Scott Duffy interviews Mark Moses, Business and Burgers: Season 1 Episode 2

I'm Alan Taylor. My buddy Scott Duffy and I are in search of the best burger in America. Each month we visit a new city to try some of the top restaurants, pubs and brewhouses while sitting down for a candid conversation with some of the top entrepreneurs, athletes, entertainers and celebrities. I don't know about you, but I love talking business over a burger. Welcome to business and burgers.

Scott and I are hanging out in Newport Beach, California trying some more awesome burgers at Muldoon's Irish Pub. There we grab a bite with Mark Moses. He's the billionaire business builder, ironman, triathlete and founder of CEO Coaching International, coaching the world's top entrepreneurs and CEOs to help them increase their profitability and accelerate growth. But first, it's time we increase our waistlines while we grow our love for business at Muldoons.

This award winning Irish pub has been a local favorite for over 42 years and has been hailed number one pub in Southern California. Even its building has won architectural awards with with its ivy covered brick, brass and beautiful woodwork, Muldoons has a spacious formal dining room, a huge open air courtyard and two Celtic pubs. One of which is where we met with Mark Moses. Mark is a top rated speaker who has spoken to thousands of CEOs, business leaders and executives from over 80 countries. He started his career as a student painter and has taken his business from a Napkin to over $1 billion in sales.

I gotta tell you. So we were talking about how Mark and I met earlier. AAA student painters. And so that was 20 years ago.

28.

28 years ago.

But I gotta know, how did you get into the house painting business with students?

Well, it was kind of similar to Scott. My dad in my last year of high school unfortunately went bankrupt. I was 17. My dad's going through a bad time. Didn't have any money for me to go to college. I walked into the career center and I saw this sign. It said earn 5 to $15,000 in the summer. I said, hey, that sounds like me. Be an entrepreneur. Wow, this is pretty cool. So that's how I got into it and I got myself a franchise. Away we went. I didn't know anything about painting. The last thing I wanted to do was be a painter. But they claimed it would teach me how to run a business. And that's how I got into it.

And when you got here, you were opening California?

Yeah, for student painters. So I partnered with a group back in Canada. We opened up student Painters here. That's where we met. And it happened Quick, you were in year one, I think. And then I did it for four years. We opened up 250 branches, had 3,000 people and then sold the company. I was 26, fun. And then took a little bit of time off, got bored really quick. And then I set up this mortgage company and I felt qualified because I had a mortgage.

So that was an amazing journey. You know, the mortgage business or anything in real estate, it's ups, it's downs, it's ups and downs. We're fortunate enough to be number 10 on the Inc 500, the number one fast growing business in LA. And then the whole business crashed. It was awful. Wall street pulled out of the market and literally we went from making a million dollars a month to just couldn't lose enough money. We ended up running out of money. We borrowed million and a half from family and friends. I had 350,000 in credit card debt and boy, it was just devastating. And finally we decided we weren't gonna make it. Literally the day before we filed bankruptcy.

To go bankrupt.

Yeah, we were gonna go bankrupt. And literally the day before we were gonna file, my business partner had met this guy who was speaking at a conference and said, hey, we're going out of business like in a day and here's our business plan. Would you consider, by the way, that's a good pitch. Yeah. Wait a minute. There's more to the story. So the guy writes us this check. Yeah. And that's a big check. And then we wrote it for six more years. And then I sold the business in Friday 13th October 2006. That's amazing.

And we're going to talk more about that. But I just saw some burgers walk in the door. It's burger time.

Find out more about Mark Moses. But after the burger.

Okay.

This one's all beef, baby. The all American cheeseburger is a half pound of Angus beef, black bean and beef chili tillamook, cheddar cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, diced sweet onion loops and a secret sauce. It's also served with an extra chili on the side, which I found great on the hand cut fries.

All right, so from what angle do you approach this?

You cut it in half is the easiest way. Oh, come on.

You.

Because then you can see the beautiful pink meat in there.

Okay, let's. Let me. Oh my. Oh my goodness.

Awesome.

So Mark, you have a knack for really understanding how to get a top performer to a level they never even thought they could get. Like to a whole nother level. You've got coaching clients all over the world. What are the most common things that you find in today's top performers?

That's a great question.

One of the things is they're willing to think big, like, really big without limits. They know where they want to go. They have a plan. But a lot of times they fail to execute. I think it's predominantly really two things. One of them is they don't have the right people, and they need to figure out who are the people that are going to take me to where I want to go. So typically, you don't have the right people. And secondly, focus. They're out running around chasing every new shiny little object that comes around. So those that execute better than anybody else, they put the right people in the right jobs, and they follow their plan with relentless focus and discipline without distraction. Those are the people that are most successful.

Mark, I run into so many entrepreneurs. When I ask them, what's your job? What's your job as an entrepreneur CEO? The typical answer I get is, you know, I do like everything. What is the job description for an entrepreneur CEO once the business gets going?

The job of the entrepreneur or the CEO is really just five things. One, where is it that I want to go? Where do I want to take this thing? Secondly, they got to watch the cash, because a lot of businesses really struggle because they run out of cash. They're not really watching their numbers. Third thing is making sure they got the right people to do the job. So put the right people in the right seats to do the job. Number four is the key relationships, the ones that are most important to the company, the ones that really matter. Right? Key customers, key vendors, your bankers. And then number five, they just got to keep learning. And they can keep learning through a number of different entrepreneur groups or CEO groups like we participated in that have help them be better.

Have you ever dealt with somebody that has an extremely high pain threshold? It seems like entrepreneurs can take so much pain, you know, internalize what's going on, hoping and praying a lot of times that things are going to be okay. What do you say to that person?

I understand what you're saying, but I'm a big fan of Henry Ford and his model. If you believe you can or you can't, you're right.

Right. And I also believe you get what you intend, and entrepreneurship's hard, and you're going to get knocked down over and over and over again.

One of my favorite stories is about how you got your company to believe in your big vision, and the elephant can you share that story.

Sure, sure. I had just gone through a bad experience. The guy that was the best man in my wedding.

He was running a division one of our offices, and he decided to leave and open a competing company two blocks away. And he took a whole bunch of the employees with him to do that. And, man, it was just devastating. We had just signed this lease to move into this 24,000 square foot building, and I had like 12 people left, and it was, oh, my God, how are we going to do this? We'd already signed the lease, personally guaranteed it, and we're moving in. Wow. So I said to my assistant, I said, jamie, I'd like you to find me a marching band. And I'd also like you to find me an elephant. An elephant? What for? I said, I want to ride the elephant into the annual meeting to get people to think big. She said, oh, man, I know you've been under a lot of stress lately, but you've lost your mind. And I said, hey, Jamie, listen, can you handle the assignment or can't you? I said, man, I'll see what I can do. So she comes back to me and she says, I found this marching band. It's a naval band from San Diego. And yes, I found you an elephant from a company called have Trunk Will Travel. We're here in la, so you can find anything, Right? So I asked her to tear a wall down in the building, and I rode the elephant into the annual meeting, our annual state of the company. And the message was, if you think big and act big, you will be big. Let's do a billion dollars.

Hold on. Make big happen. So if you want to know more about that, we're going to be reading this book. All right.

So rode this thing in, and I was. And it got on its knees, and I'm sitting on top of it. And I was just worried that if it stood up, I was in the ceiling. But it was cool. The next day, people started bringing elephants into work. Stuffed ones, crystal ones, ceramic ones. They put them on their desk and looking at them going, hey, that's kind of cool. Said, hey, pal, we're with you. I like it. I like it. So we became the Think Big company. Yeah.

And how did the company do against the goal?

Well, it took seven years, and we achieved a billion dollars.

Awesome.

And in the eighth year, we went 1.6 billion. It was amazing.

So cool.

So it goes back to, you get what you intend, and the elephant was just a funny way to do that.

Another thing that I know you are phenomenal at doing is building teams. I remember we were talking, we were laughing about how you had a painting business and built a big painting business, but you never picked up a paintbrush and you had a mortgage business that did over $1.6 billion and you never opened up a file. How do you do that?

Hiring the right people and how do you do that? You have to sell them your vision because they know you don't know what's going on because they know. Sell them what you believe in and where the business is going to go and why they're going to be a big part of that. But it's important when you're doing that that they need to believe that they're empowered to make decisions and you're not going to be second guessing them all the time. Set the vision, build the team through annual planning sessions and empower them to do what you hired them to do. So for us, we went out and hired some of the best people in the industry. These were people that really knew their stuff. I didn't. My job was to empower them, bring them together to build a great business.

Can you tell me about your book?

You know what? I've been thinking about writing a book for a long time and I'm really proud of the book. It's really about four questions. What do I want? What do I got to do to get what I want? What's going to get in my way and how am I going to keep score? How am I going to hold myself accountable? If you know you want to be here by the end of the year and you can keep score quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. So if you hit your daily goal, you'll probably hit your weekly goal. Hit your weekly goal, you'll hit your monthly goal. And that accountability enables people to achieve what they want. They take a small piece of something big.

It's interesting that all these things you've done, you weren't good at and you.

Found other people that were good at it, right?

So you don't have to be good.

At something, which I love this hiring people, it's the hiring, it's hiring the right people.

It's like the art of the deal kind of a thing.

You're so right. You don't have to know how to do it, but you need to bring on the people that know how to do it and you'll ultimately get what you want. And then you gotta inspire them and encourage them and have a cool place to work that they really enjoy being there.

So what you're good at is Winning medals at doing amazing stuff nobody else can do.

Hardly.

Which is great. Congratulations.

Hey, thanks.

Why did you start doing this?

Now that is a really good question. So my son at 3 years old had a brain tumor. Wow. It was scarier than scary. He had two emergency brain surgeries. And when he recovered, I decided I wanted to pay the hospital back. How could I pay the hospital back? Was raise money for the hospital. So I decided to do something outrageous where people would really give me money for doing something this crazy. So I signed up for Ironman and I trained for about 18 months and I dropped about 25 pounds. You might, after that burger might need.

To do a little bit of that.

And was able to do Ironman. And the first time I raised 110,000 for the children's hospital and then over the years raised several hundred thousand dollars and then I got addicted to Iron man and it was. It's been an amazing journey.

The one thing you're good at.

Oh, fun. Good to see you man. So fun.

Mark is obviously good at many things and he knows the intensity, focus and commitment it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and CEO.

Be clear on what you want and the top three activities that are specific and measurable that will lead you to that outcome. Hire great people, empower them and get out of their way. Stay focused and disciplined. Avoid the shiny new objects.

Next time on Business and Burgers. We head south to Oceanside, California to the local taphouse restaurant. Lth there we have a one on one conversation with our pal Miles Kovacs, President and co founder of Dub magazine. They're topping the charts in the automotive lifestyle scene. He's a self made millionaire. Matter of fact, you may have seen him on Secret Millionaire. Miles turned his hardship of growing up in East LA to become a catalyst for change for the betterment of companies and communities alike. Join us next time and take a bite out of business right here on Business and Burgers.

Check out more episodes of Business and burgers and our bb blog at our website businessandburgers.com also don't forget to visit our Business and Burgers Facebook page and give us a big thumbs up. Join us each Tuesday for an all new Business and Burgers presented by Microsoft where we get to the meat of a successful business.