Courage to Leap & Lead with Mark Fujiwara: part 2 - Episode 139

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Whoa, let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

You know, we had such a great conversation with Marc last week that I couldn't, you know, there's no way I could end it. And so, in fact, I didn't even say thank you to him. So today we're gonna continue and we wanna find out about this algorithm that he created to marry his wife. So if you missed part 1, please go back and listen to it. So audience, let's continue our conversation with Mark. Mark, continue about, you know, the lessons that you learned in building a business from your mom and your uncle who smoked a cigar. And who took you to school and read the sports pages to you?

All right.

I love the concept of— so what we're talking about is the way that his uncle built this business was just being at a shop, a barbershop.

Oh, coffee shop.

Yeah. Coffee shop. And just listening and being present for everybody. And so when they needed him, to do a banquet. He had all the data. It's just, it's brilliant marketing that we used to do that we don't do anymore. We don't listen. We don't place ourselves in the center of where our clients are. What's going on with that? Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like you're absolutely right on that, which is, I think, so this is specific to my, my industry. Which is almost like it's all about scripts and PowerPoints and charts and graphs and things like that. And it's just—

But we should tell the audience what your industry is.

Oh, excuse me. It's private wealth, multifamily office. And I've— the professionals in our industry, you know, specific on the investment side, They're so conditioned about getting assets under management through the door, and to the point that they're going to utilize scripts, they're going to utilize these fancy charts, they're going to talk about their portfolio or their investment management right off the bat as soon as they can. In fact, sometimes they don't ask questions of the client, they just start talking about their investment performance. But it's interesting because when you get to the heart of a client's needs and what keeps them up at night, I've never come to— a client has never walked in and just said, you know what, all the money stuff of all the things in my life, you know what's keeping me up at night is the fact that I can't beat the S&P on a risk-return basis by 42 basis points. It's never that. It's all about something else. It's about trying to grow my company, trying to sell my company, trying to pay less taxes, trying to pay less on my debts. There there could be a medical thing, which comes out sometimes in that first conversation, which it has. And it's like, and that's why I have private the best private medical people as part of my external partners. I've got close to a hundred external partners that I've that I've that I've heavily vetted since day one of this because of what Uncle Park did. because of the fact that if I ask the client what's top of mind to them, I'm gonna— I have to find a professional that can deliver that result. So every time I step in a room with a client, from day one, I'm asking these questions about themselves, about their goals. And their goals are sometimes not even financial. Their goals are something else.

Mm-hmm.

So every time a client says, I need to get this result, Sometimes I see that gap and it's like, okay, now I gotta find somebody, or now I gotta find a coach. You know, lately it's been more about you need the financial professionals around you to sell your company, but you also need a coach to handle that process of selling your company.

Yes.

So, you know, that was carried on very early. in my career. And now it's like I'm the go-to person for multifamily office needs. When I say multifamily office and a family office in my world, and what I do is expert coordinator of experts. And sometimes that's—

What does that mean?

What that means is like people will come to me. And so just to back up a little, I have a book coming out on family office. And so when people think of family office, the old family office definition is that it's the Jeff Bezos of the world. So when you amass like $1 billion, you go out and hire people just to work for you. So you're like building a company of your estate, of your wealth, and you go and get the CPA, the attorney, the insurance guy, everybody's just—

Yes.

Specifically for you. Now, what I do is, I mean, I've talked to billionaires before, but that's not something— that's not the space I really play in. I play with people far less money than that, that can afford great professionals, but it's not worth their money to hire somebody specifically for their own estate. And I see a problem with doing it where you're hiring people into, you know, into your own estate and having your own family office, having your own company of your wealth, is the fact that it's kind of like how I'm a big Golden State Warriors fan, but I'm also a big basketball fan in that in the NBA there's certain teams that will go like the Lakers did this 2 or 3 years ago and it didn't work out where they went and got all these superstars. that got drafted 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago. Now that's kind of like your single-family office. You're getting some really big names here, but they're typically towards the end of their career, and they're also paid to not mess up. So what they're going to do is they're going to stay in their lane right here. I've talked to a lot of these professionals, and I asked them, in your capacity, what are you playing at, 1 to 10? In your expertise, where, where are you at? I'm at about 4, 3, or 5. Otherwise, I want them at a 10. I want them looking over every stone possible, right? If you're a CPA, if you're a tax attorney, look at what is starting to work, and also make sure that your client is not going to make a dumb decision on a tax strategy that can, you know, be detrimental to them down the road. So anyways, that's, that's what, you know, my world is comprised of, all these external professionals. Now, client comes to me and doesn't say, it's not like going to a doctor and say, hey, I want that drug and that drug and that drug. It's, I want this result. And it's me going out and saying, okay, this is the team that you need. Now, sometimes CB, it's just one introduction is all they need, which is fine. So that's more like a situational family office. But typically what I'm doing is the typical client is somebody with enterprise value of $10 to $200 million, a founder-led business. And they want me to hold their hand through their life's most challenging transitions, whatever that means, getting money, selling the company, not paying taxes, creating a charity, things like that. And then I bring in these external partners to do the job.

That's amazing. So you really are a high-level connector.

Exactly. Exactly.

I love it.

Every possible angle too, in terms of the investment side. You know, I've seen problems with some of these big, big giant investment firms because they only have their lanes that they stay in. They don't have access to every— to all the funds out there. So, and it's— if you look at one, I won't name any names, but if you look at one investment firm statement and then you take a client opposite, you know, the opposite coast, same amount of money, they're almost most likely that they're pretty similar in the programs that they're in. So I want to play with the most open playing field as possible. You know, my, my, my, the feeling I want clients to get is that when you're at a party and people start talking about, oh, I did this tax strategy or I sold my company this way or I'm in, you know, these investment funds or I'm invested in this, You want to have— I want them to have the confidence that they're saying, Mark and his entire team have turned over every rock. So if that was something I should do, they would've told me I should do that. Or—

Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I remember when I was at— I probably shouldn't name the company, but a Fortune 500 company. And We were acquired by another Fortune 500 client. It was the giant eating the giant. And the first thing that was done when we were acquired was that all the attorneys in our company were terminated. And I remember talking to somebody who was head of marketing, and I said, are they crazy? Because it was a consumer products company, right? And they said no. Their thinking was, we don't want attorneys who are going to sit in their office and practice the law working for us. We want attorneys that are out there in the field and know what's going on working for us. And I'll never forget that. That was such an important concept.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. It supports what you're saying. Hey, now that we've talked about the technical stuff, talk about what your book is, and I want to know about that algorithm.

Oh, you want to know about that? Oh, I can't wait to share with you.

But I want to know about your book first.

Okay, so my book is coming out in hopefully a month or so, but you know, the publishing world, it's always It's insane. Yeah. So my book is called Superior Results: Maximizing the Value of Your Family Office Just Like the Super Rich. So in that book, I took a little bit of a different stance. A lot of books that private wealth professionals write will funnel back into them. It's just like, well, now you have to talk to me. Well, this book is actually written for the client and it teaches them How to build their own multifamily office, how to build their own team if they wanted to. And it goes through some of the most important parts in the book. The part, the part on elite professionals, which is a big passion of mine because I did a talk in Oxford on the Private Wealth Reset, and it really has to do with how to know that you're working with elite professionals. And that's the way you start your multifamily office. You start with one elite professional Now, elite means to me that, yes, you have to have the expertise in your industry. Definitely. You have to know all the things that are functioning. You have to be, say, top 5% to 10% in your industry. Now, how do you determine, though, that that is an elite professional? Well, for one thing, they know a bit about everything in the private well space, so they're not going to ask you questions just concerning about their own product. It's a dead giveaway when somebody just says, oh, tell me about— if they're an attorney and say, tell me about your estate plan. And all they're doing is focusing on that because that's the product. But when you have a professional, and I've noticed this with every single external professional that I work with, when they are— when they know how to solve problems outside their expertise and know who to turn to. And that's somebody that you want to lean on. And then the other thing, which is not in the book, which I, which I, I thought of a little bit too late, was the fact that I started to evaluate all my professionals and all the people I work with. So I have this little tool that I use where I will, what I will write down every 15-minute increment on how my energy is. Now, what it— what that's telling me usually is that what was I doing before then, or what was I doing during then? More importantly, who was I with? So I've uncovered some things where, you know, it's like pluses and pluses and pluses. Plus 2 is the best, minus 2 is the worst. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, there's a minus 2. And then you see the trend happening again, an unexplained -1 or -2. I actually fired a client because of that, because it's like, oh, I saw the trend. Actually, Amy saw it too. Amy saw it because, you know, she says, I noticed that when you come home and you're with our daughter, you have a smile on your face, but something's on your mind. And I said, bingo. Well, now I know why that -2 is happening. And every single client that I work with now, every single external professional partner that I work with, every member of my team is, you know, we talk about the Japanese values and there's 3 of them. I mentioned shoki before, which is true self. It's consciousness, the Japanese word for consciousness, showing up as your true self. Even when you have your true self, true mind, true heart, true soul. The second one, you know, which I mentioned is ikigai. A lot of people know about ikigai, which is a high-level purpose, something you love, something you're great at, something that makes the world a better place, something that provides you with some sort of capital. And the last one is so important to me, which is ichigo ichie. Ichigo ichie is the Japanese word for— it's the appreciation of the uniqueness of the moment. So what that means is that, CB, you and I are talking like this. I know that sometime in the near future we're gonna have another conversation like this, but nothing— this is unique right here. So for that matter, there's like, I don't know how many monitors in this room right now, but they're all off. The only one is focused on you. When I'm with my daughter Stella, I put my phone away. Not only put my phone away, but I'm just focused on her. So much to the point that I would just focus on her, and I'm just sending her love, and there's so much energy going around in the room. It's just me and her. There's so many times where she'd turn around and just give me a hug out of the blue. And so when I'm in Ichigo Ichie with her, it just makes everything go round and round. So, oh, by the way, you, you are so high on all 3 of those values, my friend. And also, I can imagine because of this conversation we're having right now, I can guarantee +2s all throughout the rest of the day. And that to me is, is where I want to live. If I can have +2s throughout the day, that everything, everything is working. Fulfillment is working. It doesn't matter how much money is coming in because it's going to come in anyways. But if I can do it the +2 way, oh my goodness.

Yeah.

Every— everybody wins on that.

Now you have to spell these for me because I, I don't, uh, know how to spell them.

First is Ikigai. Ikigai. Um, I-K-I-G-A-I.

I-K-I-G-A-I.

Okay.

And the next one is Um, shoki, S-H-O-K-I.

Okay.

And the next one is ichigoichi, so it's I-C-H-I and then go, G-O, and then I-C-H-I-E.

Okay. Ichigai, shokai, ichigoichi.

Yeah, ichigoichi.

Yeah, ichie. Okay, I love it. I-C-H-I. Okay, got it. I love learning. I love learning. You know, it's a lot of this is tied to a book that I read a long time ago, and I've mentioned in other Interviews, and it's called Synchronicity. Have you read that?

I have not, actually.

So it's written by Jaworski, who is the son of the Jaworski for the Watergate trials. Um, and basically what he says is that when you find your path, everything folds in to support that path, to keep you going.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

And this, this reminds me of that symbolism.

Yes, absolutely.

That you can just, you know, it's one of those concepts that you can see running in your mind. Yeah.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I am going to be looking those up and writing about that, those in my newsletter. Yeah, my next newsletter I'm going to write about ichigo-iche, shokai, and ichigai.

Yes.

How did I do?

Good. Oh, shoki. Yeah.

So the I is pronounced as an E.

Yes.

Okay. All right, thank you. Um, so I want to know about this algorithm, uh, That you developed? Was it for the proposal or for marriage or—

Oh no. I have algorithms just because, well, that's how my brain works. And it's for my business, really. That's where it started in terms of decision-making, in terms of decision-making to take on a client. Sometimes decision-making means, should I help, you know, this company do a fundraise? Um, so what happened though was I got to thinking. I said, why don't I do one for, for dating? Because, you know, I'm, I'm dating and like, this is, this is the big one, which was, uh, the, the algorithm figured out if I should to go on a second date. Okay, so because what happens, like, the human mind will see this pretty face, you know, and it happened one time where I was like, oh, this is— she's very pretty, right? So she's very pretty, and kind of like ignoring some of the red flags. And then you go on a second date and you're like, why did I— why did I do this? Yes.

Exactly.

So I developed this algorithm where it was like, there's some knockout factors, but I also have a very high mathematical brain. And so I was using this for a while, and then this one woman, great woman, had— it's like the SAT scores, you go up to 2400. And so it's, I think it was like a 1210, right? So 1210. And like, again, I have this brain which kind of works where I, the numbers start coming out in my head. It's just like, okay. And I can usually get within, you know, 30 or 40 within, within a, within an estimate. So Amy comes in and, or I started talking to Amy. And then when she walks through the door, That's when my mathematical brain starts to go. It's like, okay, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, you know, I wanted to be completely present. But when the waitress came by, I started doing these calculations in my head. And so the bar is 1210 to get to the second date, right? You always want to beat that, that, that, that, that the highest score previous to that. And so I'm like, whoa, she's got over— she's like 2,100. And the 300 was, was the stuff I didn't know about. And just giving you some examples is, you know, charitable, kind, you know, kind-hearted, fit mind and body, um, uh, you know, has, has, you know, has, has an interest in, you know, in, in some sort of athletics, um. is doing very well in a certain area. True self, you know, all the Japanese values. And all of a sudden I said, oh my goodness. So, but again, that was good and it was bad because I said, okay, she beat the last high score by more than 800 points. So the first thing that came out of my head is like, you're 40 minutes in, Don't blow this one.

Just— She didn't know all this when you first met her, did she?

Oh, not at all.

Not at all. Because I'm wondering, how did you get a second date with this?

No, no. And I don't think I told her until, until we were like long after we were exclusive. I mean, she was tickled. And the funny thing is, CB is that she didn't have an algorithm, but she like, she had the same kind of thought process. So Amy hired—

All women do.

Yeah, they had— she hired a dating coach because I got my algorithm, she has the coach, and the coach is like, okay, we gotta, we gotta make it so that you don't go on these second dates and that you're looking for you know, people that are, that, that are going to score high on her own algorithm. And so she was looking for certain things, you know, there's some knockoff factors that she was— she was—

Why did, why did she have a dating coach?

Because she had gone through dating and relationships that she was just getting frustrated by the results. So, um, And, and I gotta tell you, I, I was just like, you know, I'd gone on a lot of dates before then, and it was like I almost felt like she, she was— she, she could have been a dating coach. That's how good, good she was, you know. But it was so natural too. It was so natural. But it's just like, wow, like the eye contact, you know, just the asking the questions and, and like And also not diving in, you know, which was key, which was not like, oh yeah, let's get the second date and let's, you know, I think we're gonna be like such a great match. She was always like, this is fun, this is good, I do like you, but, you know, just kind of keeping that distance made me want to, you know, maybe want to go for more, right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I did the poor person's version of a dating coach. I read Steve Harvey's book. Oh yes, Act Like a Woman.

There you go.

And I started evaluating my husband from the very— from the time that I drove up, even before that, because I was an hour late for our first date. I thought Okay, let's see how this rides. And it wasn't on purpose. It was because I was new to Colorado and I just got totally lost. So I took the wrong exit and wound up, you know, going around and around and around. And I thought, oh God, and I don't have this guy's number. And then when I calmed down, I remembered I had his number and I called him and I told him what happened. He said, no problem, this is how you come and I'll wait for you. And when I got there, he was standing outside the restaurant waiting for me. And I thought, he just scored a big point.

Everything about that, the understanding and just, you know, rescuing.

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And ours was like yours. 4 hours later, he was still talking. This is good for an introvert. You've got a guy who does all the talking. And I then, on our third date, I said, okay, you have a year to propose to me. So listen, I have loved this conversation. Absolutely adore it. I'm so glad, Patricia, For introducing us to each other.

Same here, CB.

I know that we will have many conversations.

Oh, absolutely, CB. Absolutely.

So thank you so much, audience. This has been amazing discussion. And if you need to talk to somebody about where you're going health-wise, wealth-wise, whichever way, You know, reach out to Mark. He's a good guy. And so, but you know, we can't endorse anybody here, so I'm not endorsing. I'm just saying, you saw the evidence. This is a good guy. Um, I will talk to you soon. I— not soon. I'll see you next week, and I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. And remember, Courage is king. Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, CB.