The Power of Intentionality and Specialization | Mark Stern

Hey creative, are you ready to discuss profits, the money, the ways to make it happen? The Profitable Creative Podcast is for you, the creative, how you define it. Videographers, photographers, entrepreneurs, marketing agencies, you get it. CEO of Core Group and author Christian Brim interviews industry experts, creative entrepreneurs, and professionals alike who strive to be creative and make money at the same time. Sound like you? Tune in now. It's time for profit.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Cuyahoga, Ohio. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it's a great name unless you're a kindergartner and trying to figure out how to spell your address. Joining me on the show, Mark Stern of the Custom Box Agency. Welcome to the show.

Mark, thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me, Christian.

So, uh, well, no, I'm glad you came, uh, and I'm intrigued by what you do. So, um, why don't you start with explaining what Custom Box Agency is, what you guys do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was a business that was really founded during the beginning of COVID Um, when I became an entrepreneur, one of my biggest frustrations was the fact that Anytime I bought a product or service, it just felt like the entrepreneur was making it too hard for me to get a result. And I was like, I just want a clear pathway or just send me the materials that I need. So part of what I started doing for myself was anytime I was doing a virtual summit or launching a new coaching program or offering or a new service, we'd always build a physical product to be able to send that out to the customer that guided them through the journey that they were about to go on with working with me.. And people just started asking, how are you doing this? And can you do it for me? So it was never meant to be the business, but then it became the business. And to explain what we do, you have genius. Um, how do I take— thank you. Yeah, of course.

I've been trying to tell people that for years.

Oh, just bring me with you. Um, how do I package up your genius and in a way that I can create a physical product on it that is all about giving them clarity on the journey that they're about to go on, What success looks like with your program, uh, gamifies it. We love gamification, but I can get into your business and build an entire physical product that is truly an extension of you. And the benefit to customers or our clients is it really buys back their time and it really gets them crystal clear on what they're asking their customers to do. And for customers, when they receive these products that we produce, um, you're seeing results get faster. Um, you're seeing them ready for the next thing. You're seeing them share it out on social media in a bigger way. Um, so for us, there's this magic that happens when I can turn your genius into a physical product and then share it out and scale you out to the masses.

Yeah. So there's a book I read many years ago. Um, let me see if I can remember the exact title. Uh, Selling the Intangible, I think, and actually a book around selling insurance. Um, but, but it, it spoke about, you know, the idea of when you're you're selling something that's not a physical product, where, you know, you have to approach things from a marketing and sales process differently than if you have a physical product. And I think what you've hit on there is actually fascinating because it is hard to sometimes convey the value. But you're not using this strictly from a marketing standpoint. This is actually part of, say, the service delivery. It's, it's part of the, the thing you're buying.

It's a great revelation. We say there's 3 types of campaigns and it's all anchored on customer lifecycle. When you go through the customer lifecycle, your customer goes through a couple of different phases. Phase 1 is acquisition. How do they discover you to buying your products and services? I can build out a whole physical product to do just that. Or is it onboarding and delivering what you just talked about? Is this product design that you acquire me as your service provider, you hire me? And so this is part of that onboarding experience. Let me prepare you for the journey and let me give you all the tools and resources you need to be set up for success. So you have that pathway. Or is it retention? That's the third area. Is this about extending lifetime value? Recognition is a big part of retention. So how we look at things is what is your goal? Is this an acquisition play, a delivery, onboarding and delivery, or retention? And then through that, when we start to think about how we deliver the experience or bring to life the physical product, now we know what kind of what the overarching objective is. And there's so many ways to do it once you anchor it that way.

So you said that you, you started this during COVID What did you do before that?

Yeah, so I was a corporate junkie. I thought that there was only one natural way to grow and have a thriving life. I grew up in Alabama.. And so I knew what my peers knew, which is you graduate high school, go to college. After college, you get the job, then you go back to grad school. I got my MBA at Duke, and then I worked at Deloitte Consulting for many, many years. So I was a road warrior, always traveling, and had just the revelation that, you know, it was 2012. Um, I was like, this can't be life. I was $165,000 in student loan debt. I had this desire to be an entrepreneur, but, um, it just felt irresponsible with all the debt that I had. And when I finally mustered up the courage in 2018 to say, it's time to explore the unknown and explore this entrepreneurship game. The first thing I did was I built a business in virtual events. I saw this opportunity to like, how do you host an event? And when we did that, this was another outlet that I was like, well, we need something physical, because this is a lot of talking happening digitally. And so people just kept on saying we were doing getting all these organic and unboxing videos. And then the product that we would send could be something that we could sell after the event. So it had this life. But, um, just seeing people's reactions, it was enough for me to say that there's something here. Um, it wasn't until the beginning of COVID that my mentor said, you're building this business in virtual events and you're building this business in, in these box experiences, but you're confusing the marketplace. Are you the box guy? Are you the event guy? And in corporate America, I was celebrated for being the world's best generalist, good at everything. And entrepreneurship, you want to be known for something. So people— it makes it easy for other people to recommend you. And I thought about it really hard. And you'd think virtual events is the way to go at the beginning of COVID because that's what everyone's trying to figure out. We're all stuck at home. How do we crack the code with this virtual event? But there was something that was calling me to say, you need to go all in on the boxes and these experiences and pivot at the beginning of COVID was the difference between every single virtual event expert that emerged overnight being a competitor to now being a collaborator. So that now all of a sudden—

It was genius.

Incredible opportunity.

It was genius, to use your word.

Oh, thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah. No, I mean, it really is because you're exactly right. Everybody dove into that space of virtual events and huge boom and a lot. But I go, okay, so you said some profound things there and I want to go back. Yeah. But before I do that, I want to ask you, was there a tipping point? So like 12 to 18, you had this realization that there might be something that I'm missing, but didn't quite have the— I think you used the word courage to make that step. What was that transition like? Was there an epiphany, a straw that broke the camel's back, something?

This is a great question. Um, so what it was was, um, years in corporate America. If you know the corporate American lifestyle, if you work for a big consulting firm like Deloitte, I was a road warrior, which meant every Monday at 4:45 a cab picked me up to take me to the airport. I would fly to my client and then every Thursday night or Friday morning fly back to Austin and then rinse and repeat, do it again on Monday. So I had that road warrior lifestyle for 6 years. I lived on airplanes. Um, that last year I was on the verge of becoming a junior partner for the firm. And it was going to happen because if you have the ratings, you just know this is the year you're about to go up and you'll get promoted. And at the same time, I could feel every time I get on an airplane, my body breaking down. And, um, and that because you have these golden shackles where they really take care of you, don't spend money on food or travel because you're doing it for work. I was putting on weight. And there's just some so many things that were just feeling off. And it wasn't until it was actually December 27th, 2017. The only time in that lifestyle that you can actually slow your brain down is between Christmas and New Year's because you never want to take time off because you may get behind on a project. And when my brain slowed down just enough during that little window when everyone takes off, Um, I had this weird premonition on that night, um, that told me if I stay in this job, it will kill me. Um, and I woke up, um, with tears in my eyes because it was so heavy. And I had to be in Dallas on January 3rd. Um, so made the trip to Dallas, sat down with the partner I reported to and just said, I love it here. I mean, Deloitte took care of me. It was a really great experience for me. It's a hard experience, but I loved it. But I said, I have to go and put in not a 2-week notice. I put in, I'm happy to finish out the product and make sure you're in good hands, because Deloitte's a great firm to say, if you leave on good terms, they want to wish you well. But they will also welcome you back if you realize, right, I saw the world, it's not for me. But I know I will double down on you and stayed for 5 months and then finally, you know, cut the cord. And, and that's kind of what triggered the transition. Of leaving corporate to explore entrepreneurship. But it truly was— I didn't know what the business was. I didn't have anything. And by contract at Deloitte, anything you produce is owned by the firm. So even this idea of starting a business, by default, they own it. And so you just don't have the mentality or the headspace to create. And I had to let it go to get into a state of, you know, I had the belief of I don't know what it is, and I may drain my bank account and realize this is not for me.. But I had to hold the belief that there is something here. And if I free up the capacity in my head that was Deloitte, it would open up the space for me to create again. And it did.

So, so to clarify, you had not— you did not have a specific idea when you turned in your notice or even when you left 5 months later of what you were going to do?

No idea. No plan. If you had told me at the time that I'd be building a business in boxes, I would have said you lost your mind. Like, come on, like boxes. But it's been amazing that this business has been my creative outlet. It is my art. And it's just been fun to be able to get into our clients' business. And everyone thinks so the same way in terms of digital. But when you tie in the world of physical and digital, it opens up this whole new opportunity that very few people are tapping into. And it has this, um, uh, it feels more premium because it's something that's a lot more intentional and thought through. Because when you send something to print, it's printed, whereas if you upload a digital asset, you can always just edit it and re-upload it. And so there's a different intentionality and experience around it, um, that is really powerful.

Absolutely. There's a permanency to it.

Yeah. And that's a topic that is, is really important to me, which is the intentionality of the experience and getting into the intentionality of what do we actually save. Because when we think about these, we are very intentional with the design, the layout of the box, because we want it to be something that takes up real estate in your customers' homes. We want to be top of mind.

Yeah, because, you know, you're— that's a brilliant observation that the, the, the environment of online, which we all live in, and some of our businesses are heavy into it, there is a tendency to be less intentional because everything happens so quickly. Yeah. And it's— which is good that you can do things quickly, right? Because it's not permanent. But it also is dangerous because it's like, have you really thought it through? And to your point, like that whole bandwidth headspace, like if you're on that, if you're on that treadmill of digital, you are doing things at a pace that you don't ever give yourself bandwidth to sit back and and be intentional. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now.

The other part of this with digital is because of AI now, I mean, digital was already on an exponential in terms of the amount of content that was putting out there. Now that we've introduced AI and all these new platforms, it's an even more intense— stupid— exponential. And so you're seeing this rise of more content in the market getting flooded. And as a result, you're seeing a rise of digital distrust happening. Um, oh, 100%. It— I remember when someone launched a book, it was a big deal. But now books are such commodities that I could go on to Perplexity or Claude or Manus or any of these platforms, and it can help me engineer a book in a day.

And so literally, and there are people that do that, and, and crazy enough, they make money at it, which I— but I, I, I think you hit on the, the key issue is the trust, right? And I think that trust has always been a precious commodity, but it is going to become more and more important as AI iterates and we have confusion, not just because of quantity, but also because of intentional deception, you know, deepfakes, et cetera. Like what, what, what Who do I trust? Right? And so your alternative offers a major disruption in that. Like, I love it. I too am a Deloitte alum, although I only worked for 3 years. But it's interesting that—

Only? You still get an award.

I, uh, I was an auditor, so I wasn't getting paid nearly what you consultants got paid. Um, and this was back before consulting really was as big as it is for them. Um, but strangely, that, that was why I made a decision to leave, was, uh, not that I had any idea what I wanted to do, but what, what I just could not handle the travel with my young family. I'm like, I don't want this. I don't want to be away from my family and not be part of my kids growing up. And I remember I was at an engagement during busy season on a Sunday afternoon, and we were wrapping up at 5:00. It was a small engagement, and so it was just me and the partner that were left there. And the partner was on the phone to his wife saying, yeah, I'm going to be a couple more hours. And in that moment, I was like, wait a second, they hold this partnership track out as the pathway. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, he's working more than I am. I'm like, no, I have no interest in doing that.

I had the same observation. And when you think that the higher up you get, the more you buy back your time, not in that. Hierarchy. No, can you become a partner? There's a new classification. And so you go from being an analyst out of college all the way up to a senior manager and then become a partner at Deloitte. But then when you hit partnership, there's a new pecking order and you're, um, now bottom of the barrel partnership. And so you constantly have to prove yourself. So even if you get the accolade of partnership, if you're not delivering enough, they can push you out of the partnership. And all of a sudden, all these years of work you're back trying to figure out, you know, what do you want to do next? So it's a very cutthroat environment. But you're right to say I saw the same thing. I would look at partners and be like, they're working harder than I am and they're flying to 3 cities in a week and I'm just going to one city and it's just not the lifestyle for me.

Yeah, I remember having a conversation at one of the national trainings with an audit partner that was there doing some training. And she said, yeah, I billed 2,700 hours last year. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, hold on a second, that's billable, right? And we know that there's at least another 20 to 30% on top of that. So, you know, I did the math and I'm like, you're working 80 hours a week all the time. I'm like, that's insane. That's insane. Did you have a family that you were were wanting to get back home to, or was that not a factor?

It was just me. And honestly, it was almost like you had to pick. And I see that oftentimes, especially with women, um, you know, it— the balance of saying, do you want to pursue the partnership route or have kids, or finding the balance of being a mother in that environment. It's really tough. Really, really tough.

Yeah, no, I, I can see that. And, and, you know, I, I— this is kind of going off on a strange track, but I, I, I think that the, the model that public accounting firms— and to a wider berth, a lot of the professional services. So I, I throw law firms in there and engineering firms, like professional services in general. The large firm model is broken where, you know, you have a partner track and it's, it's predicated on getting a bunch of people to work for cheap and build them out at high rates. Um, and they're not finding the, the minions anymore. It's like the, this, this generation is not interested in that model at all. And so I don't know how it sustains. I really don't, but not my problem.

Yeah. Especially after a global pandemic. Mm-hmm. When you have a, a business that's built on the FaceTime and being in the client site. And now you're virtual. It's a, it turns that model on its head.

Yeah, that was, that was where I learned the, the concept of FaceTime. I remember specifically on this engagement where it was, I think they called it a director client. So it was, it was a certain size client that had a certain size fee, you know, a large one. Um, and, uh, the partner was there and I'm like, I asked the manager, I'm like, what is he doing here? Like, I mean, because there was, he wasn't doing anything, right? He's like, oh, it's FaceTime. And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, he's got to justify his rates. Like he's got to justify the fee. And part of that is being present. And that's an interesting tie-in to what you're doing., right? Because you're physically there with the box you deliver. So, I don't know if that was a great tieback, but we're going with it. We're going with it.

I like it.

Give me an example, if you could, of a use case of any of those 3 stages that you were talking about where you, you know, hide the names to protect the innocent, but Walk me through what that, that process and deliverable and, and to the extent you can share it, like the ROI or the results look like.

Yeah, I'll talk about what we're doing right now with, um, 57 Hats. This is a brand new product. This is actually one of my products. Um, my mentor said, you keep building these boxes for other people. Why aren't you doing it for yourself? And we can get into lots of different stats across whether it's an acquisition delivery or retention play. But with 57 Hats in particular, I was driving from Austin, Texas back to my home in Alabama. I grew up in Alabama and it was Thanksgiving. So I love to do the drive. My dog can be in the car with me. It's like zen because if I can avoid airports after all the years of Deloitte, I'm happy to do a 10 or 12-hour drive.

And I was going to say that's about 12 hours.

About 12 hours. Yep. Which I love. I break it up into 2 days. But while I was driving, it was just this epiphany of like, what's a challenge I've had in my business? And the challenge was, as my business started to grow, when we were 3 people, then 5 people, then 10 people, then 15 people, and now we're over 20 people, um, what was happening was I started taking hats off of my teammates. And I took hats off of them because when you're smaller, people do a lot more roles in the business. But as you grow, I wanted them to live in their zone of genius. And what they experienced was they actually went through a little phase of mourning, saying, do you not value me anymore? Do you not value the work that I'm doing? And I kept on telling them, no, I know what your strengths are. And I just want you to live in your strengths. And I want to hire out the people that could take off the pressure for you. So you don't have to wear as many hats. And then as they started to understand and grasp that, um, then, uh, to see them flourish and shine in their genius was just, for me, incredible. And in terms of a product, um, the idea came up of just something really simple. Can I give people a tool? So they understand whether they use it for themselves or their leadership team or do it from a department standpoint. They can go through an exercise in like 15 minutes to understand how many hats they're wearing in their business. And how we did it in this product was I wanted a game board, like a Monopoly board material. And then I had a series of cards that represent some of the most common roles across 5 different departments in an organization. And you literally can go through it and say, these are the roles that I do. Go through the exercise and then say, what is this something I should be doing, deleting or delegating? And there's evaluation criteria to help you understand that. And for the things you should delegate, we can take you through an exercise to say, is there someone available or can AI or automation replace this role today, or do you need to hire it out? And so this concept of this box came to life in a really powerful way with 57 Hats. Um, and what was really cool is we positioned it as an acquisition play. Um, one of the businesses in our network is a staffing agency, and if we can shine light on the problems that people are having on the back end, if they need support with staffing, we can help them with the placement of those people or help them optimize org structure. So this is what we did with just a physical box. And when we introduced it to cold traffic, um, by day 5, to cold traffic on Facebook,, the funnel was profitable. And now if you flash forward today, we've sold a few thousand units. We launched this in, in April as a front end. Um, and what's been amazing is not only has it started to bring us leads as a result, um, it's also opened the door for potential partnerships and sponsorships and other relationships are coming up with different divisions of the box. And so we're starting to build this network as a result. So we've generated thousands of leads. And we're just getting started with this product. And the other thing that's been really cool about it is whether someone was a prospect interested in the product or bought the product, we had an SDR, a sales development representative, that would reach out and call. And either way, we had about a 70% pickup rate. And of those who picked up, even if you're a lead or a buyer, 30% scheduled a call with us. And so that's what we're seeing right now is because we accelerated the curve of that know, like, and trust, and we provided value in an experience they can consume in 15 minutes. And we had a clear pathway on the back end. You know, it was very much, hey, you can do this yourself. Each card on the back has a QR code, and in the QR code for all the different roles in the box set, we give you job descriptions, roles and responsibilities, KPIs you consider, interview questions, all your personality tests for this sample. So StrengthFinders, DiSC assessment, Myers-Briggs, you get all that for every role. We just created a product that just has a lot of high value, easy to scale, easy to talk about, accelerates that know, like, and trust, and to them provides an immediate value because it's physical. I want you to keep it and I want it to take up space in your home and I want you to go repeat this exercise every few months. So the repeatability keeps the, the element of the game alive a lot longer. So this is just an example of what we've done with this one product, but it's been incredibly powerful to see as an acquisition tool to start conversation, um, or as a potential sponsorship or co-brand. Um, just the avenues that it's opened up for us, um, that's what's been really cool about it. And it all started with the physical product.

Hey creatives, Delaina Ely here. I have a question for you. If you could pay yourself more, why aren't you doing it? For real. S Corp is an option for you, the creative entrepreneur, to move your business to the next level, to pay yourself more, and to cut your tax savings down. Yeah, less money to the IRS, we want that, right? So why haven't you done it yet? What's going on? The reality is you probably have 50,000 questions in your brain, you don't know which way is up and down, and you're still too busy to do all those things plus also create, right? Well, the good thing for you is that Core is actually the place to be to get that S-corp election rolling. Yeah, we have an assessment. Let's see if you qualify. Come chat with me. Core Group, turning passion into profit.

Okay, I have lots of follow-up questions.

Let's do it.

Okay, so, so you're, you're selling this— I'm going to call it a game. Yeah, you're selling this game, uh, standalone product. It's a standalone product, and you're pitching the game, you're selling the game.

That's it.

And what's the price point of this game?

It's free, just plus shipping. Okay.

And who are you targeting?

Heavy on— yeah, um, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Uh, heavy on entrepreneurs, heavy on business owners that are We're finding people, $0 to $5 million seems to be a, a good crutch of it. And now through the experience of doing it, um, we're starting to find different pockets. For instance, a lot of people who bought it have been people who own accounting firms. And so that's intel that we now have to then eventually spin up a finance or accounting division of 57Hats. And it's, again, one of the biggest challenges we face right now with small business owners is they're so overwhelmed, but they don't have a vernacular for all the things they're doing. Um, and don't have the knowledge or the insight to know what to do next. And so a lot of this is to help just provide the, not only the vernacular, but the clarity of like what's going on so we can start to have a conversation around it.

So, so then you said there's the, a service offering behind that. It sounded like it was, it was hiring placement. Is that so? So explain, fill that out for me.

Sure. So there's, there's actually a couple different angles that have become opportunities, and that's what's been kind of cool about this product as an example, the product was designed not just to have a product for the sake of having a product. When we think about the product, especially if we're saying this is for acquisition, it's to prime and educate and nurture. So if they need the support that you have, you can position those higher ticket offers as a solution, but the know, like, and trust is already there because they've had an experience and a breakthrough with you. Um, and so, uh, for us, that, that is what has been important in terms of the positioning of this. But on the back end, not only do we have the staffing agency as a means to help, the other conversation that we're having with a lot of people is, do you see what we did with 57 Hats? We can build a physical product for you with this as well, which should get you into the heart of my business too. So there's a lot of different avenues on the back end that we can explore. Um, those have been the two most prevalent ones. And especially when you deal with, um, entrepreneurs, they're constantly looking at something like this going How do I do this for me? If this is working for you, how do I implement the strategy for me?

So is the staffing agency a partnership or was this a separate business you started?

This was actually my business partner for 57 Hats. Um, and his network, he already had a staffing agency. And so in that sense, it fed beautifully, um, as a perfect tool. And this is why I pulled on the business partner is he and his, um, uh, significant other, my two business partners, James P. Friel and Yada Golden. They are brilliant at go-to-market copywriting, messaging, funnel building, um, and so that whole front-end play. And I am really brilliant at the physical product and taking your genius and then bringing it to life and then handling it all the way down to getting into your customer's hands. So there's a— this perfect, uh, I didn't have the back-end solution, but I had the problem that I knew that this could solve. The solution I do have is if you want to do a box we can help bring your genius to life and implement similar strategies. He had the staffing agency, which made him a perfect fit for collaboration and, uh, go-to-market for us. So there's this beautiful, like, blend that happened that pulled the two worlds together. And the other thing is that now I get to be positioned as, um, a referral partner that anyone who comes in and goes through that way, it's still a win for me as well because I'll get a kickback as a result. And so this is kind of this win-win that happened as a result of this.

That's, it's absolutely brilliant. So, um, you said you have 50 employees. Is that what I heard?

I have, uh, somewhere between 20 and 25. I think we're about 22, 23 right now, somewhere in that range.

In, in the creative box side, like inside here. Well, like doing boxes for others, like that's, that's what that business is.

My core business is, yeah, with that group that I just mentioned. Yes. That is what we do. That's what we specialize in. We have a whole methodology and way that we approach it with clients. And it's fun. That's where I'm like, I'm having fun.

So, so did— okay. Had you engaged with your, your, your partner there on the staffing side before you guys launched 57 Hats, like for your company?

Uh, no. Uh, oh, actually, yes, yes, I did. Um, I actually did engage. So when we were just getting started, uh, it was that company that I went to, to find— this is a place that when you're a brand new entrepreneur, you're like, I can't afford team, but I cannot not afford it. And I remember, uh, working with that company specifically to find an integrator and thinking at the time, oh my gosh, this is, uh, I don't know if I can afford this because I was such a new business. And I took the leap, and the reality was when that role came in, it was the right person. It freed up so much capacity that the business grew. And so it was like I could not afford not to have them, right? Um, but it's one of those things that it's those hard markers as a business owner to say, you know, money is the lifeblood of a business. Is this going to pay off or am I just burning money? And thank goodness I quickly learned the lesson of you find the right people, it frees you up in a way that you can put yourself out there louder and generate more money. And so that's me. So that's where it started. And at the time, my business partner didn't own that staffing agency and he later acquired it. And he's someone that I've known since 2018 when I joined a coaching program. This was a Two Comma Club coaching of ClickFunnels. This was when they launched it., in 2018, and he was one of the coaches. So he was— he's been in my network, um, but we just over the years started to build a relationship. And when, um, the concept was coming to life, you know, I pulled him aside and said, I typically don't take on business partners because I know how I show up and I know how I deliver. And I oftentimes, you know, when you find a business partner, you want to find someone that balances you, but also you believe You know, I had a friend of mine that said, you want a partner that you believe that they're going to work harder than you and they believe that you're going to work harder than them. I kind of love that framing. But for me, it's more around what can I bring to the table and what is it that I actually can't? And who can I find a trusted partner that you don't take on? Don't take on a partner that has the same skill set as you because there would be a conflict of interest that could happen pretty quickly. May not, but like they brought so much to the table that I didn't and I brought so much to the table that they didn't. That it was actually this just perfect merriment of bringing two people together. And it's funny because even the dating phase, when you take on a new business partner, you're kind of skirting around. But like, it's been well over a year now that we've collaborated before launching the first product, and it's been a really incredible partnership.

Yeah, my, my longtime friend and attorney attorney, uh, general counsel, not, not like criminal attorney, um, he, he described business partnerships as, uh, sex without marriage, uh, and, you know, I— he's right in a lot of ways. Like, you know, the, the, the majority of business partnerships are not well thought out. Yeah. Um, but when you do find that synergy of, of like complementing each other and you have the right goal and values, like you want to go the same place and you work with the same intentionality and the same values, uh, it can be magical. Absolutely. Okay, so I want to circle back to, you know, you— if I— if my math is correct, uh, you've grown to you know, 20 employees in 7 years, that's fairly fast. Um, what were some of the challenges that you had in, in, in scaling? And I mean, obviously you had a lot of background looking at other people's businesses and advising them, so you, you, you had a lot of knowledge, but what, when the rubber hit the road, was, was the the challenge with that?

Yeah, I have two for you. When I was getting started, when I left corporate America and became an entrepreneur, I just was like, I know I'm a high performer in corporate America. I know I'm good at what I do in corporate America. And therefore I know I'm going to be a high performer as an entrepreneur. That is far from the truth. And the lesson that I learned, because I kept on crashing and burning, and then because I came from such a— I love Deloitte, but it's a pretty toxic work environment in the sense of you're always drinking from the firing hose. There was always something going on. Like, you may put in hours of work on Saturday and Sunday in order to hopefully free up some time to work out one day in the week. But I was used to passing out in my bed at my hotel room with my laptop on my stomach, because you can't work on anything during the daytime because you're in meetings all day. And so you have to then fill in the gaps of all the things you need to do after hours. And so it's just a very intense environment. So when I became an entrepreneur, the lesson that I learned was this: entrepreneurship versus corporate America is like checkers versus chess. The game board may look the same, like the game board is the same for checkers and chess, the exact same game board. The rules are completely different. And that was a big breakthrough that I had to realize because I was realizing I was playing entrepreneurship with corporate America rules. And it's not about a foregoement of everything you've done to get to where you are. It's about learning to play the new game and your competitive edge is the experiences you've had beforehand. And so I needed to learn what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I needed to understand this online game. It was a whole nother beast. And the second I started getting smarter and smarter on that, then I can use my competitive edge, which is all the years at Deloitte and the experiences that I've had in my life. And all of a sudden the game started to unlock in a really powerful way. But this is just a simple analogy. If you play checkers with chess rules, you will fail. And vice versa. And so this is why it's important to know the game you're playing.

No one's going to play with you if you try to, uh, play chess with checkers, right? I mean, what would you say the, the one or two biggest differences in the game rules are that, that—

yeah, it's this idea that it— when I was at Deloitte and in corporate America, they wanted you to be good at everything. World's best generalist. You need to be good at everything from strategy to, to understanding how the implementation will work. Because when you're advising with clients, like, they want you to be this brilliant generalist. In corporate America, or in entrepreneurship, you want— they want you to be known for something. And the way that I look at it is this, is that, um, you know, I want good people to win, and therefore I have to assume other good people want me to win as well. And the easiest way for me to help you, help me win is making sure you understand who I am and what I represent and what I do. And so if someone says, who does these box experiences? You're going to have a bunch of people say Mark Stern. But if I was someone who said, I do Facebook ads and YouTube ads and I build landing pages and I can run your event and nobody can build these boxes, all of a sudden you're so many different things that it's hard for someone to say, I think Mark does this versus, okay, you need Facebook ads. This is your person. Um, and so that element of helping make it easy for other people to talk about you makes it easy for me to extend my message and grow.

Let me, let me synthesize that and, and put it back to you. So like, as an employee, a well-paid, uh, hard-working employee, uh, the, the more general you could be, the, the more valuable you were to your employer. But as an entrepreneur, it— as the business, not necessarily you, but as the business, it's, you know, we don't have the resources that a Deloitte or a Coca-Cola or, or any of these mega corporations have, and we don't— we can't afford to be generous. Generalists. Yeah, we, we have to be very specific about the problem that our business solves because that's the only way you're going to get traction in, in marketing and, and actually delivering what you do, delivering the value. Is that a good rephrase?

It's a such an interesting depiction of it, and so I think it's a good— I think it's a good synthesis as well. Um, but you know, I didn't think about it through the lens of like the availability of resources, but I agree with you in the sense of, um, you know, the other angle of this, it's really powerful and why I'm such an advocate of focus is if I did boxes and virtual events and built landing pages and did all these things, my mental capacity, if you take a circle, you are not 100% focused on anything. You're splitting your time and you may be 33% one, 33% another, 33% another. Other. When I went all in on just our craft as Boxes and this experience design that we do, 100% of my mental capacity gets to go towards my craft and my genius, and I don't have to worry about anything else. And so in that sense, if you're talking about competition, if your competition does what you do plus 30 other things, are they really competition against you when you can hone in and specialize on your craft in a way that you're not competing, that you literally can focus? And that's what's been So really, it's— for me, it's been incredible because the more that I spend it— this is kind of where, um, this was years ago, I read, um, uh, the book, uh, 4-Hour Workweek. I can't believe I'm referencing this right now, right? Tim Ferriss, yes. And he talked about this idea of like, in my mind when I was going through business school, I was like, I should major in marketing because that's a strength, but I should do finance because it's a weakness. And then Tim said you should not develop your weaknesses, you should develop your strengths. And if you continue to enhance your strengths, all of a sudden you become in a category that for other people to compete with you, they need to have invested in a similar amount as you. And so because all my mental capacity constantly is just focused on how do we take that customer experience to the next level and how can physical be an enabler, it's hard to compete with me. Through the experiences and the thought leadership that I've developed over the years because I'm focusing on my craft. And that's true for anyone listening, is the more you hone in and focus and just continue to develop your genius, you start to elevate into a category that it becomes really hard to compete with you and what you do because people aren't as focused, um, and dedicating the energy that you are.

Yeah. And, and although the name was brilliant, uh, from a marketing standpoint, point, uh, the book really isn't about working 4 hours a week. It really is not. It's, it's about what you said, being really good at what you do and letting others do the rest of the stuff, um, because there's no reason for you to do it.

And I'll be honest with you, I— while the idea of working 4 hours sounds nice, I know me, and like while the idea of retiring sounds nice, I know me, and I don't see myself ever retiring. And, um, I don't see myself ever just working 4 hours. I'm having too much fun. And so if I can live in a place that inspires me and is my playground, um, why would I ever stop doing it? Because like, the cool thing about building a business that's so much like you is I feel like my business is an extension of me. And if I were to ever just stop it, it's almost like letting go a part of me.

Yes. I have another podcast called The Chris Project where we talk about entrepreneurial mindset and self-awareness and mental health around entrepreneurship. But one of the studies I reference in there and that show multiple times is they put, I don't know, 40 male entrepreneurs in a CT scan machine or MRI machine and, and looked at their brains while they showed them pictures. And the same part of the brain that lit up, uh, for the men when they showed them pictures of their children are— this is the same part of the brain that lit up when they showed them pictures of their business. And so it's this, this fascinating data point where Now, they didn't do that with any females. So I'm not saying that females' brains are wired the same way and would have the same reaction. But for men, when they say, it's my baby, they literally mean it. Like it's an extension of them.

Yeah. Interesting. I've never heard that. That's incredible. And I was like, if you want to talk mindset, block an hour. I have a lot to share.

Well, I may have to have you over on the Chris Project and we can go further into that.

Let's do it.

How do people find more out? Use your words. How do people find out more about Custom Box Agency?

Yeah, no, thanks for asking. The easiest place to go is to our website, customboxagency.com. Then I always tell people, you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn or Facebook because we love to meet with people. You can schedule a free call with our team. We'd love to hear what people are doing. But it's, it's such a fun process because it's truly taking a piece of you and bringing you to life., in a way that buys back your time, gives you clarity, gives you results faster for your customers. Um, so there's so many just benefits around it. So if people are interested, I just say go to the website, um, and schedule some time with our team.

Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, shoot us a message, tell us what you want to hear, and we'll replace Mark.

Oh, don't do that. Don't put that out there, Christian.

It's, it's gonna happen. Until next time, ta-ta for now.

Take care.