The Real Role of the Entrepreneur with Marx Acosta Rubio

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

All right, welcome back to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad, and as always, I like to bring you guys the ability to listen into conversations that I want to have with people I want to talk to about things I want to know about. And I have often bragged that this is one of the most selfish podcasts on itunes because you know that I'm only talking to people that I have authentic curiosity about, that I'm following what they're doing or people recommended them to me and say, man, you have to talk to this person. And that is the primary way that I filter every single guest who comes on this podcast. And today is absolutely no different. So two of my close friends, and if you've listened to the show, business partners Matt Wolf and Joe Fear from Evergreen Profits and the Hustle and flow podcast, Hustle and flowchart podcast, they'll kill me if they know I was getting their name wrong, recently recommended a guest to me who they said, man, you've got to talk to this guy Marks. He really kind of blew our mind with a lot of the stuff he was sharing, and I think you guys would really hit it off. So I said, yeah, let's make this happen. So today I'm talking to Marx Acosta Rubio, and Marx is an immigrant deca millionaire. And we'll go into his story in a moment. But he's got a very powerful success story where he didn't just make a bunch of money and he didn't even just lose a bunch of money and then make it back. It's not rags to riches. And he's going to talk a little bit about how he went from, from rags to riches to negative rags to even more riches. And he's going to talk about some of the businesses that he owns. I do believe he owns all or part of about 13, maybe more different, different companies. And he's been an advisor and consultant and mentor to some very, very big, influential business people and leaders, many of whom you may know. I don't know if we'll go into who they are yet, but he's somebody that you want to pay very close attention to. I know whenever I get Such a strong recommendation from Joe and Matt. I follow it. So instead of reading off a bio that Marks gave me, I just want to start the conversation. Marks, are you with me?

I'm always with you.

Great.

Thanks for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's good to have.

And I'm hoping that we can pick things that are controversial.

Yes.

And I can give you contrarian views so that everybody disagrees with me, and then they get to think about why.

I love contrarian views. In fact, I recently started doing something on my show which is called Wednesday Wisdom, and I spelled W I S, W, dumb. Which are these, like, platitude, like success platitudes that people throw around on. On social media. And you'll see them on Instagram or you'll see it something like, well, I'm trying to think of one that I, you know, that I just did the other day. I think it was a quote by Zig Ziglar that says your. Your. Your attitude and not. I'm sorry. Yeah. Your attitude and not your aptitude will determine your altitude.

That is correct.

Yeah. I was like, yeah, that sounds great. But it's only half the story because it's saying your attitude is everything and not your aptitude. Well, that'll get your foot in the door, but your skills and your aptitude to get the job done are what's going to keep you there. It's not just, I'm going to keep this guy here because he's got a great attitude all the time. So I try to kind of shine some light and go deeper on some of these.

Well, Zig Ziglar, who, you know, I'm a big fan of Zig. Read all his stuff, listen to all his stuff. You know, some of the rumor was he was not a very good business guy. And then when he died, he didn't really leave a lot of money and wasn't a millionaire compared to other folks like Jim Rohn, who was very wealthy when he passed away. Napoleon Hill was broke. And then he became really wealthy after he got a hold of W. Clement Stone, who, you may know, ended up becoming a billionaire and lived 100. There's a big difference between, you know, motivation and practicality or real life. There is this sort of bridge between what we're told. You know, motivators have this capacity to get us excited, but they also got this flaw to tell us what's wrong with us and then that they have the solution and that we're flawed and, you know, the opposite approach that is, we're not flawed. We are perfect. Like a Japanese vase. You know, the Japanese, they had this interesting culture, at least they used to back in the. In the day, where if a vase was perfect, they wouldn't consider it perfect. They had to have a chip or some kind of deficiency in the vase because then it made it unique and that uniqueness made it perfect.

Isn't that like diamonds, too? Like, yeah, for sure, because, like, synthetic diamonds, as I've. If, as I've heard, they can make a perfect synthetic diamond, but they know it's not a real diamond because it's too perfect.

You know, it's interesting because I think with something like that, perfection is. Really doesn't exist, as we know. Right. But it's. It's the uniqueness that makes us great. I mean, we could take some figures. I can't tell you who I've coached because I've NDA some of these people, but I can tell you that most of everybody who I've ever communicated with, there's only about a handful of people in my entire life, and I'm 48 now, that I've either coached, had the pleasure of being coached by, or have hung out with who were pretty rounded, pretty sort of balanced. Most of them are off the spectrum in what my good friend Richard Koch, who wrote the 820 Principle Book, would say called 20% Spike, or whatever you want to call it, right? They're really just incredible in this area. And then by definition, they. They're flawed in almost everything else. Now, if they're smart, they will get something or somebody or some capacity to make sure that they minimize their flaws, right? So they don't leave a lot of dead bodies like I did my first way around on the road to success. But not all of them do that. So it's this whole component of, you know, are we really supposed to, you know, take at face value the things that we listen or are we supposed to, you know, incorporate them into our own way of thinking? And Jim Rohn, who I'm a big fan of, he had a saying that said, whatever you do, make sure it's a product of your own conclusion. Be a student and not a follower. The problem with that is that most people want to follow and not necessarily lead. And as an entrepreneur, a business guy, you got to do both. You got to follow and you've got to lead. And that becomes a really interesting balancing act. I think you and I were talking about a minute ago about why I think me personally building a business to Sell is the absolute worst thing you could possibly do, right?

Yeah. And I want to go into that, right.

People will tell you, oh, no, Mark's brand, this is, you know, you have to do it because you'll build your business where it's not dependent upon you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So let me tell you what. Now, this is real life, right? So the businesses that I've been involved in range from under a million to 4 billion. And the biggest one, now that. That I'm helping or two businesses combined. $2 billion. I don't own it. The guy that owns it is a client of mine, and if he was to build those businesses as if he was going to sell it, he never would have gotten to the billion. In fact, none of the guys and gals that I've ever had a privilege of doing any work with ever built their business with the intention of selling it. You know, who does that? You know, you tell me. Who do you think builds a business, quote, unquote, with the intention of selling it?

Yeah. Nothing comes to mind.

Well, what do you think? So let's think about it. So let's say that you and I were like, hey, let's build a business to sell it. What is our mindset about that? Build that business that we're going to.

Build it, that we want to get out of it. And then, you know, we don't. We don't want to be it in the first place.

Exactly.

Well, and along those lines, it actually, this does make me remember what a friend of mine told me, A guy named Vinnie. Vinnie Fisher.

Who?

I don't know if you've heard of Vinnie, but he was on my show a couple years ago and he actually took. He did. He had the exact same contention with that topic as you do, but he flipped it. And actually, I think this made it make more sense. He goes, don't build a business that you want to sell. Build a business that you would want to buy. So that.

That's a better way to look at it, right?

Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, this is a business I would buy because it has the system. It has all this other stuff. Like, oh, man, it's got all this stuff in place. I would love to buy this business. And that was kind of a different perspective change, because obviously if you're going to build it in a way that you would want to buy it, well, then the side effect is that somebody else might want to buy it. But that's never the intention.

See that? See, I think you nailed it. On the head. Right. You're so smart. That's exactly right. Because, look, you know, I'll tell you my little story, how I came up with these four pillars here shortly because I think it's relevant. But you're right, if you build a business, most people build the business that they want to build. They build it for the sake of building it. You know, there does come a point in time where money isn't the objective anymore. And if it may not be in the beginning. Right. It's challenging work. It's exciting, it's fun. It's. You know, it's just. I had a call this morning with a buddy of mine who's got a really successful business, and I said, hey, if you had f you money right now, today, what would you do? And before I could finish, he said the exact same thing I'm doing now. And I go, come on, you're lying, Ian. He goes, no, I swear to you. Exactly. And I believe him. Right. And so that's what you want. So if you do build a business, like you said, that you want to buy yourself now, it's a different mindset. Right now you're building something of value that you're going to covet, you're going to care for. Money is very finicky. You know, money goes where it's more best utilized and where it's also coveted and wanted, as employees are, as customers are. And if you're building something to get rid of it, who on God's earth would want to go there? So why do they say that? A, it's probably some Google AdWords, you know. You know, I don't know algorithm that attracts customers. They're trying to buy you something that just isn't real life. There's a really big difference between marketing and practicality. In some cases, not all things.

A huge one.

Right?

Yeah. And. Well, and I think it is because that's the surface level desire, which is escape. Right. And I think that a lot of people get into the. I mean, doctors and lawyers are probably the. And dentists are probably the number one thing because they're, you know, if you look at the statistics, they're some of the most depressed people in the world, and they are some of the most highly paid, and they all end up hating their job. And when you. A lot of times you'll go to Internet marketing conferences or you'll go to people who are trying to build an online business, and there is a plethora of doctors and lawyers and people who feel as though they got Sold a bill of goods of this is the way to success. And they realize they're trapped, so they want to escape. And the same thing happens with entrepreneurs. You start to build a business, now that business owns you and you're not necessarily happy. So when somebody comes along and gives that platitude of no, build it to sell it, they think sell, which means escape, which means exit, and ideally with a bunch of money. But as you just pointed out, that's surface level stuff. And it can actually do more damage if you build your business like that as opposed to good, right?

Yeah. Look, I know guys who have built businesses in industries they hated. Like, you know, I mean, look, I started my first business in ink and toner. Ink and toner is not exciting. That was not my passion, right? But I built an incredible business because I wanted to build something great. It didn't matter what I did. It could have been selling paperclips, it doesn't matter. I just wanted to build something great. Then I made a couple of choices that almost put me under a couple of times. And we'll talk about that here shortly. But let me give you what I think is really interesting. So, you know, I go build this business, right? On against competing against Staple and Office Depot and all those guys, and we build an incredible business. Then I make two poor choices that just put me almost, almost in the theater of just never wanting to work ever again, right? It went from making a bazillion dollars to losing a bazillion dollars. And it was all my fault, right? I mean, I could blame people, but it really was on me. Then I sat and stuck my thumb for a couple years going, you know, was it lucky? Was this just a fluke? You know, why me? You know, should I just get a regular 9 to 5 job? You know, maybe I should work somebody else. All of these things. Began to sort of question myself. And then I have an epiphany one day. And by the way, this is not like a two hour. This is like two years, right, of sucking my thumb. Then I had an epiphany one day and thought, you know, if I did it once, I can do it again. What did I do wrong and what did I do right? Like, not I'm like you, you know, I'm going to use your words surface level, but at the structure level, right? At the structure of what happened, what really, how did I screw it up? Like, you know, how did I go from doing X to doing Y almost overnight? It's not the economy. Wasn't the employees that stole money from me. Sure, those are all factors, but what happened? So I went back and started looking. Okay, how did I get there first to begin with, and then what was the opposite? And it turns out that I did the complete opposite of got me to begin with. So I nailed it down to three things. Strategy, team building, and sales. Right. Just these three principles. I had a great strategy. I knew how to build a team, and I focused primarily on sales. So I started going back, and I thought, you know, I'm not going to be victim to the same circumstances that got me the first time, right? I'm going to change my business model, hence the strategy. I'm going to do things differently, and I'm going to grow it so I make twice as much money in half the time, and I don't put myself in the precarious position to get screwed again. So I did it, right? I did it. And all of these people were seeing me go from hero to zero and then back again. And one guy says, hey, you know, I've known him since he was 13 years old. He says, hey, Marks, I see you're doing better now. I thought you'd never get out of it, you know, can you help me? And I thought, sure, I can help. You know, I gave him some advice, and he goes, no, no, you don't get it. I want to pay you to help me build my business the way you've built yours. He goes, I'll pay you $10,000 a month. And I was like, hey, buddy, you're not going to pay me. I'll do it for free. I mean, I'm your buddy. He goes, no, no, no, no. If I don't pay you, I won't do it. I said, okay, right? You know how it is, right? We don't value the things we don't do. I said, great. Happy to help you. And he's got an online business completely different than mine. And I'm like, okay. So I went back and thought, okay, let's talk about strategy and team building and sales. And I started to implement all of these amazing things that had turned my life around. And after 30 days, guess what happened?

Sorry, I was on mute.

No, it's okay. What do you think happened after 30 days?

He didn't do anything.

Nothing after 60 days?

Not a damn thing.

90 days.

Yeah, same.

Okay, how about a year? Same time, right? So here's what happened, right? So I'm like, dude, you got to stop paying me. Whatever we're doing isn't working. And then we had put the strategy together, we had put the team. I mean, it was beautiful. It wasn't moving. And then one day I had a conversation of come to Jesus if you would, or heart to heart. And I gave him one of my formulas called V2 GP2 Vision, Value, Schools, Principles and price. And so I said, hey, Brad, we'll call him Brad.

Yeah.

I said, hey, Brad, what's your vision? Gives me his vision. I said, hey, Brad, what's your values? Gives me his values. Hey, Brad, what are your goals? Go for goals. You know, hey, what principles do you think we need to employ? Right? Because those are important. We list them together. And then I said, okay, well, here's the price you have to pay. Are you willing to pay that price? What do you think his answer was?

Well, be. Only because I've listened to your podcast of Joe and Matt. I know that he wasn't willing to pay the price. And that's kind of. That's, I think, the key to the whole thing.

Right? Yeah. So then I thought, well, dude, if you can't pay the price. And the price wasn't working harder, by the way. See, that's what I think. I didn't talk about in Joe's and Matt's. I didn't talk about the price was. So let me ask you something. I'm gonna give you the big aha here in a moment that I had, but what do you think the price would be? So let's say we did this with you, right? Let's say that you and I spent a few hours, we ran through this formula, your vision, values, goals, principle. We get to the price. What do you think the price is going to be?

What do I think the price is going to be?

Of.

If you and I decided that you want to make more money, have more time off, build a better life. Right. And then we painted a vision. Your vision.

Yes.

And then your values, you know, your wife's important to you, friendship, honor and character, integrity, whatever. Right, sure. And then we thought the goals. Here are the goals you got to hit. Because the vision is sort of this big, beautiful idea or dream you have. And then the goals are the things you. Okay, tactical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then we go. Okay, fantastic. So then what do you think the price would be?

Well, my. My intuition is that the prices. You know, there are certain things I'm gonna have to give up, and I'm not even thinking financial price, but I'm going to have to act different. I'm gonna have to give up stuff. I'm have to sacrifice some things that I might value right now that give me pleasure and comfort and safety and.

And, and confidence and do some things that really put me potentially in an uncomfortable place, in a place where I'm doing things that I've never done before and.

Struggling through that. And because that is so uncomfortable, I know that that's where a lot of people go now. I don't want to do that. It doesn't feel good. It's scary.

That's exactly right. You nailed it. Once again, the nail on the head that the price is not more work. In fact, in some cases it's less work. Right. Because you're doing things that you shouldn't be doing that are causing harm to your business or your life. The prices change. Right. Sort of that uncomfortableness, you know, changing your standards in something now, you know, Zig Ziggur, you mentioned earlier, said you don't pay the price, you enjoy the benefits. Well, that isn't necessarily true. You know, there is pain associated to it, but it's mental pain, it's emotional pain. He wasn't willing. Right. We uncovered to pay the emotional pain and the mental pain to become a better business owner, a better CEO.

Right. And it's usually not until the other. The pain of not taking that action overcomes the pain of taking that action that people finally decide to change. Right. Whether it's, you know, with addiction, it's called rock bottom and other stuff to where it's like, because pain is not fun, we spend our entire lives trying to avoid pain.

But that's the only way you grow.

Well, it's human nature. Freud put the pain pleasure principle and then Tony Robbins familiarized it or made it more common. But Freud understood it's human nature. Yes. However, success is on the other side of that. Now. Richard Koch would disagree and say, I don't think success is on the other side of failure. Although Thomas J. Watson would disagree with Richard, who started wrote IBM.

It's not so cookie cutter. What ended up happening was, is that we have emotional pain based on fear and based on all these components. He didn't want to get into the unknown. He didn't want to experience the uncertainty and the pain until we figured out how to actually make it pleasurable for him and pleasant once we changed his. Because it's all based on belief system. Right. You talked about pain and the rock bottom psychologists would call it a significant emotional event. Right. They used to say that your personality said until the age of 10 and then after that that's who you are. And then they discovered it's not true. Neuroplasticity. You can change, but it needs an emotional event that rewires the circuitry. Right. Sometimes that's. That's, you know, rock bottom. Sometimes it's inspiration. You know, w. Clement Stone used to call it inspirational dissatisfaction.

Yeah.

You know, you're so dissatisfied, you get inspired. Right. So whatever, you know, and we can. And there's. Everybody's a little bit different. Right. So, you know, when I talk to people or I coach them, and we try to get to this threshold of mindset, which is the fourth pillar, by the way, we get there differently. Right? So that's what I uncovered. I was like, oh, my gosh. You know, these other three pillars, strategy, team building, and sales, are amazing, but they're irrelevant unless we talk the mindset. And mindset is basically a set of beliefs that drive behavior. And you can tell what somebody really believes not by what they say, but about what they do.

Absolutely.

Right. I mean, because everything else, you know, if. If, you know, if I tell my dog I love my dog and I keep kicking him, that's a pretty funny way to show it. Right? So, anyway, long story short, we came in and we said, okay, let's look at it. Now. I looked at it differently. Now, look, I'm an NLP master practitioner. I'm Ericssonian hypnosis certified.

Yeah, same here.

Yeah. Okay. All that stuff, right? Been, done it, you know, whatever. I know, haven't. We're gonna have Dr. The founder of Havening on the podcast later tonight for Joe and Matt, you know, and I know eft. I mean, I know it. All right. All this stuff, right. And everybody's a little bit different. The one thing I can tell you that's worked across the board when we. Whenever we want to do this is we change the behavior set. But how we do it is really unique. So we went back and said, okay, let's change it. We change the behavior to implement the mindset. What do you think happened the next 30 days?

Things started to change.

Nothing.

Oh, really?

Nothing. The next 60 days, nothing. By the 90th day, we saw some traction, right? Because it takes a little time.

By changing. By changing his behavior, you're saying, or changing his mindset first. Changing.

Yeah, you know, it's. It's. It's a loop, right. If you go to nlp, you and I both know, right? State equals behavior, right? Just sort of this. This positive feedback loop or negative feedback loop. So we had to change a lot of behaviors because the truth of the matter is the way you do something, you do everything else. So if you're curt to the waiter, you're going to be curt to your employee or your. Or your customer. You may not realize it, but it's true. And people don't want to admit it. Right. They said you could be an asshole.

Patterns.

Yeah. Right. And you could be an asshole and still be super successful, but you won't be happy. Right. So when people want good.

No, I was just going to say keep going. I was going to go on something on that thread. But what you were saying was more important.

Now, what people, what people really want. You talked about this early with doctors and attorneys. And you know, what people really want is happiness. They want to. And happiness invokes success and achievement and living life on your own terms. But it also involves work. You know, we don't feel good about ourselves unless we work.

True.

You know. Right. You know, Jim Rohn had a great line, you know, and I, and by the way, I'm really, I'm not name dropping. I just like to give credit where credit is due.

Oh, yeah, by all means.

Because, you know, I know I would don't. And I had this discussion. The buddy of mine, he says, yeah, but every time you do it, it just clutters things. And I said, yeah, but my own character.

Not the way you. Not the way you're doing. Not the way you're doing it. A totally different story. I mean, a totally different way you're not doing it. Like this would be like, you know, so I was having dinner with Jim Rohn the other night.

Right, right, right.

He's my, you know, he's my BFF and stuff like that. That's, that's the humble brag, name dropping. But you're just simply, yeah, giving credit where it to do. I do the same thing.

I just want to give them the source. So if anybody's interested who's listening, wants to go more to it. Yeah, there's the source knocking. Knock yourself out. So Jim said that, you know, he goes, he was talking to a bunch of psychologists, according to the story, and he says, you know what I think most messes with the mind? And they said, oh, PRAY Tell us, Mr. Rome, what do you think most messes with the mind? And he says, when people do less than they possibly can.

I think that is my biggest fear. And a lot of my friends, like, the biggest thing we fear is simply not living up to what we know we're capable of. That's the biggest frustration point, which is I Did less than I know I could. It's the exact same thing. Like, I know I'm capable of more, and I just didn't do it. And I think that's a very.

Scary. I know for me, it's like one of the things that I'm not scared of a lot of things, but that's. I never want to look back and think, man, why didn't I just give it more?

Yeah, I know. I first heard this from Keith Cunningham, but I don't know who said this originally. I looked it up. I couldn't find it. That hell on earth is meeting the man you could have been.

I saw that the other day. Exactly. Like, you die, you go to heaven and you meet the person that you.

Right. You could have been.

You could have been.

You know, and that's sort of hell. Hell on earth is meeting that person. On earth. I could have been that guy.

Yeah.

So there is that. Now there is the other argument, which is guilt is something you stop feeling at age 8, right. So if you feel guilty about not doing something, that's just silly. So, you know, so this whole capacity of, you know, wanting to escape from a business that you want to build, to sell, or, you know, living on the beach or whatever, that's great. So long as there's this, you know, maybe not balance, but at least this sort of tension and relaxation that builds. Right. You know, there's. People talk about stress all the time. What they don't talk about is there's two kinds of stress.

Eustress and distress. But go ahead.

Amen. So you got. No, I mean, I knew you had. That's why I paused. Right. So, you know, distress bad, eustress good. So, you know, you want to minimize distress, although there is a time for distress and you want to maximize eustress. And you also want to be in a position of idleness and. Go ahead.

No, I was going to just go on that because I had a little epiphany not too long ago on that. Which. Which is.

I play guitar and I'm not a great guitarist, but I played for years and there was a song I wanted to learn, and I picked up my guitar and I pulled up the guitar tab online and I was, like, plucking through it and just going like, ah, man, this is. This is hard. And it actually made me not. I was not enjoying any of this because I can pick up the guitar and I can play some great tunes and it's fun, etc. But now I'm playing clucking around Like a total beginner again to where it would be embarrassing. And I'm wondering, man, am I ever gonna get this? And it's frustrating, et cetera, et cetera. But I was just like, no, I'm just gonna keep on doing it. And, you know, after a couple days of just practicing this lick, I finally got it, and it started to sink in, and I started to get muscle memory, and I was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Got it. And then it just kind of dawned on me is how many parallels of that are in, like, my business, where there's a new skill maybe that I'm trying to learn. Let's say it's as simple as.

You.

Know, for my audience's sake. It's as simple as I don't know how to run Facebook ads, but I wish I could know. Well, the minute you log into the Facebook dashboard and you're looking at all these things, like, man, I don't know where any of this stuff goes. I'm so confused. I feel stupid. I feel incompetent, right? And I think a lot of us, that's. That uncomfortable area is we want to, you know, we go to that place where we feel confident and competent in these areas because it does. It makes us feel good. And we don't know when we suck at something and we're trying to do it. We don't know how long we're going to suck at it. We don't know if we'll suck at it forever or not. But it's having kind of that fortitude to kind of do it anyway. And then this was the key piece for me, is it allowed me to. When I realized that, yeah, I've done this all my life with music.

As long as I keep at it, I get better. And so as long as I knew that I was doing it, it allowed me to enjoy it. And every single note that I then hit correct became a win. And it wasn't about my win, wasn't figuring out the entire song. My win was every note that I. That I didn't get wrong. And I was like, boom. That was awesome. That was awesome. So I started to really enjoy the process more. And I try to keep that in mind when I do something new in business that I'm really uncomfortable comfortable with, that I'm trying something, and I feel completely incompetent. It's like, no, just enjoy the. Enjoy every little step and look at the micro wins and you'll enjoy it more as opposed to making it like I'm either good or I suck at it.

So that's, That's a good analogy. And that is true. I think the mental. Mental world mirrors the physical world.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, the difference. Look, the difference for me, right, based on, on my experience with others and myself, is when somebody self imposes motivation, they don't need to be motivated. You're either motivated or you're not. There is no go get motivated. And people, they look for external components to be motivated. Right. And you should look, go to the seminars, read the books, do all that 100%, but choose the races where you want to compete in. So if you want to build a business, don't build a business that you have to use all willpower to learn and grow. You use a business that builds you stress, not distress. So, like, for me, I've been a martial artist most of my life, right. And you know, there's people out there who are better than I am by leaps and bounds. But I always put myself up against them so that I can get better, so that I can get challenged. Is it frustrating? Absolutely. Do I hate them? Some cases, yes. Do I want to give up? In some cases, yes. But there's something built in inside of me that sort of says, you can do this. Go back and get it. So I've learned whenever that's there, that's a positive sign. You should go there. So, for example, Facebook ads. I don't do any Facebook ads. Obviously it's not part of my business. Would I learn them? Sure, I would. Would I be the kind of guy that could continually move, afford. Not interested. Why? It would be distressful to me.

Yeah, I'm the same way on those. I'm the same way in those. Like it now, especially with these smaller skills. I mean, not that it's a small skill, but it's a. It's a smaller skill in the big scheme of things for me is I want to know enough to know the strategy behind it and to be able to recognize who would do a good job at it and a bad job at it. Right.

If you look at the four pillars, right. Mindset, strategy, team building, and sales, that's on your team building. See, the thing is that when you talk about building a business to sell, and I know we've already covered that, and that's on how to build it. There are four things you just. Is what I figured out, Right. In my own opinion, obviously, four things you just can't delegate, Brad. That just. I mean, it's, it's. You cannot delegate your mindset of you and your company, you just can't.

Right.

If you do, it's disaster. I made that mistake. I can vouch for it. You can't delegate to strategy if you do all disaster. Bender done that. Right. So I can vouch for that one. You can't delegate building your team. At least your executive team or your direct reports. You can't do it, and you can't delegate sales.

Yeah.

What I mean by that is you still got to put.

Look, in the beginning.

I mean, forever, right? I mean, in the sense that you may have salespeople working for you, you may have sales managers, VP of sales, but you still got to have that pulse on the sales. You got to talk to your customers every now and then. You got to have key metrics to run the business. Sales cures. All right? People get. They get enamored with things that don't work. They spend all their time on the 80% that reduces very little. Right. They don't look for the vital few, as Durant would say. And so. But when you look at these four pillars, for example, and you come to the grips that, look, I'm an entrepreneur or wannabeneur or a business owner or CEO or whatever, hey, man, if I just look at my business through these four different pillars, and I can't delegate to these. Now you've begun to become responsible. And now, like you said earlier, you know, maybe at the beginning, you've got to do the Facebook ads because it's just you. But then when you want to scale, right, okay, well, who can I get that's better than me, right? Who can I get that loves like they. They live and eat and sleep, Right. Facebook ads, you know, and look, the other component of it is some people are designed to grow a business to a certain level, and then they become not only we are the Peter Principle, Right. We all rise to the level of our own incompetence. They don't change. They don't grow. That's the point where they should either get themselves out of the business or really sell it.

Yeah.

If they don't want to change and grow.

Exactly. Well, and. And it's okay if you recognize that's about yourself, and then you set up something to mitigate it so it doesn't do you damage, so that it doesn't get you to a point where you can no longer be effective, and then you run it into the ground. But like you said, there's a lot of people who are great at starting up a company, and that's why a lot of Founders, whether it's tech or something else, they, they start it up, they get it to a certain point, and then they have to hide, hire as they should, a good board of directors. CEO like Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought in. What's his name? Tim. Is it Tim Schmidt or. Who's a Tim Schmidt? Schmidt, Right. Because they were, they're the engineers, they're the other stuff. And they kind of recognized early on that, listen, just the per, you know, I may not be the person to take this through the finish line, but it's okay if you realize that. And then you go try to build that, like you said, find the person who's like super, super good at at that area and do what you're really, really good at.

But they still can't delegate, in my opinion. They still can't delegate, or let me phrase it, they can't abdicate or delegate those four pillars. You know, one of the, one of the few guys and that I think did this, the most massive skill we've ever seen was Steve Jobs. Steve was a great guy that started a business, but then Scully and those guys were like, he was running into the ground because he wasn't a good manager. So they fired him. As you and everybody knows. Right. Because we've all know his story. He went and did, you know, next, and then Pixar, whatever. And then they brought him back to save the company. But he had worked on himself, he had transformed his, you know, his mindset, if you would, and became the kind of person that could grow to Apple to what it is today. Or, you know, First Company. Now that's both Apple and Amazon, but First Company hit a trillion dollars in value. And that's not because of Tim, who's also, you know, Tim, the CEO of, of Apple, but because of what Steve Jobs did. I mean, he set in place, he built a company that he wanted to build because it was the greatest company on earth. Now, most of us on your podcast are probably not going to build a trillion dollar company, but we could build a 5 million, 10 million. Maybe they're doing 1 million now they can get to 5. Right. I mean, that's one thing is that I think we look at society and heroes and we look at all these celebrities, which only account for 3% of millionaires, by the way.

Yeah.

Of all the millionaires in the entire US are celebrities. That's the point. Yeah, Right. But it does harm. It does. It does a terrible thing for entrepreneurs because most entrepreneurs, most millionaires are salespeople, executives and business owners. In that order. Yeah.

Well, it's almost like that book. Have you ever read the Millionaire Next Door? Years ago? Sure, of course. Right, where it's like the. The car the average millionaire drives is a Ford F150.

Right?

Or Ford. Yeah, exactly. But it's. It's because those are the. It's the unseen ones. They're not out there snapping, you know, doing, you know, Instagram shots in front of their Lamborghini.

No, look. I mean, and again, those are great marketing guys, and, you know, I don't, you know, whatever. Whatever. Right. But look, you know, in the real world that I live in, right? Because, you know, I don't live in an Instagram world. Right. Or the Twitter world, though I do love it, and I. And I visit it frequently and stuff. You know, I live in the world where, you know, we actually produce results of money. And, you know, Mike, I have a Mercedes, but it's paid for. I bought my car. Right. You know what I mean? Do I. Can I. Could I buy a Bugatti? Sure. Do I want a Bugatti? Not really.

It's more fun to know that you can buy one than to actually have one.

I was just going to say, I'm hoping. Cross your fingers tomorrow, a guy's coming to. Look, a few years ago, I bought an Audi R8, and I loved it. I had fun.

Love it.

But I'm ready to sell that thing. I have been for a while. Because it just like anything, hedonic adaptation comes around and you're like, okay, now it's just a car and.

He'S about to buy it. People like, why are you selling that thing? It's like, I'd much rather have the cash in my pocket than, you know, and know, I could buy it again.

Of course, look, it's. You know, look, I went through that phase too, right? You know, when I wanted a Rolex, when I could afford a Rolex, I didn't want a Rolex. And when I couldn't afford it again, I bought it. Which is kind of weird, right? So, I mean, we all go through that phase, right? And I think it's important. But if you're chasing the Lamborghini now, as long as it makes you a better person and you find a way to afford it and you produce value in order to get it. Rock and roll. Right? Go for it. If you're stretching beyond your means to get it, it's okay. If you're the kind of person that having it now, it motivates you even more to do better that's it. But those are rare. Few between. Look, you know, people who build these businesses build the business for the sake of building the business. And money becomes a way to keep score. It's, am I getting better? Am I getting really good at doing this kind of stuff? You know, passion's overrated. I love Tony Robbins, but this whole thing with passion bullshit. You know, even Mark Cuban. That's why I cursed. I hope even Mark Cuban will argue, okay? Even Marquimo will tell you it's overrated. You can be a passionate person, but you don't have to be passionate about what you do. You know, how you do something is infinitely more important than what you do.

Right. You can bring passion to pretty much anything, even if you're not passionate about that thing externally, but you're passionate about doing a good job, about achieving a result, about giving it your all, as opposed to, oh, I'm passionate about.

Whatever topic. And you're absolutely right. It's what you bring, it's not what you find.

Exactly. And I think. I think even passion was probably the wrong word. I think resolve might be better. Resolute, resilience. You know, there's a book called Great. Oh, I think. I think Angela Duckworth got it wrong. You know, it's when you're. When you were practicing your guitar, you had. Not passionate about the song, you had resolute. You had. You were resilient, right? You had determination. You know, Napoleon Hill would call desire, you know, which is a starting point of all achievement according to Napoleon Hill. And I think he's right. So you could be that kind of person. A lot of guys and gals I know, and some whose companies I own a piece of, they're not passionate about their business, but they're resolute about doing something great. They have resilience, they have resolve. Some are very insecure. You know, they get motivated because, you know, they. They don't think they're good enough. So they're always trying to up themselves to the next one. And that's okay if it's healthy, you know?

Yeah. I think. I think passion and interest, I mean, I think they can be sometimes like, you know, they're saying, find your passion. Build a business around your passion. And really, I think what they're saying is build a business around something you're interested in because there's an interest doesn't have as much emotional pull. Right. As the word passion, but you can bring passion to something you're interested in. Ideally. I mean, I think that's. That's in an intensity and resolution to something you're really interested in. And that's, I think maybe the holy grail is if you can make a lot of money, make a big impact, have a lot of success in something that you could just do all day, even if it was for free. But you can do the same thing to stuff that you're. You're not really interested in. Like you said, office supplies. You're not, you're not highly interested in office supplies supplies, but you can bring your passion, your grit, your intelligence and all of this other stuff to selling office supplies because that's simply a vehicle that gets you to where you want to be.

There's many ways, right? I mean, to your point, there's many ways to get there. So a friend of mine who taught me how to speed ready named Steve Snyder, world second fastest speed reader. In fact, I'm gonna have him on the podcast if you care to. He's a good guy. He's the one that mentored David Allen early in the career. David Allen, from Getting Things Done, is a good friend of mine. And he told David Allen, there's only two problems in the world. Either you don't know what you want, or you know what you want, but you don't know how to get it. So he tells me an interesting story. He says, when he was in college and he's in, he's sort of a geeky, nerdy looking guy. He's not a jock, you know, so he's not like uber popular with the girls when he's in college. And he says, you know, I'm in college and I was taking physics. And he goes, I hated physics. Hated physics, and I wasn't passionate about physics. He goes, but I had to take the course and I wanted to get a good grade. He goes, so I made up a fake girl in my mind, and she was the ideal woman, just perfect and beautiful and she didn't know physics. So she comes to me. This is what he tells me. She comes to me and says, oh, Steve, I don't know physics. I don't want to. Would you mind teaching me physics? So when he began to study physics and read physics in his mind, he now had an interest because he had to teach this beautiful girl so she could pass physics. And of course ended up loving physics, ended up getting one of the highest grades in the class, and to this day still loves physics. So I think if you have to do something that you don't like, you know, you have a choice. You can either bitch about it, moan about it. Or you can create the attitude for your Zig Zigl quote earlier today or the mindset to how do I find this interesting? So when I started One Stop, you know, selling income toner, I hated cold calling and I hated, you know, ink and toner. But it's the only thing I knew at the time. I left. I dropped out of law school, took a job, got fired, started the company. I was like, man, this is terrible. But I loved people and I loved getting people. I love teaching things right at the time. I love teaching things, and I love helping people make a lot of money. So I didn't make it about the toner. I made it about teaching guys and gals how to make a ton of money working for me. And I created a couple of millionaires, right? And I revolutionized the selling industry and all that stuff. So it wasn't about ink and toner. It was about, you know, I'm gonna. I love doing this. This is interesting to me. And of course, the result was we grew. We all made a lot of money, and the customer got the best product at the best price and the best service because that's what we had to do in order to keep this company going. In order to teach them how to sell, they had to give service. So I found a way to make something I didn't find interesting. Interesting to me. And then I found a way utilize what I thought were my core competencies at the time to make it pay off. So, you know, do you know where the word that entrepreneur came from? By definition?

I want to say I've looked up the root definition of it, but. But I cannot remember it exactly offhand.

Okay, so it was. I don't remember who actually coined the term, but it was a French back in the 1600s. And the word basically means moving resources from a place where they're not really getting good use to a place where it gets better use. So let's think about that for a second. So if an entrepreneur is basically somebody who reallocates resources, right? For the short definition, yes. Then shouldn't you reallocate, allocate the resources in your brain also? That's a good point, isn't it? So, you know, here I am, right? Let's say that I started a company, I'm one of your listeners, and I started a company that I'm just now not happy with it, right? So, you know, and I'm like, my, you know, my industry sucks. My company sucks. You know, whatever. This sort of, you know, negative Loop is right. Well, you could be a complainer about it and want, that's one way. Or you could be an entrepreneur and actually thinking, well, what am I enjoying in life now? You know, how do I reallocate my mindset so that I add value? You know, what are my core competencies? Maybe I'm really good with people and I suck at online stuff, so let me go build a team. Let me go, you know, motivate. Or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe I suck with people, but I'm really good online, right? Then how do I make my business help my core competency so that it grows? You know, it's. Businesses have a DNA, right? Just like you and I have DNA. And when you look at the DNA of a business, when you add your own special mix, you change that DNA. And if you add your strength to that DNA, you now have a better mechanism, a better organism. If your DNA is negative, you have a weak, sick organism. I'll give you an example. So, and I'm sorry for being verbose and no, I love it. So, you know, we go and we take two months off, right? We have a dog, we've got a doberman who's about 9 years old now named Zeus. Beautiful dog, right? So we like, okay, we're going to go and we leave, right, for two months. In one month my mother in law stays in the house and watches the dog. Next month he's boarding, we come back, right? You know, we come back from doing a little work at the White House and we come back and we go pick up the dog and he is emaciated. He is on his deathbed. I mean, I'm not kidding. I'm like, he's good. I told the kids, hey, it looks like Zeus has hit his, his deathbed. He might, you know, my boy's about to go to college, my daughter's starting 11th grade. I'm like, we're about to lose our dog. You know, he's nine. So you know, for a big dog it's early, but it's expected, right? So I'm like, and I told the kids and he's, he's, he's got arthritis and he's all leaning forward and we take him for walks. And he's not his usual peppy. I mean, the dog's on his deathbed, no joke, right? So I told my wife, I said, look, maybe it's not that he's going to die, maybe that he was neglected, much like many businesses. Maybe I didn't want him because I was Going on our vacation, which is true. I was like, oh, I got to deal with the dog. Right. So my attitude was negative about the dog. You know, he's a dog, he senses this. So I said, let's start walking him two or three times a day. Let's bring him inside the house a little bit throughout the day because we got a pretty big backyard. That's where he lives. And let's give him an all meat infused fat and diet. We're carnivores, we're big on that. And let's see what happens. So we got back August 16th or something. How do you think the dog is today?

Oh, probably like a puppy.

Exactly like a puppy. Right. He had some kind of sore in his butt. Gone. He had some allergic stuff on his, on his skin, gone. Almost gone. He's happy, he's enthusiastic. Now, I didn't get the right away. The first third, you know, three weeks, was he just looking. He was in pain. Now he's a totally different dog. Did the dog change? Of course he changed. But what changed first was how we treated the dog, how we saw the dog. So you as an entrepreneur, I mean your listeners, you and I and everybody included, guess what? Your business is just like my dog was. It's a reflection of your attitude towards it. If you don't like it, it's your problem.

Yeah.

If it's sucking, it's you. If it's crushing it, it's. I hate that word. Crush. Crushing. I think it's.

Yeah, it's way overused.

It's. Yeah, right. If it's doing really well, it's you. Whatever. Your business is a reflection of you. If you change you. Your mindset, like my very first client, man, I'm telling you, it like that takes off now, it doesn't happen overnight. You give it a couple of weeks, give it a couple of months, you'll feel better. But eventually it starts to change. Does that mean you're not gonna have any problems? Nope, you'll have bigger problems. In fact, one of my mentors, Peter Daniels, said success, success is the ability to handle pain. Not be a pain, but handle pain. Right. And he meant emotional, physical pain like we talked about earlier. So. So, you know, so, so it. If people look at tactics like, oh, you know, if I could change my tactics, I know a guy who I will mention has got a really successful online course, sold thousands, thousands of them. Only.01% of those who have bought his course have become millionaires.

Yeah. And it's probably only 1% have even applied what he's done and probably only 10% have even gone through the course.

Hey, look, you know what? It's exactly right. Like, you know, I have, I have story after story of people who aren't intelligent by, you know, norm standard to became millionaires and people who are really smart who are still broke and unhappy. The difference is the behavior they engage in and the attitude that they engage in. You know. But one of my very guy named Don Schmincke was one of my very first business, first business coaches, David Allen in 2001. Then I hired this guy, Don Schminck. I came in for a day, I was making $17,000 a month net profit a half a day with him and my staff. By the end of the day, I was making $38,000 net income before taxes, net profit and a half a day. What do you think he changed or what do you think he influenced your behavior and attitude? That's exactly right.

Right. You know, that kind of brings me. It's very topical because I had two people recommend this book to me and I just started reading it, I think yesterday. So I am, I am according to kindle, I'm only 15% of the way through, but I love it. But it's called why Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy. And one of the, and one of the key things he talks about in this is how you haven't really brought it up here, but I mean it all flows into it. But he talks about how what you can do is really based upon your environment and not your willpower. How it really kind of all starts there because there are so many things that in our environment that either kind of block us or throw us in other ways. And from reading the table of contents and the description, he goes in to talk about how to kind of hack your environment to set up automatic triggers like, listen, if you want to change your behavior, do certain things in your environment so that your behavior automatically changes without you having to do willpower. And the most simple example is, you know, if you're trying to lose weight, clean out your damn cupboards from all the junk food. If it's not there, if your environment doesn't have it, that's a little hack. And as he starts to go through this, I mean, he's obviously talking about behavior and everything else, but he's like, this is why he goes, people don't understand how much of this stuff influences, influences them. And by setting the right environment, you'll be able to, you know, make some of these decisions Automatic and not think about it. And that's what will kind of influence your behavior. And as your behavior changes, your attitude probably will change, you know, along with it, because you'll be developing skills and confidence.

Well, you and I would classify those as anchors.

Yes, Right.

You're just changing. You're collapsing the anchors in your environment and creating new anchors. So I'm going to blow your mind with something, I hope, right? Because, you know, one of the guys I know who's 86 now and I think he's a billionaire, he won't tell me, but I'm pretty sure he's a billionaire. He owns the second largest reserve of gold bully and lives in Australia. The guy, Peter Dan Stone. And you know, so he's. He's one of my favorite people of all time. He's got three beautiful kids, eight grandkids. So he's not only successful monetarily, he's just an incredible human being in terms of friend, father, you know, he's a role model. Right. I've met very few like that in my life. He's probably one of the guys I've met, probably the only guy I've ever met who's got so much control over his own brain. And he was an illiterate bricklayer at age 26. Right. This guy is. I mean, yeah. No, dude, the guy was crazy. Right? So anyway, so he tells me that the key to his success was willpower. And he. And he tells me, he goes, look, man, I used my willpower. So I started thinking about willpower. So I'm going to break it down for you. Will is the conscious mind. Power is the subconscious mind. Willpower exists effortlessly. When the conscious mind is able to tell the subconscious mind what to do, so it becomes automatic. So, for example, in your case, with your book and your environment, you are by definition using will power. And I've read all books on will probably get my hands on. Right, because you're reprogramming or reconditioning or whatever you want to call it, your subconscious conscious mind. So it now makes a different, better choice. What he may be referring to is when you're battling, right. Do I eat the cookie in the cupboard?

Yes.

Well, it's okay right now if you change the identity. By the way, on the four logic, five logical levels of change. If you change the identity, you no longer want to eat that cookie. Like, for example, you know, when I was a vegetarian, what was I thinking? I don't know. But when I was a vegetarian at the time, I just didn't even couldn't contemplate eating meat when I was a pescatarian. You know, I mean, my identity, this is who I am. Blank. I am X. Therefore, these choices aren't available to me. The problem with today is that we don't identify ourselves in certain ways and we have to then use our mental energy to make choices. Do I eat the cookie or not? And then that battle inside your mind depletes your willpower, your energy. And now when you go do the important stuff, you have none of it 100%.

And it's, you know, and, you know, kind of along this whole concept which you're familiar with. I've, you know, the whole logical levels like in NLP, of environment at the bottom, identity at the top, etc.

Correct.

Where if you know, the most effective way to create change is to. At the identity level. Right. It cascades down. Identity changes your beliefs, and it can also cascade up.

Right. Either way.

Right. But so in the way, at least the way that I've noticed it, is that the, the most effective but the hardest to change, like the hardest thing to really change is your, your identity because it sounds easy, but it can be really hard to do because there's all this subconscious wiring going on. But it can go up the other way. Right. So they. If the easiest to change is your environment and then your behaviors, et cetera. It also is the hardest. You got to crank that wheel the hardest. It's not gonna, it's not as effortless. But when you are facing those issues, like, man, I know I should be doing this. I just don't know how I can't change my identity. All right, we'll start at the bottom, you know, or start at the top if you can. But it's kind of find that area, you're stuck. And if you can change your identity, like, you know, for instance in the weight loss field, it's like if you can start to see yourself, I'm not, I'm not fat, I'm not overweight, weight. I'm a healthy skinny person. I just, you know, I have a few extra pounds on me, but I'm a healthy skinny or, you know, fit athlete, you're going to start acting like one more effortlessly than you will agree.

The subconscious mind, you know this. It's weird because the subconscious mind doesn't distinguish between past, future. It only lives in the present.

Yes.

That's why affirmations are I am or I'm doing or, you know, it's in the present. Intense. Right. Because, you know, it Just there's no past. Which is why, you know, if you look at the book by the Rootins, it's why the past is always present, right? But how to get rid of the past with psychosensory therapies, which we should do by all of us should do something of that nature. It doesn't, you know, the subconscious mind doesn't understand anything other than the present. So when you give it affirmations with emotion, right? Because you can't just go I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy. It doesn't work, right? You got to go, I'm happy, I'm alive, I love my life. Yeah. Then your brain goes, oh you do, okay, great, let's make that reality because of cognitive dissonance, right? Then of course, confirmation bias, you start looking for things to confirm what you've already said and your brain goes, well you're supposed to be happy, so we have to behave happy. But here's the, here's the challenge with that argument, has sort of falls apart for me is my own personal experience and studies. If you make your environment too easy, then you don't increase your self esteem and self esteem as we know by Maxwell Malz, you know, Psycho Cybernetics and a bunch of other books really is almost kind of like identity and spirituality mixed together. So what happened? Let me give an example. So let's say that you want to lose weight, although I'm pretty sure you're pretty fit. But as an example you gave and let's say that your wife doesn't. And so there's cookies in the cupboard because you guys haven't agreed on this. She wants cookies, you don't. Well the argument would be, well get rid of the cookies, honey. You know, let's do it so I don't have the temptation to eat again. Cool, that's one way to go. What I like to do is put those frickin cookies in the cupboard because it gives me a chance to go nope. And every time I go nope, it's a win. My self esteem goes up a notch. And that is true, gets strengthened.

That is true because I recently just like I recently just lost like £15 by changing my diet and getting back into the gym pretty heavily. And I just remember every time I would go out and I would like the.

Tortilla chips would come tortilla chips and salsa before the meal I would look at them and every time I just said no and I would look at them and I said no and I didn't have one I kind of had that little, like. Yeah, like, look at me go, buddy.

Exactly.

So, yeah, there's one thing. Yeah. If you can be powerful enough to where you can make that choice, and then it just kind of feeds on each other. It just shows you that you are stronger. I want to. I want to kind of. I wrote some stuff down. I kind of want to digress or segue onto a couple other things. I'm crossing a couple things off that you said. This is cool. I literally could do this all day. But.

I wrote this down because you had mentioned something about. We were talking about the root of the word entrepreneur, and somebody who organizes resources and does all that, you know, takes a little lesser risk, organizes resources, allocates resources to where, you know, they fill supply and demand. And it was really funny. I bring this up a lot when I'm talking to. Whether it's clients or I think about it in sales copy, this concept of a dominant emotional release, right? When kind of you say something to your audience that you say it as good or better than they could say it themselves, and. And you hit the nail on the head, and then you're just like, oh, my God. That's exactly it. So it was May of 2009, and I had been in business for myself, online business, for about a year maybe. And I was at a conference, and I remember who I was talking to and where I was at. And I told her, you know, here I was just, you know, working in my underwear every day, just, you know, selling info, products, and doing everything myself. And I remember telling her, I was like, you know, I just am frustrated because I, you know, we're all calling ourselves. I'm calling myself an entrepreneur, and yet I'm doing everything myself. And I feel as though I'm playing entrepreneur. Like, I'm just playing the role, but I'm not doing what an entrepreneur does. And I had that just momentary, like, realization, like, yeah, I'm calling myself that, but I'm not. I'm putting lipstick on a pig.

Right?

And it was funny because the next day, a guy that I had followed, and he's still active today. I don't know if you know who Richard Jeffrin is, but Rich wrote an email that went out, and the subject line literally said, are you playing in quotes, Business Brad? And I went on to read it, and he was literally. He was. He was espousing the benefits of understanding, like, you need to build systems, treat it like a business. You know, build a team. Build systems that your team can follow and don't just go out there and just hustle for, you know, promotion after promotion, which. Which is what most people are doing. And I mean, I immediately bought whatever he was selling. I didn't even have to, like, read the sales page. But it was one of the things that. And I have found myself getting into this trap multiple times throughout the past decade. And I, at least I can recognize it, which is, dude, you're playing entrepreneur. And I think a lot of us do that is we. Because we work for ourselves, we think, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. Are you? Or are you a freelancer? Or are you just working yourself to the bone? And one of the areas that you talked about is the team building. It has still been a very hard part for me to let go, to build the team and to sometimes build that team even before I can fully employ them and keep them.

I lost you, buddy. Can you hear me?

Brad, you there?

I am here. Can you still hear me?

Okay, good. I lost. Yeah, now I can hear you. Sorry about that.

All right, so I am just marking down what point this was. 57 minutes. So, okay, we just had a little bit of audio difficulty, but we're back. So hopefully, Marks, you heard me saying that, you know, I catch myself doing this with team building, right? So sometimes it's. I'm going to tell you, like just this little micro epiphany I had not too long ago, which was. But the problem is, do I. Do I hire the people now even before I can afford to A, fully employ them and B, make sure that I'm going to get my ROI out of them, or do I wait until I have to hire them and then try to fill it at the last minute, which can cause a lot of dissonance. But as a consultant, so I've got multiple things I do, but my primary. My current primary active income is in consulting. People pay me as an advisor, etc. And I got really used to having that 100% profit margin as a consultant. Right. I mean, not 100%, but, you know, if I get a referral, 100. Right. And then my little epiphany was, wait a minute. 99 of businesses, you know, operate at a very. At a, you know, at a profit margin. I mean, a 20 profit margin in any business is relatively healthy. I think we, you know, a lot of business.

Well, the average. The average should be 40 and the net is 7. Right. So the average gross profit is about 40%. The average net income. Yeah, well, that's 7.

Exactly. That's why I'm saying is really, really high. Healthy, right?

Yeah.

So. And as a consultant, I realized I started doing a lot myself, and I would start to, you know, not necessarily hire team members when I could have. And it wasn't until I stopped and reminded myself, like, quit acting. You know, why don't you treat this like a real business and engineer a profit margin in so that, you know, if you get a client, you don't get to keep 100% of that. You have to. If you have to engineer a 50% profit margin, for instance, then that other money has to go back into the business to either staff up, grow, expend on marketing, etc. And it just. By realizing that and shifting my perspective there of what I was doing, it made it a lot easier to let go of the reins, to start to hire people, to start to invest back in my business, because I caught myself thinking, oh, this is all mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. And.

That was one little epiphany I've had in the past year that's helped me kind of break this constant habit of holding onto the reins too tightly.

So, I mean, obviously, that's fear, right? That's what's happening. But so let me. I look at it differently. First of all, I think all those approaches are fine if they work for you, but I also think they're wrong if you're approaching for a different level. Let me tell you what I mean by that. So let's assume. Let's assume you're a client of mine, right? Like, hey, Marks, I did great. Fantastic. Let's go. Rock and roll. So we talk about the mindset. We focus on that a little bit, and I. I check on and I poke, and throughout the entire relationship, let's say we're on track and everything's good on your mindset. And now you're like, hey, you know, I get this issue about, you know, do I hire? And I would go, stop. What is the purpose of having a team?

The purpose of having a team is, you know, in my opinion, is to be able to more effectively and. And effectively achieve a goal and quicker and more efficiently.

The only purpose of having a team is to execute your strategy.

Right.

Period. That's it. So I would ask you, before you hire anybody else, what's the strategy?

Yes.

And then we would talk about that. Right? One of the four pillars and you. And then we would beat that strategy up. And you may realize, holy crap, I have the wrong strategy. That's why I didn't want to hire Susie, and I thought it was being a One upright. But in reality, subconsciously, I was resistant because X, Y and Z, there's who knows, right? The purpose. But look, the only reason you need to hire anybody ever. And I see a guy now who's succeeding really well in your space. I won't tell you. He is online marketing. But now he's thinking about hiring a team and this and the other. I'm like, oh, he's going to ruin it. He's going to kill this profit margin and he's gonna. I don't know if he'll continue to grow in revenue. He may well grow in revenue, but he's gonna. He's about to get in the world of hurt because he's hiring for the wrong reasons. He's hiring for the sake to solve a problem. You know, I don't want to do this anymore, so I'm going to hire Susie or, you know, I want to dump my business when I hire Johnny. Those are all the wrong reasons. I see this happen all the time.

Yeah, because they're hiring to just take workload off of them as opposed to more effectively execute. Execute the strategy.

It's all about the strategy, my friend. And the strategy is pretty simple, as you know, right? Who's the enemy? What's the terrain? How do we win? And then you deploy the tactics, right? And then you go, well, okay, well, so who do I need to do what? Oh, okay, got it. So I need to hire a person that could do this. So now you're hiring somebody that's going to help you execute the strategy, which means you're going to make more money. Because if you don't have a strategy to make your money, you're going to be a Derek, right? So, so then you don't have this fear anymore of, I'm holding onto the reins too tight. I don't want to invest the money. You're like, no, no, no, no. This is what I want to achieve. This is my strategy, which is a good strategy. I need someone to do this, otherwise I can't execute the strategy. Look, if you got. If you've got great strategy and a mediocre team, you're screwed. If you have a mediocre strategy and a fantastic team, they'll figure it out. But you got to have a strategy for them to look at, right? You are the chief strategic officer. You cannot delegate that. And then when you, when you have a team, because think of it this way, I mean, I've read and so have you, right? We've read so many books and gone to courses and seminars on how to hire and fire. I mean, it's, it's like vomiting, right? It's like, oh, my gosh, this is so stupid. I finally dawned on me after hanging out with the world's highest paid consultant who gets paid a million dollars a day. That's where I learned this stuff from, right? And I was like. He's like, look, man, if you got the right strategy, hiring is really easy because now you know what you need. So you go, hi, my name is Marks. Nice to meet you. John, can you do this? If you can do this better than anybody else, you're hired. If you can, fuck off, I don't need you. Oh, sorry, My language, you know, bugger off. I don't need you. Right, so now hiring becomes really easy and simple. And now you're confident anyways. I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, that's. I was just going to say that. Yeah, that's. It's simple but brilliant. And it's, it's a. It's a frame of mind that I know that I haven't. It hasn't been forefront of my mind, but it will be with. And I really do love that of how, you know what, you know, why are you hiring? It is for the team. I'm sorry.

To execute the strategy.

To execute the strategy. It's not to relieve your workload.

That is correct.

I think that that's a. One of those things that it makes so much sense the minute you hear it and yet you don't hear that very often.

It's. It's one of those things because, you know, inside your look, it's the. I love Tim Ferriss. I don't know him personally, but you know, he's, he's great. Read his book. Loves books. But there's a lot of flaws with his books, right? Particularly the Four Hour Workweek, because it's escape, you know, and look, he sold a ton of books. What he did for the industry is amazing and he's touched a lot of people and I'm grateful because I love his stuff. However, you know, I don't agree with the fact that you hire people to eliminate your workload. That's the dumbest thing you could do as an entrepreneur because you're just now. Because the whole, the whole concept or the idea is, well, if I hire someone to do what I don't like, I'll do more of what I'm good at. Baloney. That is not gonna happen. This is not gonna happen. You're gonna watch tv, tinker off or make up a bunch of other needless baloney, phony stuff that you can occupy your mind with. You're not going to make more money. You're just. You're just getting rid of a pain that you think you're having. That's silly. The best way to do it is to sort of ascend yourself intellectually, mentally and emotionally. Is, you know, is, who do I have that's going to add value now that I know what value adding looks like.

Yeah. And what value you need?

What value the company needs. Yes. Based on the. The strategy. Right. And then you go, okay, well, this better move sales. Better move the needle. Because if it doesn't move the needle in sales, they're irrelevant. Look, I don't have any employee or have had any employer, any of the companies I'm involved in where I can't honestly tell you that we don't get an ROI from them. Now, look, I mean, I don't run all the 13 companies, whatever have you. Right. But, you know, but it's. It's all about what are they bringing to the value. If you hire me and I work for you as whatever, Right. In your organization. If you. If I can't make you more money, why on God's earth would you keep me? Yeah.

So I can take away stuff you don't want to do. That's idiotic. Unless, of course, you're already financially independent, then it's great. By all means, rock and roll.

You want to hire me to talk to you and be your friend, awesome. Go for it.

Right? You know, cool, stupid. Like, you know, we have. And not just me in my household, I mean, you too, you know, your listeners. We have gardeners and they cut our hair and, you know, you do things so you don't have to garden your own garden if you don't like it or. I understand that in your business, though. Come on, man. You have a responsibility, a fiduciary responsibility to your stock owners, which aren't you, by the way. It's your wife or your husband or your children or whomever. Right. A duty to do the best you can. So, you know, stop trying to work less for the sake of working less. You want to work less so that you can create white space or, you know, you know, clear head, as David Allen would say. Right? Clear space so you can think.

Yeah, well, and that's like you mentioned Richard Koch. And it's, it's that he doesn't. He spend a whole lot of time in thinking, contemplation, and, you know, working very Little of the traditional types of work versus how much he thinks.

Richard works an hour a day. He looks at investments and then he makes trade. And he has. You can read his book the star Principle and how he picks it and. Or you can read the new version of the 8020 principle on. Which basically means he just picks a network industry. So. Absolutely. But Richard also has 20 years.

Yeah, you don't start off working one hour a day.

He's got 20 years of management consultant where he honed his skill. Right. As a strategic advisor. So he didn't just one day decide to stop. The man already had built the chop to know what he was doing. So, you know, you can't be an entrepreneur and decide one day, unless you're a unicorn, that you're going to work one hour a day, make a million dollars. It's just not going to happen. That's why you need to have an interest or be interested in something like you talked about to move forward. What you can do is realize that it is true that 80% or thereabouts, most of what we do is useless. Now, if you're learning, it's not useless if you're figuring something out, it's not useless if you're what you do need and you earliest. In my opinion, I shouldn't be preaching. I'm sorry. What is a good thing to do is to step back and think, get away from it. You know, you want to change. Here's why you want to change your environment is because your brain is yelling at you and you think you have too much to do. And so if you go on vacation, all those anchors, all those negative associations aren't there anymore. The water settles and your brain now can be creative. Because we need to be creative, right? We have to create something. So if you're going to hire somebody, it's to solve, not a problem, but to solve the strategic lack that you can't execute. And if you're going to stop, right, if you're going to stop doing work, it's so you can think more, right. It's not something you can avoid. Work if you want to. Look, if your job, if your aim. I don't mean you, right. I mean if somebody's aim, okay. If someone's aiming is to work less and achieve more, you know, buddy, you're gonna have a hard time if your work is to. If your aim is to live an awesome, exciting life, one that's filled with all the things you want, whether that's chilling on the beach, whether it's you Know flying first class world like we did, it doesn't matter right. Then you're in the right place. But that comes with the responsibility and the desire to be somebody, achieve something. You know the reason why Tim Ferriss had depression and all that stuff is because he basically was nothing to do.

Exactly. Well, and you hit the nail on the head. I mean that's exactly where I've, where, where my aspirations lie is to it is. So what do I want to say? How do I want to phrase this? Exactly what you were saying is so that when I do free up my time, the amount of time I'm doing, like just doing work is less and just so that I can have more time to think, to think strategically to really dive into the, you know, kind of the bigger problems and. But just replace the kind of work from like you know, the doing to you know, just the deeper.

Sure.

You know, philosophic strategic thought invoking strategic work.

Well, work by definition is something that isn't complete yet. Right. So thinking is work. It's just that we, we think work is nine to five. Work, Work. So I think work as David Allen's definition, it's all work. Right. Everything is work. It just. What I think we are trying to say as entrepreneurs is hey, what was necessary and exciting isn't the necessary exciting anymore. I need to graduate to this level. But these things may still need to get done. That's when, when you create a strategy, part of that may be I need someone to do these things here because maybe the things that you don't want to do anymore or that you find useless do add value to the organization. Somebody could do it better and add more value. So that comes part of the strategy. Right. And sort of this, this mindset. But look, you can get rid of things if they're useless. Right. And that's. I'm all for that. But you think they're useless. They may not be. You know, the 8020 principle operates nonlinearly. A lot of times what you think is the cause is, is, is not the cause. Right.

I know a lot of guys have another cause.

Yeah. So you know, I know guys who have very successful and they think they know what made them successful. They don't have a clue. I'm better at than they are at determining what made them successful. You know, so you, you don't know. I mean you don't know necessarily what is the thing you're doing. That's really not always. Sometimes you know, but sometimes you don't know what's the thing that's really giving you that value. Right. So it's. It's a very. You know, I know a marketing guy in your space went broke, and he's now trying to come back because he took the 8020 principle to the nth degree, and he got it totally wrong. He couldn't even pay my Buddy's bill for $5,000. He had to make payments. Right. And I think he's doing better now. God willing, is doing great. But you got to be really careful. Right. The 8020 principle is. Even though Richard talks about elimination, it really isn't about elimination. It's about discovery.

Right.

And then by discovery, it naturally eliminates. But if you don't discover what's really moving the needle, man, you're in for a world of hurt.

That is profound, and I love it. And it's.

And it's a. It's a very refreshing perspective on the entire. On the entire issue as this whole interview has been marks. I've really, really enjoyed it. What is a. Is it. Are there any nuts you're trying to crack right now? Anything that myself, my listeners, can potentially do for you? Is there any. Anything you're. Anybody you're trying to meet, anything you're trying to learn, any challenge you're trying.

To solve every day? Right. All of the above. So. So thank you for that. I really appreciate that. And this has been an absolute blast. You know what? I want to help people. Right. I mean, people say it all the time. I really do genuinely want to help entrepreneurs. I don't know how to do that just yet. So I'm still racking my brain. I mean, I've, you know, I'm fortunate enough.

I'm doing a pretty good job right now.

Well, thank you. I'm fortunate. I get to hang out with some people, and I can probably take on a few more clients. I don't know how to better hit the masses because there's. And I know that our market will be smaller because we're about the truth. I see what's happening now with entrepreneurs and these big conventions. And, you know, you can 10x this, and you can do that. You can do this. And they're spewing beautiful things that you just don't work but sound good. You know, it's like. It's like junk food. Right. It tastes so good.

Yeah.

But at the end, it isn't good for you. Right. Whereas we're going to provide. I want to provide the reality. Right. I mean, like, what you just heard now is not what people talk about, but this is the truth. Right. This is what, what we can verifiably know is true. And think about it. When I said something that you, that it resonated with you, you're like, that's right. Oh my gosh, that's right. I didn't have to sell you. I'd have to convince you. You knew internally. That's exactly. And now, because I've said it in a certain way, that you, that resonates with you. You've now given yourself permission to see things and behave differently, which is going to make a big impact in your business. Watch. It'll happen. It happens every time. And just the way you see things, you're going to feel more confident. You're going to be happy. You're going to. You're going to think differently, which gives you a different behavior set. You're not going to feel guilty anymore. You're not going to feel less than before. You're not going to feel defined, efficient, or defective, which is a really terrible thing that a lot of these guys tell us because that's how they sell us products.

Yeah, exactly.

Right, exactly. So, hey, look. And not that they're not helpful, they are helpful. It works great. But they're appealing, I think, to the fear of loss or the lack of efficiency to make us buy, which is great. And if you buy it, implement, because the product is still good. I don't want that. I want the entrepreneur to know they're awesome. They're incredible. Incredible. You're up just like the rest of us. And that's what makes you so cool. And you can still succeed without changing your hair color and your eye color and, you know, all that stuff and that it really is different than what they tell us. And that's, I mean, that's. Listen, man, I. I was that guy that thought he had the Midas touch. And everything I touched turned to gold and I made two or three moves and I went from making a quarter mil net income a month to losing a quarter mil almost an 30 days.

Yeah, it's got a way of humbling you when you get ahead of yourself. But, you know, you're doing a great job enlightening a lot of the entrepreneurs who are, myself included, who are listening to this show. If people do want to reach out and say, man, this really resonated with me. I want to explore how deep this rabbit hole goes. What's the best way that they can get a hold of you?

They can just email me directly. It's marks a r e.comm a r x a r E D. Fantastic. And I, you know, I. I don't have. I've. If somebody emails me, I will eventually get to it, I promise. But you will get a response from me no matter what. If not cool, no big deal. But if you want anything and I. I'm happy to connect with anybody if I can add value.

Fantastic. Well, that brings us to the end of this episizzle because it is so hot it's sizzling. Everybody else has episodes, we have episodels but Marks, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. This has been. I can't wait to jump listen to it again. Jump into the show notes and pull out all the pieces of wisdom. Guys, if you have if this resonates with you, send an email to Marks. I'm putting his email in the show notes. Tell him what you thought. Share this on social media Tag me. Let me know how much you loved it. And if you have any questions for me, you can send an email to ask Bridge Bradacon wrapped business.com I appreciate every single one of you. Also appreciate your reviews on itunes. Let me know what you think about the show. Marks, I definitely look forward to staying in touch with you.

Now that we know each other a little bit better and seeing how far this, as I said, how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Hey man, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Is there anything else I can do to make your day any better?

Not at all. You've done an amazing job.

Thanks, bud. Have a great day. Hit that me up. If you need me further the other list. I'll talk to you soon.

Will do. And guys, tune in to the next episode real soon.