Justin Burns

Editor:

Today we are delighted to have Justin Burns with us, a visionary entrepreneur and the founder of Miestro, a platform dedicated to empowering coaches and trainers to effectively share and monetize their knowledge As a spiritual ascender healer and light worker, Justin seamlessly blends his profound spiritual insights and practical business acumen. So I think we should dive right in. Justin, great to meet you.

Justin Burns:

Glad to be here. Appreciate you.

Editor:

Well, maybe we could start by asking you to share what inspired you to create Miestro and its mission.

Justin Burns:

Yeah, so Miestro came from back in about 2008, I started this online journey, meeting a really good friend of mine, actually interesting that we're still good friends today, and I met him while I was working at a cell phone shop in Chicago, Illinois. And I wondered what this guy did. He would come in at all times of day. I was like, what does this guy do? Does he work a job? He's always dressed down. So I just one day asked him, "What do you do?" And he said, "I sell digital products online." And I'll never forget, it was the first time ever I had heard about this. Now imagine hearing about this in 2008. It completely blew my mind. So fast-forward, I became more interested. He would come in, I said, "How do I learn about this, whatever, selling digital products or whatever?" And he's like, "Well, there's actually, if you say that, we're doing a seminar next week."

Justin Burns:

And I was like, "What's a seminar?" This is how naive I was. So I come to this event, I didn't know what to expect, and I remember a statement that really caught my eye. He said, the guy, it wasn't him speaking, it was another speaker, and the guy said, I forgot the guy's name, he said, "In the future, not too distant from now, people are going to buy your product all over the world. They're going to be able to ..." Right now, it was some challenges in that space. It was like 1ShoppingCart. I don't know if you remember the one shopping cart, that's how old school I am. You didn't have five, no, you didn't have hundreds to choose from. You had really one, which was 1ShoppingCart. Everybody used it. And so I was like, wow. It was like "People from London and Spain and Germany and Africa and Australia, everywhere. They're going to be able to buy your product."

Justin Burns:

And it was like for that moment, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And it was at that moment that I was like, it was like the sky's part of it, the heavens came down. I was like, "This is the thing. This is the thing I want to spend the next decade." So fast-forward, many failed in trials, so many blood, sweat, and tears, three or four years of not making any money. And then I was able to crack the code and I became a digital entrepreneur selling courses, and I was able to have 30,000 customers. And then that led to now where I wanted to create a tool. I wanted to do something long-term that would actually impact people. And so we've been building, that's how Miestro came along, and we've been involved in it since 2017.

Editor:

Wow-

Justin Burns:

It's been-

Editor:

That is a journey. That is a real journey. I mean, Justin, one of the things you mentioned there is the fact that when you got started, technology wasn't as advanced as it is now. So you started with a piece of software called 1ShoppingCart, which for anybody who's reading this or listening to this might think it's a shopping cart, but it was quite primitive in many ways, isn't it? So my next question I guess is for those people that are putting off getting started on their journey with digital products, what would you say to them? Was it hard back when you started or was it harder now? Because other people tend to think it's harder now.

Justin Burns:

Well, that's a good point, but there's different challenges. It's not that it's harder now, it's just there's a different challenge. So let me give you back in those days, like 2008, the challenge was you had all type of tech challenges. Every tech challenge you could think of. To get signed up to ... I'll give you a couple examples. In order to build a landing page, there was nothing called a drag and drop builder where you drag something from one column to the next. That didn't exist. You had to either learn some HTML or hire a developer, which was freaking ridiculous amounts of money. So that was the challenge. Or if you wanted to connect something, you needed to have a rocket science degree in order to connect it because it was so hard. And even shining up. Nowadays strike like two seconds, five minutes, you have an account, boom, you're selling. You had to pretty much sign over your firstborn child to get a payment processor back in those days.

Justin Burns:

So it was so many challenges. Now I believe the challenge has shifted where now technology is different like Miestro or other platforms that make it easy to sell online. It's super, super challenging. But now the challenge nowadays becomes, it's now attention. Attention is the challenge because back in those days, attention wasn't the challenge because there was only a few people who you could say was a guru or whatever they called them. It was like, oh, the gurus existed.

Justin Burns:

So the funny part about it is now you have attention because everybody and their mother now can just literally take this phone and start selling a digital product. Or they have now Zoom. Now remember technology, here's another example, the technology. I was just telling my team because they're new to online, I was like, listen, we used to have to sell. Zoom didn't exist. I mean Zoom did not exist. Back in those days, 2008, we tried to do a webinar. There is a 100% chance that the thing is going to buffer halfway and it's going to crash. That was the thing about webinars, they crashed. So now you could do a whole Zoom call for four or five hours and it completely goes through. So now I think the biggest challenge is you have to know how to capture attention and there's ways to do that.

Editor:

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, you seem to be the perfect embodiment, Justin, as well as someone who's taken this digital lifestyle. Because you mentioned before you're in Chicago, Illinois. Where do we find you today?

Justin Burns:

I'm in Pattaya, Thailand.

Editor:

So that's quite a difference, isn't it, in many ways?

Justin Burns:

Yeah. And initially enough about a year and a half ago because you mentioned about spirituality. So I'm a very spiritual guy. I never hide that. I have another spiritual company as well. Great part about digital is you can take what you're passionate about and turn it into a digital business. So about a year and a half ago I had a spiritual awakening and I decided just one day, why am I here? I had moved from where I was born in Chicago, moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and I was there just like this building, but I wasn't fulfilled.

Justin Burns:

One day I woke up and I just got this, my family is from a small town outside of Chicago. They don't leave. They don't leave their city. They don't even get on planes. I didn't get on my first plane until I was a teenager, so I just was like, I don't know. I started catching this travel bug. I went to Mexico for a couple of months. I loved that. And then I just decided to sell everything. I just one day woke up was like, I'm selling everything. So I got the lease, I sold my car, I sold all my possessions. I didn't even put anything in storage. And I booked a one-way flight to Nairobi, Kenya, and probably for about a year I was all over Africa, Tanzania, South Africa.

Justin Burns:

And then I made my way slowly but surely, I went to Dubai and then I went to, now I'm in Thailand just for a little bit. So yeah, I love it. We built these businesses because of one word, it starts with an F, freedom, but many of us, we never feel free. And so we chase this rabbit hole of just money, but that money is not freedom. We think money, money is a vehicle for freedom.

Justin Burns:

So for me, selling all my, I realised I'm addicted to stuff. I was like, when I went to Mexico, when I went to Mexico for three months, do you know I have an apartment full of stuff, do you know in those three months I didn't think about one thing, one thing that was back home. When I say I forgot about the suits that were in the closet, I forgot about the couch, I forgot about what it was. It wasn't until I got back to my home base and I walked to my apartment was like, "Holy shit, I'd forgotten about these shoes." So that made me go, I can detach from stuff. And so that allowed to have that freedom, yeah.

Editor:

I think that's the thing. A lot of people do spend their life with a lot of, dare I say, clutter? Your garage is full of stuff that you never really use or you've got just lots of things around that don't really add to your life. So to hear your story of you sold everything to make yourself start again, if you like, and have that freedom to be able to travel without that legacy of got all my stuff back home. That's an inspiring story in itself. You mentioned spirituality, which I think is a really interesting aspect to this and a real differentiator for you, Justin. What challenges have you faced trying to integrate spirituality with entrepreneurship?

Justin Burns:

Yeah, so it is always an interesting topic when you talk about spirituality, right? Because spirituality has nothing to do with what you believe. You can believe whatever you believe, but most people, whether you believe in a higher power, whatever it is, I always say that we're all, and most people can agree with this, I know everybody disagrees about politics and everything else in life, most of us agree to this, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are spiritual beings having human experience. No matter what you believe, we're not talking about a higher power, we're talking about that core focus. When you understand that and you go down the rabbit hole of discovering your life's purpose, you start to understand and uncover that you are more than you actually believe. The identity, the name that you've been given, everything is a surface level of who you are.

Justin Burns:

And everyone, no matter what it is that you're doing, you have to do the inner work. And so for me, I've been doing personal development and then I had a spiritual breakthrough a couple of years ago because I completely got lost and I completely lost foundation of who I was and I had to get back to who I was and I had to discover who I was. And through spirituality, I was able to do that. I'm not talking about the religion. People religitize things like crystals and this and that. I'm just talking about the pure focus of who you are and discovering who you are. And so some people go through that, through pain and suffering. They say, "Oh, life is beating me up." No, life is only trying to get you to see who you are.

Justin Burns:

So that has been a beautiful journey. So I've been able to combine that with entrepreneurship, meaning my team, I realised I could be around people that are like me. I can hire people that believe what I believe and I can show up because it's my damn company. My friends, I can pick and choose. I don't have to be around people that I don't like to be around. I could be around different energy. I could be in environments where I'm at today. Every day I have a regimen. I walk up and down the beach and that's my regimen, to be able to see and embody me to that. So it's been a beautiful, beautiful journey that I always say. I love it.

Editor:

And out of all the places that you've been so far, you mentioned you started out in Chicago, you've moved to Atlanta, Georgia, you've moved to Nairobi and been around various African countries and now you're in Thailand. Out of those places, which one feels most like home to you?

Justin Burns:

I was just telling my friend this the other day, I fell in love with, I love Thailand. Thailand is one of my favourite places, but I was saying number one, hands down, South Africa. South Africa is a place that just feels like home. I love South Africa. It's a beautiful, beautiful place with beautiful people.

Editor:

You mentioned Miestro, which is your platform, your business. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about Miestro and also maybe we just need to clarify the spelling for anybody listening to this as well so that they find the right place to go to.

Justin Burns:

Yeah, so it's not M-A-E-S-T-R-O. It's actually M-I-E-S-T-R-O. So the idea for Miestro came for building a platform. It was mainly of course platform when we started in 2017. And I wanted to just build it into what I wanted to build it into. I didn't know what I was going to call it. It was all these different names, "Online Business System." And I was like, "That sounds like everybody else." I didn't want to name it that. And then my friend was on the phone, he's a prolific marketer, and he was like, we're on the call and he's like, I was like, "I don't know what to call this thing." He was like, "Yeah, you got to figure it out because you're like a Maestro." And I was like, "Say that again." He's like "You're like a Maestro." And so I started going down this rabbit hole and figuring it out. And so I ended up buying the name Miestro, M-I-E-S-T-R-O years ago.

Justin Burns:

And now we've evolved it into where it's a video membership platform for creators. So it's more on the membership side. Still people can host courses and stuff like that. And we're actually going through a big revolution right now by the time people listen to this. We're adding in some really cool features that we've been working on to really take on where everything is headed. So we're actually adding in AI assistants, which are really, really cool, which actually helps people to evolve their membership. Because most people don't have data. So we'll have almost literally 10 AI assistants in Miestro that will basically help you build out your whole product line, give you insights, community, how to make the right choices. So yeah, it is exciting. Exciting.

Editor:

And what about your development team? Are they based in Thailand with you or are they scattered around in different places?

Justin Burns:

No, no, no, they're in different places. So my development team is in Ukraine and also parts of Africa. Our team is all over.

Editor:

Justin, in terms of what you've achieved, what are you most proud of? Is it the Miestro platform? Is it the fact that you are able to travel? What would you say is the number one aspect in your life that you've got out of the journey that you're currently on?

Justin Burns:

That's a great question. I would say the biggest accomplishment is who I've become in the process, who I've become going through the challenges, going through the pain, going through the suffering and realising how grateful and beautiful life, I know it sounds cliched, but I mean, it is. Life can be viewed through a couple, as many lenses as you want. You can wake up and choose to see life in a terrible light and the world is crashing and burning like some people believe. Or you can wake up and be like, you know what? There's some dark parts of the world that I don't like, but there's also some beautiful parts. So me waking up and like I said, walking the beach and being grateful and going, "Man, people don't get to live this life. I'm grateful." So it's who I've become and also it's helping other people become, or at least realise they're who they are and who they're becoming as well. So that's one of my greatest accomplishments.

Editor:

I think when I was reading about your background, Justin, one of the things that really stands out is the fact that you seem really proud of the success of the people that you work with. Obviously proud of your own success, but also proud of the success that others are achieving because of aligning with you. And how does that make you feel? Is that something that fills you with a sense of pride?

Justin Burns:

I think a part of it is being proud that you produced something great. One of my greatest accomplishments, I'll say, this is a great accomplishment, if you search Justin Burns online at Miestro, you will probably won't find at least even one bad review on me. And I don't say that there's a lot of people, I mean, I've been able to generate millions of dollars online and review 30,000 customers. Usually you'll find something. I mean, and I'm not saying people haven't wrote negative things in the past, of course, but it is to say that that is a testament. I've never had an account shut down because of bad refund rates. So that's usually ... Usually that right there gives you a sense of pride to say, look, people find value. Not to say everyone is crazy successful because they have to put in the work, but it's to say like, man, it's a sense of pride to go, "I'm producing things that people love and they like and they tell other people." And so it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Editor:

It's definitely a good metric to work by, isn't it? Whether or not ... If you have your account shut down, the question should always be, why? What have I done or what haven't I done that's made that happen? In terms of if anybody is looking to get started in this world of digital products and putting their own stamp on the world, what advice would you give Justin?

Justin Burns:

Yeah, the biggest advice is this, you don't have as much time as you think you have, right? Let me say that again. You don't have as much time as you think you have. Unfortunately we go through life and we think ... Here's what it means. It's not a scare, it's to say this. Most people believe that they have more time than they think and they look up and they go, "Where did it go?" For me, I'm 38 right now, right? I'm about to enter into my forties. I could have sworn about a year ago, I was just in high school, maybe a few years ago, I was just in high school about to go into college. That's how life did the snap of a finger. So people always ask me, what's my drive? What's my motivation? It's that by the end of this particular lifetime, I want to say that I put my stamp on life. That people say amazing things about me.

Justin Burns:

I don't want people to walk up to the microphone at my funeral and stumble to say, or use general things. I don't want them to say, "He was a great guy, he was a good guy." I want people to say, "No, no, no, no, no. This guy, oh my God, he created this. He helped this amount of people. He was amazing. He was a kindhearted person. He believed in me." If people could say that about me, it's beautiful. So I would say for people, don't wait. Right now start the product, get it out there. Stop being afraid. Scale. Put the product out there. Fail hard, fail fast, adjust. That's what I did.

Justin Burns:

Make the product. Who cares how it looks in the beginning, if it's not perfect. And then also come to Miestro as well and use our video membership platform to basically help you. And we have so many resources, books. I wrote a book called The Expert Code as well. So I'm also writing three more books. I want to stamp this thing called life. I don't want to leave here and say, "Did I do everything I was supposed to do to help people?" So that's basically my life. My life, I would say my life journal, so to speak.

Editor:

Justin, for anybody who is listening or reading this and they want to find out more about you, where do we go to do that?

Justin Burns:

Yeah, so there's a couple resources. You can follow me on Instagram, ceojustinburns, ceojustinburns. Also my website is officialjustinburns.com. And yeah, you find out all the different work. We have a spiritual company called Awaken Soul, where we teach a lot of spiritual knowledge and we have about 15, 20 teachers on there teaching. And we also have our membership platform, Miestro, and tonnes of other ways you can get connected. Whatever floats your boat, as I say.

Editor:

Justin, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure meeting you and also finding out more about Justin Burns the man, and also about Miestro as well. So wish you all the success for the future, and thanks again for your time today.

Justin Burns:

Thank you.