EP 216: Why Being the "Black Sheep" is Your Biggest Entrepreneurial Advantage

Welcome to the Making of a DM, uh, the Black Sheep Advantage. Oh boy, do I have a good one to share with you today. So with that said, let's get started.

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, you are the deal maker and dream maker of your life. Coming to you here from the DM Factory. Got my boy Cal outside taking care of a couple of the cars, making them look nice and clean. Beautiful day over here. And as I want to share something with you, I just want to take a second and say, hope you had an absolutely amazing July 4th. Got to hang out with the family and do all kinds of fun stuff, but also let you know it's only been 250 years. When I was sitting there looking at my notes over the days, so many people are trying to accomplish a million things in a day. But not, not realizing what they're capable of over 50, 60, 70 years. America in 250 years has done a lot of things. So be impatiently patient, but also give yourself a little grace. Before I get started today, again, I want to say thank you guys so much for sharing the show, letting people know about the DM, uh, Making of the DM podcast show here. Um, I do these shows to give insights and clarity, and today Um, the show is really for me and you, and I'll explain why. It's called The Black Sheep Advantage. That's right, The Black Sheep Advantage. Um, I had— I do every year, I take out my, my parents, my sisters, my nieces, everybody in my family, my side. I also do this for Dina's side as well, where we go rent a place for, you know, several days to up to a week As you know, or may not know, I did a 7-day cruise with Dina's family and all them, and I take care— I pick up the tab on everybody. And I did the same thing for my family. So I, I— it's something I'm very, uh, blessed to be able to do, something I've done for a long time. I just started really talking about it because I see a lot of people, you know, hoarding their money thinking that in the future things are going to be better. But my parents will not be around forever. My kids will only be young once. I'll only be young once. So I want to, I want to make the most of it while I have it, mind and money. But I spent the 4th of July down in Buckeye Lake. It's near where I grew up, actually, and rented a boat, rented a house. My dad, I bought my dad a boat a while ago, and, you know, he had his boat there. So we had a couple pontoons. There's like 24 of us, give or take, out there. And we just hung out for 3 days, actually 4 days and 3 nights. And it's amazing to me. And this is not— I'm not throwing my family under the bus. I'm not talking negative about it at all. I'm just sharing true real-life stuff that is going on every single day. More importantly, this is the house I grew up in. These are my parents, my sisters, my nieces. I love all of these individuals more than the world, more than myself practically. And I would not trade them for the world because without all of this I wouldn't be where I'm at today. But to be honest with you, I feel, and I don't know if you've ever felt like this, but I feel like a completely different planet when I'm sitting in there just listening to the conversations about nothing. Like literally they talk about the same people from the past every single day, all the time. There's a lot of weird fighting, a lot of non-conversation, drama, gossip, news topics that they know nothing about, which literally does not affect them. They just, oh hey, did you— did your so-and-so got married? Who cares? It's a celebrity that I don't even know. Who cares? Like, what are we talking about? What is going on with your future? What do you got going on? What's your bank account look like? What's your business look like? Why is your health so out of shape? Like, what are Why do we have so much attention on everyone else but ourself is what I think about, you know? And I'm not knocking this, but like some of them are getting, you know, they start drinking by 10, a little 3 Sheets in the Wind by 3, 4 o'clock, and then the drama really kicks up, right? And I think about this, but I— this, this was 7 days a week. It's not like just the vacation day. This is like they're talking and doing that. They're not drinking every day at 10 AM. But like, there's a lot of people trying to avoid their reality. And it's wild to me because I know it's not just my family. I know it's not because I talked to many, many, many guys I work with and gals. And they have like, they literally feel so out of place. But we're the black sheep. And I used to think about that as a bad thing. But I now realize It's an amazing gift from that moment. Otherwise, as you know, we wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be able to have this life. I wouldn't be able to take care of all these things I get to take care of and build these cool businesses and build and drive and grow and have challenges that I, you know, I want to tackle. In my world that I've built around me with my buddies and individuals I've talked to on a daily basis, If we're not talking about getting better health, talking about, you know, peptides, if you will, talking about business, where we're at, where we're going, talking about how the family's doing, how we're getting better, what we're doing to improve, what challenges we're having, how we're going to address them, creating life experiences, business experiences, etc., investing, right? We talk about investing in money every single day. Just getting better truthfully in all the ways is really all I want to focus on. I don't want to talk about it either. I want to talk about it with people that actually been there, done that, doing that. And I can learn from them and they can learn from me and we can learn from each other and we can grow, we can expand, and we can be better human beings. But it brings me back to hanging out with people and not just my family, but like lots of people. I see this all the time. Could you imagine? I'll just use my family for example. Could you imagine for a second me asking my family about a business and like a business I'm looking to buy or investment advice or even bounce ideas off of? Like, hey, hey, hey guys, I have 14 employees. I need to reduce to 10. Revenue's at this number. You know, EBIT is here. Debt-to-income ratio sucks here, but here's what we're doing. Here's our marketing strategy. Here's our HR guy, blah, blah, blah. They look at me like I literally just like I'm a crazy person. The truth is most of the time they'd say, Mark, why don't you just get a job with benefits and paid sick time? Right? I get 2 weeks at my job. Okay. Well, respectfully, I don't want your life. Right? I don't want their life. I don't have any desire for it. It's not that they're bad. It's not that they're— it's not about the money. It's about I want a different life. That's not bad. It's just different. A lot of times you'll hear when you're talking to people that don't know what's going on, dude, that sounds like a scam. I seen that on American Greed. Sounds like a scam, buying a business, making it better, getting better employees, implementing better profit margins, growing it to sell it. That doesn't sound like a scam. That's called Business 101. One thing that always cracks me up is it'll be like, just put the money in the bank and leave it. Anybody that's ever said just put the money in the bank and leave it has no money. They've never left it alone. They have none, right? They might always say words like, a penny saved is a You've already finished the statement. A penny earned. No, it's not. It's a penny, period.

Right?

I overheard a conversation. The kid had like $1,200 in a bank account and the dad that has zero money, no retirement, nothing really going on financially, not a bad guy, just has no financial sense at all. Has to borrow money from people, like whatever. Says like, you need to put that in a savings account and get 0.3%. And I was like, 0.3%? What the hell are you talking about, dude? That's nothing. Go invest the money. Go build. Go buy something. Go sell something. Make money with it. Am I the only one that sees and hears people giving bad advice everywhere you go? A simple filter on this— simple, simple filter— If you're talking to me or anybody for that matter, whatever they say, you gotta stop and ask yourself, do I want this person's life? Do I want this person's outcome of their life? I should say, if so, if a 400-pound person is telling you how to lose weight, do you believe them? If a person that's literally half bankrupt is telling you how to give you financial advice, how to go get a job, how to do these things. Are you listening to them? I don't have to be rude or disrespectful, but it holds zero weight with anything they say about a particular subject matter that they're not familiar with and/or they're definitely not practicing. It's all horrible advice unless you actually want the life they have. It's literally pointless. You feel me? Do you understand being a black sheep is a good thing in this situation? It gives me great contrast as I evolve, and I often ask myself, if I wasn't such a rebel in life, where would my life be today? Because I've always questioned authority. I've always questioned— when I say authority, parents, teachers, etc., right? Like, Mark, you got to get a job. Why? I was saying this at 17 years old. Why do I have to get a job? Now, I'm not saying I don't want to work, but why do I have to get a conventional job? I got suspended for it at school because I wouldn't do a job application to get a job. And the reason I got in real trouble is because I'm like, yo, teacher— not that way, but kind of nicely— you don't even like your job and you're telling me to get a job. Can you make that make sense for me? See, the thing is, we're not all the same people. I've never had a job my adult life. I've always questioned authority. I've always felt like if they know how to get rich, why aren't we rich? And yet they're out here running around telling people that may not have that rebellish mindset and crushing dreams. They're not even doing it on purpose, by the way. This is their life. This is how they talk. This is what they talk about— nothing They talk about— there's no encouragement. There's— it's just a very, very weird place. And you've heard me talk about this. Proximity is power, but dot, dot, dot, it can be detrimental. It can absolutely be detrimental. We're different. We want different lives. Anybody listening to this show right now wants a different life. You know there's more out there. You know you're capable of more. Yes, you might be going through a rut. Yes, you might be overwhelmed and/or you're absolutely murdering the game right now, which is awesome. But at all those levels, you know there's more. And you're willing to work hard, you're willing to work smart, you're willing to do what it takes to accomplish the goal that's in your brain. Why we all love our family, relying on them for advice unless they're successful entrepreneurs themselves, financially, mentally, physically, etc., it's not a good thing. It actually is frustrating. And I'm sharing private stuff here. And again, this is not negative, but it's just the truth. When I'm there, I have a— I feel like I have a lot of weight on my brain, my heart, and my shoulders, right? Because I want to make sure everyone's having a great time. I want to make sure no one needs anything at all while they're there with me, right? Like the entertainment side, make sure we're going to the restaurants, I got the tab. Make sure we're going to get the boats, I got the boats. The gas, whatever. Like, I want everyone to be happy and comfortable and just have literally like high— I think like 4-season experience when they're hanging out with me. I want to show them the other side of the game, right? It's not about going to a dinner and spending $600 for everybody, but going to a dinner and hanging out and having great conversations, get great memories, great laughter, and all this fun stuff. The money is just the money. It is what it is. I'm very grateful and thankful that I can just drop $600 without checking my bank account, doing all those things. I don't even think about it. I'm there for the experience with my family. But you need to protect your mindset from their limitations. Let me say that again. You need to protect your mindset from their limitations. When I was sitting there, like I said, all this weight on me, I feel tired. I felt me eating different, or at least thinking about food drastically different. Snacking, eating Cheez-Its, just junk food galore everywhere. I'm out of my cycle. I'm out of my morning routines. I'm out of my positive thoughts. And again, don't get me wrong, I love hanging out, waking up early, going with my dad down to the coffee shop, getting Dina a couple coffees, couple actually matcha lattes. Me and my dad hanging on the car talking about the old, like, where he's at, where it's going on. Like, hey Dad, what, show me that new play. I heard they're building a new complex, show me that. Like, just, that's fun to me. Then I took all the kids, we went to the movies one day. You know, got away for 3 hours, go to the movies, watch a movie and you know, have fun, act silly. Let them hang out at the house, get a couple of drinks in them. I need to get a break from that. It's very exhausting. If you know what I mean, you're the black sheep, you know exactly what I mean. Like when you're around it, you're like, gosh, like, am I a jerk? Am I being mean? Am I being disrespectful? And like I said, I'm not going to be disrespectful to my parents and my family. Like, It's not that, it's just, I have a different life. They have a different life. Everything I'm sharing with you is truthfully the reason I've done the DealMaker Family and DealMaker Alliance. I've had the DealMaker Family now for almost 11 years. 30 men, high level. They have ultimately become some of my best friends. We've done multiple, many businesses together as a collective. It's not mandatory, but it seems to happen with guys like us. When we're talking positive, talking big moves, talking the game, doing the game, being in the game, executing the game, kind of tends to happen. Success breeds success. Win with winners. And we all know the secret to ultimate success is do the work. And then I started getting to a point where I'm like, I want to help more people. There's so many people out here that might not have the awareness that I'm talking and sharing with you right now. They might not have that rebel component. And they're wondering why they feel lost. They're wondering why they feel behind the 8-ball. They're wondering why they feel like they're losing traction every day. They're wondering why they just can't get that break. About 4 and a half years ago, I started the DMA, the Deal Maker Alliance. It's $1,000 a month. We bring people in the room and there's 100 and almost 150-ish people in there, and we're talking, dreaming, scheming, growing, creating conversations, connecting to each other, forging deep relationships with high-quality people. The truth is, they're like my family that I never had. I'm not looking to give up my family that I have, my parents and my sisters. But I can only spend limited time with them, very limited. I call my dad every morning. I talk to him for 8 to 12 minutes a day. I love it. It's great. Because one day that phone ain't gonna pick up. Maybe it's from my side, maybe it's from his side. I don't know. But one day it's going to happen. My morning routine. It's part of my morning routine. Hey, Dad, what's up? Getting coffee. Hey, Dad, what's going on? Got this going on. Got that. Like, I love that stuff. But my major part of my life is I want to grow people, businesses, me, my family, my mindset. When I sit there and I look at the org chart, I was hoping my aunt was there at this. She couldn't make it, but like the family tree, got my grandpa, my great-grandpa, my, my, all these amazing people. My job when I look at that with my cousins and all these people is I need to be the generation, the, the person in the, the family tree that breaks The curse that changes the conversation. I'm not afraid to say, guys, what are we talking about here? By the way, I do that all the time there when I'm with my family. Why are we talking about this? What does this do for our life? What does it do? If it's not progressive and positive, what are we doing right now? Talking shit about someone that can't, number one, can't defend themselves. Number two, happened 18 years ago. By the way, are you doing it to deflect because on you? Because your personal life is screwed up? You're dealing with shit you don't want to talk about? But like, that's really why they're doing that. As you know, true entrepreneurship, it gives you the ultimate reveal of who you really are. It shows your good, bad, ugly, and everything in between. You got to get real with yourself. Be real with yourself. But that's why I created the Deal Maker Alliance is to really connect with people. Like I literally can walk into a conversation and feel like I've known you my whole life. Why? Because our mindset, your mindset inside that group, yes, you might not be there financially where you want to be, et cetera. And you're dealing with challenges. We all are. But we're talking, we're there to be better. We're there to constantly get better. I want you to know, like, you are not alone on this journey. If people around you are pulling you down, adding stress to overwhelm— I was talking about this a couple of days ago with a group. You must win with winners. Individuals like you and I, we are very good-hearted people and we like to help people. But eventually you got to stop and ask, is like, is this person even worth helping because they're not willing to help themselves? We got to get real with that conversation. Your intentions are aligned. Theirs are not. I can't change someone. That's not my job. My job is to support people as they want to get better and grow. And when you put a group of people, like 150 people in the DealMaker family, DealMaker Alliance, and all that, the magic, the connections, the conversations, the skill, the opportunities, the just the, ah, like I feel normal. Is unheard of. See, my group's not just about making more money. Yes, that's a component. But that's only a small component. How to become a better person, how to be a better giver, how to protect ultimately what we're really trying to build. A lot of people I work with make a lot of money already. They're not worried about not making money. They're more worried about maximizing their time while generating this money. These are two drastically different conversations. They already know how to make money. They already know how to navigate that side of it, but they're going to, they're asking themselves at a crossroads. I talked to a guy yesterday, he's making $70 million a year, netting $14 million of that. He's like, dude, I don't know what I want to do. I've been doing this for 21 years. I have all the money in the world. I don't want to— I don't, I don't need anything. I want to do more and help more people. I'm 52. So his job, he's, he's trying to figure out how to maximize his life, how to maximize his time on planet Earth, how to help people, because he wants to give back. He wants to be a great human being. He wants to make up for lost time with his— he's got a couple grandkids now. Like, he, he's at it. He's at that place in his life Who do you talk to that stuff about? I can't go talk to my family about that kind of stuff. Hey guys, I have too much money. I have a good life. I'm not complaining. But I want to be better. I want to do more. Like, they'd be like, what are you talking about? Right? So who are you talking to? The problem in those environments, you tip— not typically, you always are minimizing what you're doing, secretly knowing that you haven't done anything and you want to do more. But when you get in that room, the last thing you want to do is feel like you're talking down to them or over-talking them or peacocking or, or just being cocky, right? When you step in the right rooms with the right dynamics, you're just sharing information, genuinely sharing. Guys, I have $7 million in the bank. I feel like a total loser right now. I don't have my head on straight, kind of, you know, have some hiccups. My health's not where it needs to be. I'm in this group because I want to be better. That's true authenticity. Not going into a room acting like you have it all figured out, knowing that you need help. Going into the room acting like you have this game totally, totally figured out. Your health, you're, you know, 280 pounds, you know you need to be at 200, but you're like, oh man, I can't tell them that because I'll look weak. I'll look, I'll look like I don't have my shit together. If you're in the right room, First of all, we know if you have it together or not by the way you look, by what you talk about and what you're doing. FYI. So you might as well just be super authentic about what's going on. No one's judging you. It's funny. The people in my world, like how I grew up, they judge everybody, everybody and everything. They're judging everything. When I went inside the DM communities, like We just want to help. If it's a duck, it's a duck, period. Let's address it. Let's talk about it. Let's grow from it. We all mess up. We all make mistakes. We've all done stupid shit. We all have skeletons in the closet we hope no one ever finds out about, ever. Even our closest people in our life, ever. We kind of want to forget about it, right? Who are you talking to and what are you talking about? If you're truthfully not on the path of where you want to go and you're not getting the results you want and you don't have anybody to talk to, it's not because they don't exist. It's because you haven't given yourself permission to step inside of a room like the DM Alliance or the DealMaker family to invest in yourself to get in a room of collaboration, opportunity, optimistic, growth-oriented mindset individuals. You created the problem, you know how to fix it. You fix all these problems, let's fix your problem, our problem. What are you doing? Who are you talking to? And what is the frequency? This is why every Wednesday at 12 o'clock noon East Coast time, we meet with the DMA, Deal Maker Alliance. It's half the week's already passed, even though it's flown by. The other half is on the horizon. And we got to talk about where we're at, our wins, our losses, what we need help with, who can help us help, help, help grow. You show up every week, the compound effect of those actions will be astronomical, massive results in the next 12 months. You'll have better health, you'll have a better mindset, you'll have better revenue, you'll have better staff, you'll have better— you'll just be better all around. That's not to say there won't be problems and hiccups and challenges. That's to be expected because you'll be growing. But we're not going to discourage you. We're not going to tell you to get a job. We're not going to tell you to go somewhere and get, you know, like, you can't do that. We're going to say how you can do this, who you need to know, who can help you execute that. If you're not in a group like the DMA, create one or join one immediately. Because if not, every second moving forward after you listen to my voice today, you're working harder than you have to. You're working against yourself every second. You're losing the opportunity to compound the efforts that you could be starting today.

Today.

Why would one do that? For $1,000 a month, you would avoid it? Aren't you worth $1,000 a month? I would think so. I'll share with you next week what I got going on. I'm heading out to Hamptons, East Hampton. For a week and dropping a huge amount of money, not for me, I guess kind of for me in a different way, but for my children. I'll explain more why that's important. Because I think everyone should be thinking a little bit different, not thinking about it, but doing something about it. So proximity is power. But it also can be detrimental. Make sure that you get— you start a group with high-level entrepreneurs, or you join one like the Deal Maker Alliance. You can get over to MarkEvansDM.com, click on Deal Maker Alliance, and see what it's about. See the testimonials. See, we have people from all walks of life. We have people in there have a half a billion dollars in real estate portfolio. To people that are doing a couple hundred thousand, $300,000 a year in their business and everything in between. Blue collar businesses, white collar, you know, chiropractors. We have a chiropractor that does $5 million a year at one location. He has the secret sauce, I promise you. He's actually starting to take it more, going to multiple locations and all that, which will be absolutely stellar for him, right? So, we have all these different components. Merchant processing guy, they're crushing it. How he's thinking, how he's using it for loans and helping people get access to more money. From 401k guy to, uh, you know, if you need amazing travel trips, we have a lady in there does awesome, you know, Disney trip. We actually hired her and used her and spent $70,000, $80,000, whatever it was to go on a trip. Like there's people in there that you need to know and work with, to connect with. To make your life better. Get over to MarkEvansDM.com, fill out the form, Sonya will contact you directly one-on-one and have a conversation. This is not high pressure. I'm not high pressure selling anybody to be a part of a group that can change your life. But if it makes sense, move forward. If it doesn't, you guys had a great conversation. I can guarantee you this. You'll be better off after you talk to Sonya. She's smart. She knows the game. She's built, she's done over $500 million in business in her career. She's an amazing human being. You should know her, just her. These are the kind of people that's in this circle. And back to my family. They actually listen to the show sometimes. They know I love them and they know I love them from afar. I don't function at a high level in negative environments. It's 24/7. That's why I left the small town. My parents live on one street. My sister lives 5 doors down. My other sister lives 7 minutes, 8, 12 minutes away or left. I don't even know, 8 to 12 minutes away. It's not a bad thing, but I live in two states. I jokingly said, kind of, guys, if this keeps up, I got to move to Alaska. I need to get further away from this craziness. And that's the truth. I did say that multiple times. Maybe Hawaii, maybe Alaska, who knows? But what I do know is they're not doing it to hurt people. They're good human beings. They're just stuck in these weird patterns. And they don't have the gift maybe necessarily that you and I may have. The gift of wanting more, the gift of knowing we can go get more, the gift of knowing more even exists. We're not accepting life as is, we're creating the life we want. I'm not judging it. I'm calling it what it is. And they can say whatever they want, I can say whatever I want. But results speak louder than what we say. My life is drastically different than how I grew up. I'm not special. I just work hard and I work on the right things and I'm willing to fail every single day. I don't care if you judge me. I'm going to go do the work to accomplish the goal I want to accomplish. You have it in you to go to any level you want, you think you're capable of, any level. If the work and the connections and the strategy is aligned, 100% can accomplish anything you can put your mind to. There's no delusion here. A lot of work. I have 30 years in this game. And I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm still growing. I'm still pushing. I still have daily challenges, just like we all do. But my life is definitely better in the DMA DMFAM individuals because I can lean on them, talk with them, share. They have solutions. They have connections. Solve this, been there, try that, been there, do this.. And we just grow and keep growing and keep growing and keep growing. Where I'm at my journey of life, money is not my priority. It's already there. It's already coming in. If I work or don't work, my priority is making impact and becoming better every day. My kids are watching me. My wife is like watching me. You're watching me. You're listening to me. I have to show up every day and improve 1% every single day, just like I expect you to do. High standards, high execution, high results. If you're interested, MarkEvansDM.com, click on Deal Maker Alliance, fill out the form, talk with Sonia. If it makes sense, get involved. If it doesn't, keep listening to the free show. Keep listening. More importantly, keep executing and know, yes, you are a black sheep and that is your advantage. Don't piss it away. Don't waste any moment. Get to work and get the results. And remember, make today count. Peace.

Teach him 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 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.