Be Your Own CEO: NFL Veteran Marques Ogden on Resilience & Elite Performance

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. This is the podcast for independent insurance agency leaders to learn to grow, to think, to challenge the status quo, to raise the bar, raise the game, and ultimately truly become that best version possible. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. Excited to be with you today, and super excited to have an incredible guest with me today, in fact, someone who I. I didn't know two weeks ago, but we were at the same event together in Buffalo, New York. We'll probably talk about some of that. And got a chance to meet him at dinner and got to listen to him speak. I am excited to have Marcus Ogden, who is a former NFL athlete and now speaker, author, awesome coach, bringing the heat, where he goes. And, Marcus, I'm going to share a little bit more, but first of all, just welcome to the Agent Leader podcast.

Thank you very much, Brent. I'm glad to be here, sir. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. So again, just to give a quick background to the audience, we were at an event together and got a chance to. To meet Marcus. We were grabbing some food, and the group we're with was having a good time. And again, Marcus, a former NFL player, you can. If you're watching the video, you can maybe see the jersey behind his. Behind his head there. And the crazy thing I told you this, Marcus, is I played nine holes of golf with your older brother.

Yep, you told me. That doesn't surprise me. He plays golf a ton and he's a really great golfer.

Yeah. So we went out there and I was in Arizona and. Or Las Vegas. Excuse me, Las Vegas, where we were. And yeah, we turned the back nine, and the starter comes out, goes, hey, do you mind if someone joins us? Sure, no problem. And here comes the Baltimore Ravens golf cart, and it was Jonathan Ogden. So all of a sudden, I meet. I'm like, now I know both of the Ogden brothers. But as I mentioned, Marcus, again, incredible story. I know we'll get into some things, but obviously growing up and I got to hear some of that at your event and what you learned in that, of course, your experience playing football professionally and now your story of basically kind of rags to riches, to speak. Right. I mean, the things that you've gone through and the growth you've been through is pretty incredible. So I'm excited to get started. Talk about the wins, the failures, the learning and what you can bring to this audience. I know it's going to be incredible. So if it's okay with you, Marcus, I want to start with a mindset question.

Of course.

So you Know, we talk a lot with our agency leaders about, of course, everybody wants results. I think that's safe to say. And we know that behaviors drive results. But what really ultimately drives behaviors is, I believe, is beliefs. And so I want to start off, and I'm going to get to some of your background, but I just, I know we're going to kick this thing off with some energy here. I'm curious what has helped shape your beliefs? You talked a lot at the event about. It's how we think, right? It's how we show up. Obviously, the things that we do matter. But what have you learned? And again, whether it's from childhood, your NFL career, your businesses, where have you found opportunities to improve or reshape key beliefs?

Great question, Brent. From my rookie head coach, Jack Del Rio. When I was drafted to the National Football League by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Coach Del Rio really inspired me with his words. And he had this saying that he told us as an entire rookie class in 2003 when we were about to have the veterans come in for, for training for OTAs, off season training activities. He said, gentlemen, everybody in this room has talent. Talent's not enough. If you want to be great in this game and or in life, be your own CEO, be your own chief executive officer. What Jack meant by that is you have to have that confidence that, that belief in yourself that you can do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary and or needed to advance in your life, both professionally and personally. And he said, if you're somebody that's constantly waiting for us, that being the Jaguars coaching staff, front office, people who matter to tell you what to do, where to do it, where to be, how to work, how to really have discipline, drive, inspiration, finish things. You won't have a job long for the Jaguars and you probably won't have a job in the NFL. And life after is going to be very, very hard because life does not reward people who are not disciplined. There's a great quote, without discipline, we have nothing. So I learned a lot from my NFL career, but for sure, because I knew Jack before I got drafted, because Jack was the linebacker coach with the Ravens when they won the Super bowl in 2000. So I had a chance to know Jack before that. So he went from linebacker coach with the Ravens to defensive coordinator with the Panthers to head coach with the Jaguars. So again, that was so big. Brent, from Coach Del Rio, in life, be your own CEO.

Yeah, I remember you sharing that. And it hit me. Marcus, we talk specifically to our producers, the salespeople with the insurance agencies about creating their meat Inc. Which is exactly what you're saying, right? To think and act like a leader. And one of those aspects is to be a CEO. So I have a follow up question for you. And then after that I want to dive back a little bit into kind of your upbringing and kind of what shaped and helped molded you as you. As you grew into an adult. Right. And a professional. But from that, be your seal. Where do you see people getting stuck in that? Right. Because what I see from my perspective is a lot of people waiting for things to happen or if someone tells me something, then I'll do it. And I know this is maybe a challenging question because it could be a number of things, but where have you seen where people get stuck of not being that self starter, being that CEO? Where did they get stuck?

No, it's not a tough question, Brandon. It's a great question. Most people get stuck when they get rejected when things don't go their way. Well, I didn't get that sale, so I might as not even make this next phone call. I've been turned down all day today with my calls, so I might as well not even call anybody tomorrow. I've been turned down all week by these people for calls, so I might as well take the week off and try to go and lick my wounds and all this other stuff. People get paralyzed by rejection. Perfect example. We were pursuing this job with an amazing company. We've done work for them. They're awesome. It was two jobs for them. They were going to have one on the east coast, one on the west coast, and we were in discussions with them to get the job. Well, we found out that we're not going to get the job with these two opportunities. And they said that they'll keep us in mind for others. The first thing I told to the person that told me, I said any feedback we can get on why we didn't get it would be grateful and helpful. Onto the next. That was it. That was it. And funny enough, I ended up closing a $10,000 sponsor for our podcast about 30 minutes after I was told no on those two jobs. The old Marcus being 100% authentic would be the same way. Oh, I didn't get those jobs. Oh, like, oh God, let's go and do something to make myself feel better. Let's go and play the pity party. Let's go play the victim and let's go. Today's Marcus. I didn't get the job. It wasn't meant to be. Onto the next. And if people Would learn to handle rejection with more professionalism, more clarity on what didn't go well to figure out how to do better. And they wouldn't just get caught up in the fact they didn't get something and move on. Man, there would be so many more better salespeople. The best sales will know being no, I say it next opportunity. So I feel it's stuck in that we do a lot of speaking on that, a lot of coaching on that, a lot of consulting on that. Because that comes back to mindset. What happens is your mind is under so much pressure, it starts to shrink because, oh, I don't like what's going on. Oh, this is very frustrating. Oh, we can't do this. The ones that don't win, they allow their mind to stay shrunk. The ones that win and bounce back and move on, their mind expands under pressure, which creates innovation, new ideas and inspiration. And that's what moves you to the next level in any type of sale.

Good stuff. You know, the word I wrote down as you were saying that, Marcus, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this is context. I think there context to me, and I really dug in this last year is obviously it's a mindset, but I mean, just to what you said, I mean, one context of not making a sale is, oh, man, I'm not very good or not good enough or whatever. Right. It could be a number of things. The other context is, wow, what an incredible learning opportunity I just experienced that's going to help shape me for my next opportunity. Yeah. And again, I'm thinking here, as a kid, never played professional football, but I love the sport and I watch it. I think about, you know, even for the Ted Lasso talks about the goldfish. Right. I think about a quarterback and you just get burned. Like, are you thinking about that you just got burnt? Are you thinking about the next time? Because you don't want to get burned again. Right. Or maybe in your case, you don't make that block. Oh, my gosh.

Versus that's. I've had those. I've had those, like, lookout blocks where I got beat like a drum and told the quarterback, look out. So, I mean, yeah, it happens to everybody to look out. I like that.

I like that. I wanted to ask you, you know, you talk about Jack Del Rio and when I heard you speak, you talked a lot about your father. And this is a leadership podcast. And, you know, I'm just a big believer in mentorship and whether it's a coach, whether it's A CEO, whether it's your dad. Right. I think we can learn so much from. From mentors, and I know you've had some incredible ones in your life. And again, the stuff that you shared about your dad, I thought was extremely powerful. And so I guess my question here is, what were some of the biggest lessons you did learn growing up? And again, share whatever part of the story you had growing up. But as you. You grew up and your experience and what you learned, what really helped shaped you to the man you are today? Marcus.

You know what, Brent? I learned a ton from my dad about resilience and, you know, bouncing back. I really had lots of times in my life where I saw my dad have ups, have downs, great days, bad days. But my dad never gave up. My dad always was resilient. He was determined, and he was driven, and that was big. Because in life, right, Brent, you're going to have those bad days, those bad times, those hard times. And I always tell people, we start to truly learn about ourselves, and in the hardest times, we learn how to, you know, trust ourselves, you know, have more courage, step out of the comfort zone. And it was big for me, man, because as a young individual that was an athlete and had ups and downs and going to the NFL, ups and downs, struggles after addiction, gambling, alcoholism, painkiller, overusage, trying to figure out what to do next, Getting into construction, building something special, losing it all, having to move to Raleigh and start all over with no Money except for $400 to my name, no type of resources, no type of, you know, nothing, right? And having to. And having to hit rock bottom and bounce back, and then even going through a divorce, you know, about four years ago. I mean, man, I've just been getting. I've been getting kicked around and, oh, my God, all my life, and learning from my dad how to bounce back and have resilience absolutely is the greatest lesson he ever imparted on me. Because without him teaching me that I truly believe as many times I've been knocked down, really knocked down, all these things without my dad's teaching, I truly don't feel right. Brent. I'm able to be where I'm at today.

Wow. Well, there's a lot I want to. I want to dive into, but the image I have in my head is, you know, the boxer that's been punched again and again and again and again and again, and it's like you're climbing back up the rope, like, nope, not done yet. And, you know, again, this is a kind of a broad Question. Take it wherever you want. But I think oftentimes people think success is this, like, linear path, right? Like you're here, you know, this step, this step, this step. And as you shared with so many things you've been through, it's. It looks like this in circles. And all of that process, of all your experiences and some of the things and the setbacks, because you focused on that, I mean, the stuff that you just shared and you just kind of walked right through them. I think of people that I work with and, and I think of independent insurance agency leaders and their teams in particular on this, on this call. And yeah, they have setbacks, right, but you've experienced some of the biggest setbacks that people can experience, right? And you shared many of them. What, not only the mindset we talked about, maybe help me, Mark. It's like, what behaviors, what actions have you taken in different areas where, boom, you get beat. Yes, there's a mindset part, but what creates confidence for you? What creates the next step for you? Because we're all going to get hit, but it's the action of getting back up. And how have you been able to do that so well? Because you've got a lot of those knocked to the ground.

So what I really looked at, right, Brent, is I look at how are my attributes holding up over my skill sets, Things like grit, determination, perseverance, discipline, fortitude. And I really focus on those things. And by doing that, right, Brent, it allows me to be able to still do the external skill set things pretty well. Because I always tell my clients, if your attributes aren't stronger than your skill sets, or if your attributes break under pressure, bending is okay, that's normal. If they break under pressure and you're not able to do what you're normally used to doing, it's a bad place to be, really bad. And so what I've learned, right, is that in my life, it's about, you know, discipline, it's about fortitude, but it's also about managing the four Cs. And I talked about this when I was in Buffalo. Your calendar, your clock, your communication, your consistency. And when you can truly take control of all four of those Cs, what happens is your schedule gets in line, you time block things well, you speak to people where they can understand you clearly, and you're able to be consistent and show up not just for yourself, but for your clients. What is insurance? You're selling safety, you're selling security, you're selling that. You know that shield that, right? How about this, guys, if you're the awesome podcast in insurance, your belief in yourself and your company and what you do is the shield that the people you're trying to sell to are looking to have. What that means is your confidence, your belief in yourself is the protection that I'm buying as the end user. So you have to remember this. And so when you come at it from that perspective, what happens is you go from recruiting, trying to chase and pursue business to attracting where people and business are chasing and pursuing you. It's so much better to be the pursued, not the pursuer.

That's for a big, bold thing, magnetic confidence, you know?

Yeah, yeah, Brent, that's what. If you listen to this podcast about. If you're trying to get your. Like, what is sales? Okay. Sales is the transfer of energy. It is transferring your energy, your excitement, your passion for your product and. Or service to the individual that you're looking to have by what you are offering it. People feel that what you're offering connects with them, helps them, and you're excited about it. The chances of them buying it are like 95% or higher. If they feel that you're not excited about it, if they feel you have no passion for it, if they feel you're just up there as another transactional salesperson, if they can figure that out, or they can think that you're in trouble, which why we talk about building your pipeline so you can come across confident and with clarity, not coming across desperate like you need the money to live. That's where we try to teach salespeople how to come across in a confident manner.

Yeah. It's the idea of, hey, you know, the right fit. I. I want to do business with you, but I don't need to. Right. I mean, it's one of those things. Right. And. And there's a lot of power in that. I. I want to go to one of your seats, and you can hit them all if you want, Marcus, because these are great. I had those written down from your talk a few weeks ago. The calendar, clock, communication, consistency. And if I could, I. I just want to. I want to go into one a little bit because it's something that we talk and teach with insurance people all the time, which is being proactive in your calendar. And it sounds, again, very simple, and it. It is, but I think it comes back to. I talk about resilience and mindset. I had a mentor years ago, Marcus. I'd love to get your thoughts on this. He said, average performers feel themselves into actions. Elite performers act themselves into feeling and the idea is like if I'm intentional and purposeful in my calendar, like I'm purposely doing something, not loves you, I wonder, you know, whatever. So how have you seen that aspect of calendar? You mentioned calendar, one of your four Cs. How do you have seen the best utilize that aspect most effectively?

People who use their calendar and can plan out their week, their weeks, their months in advance and know where things are, Know how many potential meetings you have this coming week, for the coming two weeks, for the coming month. What's your pipeline? Let's take the beginning of the year. What are your calls look like in January, February, March. What are your calls looks like? You know, as far as leads in January, February, March. Are you talking to your old clients in that time frame? January, February, March. People that truly align their calendar to their active or to their pipeline or their active pipeline, if it's full or not, doesn't matter. All this active, tying your active pipeline to your calendar. This way you can clearly look at what you have business wise now and where you're going to be this coming month, the month after, two months in advance. I tell people I look at things the whole year at the beginning. That break things down by quarter. Where are we in quarter one? What's happening? How many calls are we having? How many meetings are we having? How is our business? Is it new revenue? Is it recurring revenue? What percentage is new? What percentage is recurring? Where is my money coming from?

More?

Is it new business? Is it writing new policy? Is it writing new, you know, new opportunities? Right? New new term sheets? What does it look like, right? Are you getting renewals from these people? Is it more? Is it more? If you say you're looking at, you know, the commercial side, right? Is it more like equipment or is it more like office property? Like start breaking this stuff down. Like what are we looking at? Where's my money coming from? Where's my flow coming from? This is what you need to be focusing on. Because if you can truly take full advantage of your calendar, everything else will step will start to roll the way you want it to roll. But you got to know where things are coming from. You gotta know how many meetings you have. Your calendar is your best friend to help you hit and exceed your goals.

Love it. I love it. I just, I wrote down two words. I mean there's so much gold in that. I hope everybody's taking some frivolous notes as you're listening to Marcus speak because it's good stuff. But awareness and intentionality. I Mean, two things that jumped out. And I see too often in our business, people aren't aware of where they're at, what they even need, and they're very reactive versus intentional. So everything you said there resonates. Right on.

Right. We said the mindset. Old mindset, new mindset. The old mindset is reacted. Oh, the market's too volatile. Oh, you know, I need that sale. Oh, if I don't make that sale, I'm not going to hit my quota. The new mindset is proactive. I can bring value to people. I can solve people's problem. I know what I need to do to stay ahead of the curve. We were trying to get people in the room to get out of the old thinking if they were in that category, and get into the new thinking of being proactive and planning and strategizing and being forward thinking in that regard.

Yeah, 100% agreed. I gotta. I. I gotta ask you if you. I'm sure you. You've got it in your mind because you talk about it all the time, but you shared a story that I heard years ago. In fact, I first heard it from a guy by the name of Rory Vaden about the cow and the buffalo. All right. And you talked about the bison, which, by the way, where'd you go to school?

Our university bison.

So it fit in. Well. I'll let you kind of share the story of this because I think the story of it is so good about how we face things. Kind of comes back to mindset. Right. And how we look at things. But I'd love to hear your story on bison. And then if you'd like to share the acronym, I have it written down because those were some big notes I took. And I love you to show it to the audience. Marcus.

Yeah. So, Brent, the bison is the only animal that charges directly into the eye of the storm. When a bison herd sees a storm coming, they basically put their hooves in the ground, they turn towards the storm, and they go at the storm. Because the bison knows the only way, or the fastest way, I should probably say the fastest way out of a storm is through the storm. And I tell people, that's life. When you have problems, don't run from them. Don't run and hide. Don't put your head in the sand and hoping it will pass you by, because what happens is it'll land right on your head. Right. And so this is where the acronym of bison comes in. B is boldness. Fortune favors the bold. I, integrity. Have integrity no matter what stress or harsh conditions. You may be under. Always have integrity. S self awareness. Know your strengths, but also know your weaknesses. O ownership. If you make a mistake or when you make a mistake, we all do own it, fix it, move on. And the end. Never ever quit. Failure is always a learning lesson. The only time failure becomes failure is if you quit. If you quit, you'll never know how great you could have become. So a Bison charges into the future, into the storm for you listening in your insurance business, please, if times get hard, dig your hoofs in. Turn towards the storm and be a Bison. Be bold, have integrity, be self aware. Take ownership. Never ever quit.

Yeah, man, such, such good stuff there, Marcus and I, you know, again from the insurance agency world, it could be anything, but, you know, I'll call back later, I'll deal with that later. I'll have that difficult conversation with that employee later. And you know something that we preach is this. A problem left unattended will eventually become a crisis. And.

Right.

And so that idea, that Bison mentality is you're going to face it sometime.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, everybody has a storm that they have to face, right? Everybody. If a client with, for example, a client sent me a message yesterday, we had a little bit of a mix up on some, well, something for the. For the account. So she emailed me. When I saw her email, within 5 seconds I picked up the phone and I called her right away, Tiffany, what's going on? What's the issue? What, what do you think? The miscommunication broke down. We had a conversation two minutes later. I said, okay, Tiffany, no problem. I'll send you a refund for that. Send me your Venmo. Bam. And she said, marcus, I truly appreciate how when I email you something problem, you get right on it for another story. Somebody that I introduced to somebody or they met through me, one person is not happy with the other person services. So I was copying on an email. Not only did I email that person and reply all to both within a. Like, within a minute I had told the other person, her name is Brenda, I would call you and chat with you about what's going on. Within three minutes I was on the phone with her, might have been five. But the point is, within five minutes I called her and chatted and we had a plan of action. So again, even though that wasn't directed at me, it's a problem because they met through me. Ladies and gentlemen, at the end of the day, in business, you must handle your business.

Love those stories too. It's good stuff. I got A couple more questions for you, Marcus. I'm gonna respect your time, but I want to hit something here. We talk, and this is in the book that was co authored by Roger Hickens and myself and just in general terms about good enough traps. And we can see this in business and sports, right? Where good enough, right? We're doing pretty good. And of course, there's a lot of sports examples, but it was Nick Saban talking about standards. And of course now you have Indiana winning, and Kurt Signetti is all about, you know, we play each play as a standard or whatever. And again, that's the sports world in business. As often my book's big enough. I've done enough here. Right. And it's not that we're not working hard, but like, I love to get your perspective where maybe you see or have, whether you dealt personally or with people you work with, with where you see good enough traps that are holding people back in our language from becoming their true best version. That there's this big best version. But these good enough traps keep holding them back.

Wrote notes down, something we're talking about great versus good, right? And so the enemy of great is not bad, it's good. I'm doing good. I'm doing okay. Good is not good enough. What happens is people get into the comfort zone in their business. They have a certain type of business that either hit their numbers or really don't, but they don't want to push. They feel complacent. Complacency is the biggest killer of anybody in sales and in business. So look out for these type of things, right? These type of, like, you know, scenarios or type of things. You kind of say to yourself, oh, I hit my numbers. I'll take a break. That's not a good thing to say. Oh, you know, I hit my quota, barely. Okay, I got a week left. I'm going to coast the rest of the month. That's not it either, right. So. Or, ah, you know, I'll get to that tomorrow. And you keep telling yourself that all the time. I'll get to that tomorrow. Tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes. That's a problem. People fall into a routine of mediocrity, and that's the biggest pitfall of people in sales, especially in insurance and finance and where you get like, a lot of, like, renewals and stuff like that occur. People don't think about getting innovative, creative and stepping out and saying, I'm going to try to do this to increase this relationship. I'm going to try to do that to. To make this a better for both of us, right? Look at us. We met at the event. I'm on this awesome podcast. We're going to chat sometime next week about how to help each other with referrals and who, you know, who. I know that's again. And you're doing well in your business and so am I. Right? But I'm not complacent. I'm never satisfied with just doing enough or being good or being good enough. That doesn't equate to me because I've done that before. I've done enough. I've been good. I had a multiple eight figure company. You think that'd be great, but it wasn't great in where I was at. It was good, right? But it wasn't good enough. And what happens? I lose the business, everything that I own the next year. So again, learn from me. And again, I dealt with a lot of insurance people in my old construction company. I bought commercial insurance for my trucks, my property, my equipment, my staff, my stuff. I was always buying insurance. The people that were doing well would try to build relationships with me. People that I saw as like a vendor. If I got a cheaper price, you were out. Remember this saying, to really grow in your business, you want to be successful. Seen as a collaborative partner, not just a good old fashioned vendor. Partners, we phone call vendors, we kick out of our system.

Good stuff there. And I, you know, just to share a little bit. Marcus, we, we talk a lot, especially with the, our sales teams. Just what you said. The difference between a trusted advisor or collaborative partner versus a vendor. And even our world, we see, you know, vendor, someone you call after you've already done something like, yeah, here's a transaction. A trusted advisor, in your words, a collaborative partner is, hey, I need your input. I need your advice. I want to discuss this together. We're better. And that is positioning that requires work. So really appreciate you sharing that. All right. I have one official question that I want to ask you. We could go more if you want. Then I have one just for fun. My fun one is this. In your NFL days, who is the hardest person to block?

Man, there were some dogs in my day, boy. I mean there's, there's several. There's guys when I play guard like Albert Haynesworth. There's guys where I play tackle like Jason Taylor. I mean it's just, I mean it's just, just some, some, some ah. Some dogs in the fight, man. So I, I would say, you know, those are some, some, some good names. Albert Haynesworth, you Know Kevin Williams with the Minnesota Vik games. Jason Taylor from Miami Dolphins. Some of my teammates were tough. John Henderson, Marcus Stroud, you know, I mean, we just had some, some, you know, massive, you know, Sam Adams. I mean, I go down the list, man, he has some great football players in my. But I would probably say, you know, from a tackle perspective, Jason Taylor. And from a, A dtap, well, I play guard perspective, I probably say Albert Haynesworth.

Yeah, I. I mean, yeah, great name. I know we've got a lot of NF NFL fans. Listen, they're probably thinking about that. All right, here's my question to you. Final official question then. I also want to make sure where people can find you, where they can get a hold of you or some of the stuff that you do and deliver. Make sure you're able to share that information. But here's my question. I asked this to basically every guest I have on here. If you were to come face to face with the younger version of Marcus Ogden, maybe it's when you're starting your professional career back in college, right? So I know this is kind of a weird, hypothetical thing, but let's say you walk out of your, your office today and you're walking down the street and there's the younger version of Marcus Ogden. And the younger version says, Older Mr. Marcus, if you could give me one piece of advice, what would it be?

I would tell my younger self to never let my ego get bigger than the good part of my soul. We all have an ego. But unfortunately for me, my ego got so massive, it got so, so large. It got so out of control that the good part of me was completely overshadowed. I stopped treating people like human beings. I stopped treating people like amazing assets that grew a company. I treated people as objects. I treated people as mechanisms to get me more money, to get me more fame and get me more notoriety. And what happened is I created this unhealthy, super toxic culture, and that ended up pushing all my best people away. And in between that and hitting that snag on that job in 2012, you know, fall and early winter, that was it. And once the bank shut me down, I will never forget that phone call. It was December 23, 2012. The bank had been meeting for five hours to discuss they were going to keep Kayden open. And when they told me they were going to be shutting Kayden down, I was like, wow. And that was it. So I would tell my younger self, never, ever let your ego get to the point where it overshadows the good part of Your soul. Because if you do, if your ego gets that massive, it's just a matter of time before you crash and burn.

Incredible stuff, man. Thanks for sharing that. You know, the audience here, you know, I mentioned you do coaching and speaking and you, you're an author, all these different things you do out there. So if you would please share a kind of scope of, of what you do, how people connect with you. Cause I know you've got a ton of value to offer this audience.

So what we do, right, Brent, is we do keynote speaking, we do business coaching, we do corporate consulting, we have our podcast and we're actually, we have a free app that's out right now, the Marcus Ogden app. But we're also building, with My business partner, Mr. Nathan Poole, we're building another app. It's going to be a paid app. It's going to be like more of like a one on one type of coaching, interactive style app. And we're excited about that because our podcast has grown substantially. I've been doing News Nation Live as a weekly sports contributor for the last two years, every Friday with them. They're amazing people out of Chicago. We have another podcast, the Inner Game Community. We have a show called the Jaguar Squad Show. That's me and my two awesome co hosts, Mia o' Brien and Tony Wiggins. And we love to talk about anything Jaguars. And it's very popular. We do that twice a week, so you can find us any of those things. But our podcast is called Get Authentic with Marcus Ogden. You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple, you know, we have our YouTube channel putting a lot of short form content on there to go on with long form content. So we're very excited about where we're at in that regard.

Yeah, good stuff. And I did, since we connected, I remember I got on the plane and I was heading to Chicago and I was listening to Get Authentic with Marcus Ogden. It's good stuff, man. Good stuff. So listen, I just want to thank you. Thanks for coming on here. It's a pleasure to get to meet you and I love these opportunities to connect. I know we'll continue to have conversations as you mentioned, share ideas and resources. So, Marcus, thanks so much being on here. Any final words you'd like to give the audience before we officially depart today?

No. Just watch. Yes, actually. Yes. So one of my favorite quotes is by Bruce Lee. Okay. Never tell your mind negative thoughts in a joking manner. Your body cannot dissimulate the difference. Words cast spells. That's why it's called spelling. Choose how you talk to yourself and choose wisely. Bruce Lee so basically be your own biggest cheerleader when your mind's under stress and pressure. Don't fold. Don't allow it to keep shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. Say we're good enough, watch it expand. We're courageous enough, watch it expand. We deserve it, watch it expand. And doing that, it's going to put you in a position to achieve what your heart desires every single time.

Thanks Marcus. Great share. And again, thanks for being on the podcast. I love to continue this conversation. And again, for all the agency leaders, all the listeners out there, connect with Marcus. He's doing some great work, great stuff. I'm sure he'll be out and about. I know you're very involved in the insurance space now, as you mentioned, so appreciate that. And with that, I wish you, the Agent Leader, all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. Hey there Agent Leader Brent Kelly here want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true, best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment, and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall.