EP 210: The Day I (Almost) Fired Everyone...

Welcome to the making of a DM. Fire everybody! I quit! Game over! Huh, how many times you want to say that a day? On today's show, I'm gonna pull back the curtains and get super transparent with you, so grab a pen, grab a paper, and be ready. So with that said, Let's get started. I'm Mark Evans DM. I'm here to help and teach them what I know and how I did it to discover freedom. There ain't no question, Mark Evans, when he step in the doubt, he's 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. Hey there, it's your boy Mark Evans DM. That's right. Another Making of the DM podcast show. You are the DM of your life, dealmaker and dreammaker. Appreciate you being here today. As I'm sitting here in beautiful Parkland, Florida, the family's out doing a couple errands. So I thought I'd take some time and talk about something that is on every single CEO's mind. All the time, and that's fire everybody. Fire them. I'm done. Shut them down. It's easier by myself. I'll get into that in a second. Before I get moving forward, I want to say thank you guys so much. As you know, I took a sabbatical for a minute with the show. We have so many things going on, so many new companies and growth of companies are happening and just rearranging of companies and individuals. Is going on. So that takes precedent of anything I do here on this podcast show. I come to you here free. I don't have, I don't have sponsorships. I want to provide massive, massive value to you as if you're sitting in my office where I'm recording the show here in Parkland, Florida at the house. We're just hanging out buddy to buddy, talking about real life stuff that all of us go through. And if you get a chance, if you haven't done so, Leave a 5-star review on whatever platform you're listening to. We have hundreds and hundreds of, uh, 5-star reviews, which I want to say thank you guys for that. It lets people know what we're up to, puts us up in the algorithm and gets things started. Take 3 seconds and go do that now. Pause, go do. Wait, you're back already? Okay, cool. And then share this show. It's so important. I'm going to talk about stuff on this show and every show we do for that matter. If it hits home with you, stop for a second, think about who you can hand this show off to. Send it to your buddy, send it to your friend, send it to someone you care about or someone you want to connect with and say, hey, great show, listen from minute 13 to 14 and a half, it hits home. And then they get the show, they listen to it, they either like it or they love it. And then more importantly, You got to connect with them through relationship capital. You just made a deposit in a relationship, letting them know that you're learning, you're growing, you're pushing, you're forging. And more importantly, you thought about them during this process. This is one of those shows that every single CEO could share multiple times forever, truthfully. And it'd mean a lot to me. That's all I'm asking you to do is simply share the show. So today, I want to talk about something that's frustrating me, and it frustrates me all the time, just like you get frustrated with, and that's the team. I often want to wring people's necks, fire everybody, and keep life simple. The truth is, when I was deep in the trenches in the day-to-day, This was very— you have to be involved. You have to hold people accountable. It's almost like babysitting children. And I'm not saying that in a negative way. It's just though, unfortunately, that's the way humans are. Like, you need to tell them exactly what to do. You need to give them the hand-holding. You need to give them like, good job, Johnny, keep up the great work. And you know damn well Johnny's not doing a great job. But like, these are things we have to learn how to create new standards. The people you have today working for you probably will not be more— 99% of the time will not be the people that are in your company or organization a year from now, maybe 6 months from now, depending on how bad they are. So Saturday morning, that's what I'm shooting the show to you. I have a lot of anxiety, right? I wake up, I'm at 3:30 in the morning. I'm doing my workout, I'm doing my things. I'm like, man, like something's off. I have stuff going on and just things aren't being communicated in a timely manner. And, and I start poking around and I start seeing a lot of stuff that normally gets done is not being done. So I address it. I get them on the phone at 8:00 AM and we talk through things. It's an excuse, excuse, excuse, excuse after excuse after excuse. And it's like, well, I'm waiting on you for that. You're waiting on me? When's the last time you texted me or emailed me, said you're waiting on this information? And there is no except an excuse. And it's frustrating because the last thing I want for me or them or anybody at all is for them to be waiting. If you're waiting, message and let's solve. It's almost sometimes like people don't want to message you because they actually might have to work or they might have to think. It's annoying. I can tell you right now, every one of my companies, every single person's always on the chopping block. And I don't care if you've been with me one day or fucking 20 years, it doesn't matter. You're on the chopping block. By the way, I can't come to you with an excuse and tell you I can't pay you this week because I didn't feel like it. I can't tell you I can't pay you this week because I missed it. I can't tell you, I like, have some decency, right? As employees to be on top of your game. I pay for my employees to get educated on new stuff. Right now we're educating them on AI. I hire individuals to come on the team and do that. I want my team to be better off. I don't care if you leave me. I just want you to point back to me 3 years, 5 years, 300 years, whatever later, saying, hey, this guy gave it his all. He gave me tools. He— I'm not worried about you leaving me. Truthfully, I'm really not worried about you leaving me because I know how the universe works. If you leave me, that's a sign that there's another opening of an opportunity with someone coming into my life that can serve better. Now, it's not easy, and I'm not hoping people leave me. I'm not saying that. But I'm not afraid of it. I used to be afraid of it. Here's one thing I do know. I've, unfortunately, we've fired— part of the game, by the way, it's not unfortunate, it's just the facts. I have fired lots and lots of people. I've never fired anybody that doesn't deserve it, by the way. But I've fired them. And what I've realized is that when I fire them, you always think about like, man, they take care of so many things, and when I fire them, everything's gonna fall to the ground, and blah blah blah. Every single time, 100% of the time, not 99.9, not 99.9999, 100% of the time when I fire these individuals, my life gets better and nothing breaks and I have more money in the bank account. That's interesting how that happens. It's amazing how human beings make themselves so significant in a system like they're not disposable. In an environment where they can easily be replaced with AI, with tools and solutions. Technology exists now where I can damn near replace everyone if I wanted to, but that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to enhance what my team does. However, if you're complacent, lazy, ignorant, excuse-making, you will be replaced in my environments. Without a doubt, you will be replaced. Maybe not today, but it's coming. It's frustrating. One thing about being a CEO, I think everyone in the world should have to be an owner at least once in their life to understand the stress and pressure that you and I deal with every single day. On the outside looking in, it looks like we have it made. We're hanging out this beautiful country club. Or I'm on the back of the yacht, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we're dealing with so many moving parts. I have so many entities, so many employees, so many 1099ers and all these things going on. Someone's messing up, if not multiple people messing up every day, everywhere. And if I want to lose sleep or I want to get frustrated, all I got to do is open up my phone and see it happening. Protect your peace. Set up parameters, set up guardrails, if you will. This takes time. This is a maturity thing. Now remember, I've been in business almost 30 years. So if you're listening to this and you're like 3 years deep into this, you're like, oh my God, you know, just understand that the longer you do this, the more you realize things are going to happen. Our job is to minimize them as much as humanly possible, but things have never been easier to streamline and structure with all the technology and opportunities we have now. But as a CEO, what's interesting about being a CEO is this: when things are bad in business and you have a team, we have to put on a smiling face. We have to high-five. We have to be positive. We have to focus on KPIs. We gotta keep the team very dialed in. We gotta forward outlooking to the clients and prospects. We gotta let them know we got it under control. We're there for 'em. We're gonna provide great service, great value. Our vendors are gonna get paid. We're on top of it. But then you go in your office and the world's melting around you. Right? So like picture you're in your office, door shut. You're about dry heaving. You walk out the door, you wipe the tears from the dry heaving off your eyes and you, on your cheeks, I should say. And then you go out to the team and say, guys, it's today's the day. We're going to crush it. Johnny, you got this. Bill, get those clients on the phone. I'll close them with ya. And you got to put on this face and then you got to get over to the accounting department, talk to the accounting like, I ain't got no money to pay the vendors and we need more products. Get them on the phone. I got this. Money's coming in. We're good. We're on track. Because if not, the whole team gets scared. They all start talking around lunchtime or around the water cooler. Before you know it, it's not good. And then on the other side of that coin, when things are going decently okay, you got to keep the team in check. Guys, I know right now things are good, but the storm is coming. Right now we're at an 8, we need to be at a 12 out of 10. We need to stay focused. We need to double down when we're winning. We need to keep driving when everyone else is taking off. You gotta be the reverse of what's going on in the business. If it's bad, you gotta be positive. If it's good, you gotta be hard. This took me a long time to figure out because when things were great, I was a lot, ah, let's hire more people. Let's spend more money on marketing. Let's look cooler than we are. Spend, spend, spend. Oh shit, 3 months later we're in trouble. Overhired, overspent, overcommitted on everything, and now the business is dropping. Why? It didn't happen that day. It caught up that day, but it didn't happen that day. Caught up. I lost focus. I didn't drive the team. I didn't give them what they needed to keep their eye on the ball, the eye on the prize, if you will. This happens all the time. The truth is most companies get in trouble when things are going really good because they do everything I just said. Overspend, overcommit, take it easy, take extra vacations, fly everyone first class. Do all this cool shit because it's easy and it's fun, it's exciting. They've worked so hard for it, right? This is why I talk about all the time about me. I'm not celebrating big highs. I'm not so— I'm not down depressed in big lows because I know I have to stay even kilter in the game when things are going good. I'm very conscious of that because I know what's coming around the corner. When things are bad, I'm very conscious of that because I know it's part of the game. So I'm not high-flying, celebrating, either or. As a business owner, it is the hardest job in the game. And I know everyone wants to create their own business because it's easy and it's amazing and you make your own hours and you don't work for a boss. And you're right, you don't work for a boss. You work for all the bosses. Everybody is your boss. It sounds the opposite of what we've been sold, right? Now, listen, I wouldn't do it any other way. It's what I've asked for. It's what I want. It's what I dream about. And I'm still in the game just like you are. I still have the same frustrations. I still have the same challenges. I just deal with them differently, maybe. And that's what this show is about. I'm sharing my experience with you. So today, what did I do? I have these challenges. I got off the phone, an hour and a half phone call, pissed off, ready to scream, break their neck, fire them on the spot. And these are people who's been with me for years. And then I stepped back, calm, cool, and collective. And I do what you can do and anybody else can do. And this is very important. I email a very detailed report to a fractional HR guy that I work with. I tell him my pain points. I tell him my frustrations. I tell him what they're doing right. I tell him what they're doing wrong. When I say them, I'm talking my staff. And I ask for help. Wait, what? I've been in business almost 30 years and I'm still asking for help? Absolutely. I ask for help every single day by everybody. I need help all over the place. I don't have it all figured out. I need help. I'm not the guy to hold you accountable daily. I'm not the guy to micromanage you ever. That's not what I'm good at. Some people can do it. I can't. I, my brain doesn't even think about it. I'm a big boy. You tell me what needs done. I get it done. Period. That's not how big organizations work necessarily. That's how a lot of people will paint the picture. Like it's easy. Everyone shows up because they know the goal. Everyone does what they're supposed to do because they're good people. Well, life gets in the way. Things happen. People change. Systems change, processes change, outcomes change. It changes. Why do you think HR even exists? So it's cool because you can rent an HR company, which I do. I don't have HR in-house. I rent HR. I pay them hourly. I hire them for hours. You can do the same thing. I don't care what size your company is. I don't even know what we pay, but call it $200 to $400 an hour. I don't even know what it is. Whatever it is, it's worth it. We hire a third-party HR company that we've worked with, and we let them help get their arms around the situation. We have them guide conference calls and meetings and such to get through the storm. It's kind of like a third-party mediator. If you will. Because if not, me, Mark Evans DM, will literally melt the earth down and fire every fucking person on that call. That's just what I do. So instead, the now upgraded Mark, because I haven't done that in a long time, is I get the HR guy on, or gal, and they drive the meeting. I'm listening, I'm paying attention, They're organizing it and then they're setting standards, new standards, new structures, new accountability. More importantly, they're managing that for me. I'm not doing that. They're doing it. Well, Mark, if they're doing such a great job, why are you at where you're at? Well, because it's an organization. It's a business. You're dealing with humans every day. Sometimes they're on track. Sometimes they're off track, so we get them back on track. Bring them back on track. By the way, the HR meets with my team every single Thursday at 9 AM for an hour. But we have so many organizations, so many, you know, like employees and 1099, like a lot of moving parts at the scale I'm at today. It was much easier when it was smaller, even though it did not feel easier when I was smaller. Felt frustrating, overwhelming. Well, it still does at my level. It still does at every level. The truth is, I'm mostly disappointed in people than anything. Because I know these are good people on the team. It's just they've taken their eye off the ball. And I'm not blaming them for this, by the way. I'm blaming it on me. I'm the leader. That's my job. Therefore, I have to reengage tools to get everyone back on track. We will— there will be casualties in this process, as there always is. They'll complain behind the scenes, Mark didn't give me enough direction, Mark gives me too much stuff, blah blah blah blah blah, right? Well, it's not blah blah blah blah blah, it's concerns and thoughts and how they feel. But the truth is, in business, I don't care how the hell you feel, I care what you're getting done. Because you don't care how I feel when you get paid every week. You don't care how I feel when things are going well or when things are going bad. You just care that you're getting paid. That's the way this game really works. It's not pretty. It's the truth though. But asking for help is a superpower for you as a CEO. You doing this alone is absolutely stupid and ignorant. You trying to save $300 an hour or $400 or $200, whatever the number is, is ignorant. It's costing you thousands, if not millions of dollars, definitely costing you millions in the future. But more importantly, the mental gymnastics that you're doing to yourself, trying to figure out, do I fire him? Do I not fire him? Do I fire him? Do I not fire him? Do I yell at him? Do I not yell at him? Do I push him? Do I not push him? Are they going to leave me? Are they not going to? You do this all day. Now you're playing defense in the business. And you're consuming all your mental energy on that shit when you should be focused on growth, marketing, driving revenue, et cetera. You're exhausted by the end of the day and you look up and you've accomplished nothing, but you're more frustrated. You have less money in the bank because you're trying to save a couple hundred dollars on an HR person. You do not have to hire someone full-time. It might only cost you $1,000 to $2,000 a month to bring an individual like this in your organization to help you to get organized, to get focused, to get streamlined, to get dialed in. I don't own an HR company. I know some people that do it. They do it for us. Message me on social media if you want to add a connection to this, but I'm not here to sell you this. I'm here to sell you on the idea that you don't need to do this game that's so hard alone. Stop trying to solve all the problems. If you fucking could, you'd be a billionaire by now. You're putting yourself through hell that you don't need to, and you're better than that. It's hard. Why make it any harder? See, the cool thing about the Deal Maker Alliance, we have 150+ people in there. It's $1,000 a month. That's it. Where you have access to all these people that you can connect with. I'm not saying they're free if you use them, but you have access to them. You can get guided by them. You can connect with them through Fractional CFOs, Fractional HR, Fractional Bookkeeping, Fractional whatever. You can try it before you buy it, right? I should say try before you hire. 'Cause ultimately you'll bring these people in and hire them, right? Like I didn't start off with a controller in my organizations. A controller, you're paying a lot of money to, to manage all your financial structures. They're overseeing a lot of moving parts and you have a lot of trust in them 'cause they're touching every credit card, every bank account, et cetera. But then they manage the fractional individuals. We have multiple of them. Why? Because we have multiple companies, multiple industries. They have different, different knowledge bases. One could be in the telehealth space, one could be in the real estate space, one could be in the education space, etc. These are all verticals I'm touching every day and have been for many, many years. Negotiating leases with tenants, right? These are financial instruments. Right. They're signing this. They, they, we buy a property as a 1-year lease, month to month, or year to year, depending how it's structured. We buy it, we boom, we step in day 1 and we move to 3 to 5-year leases, typically 5. That takes skill. It takes a skillset, takes proper paperwork and take proper conversation. What do you think that does to the business when someone's paying $6 a square foot? And we move them to $8 a square foot. So they're paying $6 a square foot month to month or year to year. And then we step in when their lease comes up, we go and renegotiate it. We move them to a 5-year at $8. You got to understand how to handle that objection. You got to understand how to overcome that and push forward. What does that do to the asset? What does that do to the business company valuation? Huh, it adds millions of dollars to the bottom line, and we're gonna nickel and dime to save $300 an hour with an HR person in this case as an example. Are we, are we giving the tenants a great experience? Are we giving them multiple options to pay us? Are we following up with them in a timely manner? Are we alerting the, the dispatching the team to go out and do basic maintenance stuff or whatever is needed immediately? Are we improving the asset? And if so, who's doing it? What's the accountability? And how quickly can it get done? And is it getting done on time, on track, on budget and time? I could go on and on and on. These are things that we as CEOs, owners, are dealing with every single day. You understand in the blue collar space with your, your, your employee, depending how efficient you are, your employee might only be working 3 or 4 hours a day actually working in the field. The rest of the time they're at the shop loading up the truck. The rest of the time they're driving to and from projects. Rest of the time they're driving to and from Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. Not one time, seven times, because they're so inefficient. That's your fault, not theirs. You allow it. You don't give them the tools. They don't understand how to do it. If they did, they wouldn't do it. You don't hold them accountable to that structure. So when you're charging $50 an hour or $100 an hour, just so you know, they're only there 3 or 4 hours a day, but they're charging you for 8 hours a day, and they're using your truck, and they're using your gas card, and they're using your card buying beef jerky and energy drinks at Home Depot and Lowe's and 7-Eleven, etc. Who's managing all these pieces? Who's helping you? But yet you, you wear it on your sleeve. I wear all the hats. I'm the CEO, I'm the bookkeeper, I'm the accountant, I'm the dispatcher, I'm the doer. No one can do it as good as me. Bullshit. If you're so good, why don't you have millions of dollars in the bank account? Why isn't your company being like, people blowing you up every day trying to buy what you have? Because you're delusional. We have to be to be a CEO, truthfully. But don't let delusion hurt you from growing. Surrender to the delusion. Write it down on a whiteboard as I do. Where are you struggling? What lever could you pull to grow and take stuff off your plate? Are you good at accounting? I don't know many CEOs that are. Are you good at being in the field? Are you good at selling? Are you good at dispatching? Are you good at organizing? What are you good at? I'm good at everything. Baloney. Baloney. How are you dealing with your tax filings? Most of you aren't. That's how, how are you dealing with your tax mitigation? Huh? Exactly. Most of you aren't even being proactive. You work so hard to make this money and yet you don't work barely 1%, 2% a year to learn how to protect it and save it and maximize your liability, your tax liability. Mitigate that stuff. Pay people, hire people. It will never cost you money. If they're doing a good job, they'll only save you money. That's their job. I could go on and on here, but the truth is I want to fire everybody every day just like you, but I don't. I did before. But I don't anymore. I was immature back then. I was only 1, 2 years in the business. I didn't know better. I didn't have someone like me delivering free value and free insights of experience and education and knowledge. And most importantly, time. I have time behind me, almost 30 years in this game, and I'm still frustrated. I still get overwhelmed. I still get anxiety because it sucks when I see a great person. I know they have it. I know they know how to do it. I know because they've done it, but they're humans. They get sidetracked, they get unfocused. And we got to remember there's this weird thing in life called— going on called life, right? Maybe their dad's sick, their mom's sick, someone died, someone got hurt. Maybe they got sick. Maybe there's a thing called, with the world going on, all the sickos out there running around, maybe they're spiritually, emotionally being attacked. They're listening to shit they shouldn't be listening to or watching stuff they shouldn't be watching because they're trying to fill a void and they're going down a deep, deep, deep, deep dark hole. Us as leaders need to recognize that and draw them out and share with them. Get good people in your corner. Help people grow. Who do you ask for help from? And I'm talking experts. Why are you doing this game alone? The Deal Maker Alliance is $1,000 a month. We meet every single Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern Standard Time. If you miss it, we have a private Facebook recording excuse me, a recording session, not on Facebook, but a private section where you go on and watch it. You can ask questions. You can connect with other folks. We have a full Rolodex, golden Rolodex, things that's taken me, like I've invested millions of dollars in these relationships and connections and validated them. And like, it's real, but yet you'll say that's a lot of money, $1,000. Well, that's a whole nother problem and a whole different show. Because if $1,000 is a lot of money, that is a problem in itself. We need to learn how to make real money. We need to learn how to build a real business. We need to know what it looks like, who's involved, what the players are. How it works. Being a CEO is tough. Why make it any harder on yourself? Why? Be careful who you talk to. Be careful what you buy into, because you're watching social media, you'll see all these big names, like, it's easy. Well, they ain't got no employees. It ain't easy. It's easy. They only use virtual assistants and they ain't got a real business. They're only processing basic Q&A. But it's easy. Do they have a real location? We have many locations. Do they have real employees? We have real employees and we have for a long, long, long, long time. Well, I've had employees forever since I've been an adult. Since '96. Are they spending real money on marketing? Are they spending real money on staff? Are they spending real money on things that you can see, touch, feel, buy? I see too many of you falling for these individuals that are 20-something years old that tell you how easy it is and how much money you can make doing nothing. Listen, there are ways to make money with doing little effort. But there's a lot of work to get to little effort. Right? If I'm a workout guy and I worked out really hard for 4 years and I look amazing because I dedicated 4 years of my life to looking amazing, eating amazing, lifting amazing, and doing all these things, I can fuck off for a year and still look pretty decent for a year and say it's pretty easy. But after that, it's going to start getting hard again. Stay focused. A CEO's job is to be aware. Be aware of your emotions. Be aware of how you react or don't react. Be aware of where you're at in the journey and who's on your team. Are they there to support you or are they not? When's the last time you re-updated your team? When's the last time you even asked your team what their goals and dreams were? Not just for their personal, but for their business goals inside your organization. How big is your dream? If your organization, your business dream, let's picture this. If your business dream is, I wanna generate $1 million a year, gross, and your net profit's 20%, what you're saying is that your organization on a good year with your dream makes you $200,000 a year. And then in the same sentence, same breath, you're out there, I need A players, A players, A players. Newsflash: I have A-players and I don't have an A-player that makes under $250,000 a year. Not one. A-players need to have a big picture, big vision, big opportunity to make real money. And by the way, that's base. That doesn't count the other $75,000 to $250,000 they can make on bonuses with growth, with scale, with efficiencies, etc. Get serious about this game. Get serious about you and where you want to take this thing. You have one shot. If you've been in business longer than 5 years and you're not taking this serious, shame on you. Well, Mark, I really don't— you have problems at a million to $10 million to $20 million. You're going to have problems no matter what. Why not make it worth your time in dollars? Why not make your dreams so big that when the problems happen, you have money to take care of them now? Why not make your dreams so big that when you get out to the end of the rainbow, you have tens of tens of hundreds, maybe millions, hopefully billions of dollars to do amazing things with? Quit playing small. Quit thinking you know everything. Quit trying to do it all yourself. You are better than that. I know for a fact if I'm dealing with this shit, you definitely are. But more importantly, how does one deal with it? Ask for help. Get in a group where help is encouraged. Don't try to AI it. Don't try to hand it off and do nothing. Don't try to avoid it. It comes with the territory. If you tell me you're crushing the game of business and you have no employees, you ain't crushing anything. You're crushing your dreams, your goals, etc. Fire everybody. You know who the first person you should fire is though? You. Fire you out of the system. Start working backwards. Who do I need to bring in to replace me? What do I need to teach them? What kind of effort do they need to do? What kind of skills do they need to bring? This does not happen overnight, by the way. I'm so excited for where this can go for you. If you capture what I'm saying, please share the show. Please tag me. More importantly, please join the movement in the DealMaker Alliance. Get in a room with people that want to help you grow. It's in our best interest. I want everyone netting, netting Bare Bones $1 Million a year. It doesn't happen overnight. The truth is your identity has to shift to make that a reality. Cause most of you are comfortable. Most of you are okay making chump change, thinking it's big dog change. Why? Cause you hang out with people called the king of the dipshits. I talk about all the time where everyone else around you is making a couple bucks less than you. So you're the king of the dipshit. I get it. I used to do the same thing. We're delusional. And maybe today you're crushing it, but tomorrow you ain't. That's called being a CEO. That's called being an owner of a company in charge of your future. Have you ever thought, have you ever thought for a minute, thank God this is happening for me, as opposed to like, man, why does this happen to me? Thank God this is happening to me. Cause it wouldn't happen if you weren't growing. Embrace it, get help, and execute relentlessly. You're on the right track. If you're feeling anything I'm sharing with you, you're on the right track. Don't stop, don't stop. Keep moving, dig deeper, work smarter, work hard too. Don't avoid it. Address it. Get in the right rooms. Dealmakeralliance.com. Check it out. Shoot me a message on social media, private Mark, @MarkEvansDM on IG or Facebook @MarkEvansDM. Let me know what you got going on. Let's get to work. More importantly, let's solve some real problems. And third, let's get the money that you want to get. It's out there. It's just we have to shift some stuff and get you that next step. So before you go fire everybody, ask for help, get a better plan, become a better CEO. It's hard being— it's hard when you're not a good CEO. It's hard when you're a great CEO. It's hard. Pick your hard. Promise you, being a good one's way better. I still question if I'm a good one. Oftentimes my companies, I'm only CEO in one of my companies. The other ones I'm not. It's hard. I'm more bored of advisor. That's an easy job. I don't have the day-to-day stuff I got to do. But driving individuals, pushing them when they need pushed, pulling when they need pulled, inspiring, hiring— it's an art form. And everyone does it differently, a little bit differently. But the successful ones always ask for help. The successful one always has teams around them helping them guide them in these uncharted territories. Or just keep being a smartass and know everything. It's a choice. It really is. So hunker down, get the dealmakeralliance.com, fill it out. Shoot me a message on IG @MarkEvansDM. Share the show, tag your friends. Tag me. Let's get to work. Let's solve some problems. Let's go get that money. Make today count. Peace.