EP: 198: My 60-Day Trip Around The World Starts NOW... What Happens When I Walk Away?

Welcome to the making of a DM. This 60 day trip around the world is about to start. What happens when I walk away? Listen to the show. I'm about to share some great insights with you. So with that said, let's get started.

Stepping it down, 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. That's right, you are the deal maker and most importantly, the dream maker of your life. As you've all heard, if you can dream it, you can achieve it. First of all, welcome to the show. If you're brand new, welcome. Hopefully we share some great insights with you and make sure to listen to past shows. We've got a lot of shows here, almost at number 200. So I've been sharing a lot of information over the last four and a half years I believe now. So I appreciate you being here. And secondly, if you guys are listeners, loyal listeners, thank you so much. We've got a lot of great feedback. You know the show, I still talk about this but the show we did about a month ago about if you had $10 million in the bank now what you might want to go listen to that show. If you have not. It's got a lot of feedback. It's been one of our most shared shows in the last 12 months for sure. And a lot of great meaning to a lot of great purpose. So it's why we're doing all this crazy stuff. So if you get a chance, leave a five star review. Share the show. If you hear something that's impactful, make sure to share it with a friend. Let them know like hey man, check the show out between minute 12 and 17 and enjoy. Like let's spread the message. I do this for free. I want to help people. I actually pay to do this. I have people that do editing and deployment and all that fun stuff. Not only that, time. Time is the thing that's really ultimately what you're chasing is time freedom. I've been lucky and fortunate to be building time freedom like you as well. I've been almost 29 years in the game of business. Almost June 2nd will be 29 years. I've been a business owner. I'm not down to it. I didn't say successful business owner the whole time, but I've been on the journey. I'm still on the journey with you. So I want to share some real life stuff with you today. Today's show will be kind of interesting. I've been writing down my notes, kind of what I want to talk about today. And it seems kind of weird because I'm going to share some behind the scenes personal stuff with you. I always share personal real stuff with you, but this is a little bit different and I thought it'd be worth sharing because this bug happened to me 12-31-2005 and that bug is traveling. I left Columbus, Ohio 12-31-2005 with my girlfriend, now my wife Dina, and we went to South Beach, Florida for one month. To say I was scared is an understatement. Now keep in mind I was 27 years old, never really traveled like that. Never left my business ever, ever, ever. I was so like I was a real estate guy. I'm in the trenches, cranking along, doing the work every day just like you, shaking hands, kissing babies, high fiving people, going to networking events, going to meetings, going to masterminds. I was doing all this stuff. Now keep in mind this is pre Internet like it is today. So there wasn't lots of live zooms back then. We had telecalls where you could listen in on stuff. But it genuinely was a different time. But I still see a lot of people has built businesses where they can't leave. And I hate to hear that and see that. And not to say some people want to travel by the way. I never really wanted to travel. I didn't even know it was a thing. But my girlfriend then, now my wife Dina said let's leave for a month, you need a break. Because my grandmother passed that year, kind of really was going through some stuff mentally. I had the money, I had the business, I had the life that I thought I wanted, but I really didn't know what I wanted because I was so damn focused on making money and that's all I was focused on. So I listened to her and that one month turned into seven years around the country and around the world. We traveled literally kind of Vega bonding style. You've probably heard of the book four hour Workweek. We were doing exactly that. I was working way more than four hours. It's more of a framework really. And that's what I want to share with you today. The framework structure of how it all came together. And I was doing from the. I was from a flip phone sitting on the beach in south beach, doing deals in Columbus, Ohio. Real estate transactions like clockwork. From Columbus, Ohio, from Florida In Columbus, Ohio, many transactions. I lost half of my team because the other half, the half that left, you know, they just couldn't hack it. Like, I made them look better than they were. I supported people that were in my ecosystem that I shouldn't have been supporting. And it worked out. They sorted themselves out. The other half stayed around. And we evolved and developed and built and, you know, we grew. We grew a real estate company. And that's the difference. Back then I had a real estate job, and when I left, I had to build a real estate company because if not, I had to come back home. And like I said, I traveled this country, in the world for seven years, all over these crazy places. So now, today, 20, 25, two days before we leave. Actually, as I'm recording, excuse me. Three days before we leave. We leave Saturday morning, I'm hopping on a plane, and me, my wife and my two kids, we're heading for 60 days. We're heading out of the country for 60 days. And the first stop is not out of the country, it's in Hawaii for six days. I'm going to be hanging out there, speaking at a real estate event, talking about big deals, lifestyle design and all that stuff. And understand what I'm sharing with you right now is not for everybody. Some of you listening are like, dude, I don't want to travel like that. That's cool. It's not about traveling. It's more of about a framework. Because when I travel, travel forced me to become a business owner. It forced me. I wrote about this in my book called 10 Minute Business Owner, the Power of Constraint. Mark, how did you come up with the 10 minute business owner name? Easy. I was sitting on the back of a yacht, true story, that I rented for the week with my wife and kid, Mark. Then we only had one son and we were on an island. Me and my wife went over to this private island. We're hanging out, sunbathing, I'm smoking cigars, writing a book to, you know, 10 minute business owner. Writing that book is what it is today. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, I'm sitting on this beach. No one's around. I see the yacht in the far in the distance. Me, my wife and my son hanging out. We got the drinks, we got the food, we got everything. It's perfect. It's beautiful out. And I'm having a little bit of anxiety. I'm getting overwhelmed. So I call, get on my cell phone and I call my. My coo. What's going on? Where's the data. I start creating a problem, right? I start overwhelming things. I just. I'm crying. I'm starting up problems where problems don't exist. Sound familiar? All of us business owners do this, by the way. We like to create problems or create fires, right? We're like, we're putting out fires. Well, yeah, but you're kind of starting them, so you're kind of an arsonist in your own company. And sometimes in your life, we've all done it, so don't be too hard on yourself, but recognize it and learn how to get better at this. And then I said, okay. So I hung the phone up. I thought that made me a little better because the numbers are good, things are working. I already knew my KPIs. I knew how much our deal flows were. I knew how much we made profit per deal for transactions. Single family houses, by the way. So if they said we did 100 deals this month and our average deal is $27,000, cool, we generated 2.7 million in profit. That sounds good, right? Gross profit, by the way. But that sounds cool. However, as the market changes, right? If you don't understand that key metric, that 27 over time deteriorates and or goes up and or stays the same, so you must know that number. What are you making? So if someone says, mark, we closed 10 deals, I don't have to ask 72 other questions because we have a baseline understanding of what that number means. And revenue. Because if revenue is going up, production's going up, team's still there, everything's working right now. I'm not saying you wouldn't track deeper numbers, but you can only track so many numbers. So back to the story. I'm sitting on this beautiful island and I just had pretty much a damn near panic attack because things aren't. No one's calling me for anything. They don't need me. They're raising money without me. They're buying houses without. They're rehabbing houses without me. They're building the company without me. This is the thing I worked hard for, for many years to build. So I sit there and I thought about this and I said, okay, listen, the truth is, this is never going away. How can I reduce it, though? So I said, let's create a story. I have 10 minutes. I have a global phone. I can be anywhere in the world, and for 10 minutes a day, I get on the phone with people that need to be on the phone. Who's on the phone? My coo, accounting, marketing director, svp, et cetera. Like, who would you have on the phone? And I would for 10 minutes. And then not only that, dive deeper in that. What data would you need to hear on the phone or share? Knowing that once I hung up, I could enjoy the rest of the day, 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day. I could sleep like a baby. I could be present with my family when I'm hanging out on the beach, smoking a cigar, relaxing, or if we're yachting across the waters, it doesn't matter. I'd be at least be settled down knowing that things are moving in the right direction. And that's how I started creating this framework of traveling and creating, you know, really constraints. I remember sitting in India. I literally am in a little booth in India. My wife wants to go do all these tours and do all these cool things, which is fine, but I still, I love working. I love deal making, I love, I love researching properties. I love making deals happen. I love creative financing. I love buying businesses, I love selling businesses. I love the idea to creation. Like, I like that. I enjoy it. It's like fun for me. Some people like watching Netflix. I like building a business. Some people like watching sports. I like looking at real estate to buy a real estate deal. I just enjoy it. So know what you want. Know what gets you excited. So when I'm in India, my wife's like, I got all this stuff planned and blah, blah, blah for the day. I'm like, cool, I need 30 minutes. So I'd run down to this shop, and for 30 minutes, I was so productive. I wasn't dicking around, messaging people. I wasn't scrolling the Internet. I wasn't checking to see what someone's doing on social media or any of that. I literally got there, had an objective, I had a constraint, and I executed accordingly. See, the thing is, I hear people all the time say, mark, I don't have time to start a business or grow my business. The truth is, I think the majority of the world has too much time on their hands. That's why they never accomplish what they can because they have too much lingering time. How much time do you spend on social media? How much time do you spend, like, just browsing around? How much time do you have just hanging out, watching tv? How much time do you have just hanging out, out back? How much time do you have at the gym? Instead of going an hour and a half, maybe you go 35 minutes, 40 minutes. Constraints put pressure on things. And when you start doing this, you start creating time. Very powerful. I don't Take crazy meetings. I don't take crazy calls. I'm not doing 15 zooms a day. My schedule's not booked up every 15 minutes. I don't do that. And I'm saying, I'm not saying, listen, if that's what you like and that's what you want, the life you want, cool. My framework's different and that's why I want to share with you. This trip for 60 days is about in a $200,000 investment, that's about what it will cost me a couple hundred grand. Some of you are thinking, like what? Well listen, considering a yacht cost me 150 for a week, 200 grand for two months is not too shabby. Considering everything's top tier, pretty amazing hotels, amazing flights, all that fun stuff. And again, I'm not sharing this to impress, but to impress upon. I used to be the guy sitting in the back of the plane bragging about how I only paid $139 to get a round trip ticket somewhere. That's not the case these days, but my framework's this pick out the destinations. Here's my destinations, I'll share them with you. So if you know anybody I should connect with when I'm in them, please let me know. I'll be in Honolulu, Hawaii for six days doing a real estate event, talking with a lot, 100 plus investors all over the country, connecting with them. I bring my wife and my kids as well. As well as they do too. Then I bounced to Tokyo, Japan. I'll be over there for a while, 10 to 14 days, we're not sure. Truth is I have the flight from Hawaii to Tokyo. As I'm speaking to you, I don't have a hotel yet because we'll figure it out when we get closer to it. That's how I roll. Some of you get anxiety with that, but that's how I've rolled for seven years. I'd wake up on a Saturday in some state and or country and on Saturday night or Sunday morning I'd be in a totally different part of the world. That's how I roll. The beautiful thing called the interweb allows us to do that. It's never been easier. And back when I was doing that in 2005 and such, you actually had to go to Craigslist. It was very sketchy. It was not as easy and convenient as is today. But I digress. So we'll be over there. We got a couple things in mind, what we want to do, but I got some conferences and meetings that connect with some business owners. There's a lot of Japanese guys and gals that are doing business in the States and I'm connecting with them, right? So I'm already over there. I've never met some of these people face to face ever. So it's a great time to connect and see what's going on. So once we get done with that in 10 to 14 days, we're gonna bounce over to Australia for another 10 or 14 days or however long we want. We don't have the hotels, we don't have flights there yet. But we'll get over there and hang out. I already got like nine meetings set up with people and these are not meetings times, these are more like, hey, when I get there I'll give you a heads up and we'll meet that day, that next couple days, whatever, right? Whatever's convenient for all of us. We'll work it out. It's not stressful. I don't have to go against the calendar. I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta be in Australia at this place, this location on Tuesday at 3:00pm, blah blah, blah. Like no, none of that. And then once we get done with that, we'll head over to New Zealand probably for a couple of weeks as well. Bounce around. One thing we know we're going to do is this two day trip across New Zealand. The kids want to do that, so we're going to do that. Whenever we get over there, we'll hang out, do the first class carriage and just roll around New Zealand via train and then hang out in some cool locations. My wife loves the beach and pretty sceneries and all that fun stuff. I'm not much of a guy to go out and explore and go deep water diving and deep water fishing. I'm cool with all that stuff. I'd rather hang out, connect, read, hang out with the kids, play with the kids and whatever they're up to, I want to do it with them. I want to create experiences. So if you know anybody in Hawaii, Honolulu, specifically Tokyo, Australia or New Zealand, let me know, I will be there. And I'm excited to meet up with business owners, entrepreneurs. I got some people doing events, I think I'm going to go speak there if my time makes sense. When I'm over there, pop in and do a 30 minute, 60 minute connection speech. Let them know what's going on in the us Let them know what kind of businesses I do and just share insights, right? Really forge relationships in person. That sounds crazy, huh? In person. But what's cool about this is I'm sharing this because this is going on real time. I'm two, three days out and I'll be heading off and business will still happen. My team will still show up, buyers will still buy, investors will still invest, opportunities will still pop up. I have access to email, I have access to my cell phone if I want. But the truth is what I want you to really think about and listen, maybe you can't do 60 days, that's cool. Maybe you can't do six days. However, like stretch yourself. Get in a situation where you stretch yourself, go a week, get away from your business so you can grow your business. How do you grow your business? It's simple. You grow, you, you figure out you're a massive anxiety ball. We need to sit there and really figure out what is this emotion I'm feeling. Because you're going to have lots of them, right? Recently one of my buddies, Will took three weeks. He's never done that. I was like, dude, journal this. It's you've massive value. Journal it. When that weird feeling pops up, think, write about it immediately. Why am I stressed out? It's 3pm East coast time, it's 6am Wherever part of the country world you're at at that time. Why am I stressed? Where does that stress come from? More importantly, what information, if I had it, could reduce it, minimize it or eliminate it. This is awareness, right? Financial situations, financial problems, Talk to your team, give your team leadway. Meaning if you know you're leaving saying, hey, Kim, that's my one of my assistants, I trust you. You have a $5,000. You can spend $5,000 without anything of my approval as long as you did the proper due diligence and you think it's the right fit for our company and what we need. Now, every problem that happens in the company under $5,000, I will never hear about it. Could be 10,000, could be a 100,000. Whatever your threshold is with where you're at in the journey, let them make decisions, teach them how you think, teach them how to solve problems. Huh, that sounds crazy. A business owner wanting your team to help you solve your problem. Most of the time we're constantly creating problems and trying to help them solve the problems we created. Give them a number, empower them, let them know I'm heading out. Some of you might be thinking, well, but yeah, my team will get upset or my team will look down on me or what. Why? That's more you. They're probably excited for you to get out. Excited for Them to shine, excited for them to show you what they can actually do for the company. Because when you're so close and I promise you, I was this person in 2005, I made a lot of team members that were weak look strong because I stepped in and I always, always made them look way stronger than they were. I'd give them power and I'd pull it away immediately. I never let them sort things out. I solved problems without them solving it for themselves. There to create significance for me. Don't do that. That was stupid. Wasted a lot of energy, lost a lot of good people. But document these feelings, document these emotions, document the solution. Most importantly, what data points, what information could I see or need that would take away or reduce the stress? I can promise you this creativity and opportunities and discovery of yourself happens when I travel like this. It happens every single time. 60 days, give or take 60 days. And the truth is, the reason I'm sharing this with you is you would have no clue that I was on the road for 60 days if I didn't tell you. You'd have zero clue, Zilch. Why? Because my business, what can run with or without me. Now, don't get me wrong, but Mark, what about your podcast show? Well, the beautiful thing about the podcast show, as I'm doing right now, I can record from a handheld machine, literally a handheld machine, talk into it for 30 to 60 minutes and have interweb connection anywhere in the world. Upload the show to my deployers, they edit it, clean it up, and deploy it Every Wednesday at 10am I don't. I'm not time sensitive. It's not like I have to be at the office at 8am on Tuesday to record the show. No, I record the show whenever I feel like it, whenever it fits into my schedule, whenever I have an insight that I can share with you. I don't want this to be forced. I want this to be insightful. I want this to be, like, educational. I want it to be, like, inspirational to you. So I'm shooting this at like 11:48 in the morning. I have three other things going on today, but this is the most important thing. And that will happen as I travel. I'll get something going on. Dina and the kids are down by the pool at the sauna. We're at the spa, wherever they're at, at the kids club, who knows? I'll have an hour. I'm inspired and I pull out this little pocket thing and I start shooting this recording and it gets uploaded and then I have the Thing called the Dealmaker alliance and the Dealmaker Family. It's the only two main commitments I do and I'll stick to them as well. Cool thing is, I built the show. I could change the time if I wanted, but I wouldn't do that because I don't think that's right now. If it was like super weird hours, I might do that. But like, when I'm in Australia, it'd be 3am, I think, or something like that. When I'm in Tokyo, it's like 1am or noon, midnight or something like that. So I'll just go into another room. It's not convenient necessarily for my schedule because, as you know, I like to be in bed by 8 or 9pm but I'll do it because the reward is so much greater than the process. And that's only on Wednesday. So when I'm thinking about where we're staying and what we're doing on a Wednesday, Wednesday at noon, east coast time, I do the Dealmaker alliance call. And then Wednesday at 2pm I do the Dealmaker Family call. Other than that, that's all the real things I have to do. And then I still do my tax call, right, with my tax advisor CFO guys, I do that, but it's very fluid. I can do it whenever, whatever makes sense. Hey, guys, here's three times that makes sense for me this coming week. Pick the one that best fits you, and then we do it. So not all businesses are created equal. I've been very diligent about creating businesses that allow me to be fluid. I don't have to go into an office to talk to a sales team. I don't have to go into an office to open up the doors to let clients in. I don't have to go to an office to meet X, Y and Z. I don't even know. I have some really cool offices. I rarely go and I don't have to go. I want to go when I go. So what are you building? See, the thing is, I've always been clear. I've always wanted to create a life that I wasn't running from. I'm not running from life to go on vacation. My reality is my daily life. It's my, It's. I'm very blessed because I've worked really hard, consciously, in and tirelessly to create this lifestyle for myself and my family. I incorporate my family. I incorporate fun. I create. I, I, I incorporate exploration and I incorporate business in every part of my day, every day. And you should think about that as well. And the reason you should think about it is, again, back to the earlier word. I said constraint. See, when you have real priorities, there's constraints inside of that and there's lots of ways to accomplish it, or what we've been taught, there's lots of ways to skin the cat, if you will. And if I say, listen, I need you to make a million dollars a year without going to an office for the next 12 months, your brain might break. It might take you 3, 6, 12 months to figure that out. But then I say, okay, listen, I need you to generate a million dollars in the next 12 months and I'm going to hold your family hostage and take everything you've gotten until you do it. I promise you, you're going to start thinking a little bit different because you have constraints now. You have real pain. I also hope this show inspires you to live while you're alive. I've shared this story many times, but I'll share it again through my seven years travels. Dean and I'd meet these old couples. Nancy'd be pushing Harold around in the wheelchair in these beautiful locations in their 70s. And I always wanted to talk to them and I did. And they literally would save up. I saved up my whole life for this dream trip. Huh? How is this a dream? You're in a wheelchair, homie. I get it. I understand what you're saying. But do you wish you would have done it different? The answer is always yes. Live while you're healthy. Explore. Open your mind to things that are possible. You're capable of so much more. I want you to pay attention to my life. Why? Because I'm living it. And I want to help you live a better life through time, energy, profits, building businesses. I have roofing businesses we're building. We have H Vac businesses I'm involved in. I have IV wellness therapy business I'm involved in. We have media companies. I mean, I'm involved in a lot of stuff in different ways. Lots of real estate. I can sign docu sign from anywhere in the world to close a deal. I can do a virtual notary anywhere in the world. It was never that easy. In 05, I had to. I had to have. I had to go to them. Now they'll come to you. Shit. They'll come on virtual, they'll go online. There's lots of ways to do this game of life. Take a hard look at the way you're doing it. Is it the way you want to do it next year, five years from now, Start putting constraints in this game. Add constraints to the model. Start building a better framework to help you accomplish what you want. Listen, this does not happen overnight, but it starts today. It starts today with you realizing that you are capable of more. It starts today with you looking at where do you want to go, not with where you're at. I never in a million years thought I'd be here today, where I'm at, to invest $200,000 in a 60 day trip. Are you crazy? But that's my life and that's the truth. I could spend more. I could spend less too, by the way. But one thing is true. We're hiring people still while I'm traveling. Buyers are still buying, marketing's still running. People are still clicking emails. People are still responding to text message blast. People are showing up to evergreen webinars and live zooms. Salespeople are still selling, emails are still going out. Websites are still working, businesses are still performing, companies are still growing. Some challenges, lots of challenges involved in all that stuff as well. But we have teams. They all know that what we're building. I've worked really hard talking about these things year after year after year. Not everything is peaches, unicorns and rainbows, that's for sure. But I do know this. If you know where you want to go, you might build something different. Not all businesses are created equal. Not all business models are created equal. Look at how you're building what you're building. Do you want that life where you can travel whenever you want for as long as you want? Simple answer. If it's yes, cool. Is the business model you're in allow you to do that? And if not, what would it look like? And if so, congratulations. These are things I want you to focus on as we trek together. Follow me for the next 60 days here on this podcast show. More importantly, get real real behind the scenes inside the Dealmaker alliance for a thousand dollars a month where I talk about this every Wednesday and beyond. I'm sharing this in private Facebook messages as well. But I'm sharing behind the scenes stuff. What we're actually really doing at Deep Sea. I only get 30 to 60 minutes a week with you guys here for free. But as you get involved in the dealmaker alliance@dealmakeraliance.com if you're a real business owner looking to scale and grow, I'm sharing frameworks, I'm sharing insights, I'm sharing structures. There's people inside the group. There's 150 plus people in there talking about what's working. This week. We got A guy that's literally thinks he's making 400 grand in four months. I'm going to share with him exactly how he's losing millions of dollars a year with that thinking process. Not only millions of dollars a year, the easiest money he'll ever make. But again, he doesn't know that. But that's why he's paying to be there. And I'll be sharing that in a case study Live. These are the conversations that go on behind the closed doors. And you need to be in those rooms. And shame on you if you're not in rooms like that. But the dealmakeralliance.com it's happening every single week. I'm excited to share real insights with you. I'm always excited to give you the real truth, even if it makes me sound douchey. I mean, who comes out and says, hey, I'm leaving. I'm traveling the world for 60 days with my family and I'm spending at least $200,000 to do so. I'm not trying to rub salt in a wound. I'm not trying to spit in your face. I'm not trying to brag. It's just I'm trying to share truth. We're working on charity stuff. We're working on business building stuff. We're working on hiring stuff, staff reorganization stuff, New books coming out, new systems coming out. Like, I have so much going on, but I can do it from anywhere in the world and I can do it under constraint and I can do it with hiring great people. I have so many great people in my life that I've hired. Hasn't always been that way. But you understand, like, you know, hiring's hard. I should say hiring's easy. Hiring, hiring good people is hard. Retaining them is even harder. And we'll talk about that. And inside of the DM alliance, Scott Hannis talks a lot about that. But again, if you're serious about growing, I would love to grow with you. Dealmakeralliance.com it's easy, it's simple. The downside's a thousand bucks. The upside is unlimited. Unlimited. I hope you follow me along on the journey. If you have any connections in Honolulu, Hawaii, Tokyo, Japan, Australia. We're all over Australia as well as New Zealand. Let me know business owners. I'd love to talk to them, connect them, shake their hand. Maybe you're listening to me from one of these locations or you know someone, please let me know. I will do what I can to make the time to meet up with them and add value in Any way, shape or form. I appreciate you being here. I look forward to seeing you on their side. I can't wait to share with you what we got going on next week. So with that said, make the day count.

Closing deals. Time to tell them 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 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 Graduation waited high school with a 1.8 should have held me back I hope my principals and teachers are alive just to witness this I'm a own boss I'm out here running two way figure businesses I can 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 pause 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 Got us where we at is it gonna get us where we wanna go? Time to push, time to learn time to grow I'm more Kevin's DM I'm here to help and teach him what I 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 the journey's where it's at it's all about the prize Time to get over to the DM project.

This is the podcastfactory.com.

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