193: Mimi Ikonn | What the Life of an Influencer Is Really Like

193: Mimi Ikonn - What the Life of an Influencer Is Really Like

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. Influencers and the influencer economy have always been interesting to me. There seem to be a few sides to the whole thing. Influencers are Instagram or YouTube personalities just for the sake of attention and others that build influence as part of a real business, a window into their life that people really relate to instead of being simply aspirational. Today, I interviewed my good friend, Mimi Ikonn. I've known her and her husband for years, and they're very unique and that what you see online is what you get in real life. They've built successful businesses off of their ability to connect with their audience in a way that I've never really seen before, at least not in a way that is actually -- I hate this word, but I'm going to use it anyway -- authentic and real without the pendulum swinging too far in one direction. This episode was an interesting look into the lives of people who have a piece of the public eye but managed to stay happy and fulfilled along the way. And I hope you'll take something out of our conversation here today.

[00:00:59] I've got a great network of friends, I've got a great network of business relationships, and I do blend the two. And I'm teaching you how to do those very specific tactical ways that aren't icky in our Six-Minute Networking course, which is, of course, free, jordanharbinger.com/course is where that is. I would love it if you would try that, see how it changes your life and then hit me up, jordanharbinger.com/course. All right, here's Mimi Ikonn.

[00:01:23] Does this come naturally for you? Like did you one day just go, "I really like being on camera and talking to people." It seems like an unnatural thing for anyone to do.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:01:32] I think public speaking for me was something like I've always wanted to do. I just get energized by people. Camera, I didn't know until I did it. And again, like my first video was on a laptop. I was just looking into the camera.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:01:46] With the camera going like up this.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:01:47] Hair tutorial, like, "Hey guys," and the quality was crap, but the videos still got a quarter of million views over time. But then obviously, we invested in DSLR cameras and then just like to our channel to a whole different level.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:01] That's incredible. And I think the difference that I see between you, Alex, your husband and other people being like influencers is that I know you guys in real life, I have for quite a few years. You guys, the positivity, the happiness, all that stuff is pretty real, right? Like I'm sure you guys have the stuff that happens to any normal human. But I remember my wife Jen showing, she was scrolling through Instagram, I don't know, three-plus years ago. And I said, "Wait a minute, who is that?" And she goes, "Oh, that's Mimi Ikonn." And I thought --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:02:36] Was right after we met?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:37] It was right after we met. I was like, "I think I know her from somewhere." And she's like, "What? Where?" And then I was like, "Yeah, that's that guy from Mastermind Talks." And then I thought, "Oh my gosh, yeah, that's so you know them from something." And she's like, "Yeah, I just followed them. I liked their energy, that happiness, all that stuff." And I said, "Yeah, what are the odds of her following somebody that I just met." And then you kept popping up, you kept popping up in the feed. But then I met other influencers on Instagram and YouTube and I thought, "Oh, this is not the same sauce."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:03:09] Yes. That happens quite a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:10] All the time and all that energy.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:03:12] I would say more actually.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:13] Yeah.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:03:14] Like sometimes people --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:15] I think you're right,

Mimi Ikonn: [00:03:15] -- are very extroverted on camera. You get the sense that they would really be into people. And they're like very excited and upbeat and you meet them in person and they're like very calm and chill. So it's almost like they have to get themselves like hype up for the camera. And then they do that but in reality, they're just a very different person, which is nothing wrong with that. But I guess people use different strategies to do this thing called YouTube and Instagram and all this social.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:44] I think you're right. But I think also the part of it is people are playing to what they think other people want to see and that's much harder. That's acting. I'm not good at that. I don't know about you guys.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:03:54] I'm not either.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:54] I'm not an actor so it's easier to just be yourself and everyone says that's the best advice. But not many of the people that I've met who have big channels or small channels or do any kind of video, not many people actually have that. And so I thought that was really interesting because you seem to be super happy. The couple we see on Instagram does closely match what I've seen in real life and I've found that to be the exception rather than the rule. And I was really disappointed because I thought, "Wow if I like them I'm going to love these other people." And they can either be really not interested in talking with their fans at all, which I think is unfortunate. They can be really quiet. I think, "Wow, it must take you like 400 takes to be this cool guy if in real life you're like a bag of rocks."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:04:40] So it's a bit of a disappointing experience, to say the least.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:43] It is, but you don't seem to have that problem. And kudos, first of all, for being real and also being positive in real life.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:04:50] It's one of the biggest values we have.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:52] It seems to be, and it also seems to be kind of scary because you also do share some of the downsides and so. very personal things.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:05:00] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:00] How do you strike that balance? Because it would be risky to be like, "Hey, hair stuff, also here's this problem in my life." And people will be like, "Oh, I don't know if I want to be in the middle of that. I was just looking for hair extensions." But that's not what happened with your business. It was the opposite.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:05:17] Exactly. I think what people really like in other people, especially the people they follow on Instagram and YouTube, is relatability and I think what happens to a lot of the social media stars, whether they're on YouTube or Instagram is they get big and then they forget what got them to that point. It is the fact that they have shared those struggles that they had or problems or just their journey. But the journey is what really attracts people to them. It's the fact that they're real people and not just somebody who travels the world and they drive this car and wear these designer clothes. So that's something I always think about and to me, that's very important. At the end of the day, no matter what success I obtain, no matter what books I write, or things they create, it's not just about me. Actually, it's not about me ever. It's always about the connection I have with the audience. The reason I am here today is because people find me relatable. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here and that's, I would believe everybody who is on social media. But I think at some point people forget that and they just make it all about the stuff that they attained and I think that's when they start going downhill.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:31] I would love to believe that too, because it is a little disappointing to see, especially in the bro side of it. I see that. I shouldn't say I follow that. I see that more than I did see, let's say, beauty and hair videos.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:06:45] Naturally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:45] Of course, it's YouTube selecting what I see generally or Instagram. But I find that a lot of the content generally is aspirational. So you see a guy in front of a private jet that they flew once --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:06:57] Right, I think I know who you're talking about.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:58] Yeah. I mean there's a lot of these guys, right? They all look the same. One has bigger muscles than the other. That's a primary difference. The other one wears glasses like that's it. But like you see like seven cars. So you see aspirational, and you guys also do aspirational, but it's different. The thing that's aspirational about your content is, "Oh, they're happy with each." "Look, there's them and their kid." And "Look, Oh they're in this place reading," not gambling or like in a pool with 17 models.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:07:28] That would be a little weird.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:29] That would be weird. There's an audience for that. But it would be weird. You managed to take the aspirational quality and just make it about the life that you actually created, which is harder. It's harder to create a life I think where you're actually happy and then showcase that rather than renting a bunch of cars and being like, "I'm cool and happy. Take the pictures cause I'm, I want to get out of here." And I think that's very admirable and I think a lot of people watch you to escape their real lives or maybe to augment, but definitely also to escape. Do you feel pressure at all to conform to what those people are looking for?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:08:04] I would say there's definitely pressure. Sometimes I feel it, but for me, the most important thing as a creator is to stay true to myself.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:14] How do you do that when somebody just wants to see more of one thing than the other?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:08:19] Yeah. I just check in with myself to be honest on the regular, especially where I catch myself thinking like, "Oh, if I just did this, I know it would get more likes or more views." Because I do a lot of inner work. I meditate, journal once in a while.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:08:37] The five-minute journal?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:08:37] But I think meditation, well it's a very easy, simple journaling. But like even sometimes deeper journaling, like doing vision journaling. That's something Alex and I do to just really reflect on your values and like, why are you here? What are you doing this for? So this is the point where I grow myself. It's like if I feel disappointed in myself or if I feel like I could really cheapen the system and I clearly know how to, I've been in the game way too long, I just say, what's the point? Like why are you really doing this? Is it to get fame? Because if that's why you're doing this, then you should just stop now. It's all for the ego. And for me it's just not, you know, I draw my joy and fulfillment from knowing that the information and the content that I put out can change people's lives, can improve them, make them happier, make them see that there's a different world for them that's possible and available because Alex and I are the underdogs. We come from a very different world. Even now we're sitting here --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:39] We're getting there for sure.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:09:40] And a beautiful space, this lovely flat and you know, one of the best areas of London. How the hell did I get here? Like I got to pinch myself literally once in a while and be like, "Girl like this is crazy like you are living your dream life." But I always remind myself where I come from. I come from a small town Azerbaijani, and not most people don't even know where that is. And my parents had very little, my dad was unemployed for years. Our grandfather used to support us and it was a very difficult time, but we always had the love of parents and we always had the freedom to be ourselves. So even though I had very little financially, I was free to dream and it is that freedom that allowed me and self-belief, always the self-belief that allows me to believe to get here. And like if I can do it, I don't believe that I am more talented, definitely more beautiful or I don't believe that I have anything special. Maybe just the belief that I can do it. That's it. I really believe that's what sets people apart. The people who do it and become successful and the people who never try or fail and then stop trying is that they stopped believing that it's possible.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:55] When you first started you must have had another job to support yourself.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:10:58] Well not really because what happened is like Alex and I, we’re both forced by life into this situation where we met working in a bank. So we had corporate jobs and I always knew it's not something I want to do long term. It's just something I happened to be into because I did co-op in high school.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:18] Is it a bank in Canada that you work on?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:11:18] Yes, one of the big four banks in Canada. So that's how I met Alex one day. He just walked into our branch and my bank manager was like, "This guy also speaks Russian." I was like, "Great, he's going to steal all my customers." But obviously, that's not how it happened. We're really connected and we're connected on the vision of the dreams we both had. So having the freedom to travel and see the world, having our own businesses and that's how our friendship grew.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:45] Did you work in the same branch?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:11:47] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:49] I was going to say how did that come out of like one conversation when he walks in.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:11:52] No, no, he was introduced to me because he got the job that day and he was just signing the contract. And I was like, "Oh, interesting guy. Okay."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:59] Interesting guy that was your first thought.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:12:01] Yes. You know, I remember that moment like so vividly. It's really crazy because obviously now we've had this whole journey of starting a family, creating a business, selling the business, doing so many things, and growing as two human beings, which I truly believe I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:12:26] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Mimi Ikonn. We'll be right back.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:08] Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways for Mimi Ikonn. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. And thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all the latest episodes in your podcast player as they're released so you don't miss a single thing. Now back to our show with Mimi Ikonn.

[00:15:44] So you had the job at the bank supporting yourself, and then what made you decide one day to go, "Hey look, I'm going to make a video about hair or whatever and upload it to Instagram dot, dot, dot, this is going to be my career."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:15:56] So this is quite a funny and interesting story because Alex always had this dream of becoming an investment banker. I didn't really care what he does as long as he's happy. And then one day he gets fired and he gets fired for having a side hustle. He was selling cars, he was transporting cars from the US to Russia and like making a commission on that. And he was using his work email when he was free at work, I guess. You know, there's always 15 minutes here and there to do the deals and the corporate security I guess followed him for a while and then they had like a stack of emails and phone calls basically. And that was it for his corporate job at CIBC. Of course, he could have applied somewhere else. But it was a good point because in that moment he realized that for a corporate world he was just a number, like a cog in a machine. Like nobody cared. He was able to not only meet his targets at the bank but exceed them and also have a side hustle. So obviously --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:16:56] Promote this guy.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:16:58] Yeah, like promote. How can we utilize you more if you can do these many things? And he was going to school full time. I forgot that he was like 19, 20 I can't remember like 21 maybe at the most. So that's when he got fired and when he got fired, I knew I'm not going to stay there because I already knew that banking is not something I want to do. I just had fun working there because we had a good team and I had a good manager and we had fun working together, but I just didn't see this as a full-time career. And then Alex and I were just talking because he wanted to try becoming like a social media person. This is how many years ago? Gosh, like 12 years ago. Like Twitter, just launch.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:17:37] Who was even thinking about social media?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:17:37] Yeah, he was. And he was telling me to start -- actually I already had started a blog, like doing fashion stuff because I was always into beauty and fashion. And then he kept saying like, "You should start making videos." But at that point, I wasn't ready. So I went to school to get certified as an image consultant. And then I started practicing that. And my dream at the time was to be a fashion stylist. That sounds so glamorous, but in fact, unless you were living in New York or maybe Paris and Toronto, you're just going to be basically styling boring shoots for banks, travel agencies, doctors. I don't know like --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:13] Cranky old dudes --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:18:15] -- really corporate jobs.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:15] -- who shops for clothes that fit.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:18:17] And it's boring stuff. You know, you're not styling fashion shoots, you're styling regular people for commercials. So I very quickly realized this is not going to work. And then also like returning bags and bags of clothes after all these shoots. I literally would walk into these retail stores. The people just don't like me there. So I remember calling Alex one day and at this time Alex was listening to Four-Hour Work Week and I was listening to it as well and I was like, I don't see myself doing this. This doesn't feel like I own a business because I'm serving my customers and also if I get sick or if I'm traveling like I realized that if you are in a service business, you're not really a business person. Like if you want to have a real business, you have to have a product business or maybe you're selling a course or something, but basically, you want to make money when you're sleeping.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:05] Yeah, you want to make money while you're sleeping.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:07] I became aware of that and I was like, especially if I'm starting a family, I want to have the freedom to be present with my children or child and how am I going to be able to do that if I have a service business where I still have to serve my customers. So I just realized that wasn't for me. He agreed with me. But then we were reading the book, the Four-Hour Work Week and we didn't the muse.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:26] Didn't have the muse meaning like?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:28] Yeah. The muse, basically that inspiration of what the business will be. And then at this time when we're broke, he was fired and I decided to quit the bank.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:38] Good timing.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:39] Yeah, I was like, "I'm just going to quit."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:40] He gets fired and you quit.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:41] Seriously.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:42] We'll figure it out.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:42] So great and getting married. Right? Like he proposed to me and we're both broke. I'm like, well --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:47] He proposed while you guys were up broke after he got fired and you quit.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:50] Yes. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:52] You guys got the timing nailed.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:19:52] In a lovely place using your credit cards to get there. But we were in Positano, this was like, gosh, 11 and a half years ago probably, and he just went down on his knees and he's like, "Will you marry me?" And I just knew he's the right person and we were both broken young and full of dreams, but it really didn't matter because I always felt like at the end of the day it's about being with the right person, not about having all these perfect things in life figured out. So I said, "Yes." And I said --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:20] Okay, but what did your parents think? They were like, "This guy doesn't have a job. He's 22 or whatever."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:20:27] You know, I never even thought about what they thought, to be honest. I mean now as a parent because I have a child, I feel a bit like, "Oh, that was very selfish of me." But they like Alex and my parents are very good people. So they supported that relationship even though they did think we were crazy. When we told them we're going to start a hair extension business. They're like, "What? What are you talking about?" And also the time we were listening to Tony Robbins. That's another funny story. Are you familiar with Tony's stuff? So Tony talks about like gratefulness walks. So we would go on these gratefulness walks and basically talk about all these things where we're grateful for what did exist in the present time, but also all these things that we're grateful for that we want it to manifest. So for example, we'd say things like, we have our own business and we'll travel the world.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:21:14] Then, you know, we'd do motivational speaking or all these things that we would want to do in reality, but obviously that was not our reality. And my dad would call me and say like, 'What are you guys doing?" And I'd be like, "We're doing gratefulness walks." And there would be a long pause.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:21:28] I can hear his eyes rolling over.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:21:30] And I understand him now. Like before, maybe I didn't as much as now as a parent. "Like you guys really need to start looking for a job. I'm a little worried." And I said, "We'll figure it out. Don't worry." And you know, we did. I'm so grateful. We were young and broke and in a way desperate. But because I do believe you have to be a little desperate to do something crazy as basically put all your savings annually and credit, and some kind of a crazy visa check that if you don't pay in six months, you're going to pay like 20% interest.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:04] Oh, the credit card. Yeah. I forgot about all that.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:22:07] You know, we'll put like 30,000 grand. That was like our initial investment to start this business, which was Luxy Hair. And in our first year, we made a million. And that like almost never happened.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:18] No, it does not happen. To make a million dollars in your first years of the business.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:22:20] It's like 0.000001 percent. So we'll always know how special this thing that we did was.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:29] Did you tell your parents how much money you made and what happened?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:22:33] I mean, we never really focused on the money.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:34] Of course, but you had to at some point.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:22:35] No, we didn't actually but they could tell we were doing well. My parents are very cool. So like they never really asked about this stuff and we're kind of like, don't like showing off.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:22:44] Of course, but at some point, they must have been like Alex's shipping cars to Russia. You guys made all this money, like what's going on? What are they really doing?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:22:52] No, we're shipping cars that were in the past. After the bank, he definitely stopped. But they knew what we were doing. But like, yeah, they were shocked. I think to this day they're still a bit shocked, how we were able to create something like this again with no knowledge of how to do this. Like we're all self-taught and also I'm a college dropout. So yeah, I mean expectations were probably really low.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:14] So they're just happy that you weren't living in their basement or something.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:23:17] Yeah, exactly. It turned out pretty well.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:21] I'm surprised that you guys stopped shipping the cars after you got fired. I feel like that's the time where you doubled down on shipping cars.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:23:30] I don't know why Alex stopped that. But yeah you have to ask Alex.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:30] I have to ask Alex at some point.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:23:31] That's a different interview.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:33] I know that you do answer some crazy, crazy questions. I mean I was searching through your channel and I was actually looking for the ones that you spoke of hacking the process. I was kind of looking for that. I was looking for titles like Alex throws a plate during a fight or something and there's nothing like that there. I'm surprised. Because any other YouTubers, it's always like, "You'll never believe what this famous person said and then the video is totally not about that. Yeah, it's garbage and your openness is really something that I think people do wrong a lot in videos and who am I to say this? But really I find that people who are really open tend to often be dramatic in a fake way. Like it's not real openness. It's acting and fakery.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:24:19] It's over-exaggeration.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:21] And ridiculous comedy and throwing food off your balcony and watching it explode or something.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:24:26] Yeah. I've heard of all that stuff. I just don't watch that personally. But I know it exists out there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:31] It does.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:24:31] And people are addicted to it. I just have so much to do in life. Who has the time?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:37] I agree. But it makes people like me go, "I'm never doing Instagram or YouTube," even though we are doing it right now.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:24:43] It saddens me actually. That's what gets --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:45] It lowers the bar tremendously. But your openness to something different. And one of the videos I was talking about when I came over was someone had asked you, I'm going to paraphrase here, "Do you feel self-conscious about your nipples showing when you go out without a bra?" I guess because of the baby at that point or do you just not wear bras? I don't know. That may be for --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:25:03] Maybe they noticed something in a vlog.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:06] Maybe. But you'll answer a question like this and instead of it being kind of gratuitous, it's like, "Okay, this is what people talk about with their friends," and you have that really dialed in. You told me before, you're pretending that the person's in the room with you. So is there a line or is it just whatever you talk about with your friends is fair game for your channel?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:25:27] I'd say I go as deep as I would go with a friend. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:31] That's an easy bar I think.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:25:32] Yes. Because if I were to meet any of my subscribers in person and they were to ask me that question, like I'm pretty much an open book. Like I don't have anything to hide. I am not attached to some idea of Mimi Ikonn that could be broken and destroyed. I'm a human that's always evolving and changing and the only thing I do know for sure is that I'm going to change. And I do always work on obviously changing towards the better.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:01] I feel like people will often meet me and my fear would be that they build something up in their mind and that I'm different from that, but I can't control that at all.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:26:12] Absolutely you can't.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:12] So I had to get over that over 12 years of doing videos.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:26:17] Wow, you've been doing it for long. That's amazing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:18] Yeah. But it's not easy. And I wonder, do you still feel the imposter syndrome of like, "Oh the one day this could all come crashing down and this was a dream"?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:26:27] I think more superficially, like let's say if I'm out and I'm not wearing any makeup and like I always want to, of course, present the best of myself or like I'm sick, I'm not wearing makeup and I'm sick on top of that and Alexa is here and she's crying and this person like, "Oh my God, I'm from Italy and it's so amazing to see you." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh. It's really not the best time," but I realize how special that moment is to them. And I also remember one time I met somebody famous author that I really liked before I met them because I had such a disappointing experience when I met them. You said some people you meet are very different persons. And I just stopped consuming his work after because I was so disappointed in that experience. And of course, I don't want to judge him just by that moment but it lingers. I still remember how I was treated and it was very hostile. So like I really always make sure that I do eye contact and I just do my best in the moment. Even if it's like 10 seconds of my interaction with them where I'm just sending the me that they know, the me that I know that might not be my momentary experience. Like I might be upset or sick or whatever in the moment but I just beam that to them, that light that they know and recognize. And then I say, "Sorry, I really have to go right now. I would love to stay and talk with you, but I really can't right now." And they usually understand.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:54] Yeah, I feel like it's an honor to meet anybody who's consumed my work and I'm sure you feel the same way.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:28:01] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:01] But I feel a little bit of pressure to be like the same person that they want to see or hear. And luckily I met my wife and the reason she went out with me, and she'll tell you this, is that she wanted to see if I was the same guy on the podcast as I am a real-life or the same person in real life as I am on the podcast. And that turned out to be true. But I also think, how many times have I not been that person because I'm buying noodles and I'm tired or whatever and someone sees you. I feel the need not to perform, but to give them what they want. And it took me years and years to get over that. Your format is more intimate. Podcasts and videos for me are fine, but you are in front of that. They're in bed watching. Talk about braless grocery shopping. So you have that all the time. And I wondered if that something that you had to get over or is that something where you always kind of open and it didn't really affect you.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:29:04] I think I just don't care that much. I don't care that much about what other people think, which makes me more real in all my interactions. Whether on camera or in real life, I'm me. And if you don't like me, that's fine. You don't have to like me because not everybody will like me. Let's just be real. That's just a reality. You can't just make everybody happy or you can be liked by everybody. So realizing that and not trying to impress I think just makes you more real in the moment. And yeah, honestly I don't struggle with that. So it's hard for me can relate. I don't believe I've ever struggled. So the only moment I feel that way, if again, I'm caught off guard where like I have no makeup on, my hair is messy, I'm sick, my nose is running and I'm like, "That's really not a great time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:53] But nobody wants to be seen like that to be fair.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:29:55] Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:56] Nobody wants to be spotted.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:29:57] But other than that, because I'm such an extrovert, like when I meet people and like they're my subscribers, whether it's in Positano in London like I'll go out of my way to chat with them. There were times like we've had dinner with our subscribers just because we're like, "Why not? We're here." In some small town of California, I think it was Ventura, we just had dinner with this lovely family that we met there. It happened to us in San Francisco as well. So like if it's like by chance or serendipity, it happens. Like we're even happy to bond and have dinner and go even deeper with subscribers because like, "I genuinely care," like I truly. That's the only reason I do this is because I genuinely feel like these are my beautiful friends.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:40] Sure.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:30:40] Because that's how I greet people.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:42] I think it's a great way to live. It would be tough for me to do anything like this. If I put myself above the people who are working for.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:30:51] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:30:51] It would be much harder because I wouldn't want to do it. So I like to think that when I come into the relationship with whoever's listening or watching, like you, that my analogy is we're in a coffee shop and these people are kind of eavesdropping and we invite them into the conversation and I prefer that. And I think that that will probably stick around forever because otherwise, I would just quit doing what I'm doing. It wouldn't be fun for me at all to do it any other way. I know that you grew up not affluent at all. You touched on this earlier.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:31:23] Yeah, we have very little.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:24] When did you move to Canada from Azerbaijan?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:31:26] So I just turned 16 years old when we moved and I went to grade 10 in Canada and then I did my grade 10, 11, 12 grade 12 basically I was doing co-op most of the time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:36] You're doing what?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:31:36] Co-op, so like you basically work and you get the credits because I just couldn't wait to get out of high school.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:42] Going into high school from Azerbaijan to Canada as a teenager 16-year-old girl sounds like a nightmare.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:31:50] It's not how I viewed it at the time because, from the age of maybe 11, 12 it was like our biggest dream, my sister and I would visualize every day that we're living in America. I mean --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:59] Canada is good enough. Sorry, Canada.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:32:01] It's really hard to get in the States. My parents tried, but unless you win a green card, but what are the chances? So we did this whole immigration process and literally my parents had to wait like three years to get a response from the immigration office. And I remember the day, we got on the plane. It was my first flight ever. I was tripping. I was like, "Oh my God." It's a dream. Imagine like you were visualizing this for years and years and then I'm there and my brain is like, "This can't be real, this must be a dream." So from the moment I went on a plane, I feel like I'm still in a dream.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:38] Wow.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:32:39] And it's been a really lovely dream. I'm very, very grateful.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:42] It seems like though that you must have had a cold shower when you walked into 10th grade and people are like not -- what was your English like? I mean you have to figure it out.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:32:52] Yeah. And I did get quite disappointed because I had this idea that again, I'm very positive, right? So I'm going to go and make friends, it's all going to be great. I'll have a boyfriend and like everybody's going to like me. And then I kept hearing this word fob. I don't know if you guys use it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:08] Yeah, it's mean.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:33:09] It's very mean and I have no clue.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:13] Fob, fresh off the boat.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:33:13] Fresh off the boat. And I was like, "What does that mean? Fob? Like I keep hearing that." And then when I knew, my heart broke a little bit. But then I knew that high school is not forever. So that's kind of when I was like, "Oh, I just can't wait to get out." I don't care. I never went to prom. I don't feel like I belonged. But I still managed to make some friends actually, so I did my best to make the best of the whole experience. But in general, traditional education is not something I ever felt I fit in, just because I have such a creative mind and I just have a very hard time sitting still and kind of following directions. I just always couldn't wait to get out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:53] I feel like we have that in common. I did okay in school but it was all I could do just to make it through. Because at the same thing, I just couldn't focus, didn't want to be there. I didn't see the point. Yeah. It's funny that one of the most popular people on YouTube didn't go to prom, and was called names in high school. I mean it seems like a complete shift and so that sort of proves that the environment was not a fit.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:34:21] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:21] Yeah. Interesting.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:34:23] So you can come a long way from what you might even expect yourself if somebody is listening to this and they're in high school and they're not the popular kid and people are making fun of them, they don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, things will come around. Just keep believing, have that vision for yourself and just stick to it. High school is not forever.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:43] Right.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:34:44] Neither is college.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:45] Oh no, I know. Thank goodness. We had this campaign on TV in the United States a while ago and it was something like it gets better and it was about bullying and it's like it gets better, it gets better. And it was all these famous actors being like, it gets better. And I see that I saw that a few years ago and I thought I could have used this in high school because you think that your whole world is this. And even when I got to college, I remember my parent is going, "Man, the college was, those were the greatest days of my life." And I was like, "Oh my God, it's downhill from here. This is terrible." The greatest years of your life. I'm just to just --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:35:18] But see how from generation to generation experience can also change so drastically.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:22] And I also think it probably is great if you're going to work at CIBC for the next 30 years --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:35:30] Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:31] I don't know if people really dream about it. I think they end up there and then they go, "Well at least I'll become an investment banker and it won't be that bad. Unless I started shipping cars and got fired. What are the odds of that? Right?" Well, when I met you guys though, it's funny, I reason I asked you about your background is because when I met you guys, I was talking with you for a while and I was like, "Oh, these are good people." I can't remember who I spoke with somebody else from the group we're with. And I said, "Oh yeah, they must be like old money Russian people."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:35:59] Really that's something you thought.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:00] I did. And it wasn't because of attitude or anything. Especially Alex though I was like, "Of course, this guy is like wearing white suits. He's probably learned how to ride horses when he was eight."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:12] He does get that a lot.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:12] Yeah, and he was like, "No, I grew up poor." And I was like, "Define, poor. Right? What does that mean?" Because it could be different for a lot of people. And then I heard --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:22] Like really poor.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:22] Like unemployed refugee-ish parents.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:26] Yeah. Like mom working in the bakery, like night shifts. Parents divorced.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:31] Oh my gosh.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:31] Yeah. And almost going to jail one time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:35] You?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:35] No, no, no, no.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:36] Your mom.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:37] No, no. Alex.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:38] Alex? Oh God.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:39] That's a story. He has to tell on his channel.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:40] I definitely want to hear that story. That surprises me.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:45] Yeah. He was just, you know, hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:48] Oh my gosh.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:36:49] Yeah. He's definitely come a long way too.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:50] Yeah, he's so pretty now. If you want to take a break, he can just do all the hair stuff, just needs some Luxy Hair extensions. I know that you didn't aim for millions of subscribers.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:37:00] Yep.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:01] That was kind of an accident. What was the plan? You know, you wanted to start doing videos or he wanted you to start doing videos. What was the plan? Because most people now, they want millions of subscribers because the whole point is, "I'm going to be famous on YouTube or Instagram or both."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:37:15] Yes, yes, yes, yes. You're so right. It was the wrong focus. The focus is the numbers now, whether to make more numbers like money-wise or more subscribers, but what is the point? What are you going to do with those subscribers? So for us, the focus was the freedom. We wanted freedom and we knew that we enjoyed providing value to people. So if we can combine these two things and make three, four grand a month. That was the goal. Because at the time we were leaving with Alex's mom. We could still live with her. She didn't mind. Travel the world, we wouldn't be.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:48] Does she live with you now?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:37:49] No, she just moved today. No. She's amazing. I mean I would love to still have her here all the time because she's so awesome and I'm lucky to have a great relationship with her. But the goal was just to make enough not to have to go back to corporate work and have the freedom to travel. We just wanted that freedom of space, financial freedom, and in general, just freedom of everything is kind of like our top value. And we reached --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:18] Overshot the goal quite a bit.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:38:21] Because again, in work ethic, providing value and doing the best, like paying attention to details. I'm very customer service-centric. So providing the best customer service ever. Because like I said, I had customer service in the bank and I just didn't like the fact, like at the bank I had to say the script to people where in reality I would've dealt so differently with certain situations.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:44] Treated the people a little nicer.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:38:45] Yeah. And I know they would've come back to their friends, so the family and the business would have even grown bigger and faster and I was able to apply that when we started our own business. And obviously, now I can see there's evidence that it works.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:58] Yeah, it does work. It's hard to scale when you have a billion employees to train, which is why I think big companies do a crap job because they're just trying to make everything vanilla. But if you're serving your customers in a way that's specific to you, you can do whatever you want. And it does work because it's better to lose a little bit and have them say, "I've really loved working with them or doing something with them." But it's very strange to see how the business grew because most people who try to follow business advice from a book, they decided to get into a product business, which was a good move in hindsight, right? It can be really tough. You built this business with a brick by brick process.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:39:35] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:35] People want YouTube, Instagram to be overnight. This is not really overnight. I look at other YouTube channels and I'll talk with those creators sometimes. And it's like, "Oh, well, I was doing this for a long time and then I did a video about Donald Trump's hair and then that went viral and then I got 10 million subscribers or a 100,000 and then I did another one," and so you see their content take like a hard right turn or I'd left her and maybe, yeah, and then everything is they say, "Oh, it's so two years to an overnight success." You didn't really do that.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:40:08] No we did not.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:08] You had kind of a very unique path.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:40:10] It was consistently and some videos did get viral. But later I'd say more like maybe, after a year or so of starting our channel. There were some videos that reached 15 million or 10 million-plus, but it was just that putting out consistent work every single week. I think at the time we weren't doing like two videos a week, sometimes even three and again, putting out the engaging content that's relatable to what your channel is about. And the quality has to be great and you have to be authentic. All those things as we've shared with you before.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:49] It's tough.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:40:50] It's of course. It's quite a lot of work, but because we had so much fun to this day, I never feel like I'm working.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:40:57] That's great.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:40:57] Since we started our own businesses because we only just did what we're really into. I just always feel like I'm tricking the system because I just love what I do. It never ever feels like work.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:08] I agree. Although I won't say it never feels like work.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:41:11] Well, I know what you mean. Certain things right now as the business grows, you know, like having meetings with the accountant or like, sorry, I know Jen is an accountant.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:18] She was. Jen was an accountant. There's a reason she's not.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:41:21] But I mean like I'm really not into accounting. That's why I dropped out of college actually. Anyways, that's a different story. But you know, like boring stuff that personally is not my strength in the business. That's when I kind of feel it, but I do my best to avoid doing that and getting somebody else who's better at it to do that at the business.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:41:41] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Mimi Ikonn. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:41:46] This episode is sponsored in part by Hunt a Killer. So this is unique. It's almost hard to explain, but it's really fun to play. So it's your new favorite obsession. First of all, it's like an escape room where they send you everything in a box, but it's also a detective murder mystery/true crimey type thing. So each month you receive crime scene photos, evidence, motive, and suspect information that you need to solve a crime. And it's really interactive. It looks and feels real. So there's like newspaper clippings, clothing left at the crime scene, jewelry, whatever. If you think it's easy, it's super not easy. Actually, it's definitely challenging. You can play it solo, you can play it with a date. Well, I play it with Jen, of course. You can play it with friends on game night. You can swap theories. They have an online community and you can work with other people who are at the same point and the story is you. They've got over 60,000 people in that community and over a thousand five-star customer reviews. It's really a unique concept because it's not a board game, but it's also not an escape room. It's kind of like you've got your little detective desk with all the game stuff on it and you're trying to solve a case and then you go to the grocery store, come back and keep trying to solve the case. It's really a fun idea and I think it's going to catch on. Jason, tell them how to get Hunt a Killer.

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Jason DeFillippo: [00:44:03] Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. So to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes over at Jordan harbinger.com/podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Mimi Ikonn.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:44:26] So you managed to listen to your -- I hate the word inner voice, but I'm going to use it. But you did it in a way that didn't result in you doing things for vanity or ego despite it being a beauty business, which is highly unusual. Because if you see people who start things in that niche or in any niche, usually following the inner voice is whatever makes other people like them more because it makes them feel good. And you managed to follow what you wanted to do without getting sucked into this sort of drain, literally like a pool drain sucking you in and making you do things that you feel good in the short term.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:45:05] Are not real too.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:06] Yeah. And I find that that's fascinating. So when you started the business, how did you find the product? Were you just like, "Hey I use hair extensions, we should sell these. The markup is insane."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:45:16] It was actually an interesting story because Alex and I were getting married at the time as you know, we were broke and I still wanted a really nice mermaid kind of hair for my wedding.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:27] Mermaid's hair?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:45:28] Yeah. Like a mermaid long, because my hair stops at this point and just doesn't grow any longer. And I went to a mall and I saw this kiosk selling hair and I said, "Okay, I'll try it." And I put in my hair, I look really nice there. And I was like, "Okay, fine, this the only time I can justify this. This is my wedding, this is $200 whatever, I'll spend it, but I'll wear it to my wedding because it's a big day, it's a special day." So I came home, took this out of the package, put it in my hair and at this time my sister was in the room who was also unemployed and kind of figuring her stuff out. Alex was just on his laptop trying to like do something or maybe just wasting time who knows. And I've put this hair in and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is crappy. This doesn't look real." I can't return this product. Because hair extension is a hair hygienic product. I mean, maybe if you can take, take just a sample, you can return it, but not the whole thing. So I just started complaining to my sister and said, “This sucks.” I basically wasted $200.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:30] I would cry, even now would cry.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:46:32] Yeah, it's my money, especially when you broke. And Alex was in the room and he said, "What are you talking about? What's a hair extension? I've never heard of this. Tell me more. I'm just really curious." And I just opened my laptop, started showing some videos on YouTube of before and after of girls wearing this kind of extensions. And Alex was just shocked. He couldn't believe like you can have such a transformation with hair extension. You may not wear this obviously being girls. Because at the time though, it was still a very new product that Europeans use the lot. Australians use. But in the US, there were only like two or three companies doing it, which was shocking to us when we started doing the research.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:16] In crappy mall kiosks, selling with costumes.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:47:19] Exactly selling questionably, whether it's real or not, although they said it was real. So anyway, because at the time Alex was listening and we were both listening to Four-Hour Work Week and looking for the muse, he said, "Well why don't we do this?" And we just looked at him like he was crazy. We're like, "What do we know about hair extensions or like hair in general?" He's like, "You know, like all of us are broke, have nothing to lose. Why don't we just do it together? And like we'll figure it out. We'll just learn how to do everything." And because we had nothing to lose, we're like, "Yeah, why not?.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:50] How old were you at that point?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:47:52] Oh gosh, I must have been I think 22 turning 23.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:57] So you had a ton of energy to start something new.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:47:59] Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's such a great time to do things like that, like a little crazy. I mean at any age, but especially I think I always trust the importance of appreciating and valuing your 20s because now a lot of people look at 20s like, "Oh this is the year. You're like, screw around," the years. I mean the decade of your life where you screw around. No, 20 is a very valuable time where you can actually build something. You can learn so much, you can get married and then start a family if that's what you want to do. But definitely don't waste the 20s.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:33] I definitely spent too much. I mean I did a lot, you know, I went to law school or whatever. Graduated. Started my business, started my show, but I also spent a lot of time screwing around. And I look back at it and I remember -- of course, everyone thinks they wasted their time. Even in the moment, I realized I was wasting it. I just thought you were supposed to because if you sort of waited long enough, something would happen. Do you think you come from a background of not having a lot of money, moving to another country, and said, "Look, no one's handing you anything. You got to do this."

Mimi Ikonn: [00:49:10] So the desperation and also like what's the alternative? The alternative is I'm going to have to go back to the bank and that to me was a death sentence because I literally had existential panic attacks there. Like thinking, what am I doing here? I just don't belong. I know it. I'm pretty aware as a human being, I always have been. So it's hard to deny the truth when you're that real with yourself. So we just went for it. The idea came to us maybe -- I don't, was it March -- from that, we launched pretty much I think the end of June, something like that. So like it was just a few months from the inception of the idea of launching the business and actually selling products like on the first, second, third and then just growing from that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:58] So how did you get it? Because you didn't want to buy the same crap from that kiosk. How do you find a supplier of hair extension?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:50:03] Yes. So that's where Alex came into play. We did the creative stuff with, we started basically making YouTube videos even before we had the product. We didn't even know if we're going to get these amazing hair extensions.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:15] So you're just making videos like nothing in them.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:50:16] We knew it's going to be obviously a hair extension, but we just started making hair videos. Just providing people value again. That was our biggest value always to provide value. So we're just starting making hair videos using our hair at the time because we didn't have the hair extensions yet. And then Alex got busy emailing all these people on Alibaba. Actually, that wasn't even popular yet. It was just like emerging as a website. And we got maybe 10 samples. And the first one we tried, we were like blown away because the problem with the hair extension that I bought at the kiosk was that it just didn't look real. It was very thin. Like most girls would need more hair but more hair cost more money and most people wouldn't be able to afford that. So our goal was to make affordable hair extensions, but premium quality. How do you do that? You cut the middleman and instead of selling it at kiosks, at the mall, or salons, you sell it online. When we told people what we're going to do, they were like, you're crazy. Like nobody's going to buy hair extensions online. So we stopped telling people what we're going to do. We're like, "Let's just do it. And see what happens." So yeah, we've got 10 samples. The first one we got, we were blown away, but we're like, "Let's not get excited. We still have nine more samples." The rest was crap.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:35] Is this real hair?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:51:36] Yes. This is real hair donated by hair donors. So there are different types of hair.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:41] They're donated? Why would?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:51:42] Well, they sell it. I guess I shouldn't be using the word donate because they do sell it or salons cut the hair and then they collect the hair and sell it. That's Asian hair. We've always only used Asian Remy hair. Some people or companies I should say use Indian hair, which comes from temples. So there are these temples where people go to donate their hair because that's what they do in their religion. And that's not the hair we use, for example.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:14] It seems unethical somehow to do that.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:52:17] Yeah. I don't want to get into that. But yeah, there's like a documentary about that. But that's not the hair we use. So it was very important to us that I mean it's a tricky thing because you never know how much that person gets. Because the person that we're selling the hair, then there's somebody collecting the hair, they resell the hair. It's a really tricky, complicated world. But at the time we weren't even aware at 22, 23 these are the questions we started answering after and later down the line we did change the factory and the supplier because we wanted to be more transparent with our audience.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:52] Fairtrade hair.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:52:52] Yeah, well, there is no such thing yet. But if we were to stay in the hair industry, that's what Alex and I would do because that's how we now live life. That's our philosophy and we were taking the company in that direction and there's so much transparency on the website if you go there and now this is very important to us.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:11] How did you know that when you made a bigger order, you were going to get what you paid for?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:53:17] We didn't know anything. But to be honest, I never twice thought about sending this money to China, to this person that I would never, ever met. To this day, we've never been to China by the way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:27] You never went to China.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:53:27] Not even once. We hired somebody later who did this as a project and they did an audit and then they found the other factory that was very legit and treated people nicely and everybody had fair wages and the factory itself was beautiful and because those were very important things to us. But again, we outsourced it. This is not my strength. I could be doing way better things with my time. And that's just like our philosophy in business. Although I do wish that we do go, we would do want to go to China, of course, but it's just like we were doing other things, that just seemed more important than at the time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:07] I just imagine wiring like five grand to China and being like --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:13] So this is 30 grand when you --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:14] 30 grand, if you lose it, you're totally screwed.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:18] I just believed 100 percent that this is going to work.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:22] You must have been like, please don't --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:24] No, I wasn't even thinking -- Alex later confessed that he was having some doubts. I'm like very risk -- what's the right word? Like I'm very good at taking risks.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:35] Risk tolerant.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:35] Yeah. I'm very risk-tolerant. I can take risks that I don't think twice, which is not always the greatest thing.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:40] But good quality in an entrepreneur.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:42] Yes. Yeah. I'm just like, if I feel for something, I just go for it. I don't think twice. If I were to learn a lesson that you got to do more research and you're going to lose 30 grand now, that would have been a lesson that I would have learned, but that was not. That was not in my cards.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:56] That is so lucky.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:54:56] Something to be grateful for, but it just felt right. Obviously, Alex was talking to these people in China. It felt like he could trust the person and some people you could just see in the way they were conversing that they were a bit sketchy. So you have to use your intuition. And again, that's something we will also value highly in business decisions and hiring. Making any business decisions, intuition is high on our list. Like we don't do any kind of marketing groups. If we know this is going to be what we're going to call the product, which is to go with intuition and so far we've had the luck of being always successful in that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:34] Yeah. I mean I'm sure there must've been ups and downs, but you handle it by pivoting or changing the course.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:55:39] Yeah. Failing is part of succeeding. You can't always succeed. It wouldn't be natural. Like that's just not how life is. So failure is just part of learning and growing as a human being as an entrepreneur.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:52] So the first year you made like 1 million bucks.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:55:55] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:56] More probably, but let's not split hairs, no pun intended. That was weird. I know, look, I know you work hard and you guys have really good ideas. You guys are very positive. You guys have great systems in place, you have a great team, all that comes with work. But how much of it do you think like, "Oh my gosh, that was lucky that this didn't happen," or, "This is lucky that we were able to do this?"

Mimi Ikonn: [00:56:17] You know, people often say, "Oh, you just got lucky."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:20] Partially true, but only partially.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:56:22] Right. I like to answer that kind of a comment with luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So of course if you have an idea and it's a brilliant idea and you do something with it, there's luck because there's luck attached to it because there's the timing of doing something really special. We started a hair extension company at the time where almost nobody was doing it in the United States and Canada, and that was when the trend for clipping hair extensions became growing. It started growing. You can even see it in Google analytics, like 2010 was the year when it just started growing and up, up, up it went. And then, it sort of plateaued and now you know, other things are becoming more popular, whereas the timing, that's the luck. But at the end of the day, you would have had to do some research. You would have had to build certain muscles to go for it. So those are the things we were doing before we had the idea. And I know I failed in my fashion styling business and Alex failed, you can say in his social media --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:31] His Russian car shipping business.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:57:31] Or the car shipping. I mean, he made some money, but you know, it did fail as a business. So it's just part of learning and it's part of growing, but nobody just gets lucky.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:44] I think people who say things like, "Well, you got lucky." I understand the desire to do that. I would love to walk in here and go, "Nice place. They're so lucky. I can never get that because of luck." But if you zoom out far enough on the timeline, you guys worked hard. You'd learned English as kids, not even that young or as teenagers, came from families that didn't float you guys, your first 30K hair loan.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:58:11] Nope.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:12] You didn't have a bunch of connections to like, "Look, if we don't buy this hair, we'll sell it in my mom's 18 salon location." Like none of these things were the case.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:58:22] We didn't have a single entrepreneur friend. It felt so lonely. Those first few years of working together, thank God we had each other. Literally, we had nobody, nobody to ask any question or get feedback on. Now we do, but I mean it's been like almost 10 years.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:38] Sure. Yeah, and I think it's important to note that when you --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:58:41] Almost nine years.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:58:43] Nine, not bad though. You zoom out far enough on the timeline, you find a lot of unlucky things that you're not necessarily focused on. I mean, look, it's lucky you didn't wire $30,000 to China and they never see anything. That's lucky that you got the hair, that that person wasn't a con artist. But the rest of it comes with work diligence --

Mimi Ikonn: [00:59:03] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:03] It's not like you made one video and you sold a million-dollars’ worth of hair extensions. How many videos did you make during the year during the year that you sold those?

Mimi Ikonn: [00:59:09] Oh my God, like 300 plus.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:09] 300 plus, which is like maybe a thousand or more hours of work, 2000 hours of work for the videos alone.

Mimi Ikonn: [00:59:19] And then there's the video that never sees the world. So there's definitely a lot of work but like I said, just never felt like it. That's the blessing in doing something you love. That's why I always tell people, young people, that I meet, the older people that I need who are lost, like, "You really have to go for something you enjoy doing or at least you feel like you had an interest in. In that way, you're just going to really be into it. And when you are really into something, you’re present, you really do your best. And that's how you become successful in life."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:59:49] When you were broke, poor, X dollars in debt probably after hair extensions and having a wedding, did you think we're making all this money, it's going to make us happier.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:00:02] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:00:02] And then how did your perception of money change. Because you're happy people, so obviously something went right but it probably wasn't the money that did it.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:00:09] Definitely not. That’s a very sensitive topic. But I'm definitely happy to talk about it because I feel like it can help so many people who also like me come from very humble beginnings. And it is marketed to us that when you get the money and you get the husband because I had at the time the relationship. I'm in good health, which is incredible, like the best thing to ever ask for. And then you have a business that's like making lots of money and you just started, literally like a year ago. And that was the time when I got the most depressed ever. I mean I've never been depressed before, but that was the time when I got depressed, period. When I realized what depression is and now that I've done a lot of inner self-work, I mean this was years ago, I realized why it happened at that time because when you believe in something so strongly, like when I have the money, that's when life is going to be perfect. I can travel the world, I can buy anything I want. And then I got there personally, I can't talk for other people who become financially successful because their experience is different. But I'm sure there are lots of people like me out there. You get there and you're like, "Okay, well, we've traveled to South France, and we went to Costa Rica and we went here and now what?" This actually felt more valuable or exciting when I had some other purpose in my life. That's when I realized, like, "Okay, we're making money and whenever we really realize we're going to get this successful with this. So we never looked at it as this is the business where we will bring value. I guess when we started we just wanted the freedom like I said, and then I had to almost reevaluate everything I was doing in life, which was so great because I just looked at my whole value system and had to rearrange it in my own mind.

[01:02:03] And I realized that purpose is one of the most important things because it's what gets you out of bed in the morning. And that's when we started even looking at what we're doing differently. Okay, these are hair extensions. What's the purpose? There was so much purpose. We're making people happy. We're teaching them how to love themselves because not everybody has to buy extension, so many girls watch our videos, never ever buy the product. They told their friends to buy it, but they didn't need it because they already had nice hair or just didn't want the product. It was the energy we were putting out. And like the comments, I would get some time. I would just ball there. had nothing to do with clipping extensions. So I just switched my mindset like, "Okay, but this is still my purpose because I am reaching an audience and it's the energy I put out there.

[01:02:50] And I remember some of those videos like I was super depressed like I really wouldn't even get out of the house sometimes because I just started developing social anxiety, which was so weird because like I'm super extroverted.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:02] You never had that before.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:03:03] Never.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:03] You're making a million dollars. Now you feel like you can't get out of bed.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:03:06] Because of your identity, you're having an identity crisis. You're like, "Whoa." Like your dream comes true but it's not what your mind thinks it would be. So your mind has to rearrange completely. You have to create new brain connections and like there are lots happening inside while this is going on. At least that was my experience and I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I did a lot of inner work that just made me realize that at the end of the day, it's the purpose. Like what do you wake up for every day? And that's what keeps me grounded now. You asked how do you not get swayed away by all these trends on getting big. Of course, I can do these bikini things. You know, I don't want to say anything because I don't want to label things, but they still take pictures in bikinis. Again, there's nothing wrong with doing whatever you're doing as long as in the moment it feels real. But like at the end of the day, what are you doing consistently, what do you feel like you bring into the world. What is the value? And that has to feel authentic to you. And again, nothing wrong with doing anything as long as it feels authentic to you. So that's my philosophy.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:07] I like it. And I agree. I think the reason I'm asking you about this is because I think it's easy for people to go, "Boohoo you made a million-dollar and your first year and you got sad, like go fly a kite. How dare you?

Mimi Ikonn: [01:04:19] No, but this was really scary. I was really worried about my life, honestly. I always love my life, but I didn't realize how heavy depression can feel until I had that experience. Literally, some days like I couldn't just get up to do a simple task, but it also would draw me to do that inner work to realize that at the end of the day, it's not about the money. It's not about success. This is why you're here. It's to really also teach through your challenging experiences and I truly believe that's why probably I had to go through that. I always tried to see the positive and the negative and I really don't see my depression as negative because I think people get depressed a lot of times when they're out of alignment. It was my body's way of telling me that you're just not aligned. You need to stop. You need to, in a moment, just stop whatever you're doing and become aware instead of -- of course, sometimes you have to take the drugs. I didn't choose to go that route because I just wanted to face that experience. And it's so freaking hard because like when I went to the doctor, they'd just say, here's a prescription. But I'm like, "What's the root cause?" "Well, we can't really help people find the root because that's not what we trained at."

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:36] Yeah, we don't have that kind of talent.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:05:37] Right, and I'm like, "That sucks. Like are you kidding me? This is the only help I'm going to get." So then you go and do a lot of inner work elsewhere and it is so freaking scary. And if it wasn't for that inner work and going inside and hours of meditation that I had to do alone by myself, I just wouldn't be here now, completely free of all these things. And I'm still a human. I experience fears and certain anxieties once in a while. But like again, that's what makes you human. That's what makes you relatable. And then you can share your experience and help other people who are going through similar things. So I believe that the reason for my depression was just to realign my beliefs, my values, and just myself from inside out.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:19] You just sold Luxy Hair.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:06:20] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:21] Congratulations, by the way. So that must've been something that you could only do if you made the purpose about something other than the hair and of course other than about the money because then you would just have to start another business from scratch.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:06:33] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:33] Or from the foundation that you have. Scary. It's not something that you necessarily want to do.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:06:39] What do you mean starting another?

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:40] Starting over.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:06:41] Oh, for sure we'll start other businesses 100 percent. We have so many ideas every day, but for us, what we're realizing it's not about doing more, it's about doing maybe one or two things, but going deeper with it. Because part of also why we sold Luxy Hair, we both felt like we're just not giving our best to this business because it's just no longer aligned with our core purpose as much as it was, you know when we're starting. And also there's just so many other things. This is your life and it's a journey, but you realize it's not infinite and there's just so many other things we want to do and time is of an essence and those were some of the reasons why we made the decision. It's like if you really want to do something and we clearly know we have the vision that's really big. That's something we do as a couple is just we define our vision. It's an exercise we do together and I think it's so important for everybody to do that, especially us, we're also business partners, not just a couple, but I think even if you're not business partners, just like what is your common vision as a couple. And we just knew that we, this is a decision we have to make to move forward and create other things that we truly believe in.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:07:50] Do you sit down periodically and go, "Hey, are you happy with selling the hair extension?" "Nah, I kind of want to do something else." I mean, do you have a process for sitting down and reevaluating what you want to do?

Mimi Ikonn: [01:08:00] I'd say we do that regularly. Just chatting. It's not like a process. We're not very process-oriented people, but we're always talking about what we do in bed, on the couch, in the restaurant. We just can't help it because again, for us it's hard to draw the line between work and life because all life is sort of our work. Really I just don't mind that because I truly love what I do. So if I get too stressed, of course, I know I need to draw the line just to be and chill out and meditate, which is a bit of a challenge at times, but at the end of the day, yeah, we talk about the stuff all the time. It's not a process. That's just an ongoing thing. I guess that maybe the process.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:41] That can be the process.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:08:42] Do that on the regular.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:43] For me, for a long time, I just did lots of work and then kind of one day -- I don't think it was that sudden -- but I started to also be depressed. This was years ago and I thought, "Well, I'm depressed because I'm working so much. I'm depressed because I work a lot and I neglect my friendships."

Mimi Ikonn: [01:08:59] When was this for you?

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:59] Maybe like six, seven years ago before I met Jen and I was working and I thought, "Well, if I work harder and achieve more goals than it'll be better." And I would do that and I would achieve goals and I would go, "Oh, it must be because I'm not going out with friends." So I would start to be more social and it helped a little, but then it was like this disjointed life that I had where I was enjoying life sometimes and then really not. And I thought if that never ends, I might as well just work at the post office because at least then I have certainty of getting a paycheck. Whereas right now I have all the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur and I hate it. So what am I going to do? And it turned out that it was alignment. It was, I don't want to run around teaching guys how to meet girls or whatever I was doing at age like 33. It was getting a little sad at that point. And so I wanted to do the show I wanted to do with The Jordan Harbinger Show and interview people and get great information out there and help people and help them learn things.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:09:55] So you knew it inside.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:56] I knew it, but --

Mimi Ikonn: [01:09:57] You weren't listening.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:59] I wasn't listening. I wasn't listening. It was back there, but I thought, well I can't do that and I've got to do this other thing.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:04] That's not going to make me money.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:05] Right. And then, I flushed my happiness down the toilet essentially. So I think it's great. You don't have to have that process, but it seems like you get space for that and you and Alex make space for that.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:19] It's extremely important on our list, if not the most important thing really because what else is there.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:24] Yeah, sure. Do you have a kid now, a child?

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:27] Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:28] Alexa.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:28] It's been quite a journey.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:29] I assume you don't have an Amazon echo or your life would be chaos.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:32] We do. We just treat it as another person. She actually goes up to it and says, "I like some play ballet music for kids." Aw, so good.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:40] So if you're yelling at her down the hall --

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:44] Yeah, that happens sometimes. Alexa says, "I don't understand what you're saying." I'm like, "Oh, just turn that thing off."

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:50] Yeah, I wondered if you just had Google home instead.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:55] I hope they're going to have a feature where you can rename it. I think that would be --

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:58] I think they do have that.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:10:59] Do they? Alex told me that it doesn't.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:01] I'm almost certain that they have that.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:11:03] I got to look into that.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:04] Problem solved. Things are just getting easier for you. What is next for you now that you've sold Luxy Hair?

Mimi Ikonn: [01:11:09] We're starting a podcast as I mentioned to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:12] Happy to help.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:11:12] So excited about that. Just creating more content really on my channel as well. Becoming more consistent because obviously being full-time parents and spending all my time with Alexa in the last couple of years didn't leave me a lot of time to do other things, especially with the business growing and then now deciding to sell it in the past few months. But now that has come to an end. So it's almost like a new chapter. And Alex and I do have a lot of goals and a big vision. There's some uncertainty at the time, the moment that I cannot publicly share yet. But you know, obviously, I think, we'll just continue doing more of what we are doing at the moment and I want to go into more public speaking and just helping people with self-growth because I believe that's what I can share the most of because I feel like I've gone through such a big journey myself and I realized there are so many people struggling with like the small stuff. Again, just believing in yourself and that's stopping so many people in the world from doing anything going out for the bright girl or the boy going, applying for that job, just starting on that hobby or starting a business or applying for the school that they want. There are so many people who just plainly don't believe in themselves. And to me again, now that comes supernatural and if I can just share more of that stuff that got me to where I am today, I feel like I'll be even happier. I'm already happy, but it'll just make me even happier.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:42] Mimi, thank you so much.

Mimi Ikonn: [01:12:43] It's my pleasure. It's been a great time. Thank you so much for having me.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:49] Thanks to Mimi and Alex Ikonn for today's episode. And if you want to know how I managed to book, well, not even just book, but have myself surrounded by amazing people such as Mimi and Alex and everybody else you've heard on the show, check out Six-Minute Networking. It's a course that I've developed. It is free. It's designed to show you how to create and reach out to connections and maintain those relationships over time. jordanharbinger.com/course. It takes just a few minutes a day. I know you're busy. It won't interrupt your life. This is the stuff I wish I knew two decades ago. jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Mimi Ikonn. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, and there's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:13:33] This show is produced in association with podcast one and this episode was co-produced by Jason "The Influencer" DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty, and I'm your host Jordan harbinger. Remember we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode, so please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:03] A lot of people ask me which shows I recommend and listen to and one of those is the SDR Show and I got my friend Ralph Sutton of the SDR Show here with me. Ralph, you recently had Sal Vulcano of Impractical Jokers. I was watching those guys on the airplane because they're on that like in-flight entertainment. The social pressure those guys put themselves under to be funny, it both makes me laugh and cringe kind of at the same time.

Ralph Sutton : [01:14:26] Yeah, I have to agree with you. In fact, I was on set with them at one point and they take it so seriously. Everything you watch on the TV show is 100 percent accurate. There are no actors. In fact, when I was there, somebody there had recognized them, had been in the background on another episode before, so they scrapped the whole scene because they didn't want to take a chance at anybody recognizing them. Sal has become a good friend of the show whenever he's in the New York area, he comes on and honestly, one of the funniest guys, coolest guys in the world, we always have a great time with him.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:14:54] That's the SDR Show. And we will link to that in the show notes for this episode as well. Thanks, Ralph.