deep presence and of asking what they call open honest questions. So really probing questions that are hopefully going to draw out your own wisdom. And then it’s particularly useful for not linear problem solving type of issues that you’re facing, but more like heart and soul-based questions like that you might be wrestling with and you’re, and stuff that you might be stuck in for years and aren’t sure of. And then just with the benefit of having a few people give you their deep presence and listening, it can really unlock a lot of powerful inner wisdom that’s already in there, but you just don’t know how to access it. So stuff like that.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Wow, very cool. And how did you start to become passionate about exploring this lack of connection? And do you feel like there was a certain point in our society’s history that really started becoming, I mean, somewhat of a pandemic mean with the pandemic? Yes, that was very obvious, but it seems like it started a lot sooner, much before that. Can you talk about that and how you see the systemic role?

Mike Brcic:

Well, one of the people I draw inspiration from is a writer and philosopher, Charles Eisenstein. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him, but fantastic writer. And he talks about the age of separation and what he calls this move towards the age of being or connection. And he’s such a incredible thinker as well. And he sort of draws it back to the dawn of the agricultural area five, 10,000 years ago when we moved away from these hunter gatherer societies where people had to rely on each other, and they lived very deeply interconnected lives. And then moving to more sedentary lives in the agricultural era. And then of course, continuing through the industrial era and now the internet era and all these technologies that we have now.

And I was just remarking with somebody today, actually, we were talking about raising children, and for most of history was very much a village role. The entire village raised the kids. And you can see that in Uganda today and many places in the world where it’s not just the parents who are raising the kid, but it’s the entire community who are doing that. And then it’s only in the last few hundred years, that circle of influence has just shrunk. And now it’s two people, sometimes one person trying to parent kids on their own. And that’s a really difficult role for one or two people to take on. And I guess what drew me to this work was kind of scratching my own itch and recognizing I went from a place about, I guess 19 years ago now, I went through a profoundly deep crisis in my life, and at that time feeling extremely isolated. And part of that isolation was self-imposed as well. And it was this vicious feedback loop. And then it took me a couple years to get out of that. And as I started to merge, becoming much more intentional about restoring connection in my life and then the things that I learned along the way about how to restore connection in my own life, how do I share that with others? And that’s my life’s mission. Now,

Ella Magers, MSW:

Are you up for sharing any more about that journey from 19 years ago?

Mike Brcic:

Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, I’ve been open about it. I went through a very deep and profound, long, dark night of the soul, as they say, or depression in medical terms to the point. I didn’t actually make any attempts to take my own life, but certainly those thoughts ran through my head very frequently, and it was a very, very difficult time. And then that feedback loop that I talked about, when you’re in that state, you don’t really feel like other people want to be around you, so you isolate yourself. And because of the neurology of how our brains work, which have been hardwired for connection over the last few hundred thousand years, when you disconnect yourself from other people, it tends to send your brain into deeper and darker places. And so that was a tough one to get out of.

I will say the things that were helpful along my journey, I had a very tumultuous relationship with medication and treating my depression with medication. And I would take it for a little bit, and then I would quit cold Turkey and I would sink even lower, and then I would take it again and then sink lower. And it wasn’t until I actually, after one particularly really, really rough night where I had that night, had I not managed to get back to sleep that night, I probably would’ve made some sort of attempt at my own life. And when I woke up, when I finally got to sleep and then woke up the next morning, I said, I can’t go through that again. And that’s when I committed to my medication, and I knew that. I knew it wasn’t the final so solution to my troubles, but I also needed some sort of foundation to keep me from there.

Most days, I couldn’t even get out of bed. I could barely eat. I certainly couldn’t exercise. I had no motivation. And so that gave me that foundation to do the more positive things like exercise, like yoga, like meditation, connecting with people. And then I was eventually able to wean myself off them. But I have a different view of, and I think they have their place, but they’re not staying on SSRIs for 20 years is not the solution. And also I think just in terms of our individual and collective healing that I was just reading a post yesterday, which talked about addiction and the opposite, opposite of addiction, not being sobriety, but being connection. And when you put people in a context in which they’re in a supportive community, they’re connected with other people, addiction levels go way down. And so we tend to think of personal healing and personal growth as a very individual journey. And there are certainly aspects of it that are, but I also view it in the lens of a community journey as a community journey for our own healing, but our collective societal healing as well. And so again, that ties back into the work that I’m doing.

Ella Magers, MSW:

I love that. Thank you for sharing about that. And I can totally relate. I was on and off, well, mostly on since 16 years old depression medication and have been off now just a year and a half. And I’m curious when it comes to that, in this age of social media and all the positivity, which it’s almost like, and I run group coaching programs, and it’s like people don’t want to share when they’re not feeling positive. How do you see that in terms of the role of positive thinking and being, putting yourself and having the power to be positive versus allowing yourself to feel and feel badly sometimes? And how to go about balancing those two parts, if that makes sense?

Mike Brcic:

Well, I guess I would ask you as somebody who’s been there as well, when you are in that state, when you’re at your lowest, how effective is it for you to just think your way into feeling better?

Ella Magers, MSW:

Not at all. Yeah, the opposite.

Mike Brcic:

So

I think we in our western paradigm or western culture are used to thinking of feeling, it’s something that occurs here. Our emotions are things that we think about, but there’s actually, and what I’ve learned over the last few years is that the feeling occurs here in the body. And that’s something for most of my life I’ve been disconnected from and have only begun to approach over the last couple of years of realizing just how much wisdom is located in my body. And so a useful practice for me has been when I’m in those difficult states, I try and stop and pause and give myself some space for stillness and to just get curious about what’s going on. Where in my body do I feel that is what’s going on there? And often when I get curious about it, one of two things happens.

Either it just passes, and if I just give it feeling the space to express itself, it’s kind of like saying, oh, thank you. Thank you for listening to me. I feel heard and seen. I’m going to go now. And then often it just passes. Or if I listen acutely enough, I get some additional information and maybe another part of my body starts to experience some tingling or whatever. And then maybe if I close my eyes, I might experience some sort of memory, or I might experience a vision or something like that. I’m like, that’s curious. Where’s that coming from? And that to me has been a far more useful practice of actually just as you said, just feeling the feelings and allowing them to express themselves than trying to positively think my way out of them. And I haven’t found that practice useful. And at the same time, I do very frequently on a daily basis, practice gratitude.

And I just think about, I try to just think about all the things that I’m grateful for, and I live a very blessed life, but I also try and take it a step further and rather than just thinking about those things, trying to actually feel them in my body. So when I think about my children or just gratitude for the wonderful neighborhood that I live in, I try to just close my eyes and really, really feel that and experience it on an embodied level. And so that’s maybe a little bit different than positive thinking, but it is a regular part of my practice. Yeah.

Ella Magers, MSW:

No, that’s incredible. I lost you for part of that, but I think if we lose you one more time, I don’t know if we’re having a torrential like downpour here, so it really could be my end, but let’s keep going and see if we can keep going.

Mike Brcic:

Okay. I’m going to think positive thoughts.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Okay. What is your definition of holistic health or holistic wellness? Mike?

Mike Brcic:

Great question. There’s so many ways you can, a approach that I’m a big proponent of my own wellbeing of exercising, taking care of what I put in my body, of engaging in practices that contribute to my overall wellbeing. But then I don’t think health can exist in isolation, just me as an individual. It has to extend to have a much more broader definition, because if I’m feeling good, but I live in a context where the rest of my family is unhealthy or unhappy, that of course affects me. And so that widens my scope of concern. But then if I’m well and my family’s well, but we live in the context of a neighborhood or a community or a city that is unwell, then that will affect me as well. And so I look at it that holistic health as starting with me, but widening the circles wider and water until I can consider the entire planet in my sphere of thinking.

And obviously I can’t on a daily basis change the world and make the world healthy well, but I can just, in my daily interactions where I put my focus, the work that I do, even just little interactions, whether it’s with my barista or the crossing guard or whatever, if I can take a holistic and healthy attitude to those interactions, then hopefully I will spread that farther, and then those ripple effects will contribute to our overall wellbeing. So I’m not sure if that answers your questions, but that’s how I tend to view health. And if we’re looking at it holistically, then how can we expand that whole to be as large as possible?

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, no, that answers it very clearly, actually. And when we’re looking at then the big picture and the whole planet, and knowing that we’re part of a whole being and a whole planet with so many other beings, and knowing that we live in this world right now, that’s really complex. And in certain ways, and I’m curious as your thoughts on this, but it feels like we’ve got this growing of divide, talking about connection here. We’ve got the spiritual kind of revolution happening in terms of more and more people being connected to their own consciousness and elevating their consciousness and going that route and yoga becoming mainstream and mindfulness being in the mainstream. And then we’ve, it seems this population of people resisting that even more. And maybe that’s just me and my bubble, but it makes it feel very complex to have a healthy planet mean with the climate crisis happening and all these things happening. How do you view that, and where do you see us going as a collective and in terms of humanity? No, that’s a big question.

Mike Brcic:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m not going to be so bold and brass as to think I can predict where things are going be. And that maybe a hundred years ago you might’ve been able to offer predictions. But there are so many interdependent, rapidly developing issues, ai, climate change, you know, name it. It’s pretty much impossible to predict where we’re going. But in terms of how I situate myself in that and how I approach all of this issues, I try to narrow my sphere of influence to my immediate surroundings, to myself, my family, the people that are around me, and at the same time hold that concept of the whole in my consciousness, knowing that if I can start with those smaller, narrower circles, the ripple effects will go beyond that. And I obviously can’t reach 8 billion people in the world. And again, to bring it back to my work, I’ve really resisted the call to try and scale my business.

And I know a thing, I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time. I know a thing or two about scaling, but I’ve decided to intentionally remain focused. I only run two events a year, roughly 20 to 30 people per event. And then I have a broader membership. We do events here in Toronto as well, but we’re talking maybe about a hundred people. And I’ve decided I would rather focus my attention on those a hundred people and provide as much value and as many opportunities and context for them to restore connection in their lives and try to reach a million people or a billion people or whatever. All the entrepreneurial gurus are telling us that you have to think big. I know if I try and scale this to reach a million people, I can’t have the profound impact that I have right now on the people that I work with, but the ripple effects of that.

And I have people telling me all the time and sending me messages weekly of the impact that I’ve had on their lives and how their lives have changed for the better. And I think those people have families and they have employees, and they have friends, and they have other people that they’re regularly in contact with. And if I can make a significant change in one person’s life, the ripple effects of that are massive. And so I focus on what I can impact, but at the same time, still try to hold that sphere of consciousness of the whole planet. And how does my work or my sphere of influence tie into that larger hole without trying to address the hole? Because that’s impossible. And that’s crazy making.  And so I’ve decided to focus my sphere of influence on this small circle myself, my family, my community, the a hundred members of Wayfinders, and I know that, and even if though there’s only five people in my membership, I know that that can have a profound impact on the world. And so I try not to get too ahead of myself, and I just focus on what I can change. And it also really just has to start with me, right? Because I can’t create those experiences for people if I’m personally not living an authentic life, if I’m living disconnected. So it has to start with me first and then ripple outward from there.

Ella Magers, MSW:

And I know you, you’re very intentional about creating a life that’s in line with this value of human connection. Can you talk about how you structure time for connection? I know you have a robust system for doing so.

Mike Brcic:

Yeah, I probably approach it a little bit differently than most people in that I’m quite systematic about it. And so I actually have, I use Airtable, which is like a spreadsheet on steroids, but I have a database of all the people, my members, friends, other people that I want to stay in touch with, people with whom I want to nurture and develop the relationship. And I keep track of when’s the last time I connected with? And so was it a phone call, was it a lunch? How did we connect? And then I’m very intentional about reaching out to those people and staying in touch with them. And so any given week, I’ll probably have a couple coffees with people, a couple of lunches, maybe 10 phone calls or Zoom calls with people. And so I know that relationships take nurturing. You can’t just be accidental about it.

And yeah, sure, we all have those old friends that 10 years can pass and you see each other and it’s like no time has passed. But even with those relationships, I don’t want to let 10 years pass even. I actually just today had lunch with a friend who lives in Australia and happened to be in town. And we’ve been very intentional about staying in touch, even though, you know, can’t really get much farther from Toronto than Australia, but relationships take time and they take nurturing, and we can’t take them for granted. And it can be as simple as just, I will just sometimes just sit on my phone and just bang out a few texts to people that I haven’t connected with and just, Hey, thinking of you, hope you’re doing well, and let me know if you need any support. But for me, connection and my relationships are the most important thing in my life. So that’s where I put the bulk of my attention. And consequently, that has worked out really well for me in business, and that’s not why I do it, but it’s worked far better for me than the latest marketing campaign or digital marketing tool or whatever. It’s just really maintaining those strong human connections with other people. So like I said, I take a very intentional, systematic approach to it, and that’s where I invest my time.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Okay. We’re not on video right now, but I’m smiling my head off because I love that you use Airtable. Do you actually record when you text somebody or go out to coffee? Is that a recording kind of thing in Airtable and I’m, I want to know this system, I want to do it

Mike Brcic:

So I can spend a couple minutes just walking you through the system. Yeah. It started with making a big database of the people that I want to stay in touch with, the relationships that I want to nurture. And then from there, I have sort of three options for connecting with people. It’s either a phone or a zoom call, a meeting up for coffee or a lunch. And those are obviously different levels of commitment, both on my part and the other person’s part. And so relationships that I really want to invest in, I want to meet up with them for lunch. And so then I go through Airtable and each of those relationships, I kind of score it. And probably some people are going to be listening like, wait, I only made the zoom call. Why didn’t, part of it too is geographical. If somebody lives on the other side of town, I don’t necessarily want to use up half my day or make them use up half their day to come for lunch with me.

So if you’re listening to this and you only got an invite for, that might be part of the reason and other factors as well. But then I have a full-time assistant, I ask her to reach out to them and say, I used to have her kind of posing as me as me, but I want to focus my time on the connection with them, not the mechanics of setting up the connections and whatnot. So it can come across a little bit weird. His assistant is reaching out to me, I’m too big for my britches or something like that. But it really stems from I want to focus my time on being fully present with people and spending time with them rather than emailing back and forth or whatever else is required. So then she reaches out to people and they have a link that they can pick a time in my calendar for a call, a coffee, lunch, whatever.

And that’s all done in Mixmax, but you can use Calendly or some other appointment software. And then when we meet up, I record that in the spreadsheet we met up on June 5th, for instance. And then I can see in my spreadsheet when’s the last time I got together with these people and if too much time has passed. And I have all these filters by dates so that if somebody, I met up with somebody in the last couple months, they’ll disappear from a particular view, but then they’ll pop back up when two months has elapsed or three months or whatever. I have it set up. And so it’s a very systemized thing, and it sounds like a very robotic way to approach relationships. But the end result is I’m continually staying in touch with the people that I want to stay in touch with. And when I’m with them, it’s not robotic.

We’re just having a wonderful coffee conversation lunch or whatever. And so I’ve system about systematized the part which is just about the setup and making it happen, and so that my time can be focused on presence with them. And again, I really think this is, it’s both personally really fulfilling. It is socially fulfilling. People I like to think value their time with me because I can give them the gift to my presence and we can nurture our friendship. And it’s also professionally rewarding because when I spend time with people and I show them that I’m thinking specifically my members, when I spend time with them and show them that I, I’m thinking about them and I care about them and I’m curious about their lives and how I can contribute to them, then they tend to really value the connection to the wayfinders community and want to stay part of it. So I would say that takes up a good 50% of my time. It’s just connections with people of my work time, and I consider that the most valuable way I can spend my time.

Ella Magers, MSW:

I absolutely love that and it, it’s resonating so much with me right now because as an introvert and somebody who can get very caught in details of the day-to-day and the work and figuring out what to prioritize, I mean, that makes perfect sense. And I love your method, and I’m totally going to work doing the air table thing, Mike. Thank you.

Mike Brcic:

That’s great. Right on.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, absolutely. And one other thing that I wanted to touch on before we start to wrap things up is the integration process. I want to head back to Wayfinders and these trips and having breakthroughs along the way and everything people are experiencing on those journeys and then coming back to life in the same situation, the same environment, the same home, the same work, but from a different place. How do you handle that integration process? How do you support people in having this be a sustainable change or transformation?

Mike Brcic:

Yeah, it’s a really good question. And that’s really occupied a lot of my thinking over the last little while because people can have a profound breakthrough on an event like that or on a plant medicine journey and then go back into their everyday context and nothing really changes. And so one of the things I do at the conclusion of our events, we do this final exercise, and there’s numerous elements that I don’t need to touch on, but one of them is getting people to just summarize up to three different actions they would like to take. And these could be either habit they want to commit to or a goal that they want to commit to, or even a difficult conversation that they need to have. And sometimes that insight is like they get a powerful insight about a conversation that they need to have that they’ve been avoiding for years or maybe decades.

And so I get them to write that down at my events. People are broken up into these smaller groups, and I call them these smaller groups, typically three to four people. They’re called Moai, and it’s, it’s named after this. A moai is a small group of people. It’s this system on the island of Okinawa and Japan where often people are put in these groups as children, and these MOA will endure for decades and even into their old age. And Okinawa is one of the world’s blue zones where people live very, very long lives far greater than the average. And when people started researching Okinawa, they discovered that one of the things that they believe really strongly contributed to this were these strong social ban bonds that people maintained into their eighties, nineties, even into their hundreds. So at my events, I put people into these moi, and a lot of the exercises will happen in these smaller groups and some very intimate conversations.

And then when they’ve, at the conclusion event, when they’ve written down those three things that they want to commit to, then they stay in touch with their moi and that they have follow-up and they give support and accountability from that group and going in the weeks and months after the event. And we also do follow-up calls. Also, I’ve really focused on the last year on building out an ongoing community. So we have lots of events both here in Toronto and online and workshops and connection calls and dinners and all stuff like that so that people can maintain their connection to the community and they can keep walking that journey with these people at their side. So it’s an ongoing process of just understanding the human journey and understanding human behavior and how does change happen and all these things.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah. And how many of the people that go on one trip come back and do a second?

Mike Brcic:

Oh, it is. It’s really high. These days. A typical event is three quarters to up to 80 or 90% repeat Wow people. So I have some very loyal customers, and my events for 2024 are just about sold out already, and I just announced them a few weeks ago, and I may do more, but right now I’m committed to just doing two a year. I think once people experience that feeling of deep connection with other people and with themselves, they want to continue that. And when I have a lot of people coming back, I just love the sort of enduring community aspect of that where it’s just a lot of the people just becoming really deep friends and staying connected. And so then when we travel to another part of the world, it’s like a bunch of old friends coming together to experience the beauty of another culture in another part of the world.

Ella Magers, MSW:

That’s beautiful. So what’s next for you? Do you have these two trips a year? What are your dreams beyond continuing with that?

Mike Brcic:

Well, more immediately, I’m off to Mongolia in October. We’re going to be in far Western Mongolia, and we’re going to be with a nomadic family for nine days, and we’re going to be accompanying their fall migration, which is going to be, it’s kind of the wildest event I’ve done yet where essentially there’s 30 of us going and we’re basically building a mini burning man kind of camp in the Mongolian wilderness, and then breaking it down and packing it back up every night for six nights during the migration. Parts of that’s going to be wild, most logistically difficult thing I’ve ever done, and I’m really looking forward to it as well. And I know all kinds of things will go wrong and still be magical in the process, so that that’s got me really excited. But the big dream, or the big goal, which has been ongoing thing over the last couple years is my wife and I are really interested in purchasing a piece of wilderness outside of Toronto and building out a retreat center, and just a place where, I guess to bring it back to how we started this conversation with that Ram Doss quote, it’s a place where we can walk each other home and we can connect with each other, we can connect with the wilderness, we can connect with ourselves.

So we’re in the process of raising the funds. We’ve got most of the funds available for it, and then it’s just matter of finding the right piece of land and something that speaks to us. And so I’m hoping for a little bit of magic to guide that process and the right place will just come to us.

Ella Magers, MSW:

That’s so exciting and spectacular and oh my gosh, the Mongolia. Wow. How long does it take to plan something like that? And yeah, work those logistics out.

Mike Brcic:

That’s been going on for about a year and a half. Wow. I went there last October to do a test run, and I went and met with the family and spent some time out there. Unfortunately, when I went last time, it was on the tail end of an event in Bhutan and I kind of, between the event in Bhutan and then the long travel to get to Western Mongolia, we ended up, because the flight schedule didn’t align, we ended up driving all the way across Mongolia, which is about 30 hours, and then the last five hours of it in this military vehicle to get way out there. And then by the time I got there, I got quite sick, and so I didn’t really get a chance and I just was taking lots of ibuprofen and drugs to get through it and go on these hikes and check everything out.

But I didn’t actually really get to enjoy it. I was in such a rough state. And so I’m looking forward to going back and hopefully being healthy and with these 29 other people in tow, been a lot. I have somebody in Mongolia who’s handling all the logistics, and it’s been a lot of conversations just even sorting out the right gear and the right stoves and all kinds of stuff. And it’s, it’s going to be a big undertaking. There’s 30 of us and there’s about, I think 16 support staff to make it happen, and it’s going to be this big wacky, wild traveling caravan across the Mongolian wilderness.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Oh, incredible. Wow. Well, Mike, thank you so much for sharing all of this that you shared today and for the work you’re doing. And I do see that snowball effect really intimately working with small groups of people and how that can then snowball and have huge ripple effects around the globe. And yeah, it’s amazing work. Thank you.

Mike Brcic:

Thank you. And thank you for the work that you do as well. Oh,

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yes, my pleasure. All right. Well, we will put all the links in the show notes. What’s the best place for people to go find out more about your work and what you do?

Mike Brcic:

Yeah, the Wayfinders website is a good place to start. It’s way finders.com w a yen finders.com.

Ella Magers, MSW:

All right. Thanks a lot, Mike.

Mike Brcic:

Thank you so much.

Ella Magers, MSW:

All right.

Mike Brcic:

Back,

Ella Magers, MSW:

We survived.

Mike Brcic:

Hopefully you can edit out some of those glitchy parts and get enough of something useful.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, for sure. We’ve, we’ve got a editor who will figure all that out, help out.

Mike Brcic:

Well, thank you so much for the conversation.

Ella Magers, MSW:

Yeah, it was great. I really appreciate you and the work you’re doing and hope to one day be able to join you.

Mike Brcic:

That would be great. All right. Thank you so much. I’ll

Ella Magers, MSW:

Keep you posted. Okay. Bye bye-Bye.