Hidden Power of Physical Products in a Digital World

Think about it in this way. Law of reciprocity states, you know, for me, I truly want other good businesses to succeed. Therefore, law of reciprocity states probably other good businesses want me to succeed. How do I make it easy for other people to make— help me succeed? Make it easy to communicate what it is I do and how I can help. I have a YouTube ads agency, but I also have a podcasting business, but I also have social media managers, and I also have a VA staffing business. All of a sudden, you just made it so much harder for people to recommend you because if there's someone who specializes in growing a YouTube channel or specializes in podcasting, they're going to beat you out any day of the week because they're putting all their mental capacity towards their craft.

Welcome to the Speakeasy Mastermind, where the real conversations happen behind closed doors with the boldest entrepreneurs, creators, and growth minds in the game. No fluff, no filters, just the raw strategies, personal stories, and mental models that move the needle. I'm Eric Berman. Now let's get into it. In today's episode of Inside the Speakeasy Mastermind, you're going to be so excited to learn from Mark Stern, who's gone from the crazy corporate world of Deloitte and Touche and other major, major companies into the world of entrepreneurship, where he's sharing his genius, especially when it comes to creating custom boxes, incredible retention experience with your customers, and out-of-the-box ideas to acquire new customers, some that you've probably never heard of, and some basic, basic tips to help you get more from your, your existing clients. Welcome, Mark Stern.

Eric, I'm thrilled to be here. So thank you for having me.

Yeah, we've had some good dialogue and really ever since, I mean, you really opened my eyes the first time we chatted and you're doing some incredible things on just custom box experiences, the onboarding, you know, building community here at Speakeasy and realizing the importance of that proper onboarding, the struggles we're going through. You know, our first conversation, you really helped guide me a lot and open my eyes into some obvious misses I had. And, you know, if it's okay with you, I'd love to get into some of that a little bit later in this chat.

Let's do it.

But before we get into that, because you do some incredible, you know, custom boxes, you know, just general customer journey that you've really got to learn. I was so fascinated when we talked, and I love having you as one of our great members in the community because we have a lot of members that are almost like the anti-corporate, you know, they go in through the, I always say the unhireables, you know, the people that are like, oh, I could never go be in the corporate world. And they just out there rolling up sleeves and building stuff on their own. Yet you have a cool background where you were in that corporate world. You were the guy who was just crushing out there and you went the opposite way. And I'd love to hear a little bit of your background, some of your entrepreneurial story, if you could share like what you learned along the way and how you got to this point. Yeah.

Oh gosh. So I grew up in Alabama, a Jewish family in Alabama, which you're automatically kind of like the token representation of your faith as a kid. But like, I was just told, and everyone was taught the same thing around me, that there's just one natural progression to life. And, you know, you graduate high school, go to college, you graduate college, you get the job. Then you go back to grad school and then you get the dream job in the White House with the picket fence and life is great. And you know, I thought that was it. That was the pathway. So I used to joke and say I was the poster child of corporate America because I was president of my high school. I, when I went to college, I was president all 4 years of my class. Like I would go to the extremes. I had one job from undergrad to grad school. I had this dream to work on national marketing campaigns in the liquor realm. So like Absolut and Jameson and Malibu, we'd incubate and launch these national campaigns for them, which was amazing. Um, got my MBA at Duke, was one of the co-student body presidents there, then worked for a big 5 consulting firm, Deloitte Consulting, and, you know, worked my way to be a top-rated strategy consultant thinking this is life, like this is like the game. And you wake up one day and realize, and this was back in 2012 after I had graduated. From business school.

You are on that ladder, that ladder that you thought it was, right? Straight into it, crushing, get into the corporate, you know, fun corporate job, you think.

That's because everyone I knew was like that. Like we were all kind of playing and drinking the same Kool-Aid and playing the same game. And then it was 2012. I graduated Duke. I had a 2-year commitment to Deloitte. I had no quality of life because at 4:45 every single Monday, a cab picked me up to take me to the airport to fly to my clients and literally lived weekly as a road warrior flying to my clients for 6 years. And you realize I'm $165,000 in student loan debt. And now I have this job that I have no quality of life. This can't be, you know, the dream at the end of the tunnel.

When do you realize this? So you're, how many, you said 6 years you started?

So it was 2012 when you stare back at saying you have $165,000 in student loan debt. And I think I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Nothing is worse to an entrepreneurial spirit than feeling this black cloud of student loan debt. And then here's the other twist. Deloitte, by contract, anything that you do in and outside the firm is owned by the firm. So you're signing away ownership that if I were to start a business, the firm would own it. And so the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, I truly didn't have a choice that if I wanted to scratch the itch, I had to leave the firm. And that it just means that they did to protect themselves, especially after the whole Enron scandal, how they started to separate and compliance in terms of what it takes if you're, because you get access to proprietary client information, they want to protect themselves. And as a result, for me, it was crippling that you had to burn your bridges or burn the ships down if you truly wanted to go all in on the entrepreneurial.

Well, just catch up though, because I mean, for a second, for those of us who haven't been in that world, you know, you're out of Duke, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you're fired up, you graduate, you're like, you get to that sexy job at Deloitte. I got a 2-year contract, which is probably really exciting, high-fiving, celebrating. And how much time are you grinding until you all of a sudden start to say, well, wait a second, is this really what it's meant to be? And you're having these thoughts about the debt and the, you know, you can't do anything on your own. How long did it take you to realize that?

So indirectly, it took me a year or two. And what it was, I attended a conference I had no business being at. I saw a YouTube video for this conference by Mindvalley. Are you familiar with Mindvalley?

Of course. Yeah.

Hey Fest. And I saw a YouTube video of this event called Awesomeness Fest, which was TED Talk speakers in the daytime, Burning Man parties at night, a bunch of entrepreneurs, apply only. And like, for me, I was at this place in corporate America where, because I was traveling so much, this is about a year and a half or 2 years into Deloitte. I was realizing this can't be it. Like, this can't be life here. And really the low of lows happened at the time was I realized when I finally was transitioning off my current client project, waiting to transition onto the next project, you have this moment of there is nothing ahead in my life to look forward to and to be in a position that you're like, I have nothing to look forward to because all I'm doing is working. That's what made me book this ticket to A-Fest. And I thought my friends from business school, they were like, this looks really cool, would go with me. But when it came to taking out the credit card, I was the only one who did it. And you know, I was like, regardless if no one goes, this is calling me. And going to that event, it was like living in a bubble that you thought like your bubble was secure. And then going to an event and seeing effectively it introduced me to digital marketing. André Chappell and Yanik Silver, Ryan Dice, all these people, Dane Maxwell were there, all these digital marketers. And I had no idea what that was. And I even remember sitting down talking to someone and they were like, I just paid $25K to get Mastermind certified. And I just stared at her like, you did what? Like none of these words made sense to me because none of them were like the people I came from. So this is kind of where that bubble shattered and you go back into corporate realizing you just like had the rug pulled from under you and you're now seeing, you know, having a fulfilling professional career through a new lens. And it took me, from like 2013 when I had that instance to 2018 to finally muster up the courage to say, now is the time for me to make the transition out. You have these golden shackles when you work for Deloitte because they literally pay for everything. And, but you have no quality of life.

Right. Right.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I mean, it's very self-aware. You had, you sort of tasted that over here with these entrepreneurs are going through. And I see it so clear because my brother who was a corporate guy, you know, started, did actually started MySpace and did some interesting things.

And wow.

And watching that go from, you know, that world to corporate News Corp taking it over and it's almost watching the culture shifts and then talking to people that he knows that are all these corporate guys. It's just such a different world when you cross over into, I call it the marketing entrepreneurs that are out there. It's, I could totally see you get a taste of that. So you get in there and 5 more years and what was the straw that broke the camel's back there?

Oh, goodness gracious. So what it was, the last year that I was there, like I was on the verge of becoming a junior partner. It was like, it's so predictable when you're going to get promoted because of just how big the machine is if you hit the certain, you know, if you did the role for a certain number of years, you're hitting certain scores in terms of like your ratings in the firm, you just know you're going to get promoted. And this was a promotion year for me to become junior partner. What ended up happening was every time I would get on a plane, I literally could feel my body breaking down and it manifested like the only time your brain slows down in that career is between Christmas and New Year's because your clients shut down, the firm is shut down. It's the only time you feel good about taking off time. And it was literally, I remember to a T, December 27th, 2017, went to bed and weirdest feeling I've ever had in my life. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was this like premonition that said, if you keep doing this job, it will kill you. That was the feeling that I had. And it just brought me to tears. And I had to be in Dallas on January 3rd for one of our client partner meetings. And I sat down with the partner I reported to and just said, I can't explain it. This is not a 2-week notice. but I have to put in my notice and leave. I don't want my title to change, but I'll stay as long as you need me to. And ended up staying from January to May. But you know, that was, I don't know what my entrepreneurial career, like I didn't have the mental capacity 'cause everything was Deloitte at the time. I just knew that if I could let go of Deloitte, I could at least free up the clarity to figure out, you know, and get creative again about what could I do or what impact can I have as an entrepreneur.

You didn't even know what was next. You just said, I gotta create that separation. I gotta get out.

It was a bold and scary move.

Yeah.

But like when all of your mental capacity is just so focused on, 'cause it's 24/7, you're just like, your phone vibrates, you dive for it in that world. And I don't think I realized how like toxic the behavior and the habits I was developing were. But that was it, was that like I had to have faith that I would figure it out, but you never know. You don't, but it felt I was comfortable enough to say, even though I don't know what it is, it's going to be okay.

Wow. That's impressive. I admire you for that. And I think there's a lesson in there for all of us to be thinking about that time when we're just, you know, not satisfied and there's that scary moment. I think we've all been to that. I mean, I kind of, I have that thought all the time. Like, you know, it is scary. And especially as you have, you know, more financial responsibility, it gets even scarier, right? Not to have that clarity of revenue. But I commend you for that. And obviously you look back and were probably pretty happy. So what's next?

I joined, which was like the craziest thing is I never had joined such a big mastermind, but I was exposed to Russell Brunson's ClickFunnels community. I attended his Funnel Hacking Live and he pitched this Two Comma Club Mastermind, which was about how to go from zero to a million dollars. And I remember being like $18,000, which like as someone who's trying to figure it out, was one of the boldest, most stressful things that I'd ever done. But I know I needed some type of community and that's what it brought me was community and support. Because like just the mental game of entrepreneurship's pretty heavy and it was perfect for what I needed at the time. But ended up starting out by, somebody told me to do a virtual summit, which was the ability to, and the way that traditional summits were done was like, it was almost as a lead gen tool or play where you would interview all these people and create kind of your own virtual conference. And then, you know, over 5 days or so you'd release a subset of the speakers you interviewed and it's all prerecorded and you tell people they have 24 hours to watch the interview. Otherwise they have to buy the all-access pass. And I did it 'cause it was like, you build a product, you learn how to build a funnel, you learn email, you learn community management, you have to interview people. So you have to go through that process. So in terms of like an, a little MBA on the digital marketing space, like No better place to do it, but I did it my way. And of course I interviewed like over 40 people.

Yeah.

And what it revealed to me, which was early days of kind of where we are today with Custom Box Agency, is it felt like such an overwhelming amount of content that I was producing and telling people, you have to consume as much as you can in 24. And I'm like, I actually want to help people and serve people. And by creating this urgency in this capacity, I'm not serving them. And if I'm trying to upsell them into some offer, having 40 disparate different points of view isn't going to lead people naturally to the outcome that I wanted them to take. And so I took the best insights, built a publication from it, and for anyone who bought the ticket, I sent them this publication. And what I didn't expect was when they got this physical publication from the event, the publication was called Entrepreneur Elements. What I didn't expect was that people would start doing reveal videos and unboxing videos of this publication. Taking pictures, posting on it, and I was getting all this organic attention and all of a sudden it separated me from everyone else 'cause everyone else did digital only. But now I was marrying something physical that had legacy and lasted beyond the event and literally just got off a call with someone about a week ago that her husband still carries that publication in his backpack 'cause he loves it so much. He was saving it years later. We're literally talking like, what, 7 years later since I did that? And get your digital logins for all those programs that you buy. You know, sometimes I bought things again that I didn't realize I bought because it's been years, but something physical takes up space like the books behind you, you know?

Yeah.

There's something about like, there could be books you've never read. There could be books you've read once. There could be books you go back to and reference many times, but there's something about a book that we keep it.

That's right. So that's incredible for a few reasons. So one is you probably now look back on that and say, I guess I am an entrepreneur. Like you sort of had to get your wings out. Leave Deloitte and now you're like, wait a second, you know, you're building confidence. And I bet you had the most fun, probably one of your most fun times I imagine is being able to just fly on your own and figure it out. And whether you're failing or succeeding, you had the freedom to do what you wanted to do.

Totally. And I think that the other thing on top of that people don't realize is that when you're hired into a corporate job, you're hired into a bracket and there's a top and a bottom of this bracket, but you're only as good as your bracket. So in terms of understanding your potential as an individual, when you're hired into a bracket, you could be exceptional at your job, but you're still capped at saying, do I actually know how good I am? And I think that was one of the coolest things about entrepreneurship is that every time I had the thought around, oh, I can't do that, then I realized that I'm the only person limiting me because there is no bracket in the game that I'm playing. And then all of a sudden I can have a bigger impact because I'm not limited based on a corporate structure.

God, that's so interesting. I mean, I think some of us who've never gone there, it's almost, it's almost a blessing in a weird way that you had that experience because you could appreciate different things. And now, you know, it's almost like that motivation level, you know, you're right. There's no box that's going to force you to limit you. I mean, is that really the seed of your current business today? I mean, there's publications in the printed, what you did there.

You know, I think it was kind of like the echoes or the whispers that like I didn't, if you told me I was going to start a box business. In the capacity, I would've probably told you coming outta business school, you've lost your mind. Like it was never a dream of mine to do it. But all of a sudden what ended up happening was when I did my second virtual event, seeing the response, I was like, I truly wanna like set people up. So rather than interviewing 40 people, I interviewed 10. It was all about high ticket sales cuz I wanted to get smart on high ticket selling. And I converted all the best insights into a box experience that was the High Ticket Online box that not only spotlighted the speakers, but it just was designed to give people a quick win or outcome on their journey in that model to building their own high-ticket offer, which then had a perfect natural ascension. What I didn't expect with that was every person who received the box would do an average of 3 to 7 minutes showing off the box, even though they're all showing the same stuff. Everyone wanted to do their own unboxing, and it just solidified that there's something with physical blending with digital. And that was kind of where it just became, it's a no-brainer. It didn't become the business. Until COVID really, because more and more people started saying, how are you doing these boxes? Launched a challenge called the Custom Box Challenge to teach people how to do it, to buy back my time. I was, I was building this business in virtual events.

Right.

And people just kept on saying, how are you doing this? And then they'd go through the challenge and call me back up and say, but we want you to build, we want a Mark Stern box.

Yeah.

And launched an agency in concurrent of launching, you know, growing this virtual event business I started. And then COVID happened and it was my mentor who looked at me and said, I talked to a bunch of people who is Mark Stern. Half of them say you're the box guy. The other half say you're the virtual event guy. So you're confusing people. So pick one. And it made sense to pick virtual events because we're at the beginning of COVID and I had experience in it. My gut said there's something about these boxes that is an untapped game. That is such massive potential for businesses that I just had to get there and like listen to people and just listen what they were asking and killed this virtual event business I'd been building for 3 years, went all in on boxes. And that one strategic decision of just going all in on focusing on one thing truly changed the game for me.

Wow. It's the old, I always look back in life and say it's the choose your own adventure, you know, really pivotal times in life. I mean, you had it just in this conversation, obviously the big pivot to change, you go on this route and now there's another major choose your own, which path you're going to go down. Yeah. Sure. The box path. I love the lesson in there, which so many of us failed to do, self-included, is the just go all in on one thing, which has led to the success and versus trying to drive, which most of us entrepreneurs probably would've said, screw it. I could probably do both at the same time. Let's see what happens. And you did that. We get, yeah, go ahead and you're gonna say something.

Yeah, no, I have to say, because there's something really important here and this is it. And so this was kind of like the backwards, like I was taught at Deloitte to be the world's best generalist, be good at everything. Like that's what the like wanted you to be good at is everything. They celebrated the fact that you were not only a good strategist, but you could turn around and implement the strategy and you can get in the nuances and you just had to be good at everything. Entrepreneurship doesn't value being good at everything. They don't want you to be the world's greatest generalist. They want you to be known for something. To justify why this is important, think about it in this way. Law of reciprocity states, you know, for me, I truly want other good businesses to succeed. Therefore, law of reciprocity states probably other good businesses want me to succeed. How do I make it easy for other people to make, help me succeed? Make it easy to communicate what it is I do and how I can help. And if you do, I have a YouTube ads agency, but I also have a podcasting business, but I also have social media managers, and I also have a VA staffing business. All of a sudden you just made it so much harder for people to recommend you because Like, I don't know which one of those, which is if there's someone who specializes in growing a YouTube channel or specializes in podcasting, they're going to beat you out any day of the week because they're putting all their mental capacity towards their craft as opposed to splitting it between so many different domains. And if I know you do podcasting and you run a podcasting agency, when someone says, who does podcasting? I'm going to recommend the person that's all in on it more so because it's going to be more second nature to me than the person that does 30 other things. So just the power of niching down just makes it easy for me to help you win.

Dude, I appreciate you saying this. That is so obvious in hindsight, what you said, but it's so profound for, again, all of us. And again, I'm looking at myself in the mirror, or at least at the screen as I look at myself talking to you and saying, you know, I'm guilty of this and you're right. And you're going to get me to switch because I am juggling a couple of things. But as you say that, you're absolutely right. It's how am I supposed to expect somebody, they have such limited time. If they're kind enough to refer me, I'm making their job so much worse by having them think, exactly remember what Eric does, but a bunch of stuff. And then versus, you know, or whoever, but you're right. Be known as the guy. Cause now, you know, I love it. I mean, it's obvious, but when the way you said that is brilliant. So thank you for that.

Yeah, I know it's crazy too. It's like, I didn't see it either. Cause it's so easy to chase whatever opportunities in front of you. Even just saying no to opportunities, things that we could do, but it's just not in our wheelhouse or our domains has also helped grow the business. I love it.

All right. So let's get into, you know, your unique, your focus. We just talked about that, what you are known for, what you're great at. I know you're great at a lot of things, but what you've just talked about, you know, let's walk away with what you're known for, what the great thing you do and what we're all missing. I mean, I want some, there's some great lessons in here on what you've been able to do for people in the custom box experience and walk me through that a little bit.

Sure. So where we anchor things is customer lifecycle. If you think of the customer lifecycle, there's 3 phases. You acquire a customer. So how do they find you to buying your products and services? Then you deliver your products and services. So this is onboarding to the outcome of whatever promise you made when you sold them whatever your product service is. And then the 3rd thing is retention. Retention can be anything from introducing the next journey in terms— and so we're talking about extending lifetime value. Recognition is a big part of retention. Giving people the goalposts of things to strive for. A perfect example is ClickFunnels does this brilliantly with the 2 Comma Club Award. You know, if you are playing their game, they define success as in you've generated $1 million using ClickFunnels and a funnel. Black and white, easy terms. People keep paying that monthly fee to ClickFunnels because, you know, they want that recognition. So that's kind of what we anchor on is when we talk to clients, they may come to us saying, we're launching a new program. We are launching this new product or service. Can you help us really streamline the journey to get the outcome? So we can work with you saying, here's onboarding. Here's the end result and let's build the pathway. So it's a recipe so people know exactly where they are in the process, you know, and then from that we can build out a physical box experience, but we can do the same thing on the acquisition and on the retention side. So this is kind of where we just say, how can we start to like truly set up our customers or clients for success out of the gates? Part of this is sending them all the tools and resources they need. And this is why I love Box is that You know, I don't want, and I, this is my big struggle when I started as an entrepreneur, is I would spend $10,000, $2,000 to $10,000 on products. And to get started, I would need to print out things or go buy things and get things. You put up all these obstacles that wouldn't allow me to get started, like off the bat, had you just sent me what I needed. I can remove all those obstacles and get out of this idea of someday I'll get around to it. Right. So this is kind of where that if I can gamify your business and incentivize behavior and give people a clear pathway to follow, then I can build a whole physical product around that. And I promise you that not only is it going to reduce overwhelm and attrition, which is what's typical in the onboarding part, but it's going to get results faster. So then you can introduce the next product or service to your clients or customers.

Right. It's the psychology of, I love how you said someday I'll get to it. My partner for years, Brian Tracy, calls it someday aisle. Someday aisle, you know, you take a trip down someday aisle.

I love he says that.

Really, it's the psychology of being able to, like you said, once you get the momentum, why are we creating friction? We just got the customer bought, sold, engaged, and now we're creating friction to get them to actually take action, which ultimately leads to, you know, referrals, more sales, more consumption, et cetera, et cetera.

More social proof. Yeah.

All the social proof. So what's the magic? Tell us a little bit about the custom box experience. So what am I getting? And, you know, obviously whether we, you know, somebody works with you or just in general, you help them create some ideas. Talk me through like an example experience.

Yeah, it's a great question. And I can show you some of the strategies that we're deploying with our own products that we've introduced in the marketplace as well. But there's a certain formula that we take every client through. But what we try and look at is with any experience, you always start with the end in mind. So what is outcome? What is success? And defining success. Defining success is critical to me. Businesses do not do a good job of this. And what I mean by that is I'll use a marathon as an example. If you've ever run a marathon or if you're familiar with a marathon, I know that a typical marathon is broken down into 3 phases. Before you start the marathon, it's all about prep. Mm-hmm. Then when you cross the starting line, I know you are no longer prepping. You are now in the race. And I know that when you cross the finish line, you are no longer racing. You've completed the race and now it's post-race. So if we have phases that are race and post-race, like what is the defining marker that tells me you are transitioned from one phase to the next? Well, crossing the starting line. I know for a fact you're not prepping for the race anymore. Crossing the finish line. I know you're not running the race anymore. And then what's a marker or emblem that represents success? I know if you have the medal, that's the medal that they give you at the end of the race. Without a shadow of a doubt, you've completed the race because you have something that represents success. So it's very clear. Same thing with Taekwondo. If you want the black belt, having the black belt, we call 'em jewels, having that jewel without a shadow of a doubt. I know that you've gone through the training to earn that rank. So they define success. Same thing in Boy Scouts. If you have Eagle Scout ranking, like again, I know that you've achieved a certain degree of success, but they've defined what success is. Even in college, they have a pathway, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. When you graduate and have the diploma, I know without a doubt you have been successful on the journey of graduating. Businesses don't do a good job defining success for their people, so they know without a shadow of a doubt. Have I been successful with your product or service? And so that's something that we look at is what is the outcome, but what is the metric that allows us to know without a shadow of a doubt? It's a binary yes or no. They have been successful. Once we have that, I go back to the beginning to say, how are we educating and onboarding them to make them not feel overwhelmed? And then what is the pathway that's gonna get me this outcome? And we'll build all that out. A lot of times within a box experience, which you'll typically see, is not only do we have like a welcome note in the box and a getting started guide. This is the PATH box. This is Annie Grace. She has a coaching program to help people conquer their relationship with alcohol. She's a New York Times bestselling author, but within her box, you know, I always want a welcome note that anchors people on the experience. I always want some type of guide that like prepares them for the journey. What are the tools and resources you have access to? What is the process you're about to begin? And then seeding your universe of like, How else can you support them when they're ready for it? This is a powerful sales piece. Some type of journey map, you know, hers is a little chaotic in terms of how we laid out the journey map, but some people have it almost like a Candyland board, just a clean one-pager that shows them this is the process that you're about to go through to get the outcome, and then all the tools and resources they need for that experience. That's a pretty typical box experience, but boxes can truly be whatever you need them to be. No two boxes are alike because No two businesses are alike. And so when we go through it, there's just certain staples that we want to see. But the question we ask is, have we defined success? Have we presented a clear pathway and have a good onboarding plan? And have we sent them all the tools and resources they need? And, you know, you'll see that a lot of our boxes typically are—

those are beautiful. Yeah, those are nice.

Well, it's smaller, and boxes can be so many different modalities, but I know when you read a book, you put it on a bookshelf. And so why aren't we building experiences that fit perfectly on the bookshelf? We can brand the spine. Even the design of the box can be a strategic enabler because, you know, we have clients like Insider, that's 3 boxes that when they stack together on the bookshelf, they create a series. So I can send you box 1 of 4 and tell you this is box 1 of 4 and print that on the side of the box. But it's creating this open loop to say, if you want to collect box 2 of 4, 3 of 4, and 4 of 4 to get the pieces to the other parts of the journey, you have to keep playing the game. And you can even see on this one. We even play it off of the fact that as they collect the boxes, even the design as it appears on the bookshelf, people want to complete those series. So there's just so much that you can do.

It's, I mean, to me psychologically, there's so many wins in there just to kind of like, from my take on this, I mean, first of all, you are to some extent bringing the, the thought of play. When you see a box, I think we probably go to the world of games as kids and like this concept of, oh, this looks like much more fun way to start to engage in whatever it is I just bought. And I mean, number one, that psychology hits me when I see that. Number two, is the dopamine or the psychology of, I know when we make a purchase, we want our purchase validated that it was a good decision. And then getting this really cool experience after the purchase, which most people fail to do, which I see you're not failing to do, you're helping people have that positive experience, is such a win. Because now it's like the world of just even people buying beauty products, you know, the boxing is such a beautiful box. People keep that box. That per— I mean, and so it makes that decision so much better. But why not do it for all the other products, which is what you're doing, which is genius. It's like, why not create that same— the other analogy I came up with as you're walking through this is like, I think about back in the day, you know, as old as I am, when I used to get CDs and even albums back as a kid, like I still remember a couple of those CDs. Like, do you remember when you got like some of those? It wasn't just the typical, but it was like the full-on mega box with stuff inside of it. It was like, that's the one I would just always keep at the top. I'm like, God, that's the coolest. Like, CD cover. It was such an experience.

Like the other piece that I'll say is this is the power of intentionality. And so when we, like, for those who are listening, like, I don't want you to think about a swag box. We joke and say swag means stuff without a goal. Stop sending people stuff, like truly give them the tools and resources they need. And so in the art of intentionality, you know, there are things that we naturally save in our lives. And again, we use the book as like things you reference and put on the bookshelf, things we save. But what you just referenced is things with play, with replayability. Are things we save. Like I still have my CD collection from high school. I had my cassette tapes. My dad has his 8-track and vinyl records. He has no means to play it, but he still keeps them. VHS tapes. I don't even think we have a VHS player, but for some reason, things with replayability. This is why we save board games because you don't play Monopoly once and throw it out. The replayability keeps it that the Monopoly that I played was the same one that my mother played. It was the same game board that she had kept from generation to generation. Sporting equipment, like things with that replayability. How do we engineer replayability into the experiences that we're creating? So I could say, hey, when you go through this product today, I want you to do it again in 6 months, 'cause I promise you, you're gonna have change. Your environment's gonna have change, and it's gonna be a different outcome and experience. So now, like, how do we give life to our products in a bigger way? That can be engineered.

Love it. Love it. So now for those listening, I mean, clearly you got my eyes opened up, and hopefully others listening to this about that experience upon purchase and creating that You know, what's an easy first step if they don't necessarily go into the box, which, you know, may hopefully many of us do. Any recommendations or tips you have for those listening on what they could just do to like take one step or a couple steps above the typical what we do on customer experience?

Yeah. I mean, again, this gets back into making sure that the outcome, like what is success and what is the outcome of completing your, this product or service in front of them. If you just start by that defining the backend anchor. To me, that is something that, like, what we're trying to do for, from a customer or client standpoint is minimize overwhelm and give them something very concrete to strive for. And so this is why I think that 2 Comma Club Award's so powerful because it's so black and white. There could be people who say, I don't like the ClickFunnels platform, but they want that award and it's enough to push them over the edge. I can give an example of one that has inspired me in my business too, just to see like the power of. Jewel or a physical emblem that represents success in a journey. But for me, when I was born, my feet toed in pretty badly. And so like running, I would trip over my feet. I was never someone who self-identified as an athlete just because I wore braces on my legs as a kid. It took me till my thirties that something I saw, it was a Groupon ad for a Spartan race and went and did the Spartan race and almost talked myself out of doing it because it so wasn't me. And somehow mustered up the courage and didn't tell anyone I was doing this. 'Cause if I made a fool of myself, I didn't want anyone to know. But did it and loved it. And it was this amazing experience. But what Spartan did so brilliantly was they gave me the medal at the end of the race to signify I completed the race.

Right.

But brilliantly, they gave me a third of a medal on the medal and said, okay, now it's time for you to go for your Spartan trifecta, which means I had to do an 8 to 10 miler, and then a half marathon. And you have to do it in the same calendar year. And they put the constraints in place that made me go from— if you said, Mark, you're gonna do a half marathon mud run, I'm gonna tell you, you lost your mind. But when I started this process and they gave me this third of a wedge, and I knew I was gonna do one more race and got the second wedge, if I had to drag my body across the finish line, I was going to do whatever it took to get that last wedge. So, and I actually have, this is actually that one from 2015. You can see they come together and make a brand new— that is so cool. All that say 2015, but the significance as a business owner is for Spartan, for me as a customer to Spartan Races, it was about an identity shift. It was about achieving something that felt bold and bigger than me. For Spartan, it's about lifetime value. They engineered a system that made me pay them more money. In order for me to realize my own goals. And so that idea can be reimagined and rethought of for any business that you don't like, and you don't need to overcomplicate it. It could be all done digitally as well. But this is kind of why giving people something to strive for, we call them jewels. What's the jewel at the end of the journey that they could strive for? You know, in college it's the diploma, at Super Bowl it's the ring. Like there's something at the end of the journey that just defines success. So however you're giving them that marker of success, Easy place to start. Because once you have that, I can go back to the beginning, define onboarding, and then start to map out a clear process to get that outcome.

God, that's so brilliant. And I love— this has been so powerful because it's just simple things we could be doing right now. And so many of us focus way too much on getting just that first customer in the door, get that check, and okay, onto the next customer, and missing that huge opportunity. And a lot of it's just lack of knowledge and understanding of these little things and You know, if they spent just a little bit of time figuring out, you know, the outcome of success and coming up with concepts like you're talking about, I mean, how much more can we all do together? So thank you for all that. Now, I know we're probably running out of time, but I hope we could carve out a couple more minutes because as you were talking about running the race, you got me to remember that we talked earlier in the quote green room about something you went through personally that maybe we could share and all learn from as well on the quote midlife crisis journey you went through. And again, we all probably, a lot of us probably go through that as you went from, you know, I'm looking at you now and you're a healthy, skinny-looking, athletic guy, you know, and yet that wasn't always to be. So, so what happened?

Yeah, no, thank you. And I have a mustache now.

No.

So I read an article when I was 39 that said the average human lives to 78 in the US. And being at 39, I don't think I ever thought about the mortality of life. I just assume you wake up another day and, you know, c'est la vie. And it was the first time, like, I started getting ocular migraines. This was December of '23, and I was overweight. I did a DEXA scan, which people are kind enough to remind me that it's the industry standard, told me I was 39% body fat, which clinically makes me morbidly obese. And it was this immense fear of, I'm going to transition to the second chapter of life. What if I find out the things that I could have been better about? It's too late. Right. And I don't know, I was just in a really dark space and then 40 is knocking on the door and I'm not really good about asking for help. I think I've gotten much better about asking for help.

Well, hold on. You said you're in a dark space, so where are you in the business? It sounds like business is going well then, and, but the health isn't. Is that what's happening?

Yeah. And so how I would break it down is let's just break it down to 3 simple categories. If you have life is made up of, you know, this is how you spend your hours of your day. Personal. You know, your love and relationships, your friends, your family, professional, how you make money, your business, and then self, like how you take care of your body. So sleep, fitness, nutrition, relaxation, meditation, all that stuff. If those are 3 different domains, you know, I had this breakthrough that was my business. I feel like I want it to be world-class. Business is growing and business is thriving. Body is not. Like where it needs to be, and then my relationships could be better. If you've ever heard the saying, like, you're only as good as your weakest link. I may have a world-class business, but if my body is just good enough, right, then that's my business can be as good enough cuz it's all part of me. And so I think that was part of this idea of like, if I really want to have the impact and take the business to the next level, stop focusing on business strategies and start focusing on optimizing self or optimizing relationships. Because it will have a direct impact on business and it has.

Right.

And I think that was kind of like how those pieces all start are interwoven, which I never saw them as interwoven. That was a big part of the journey that made me go, okay, you've always put business first, but never taken care of yourself. What's gonna happen if I take care of myself? And taking care of myself had a direct impact on revenue because it is about how I showed up, how I approached other people, how I approached the relationships I had. And so that's kind of where that interconnectivity comes in place. But it literally, if you see the transformation from beginning of last year to now, you know, it's almost unrecognizable in the sense of not only physically, but the man that I am. It's not a forgoement. It's always the identity of Mark was always there. I just don't think I ever allowed myself to embrace that version of me until I really started to prioritize health.

So can you give us a sense, do you mind sharing like where were you at? Like, I mean, how much weight did you lose and, and everything else?

Highest weight was 250 during COVID I kicked off last year, I was in the 220s. I'm 5'11" and I think I store weight really well. So I don't think people knew how big I was. I don't know if I really understood how big I was either, but now I'm at 173. My goal is to get down to, not my goal, the guy I'm working with's goal for me is 165. Nice. Cause he's like, he wants you to get down to that six-pack lean, but I never held that. This is another belief. I never held a vision that I would ever be six-pack lean in my life. It was just never something I saw for me, especially as a kid who wore, who was just never an athlete.

Yeah.

And to have a mentor that held a bigger vision for me than I held for myself, which I think is a responsibility of entrepreneurs, we should hold a bigger vision for our people. The fact that he held that vision for me is what gave me the motivation to keep going on this journey too.

Amazing. And summarize, tell us mentally, how do you feel now? I mean, you had to do a major Or what was the biggest thing you did to get to drop the weight? And then how do you feel today?

Yeah, I had to ask for help. And so I hired a mentor that like, and it's weird because it's like I've always hired business mentors and to hire someone on health is a fraction of the cost of hiring, joining a business mastermind. Interesting. And I remember thinking like, I'm gonna spend that much money on a mentor. And then I was like, but you spend like 4 times that on business mastermind. It was the greatest investment I could have ever made. Blood work. They start with a blood panel to see where you're deficient, which I had never done. And then they prescribe supplements based on your deficiencies to kind of balance out and optimize body. They make me weigh in daily. They make me take pictures every Monday so they can see the transformation. So I have a degree of accountability. I get messages almost every day and they give me a new workout every 8 weeks that's tailored to me. Those were the things that, and they set the rules, and I think this is what's really powerful. I'm only allowed to work out 3 days a week. I have to have a 24-hour break between working out. You can run between, but like they're very strict and the workouts are like 35 to 45 minutes cuz they understood their avatar and their lifestyle. And so all of the workouts, how they onboarded me through it, beautiful experience that they built. This is the power of defining a really good experience cuz they took me from amazing customer experience right there.

Yeah, it's a good customer journey.

You're like, yeah, they took me from literally having no motivation to go into the gym. To not missing a day since starting the program.

Mega accountability, mega structure. Got it. I love it. Love it. How do you feel? How do you feel today?

Oh, I feel amazing. Like, I think that if anything, the other thing that, like, from a mental perspective is thinking pretty heavily, and this is a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day though, is this idea of what is power? Like, what decisions do you make result in you giving up power versus decisions you make that help build power? That has been an interesting conversation because there's things that we do that we do at the cost of us for the benefit of someone else. Just being a little bit more conscious of when you are choosing to let go of power and when you are collecting power. This idea of power has also helped rewire my mindset and build confidence in a way of, and an easy exercise you can do is what are your non-negotiables in terms of how you navigate? I don't think I was clear on the things that were just like, this is just not me, or it's just not a good fit for me. Having those non-negotiables is a power play because You know, right now I'm not drinking. It is a decision. I quit drinking in January. I don't need alcohol. And I was just at a bachelor party. I was on an all-inclusive resort 2 months ago. Alcohol didn't faze me because it was a non-negotiable. It's just not something I need. So even peer pressure didn't slow me down.

Right. Amazing. Impressive. Well, I mean, your whole story's impressive. Thank you so much for sharing it with us today. And so many good nuggets. Hopefully everybody got some great takeaways from today's, and I've certainly have some notes for myself that I can't wait to implement. So appreciate the time today. Thank you so much. And, uh, looking forward to hanging out with you back in Austin when I get back out there again.

Yeah, absolutely. Let me know when you're in town.

All right.

Yeah. I appreciate it, Eric.

Thank you. And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the Real Mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.