What if the biggest constraint in your business growth isn’t your marketing, your team, or even your offer—but how you show up in the moments that matter most? In this episode, we sit down with Mike Irving, founder of Advanced Business Abilities, to uncover the overlooked skill that directly impacts your ability to scale: how you communicate, influence, and lead high-stakes conversations.
Mike shares why many entrepreneurs hit invisible ceilings despite having strong opportunities in front of them—and how mastering certainty, clarity, and control in your interactions can unlock a new level of growth. If you’re looking to convert more of the right opportunities, strengthen your leadership, and create momentum in your business, this conversation will give you a powerful shift in perspective.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Welcome to the build to billions podcast where we’ve got successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goals have you scale and compound your wealth and life so you can give more all but a way to help MVPs and most vulnerable people. My name is Brett Swarts. I am excited to be a host today, again, grateful to be here and to be interviewing a guest who’s going to help us unlock resistance for growth in our businesses and our leadership. He’s the CEO of a company that you’re going to be learning all about. It’s called Advanced Business abilities, okay? And he’s he helps business executives to three extra business with the resistance, removal, sales strategies, leadership, development and hiring unicorn staff. He’s got a tremendous background, and I’m just really excited and honored to have him here. Mr. Mike Irving, welcome to the show, Mike, how you doing?
Mike
Hey? Brett, thanks. That’s a really kind introduction. I’m grateful to be here and really happy to have a chat. So, thanks very much for having me.
Brett
Absolutely. If our listeners get tonight for the first time, would you give us just a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. So. So, I was born in Boston in the United States, and at the age of 21 I went to Australia. I was meant to be in Australia for being back and finish my degree in
biology and go and get a job and be a normal human being, but that was never going to be the path for me. So, I ended up finding a way to stay in Australia, got a job, going door to door, doing sales on commission only. And a lot of people think of that and think that it’s like, that’s the hardest form of sales in the world. And look, it might be, but it was a really good teaching for me, because it taught me, at the earliest piece, that sales was a system. There was a system to follow. There were principles to it, and I could see those. And so I learned how to do that. 18 months later, incorporated my first company, and we at one point had 300 sales repsin the field across three cities of Australia, going door to door and business to business, commission only until 2005 2006 and that’s when I that’s when the seed of Advanced Business abilities was planted in my mind. So that’s a bit of background.
Brett
Fantastic. Let’s dive right into the topic at hand, which is unlocking resistance for growth. So, Mike, what’s the number one secret to do just that?
Mike
So, if I tell a story, and it’s actually my own story, so you know, not talking about anybody else in in that first business that I ran, I I had lots of success, I achieved lots I generated lots of revenue. At points in time, you know, 300 sales reps in the field, you’re going to have a lot of revenue happening in new clients or new customers for clients. And my experience of it was that over the nine years of running that business, I had high highs, and then I had the lowest of lows. I hit the wall, I got smashed. And for the first few times I hit the wall, I kind of got myself up and brushed myself off and decided that I would either go around it or over it, or under it or through it. But in 2005 I hit the wall again and went, okay, hold on a second. This keeps happening like these sums wrong. What’s going on. I had hired business coaches, and they were all good. They all had good information, and I found that what they were attempting to do with me was actually creating more stress than it was solving. And so I ended up very, very disillusioned, until I met the people that I now refer to them as my research team. But they were a group of people, small group, three people who, in 2006 really helped me to totally and utterly change my life. And what they did was they put my attention on the ways that I was actually creating my problems.
Brett
So, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
Watch the episode here:
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About Mike Irving
Mike Irving is an entrepreneur, sales trainer, and the founder of Advanced Business Abilities, where he specializes in helping business owners and sales professionals elevate their performance through advanced communication, influence, and closing strategies. Known for his direct, results-driven approach, Mike has trained individuals and teams to operate with greater certainty in high-stakes conversations—unlocking higher conversion rates, stronger client relationships, and more consistent revenue growth.
Through his coaching and training programs, Mike focuses on developing the internal skillset behind elite performance—how to think, communicate, and lead with clarity under pressure. His work centers on bridging the gap between opportunity and execution, equipping entrepreneurs with the tools to not only generate more business, but to convert it at a higher level and scale with confidence.
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