How to Go From a Top 1% Rep to a Top 1% Sales Leader [avoid my mistakes]

one most memorable times was actually early on when I was trying to figure out how to effectively go door to door to businesses literally walk into businesses and knock on doors and this is back in 2007 this is in the last recession so businesses were shutting down people were pissed people were angry things were starting to get a little crazy unemployment is going to 11 plus and I remember there was this prospect that I had I targeted I knew would be a great Prospect like this guy spends a lot of money he has a huge

opportunity but every time I'll go call the phones I would email or do any type of outbound that way I could never break through and what's interesting about the building was it was in this old part of Portland Oregon where the main office for some reason the way it was set up it was Behind These closed garage doors so there's always roll down it's very industrial part of Portland and that was the only way in and one day I was in the field and I saw the doors actually rolled open and they had a regular

glass doors right behind them like oh perfect this is awesome here's my opportunity and I see some guys like moving around to this through glass store I can see like in there so I go and I walk in and I walk this like his huge warehouse and there's a bunch of people moving around there's like just dozens of employees and they're kind of gruffing around the edges and they're like hey what can I do for you I'm like oh I'm here to see Peter and they're like okay and Peter is the owner right and I

probably should know that's like is he expecting you I'm like sure you have to say it I'm like sure I must sound at least confident enough at the time I'm like all right so like okay so it's in this really old building in Portland so they take me down to this hallway and the appointment to this room and I walk into the room and the room is like almost pitch black there's no lights on it was almost like a movie and probably like 10 20 feet in I can see there's a desk lamp and a

computer in a guy on the computer and he's like facing but everything around the complete pitch block I'm like oh okay that's weird let's fly whatever and I can see on his face he has a big scowl on his face he just looks pissed right I'm like okay here it goes you know I walk up I try being a typical salesy person back for kind of figure out how to sell I was like hey Peter how's it going you know my name is Marcus blah blah you probably got my phone calls and emails hahaha I

might expect some stupid joke and in the middle of my pitch he starts shaking his head side to side and it says you [ __ ] sales people and I'm like I can see a space like it's almost like a kettle or a pot of water in a boil I seem to get like redder and redder I hear them I'm like oh you know hey I'm not trying to like sell you something right here you know I just wants us some time aside to have a conversation with you and keep shaking he's like you guys

never [ __ ] learn I'm like okay I'm always sure I have no idea how to handle a situation he reaches into his desk he grabs I mean I don't know what he grabs he pulls it out he puts it on the table it's a gun and immediately I stopped talking I'm like oh oh okay you know what honestly I can't a terrible time I will be on my way I started backing away and he picks the gut there's walking toward it you guys never learn I'm like oh my God I just I'm like okay

I just raced out I just take off poorly he doesn't come after me right and like I'm freaked out completely freaked out this has never happened before because number one no one's ever pulled a gun on me before number two they expected to happen number three like I'm walking like businesses so this is like not someone's residential home this is like an actual business so I'm like I'm freaking out so I don't know what to do I'm sitting so I sit in my car at first I drove off I'm like I can't see that comes

out I dropped somewhere I'm like I see him kind of like I'm frazzled I don't know how to deal this so I call my boss and my boss is like kind of old school but been around seeing some he's sort of like in one of the wars and he was just like kind of rough around the edges and I call him and I'm like hey Paul something just happened I don't know if we need to report this I don't know if you do something but this guy that I've been trying to cold call and knock

on the door I'm trying to meet with I just saw him oh great I had a girl look terrible he pulled a gun on me he's like oh I got you I'm like did you find any shots I'm like oh no no Nick are you okay I'm like well I'm kind of freaked out but like you mean like a shot yeah you did you get hurt no I'm totally [ __ ] he's like oh so hold on you didn't get shot you're not hurt shots at you he just pulled the gun out that that's it

I'm like yeah he's like but you're okay I'm like guess it okay get back to work that was like conversation I'm like all right okay now I wish I could say cow I wish I could say that I was so like so tenacious and I worked so hard and then a year later I wouldn't close him I never called my guy ever again never again oh man is it here's what's probably the worst part for me what stuck in my head is a hundred percent your manager it's like all right we'll finish around I know

he was like every door every floor right the more people the more handy shake the more money you make I'm like all right okay well got it I got it noted that is now sticking in yeah oh that's such a good story I love that you shared that so to segue into that where were you at this point in your career yeah so at that point I was in about six months in my career and I had never wanted to be in sales I didn't really see as a career I started more like a stepping

stone at the time it was more so I could didn't know I wanted to do so when this opportunity came up when I graduated this is like before the recession starting getting kind of crazy this opportunity for B2B sales for a startup division for a major Fortune 500 company so I'm like okay cool like let's go and let's do it there's opportunity to kind of build something from scratch you kind of learned a lot at that time I didn't realize we didn't really have product Market fit in this theater thing I learned later on I

didn't know it was called the time there was no inbound leave so I didn't know about leave flow I didn't know about marketing so we had become our own marketing and sales machine so that was like a lot to learn because even on day one I'm excited because fresh college grad fresh haircut I wear a full suit or wear a shirt and tie at a time and I go into my my boss's office day one he gives me a manual it's a two inches thick written by people who never done a job before he's like

here you go good luck right so that was like my first taste in the B2B sales and then and I didn't know what to do so I'm like what should I do first he's like oh cool I want you to go knocking some doors first because remember we did have a CRM but we didn't have any leads inside it's a great place yeah right great exactly they didn't buy it they didn't do any of those things so we had to go get the data and put it inside so we're looking okay so what do I

do he's like go outside and go right and don't come back to get 30 business cards I'm like okay all right that sounds good so that was my first dive into B2B sales was like learning right in the field in the recession where businesses were shutting down kind of knock a doors cold call and actually sell people within four zip codes some people that did not have approval I did product Market fit uh man it's funny I started out as an insurance agent and financial advisor at the exact same time um and I'm from Toledo

Ohio which is directly tied to Detroit well if you weren't following along Detroit didn't do so hot during that recession oh yeah oh yeah so I could empathize with that so when did you start to have that that turning point in sales just in general where you started to click you clearly wanted to do it because you kept doing it as you've mentioned when you didn't really know what you're doing doesn't sound like and I've read on some of your posts Rick I wasn't that great at it when I started what were those turning points

that it's like okay I started to figure this out and I started to see a lot of success after that well I think the first point of self-actualization is realizing you suck and that's like first point right and I think a lot of times people aren't willing to admit that own that and thus they can't fix it and the thing was so early on as I was struggling the advice everyone told me was you simply need to work hard and it's a numbers game now okay if you're a college grad you don't know anything so

you're like okay that seems to make sense sure so even that same day the day one where my boss is knocking 30 doors I'm like probably book one or two memes at least I'm like cool I walked in over 60 doors that first day inbox zero meetings zero interest The Next Step I'm going to try again what save me again 60 plus more doors same result 100 120 plus doors are walked in to buy for two businesses zero result and then the the third day I asked about what do you call them I called every

single one of those that third day fourth day I recall them again zero book meetings so it's kind of like what the heck like I'm actually out doing expectation activity and everyone else that was even crushing everyone activity no results very embarrassing he like look in the mirror that one you're kind of like what's wrong with me kind of fast forward continue to not have any results and first turning point was I started reading books that was the thing like back then at that time like there wasn't like LinkedIn YouTube was kind of starting to

take up and there wasn't easily accessible sales knowledge and insights for free that you can access so I went to the library I went and got books I got every single sales book I can get you know Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar Augmentin all the classics typical ones and those were kind of useful to a certain extent but they're all like written in 1950s right 16 Etc so it's like some principles can apply but lots of didn't apply anymore so that was like kind of hard too but upon that Journey one of the things that I

ran into was Tony Robbins book awaken the giant with him this is kind of my first step into the personal growth space and then inside that book one of the things he said that really stuck me ever since was if you don't like the answer ask a better question and that was really interesting to me because I realized at that point every time something bad happened to me I walk into a business someone pulls a gun on me I'm like oh my God what's wrong with them they're crazy Etc I've walked into the business and

dogs have bitten me I'm like oh my God what's wrong with that little dog loose like I'd have you people yell at me curse me Etc I'm like oh my gosh what's wrong with them why is he a comment why is there a recession why don't get any training why do I have a tech stack why is my boss terrible why is everyone doing better than you I have a bad tear at all these excuses and because of that I was asking myself these bad questions I got bad answers so the first turning point was

realizing I should ask better questions it sounds so simple but that's what for the first stage which was being able to learn from a mistake but learned the right lesson from mistake because most people learn the wrong lessons right I'm saying again so most people own the wrong lesson can you learn the right lesson when you make a mistake so you can so you can actually get better from there so for example let's just say I had a cold call let's say I got absolutely destroyed which happened a lot and instead of say what's wrong

with me I can shift the question where I learn from this I learn I need to do better research beforehand because when I called I asked someone who wasn't even there and never been there before interesting so lesson from that do research in advance so I have the right people in advance interesting small detail big difference right so when you start doing it you start realizing how you can actually start to improve your game because you start asking yourself a better question that's the first piece the second piece the second transitional point was about seven

weeks in because I'll still not perform anything I'll still like the worst rep possible that's when I got threaded with a pit that was awesome right so you know it's seven weeks in I'm the worst rep that high hopes for me because I was interned practicing company it really was an intern that was more like inside sales and then now they're like oh like you should do all this and I'm just a piece of crap basically and my boss pulls me at four o'clock Friday afternoon which is never a good sign and says hey man

if you don't turn this around we're gonna have to fire you I'm like oh my God like this is a recession I can't quit now because there's no jobs right now like oh my God I have no skills I'm fresh called grad so that was like slap in the face right around the same time and it seems completely as well as things were in life I think we had different points that things that happen in our life and sometimes we don't realize how one dot connects to the other dot to Lobo later on yep right

so one of the thoughts that happened up front first was at this point I was pretty stressed and I don't get an annual checkup with my doctor blood test Etc I do all the normal things and my blood pressure had really skyrocketed since the last time I've been there like Richard prior and I gained a little bit of weight as well and I wasn't as healthy as it could have been and the doctor started diving into my situation and by the end of the conversation I basically had committed to eating healthy working out more being

healthier and making some changes my life and I remember that night I was actually excited about those changes right and I thought to myself like wait a minute how did my doctor convince me to do that and I realized there was no convincing they influenced me how do they influence me I'm like all I really do is just ask me questions really good questions that made me become insightful to my own situation they made me realize I've been making all these mistakes and because now I knew there's a problem they just showed me a very

simple solution so there's no selling they suddenly influenced me to at that point and I realized this whole time in my sales process I had been doing the opposite I walk in ask a couple questions and be so focused on the pitch the features maybe some of the benefits trying to pitch trying to convince them to buy from me and I realized that'll actually holding me back from selling so I started plotting on following day or a couple days later I'm like okay how can I restructure my sales process so I literally restart let's hammer

it all out I'm like okay I'm gonna try to run this way and it was hard because it would focus on me like basically not pitching so I tried the first call and actually progressed for the deal more expected like quite interesting and I think that weekend closing a couple deals small deals albeit small deals but I'm like oh crap this is way better you felt better et cetera so that was like you start learning these lessons right so that was like a big piece and I started refining over time little things here and there

because sales is like a death by a thousand paper cuts it's never usually one big thing people are doing wrong it's usually a bunch of my little things so from there I started kind of realizing like man I could really improve my process I mean I kept refining it and the third month I went from like Bob to number one in month three and then what's really interesting was so I stayed number one for the next four months in a row and then my boss's boss said okay Mark is doing pretty good we have opportunity

for you I'm like great like what's up he's like we're gonna move you to a different operation and we want you to do is we want you to go over there we're not going to pay you more We're not gonna give you a title bump but we want you to leave the small team there of two actual reps there and we want you to turn the place around did you want to be in sales leadership I didn't really know I thought I did I wasn't really sure but I was like okay this makes sense because

there's kind of a linear path in that company on the other part on the BDC business side they kind of have a linear path right at the time looking 18 billion dollar year company so it's a very linear path I'm like cool so it's kind of made said that they're trying to meet on the B2B side I'm like yeah I'm like that makes sense I'd be cool with that yeah for sure so I'm like that sounds exciting that's a good opportunity for me I took it and this is where this is another Turning Point because

that first step in the leadership I realize how hard leadership is like anyone who's gone from the individual contributor to leadership you realize pretty quickly no one's you and from a value system's beliefs execution habits routine work ethic you realize very quickly they're not you so that boxed up pretty badly at first because you're trying to be like I'm a planner by Nature so I'm very analytical I2 micromanage every detail to control the outcome which can be good or bad thing right it doesn't mean I'm a micromanager but if you're a young leader that comes

off as a micro manager automatically what I did was I went and created like a 30 60 90 180 day plan because I'm like okay what's my goal my goal is to turn this Branch around be profitable and prove to my bosses that they made a right decision to hire me so I can become the manager here that was my goal so I can optimize and do I've been able to figure out a little bit in sales I'm definitely no expert but definitely better than everyone here at least I'm like all right let's do something

right there's something I'm doing that's better everyone else because my results I was in about four everyone else most people close maybe like two accounts a month I was closing eight to ten accounts every single new fresh blood right completely cold so I'm like okay I'm doing something right obviously so how can I replicate success I went and I mapped out of the third 60 90 day plan this is what we're gonna do so I had it all together and then day one I'm with the small crew and I'm excited I'm also not really reading

the room because their manager just quit and they actually were like the manager but they were performing they're doing terrible so I came in new guy who actually was younger than all of them been the company for less time running circles around them did not realize that they had paid to me as the Golden Boy I was the guy who like the Hot Shot internally crushed as an intern yeah he struggled at first but now he's crushing here like he's just the teacher's pet basically and then why is that at the time so day one

um listen like I know I guess I'm performed here but I got a plan like first 36 now we're gonna do a b see we can change all these things go through my whole plan and I look at their faces after 15 minutes and there's not having it I don't know how to handle that I'm like okay like all right cool let's just do our thing today you know haha all right let's try to try to roll it off I remember going to my girlfriend now wife girlfriend of the time and she's like how was

your first day I'm like terrible I think I should just stay like just in the sales role right she's what do you mean I'm like wow they just don't get it I was so naive and so egotistical about myself right I was like I've been number one for the last four months which is a pretty short time when you think of it and all things considered oh what's and how is master plan they wouldn't even listen to me and she's how do they feel I'm like I don't know do what I say she's like do

you really think so yeah and I swear she's like no dubby they don't think you have their back you're already put on a pedestal ready a different way they're gonna have some envy and like jealousy towards you so you coming in trying to bring the hammer down on them it will influence change and I'm like oh my God you're right you know because she usually is so you know the next day this is a good lesson I learned all the time I sat them all down I just apologize I was like listen like I think

I just came off totally wrong like I had this plan but here's reality I don't know what I'm doing like all I know is I want us to win I want to help you win and I'll do whatever we can we can together so what do you guys think you know what are you guys ideas you know what are you guys thoughts and they had all these ideas and we worked together and we partnered her up I really learned about how to actually lead without a title and how to actually influence yeah and on top

of that when I was able to learn how to do these things it also taught me how do I take the process that I kind of developed in my head and be able to systemize and teach other people because that's what I had to do because the nature of what we were in because if we fail this Branch will close down and we'll get fired that was like that was it like I'm like that wasn't an option so that was another interesting learning point as well where I learned about how to really build how to

build sales Playbook how to actually scale it because that at that point within next six 12 months the operation shot to number one I say the number one sales person we're all sales people right the people my officer is number two number three right so like we're able to replicate success so now it's interesting to learn as well I'm not a whitehead Wonder so I didn't get lucky right yeah so you had a ton of success here and he rose up the ranks you figured out you crack the code on sales leadership as well why

start your own company that's a really good question so at that time I ended up working for like them for several more years and then I went to a whole different company because I wanted to see if I could do it again I wasn't sure if I got lucky I mean I got lucky maybe this industry maybe whatever like I promote several times there and then I went to a whole new industry whole new company and fortunately I lost success there too right unfortunately made a lot of same mistakes early on so they able to

kind of learn from those which is kind of cool which is awesome and that was really cool got someone running really big org and what's interesting is I never want to start my own business really I never wanted to never growing up or anything never wanted to be an entrepreneur no interesting never and it's because my parents were entrepreneurs so that a restaurant the festivals as well a bunch of real estate as well but growing up we grew up really poor and I grew up working in a restaurant so I I remember like literally like

sleeping at the restaurant waking up working there I remember like helping my parents out as a kid I was working like 20 30 hours a week like as a seven-year-old yeah and so I'm like oh my God this is entrepreneurial life your parents work 80 hours a week they don't come to any of your school events or activities like that sounds terrible to me and it just seemed like it was a very unstable thing now I just didn't realize the opportunity there's made different types of entrepreneurs and opportunity vehicles to be in so my whole

life I was almost essentially I don't say brainwashed but I was led to believe that the best path is working somewhere safe now they wanted me to be a doctor a lawyer an account something more prestigious was very normal for Asian parents but I didn't do any of those things right right got a corporate job so it's like there's some stability there what's really interesting was so I went 2007 with my graduated I went to start working and at this point it worked several years so by 2015 I was in my second company already and

I mean [ __ ] I've been out in my court in the corporate world for what eight years at that point and I've been promoted 10 times that point in eight years and I was leading out at this point uh one of the young instructors in the company leaned a sales force about 85 total employees working for a Fortune 500 company and people were like wow like this is crazy dude like how did you do this and even at that company that was my second company most people were at that took him like 10 years

to get to that level I did in four and a half years people were like how did you do these things I'm like do you want things I'm just showing up I'm giving 100 everything I do I truly cared on passionate this is what I do and at that time people were like dude you should write a book I'm like write a book that sounds crazy I would never write a book right I'm like whatever so I'm like but I may wear an ebook so at this time I started to learn about online marketing yeah

and like ebooks Etc and now everyone the mother has an e-booking course Etc about the time it was really only the internet crowd knew that so I'm like oh okay this is interesting so I bought a program I learned how to write an ebook I turn into an ebook I learned how to automate it so someone could pay online and get distributed automatically at the time so there's a way more complex so now it's super and I remember like write this first book it was called the corporate climb I call it hot 10 times in

10 years which sounds better than 10 times 8 years I love yeah so I remember although internet marketing on social selling I was using Instagram as my test place so I'll do testing on Instagram and this is what Instagram was really it's starting to get really hot because this is like 2015 2016. so built a little following there and I just launched this ebook and I remember like within an hour I made 9.95 and I'm like oh my God someone for internet pay me money like for a B2B guy right for someone who's B2B sales

who's used to sit in front of someone had a conversation right to extract money and value from them for that value now I'm doing online that's weird and I'm like wow this is really interesting and that blew my mind I still have a screenshot of it somewhere of that first sub ten dollars yeah because it was the same opportunity and this blew my mind so I'm like interesting I'm like you know I should do is I should build something bigger you know so nothing was doing a couple hundred dollars like a month right just pretty

easily so I'm like okay you know what I should do is like I need I'll miss something bigger oh my next step is online course the national transgression now again before everyone has an online course and at the time no one had a B2B course if there was anything out that was really really bad I'm like I get a lot of questions about bdb sales like I run big org big sales teams and I'm getting asked the most basic questions that literally I thought everyone should know things that I just thought was like normal at

this point I just didn't know people didn't know so then I'm like okay I should build an online course now this took me a long time to build out because again the technology is different back then so I'm like okay I should build this out start recording so if I apply to the program learn how to do it started to do it I started building my free time now this is kind of a crazy time for me because I was traveling about 100 nights a year in the hotel seen all my teams traveling around we

had a baby during this time and the company I was with ultimate like a major acquisition so they bought another company and it was just like very tumultuous a lot of moving parts right so this whole time I'm just trying to build this little fun thing on the side so it took me two years so January 2019 I'm finally done I'm like oh man awesome but then I'm like what if nobody buys it what if this is a bad product right because again it's like when you create something of your own versus sell them for

someone else you don't realize how much work it takes to build your own offer in your product or solution 100 right I didn't have I didn't have pmf I didn't test anything out I'm just like let me just see what happens so I'm like [ __ ] it I just launched it right woke up made two thousand dollars overnight I'm like oh my God that's amazing and my audience wasn't that big it wasn't even the Right audience so I learned a lot of things on Instagram I wasn't I posted on LinkedIn my club Was Not

Cool by me posted on LinkedIn once a month more about the business about like my company stuff versus anything else yep so I'm like okay that's really interesting so at that point it was like wow this is an opportunity like this is scalable I can scale something like this I can scale a thousand dollar products so at that point I'm like what should I do now one of the things where you also get to a point in your career where you start realizing what's really important and it's like it's not to say money is not

important but when you've made a pretty good amount of money and you're pretty good managing money investing and multiplying doing all this stuff like you start realizing like money is totally cool but if you're pretty simple you don't spend really that much and you put yourself in a spot where you can do whatever you want and that's why I did so I'm like okay I can keep two of them and do and I can see the lifestyle of what my life's gonna be like when I look at like my VPS Etc and everyone else I

don't want that I'm like what I really want is more time I want time Freedom right that's exactly what I want to be able to do with who I want whenever I want that was just really important to me and when you read any business biography of the wealthiest people in the world most of them will say the same thing like I just want more time back yeah time with family friends relationships do what I want and just have fun do stuff so I'm like okay that's interesting now again I didn't quit my job on

spawning I'm out see you later right I'm like I want to be strategic about this and at a presence Club trip coming up in August I'm like I won that I'm listening to go to that okay I want that I'm my year-end bonus in stock I want all that for sure that happened in June we had our earnings called out happened in September that was Skyrocket everything all right so I'm like okay I'm just gonna I'm gonna time this all up because it'll be the audience call in September if I can't time it all out

I'll get everything I need and then I can wait for my vesting period to also hit as well and I can just exit out right after that so that's exactly what I do timed everything out and then exit out and left January 9th or September 19 2019 it went all in on the business because at that point it was about time Freedom right I forgot the other point why I also left too which is also really important because the time was probably number one the second piece was you start running what's really important to you

and one of the other things that's really important to him is impact and the thing was I had built a pretty good reputation like everyone knew me all the execs knew me I was right around corporate chats periodically and stuff but that was cool like I'm still in the corporate I'm still in the corporate training videos yeah like people still talk about me so which is kind of weird some probably hate on me now this is what it is but it doesn't really matter but anyways but it was cool but what I realized was like

I'm like I want to have more impact I had like my team Etc and also Mentor 10 other people within the organization as well to help them Rise Up from Individual contributors to sales leaders other directors as well I was mentoring them as well and like I wanted to make more of an impact and what was really interesting was even the course when I first launched it and people started buying after the launch I'll look at emails from people that be like wow this really helped me this really works and that was like wow this

proves to me that this works outside of my industry this proves to me I could scale this and that was like that that also made me realize I'm like if I stay at this company I can impact people within the company or I can untether myself embed on myself and be able to create a business where I can impact way more people you know and that's why that was a big part of the business was being able to put in the spot where I could do whatever I want who I want but also help the

people I want to help that's why I made the leap that freedom of money freedom of time freedom of relationship or do you do strategic coach what do you mean so there's an organization called strategic coach and what you just described is their whole thing first you get freedom of money then you get freedom of time or I'm sorry first you get freedom of time then you get freedom of money then you get freedom of relationship so it's essentially I can I can work when I want with who I want whenever I want that was

the thing so basically yeah I guess I'll say yeah it's pretty interesting no and that's that's pretty cool and that's something that with me personally that's 100 it's something that's been on my mind a lot more like you know you can do it two ways you can just grind it out and you'll make an absolute ton of money but I think it gets to a certain point where it's I really want more freedom of time that I care as much about so the next thing because you can only buy so many cool things that's just

kind of the reality oh yeah if I could share this I think this will make a lot of sense I remember when I made the right decision when it hit because when you go and start your own business there's always that fear there's a lot of uncertainty like I think a lot of people think oh Founders they don't have fear actually hell yeah I got tons of fear and anxiety right but it's acting in spite of the fear and anxiety and I remember one month after and I was kind of I was second guessing myself

I was like oh man was that the right decision I left behind seven figures in equity like I have a like what is that really the right move like ah okay you started going back and forth and just kind of questioning like maybe it's easy to go back to work for somebody else I don't know you just have all these doubts and about one month in and my kid was pretty young he's about two and a half at a time and before this all doesn't happen because I traveled so much anytime I get upset cry

hurt he would naturally go to Mom right that was like go to Mommy raise to Mommy right yeah I don't really think much about it even when I was in it it didn't happen because she was always she was around more but a month after and I remember right after happened after I'm in the move he's like oh Dad you're here I'm like yeah I'm here you know whatever you gotta see me every day which is interesting I gotta take him to school drama I could do all these I couldn't do before and a month

after I remember like he heard himself got upset and he ran to me and that's when I realized I'm like this is why that's Pure Freedom you don't get the time back like your kid they're probably gonna love hanging out there for the first 10 years of life and after that who knows what's gonna happen so I'm like I better capitalize it now because now he's six so I'm still thinking the same way so that's so cool I love that what as you're growing this business what's your goal if you you've already been incredibly successful

in the business that that you've grown you've got a gigantic presence across multiple social channels LinkedIn newsletter all sorts of different Outlets what is the goal for you what do you want out of this yeah so I think it's I'm gonna continue to optimize for the four F's I talk about right the four apps so Fortune right that's building them all stacking Cash Family freedom and fulfillment right this is why I optimize for every single day so if I'm always doing things the optimize for that's really important but it's also being able to start realizing

I can't just create whatever solution offer because that may require me sacrificing time for my family which I'm not willing to do so it's find that really good balance so that's the key so as part of that business so when I think about that it's okay if I build a new offer wants to have more impact and do I enjoy doing that that's what I always think about because at the end of the day it's like I goals in my but not really right that makes sense because there's a certain things I also want more

I don't really want those but it's more so like how can I create the life hacks you want like to wake up when I want do what I want Etc how do I design it to be fully optimized to me only doing things I like to do and that's what the top people do we look at someone like Oprah Winfrey she probably works like one or two hours a day why she freaking loves that part of it is whatever she wants and I think about how can I create my life to be the same way

you know and it's also when you add to this as well you get addicted to the process if you will as Scott Lee says like you get dick it's a process over time and everything I've done I've learned to I hate to say I don't say Enjoy the grind I think people read that the wrong way I enjoy the process I enjoy what I do I enjoy the building I enjoy this because there's something about when you able to take something in your mind's eye and you're able to turn it to reality it's very hard

to put into words what that really means so for me yeah maybe there's some end goals kind of but not really because he has more seasons like even like this current program that I'm running right now for BB sales people like we're doing really well we're helping a lot of people it's really really awesome it's great this is my current season I'll do this for a while I'm still good with it but over time I'm sure like okay what's my next season gonna be you know what do I want to do next who do I

want to help next or I keep building upon that I don't know right I think it's good to thinking like long time Horizons like 10 20 30 50 years out but also in the season the seasons May shift a little bit it's kind of like when you're driving on a freeway you know where you can go for end destination but you're enjoying the drive and somehow you can go off the freeway you're going to speed up you can change the lights depending what's in the road you make detour off a little bit to go a

different path then get back on right because it's all part of life a hundred percent and I think you hit on something that that's always been important to me and just love to practice right love to practice as much you as you like playing the game if you can find something where you love to practice as much as you love playing at the game like run with it you're probably going to be really successful at it so the last question I have for you is in if you could have a conversation with your younger self

age totally up to you what would that conversation be what advice would you give them so thinking longer time Horizons and make decisions based off that I think when you're young you're always taking a very short term like you always think you have the rest of your life you always give all this time you're always like oh I'm young it's fine but you end up just making dumb decisions frankly and when you think of a longer time Horizon you end up becoming much more well-rounded you make more strategic decisions for example there's always pros and

cons because some people might say hey Marcus that's really cool like two companies and 14 plus years that's really cool yeah a lot of success that's really awesome and then there's some people that look at me and say Marcus man you're doing pretty well as entrepreneur maybe you should start that sooner and I think one of the things that early on I was very risk adverse very risk adverse and I think there's always going to be pros and cons to everything but because of that I was probably more gun shy making some bigger changes and

decisions like a really simple example I remember even when the market tanked in 2007 2008 I'm like now probably a good time buying some stock right but like I'm too scared I'm too scared and that was like in hindsight obviously probably could like make even more money because of that right who would have known right but it's one of those things where the principle is still the same it's more so um if you think in a longer time Horizon you start realizing there's always patterns everything and you hopefully make better decisions now they'll pay you

long-term dividends and if you start thinking of it this way it really helps you in every part of your life whether it's relationships or anything else for instance and I think in some parts of my life I did a good job with that and other parts I didn't do a good job for example I think back to one good decision I made was early on you know especially in college I went to the Run of Dayton whomever that was cool medium field is really fun whatever and then I got sick of the game I got

sick of the game and I'm like this is what I want and a very set criteria I was like that psycho who had an idea like who wants to be with and it was in my head at least and I found her I found her and it was my senior year I've known her and there was it was her my senior year and that was a good long-term decision right that was a good long-term saying she was resistant too about you know we started dating eventually and now I married her no great life we have

a kid now so that's a good example of long-term thinking that I think most people would have given up when at the first rejection she rejected me for really five years since we started dating four years we started dating but as a long-term move as well my point so if you think long term you'll make better decisions hopefully in the short term they'll pay you on from dividends the beauty about long-term thinking is it makes the short term setbacks don't sting his back because you understand it's just a bump on the long road so I

think that's excellent Marcus this has been a blast thanks for coming on today man thanks so much for having me out it's been an absolute blast I love it I love it