Nothing Is Too High: Mike Schill on Sales, Personal Branding, Discipline and Building a Legacy

Some people set goals. Mike Schill sets targets. Then he writes them down every morning.

A New York Times bestselling book. Featured in Forbes and People Magazine. Homes in New York, London and LA. Owning a baseball team and a football team. Building a multi-billion-dollar organization. And helping provide homes for 10 million foster children.

Oh, and when he dies, he wants his name to mean enough that people stop what they’re doing when they hear the news.

So when Mike says:

“I don’t think that anything is too high.”

You get the feeling he really means it.

On this episode of The 6IXCAST, Waruna sits down with Mike Schill, CEO and Co-Founder of Full Circle Agency, former number-one producer for Grant Cardone and former Division 1 athlete at Florida State University, for a conversation about ambition, sales, personal branding, discipline, leadership and the uncomfortable business of actually doing the work.

Mike’s story moves from adoption and foster care to elite athletics, medical sales, Grant Cardone’s high-performance world and entrepreneurship.

But underneath all of it is a remarkably consistent philosophy:

Think bigger. Adapt quickly. Learn the game. Build the discipline. And then do the damn thing.

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First, Learn to Adapt

Mike’s story doesn’t begin in a boardroom.

He was born in Georgia and adopted at a young age after his biological parents couldn’t afford the situation at the time. His childhood then took him through a range of environments, including Milwaukee, Chicago, Knoxville and Melbourne, Florida.

Looking back, Mike sees those different environments as an advantage.

“I think that allowed me to be able to adapt in a multitude of different environments.”

He describes himself as a chameleon.

He can walk into an executive boardroom and speak the language of business, then move into a completely different environment and communicate just as naturally.

Because, for Mike, communication is not simply about knowing different languages.

It’s about knowing people.

“You gotta speak somebody’s language.”

What do they see? What do they know? How do they communicate?

That ability to adapt would later become one of his biggest advantages in sales, leadership and entrepreneurship.

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Then Came Division 1 Football

Education was everything in Mike’s family. At Florida State University, he studied biology and exercise science while playing Division 1 football.

And apparently, football wasn’t enough.

There was inorganic chemistry. Human biochemistry. Calculus. Physics. A fraternity. Student government. Training.

Looking back, even Mike seems slightly amazed that he managed it all.

“Quite frankly, I'm like, damn, I don't even know I did all that.”

But there was a bigger lesson underneath the workload:

“Education is everything, but education with application is how you actually get results.”

Then football ended sooner than expected. A knee injury forced Mike to make a quick pivot. That pivot sent him into sales.

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From Number One to “Bored”

Mike started in orthopedic and pharmaceutical sales. Within two and a half years, he had become number one in the company.

Then he got bored. That boredom turned out to be useful.

One of his colleagues — his “right-hand guy” and fellow top performer — moved into Grant Cardone’s organization and kept telling Mike he needed to make the move too.

For six months, Mike ignored him. Eventually, curiosity won. He called.

“Shit, let me go ahead and see what this thing is all about.”

Five years later, Mike had become Cardone’s number-one producer. And those five years were less like a conventional job and more like an accelerated business education.

He describes working Sunday through Sunday, attending 150–160 events a year, speaking in front of audiences of 5,000–7,000 people, teaching sales and business growth and sitting across the table from billionaires.

He even recalls selling out a 35,000-person Marlins event around Super Bowl weekend.

His summary of the entire experience?

“It was five years of working alongside an absolute savage.”

But Mike wasn’t simply learning how to sell. He was watching how an organization could operate at scale.

How leaders create intensity. How teams become obsessed with targets. How culture becomes part of the machine. And eventually, he realized it was time to build his own.

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Your Name or Somebody Else’s?

After five years of building someone else’s organization, Mike reached a simple conclusion:

“As opposed to growing somebody else's last name, I gotta grow mine.”

That became the next chapter.

Around a year and a half ago, Mike and his partners started Full Circle Agency, a South Florida retention marketing firm specializing in email, text messaging, subscription and rewards programmes designed to turn existing customers into repeat buyers.

The goal wasn’t modest.

“The goal with this organization is to grow into a multi-billion-dollar organization under five years.”

Then comes the part that sounds very Mike:

“That is the goal, that is the target, that is exactly what we’re gonna do. And we ain’t stopping until we get it done.”

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Nothing Is Too High

So, how big is too big? Mike doesn’t really entertain the question.

“I don't think that anything is too high.”

For him, the real limitation isn't the size of the goal. It’s belief. And exposure.

If you’ve never seen something, experienced it or met someone who has done it, how are you supposed to know that it’s possible?

“It’s hard to know something that you don’t know exists.”

That idea matters because Mike believes people often put their own ceiling on their lives before anyone else gets the chance to.

But belief is only the first half. The second half is much harder. Discipline.

Mike’s test is brutally simple: at the end of the day, look yourself in the mirror and ask whether you actually did the things required to move towards the future you say you want.

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s absolutely not.

Either way, you own it.

“It’s belief in discipline.”

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The Morning Starts Before the Business Does

Mike doesn’t leave his goals floating around as vague motivational statements. He writes them down every morning. Then he trains.

Not a casual 30-minute session either. His workouts can last an hour, whether he’s at the track or in the gym, pushing himself to the point where he's nearly throwing up.

Then comes food. Personal development. Sales training. Meditation. And a calendar planned the night before. 

All before the first business meeting at 9 a.m.

The philosophy behind it?

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

Coming from elite sport, Mike understands preparation. You don’t wait until game day to decide you’re going to get serious. You prepare before the game. And that same philosophy runs through his approach to sales teams.

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Don’t Throw People Into the Fire

Want your sales team to perform? Give them a playbook.

Mike doesn’t believe someone who has never sold should suddenly be expected to close major deals.

Instead, develop the skill progressively. Start someone with appointment setting. Let them learn how to make the call and get the appointment. Then let them listen to demos. Have them write down the demo structure and the objections that come up.

After they’ve spent enough time learning, let them start doing demos alongside someone experienced. Eventually, they develop the ability to take a prospect from appointment to close.

That’s how you build capability.

Because:

“You can’t throw somebody in the fire unless you prepared them to be in the fire.”

The sports analogy is obvious, but powerful. An athlete can be the next person called into the game because they’ve been training every day. They know the playbook. They understand what to do.

So Mike’s advice is simple:

“Give your people a playbook. Because if you don’t have a playbook, how can you win ballgames? It’s impossible.”

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Sales Is a Process, Not a Personality Trait

Mike’s time in the Cardone organization taught him something he considers fundamental: Sales is everything.

A business can generate all the leads in the world. But those leads don’t matter if the person handling them can’t convert them.

The salesperson needs to know how to:

• get through to the right person
• set an appointment with the decision-maker
• conduct fact-finding
• overcome objections
• run a strong demo
• present the value
• trial close
• transition into negotiations
• close
• follow up
• support the customer
• ask for referrals

Each stage is a skill. And each one takes practice.

Mike’s point is particularly important for business owners who blame poor results entirely on lead quality.

“You gotta learn how to set the table.”

If the decision-maker isn’t there, the prospect doesn’t know why they’re on the call, they don’t know what you’re offering and the necessary information hasn’t been provided, you’re not really walking into a properly prepared sales conversation.

You’re hoping. And hope isn’t a sales strategy.

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Expect the “No”

Mike doesn’t expect every conversation to become a deal. His average is around one deal for every eight to ten demos. That means rejection isn’t a surprise. It’s part of the maths.

“You gotta expect the challenges. That’s half the battle.”

Knowing that you’ll get hung up on, lose deals and hear ‘not right now’ makes it easier not to become emotional about every outcome.

The important thing is understanding the process and staying in the game. Because someone who doesn’t buy today might buy in three months. And that brings us to one of Mike’s favourite parts of sales: follow-up.

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Follow-Up Doesn't Mean “Just Checking In”

A generic email is not the only way to follow up. Mike’s list is much more creative.

Connect with someone on LinkedIn. Invite them to an event. Send a useful tutorial. Let them subscribe to your newsletter. Send something to their office. Even send Starbucks. Or simply show up, shake their hand and don’t ask for the sale.

The point is to stay relevant without becoming annoying. Then, once someone becomes a customer, the responsibility doesn’t disappear.

Mike believes you need to stay close to your customers, anticipate problems and deal with issues immediately when they appear. And sometimes, the most important thing is simply listening.

“Customer services people just want to be heard when it’s all said and done.”

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The Leader Sets the Temperature

Mike’s experience at Cardone also shaped his thinking about leadership.

It was an intense culture. Training every morning. Role-playing. Company-wide readings. Targets. Graphs. Metrics. Call times. Deal flow. Regular breakdowns of demos and phone calls.

Mike knew his numbers several times a day. And if someone couldn’t keep up?

“You were cut.”

But there’s an important distinction here. Mike doesn’t believe leaders can simply demand exceptional performance and call it leadership.

The organization has to create an environment where people can win.

“You cannot expect somebody to be exceptional if you don’t provide an exceptional environment for them to be exceptional in.”

That’s why training and onboarding matter. That’s why culture matters. That’s why targets need to be clear. And that’s why accountability has to start with leadership.

Mike shares a principle from one of his mentors, Brandon Dawson:

“Any single problem you have in your business is not because of your employees; it’s because of yourself, because you led the person in the business.”

There’s a sharp idea underneath that. Business owners can’t expect everyone to operate exactly like them. If they did, they’d have 25 business owners instead of a team.

The leader’s job is to build the environment, hire the right people, give them the tools and then hold them accountable.

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Stop Trying to Make Everything Perfect

This might be one of the most useful takeaways for anyone starting a personal brand. You don’t need to produce a Hollywood film.

“You’re not Steven Spielberg. You’re not gonna shoot a movie.”

Your content doesn’t need to look like a movie on day one.

Mike himself invests heavily in content production. But he sees that as a long-term investment rather than a prerequisite for starting.

The quality improves as you go. The communication improves. The production improves. The audience grows. But none of that happens if you never publish the first thing.

“The first thing is just to take action and just put it out there.”

And there’s another rule: provide value.

Mike’s view is that content needs to educate or entertain. A photo of what you ate last night? Probably not useful. A random picture of your dog? Probably not useful.

A useful lesson about customer acquisition, retention or building a business? Now you’ve given someone a reason to pay attention.

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Build the Audience Before You Need It

Mike isn’t building his personal brand solely to sell Full Circle Agency today.

He’s thinking five years ahead. What happens if he launches another company? Writes a book? Moves into another industry? Starts another project?

If millions of people already know him, he doesn’t have to begin from zero. That’s why he keeps coming back to attention.

“Eyeballs are the only currency that matters in this world.”

Mike points to Jake and Logan Paul as an example of what can happen when a massive personal audience is attached to a product.

The broader lesson is simple: build the relationship with the audience first.

Then the audience can travel with you.

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But What’s Actually Driving Mike?

Money matters. Revenue matters. Responsibilities matter. Mike is open about that.

But those aren’t the only things getting him out of bed. Two motivations stand above the rest.

The first is his name.

“I want my last name to be remembered.”

He wants the Schill name to carry credibility five or six generations from now.

The second is bigger than his own name. Mike knows that the world he grew up in wasn’t always equal.

He speaks openly about the opportunities that people from different backgrounds have historically been denied and believes that those who now have opportunities have a responsibility to use them.

That’s part of why one of his goals is to help provide homes for 10 million foster children.

And that’s why his definition of success is not simply about money. It’s about impact.

“Because if you ain't having an impact like that, bro, what the hell are you doing?”

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Listen to the Full Conversation

Hear Mike Schill and Waruna go deeper into sales, personal branding, leadership, discipline, entrepreneurship, ambition and building a legacy on The 6IXCAST.

Watch the full episode and hear the stories, lessons and hard-earned perspective behind Mike’s approach to building something that lasts.

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