EP 86: Success and Hard times...are they your friends or not?

Welcome to the making of a dm. Success and hard times. Are they your friends or are they not? We're about to find out. So with that said, let's get started.

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

Hey there, it's your boy, Mark Evans, dm. Hope you have an amazing day. And as you're listening to this, I'm recording today from Mentor, Ohio, down here in the cigar bar area. It's getting cold here. A little bit of flurries recently, but the treehouse update is almost done. Actually, today I believe they will be done. Day 11. This thing costs more than a car. So it's, it's exciting. I'm excited to spend and create a lot of cool memories up there with my son and my daughter and my family in general and just hope you guys have been following along on the journey. It's been fun to do and Mark's out there every day helping them. And you know, it's raining, it's snowing, there's mud everywhere. We just got the electricity and Internet cable up there yesterday, so they're finishing up on the exterior today. So appreciate you guys following along on that. It's always fun to me. I like to share real life stuff with you. That's my life and that's part of today's show about the success trap. I see so many, so many people fall for and I want to kind of share my thoughts and insights on it and through the journey of almost 25 and a half years of being in business and wanting to be the most successful person and all that good stuff. And we'll talk about that here in a second. I also want to take a minute and tell you guys thank you very much. Last week I asked for help on five star reviews over on itunes. Absolutely free for you to do. Helps us a ton, helps me, helps the audience, helps us all win more and create some great relationships through this powerful thing we have access to. It's pretty neat, isn't it? It's pretty wild. You're listening to my voice. Maybe in your car, maybe in your headsets, maybe on the treadmill, maybe you're working whatever you're doing. And isn't it amazing. Like, I'm shooting this from like a little handheld recorder, pacing around here and talking to you. And there's a reason you're listening to the show today. There's always a reason. I don't believe in things happen by accident. There's 100% reason you're here at this moment. So I hope and I take this very serious. I take this shit ultra serious. I don't want to be here just to waste your time, let alone my time, to be honest. So I have something to say today and I hope and I believe, if you hear the message, I think it could resonate with you and maybe help you on the journey to the next level. So, again, appreciate all the five star reviews. Keep sending, Keep doing them. It's amazing. So thank you guys for that. So today's show, I was talking with a buddy actually from the Treehouse yesterday, and he's worth about a quarter of a billion dollars. 250 mil. He has three young children. Young, I mean, 16 to, I think 7ish. And I was talking to him and I'm like, dude, what's up, man? You know? He's like, man, I love that tree house. It's awesome. And, and he said some stuff interesting here. Here's what he said. He said, man, I wish I had the time to do something like that with my kids. And I'm like, just, just news flash, I'm not worth 250 million yet. And I started thinking, I'm like, well, I didn't think I said this. I'm like, dude, what do you, what do you mean you wish you had time to do that? He's like, dude, he's like, right now it's the biggest opportunity in our business. We're crushing it. We're traveling all over the world, meeting new partners and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you have your priorities absolutely fucked up. If you believe, if you've bought your own bullshit that you think that's success to you, to me it's not. And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, dude, your children are not going to. When you die, they're not going to say, man, I wish my dad acquired another company or built his company bigger to make more money. Your kids are going to say they're going to remember the memories that you created with them. And for them, I'm a family man first. Got to be honest, guys, I'm not out here, you know, I know a lot of people are saying hustling hard and you know, all this shit. Not to say I don't work. I work, but I want. My goal today is to help, you know, give a different framework, maybe a little bit different perspective of what success in our brain looks like. And anyways, him and I kept talking and literally he's. He's created this thing in his head that the more successful he is, the better provider he is to his family. Now, again, I believe you should be a great provider. I'm not judging that. But the guy's worth a minimum $250 million. If you can't provide at 250, you sure in hell can't provide at a billion. You know what I mean? And I know some people listening to this, like, oh my God, if I could only get to 5 million or 25 million or whatever your number is, it would be different. And that's what I want to challenge you today. It's not different. You know, I've generated a decent amount of money nowhere where I'm going, but you know, where I come from, it's a hell of a lot. And I have many, many, many investments, generating seven figures a year without ever having to work. And I've realized, you know, I just stepped back. You guys got to keep in mind, I've been literally virtual not in my companies in the day to day since 2005. So this is not a new rodeo to me to like, oh, I just woke up, read a book and now I'm gonna teach you and share this shit with you. I've been doing business. Well, shit, I was doing business when I was five years old. Let alone, I didn't know it was business back then, but I was hustling. I was, you know, I was creating money through thoughts, right? My thoughts grabbed my sister's toys, do the rain dance, hope it rains, and sell toys during rain recess inside. True story. I did that all the time. I did bracelets, I did necklace. I did all kinds of shit. But back to the point, we create this trap in our brain of what success looks like. And I get it, man. I grew up in a trailer court. I just wanted to get out. That was success to me. Just getting out step success. Step one, get out success. Two, small town, get out. Accomplished, accomplished success. Three, make more than 100 grand a year. I accomplished that really quickly. But I was chasing more. I wanted more. I still want more. But I also am not willing to trade things to get more, if that makes any sense. There's certain things I will do and not do to accomplish certain things. So I'm going to talk to you and share those with you today. But my first question to you against a little bit of thought auditing is what does success mean to you? And the thing is with success, it's a moving target. As you evolve, it changes, it edits. Ideally, it edits. When I'm talking to my buddy, I'm devastated for his children. Seriously, I'm devastated. Truth is, he's heading down the path of divorce. It's just not a good place to be. But in his mind, again, he's sought out. He's a big dog in his world and he makes a lot of money. And that to me, again, let me just be clear, is not success to me. I'm not judging him, by the way. If that's what he wants, it's all him. But we were cool about it. We had a conversation. He knows kind of where I stand on it because I am family. I'm a family guy. First, there's no amount of money you could pay me to come and speak at an event. If I'm not rolling with my family, I just don't do it. And, you know, I realize my kids are young, they're two and a half and six and a half, and I have a very limited amount of time with them at these ages. Actually, when this age is gone, it's never coming back. Not like money, right? I could make and lose money today, you know, get more tomorrow and lose more tomorrow, too. Just part of the process. But time, that's the ultimate success for me, is buying time to do the things I truly love to do. I love to come up. It's funny, my contractors and guys I work with and do stuff with at my houses, they're always like, dude, how the hell do you even think of the shit you have us do? You know, putting cigar bars and candy bars and all this cool shit in, you know, in the basement. And you're turning into, like a cool area. And then, you know, the saunas and now the tree house. I mean, it's just, you know, expanding yard, just doing stuff like that. It's because I genuinely have time to think about what makes me happy. I don't give a shit if it makes you happy or mad or sad. I'm not flexing. I'm doing what makes me happy. That's success to me. I enjoy sharing with people. I love not just sharing the thing, but sharing the journey and the experience. Hence why I've been sharing it on social. About the process, about each day. Me and Mark are out there. Literally actually Mark goes to the gym with me in the morning at 7am we come back, the guys are here working and he's like dad, dad, can we go? Can we go? Got to throw in the jeans and go out there get all muddy and check out the tree house. That's a real part of my life. It's the most important part of my life. There will be a point when these kids don't want to hang out with dad. There will be a point when the kids are out of the house and dad's begging them to come and hang out. And yet I see great people chasing the wrong thing of what? And this is my opinion, I think they're going to look back. I know. I feel very, very, very ultra confident that people that are chasing the dollar will one day look back if they have children and family. There's going to be a lot of devastation. There's going to be a lot of regret. I know we always talk about do things, you know, no regret, no regret dude. You're going to regret that. Because time I can't get back. I cannot do it. No one can. So you have to start building a path. There's a great book called, and you should read this book by Dan Sullivan called Gap and gain. The Gap and the Gain. I know a lot of times because we're in social, we live in a social environment world, right where people can see what they think success looks like. Maybe you see, maybe see my cars. I got all these Rolls Royces and Ferrari and cool cars and cool houses and flying on jets and yachts and shit or whatever. But that doesn't mean that success, success. Truth is I do it because that's what I want and I can get it, right? So that to me is success. You can't take an outside influence. You can use it as inspiration. But don't think you're not getting successful because you don't have it today. I always talk about my roles. It took me 12 years of my business life to get my first ex like high end car like that. I had a Rover prior, right, had a G wagon, nothing crazy back then. And it's not because I couldn't afford it. It's because I didn't really necessarily care about it and I didn't care what anybody else thought I drove. It was like whatever to me. But I can tell you this, I was driving shitty car back in the day and I felt like I was driving a Rolls. I was actually putting myself in the position in my brain where I Was thinking positive stuff, listening to Tony Robbins on that cd, you know, positive thinking and all this shit. Not positive thinking. Do nothing but positive thinking with massive action behind it and ultimately you get what you want. I still pinch myself daily thinking like, how the hell did this all happen? You know, I had everybody telling me this could never happen my whole life. No one's, you know, no one said, mark, that's a great idea. You're going to crush it, right? They always said, mark, go get good grades, go to college, get a good job and just sit back and enjoy life. And I thought, that is exactly not the life I would ever have or want. I don't want to be average, I don't want to be normal. I don't want to settle. So it's like I want to create the most out of this life. Very short life we all have. I'm 43, hopefully I lived 150. I don't know if that's going to happen, but it could. And you know, let's say if half of my life is gone, I want to make the other half count at a whole nother level on a compound effect. But this book Gap and Gain will give you some clarity on this once you start discovering what success is to you. So they talk about one part in here about, you know, a lot of people are seeking success, right? I'll be successful when, like I said, I'll be successful when I move out of my small town. I'll be successful when I make my first hundred grand in a year. I'll be successful when I buy my first house. I'll be successful when I buy my high end car. I'll be successful when I get married. I'll be successful when I have a kid. Like, I'll be successful when I sell 25 companies or buy 20, whatever, right? The problem with that is, is we need to change that around. We need to change the context of the question to yourself. Flip the question. This guy Dean did this and it's very powerful. And the thing is, is this, he, he flipped it from like I said, I'll be successful when that dot to I know I'm being successful when that. When will you be successful? When will you be successful? I'm going to share some of my things I wrote down for success. And these are literally rough draft success things and things that, not even rough draft. It's just shit I live by. And I wrote it down though. I know I'm successful when I can work with whoever I want. And what that means is if I don't like you. You're out of my life. Period. Sucks sometimes. It's not always easy sometimes. I'll talk more about that here later. But remember this. Hard times find weak people that say they're your friends. This is a very powerful one. Stay tuned to that one. I'm going to share that here in a few minutes. Here. I kick shitty people out of my life. If I discover you're doing bad things or shitty things or you're just not a positive, upbeat person. Get out of my life. By the way, I control that. I control the good, the bad and everything in between. But once I identify, I execute it. Sounds cold, but it's true. I do it all the time. Take stock of the people you're rolling with. Look at where they're at and what they're doing and what they're saying and how they're doing it and address it accordingly. I know I'm successful when I create massive amounts of passive income that massively supersedes my living expense. I've done that already today in my life. But yet I'm still chasing. I'm still growing, not even chasing, I'm still building, still feel like I've not accomplished anything. This is the difference with the gap in gain. Seriously, like I. I talk about it often is I'm just getting started knowing what I know now. I'm just getting started. I know I'm successful when I live anywhere I want. It's pretty powerful. I don't know if you guys can do that, but I've built my life to be able to do that. I've been doing it since 05. I have two kids now. I still do it. I live part time in Ohio, part time in Florida and we travel a lot of places in between. My boy calls me up and says, yo Evans, you want to hook up? We're going to the lake tomorrow and you know, in Arizona or Utah. Cool. See at 9am I've created a life to allow me to do that. I created. It sounds crazy to the average person because they don't understand. Oh my. How do you organize? Dude, I've. I'm prepared, I'm ready. I've built this life that way. This isn't bragging by the way. I'm just sharing real shit with you that is real. I mean, it's the truth. I invest time in memories, small and big. What I mean by that I'm very, very conscious of. Time is the fleeting thing that we're all want more of, especially with our kids in the mornings, every morning. Good morning. I've built my life to be able to wake up and hang out with my kids in the morning, play with them, do whatever. I don't have a packed schedule. I'll show that in a second. But wake up my routine at 4:44, if not earlier, do my thing, head out to the gym at 6:40. Take Mark with me, typically probably about half the time, because he wants to spend time with dad, hang out, work out. I love that, by the way, as a dad, I love. I love him wanting to like, learn and jump and grow and sweat and push through hard times and grow, build his confidence up. Then when we get back, can walk in, take my time, be relaxed, have breakfast with them, play with them, and do the things that I love doing. I love being a dad. I could do these podcast shows on my time. I don't have a set schedule to do my podcast show. I do it when I have something to share. So I oftentimes hang out and have lunch upstairs with them. Oftentimes I eat by myself too. But like, often when my kids are here, if I can sit down and just for 10, 20, 30 minutes and talk to them and, you know, Dre is collaring and trying to feed me and Mark's dropping food all over the new chairs Dina bought. Like, those are the moments. Taking my son to build this tree house, he's helping decorate it, he's got his little red beanbag and dad, can we do this and can we do that? And it's like, so tell me what else you want to do. Like, how do we do it? How much does it cost? What's it look like? Why do you want to do. That's cool, man. Half the shit I don't want to do, but it's cool to talk about. These are memories for me and him. See, the thing is with children, right, oftentimes this is like a 20 year investment, right? You might not even know the impact that you're making. It's not like, you know, financials. This is why a lot of people don't invest a lot of time in relationship capital. I believe is they don't see an instant payoff. They don't see, like, hey, if I put a hundred grand in and get 10% a year, I got a 10% ROI. Cool. I'm good with that. I don't look at relationships or money like that, honestly. I look at it as a whole. Being able to take my wife on a date once a week. Memories for us. Talk about where we're at where we're going. Be silly, right? Memories. A lot of times you guys see us on a yacht or on the jet with the fam. That's memories. What you don't see is what we're talking about. When we're in the jet, we're on the yacht. We're talking about life, talking about giving, talking about how blessed we are and how lucky. This is not a normal thing. But Mark, we've never been normal. Drea will never be normal. I don't want you to be normal either. I want you to be extraordinary. I want you to live to your highest capabilities. I want you to dream bigger than your dad. Don't we all want our kids to be better than us? I don't want to give them handouts. I don't create handout children, but a hand up for sure. Come to me with an idea, come to me with a plan. Come to me with solutions. Teaching the kids how to solve problems. Deal with it. See, when I was a kid, I was getting in fights with other kids. My dad was like, dude, you started. You deal with this. Figure it out. Leave us alone. We're trying to drink some beers and play cards. Might not talk to my buddy for two days, but then we're best friends three minutes later, right? Figure it out. Solve problems. Too many people like too many kids are so pussified. They get their. Everything's always upset. Oh, you don't understand. They're feeling very sensitive. Yeah, they're called pussies because you created it, you've allowed it. I'm not saying I'm insensitive, but guys, we have a. We. We have a duty to bring amazing children into this world. To be great leaders and great people. Just great givers and just good human beings all around. We're in the yacht. Seven days out there just dreaming. Disconnected, but ultimately really connected. Talking, playing. Dad, let's go in the water. Why? There's sharks in there. Mark, let's go jet skiing. Let's get over our fears. Mark's kind of afraid of jet skis with me because he says I go too fast. But he'll go with a buddy of ours, his kid, because he goes slower. Cool. It's memories, right? I love taking trips without scheduling them. I'm very. I don't really. True story is I don't like scheduling stuff. I don't like a packed schedule. I don't like it. I know a lot of people like product productivity hacks every 15 minutes do XYZ bullshit again. It's like they're looking for. I know a lot of people are very productive, but have no money, have no life. Makes zero sense to me. I'm not that productive. Truthfully, I'm not that productive at all. But I get shit done and I hire people to help me where I'm weak. You know what I mean? I can stop anytime I want. This is a big one. This is a big one. I can stop anytime I want. I've genuinely built my life and created a lifestyle where I'm not. I don't have. I don't need millions of things like I'm set, but I've created an amazing path of cash flow to take care of me and my wife and kids pretty much forever. At the age of 43 today, well, way earlier than that. But like, where I'm at today, it just keeps growing. Today I made multiple investments. True story. Message. My Buddy, he has 16 different companies invested in. I'm investing side by side with him on some of them, not all of them, but some. There will be singles in there and there will be massive home runs in there. You know, recently, I don't know if you guys saw, but Kobe, before he passed, he actually invested 6 million in a company and they actually just went public or sold and popped them off. 400 mil. It's a pretty good return. Pretty good return, I would say. So I like to do that. I like to invest in young guys, gals, great companies, great visionaries, great leaders. It's one thing money can do for you, is give you an opportunity to help bless other people and make money doing it. So it's a pretty cool thing. Make more money. I can get more money and help them make more money. We can give more money back to charity. But you know what? The best part about it always really is believing in the individual and supporting it with your dollars. Everyone will say they'll support you until money comes in the game. I'm really busy, man. I can't get up to that right now. Right? When you put dollars behind, it means something. Like I said, I don't really have a calendar. I have a set call every Wednesday at 10:30 with one of my companies and another one of our companies got beat up pretty bad recently. It's just part of business growth. It's a massive growing pain issue we had. And so I heightened communications and I talked to them from 10:30 to 11:00am Four days a week actually. Today was only 15 minutes. Today, boom. Because when shit hits the fan over communication is key. I wake up without an Alarm. I know I get up early, but I've trained myself, I've built my life to. That's just what I do. I just get up early. Some people are night owls. I'm not. You know, last night I was in bed at 7:40, laying in bed. I wasn't going to sleep because I have two kids crawling, crazy. And I'm down the floor acting like a horse. They're on my back, flying off, crying, laughing, jumping back on. Do it again, dad. Do it again, dad. And then by 9:30, 10 o', clock, we're all passed out. But I don't have a big calendar. People try to hit me up and say, man, I know you're so busy. Can you get on my podcast show? When? Seven months later. Sorry, hit me up, you know, seven months later then. I don't, I don't schedule like that. Why? Glad you asked. It creates massive anxiety for me. It really does. Guys. I don't work for anybody. I work for myself and that's it. But I take it very serious. If I have something on my calendar, it really messes with me because I don't want to disappoint and it creates massive anxiety. I've bought every productivity hack. I've, I've hired productivity coaches back in the day. Like, this works for me. It might not work for you, but it works for me. You look at my schedule, there's one thing on it. 10:30am, that's it. But I have habits. Get up early, work out, have lunch, you know, like, I have habits. I eat early, I eat like an old man. I eat at like 5:36pm These are my habits. These habits help me stay on track. I know I'm successful when I'm pursuing a better version of me, health and wealth wise, right? I know I'm successful when I'm impacting others and becoming better and bigger to make a bigger impact. That's why I do the podcast show, that's why I write books, that's why I give to charities. I want to impact people. I call it Full Circle giving. So our number one core value in all my companies that I'm a part of, Full circle Giving. Take care of yourself, take care of others and keep growing. Like that's what we do. And it's a big deal to me. I genuinely love helping people, want to help themselves. There's nothing better than that at any time. But those are some of my. I know I'm successful when. So the reason that's important is because if you call me up and you're like, mark, I'll pay you $100,000 to come speak at my event. It's in Alaska. It's during Christmas. I know it sucks, but dude, it's 100 grand. I would already stopped you and said, I'm out. I'm not interested. It's not because I don't like you. It's not because of the money. It's because of my time. My time's way more, way more with my kids and family. This might change a little bit once the kids are 18, 19, 20, 25 years old, whatever. Maybe I'm just hanging out at the house and bored and I want to do it. Shit, at that point, it's not even about me doing it for money. It's about I have time and the flexibility to be able to go and do that kind of stuff. Dean and I would fly in, hang out, do what we do, and then roll. Maybe that's in the future, I don't know. But like I said, this stuff edits. Mark, I got this most amazing business. You need to have four meetings a year. We meet corporate style, blah, blah, blah, I'm out. I don't buy businesses like that. I don't participate in businesses like that necessarily. I am an entrepreneur and I like entrepreneur style businesses. I don't like corporate style businesses. I have invested in corporate style businesses. But like, just strictly as a money play, cash flow play, right? But if I'm being involved in adding value with knowledge, I'll do a virtual video to them. Maybe I'll shoot a live or something. But I'm not picking up and leaving. And don't get me wrong, sometimes it's great to leave and get out of your house and get out of your circle, depending on what situation you're at in life. But guys, I did that. You gotta understand. From 1996 to 2008, ish. I traveled a shit ton. I learned a lot about myself. I traveled for seven years with my wife, literally around the country and the world. So I got really close with myself. What do I like? What am I great at? What do I hate? Why do I hate feeling like this? What does success mean? Like, this is where thought auditing really kicked in. When you're hanging out in Paris, France by yourself for three weeks and your wife's like, you know, she's like, we're kind of like, you know, going through changes, you know, because we're like, oh my God. We're, you know, we're not home and we don't know anybody like you really start going inner instead of external. The gap and the gain. You should read that book by Dan Sullivan. So those are I know I'm successful win moments for me. And this is kind of gratitudeish style. Very grateful to be in this position. It didn't happen by accident, that's for sure. I have sacrificed a lot. Time, money, energy, emotions. A lot. The bigger picture was more important than the pain in the moment. It's kind of like going to the gym. It sucks. Lifting sometimes. But you know, you're there for the reason and you're there for the results eventually. It never happens as fast as you want, but it will happen if you keep your feet moving. I hope that helps you a lot. I really do. I have some other stuff to talk to you about today, but I hope the success. What does it mean to you? Right? My life wouldn't change if you had. If you handed me a billion dollars, my life would not change. May I might buy a jet, a bigger jet, or something different. But guys, I built the life I want. I have everything. You know what I want more of? I want more health, I want more energy and I want more longevity of my life. My kids. I want everyone I love to have the same. Right? That'd be a great world to live in, right? Right now, everybody's good. That's not the case forever. Parents are getting older, I'm getting older. You just never know when the man upstairs calls your number. Truthfully, I think about that daily. I did a show about this, how death drives me. So I do work, though. You can ask my wife. I do work. It's not like I'm sitting at home smoking cigars, doing nothing all day. But what is work? Have we ever asked ourselves, what is work mean? And why do you have to work? So again, I say I do work. But what does work mean? I got to give you context. To me, it means leading people. That's my job every day. To hear, listen, lead and bring ideas to help grow companies. That's how I get paid. The bigger the problem, the bigger the solve. The bigger the opportunity. The more people we can impact. The more money we can make, the more people we can hire. I had a real big moment recently where I didn't even think about this, because I don't. This isn't stuff that I think about a lot because we are all moving and just doing stuff. But I have. I'm invested in a lot of different ventures and I was just calculating some basic math. I don't know the exact number, but it's like 14 or 1500 employees that are impacted through my investments. It's pretty wild. Entrepreneurs truly can change and will change the world. They have. They will. We always will, because we solve problems. That's how we get paid. But it's pretty neat to me to be thinking about that. That's a lot of people. And then I don't talk to all these people, obviously, but I talk to key people and, you know, the message gets carried down throughout other stuff. And it's pretty cool, actually. A lot of people on the teams listen to the show if you're one of them. Thank you. I care about you greatly. And I do. I really genuinely think about the team. How to help them not just make more money, but how to build an amazing life. Talk more about that later. One day maybe on another show. But like your team is. There's so much opportunity with. They're great people, really, all of them. I. I don't have, like I said in my life, if you're a shitty person, business or personal, you are out of my life as soon as I discover your shitty person. True story. I don't care how big or how much you make the company, you're out. I just don't like it in my world. So moving forward, hard times. Find weak people that say they're your friends. Like I mentioned earlier, we've had some challenge in one of our companies. It was crushing it. And now we're having some growth challenges, which happens in business. You know, that company's growing really, really quick and big and a lot of people, hundreds of people in motion. And we had a challenge and we had some partners and we addressed the challenge with them. And we have a lot of partners in that one. And two of them, unfortunately went south quick. It was about money for them. And to us it was about doing the right thing and what I've discovered through my life. And again, I'm not talking shit about these guys. They're great guys. It just doesn't jive with my. What I feel and do and act. Because I considered these guys my boys. Truthfully, like, these are guys that I would. They called me up at 2:00am and said, hey, man, I need 100 GS to send ASAP. No questions asked. Done. No questions asked. For real. But that didn't happen. And it wasn't even a lot of money, by the way. For the situation is more of having a conversation and then what happens? They come on the attack. As opposed to like being your boy and having a solution and having Your back saying, I got you. You tell me I'm in this with you for the long haul. And these guys have made massive six figures, if not seven figures each with me just this year alone, net. And it's very unfortunate. I'm actually saddened by it. It fucked me up for about three days for real when it happened. Not about the money, not about the things, but the two guys that I thought were my boys. One guy avoided me for three weeks. He avoided the conversation for three weeks. It was kind of a weird thing. And like I said, I consider these guys like my brothers. So when shit hits the fan, I guess what I'm saying here is if you truly do care about someone, over communicate with them, they're going through a tough time. You know, their heart's in the right place. You know, they're not doing anything malicious or negative. They're just dealing with stuff. But when people fight or flight, get them out of your fucking life as fast as humanly possible. It's a massive character flaw. Massive. To me, it might be one of the biggest character flaws ever. And looking back, clearly there weren't my boys. Because if you're the boys, you ride or ride to die. Ride and die, right? You don't ride until because it's easy. And fucking jump off because you hit a bump and take off running. You lean into it, put your arms around it. You let them know, man, here's the deal. But what they really did is they manipulated a situation, calling themselves their. Your boy to be able to get in this. And again, this is my take, by the way. This. This could be wrong to them. And that's fine. You know, I think this is one thing everyone's worried about. Being a post like, oh, man, I don't want to. I don't want to upset this person up. I'm not worried about you. I'm worried about me. I'm not trying to go out and maliciously hurt someone ever. But, like, I'm sharing my feelings if that feelings don't align with yours. Okay, well, figure out your feelings. I. I don't know, right? And I've discovered this through life, right? Like, I can't. My job's not to make you happy. My job is to make me happy. And if you're happy being happy with me, perfect. That works. Get your shit together. Not my shit. I got to take care of me, you got to take care of you. And then hopefully we come together and we help each other grow, right? That goes for all relationships, right? Family, kids, all this Shit. But when the times are hard, I don't like sit around and pray for hard times. By the way, this is a multi million dollar thing that happened, by the way, for real money. Not like fake money or whatever, but real money. I stepped up out of my personal pocket and ponied up and paid for it. But what was interesting is I'm very thankful that this hard time happened because my team that runs that company are fucking rock stars. They genuinely got punched in the face a thousand times and kept getting up. I was there, they were there, we were all there. We actually brought on more people. We actually. So not only was shit in the fan, but we were hiring and hiring more people to help handle the influx of what was happening. And so now you got to hire, you got to train, you got to do all that. I mean, this is levels and levels. They're working eight to ten hours a day, moving it to 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. So hard times like this team, I will roll with and die with for real. If any one of those team members, it's a big team, would call me and say, hey, man, I need help on this or that. Done. I'm in. Because they showed their true collars when things got hard. See, a lot of people avoid the hard. Avoiding hard will never serve you. Hard conversations, have them with yourself first and then have them with others. You know, the people in your life that are full of shit. So one, why do you keep rolling with them? And two, why don't you tell them straight up? I've always had a knack for that. Used to get called a dick because of it. Oftentimes probably still do. I just don't listen to it anymore. But I'm not being a dick. I actually do care. That's why I'm telling you straight. I do care. If I didn't, I'd lie like all your other friends that don't care about you because if they did, they wouldn't sit there and watch you ruin your life. I don't need anything from anybody. I don't need your acceptance. I don't need your like, oh, he's a great guy. I don't need any of that shit. That's not what gets me excited. What gets me excited is seeing you grow, seeing you break your boundaries, helping you and being there. Most importantly, I genuinely want to be the best friend ever. I want to be the best husband ever. I genuinely be the best father ever, the best son ever, the best brother ever. I'm not saying I Succeeded all this all the time, but I'm very conscious of it. So when that happened, not only were they buddies like my boys, like brothers, but they also, like, we had business going on. They flew faster than anything I've ever seen before. It turned negative like I've never seen it before. Oh, I'm heartbroken. The fuck ain't your wife. What do you mean heartbroken? This is a business thing. I'm calling it like again, shit like that. And then you go mia. They're not bad guys, but that's a bad, massive character flaw. For my world. For my world. One thing to know about me, I will fucking win. I always do. I could get punched in the face a million times. I'm not stopping. I will stop when you plug my ass in the fucking ground. That's when I stop. But I'm building my life where even when that happens, we're still going to keep fucking shining. We're going to still keep growing, we're going to still keep pushing. You know why? Because I have the team. I have amazing people in my life, consciously amazing people. I would fucking cut off any limb to. To make their life better. I would help them do anything that's rolling with me like that. I will help them accomplish anything they want to accomplish in their life, even if it means leave our company. I don't just say this shit. I live it. I'm for real. See, that's the difference. There's a lot of people that say a lot of amazing out loud. And then you get behind the scenes and you're like, this guy's a liar at all levels. Not to say they can't help you make money. Not to say they can't help you do stuff. But listen, a lot of people that have the same compass I have, I can do the same thing with. See, the biggest thing I hate about it is I'm vested in these guys. This is me, by the way. I want to always over deliver, over promise and over deliver. I want to be the guy you call at 2am because you need help. That makes me excited. That makes me feel like I'm doing, like I'm accomplishing success for real. I genuinely know in a crazy situation, I actually, in a for real way, I become very crystal clear and calm. I've trained myself through reading and coaches and mentorships and doing it, going through real shit of how to assess and address in a calm, cool, collective manner. When most people are running around, there's a fire and they're just running in circles, freaking Out. I promise you this. When hard times hit, dig in deeper with your relationships. If you look at any long term relationship you have, you've had hard times that you've addressed and overcome and you've grown closer. I've never met someone that's never had hard times. But you know what sucks is these guys like, I'm the type of guy you could like. I want to see you make more. And again, I don't have any ill will against these guys. None. But I'm going to fucking smoke them. They're going to lose long term because I'm the best fucking friend ever. For real. I am. Some people might disagree, but for me, if they do disagree, they need to come to me and we could talk about it. Because I want to know how to be a better friend. I don't know everything, clearly, no one does. But I'm very conscious of this effort. I will bend over backwards. I will give you anything, access to anything I have. If you're my boy, I'm in for real. I have stories after stories on that. We won't go down that path. But what kind of friend are you, by the way? I'm talking friends not just to your boys, but to your team. I know a lot about a lot of my teams. I know a lot of people that don't get close to your team, dude, I don't agree with that. For me, for me that doesn't work. I like to know what they're up to. I like to know what they're going through. I like to know they accomplish their goals. I like to know if they're having some struggles and they need help. Because I like to help people. As my daughter comes down here. But I want you to know hard times find weak people and I want you to be clear of that. You need to pay attention. You need to take notes of people that are rolling out when there's some resistance because that's a great opportunity for you to really expand and excel the friendship and relationship very quickly. The guys that are still standing with you, you want them to flourish millions of percent more millions. We had one guy, I can't mention his name, but he did something that 99% of guys would never do. I promise you, this guy rolls with me, he is rolling with me and he will always roll with me and I'll always roll with him. We will generate, we will change both parties lives forever because he's a doer and he's a great dude. And what's interesting about that is I've Only known him for nine months. The other guys I've known for years. So it's funny how these friendships work, right? It's funny how life works. But again, the hard time happened. Him and I communicated, we over communicated and we created a solution and we both are still in the fight and we're fucking winning. The other two guys, they'll win. In their Mickey Mouse game, they're playing one. They'll never be successfully happy. I hope they are. I wish they are. I absolutely don't want anybody to be unhappy. But they can't with that peace in their life because anytime there's pain, resistance, they revert. They play the old rule in their head and they revert and become that person they're trying not to be. They've created this mask. I'm a great guy. I will do anything for you. Oh, oh. Things happen. Dude, who. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out, right? I'm out. You didn't tell me that, man. I thought we were boys instead of like, yo, man, Mark, this sucks. I'm here for you. What do we need to do next? That moment changed my life, in their life for sure. Because it makes me take stock, makes me pay attention of behaviors, learning by doing, by the way, I'm learning by doing. I've spent great moments with these guys, but now it will never happen again. Not in my life. Because it's a character flaw that you cannot overlook. Because this is petty on the grand scheme of things of life. People have real fucking problems. This is a problem. But I'm talking like, this is not a life altering problem. It's not like, unfortunately, one of my buddies, his pops, just found out he has brain cancer. Very ultra rare brain cancer. Disgustingly sad because they're great fucking people. But I pinged him immediately. I'm here. Anything you need. Like, I hope he texts me and says, dude, he has the finances to do this as well. But I would love to do this for him. I'd get him a private jet for his family and take them anywhere they want in the world to spend time with his pops and his family or whatever. He'll never ask, but I would do that. I'm that type of guy. It's a big deal. I'm there if you want to cry on my shoulder. I'm there if you want to hug. I'm like, I'm in the game of relationships forever. Many say it, very few live it. And I understand why. People that are ultra, as they get bigger, they start their herd is very thin. They're not rolling with 50 people deep, they're rolling with 3, 4. Maybe it's because life is interesting and you start seeing true collars when hard times happen. Like I said, I don't pray for hard times, but hard times are everywhere. And then identify what is a hard time because that becomes now gratitude, perspective, and realizing that we're in the most amazing, like we're in the biggest, most amazing time of life that will ever be today. This day will never be replicated. Once this time's gone, it's gone. The minutes, 30, 40, 50 minutes you've been listening to the show, you can never get them back. But I hope it can encourage you to be better, to be stronger, to be, you know, grow and just keep enjoying the journey. I personally don't think there's any destination. I think we're all checkpoints of the process. We think it's a destination. When I was 18, I was like a hundred grand if I could just make a hundred thousand dollars a year. I used to dream about it for real, like that's all I thought about. And then you do it and you're like, that's, oh shit, I should have said a million. Then you get there, you're like, I should have said 10 million, etc. Etc. Etc. So then you got to start asking yourself, what game am I playing? Whose game am I playing? That's a big one. A lot of people are playing other people's games that they see in micro moments. Well, dude, Evan just bought a company. Why can't I? Well, because I probably have 25 years experience and I have connections, 25 years of relationship capital. Probably got an inside advantage, probably. And, and you don't even know my, my, my goal with the company. Maybe it's not even to make money, right? Like there's so many variables to all this. So anyways, I do believe there's a lot of amazing people out there in this world. And I do believe a lot of people allow shitty people in their life because it's convenient and you don't have to have a hard conversation with yourself and with them. Take stock, write them down and start working the relationships. Become a better friend, become a better business partner, become a better husband. I need to always get better at all these things. Everything I'm saying, I need to always be better. But if you're consciously paying attention, I do feel like we're making an honest, heart like effort. It's in front of me. It's definitely in front of me. So I hope this show is beneficial. I'd love to hear your insights. It's a little bit different vibe of a show today, but I want you to be extremely like, I don't know, I'm very fortunate and I'd love for everyone to have what I have like lifestyle wise. I know it's not going to be for everyone and maybe my lifestyle sucks for you, I don't know. But my life is pretty cool with my kids and what we were able to accomplish over here. And I've built some amazing businesses around me. Well, I guess I shouldn't say that. Not around me. I've built amazing businesses to serve me. Not me, serve the business. Right. I know a lot of you guys are trying to have 100% of everything. That means you got to do 100% of everything. By the way. I'd rather have a small piece of something and know my role in part and let the guy that's driving it or the gal driving it go accomplish that. I want to support them and uplift them. I want to give them resources and people and connections and grow. Would you rather have 10% of a hundred billion dollars, 100 billion with a B or would you rather have 100% of a million dollar company? I know what I want. I know what I have. I do own companies, some of them 100%. But I always am looking for strategic opportunities where I could build bigger by doing less. I know, it's crazy, right? You can actually make more doing less. Everyone says it. Very few people one, even know how to do that. And number two, they don't even believe it. And three, how many people are actually doing it? A lot of people say it, but the same guy sitting on stage, working 20 hours a day, traveling all over the world while his, his family life is going downhill, but he's saying all this amazing and we kind of get bamboozled by it. I'm excited though actually. I'm hopping on a jet in a couple days and flying down to Orlando to hang out with my boys. There's 200 of us hanging out people in Orlando, but guys on the jet. 12 guys are rolling down with me on the jet and I know all 12. I know what they got going on and my goal is to help them 100x in the next 12 months, their investment. Minimum 100x. So if you guys ever see me do a jet trip, this is only the second one I've ever done where I bring people with me. It's not cheap. It's 10 grand usually minimum 10 to 12 grand, depending where we're going and all that and how many people can go. But even if it's 25 grand, it's still, even if it's 100 grand, still worth it. I mean, it's literally one of the most impactful things I get to do because we're like literally on the jet for five hours, talking, connecting, listening, no distractions and just with great guys and gals in there where shit like it's impossible for not breakthroughs not to happen. It's impossible. Amazing things happen. I've seen it first beforehand in my. Like, it's real. And if you ever want to experience that, shoot me a message on Instagram, arkevansdm. Shoot me a private message, say jet experience. Put me on the wait list or something like that and we'll get you on a wait list. But it's a cool thing. That one sold out within hours of us going live with it. So there is a big demand for that. Sometimes it's just a timing thing for people, which I get. So get on there. Hope to be on the jet with you one day. It's a very cool experience and more importantly, very big breakthroughs, what we can accomplish. So that's it. Big day today. Getting ready to. Once I get done here, actually I'm taking my wife to go, probably do a lunch thing real quick, come back two o', clock, go out, check out the treehouse status, get to the gym. I'm doing two days right now, so I'm going to do an hour cardio and we're cranking. Life isn't always easy, but it sure hell is a hell of a ride. Hope you guys enjoy it. Be thankful for what you have. Not say you're not, but just be overly thankful. Be very grateful. We live in this time that we live in. Even with all the crazy going on. You have your head, you have your body, you have your brain. Like you got it going. I know it's not always easy, but it's worth it. Keep your feet moving. So with that said, make today count.

I'm here to help and teach him what I know and how I did it. To discover freedom. There ain't no question mark. Kevin's when he stepping the doubt, he's closing deals. Time to tell him what the DM stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker. But I'm not just a deal 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 breath didn't see no one making more than that Graduated 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 my own boss I'm out here running two eight 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 ball Everybody chasing the money But I'm not chasing the money I'm out here chasing the purpose Yo I've been working my whole life what got us where we at Is it gonna get us where we wanna go? It's time to put time to learn, time to grow I'm here to help and teach him what I know and how I did it to discover freedom There ain't no question mark Kevin's when he stepping the doubt he's closing deals Time to tell him what the DM stand for I'm a deal maker a deal maker But I'm not just a deal maker I'm a dream maker the journey's where it's at it's all about the process it's time to get over to the DM project Deal maker deal maker Deal maker Maker Deal maker Deal maker.

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