EP 185: How To Deal With Stealing And Betrayal In Your Business As An Entrepreneur...

Welcome to the Making of a dm. How do you deal with stealing, betrayal, and cheating in your business? This show gets real and raw and deep. So with that said, let's get started.

I'm here to help and teach him what I know and how I did it to discover freedom. There ain't no question mark Kevin. When he stepping the doubt, he's closing deals. Time to tell him what the DM stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker. But I'm not just a deal maker. I'm a dream maker.

Hey there, it's your boy, Mark Evans, dm. Welcome to another Making of the DM podcast show. That's right, you are the deal maker and dream maker of your life. I'm excited to be here with you today as I sit here in the treehouse overlooking this beautiful fall morning. It's about 70 degrees, perfect in Ohio. The tree collars are absolutely amazing. I don't know about you, but I love fall. It's absolutely the best time of the year for me. A little bit of sweatshirt weather, Jean weather, hanging out with the kids, the smells, the views, the looks. It's just pretty cool season. Anyways, I want to let you know I appreciate you. I appreciate you following me on this journey, being here. We're getting up to our, you know, I think almost four years of doing podcast shows. The making of the dmtu. I remember sitting at the park, shooting my first episode to you guys and just connecting. I just want to share. Doesn't cost you anything to be here. Your time is very valuable. So that's the biggest cost and I take that very serious. I'm not here just to talk. I'm not here to make friends. I'm not. I'm just really here to give you insights. If you're sitting in the treehouse with me right now, we're overlooking this 200 foot down in the ravine. We got animals running around, turkey, deer, you know, squirrels, fox, coyote, probably checking things out. And I just want to let you know you're over in the chair with me and it's like you and I talking. And I have the privilege to work with thousands of entrepreneurs over the years. I'm 28 and a half years in the game of entrepreneurship. And I want to let you know is like, I do this because I want to give back to a most amazing community in the world, entrepreneurs. Obviously we're dealing with the election cycle right now. We're only a couple weeks out or the less get out there and vote. FYI and a Lot of chaos, a lot of craziness, a lot of people doing stuff out of the ordinary and it's different, it's weird. And I want to talk to you guys about stuff when I'm talking to entrepreneurs. And I have 150something people in the Dealmaker Alliance, 30 guys in the DM family, you know, and all these guys are investing a lot of money to be a part of these communities, to change their life and other people's life that they care about. So I take this stuff very serious. These podcast shows. Last week I was hanging out with the DM family. About 20 guys came out to Ohio. We hung out at the farm for a day and then we hung out at the factory for a day just to connect. I brought in, you know, a 71 year old guy that does billion dollar projects. You wouldn't see him on social media. He's not on social media. No one even knows. This guy is very wealthy, not just mentally, but financially. Right. He just has a massive amounts of wealth mentally in the game of business that a lot of people don't understand. So being in the right community, being in the right groups really can make or break you with where you're going. A lot of you listen to my voice. I don't know if you've ever been a part of an amazing community or not, and if you are, that's awesome. But the Dealmaker alliance is a special place. It is amazing human beings. I believe literally anything you need help with in your business, I don't care what business you're in, it could change your life. I've seen it happen over and over and over and it will continue to do so. And it actually only happens quicker and easier as we do more. Not say there's not work required, but as DM alliance gets bigger, we have more connections. We always talked about the six degrees of separation. Well, with the social media and the Internet, we're only one separation away from a massive connection. And I, I think a lot of people don't really understand the value of relationships at that next level, which I'm talking today to the DM alliance about massive collaboration. It is the ultimate currency. If you have relationship capital stored up, you could literally generate so much money. There's so many people listening to my voice right now. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but a positive way. You're working way too hard for way too little. And it's not that. And again, I'm not saying hard work's not required, but smart hard work is where the magic is at. So anyways, these kind of things we talk about in the Dealmaker alliance and the DM family. And if it's something you're interested in, you could always reach out to me on social media, on Instagram, @Markevans DM, just say podcast, DMA Talk. Podcast, DMA Talk. I know it's you. I communicate with you 100%. I don't have staff doing that for me on social. I will do that. But I want to talk to you guys about sharing the show, letting other people know about it. Share it on social media, Leave your five star review, let people know the show exists. I Wish it was 10 times bigger. I wish it was a thousand times bigger. And we're working on it, so stay tuned. We are up to some cool stuff here and without you it doesn't exist. So I get asked a lot. It's been happening a lot more lately. You know, they're coming to me saying, mark, I have employees and vendors, people stealing from me, what do I do? And weird circumstance. Well, number one, what do you do? You fire them. That's the simple answer. But I want to, I want to share some stories with you that's happened to me and it's going to happen again, I'm sure in the future, just not as many times. And you know all that good stuff and I'll talk about that. But my biggest thing is the reason I want to share this. I don't want you to lose your niceness. I don't want you to lose. I don't want you to see the world as bad. I don't want you to see the world through a lens of bitterness. I don't want you to see the world in negative lens at all. Right? We live in a beautiful world, you know, I know if, if you listen to me, it's not that way. But like I get to connect with amazing team members every day, amazing entrepreneurs every day, amazing family. Like I love people, I love connecting with people. And unfortunately, sometimes we get taken advantage of, we get stolen from, we get ripped off, we have betrayal, right? With what we think are friends that are literally just in the game because we're paying them and they're acting like your friend. And when that changes the cycles, when it's like, hey, I need you to send me money back. Now all of a sudden you're the devil. So we'll talk about these things because I do know we all deal with them. I remember I was small time business guy, actually crazy entrepreneur, psycho entrepreneur to Be honest. Small town. I was in Columbus, Ohio, back then on Executive Drive. Her name, I forget her name. Her name is Jessica or something like that. It was an assistant I hired, and she had access to my credit card. And I'm so busy running and gunning. To be honest with you, I never really checked my credit card statements ever. I didn't have checks and balances. So I'm going to share with you lessons of what I've done over the years to minimize, not prevent, but minimize these things. And ideally, prevent. That'd be amazing. But that's just not how real world works. But I remember Jessica. She had my credit card and my accountant called me one day and she's like, wow, you are literally must be crazy busy. But I don't see more revenue coming in. And I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, you're spending a lot of money at gas stations and, you know, like, daily, like, you know, $600 a day. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, we fill up once a day. That's it. We have two trucks. No big deal. And this is when I did, like, construction on my projects. I had multiple is my car. And we had another truck out in the field doing maintenance and rehab. You know, just project management and stuff. So I didn't think anything about it. Just kind of kept going on like, yeah, we're crushing it, right? You know, we're very delusional entrepreneur. So a couple weeks goes by and she calls me. She's like, mark, this is in the thousands of dollars. Like, we have to see what's going on. Keep in mind, this Jessica girl showing up every day. She's all chipper and smiling and happy and come to find out, every day she was meeting her friends at the gas station and filling up all their gas tanks with. With my credit card. And I. Once I discovered this, I. I really felt saddened because I thought she was a good person. She acted like a good person. She, you know, showed up for work every day and, you know, clearly. Why? Because she was hooking up all her friends. So I immediately fired her. I actually was going to press charges on her because that's what my lawyer told me to do. I ended up not doing that. I don't know if that's right or wrong. Maybe I should have. But at the end of the day, I mean, this is a college girl, right? That I felt like, you know, listen, stupid mistake. She's just trying to be cool, whatever. So that goes by and I kind of started getting like pissed. So like now all of a sudden, and you've heard me talk about, like, when people are buying stuff on my card, I'd like, you know, oh, I got post it notes for 40 cents. And I'm like, why'd you do that? You got for 32 cents. It made me focus on a lot of little things that I normally wouldn't focus on. And I shouldn't have done that. What I should have done is created a checks and balance system with accounting, someone that was measuring what was actually happening. And keep in mind, two weeks prior, my bookkeeper called me and said something, but I was so busy, I just didn't do it. You know, you and I are all the same. We have stuff on our credit card. If you've ever. By the way, I've never balanced a checkbook. Me personally, I've never looked at my credit card statements and done this verse that necessarily, ever. So I have team members where, you know, okay, they're charging now they have a card with their name on it. So we know all the charges that they're running through it. And we have a checks and balance. It's like, cool. What is that for? You know, just a quick verification process and, you know, so I wish I'd have done that a lot sooner. That was like six years in the game for me, so I could only imagine how much I lost. And the truth is, where I'm at today in my journey is I had a partner in the beginning of my game where this guy stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from me. This guy was building stuff at his house. He was process, you know, he was hanging out all the time. By the way, there's different ways of stealing, stealing time, stealing money and stealing, you know, paychecks. Like taking a paycheck and not working, doing other stuff. Right. You know, I know some kids are out there, guys and gals are out there, adults even, where they have multiple jobs because they're virtual and they actually have systems out there that makes you look like you're working and now you're collecting two or three checks from different companies. That's fucking stealing straight up. That's a massive issue. So anyways, this guy stole from me. I was thankful for it. This sounds crazy, but I was thankful for it because I always thought like, man, it could have been so much more if he played his cards right, he could have stole so much more from me. By the way, it wasn't his fault, it's my fault. It was my company. Even Though we are partners, it was my responsibility to have checks and balances. You know, this is a learning experience and you're going to hear this repetitive through me. This is how this moves forward. Because if not, you will be bitter, you will very rarely take massive moves because you'll be stuck in fear. And I don't want that to happen because there's so much amazing opportunities with great people that exist and I want to share that with you. So that happened. Checks and balances, Jessica happened. Checks and balances. It made me better, it started making me better, but it's not always a hundred percent. So as you're scaling, growing, moving, shifting. And then I went virtual in 05, right? I went down to Florida, turned it into a seven year trip around the world. I, I don't know if I've ever shared this story. I don't think I have actually. But one time I got a phone call and I very actually, I never answer. Unknown numbers, like numbers that I don't know who it is, they'll go to voicemail. They don't leave me a voicemail. Cause I tell them not to. If they have my email, they can email me, then I'll get back with them. But I had a feeling to answer this call one day. I remember this very clearly. I was sitting in Florida, out back by the pool. I just answered the phone and it was Chase Bank. And they're like, hey, your payment's past due. I'm like, what are you talking about? I don't have a Chase credit card. They're like, yes you do. It's $160,000 on it that you've charged and it's past due. I'm like, what? So I get the details. I ask them who opened the account, how long it's been open. It's been open for 14 months. And I'm like, cool, send me the statements. I don't have login. I don't even know what they're talking about, right? But it's under my name, it's under my credit, it's under me, everything under my company, all this stuff. So someone that had access to my business documents, someone forged my name, someone did a lot of stuff they shouldn't have done. So I get the information and I start digging deep. It was a top tier person in one of my companies. They've been around for a long time, come to find out that that 160 uncovered, they literally stole over $4 million from our organizations. And some of it's been paid back now. Thank God. But it was millions of dollars of discovery. Millions. And I think about this because I have checks and balances. And the way they were running it, these are very smart people. The way they're running it, they were diverting the thing. So, like, my team never even saw that on the books. So it was never on the books. It was off the books. It was always like, it was a different P. Like they were running it kind of like a separate business that was my business, but wasn't my business, if you will, Right? So we never could. We never saw it. So what we had to start doing, one, one, that's a massive fraud case. And two, like I felt, to be honest with you, I thought this individual was a ride or die individual. Like we're going to go to the moon together or we're going to crash together. And I never in a million years thought that someone would done this to me and my family and my future. And it sucked. It was a very real conversation. A lot of crying from the other individual. This man, or what he thinks to be a man. And you know, it got deep, it got real. And he could go to prison because of it, right? He could have. And so we had a real talk. Thank God there was a solution. He made it right, and we're out of that. But these are things that can happen and will happen. And I'm sharing raw, real stuff with you. This is not fluff, BS make you feel good. And I'm not trying to talk you out of business. I'm talking you in to business. Because I want you to know that this is a part of the game. There's no way to get over it. But people can steal from you. Like it could be a vendor, right? I've had lawyers where they just send multiple bills and they over bill you, right? Tens of thousands of dollars. So you catch it, you address it and you move on, right? You don't pay them. This happens when I used to build houses all the time, right? You're getting multiple lumber packages. Multiple contractors are overcharging you. This happens in real estate all the time. Real estate, property management, right? They nickel and dime you. They're charging you $1,700 for this and then 350 for that for a service charge. And it's like, dude, like they're stealing from you. That's stealing. Unless it's outlined and what they're going to do, they're not getting paid. We have to have a very clear understanding of this is what you get paid for. And this is what we pay, right? So it makes you tighten up the ship, slow down a little bit on certain things. And again, this shit for me, I absolutely hate. But it's mandatory because this is your job as a CEO, business owner, business leader. Your job is to protect the ultimate domain, the business, at all cost, right? So if people are stealing from you, you got to whack them, you got to cut them. If people are, you know, overbilling you, you got to address it, put in processes in place. And if it happens consistently, you got to let them go and go find new vendors. But yeah, this is real stuff. I just want you to know, another one, this is another thing that happened. So we have companies that have affiliates, right? And an affiliate is someone that out there promotes your product or services, and they get paid a fee. Well, we had some situations going on. We had all these great affiliates. I mean, they're making a lot of money with us. And one guy, actually, two guys in particular. And again, I'm a relationship loyalty guy, so I treat people how I want to be treated. I do the right thing, even if it sucks, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I went to this individual because when there's refunds, well, you refund the money back to the client. So this individual's brought clients and they collected the money and they got paid whatever. And. But these clients wanted a refund, and that's what we do. So we refunded. And sure enough, the affiliates said, f you, I'm not giving you money back. It's like, wait a minute, that's thousands of dollars. That's the deal. That's the agreement. There is agreements there. And sure enough, they pretty much said, mfu. You know, you're the devil. You know all this crazy stuff. And keep in mind, they've made many, many, many, many more thousands of dollars than what we were asking them back for, to do the right thing, to the point where it actually almost caused that company to go bankrupt. It was that bad because I actually had to step in and backfill a lot, a lot, a lot of money to do the right thing. So you look at these situations, and if you ever wonder why the bigger someone is in the game of business and life, you'll see that their circle is very small. It's very, very, very hard to penetrate in. We don't need any more friends. Because it's like, I know the ones to trust. I know the loyal ones. I know the ones that will be around forever. I know the ones that will do the right thing, right? And this Happens at all levels, right? Like, I just want you to know some of my, my best investments are investing with people that don't need my money. They have more money than me, right? Those are my best investments. They always do the right thing. They have money, they're not, they don't need my money. They want it to participate and grow with them. Have you ever understood why big developments always have multiple joint venture partners? Have you ever understood why these big companies that ever that all of them go big always bring on strategic capital partners, right? If the company doesn't necessarily always need the money, the money is a good, good component. But the company might be generating way more money. And not only that, what they're really looking for is guidance and relationship capital. So those are the best deals. As opposed to the person that you always hear me talk about. Win with winners, right? We have a tendency, all of us listening to my voice have a tendency to help losers help people with problems. Well, listen, I don't mind helping you if you have a problem as long as you have money to solve the problem. Are you a loser? Meaning do you steal? Do you lie? Do you cheat? Do you not want to do the work? Are you not willing to do the work? Like, I don't want to try to fix broken people. They can't even fucking fix themselves, right? So it's something that drives me bananas because I genuinely want to help people. And if you're like me, you almost try to help them more than they want to help themselves. And you're going to do that in the beginning, but you'll quickly realize it's a waste of time, energy, effort, money, mental power. Because While you're spending 90% of your time on these fucking losers, you're only spending 10% on the winners. And guess what? The winners keep winning. But if I could spend 100% with winners, we're all winning a thousand times bigger. I want you to take that nugget and think about that. Look at who you're hanging with. Look at who you're trying to help. Are you pushing them? Are you pulling them? Are you dragging them? Are they fucking stuck in concrete? Like, what is going on? I want you to really think about that and adjust accordingly. Because when you win with winners, winning becomes more fun, right? You don't have to feel guilty. Like, you know, you, when you're working with losers, dude, you got to be careful what you say. You got to be careful how you say it. You got to tiptoe with around. Well, you know, Jim, you've Been doing an okay job, but, like, listen, man. No, motherfucker, you suck at what you're doing. You know better. You got to do this. You said you're gonna make 10 calls. You made two calls. Step it up or step out, period. You say it to a winner, they go make a hundred calls. You say it to a loser, they go online and they bash you and call you a fucking dick. That's the truth. And we're better than that. We are in control of that, by the way. So if it keeps happening, you got to stop, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what is the common denominator? It's you. So the only thing I can control is me. Therefore, I got to change the way I bring on friends. I got to change the way I bring on employees. I got to change the way I manage my accounting practices. I got to change these things. And every time this happens, even with this guy that snagged for 4 million, I swear on my life, before immediate flash, I want to break this guy's neck. Secondly, I said, thank God it's 4 million instead of 40 million. It could always be worse. So that's the key to this talk today. What do you do when someone steals from you? What do you do when someone betrays you? It's okay to get pissed, but don't let the fear, don't let the pissness, don't let you know you getting upset. Don't let the betrayal control you. You control it. Use it as fuel. I remember when me and my partner split up, I literally was going to stomp on this guy's throat. I was pissed. I was naive. I was pissed. I used that as fuel to grow millions of times bigger than this guy. He could never compete with me. He never can, never will. He doesn't think like me, doesn't move like me, doesn't act like me, doesn't do anything like me. And I've been winning every day since. Now, I don't wish him harm, but he'll never fucking be allowed in my circle ever again for obvious reasons. And that goes for anybody that's ever stolen. So I want you to, like, think about these things. Look at your situations as you get bigger accounting teams. You could audit, right? You could have someone looking at your books weekly, your documents, your books, your invoices. And have a checks and balance system if something's funky. If something looks off, it probably is. So you got to find out who it is. You got to address it accordingly. And you got to make sure, like, you're on top of this, this is not the sexy side of the business. This is actually something very hard for people like me to do. I don't like it. So Every Thursday at 10am I'm talking with my team on accounting about these particular situations. Now I'm big enough at this point, honestly, where I have multiple layers, where I have people looking at it daily and weekly with me and I have people driving it, people doing checks and balances, by the way, still falls through the cracks. Not as much, but it definitely will happen. So this is why anytime I even participate in businesses, I got a call coming up this week with a guy that we've done business with where he's been literally taking 20,000amonth out of the company I've invested in and saying the company's not making any money. It's like, yeah, because you're taking a quarter million dollars a year out of it. How do you expect it to make money? You know? So again, if I'm in the business and I'm running the books, my books look way different. Very tight, very organized, very structured. In the beginning it was not like that. It's very sloppy, very overwhelming, you know, so you gotta hire good people in there. If you need help with that, let me know. I have people that I've hired over the years. Third party companies now we have all in house mostly, but there are third party companies. There's some good ones and there's some really, really shitty ones. Really shitty ones. And the truth is, if I'm shooting straight with you, the majority are shitty, straight up. They don't care. You're just a number. You just send them money every month. They send you reports 15 days after the month's over. So everything's reactive business planning, not proactive business planning. So there's the right way to do this and the wrong way to do this. So anyways, these are the things I want you to think about. And then one more thing. You ever, as an entrepreneur, have you ever thought like, dude, why would anybody work for me? Why wouldn't everybody be an entrepreneur? Have you ever thought like that? Well, this is why. This is why. Because there is betrayal. Because it is hard. Because you have to generate revenue. Your employees get paid before you do, vendors get paid before you do. I know all these cool things say you got to pay yourself. And that's true. But like, at the end of the day, it all is on your shoulders. As an entrepreneur, we make it look easy because we just do the work. We just keep staying moving. We never Stop. We never quit. We will figure it out just through time. When you get in the right rooms, you're going to do this anyways. You're going to have these situations. Our goal is just to help you minimize them, help you push through a little faster. That's what the dealmaker alliance does, is there to support you, to be there, to guide you, to give you the tools and resources to help you grow. But this is why, truthfully, the majority of the world will never, ever, ever be an entrepreneur. It is not for the faint heart. It's tough, it's tacking, it's time consuming, it's stressful, it's exciting, it's scary as hell. A lot, you know, if, if you need to know how everything works before doing anything, you're never, it's going to be very, very, very, very complicated for you over the years. It's going to be a tough life. Get around winners. Start winning with winners. Enjoy winning with winners. Winners win. They always win. They'll always figure out even if they're getting punched in the face and there's blood everywhere, they will figure out a way to win. That's what winners do. Stop focusing on the losers. Stop trying to fix broken people. Broken people can't even fix themselves. Why do you think we can? We can't let them discover that through their journey. And when they start winning, then they step in your arena. Focus on this game. Know that you're not alone and trust me, keep your feet moving, get in the right rooms and enjoy the process. So with that said, make day count.

I'm more Kevin's dm. I'm here to help and teach him what I know and how I did it to discover freedom. There ain't no question mark. Kevin's when he stepping the doubt, he's closing deals. Time to tell him what the DM stand for. I'm a deal maker. A deal maker. But I'm not just a deal deal maker. I'm a dream maker. The journey's where it's at. It's all about the process. Time to get over to the DM project from a small town in Ohio so I know how it is. Can I come from a lot of money. I remember as a kid wanted to make a honey rat. Didn't see no one making more than that. Graduated high school with a 1.8. They should have held me back. I hope my principals and teachers are alive just to witness this. I'm an owner boss. I'm out here running two way figure businesses. Walk away from it all and I'll be good But I've been called to help people just like y' all learn the game it's time to ball Everybody chasing the money but I'm not chasing the money I'm out here chasing the purpose Yo, I've been working my whole life what got us where we at? Is it going to get us where we want to go? It's time to push time to learn, time to grow I'm over Gavin's dm I'm here to help and teach them what I what I know Knowing how I did it to discover freedom There ain't no question mark Kevin when he stepping the doubt he's closing deals Time to tell him what the DM stand for I'm a deal maker, a deal maker But I'm not just a deal maker I'm a dream maker the journey's where it's at it's all about the process. Time to get over to the DM project I'm walking here. Deal maker, deal maker maker Deal maker, deal maker.

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