Hey! I’m Mike Leip! So great to meet you!
Just a man on a mission to create a meaningful fantasy world and turn it into a billion-dollar entertainment franchise.
First, here are a few things about me:Â
➤ 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)
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Quick Little Backstory:
A few years ago, I burned out… really fucking hard.
While working on my ecom startup, 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 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’s something you choose.
So I created a process to help me choose a meaningful direction in life; to choose my life’s purpose. That process led me to the decision to launch an entertainment studio with the hopes of creating stories that positively impact people and culture.
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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.
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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 in to any impulsive thought (no self discipline)
➤ Among other things…
The combination of these bad habits was completely destroying my mental health.
I knew I needed to make some changes. So 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 (get my system for reducing screen time here)
➤ I’m learning how to sit with discomfort and make room for the full spectrum of life’s experiences
➤ I’m learning how to slow the fuck down
➤ I’m learning how to be disciplined
➤ I started working diligently on my first storyworld franchise
In short, I committed to SLOW LIVING.
All of this is still a work in progress, but holy shit things are way better than they’ve been! I’m committed to this path for the long haul. With this foundation of slow living in place, I am actively pursuing my long term goal:
I’m Going To Create a $1 Billion Dollar Entertainment Studio
I want to create fantasy worlds with 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 care deeply about improving our collective mental health, protecting the natural world as well as doing what I can to combat the growing trends of division and cynicism in our culture. I believe that storytelling is going to be an integral part of accomplishing any of this.
So why is the goal $1B?
Well, because impact is hard to measure. I look at it like this: the only way for an entertainment company like this to be worth $1B, is if it 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.
I’d love to have you along for this journey!
If you’ve ever wanted to build something meaningful, sign up for the Modern Creator newsletter so I can send you weekly updates about what I’m learning on the (slow) road to a billion!
