Exploring Life & Business with Michael Funk of I’ve got my hand in a few cookie jars

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Funk

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Wow. Where do I begin? That is going to get deep. Well it all started when my dad met my mom. I was born, raised, and still reside in the beautiful Kansas City area and for that feel extraordinarily proud. At a young age I sadly experienced a major heartache and in spite of I faithfully believe created the impetus in which awarded me endless optimism and confidence. It took me many years to comprehend what that event meant to me, how it manifests in daily life, and fueled my motivation. Graced with an intuitive ability for overcoming difficulties and fortifying a relentless mentality that I profoundly smile upon. I’ve always been a shot first, ask questions later, fly by the seat of the pants, figure it out later kind of guy which makes life interesting. I’ve been able to illustrate an interesting story to this point and have zero plans of stopping anytime soon. Chapter by chapter that story continues to be written and no matter what My college years taught me that being boring isn’t very fun, my post college years taught me that I can do anything I set my mind to, and my recent years have taught me that I am still young and there is always time to start again.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Every road traveled has its own struggles. No road is smooth as you can always count one 3 things: death, taxes, and concrete breaking. Just look at the roads in Missouri! For real though, if anyone claims they’ve had a smooth road to where they are today I call bologna. The roads we’ve all traveled shape us to who we are today and give us snippets of knowledge to carry forth to the next exit. Where then we will hit another bump and so forth. To me, it’s about continuing down that road seeing where it leads until you hit a dead end and keeping a positive mentality so you don’t get lost. To say my struggles have been any greater than anyone else’s is how we interpret what they mean and don’t mean too much if we don’t carry those struggles to the next road. It would be unfair of me to list my personal struggles because to me, they haven’t been struggles they’ve simply been speedbumps slowing me down on the journey of where I’ve ended up today.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about I’ve got my hand in a few cookie jars?
Well, shall we start at the bottom of said cookie jar and work up? I think what sets myself apart from others is a keen ability to see opportunities in many ways. I started my first “career” that wasn’t behind a bar as a Real Estate agent. I was extremely fortunate to have worked with many supportive, illigent, and dedicated individuals which eventually garnished myself with a robust knowledge of how to create wealth for yourself. That experience had blessed myself with an epiphany that I couldn’t be more grateful for. “If they can do it, so can i!” A new road was being taken. I formulated a game plan I cashed in all my loose change, and convinced a good friend to jump in the deep in with me and we’ve never looked back. We started with income producing rentals, dabbled in some flip properties, and a few short-term rentals. Somewhere in the middle of that divergence from Real Estate agent to landlord extraordinaire I started educating myself on small business loans and small businesses for sale. I shortly came to the same conclusion a few years before when starting my first passion, “if they can do it, so can i!” Ended up purchasing a small local pet (dog to be more specific) business while it was in its infancy stage in the metro with my wife at the time. We were able to grow it beyond our imagination and still have the privilege of being the owners. During my small business education I learned that I didn’t have to stop there and was able to purchase another small local business as a FedEx Ground contractor a few years ago and certainly learned more than I ever thought I would with this one. This is now my passion, my nine to five, 7 days a week, playing ding-dong-ditch daily, and what I call my “beautiful chaos” that I am extremely blessed to wake up each day knowing I have a job that provides for my son and I. Even more recently I’ve been lucky enough to be a supportive partner and teammate to a special person in my life while they’re following an ambitious passion into a completely foreign and new successful endeavor with the same mantra I’ve said before, “If they can do it, so can I!”

How do you define success?
Jeez! This is subjective, but I’ll give it a go! To me, success is clearly defined as setting out, reaching for, and obtaining a goal that is either set in your mind, written on a piece of paper, or even unknowingly present. I’ll break it down a bit more here. Success is and can be whatever you set your mind to as long as it creates a positive emotion. Success to me comes in endless shapes and wears many masks as in it could be money, it could be love, it could be traveling the world, it could be family, it could be as simple as waking up each morning, it could be competing with yourself to be or do a little bit better today than you were yesterday. To me, it truly has infinite definitions. Success can be as illustrious or as simple as you want it to be. Success to me, is the ability to create happiness and positive thoughts each day because without that combination you’d be stuck in a purgatory convincing yourself that you need more in order to be successful, but if you start with happiness everything else that you want out of life will fall into place.