Money Didn't Make Mark Jenney Happy, So He Made More Money

Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran. And welcome back to this binge series for Freedom Fastlane Live, where we're highlighting some of our favorite talks and Q&As from 2015's inaugural event for Freedom Fastlane Live. Today you're gonna hear from my best friend in the world, Mark. Jenny. Now, I did not just invite Mark to the stage because he's my best, but also because he's one of the biggest thinkers that I know and has probably had the biggest impact on the way that I think about business. Mark is one of those unique individuals that just wakes up every day with a clean slate. I never see the guy stressed out and he has this miraculous ability to think really big. You're gonna hear him talk about that, how that freed him up to do some really cool and really big things early in his career, but they were all about money. In fact, he spends a decent amount of time really talking about how the first part of his career was just doing cool things and making a lot of money. And I don't want you to think of that as self boasting. It's actually all painted for context because all of the entrepreneurs that Mark and I really grew in this industry around had that mentality that it was all about the flashiness, all about the Lamborghinis, all about the nice things. And it really became just an egoic pursuit of cash and looking cool. And Mark publicly admits that it was fun for a while, and then it lost its purpose. And as a result, Mark ran into some trouble, you know, at the peak where all of a sudden the money didn't make him happy. And because it didn't make them happy, made less money. And there was a bit of a downward spiral there, not into anything destructive. It just left him empty. Now, for a lot of people, that ends up in destructive patterns, destructive habits. Mark instead talks about his pivot, where he went from. Instead of focusing on me, he focuses on what can I build that is better for humanity? And he talks about his new project, RV Share, which he was speaking to the back room last week at our last meeting, talking about how profitable the business is, how it's now the biggest site of its kind in two years or less. We met some of his team, they talked about their processes and what a difference. Not just in the approach, but the profitability. And not just in the profitability, but the saleability. By focusing on creating an immense amount of value, Mark is changing lives and is building what could be a hundred million dollar plus company. He's doing very special things that I want you to absorb every ounce of what it is that he talks about from stage, from last year's talk at Freedom Fast Lane Live. It has an impact on me. My buddy Sean Coyne said it had. This talk had the greatest impact on him as well. And if you are not finding purpose in your business, this is the time to do something about it or it's time to pivot. Even Gary Vaynerchuk talked about this. He talked about you can go back and listen to the Q and a, the first part of this binge series where Gary Vaynerchuk very I'm so excited. I can't talk. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about shame on us if we are in a business that we're not passionate about just for the cash. Because you can pivot and automate that and then move into something that you actually want to be in. Build the cash flow business, go for it. But pivot, get out of that mindset, do something that makes you happy. And Mark hammers that home. He did it in business. Some people really just want to be entrepreneurs for the cash. Mark's one of those guys that just has to be an entrepreneur. So what does he do with his life next? Builds an even bigger company. I love the guy. I tear up if I talk about him too much. I actually did backstage. This is one of the greatest human beings you will ever have a chance to listen to. And I believe he will be in the audience this year at Freedom Fast Lane Live. So if you want to meet him, you need to be there. But for now, enjoy this presentation from Mark.

Jenny, for six months I have been nervous about introducing our next speaker.

Jesse talks about living in the now. Yeah, I couldn't do that for this. I've actually been worried about this for six months. The reason for this is.

No matter.

What I say, no matter how much I exaggerate, I cannot express adequately how much our next speaker has impacted me personally, both professionally and just as a person.

There are two people in this world that I have a hard time talking about because if I talk about them too much, I'll get choked up. And Mark, Jenny is one of those people. Mark has, first of all, maybe one of the most creative and forward thinking business brains of ever encountered and as a result has completely shattered every paradigm that I've ever had. Mark has.

Maybe more than any other person alive, completely shifted how I view life and the world and is just one of the greatest human beings you'd ever want to meet.

Mark is Just a very special person. That is a rare breed of being a human being. If the world became more like Mark, Jenny, the whole world would be a better place. Both.

As somebody who takes responsibility for solving the problems in the world and who thinks on that global scale, and also how he just treats people and how he carries himself, I consider him my best friend in the world. It is an honor and a privilege and one of the highlights of my life to introduce to you my friend, Mark Jenny.

Love you, buddy.

Hello.

Hello, Austin. So, Ryan, thanks for having me here. I'm honored to be here speaking to you guys today. I know everyone out here has invested a lot of money to come to this event, and I want to make the next hour worth your while. Now, not just because you guys invested money, but because you're investing time. And right now, you're investing an hour of your time listening to me speak. And while I'm sure everyone here wants to see a positive return on their financial investment, money is not our most important asset. Time is our most valuable asset. And because it's the only thing you can't make more of, and it's the only thing you can't see how much you have left. Once you've invested your time in something, it's not like a bad financial investment. You can never get your time back. If you lose your money in investment, you can always make more money, but you can never make more time. And by you investing one hour today of your time listening to me speak, I hope that I can make your investment of time worthwhile. Today I'm going to share some personal stories along with some fundamental success principles that have made a big impact in my life. The main purpose of my talk today is actually to ask you guys four specific questions that can change the path that you're currently on. Over the years, I've come to learn that the better questions you ask yourself, the better results you get. And there's a quote, which is very true. And the quote is, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. Now, there are four important questions I want to ask you, but before I do this, I want to get a show of hands. How many of you guys out there want to own a business that generates millions of dollars every single month? And I want to see a show of hands. Okay, so most of the room. Okay, you guys can put your hands down. Well, today I'm going to tell you why I completely walked away from a business that I co founded that was generating millions of dollars a month and revenue and by walked away, I mean I walked away. I gave up a majority equity stake in the company for nothing in return. This business was doing eight figures in sales annually and I'm going to tell you why. This was one of the best decisions I've ever made and how it's impacted my life more than anything else I think I've ever done business wise. But before I tell you about that, I want to share a little bit of my backstory. Most of you probably don't know who I am, so let me give you a little background so there's some context to my message today. I'm currently the CEO and founder of RVShare.com, which is the largest and fastest growing peer to peer RV rental company. RV share. It's like Airbnb for RVs. So we connect RV owners with people who want to rent RVs and we provide them with all the tools they need to start renting their rv, like training and marketing, insurance and contracts and those types of things. We make it really easy for the average RV owner to just start making some money utilizing their RV when they aren't using it now. Before I started RV Share, I owned a wide variety of different companies and all sorts of different niches. To date, I've owned more than 30 different companies since the age of 13. Here's a list of some of the businesses I've owned over the years. So a nursing home, A real estate investment company Affiliate Marketing I was the largest web hosting affiliate in the world, generating millions of dollars a month in hosting commissions. I did that before I started my own hosting company. I've owned several hosting companies, I've owned several information publishing companies selling a wide variety of ebooks in all sorts of different niches. I owned a sign manufacturing company.

That sold lighted signs. I owned a company that went to storage unit auctions and bought stuff and resold it. Kind of like you see on Storage Wars. I've had a health supplements company, sports memorabilia company, a search engine optimization company, a company offered genealogy services, an ebay business, infomercial company, a direct mail company, a market research company, a computer backup company, a book wholesaling company, a coaching business, a photo sharing website. I manufactured and sold space heaters. I had a website security company, an artificial chat intelligence software company, a T shirt company, a window decal company, a company that sold business opportunities, a website builder company which was a software as a service, an accounting company, a company that was a virtual timeline of your life, and a content publishing company to say the least. So Some of these businesses didn't last very long and they were complete flops. And others were really successful and went on and made millions of dollars along the way. I've had a lot of ups and downs. I've had great experiences like becoming a millionaire by the age of 21. And I've had terrible experiences like getting sued by the Ohio Attorney General for marketing claims made by one of my companies. This lawsuit cost me a small fortune in legal fees and caused my personal reputation just to get smeared through the mud. But in the end, it ended up actually being a great experience and a good learning lesson on what not to do in business.

Through all these different companies, I've sold hundreds of millions of dollars in products and services, both online and off, and I've been able to employ hundreds of people over the years. I've taken companies from zero revenue to millions in monthly revenue in less than 60 days, and I've done this multiple times. I've taken websites from zero visitors to more than 100,000 daily visitors in less than 30 days, and I've done this multiple times. I've been very fortunate and through a lot of hard work and some luck along the way, I've been able to do some really cool things in life. I've owned multiple mansions around the country. I've owned, owned every kind of exotic sports car you can think of. Bentleys and Ferrari, Lamborghini, Range Rover, BMW, Mercedes, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. I've owned a large luxury yacht. I've flown private jets. I've been able to retire both my parents and buy them homes and cars. And I've been able to travel all over the world and do cool things like riding through the desert with cool people like Tony Robbins in Egypt. I've been able to help friends of mine build a school in Kenya. My friends Stu and Amy. I've worked hard and I've been blessed with a great life. But life wasn't always that way. It wasn't too long ago that I was homeless and I actually grew up living in an industrial garage. We lived in this little storage room that was about 10ft by 10ft. And I remember every time we would come home, our home was a garage. We would come home, we have to roll up the garage door to get in. And in the back corner there was this little storage room that we lived in. You can picture in your mind, like walking into the dirtiest industrial garage you can imagine, where construction vehicles used to be stored. That's where we lived for years. My dad knew the guy who owned the building and somehow convinced him to let us live there. There was no heat, no air conditioning during the wintertime to keep from freezing. We had this little space heater that we got from Walmart, and we would just sit next to it. We didn't have a shower, but luckily we did have a toilet and we had a sink, so we could at least go to the bathroom and drink some water out of the sink. I remember taking what I called a mini shower. I would put soap on a washcloth and just try to clean myself and act like it was a shower. We had no kitchen, and for food, we either ate things that didn't need to be refrigerated or we went to McDonald's. That was right down the road. Now, we were so poor at the time that my dad had to buy one McDonald's hamburger and cut it in half for both my brother and I to share. He couldn't even afford to buy both my brother and I our own hamburger from McDonald's. And I think at the time there were only like 59 or 60.

So living like this definitely gives you some serious perspective in life. During this time in my life as a young kid, I always wished that I grew up rich. But now, looking back at it, I think being homeless was an advantage. And it gave me this level of motivation that to be successful that a lot of other people just, just didn't have. And when you're homeless as a kid, you can either say to yourself, well, this is just how it is, or you can try to do something to change the situation. And that's what I did. Living in poverty provides some serious motivation for wanting to become wealthy. I definitely didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I didn't come from money, I didn't have connections, I didn't have mentors, and I didn't even have a solid formal education. I actually dropped out of high school, but not for the reason that most people drop out. I dropped out because I was running a successful business at the time that was bringing in six figures, and I was skipping school to run my company. And one day, I remember I was called into the principal's office, and my principal, Ms. Waxman, told me I had missed too many days to graduate. And I tried to explain to her that here's why I was missing school. I started a company, and I was taking my time to fulfill orders, and that's why I was missing class. But unfortunately, she just was not all that sympathetic to my story. And I Actually really, really wanted to graduate high school because at this point in time, we were more than halfway through my senior year. My grades were average. I was a. Yeah, I was a C student. I was passing all my classes, but my attendance just wasn't up to snuff. When she told me I wasn't going to graduate, I remember begging her. I literally begged her to let me graduate with the rest of my class. I asked her for another chance. I told her, I said, look, if I don't miss any more days for the rest of the year, you know, this is halfway through senior year. Please just let me graduate. If I don't miss any more days for the rest of the year, will you let me graduate? And. Well, her reply wasn't exactly what I was expecting. She essentially told me that Barbin High School was not the place for me and maybe I'd be better off trying to graduate somewhere else. Well, now, Bardon High School wasn't exactly a prestigious educational institute. It's probably one of the worst school systems in Ohio. The school is only rated a 4 out of 10, and more than 57% of the students who go there are economically disadvantaged. So you would think as a principal in a school system like this, you'd be supportive of a student who is doing something to escape the economic distress that the majority of students were faced with. But unfortunately, it wasn't the case. Now, at this point, my only option to graduate school was to go to summer school. And I thought about it, I thought about going to summer school, and then I decided against it. And I said, fuck it, I'm not doing it. I told her I was dropping out and if she didn't let me graduate, I was just going to drop out. And so that's what I did. I dropped out and I decided to focus on my business full time. Now, by the time I dropped out of high school, I probably had more business experience than most people will have their entire lives. I started my first company at the age of 13, and when I was young, I mean, I just did everything I could think of to make money. All I was trying to do, I was just trying to escape poverty. And that was my number one goal. All I cared about back then was making money so I didn't have to grow up and be poor like my parents. And when I say I did anything to make money, I mean I did anything to make money. I remember I went as far as dumpster diving to make money. There was literally nothing at all that was below me. My best friend and I at the time actually went jumping into dumpsters to find things that we could sell and, and surprisingly we actually made some money doing this. And what's ironic is that friend who went dumpster diving with me also dropped out of the same high school and he also went on to build multiple multimillion dollar businesses separate and apart from me. So a few months ago I was talking to him and he was telling me now he has a company now that's doing between 2 and $3 million a month in sales. So it just goes to show you that it doesn't take an Ivy League education or even a high school diploma to achieve business success. My experience with the school system is probably a bit of an anomaly. You see, my teachers knew I was running a business. However, most of them were less than supportive. When I was in class, I used to read business and finance books that I would go to Barnes and Noble and buy these books and bring them in and read them in class. Unfortunately, my teachers, they just didn't see the value of me self educating myself with anything other than the standard high school curriculum. Which is funny because that's the only type of education that really matters when it comes to real success is self education. I remember I had this teacher named Mr. Barnwell and he was like seven foot tall, he was a giant huge guy. And he used to make fun of me to the rest of the class, all the time, to all the students, and I used to read business books in his class. And I remember him telling me that if I didn't pay attention to what he was teaching, that I was going to grow up and be a loser. And he would say I was just wasting my time reading those stupid business books. Well, I was never one for falling authority and needless to say, I followed my own path and continued to read business books and continued to get harassed by my teacher and ultimately I ended up dropping out of high school. Now one thing that's important to know is the only person who's going to determine your success is you. There aren't any authority figures out there who are going to determine your success. No teacher, no principal, no boss, no mentor, no business guru, no business partner, nor any of the speakers on the stage. The only person who's going to determine your success is you. It doesn't matter what other people say about you, as long as you're determined to achieve success. And as long as you don't give up, you can do it. Now back to my story about my teacher, Mr. Barnwell. He was the guy who Always used to make fun of me in class and tell me I was going to be a loser. Well, a few years later, a few years went by and I got out of high school or dropped out of high school, and I saw him. I definitely had the last laugh. And I remember one day I was picking up my younger brother from high school, and that day I happened to be driving my new Lamborghini.

And my good old teacher, Mr. Barnwell, who used to tell me I was just wasting my time with those stupid business books. I remember him walking right by while I was sitting there in my Lamborghini. And it was a great moment. I didn't have to say anything. I just smiled and waved hello. And you should have seen the look on his face. It was priceless. It was literally as if he saw a ghost. I actually have a crazy story about this Lamborghini and how I ended up getting it. This was actually a Lamborghini that I decided to buy on my lunch break one day. I remember I was just sitting there at my desk at the office, and my business partner and I were talking at the time, and we were trying to figure out where we were going to go to lunch. And I was sitting there. Like, thought popped in my head. I thought to myself, I think I want a Lamborghini. So instead of going to lunch, we literally just drove over to the car dealership, wrote a check for the car cash, and drove it back to the office an hour later. That's one cool thing about being able to have financial freedom, is being able to do cool things like that on a whim. And I'll tell you another fun story.

This was actually a few years ago, and this one involves Ryan Moran, a lot of wine, and a private jet.

So I was taking my wife and some friends to dinner for dinner and drinks down the street at a wine bar from my house in Ohio. And it was a Friday night. There were about 10 of us who got together. We had a limo, so no one was worrying about driving. And at the time, I was known for ordering way too many bottles of wine whenever we went out. And, well, this occasion was no different. After a few bottles of wine, we were all feeling good. And there I go, I get one of these ideas in my head again. And I got this idea in my head, I'm like, it'd be great if we were all in a much warmer climate right now. And we were in December. It was the beginning of December in Northeast Ohio, so it was cold, really, really cold. And we were having a great time. We were celebrating. It happened to be my wife's birthday. That's why we were out at the wine bar. And I thought, I'm like, what if we were all in Miami right now? So in that moment, I got on the line with American Express, Centurion, concierge, and I'm like drunkenly telling them, I'm like, I need a jet for 10 people and, and hotel rooms at the best hotel in Miami, and I need it like right now.

And so we had the limo take everyone to their house, picked up some clothes for the weekend, and literally within two hours later, we were on a private jet, all flying down to Miami. So the next morning, instead of hanging out there in the snow in Ohio, we were hanging out at the beach in Miami at one of the best hotels. Now, I'm not telling you guys these things to brag. I'm just sharing some personal experiences so you can see what's possible. Because if a homeless high school dropout who's told by his teacher that he's going to be a loser can achieve this level of success, so can you guys. I'm not smarter than you or more connected or better looking or anything else like that. The only reason I've been able to achieve this level of success is because I'm persistent and I don't give up. And this is a skill set that anyone can acquire. Now, one thing I want to stress as I transition my talk to some of the more important points is that this kind of stuff doesn't really matter in the end. I mean, it's fun to be able to do cool things like buy a Lamborghini on a whim or charter a jet down in Miami at a moment's notice. But as fun as this stuff is, it doesn't actually lead to happiness. These types of things, the sports cars and private jets and mansions and trips and yada, yada, yada, they're more like. They're kind of like a drug. They make you happy in the moment, but that temporary happiness, it just, it wears off real, real quick. And in order for this kind of stuff to keep making you happy, you need something even bigger and better. The only reason I bother telling you guys about this stuff is because I want you guys to listen to me today when I talk to you about some things that really matter, like fulfill fulfillment and happiness. Unfortunately, if I started my talk and I just jumped straight into talking about fulfillment and happiness, most people probably wouldn't be as interested. Fulfillment and happiness, they're just, they're not as sexy to talk about as fast cars and private jets and mansions and millions of dollars. Now, the purpose of my talk today isn't to show you how to get a new mansion or sports car or private jet.

Now that we got all that out of the way, I want to talk to you guys about some stuff that really matters. I want to tell you guys how I was able to get true fulfillment and happiness. Because sports cars and private jets don't provide you with true fulfillment and happiness. When I was young, I thought that money was what made a person happy. Because. And I probably thought this because when I was poor growing up, my parents always fought about money all the time. And then once I got money, I realized it didn't make you happy. So what did I do? Well, I figured, well, maybe I just don't have enough money. So I was focused on making more money because surely if I had more money, then I'd be happier. So I made more money and bought more exotic sports cars and bigger houses and went on more vacations looking for fulfillment and happiness. But in the end, it was always eluding me. You see, there are a lot of people I know who make a lot of money, but they aren't truly happy and fulfilled. And this was a problem that I was faced with a few years ago. Now I find. Now I find I did find happiness and fulfillment. But it literally took me walking away from a company that I owned that was generating millions of dollars per month to do it. I gave back ownership in the company to my partners and I walked away for nothing in return. Now, some people said I was stupid for giving up a majority equity stake in a multi million dollar company for nothing in return. But it ended up being one of the best decisions I've ever made, business wise. Now earlier, when I asked you guys to see a show of hands, how many of you wanted a business that generates millions of dollars every single month? Almost every single person in here raised their hand. But what I didn't ask you is would you still want that business if it didn't provide you any fulfillment, if it didn't make you happy, and if you just didn't feel like you were adding any value at all to the world? Even worse, what if you felt like all you were doing was extracting money from people's pockets in providing very little value in return? Now that's where I found myself. Not too long ago, I was a majority owner in a company that I didn't personally believe in. I didn't believe in the products, I didn't believe in the marketing, the only thing I believed in was depositing the checks in my bank account. Now, I had great business partners, wonderful people, and we had lots of fun working together, but I just didn't believe in what we were doing. And every time I thought about the company, it just gave me this bad feeling in my gut.

It's because I was focused purely on extraction instead of contribution. That's all I was focused on. I was focused on myself and purely on extraction. I didn't feel like I was contributing anything of value to the world. And I felt like the only person winning in my business was me and not my customers. Now, this business started out with the best of intentions. In the beginning, when we first launched the company, I felt good about what we were doing. However, as time went on and the industry got more and more competitive, our marketing got more and more aggressive and to the point. I just wasn't comfortable with what we were doing anymore. Now the business was a health supplement company. And in the beginning, it was just like most other health supplement companies. But after a while, we ended up transitioning into this company that focused primarily off of piggybacking off of the popular products that Dr. Oz was talking about on his TV show. And I'm sure you guys have seen this stuff. I'm sure you've seen websites before out there that talk about some miracle diet pill where you can lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Well, that's the business I was in, and I fucking hated it. As far as business goes, business was actually going really, really well. At one point, right before I walked away, we launched a new product that Dr. Oz had just talked about on his show, which was a weight loss product. It was a product called Forskolin. And this product that we launched, it went from zero sales to more than $200,000 a day in sales and in less than a week. So we went literally from zero to more than $200,000 a day in less than a week. But this product, it didn't pass what I call the friends and family test. If you look at your product or service and ask yourself, would you be happy if your mom or your best friend purchased your product without them knowing it was yours? Would you feel like your mom or your best friend got a good value for what they paid for? Would you want your mom or your best friend to recommend it to their friends? If the answer is no, then why are you selling what you're selling? I had to ask myself this question and make a tough decision. This is one of the things that ultimately led me to walking away from this company. Now, when you're caught up in a business, you tend to justify everything to yourself just to make things seem okay in your mind.

Now, if you're currently selling something and it doesn't pass the friends and family smell test, now, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means that you found yourself focused purely on extraction instead of contribution. When you focus on extraction, you're just looking at the situation from the standpoint of what can I get out of it instead of what can I contribute and what value can I add? It just means you're focused on the wrong thing. Now, over the years, I've sold a lot of good products and I've sold some bad ones, too. When I walked away from the health supplement company, it ended up being one of the best things I've ever done in my life.

Finding fulfillment and happiness with your business is so, so important. And the reason why it's so important for you to find fulfillment and happiness, not just money, with your business, is because most likely you're going to spend more time working on your business than you spend on anything else. So, I mean, let's cut your day into a thirds and say you have eight hours to sleep, eight hours to work on your business, which for most business owners is actually more than eight hours, but we'll say it's only eight hours. And then eight hours spending time with your family, working out, commuting, eating, and whatever else you do. This means a full 1/3 of your life is spent on business. Now, if you don't have fulfillment and happiness in 33% of your life, it's almost impossible to live life to the fullest. When you're frustrated or depressed with business, it tends to spill over into every aspect of your life, your personal life as well as. And.

It'S just not good.

Since you spend so much time on your business, it's important that you not only enjoy what you're doing, but it provides you fulfillment and happiness. Now, what led me to walking away from the health supplement business was a series of questions that I asked myself. These questions I want you to write down, and I want you to put some serious thought into them, because they could change your path in life for the better, just like they did for me. The first question is one of my favorite questions of all time, and it was initially asked to me by a friend of mine, Perry Belcher. The question is, are there any old, happy rich guys who did what you were doing? Are there any Old, happy rich guys who did what you were doing. Now, if not, you should seriously think about doing something else.

When I looked at what I was doing at the time, I couldn't think of any.

The only people I could think of were guys who made a lot of money and then they had some type of legal issues with the government because of their product marketing. The next question I asked myself is, does what I'm doing matter?

It's a question you should ask yourself, does what I'm doing matter? The simple test for this question is, if I stopped doing what I'm doing, would the world be better or worse off? If I stopped doing what I'm doing, would the world be better or worse off?

When I asked myself this question, I came to the conclusion that the world would be better off if I stopped what I was doing. I was purely just focused on making money to increase the size of my bank account, to buy more crap that I didn't need. There was literally no focus on contribution. I was purely focused on the extraction of money.

Now, the next question I ask myself, and I want you guys to ask yourself, is on a scale of 1 to 10.

How important to humanity is what you are doing with your life? On a scale of 1 to 10, how important to humanity is what you are doing with your life? If you died today, besides your friends and family, would anyone care?

Now, when I asked myself this question, I realized that nobody would care. No one would care at all. I didn't have a company that was adding any real value to the world. If my company closed tomorrow, the world would be better off. Now, when Steve Jobs died, millions of people were affected by this and the world lost a visionary person who added value to millions of lives. Now, we don't all have to have a company like Apple, but we should be playing our part to to add value to the world. The last question I ask myself is, would I be totally happy and fulfilled 10 years from now doing what I'm doing? Would I be totally happy and fulfilled 10 years from now doing what I'm doing? Ask yourself this question. Would you be happy and totally fulfilled 10 years from now doing what you're currently doing?

If the answer is no, then what are you waiting for to change your current path in life? Are you telling yourself that you just need to make a little more money and then you'll do something else? This is what I was telling myself for a long time. Now, being in a situation like this is kind of like being in a relationship that you know you shouldn't Be in. The longer you wait to end the relationship, the harder it becomes. And really, it's no different with your business. If you wouldn't be happy and totally fulfilled 10 years from now doing what you're doing, then you need to change your current path and start heading in a new direction.

You know, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And this saying is very true in business. By asking myself these questions and taking some time to do some self reflection, I was able to come to the decision to walk away from what I was doing at the time. When I walked away from the health supplement company, I instantly knew that I made the right decision. Literally as soon as I walked away, there was like this big massive weight that had just been lifted off of my shoulders. Now, I walked away from a lot of money, but what I did is I walked towards happiness and fulfillment. When I left the health supplement company, I started focusing on a passion project I had at the time.

I was trying to solve a problem that I was personally facing. And it's funny how solving a personal problem always ends up being the best business because there are other people out there who are also faced with that same problem that you have. And deciding to walk away from the supplement company was literally, it was one of the biggest milestones I think I've personally made in my life because I drew my own mental line in the sand that I said to myself I was no longer going to do something just because of the money. I was going to start focusing on contribution, not extraction. Now up until that point in my life, basically everything I had done it was because of how much money I could make instead of focusing on how much value I can add. And I think one of the reasons for this is probably because of being homeless when I was younger. But now I was an adult and I was successful and I didn't have any excuses for being so damn selfish, honestly. I mean, I was just focused on myself instead of others. And I always felt, I felt really bad about it inside. I felt bad about focusing on extraction instead of contribution, but for the longest time, I just didn't do anything about it. When I finally made the decision to walk away, it changed the rest of my life and it allowed me to break out of these mental shackles that I had for so long that had me only focused on money. If you're a slave to money, then it's really hard to find true happiness and fulfillment. And one thing to keep in mind too is that you don't have to be broke to be a slave to money. There are just as many millionaires out there who are a slave to money as there are broke people. When I walked away from the supplement company, I jumped right in and I started focusing on this passion project that I was working on. And this little passion project was a company called RV Share. Around that time I bought an RV and I was looking for a way to rent it when I wasn't using it. And I figured, well, there's got to be an Airbnb for RVs, you know. So I searched the web and I just couldn't find anything. So to solve my own problem, I decided to create the solution and build an Airbnb for RVs. And now RV Share is the largest peer to peer RV rental marketplace in the United States. If I had not walked away from a multimillion dollar business, RV Share would never be what it is today. Now, today, RV Share is a profitable company and it's worth exponentially more than the company I walked away from. Running RV Share, it's given me this level of happiness and fulfillment that I've just never had before in any business. And it's because it's a company that's focused on contribution instead of extraction. Now every day we're helping RV owners all around the country generate a second income from their idle RVs. A lot of our users are people who find themselves underwater with their rv. They owe more than it's worth and they can't afford their payments anymore for some reason or another. But at the same time, they can't afford to sell it either. So we've been able to help a lot of these people who are in this situation turn their RV from a liability into an asset. Some of these people, they actually end up making so much money renting their RV that they end up buying a second and a third rv and they now they've turned it into a little business. Now we've created this platform that makes it easy for the average RV owner to start renting their RV when they aren't using it. And RVs sit idle most of the year. The average RV sits idle 90% of the year. RV Share, it's has a purpose and it's beyond just helping people rent RVs. The purpose is to empower people and to give them the tools to become an entrepreneur. You see, most of our owners are hard working, blue collar folks whose lives you can really, really impact when you help them make just an extra 500 or $1,000 a month. Now when you're helping Middle America make an extra 5,000 or $10,000 a year. It makes a huge, huge difference for these families in their lives. We've been able to completely change the outlook and the financial outlook for RV owners all across the country. Now, from day one with RV Share, I've always made it a priority to focus on contribution.

I believe now that by having a higher purpose than just making money, ultimately in the end, we'll end up making more money as a byproduct. But that's not our focus. We don't focus on maximizing monetization. We focus on users and helping them. We have a philosophy to always do the right thing and to treat our users the way we want to be treated. And now, this just isn't lip service. This is something that we live by day by day because of this higher purpose, helping people. I believe that's one of the reasons why we've been able to build RV Share into a profitable marketplace in such a short period of time.

But it's not the fact that the company is worth a lot that excites me. What excites me is that we have raving customers who absolutely love us, and we're focused on contribution, not extraction.

This small shift in thinking and focusing on customers first and yourself second ended up leading to happiness and fulfillment. And in the end, I think it'll probably end up leading to more money as well. Now, most of you guys came here today because you think you want more money, but in reality, what you want is you want more fulfillment and you want more happiness, and you think money will get you that. But I want to tell you that money will get you a lot of things, but it will not get you happiness and fulfillment. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with making a lot of money. I've made a lot of money. And being rich is much better than being poor. And I've been both. But being rich alone, it just won't make you happy. And I used to think it would, but I was dead wrong. See, I've been a hustler most of my life. I had to hustle my way out of poverty. I hustled my way to becoming a millionaire. But one important thing to know about hustling is that you can hustle your way to wealth, but you can't hustle your way to happiness and fulfillment. And at the end of the day, you want it all. You want happiness, you want fulfillment, and you want wealth. Now, the person in this room who contributes the most value to society and helps the most people will end up making the most money. It's not the person in here who hustles the most. It's easy to hustle your way to a million dollars, it really is. But it's almost impossible to hustle your way to a billion dollars. And the reason why is because generally when you hustle, you're focused on yourself and how much you can get or extract.

Now, when I was hustling, I had to ask myself, who was I serving? Was I serving myself or was I serving my customers? The only way to get what you truly want is to serve others. To get happiness and to get fulfillment, you must serve others. I was focused on money extraction instead of contribution. And although the money extraction part was working really well and I was making a lot of money, I wasn't happy and I wasn't fulfilled. I had this, this.

Very empty void inside.

As I've become engaged with the world of Silicon Valley and the technology sector, I've noticed a stark contrast between Internet marketing conferences, which I've personally attended for years, and Silicon Valley type conferences. The main focus of the attendees at Internet marketing events is normally internally focused. Most people are focused on how can they make more money. And I know this firsthand because I was that person. Whereas going to a Silicon Valley type conference like TechCrunch Disrupt, the focus of the attendees is primarily on how they can build cool things that will improve the quality of people's lives. Now, it's not a mistake that you see billion dollar companies coming out of conferences like TechCrunch and you don't see billion dollar companies coming out of Internet marketing conferences. To build a billion dollar company, you have to be focused on contribution. It's the only way you can do it. You can't be focused on extraction and build a billion dollar company. The real secret to making money is to focus on contribution. The people who contribute the most to the world get compensated the most. It's a law of nature and there's literally nothing we can do to cheat this law. You can hustle your way to a little wealth, but a lot of times you get wealth. Without happiness and fulfillment, there are no shortcuts. A lot of people come to events like this looking for the shortcut. Well, here it is. Focus on contribution and helping other people get what they want and you'll get what you want in return. Now, when it comes to building a successful company, most people are looking for for the elevator when they should be taking the stairs. It's no different than Working out. If you want real long term results, you have to put the work in. I look at some of the companies I founded over the years and it was if they were literally on steroids, they made a lot of money really fast. But a lot of them didn't last very long because they just weren't built on a solid foundation. This is something that I did for years. I was always looking for the quick and easy way to make money instead of the right way. I want to ask you this question before I close. Do you feel like you're meant to be doing something much greater than what you are currently doing right now in your life? Do you feel like you're meant to be doing something much greater than, than what you are doing right now in your life? You don't need to raise your hands. But if you feel this way, I urge you, I urge you to take action. Because if you're waiting for everything to align and you want all the stars to align, until you take that action and do something greater, it's just never going to happen. Now, like I said earlier, the purpose of my talk is to ask you a few questions that can change the entire course of your life. I'm going to ask you these questions one more time so you can write them down. If you didn't write them down before.

Are there any happy rich guys who did what you're doing? First question, are there any happy old rich guys who did what you were doing? If not, you should seriously think about doing something else. The next question is, does what you're doing matter? The simple test for this is, if you stopped doing what you're doing today, would the world be better or worse off? The next question is, On a scale of 1 to 10, how important to humanity is what you are doing with your life? If you died today, besides your friends and family, would anybody care? And the last question is, would you be happy and totally fulfilled 10 years from now doing what you're currently doing now? Ask yourself these questions not just now, but when you get back home as well. Because these questions, they changed my life and they can change yours as well. For the rest of this weekend, I hope you guys can listen to the speakers through the lens of not how you can get more, but but how you can give more. Because in the end, this is the ultimate fast track to getting everything that you want. And with that, I'm done. I'd like to thank Ryan for having me here to speak and I'd like to thank each and every one of you out there. Listening today because today you invested an hour of your time listening to me talk. And time really is our most valuable asset and I appreciate that. I hope my talk has been of value and that you can take something away from it and it will improve the quality of your life. And with that, I'm done.

Mark and I went into Q and A after his talk from stage. If you want to hear that, that was a previous episode here on Freedom Fastlane. So you can look that up@freedomfastlane.com or just search for Mark Jenny in itunes and it'll pop up. Listen. Tickets for Freedom Fastlane Live 2016 Go on sale sale at the end of September. If you're on our newsletter you got an early Bird link with a discount that ends at the end of August. So if you are listening to this after then you'll have to wait for the public opening or if you don't want to be on our list, you'll have to wait to the end of September or you can grab your ticket through the newsletter and you can go over there and you can get Early Bird and get that discount. The lineup includes John Mackey, the investor panel, Alicia Silverstone, Peter freaking Diamandis, Jesse Isler, Sean Stevenson, the hilarious JP Sears. This is an amazing lineup. I can't wait to have you here. But listen, this is not an event about tactics. This is not an event about Amazon. This is not an event about little tweaks in your business. There are events for that and they're cool. This event is about exploding what is possible and demystifying the impossible. It's about highlighting people who have done impossible things like running an 11 billion dollar a year company, like becoming world class investors. This is about surrounding yourself in an environment that forces you to uplevel. It's about solving greater challenges. It's about listening to people like Peter Diamandis who are solving the challenges that face this planet. It's about being around people who are on that same wavelength because you probably have a sucky network that is dragging you down and this is the place where you will elevate it. You will level it up like nowhere else. Because everybody else is going to make money conferences to get those little tweaks in their business. And this is an event about completely changing the way you think about your life, about business, about investing. And when you're on that path, you need to be around other people who are on that path and you will get that. At Freedom Fast Lane Live. You can get your tickets when they're open@freedomfastlanelive.com or you can sign up for our newsletter to get early bird Access. Public tickets go on sale at the end of September. I hope you'll join us. I hope you're one of those people that is on that path and we can certainly help you this December in Austin, Texas. Thanks for listening. I know you're going to love the rest of this binge, so stay tuned for the rest of the series. Talk to you soon.