3 Leadership Investment Strategies to Secure Your Future (feat. Mark B. Murphy)

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum and welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we help empower leaders and strengthen teams to to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on emotional fitness in the financial sector and my guest is Mark Murphy. Mark is the Chief Executive Officer of Northeast Private Client Group and is the author of three books including the just launched title, the Ultimate A roadmap to grow your business and build multi generational wealth. Mark has been ranked number one in New Jersey and number 15 in the nation on the Forbes America's top financial Security professionals list for 2022. His company, Northeast Private Client Group, is a national financial planning and wealth management firm which focuses on the process by which clients use financial products rather than the products themselves. Mark believes true financial wealth is developed with a high level of emotional fitness driven by wealth accumulation strategies and a plan that will work under all circumstances. So welcome Mark. I'm excited to learn more about your unique mindset.

Well, thank you, Susan. First of all, I appreciate you and you were so kind to mention my most recent book. I also have a copy of my favorite book that I've just read, which is your book the Leaders Playlist. So thank you. Natalie was so impressed. I made our entire leadership team read that book as well. So that's wonderful. I just want to tell you, we're huge fans of you as well. But you know, I, you know, people, I think what I've always focused on is that, you know, people always want to figure out how do I create wealth, you know, how do I create wealth, you know, wealth. And so what I've said for probably 30 years is I've said, you know, money markets, CDs, IRAs, 401ks, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, blah, blah, blah. Most of our clients will have some or all those assets. Most of our clients will have will, you know, will have some or all those assets all their life. But at best, they're inflation adjusted holding tanks. You always say if Bill Gates was on the phone with us today, he wouldn't say I'm worth $110 billion because of my 401k or because of my mutual funds. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's really only three ways to create wealth, and that's either investing in your business or some other operating company. It's investing in real estate, it's financing deals. And I'll leave out divorce and inheritance. You can do it that way too, but I don't think we'd focus on that as well. And so one of the concepts that we've, you know, we've worked on, you know, quite extensively is, and I've, I've been working on this with my partner and friend and been hearing about it from, and I've really started to explore it is that Japanese concept of aaki, you know, where the four questions you ask are, you know, you ask, am I passionate about this business? You know, the first question, the second question you would ask yourself, am I good at it? The third question you ask is, does the world need that product or service? And then the fourth question we ask is, can you get paid to do it? And so, you know, it's got to be kind of a yes to all of those things. And for your audience, which I think, you know, I, you know, I understand to be a lot of CEOs and owners of companies, but also some senior executives of some very large companies is I've always thought the best investments entrepreneurial thinking people make, and that includes people that are not the CEOs of their companies is when they invest in themselves. And so when I look at things, I look at things pretty simply and I say there's only two things. There's either expenses or there's investments. And I, and if you're an investment in my organization, you're always on the chopping block. But if, if you can give us at least a four or five to one return or more on our money, I have almost an unlimited appetite for investment. You know, there's not too many places where you can get a 4 or 500% return on your money or better. And it's something that you can control, that you're an expert in and, and allows you to, allows you to grow that business. So if I only had $1 to invest, I always tell our clients to put it in their company. And it's also, then you go and say, well, you know, so many of the senior executives, you know, that's easy if you're, you're an owner of the company or the CEO to do it. If you're a senior executive in a company, that still makes sense, but it's more about an entrepreneurial mindset, meaning, you know, oftentimes it's not only in the entity, sometimes it's in helping that executive be able to acquire the skill sets necessary to get the next job they want or to improve the ebit of their company. Sometimes for them it's investing in education or it's investing in leadership skills, or it's investing in building a network around them. It's a variety of things to prepare them for that next opportunity. Because I think there's so many people working so hard day to day that I think one of the things that I think people really appreciate is somebody that can just slow them down for a very short period of time and say, I'm working so hard today at the task is at hand, but is someone helping me to happily create and shape and drive that vision of where we want to be? And so that's why, you know, you always say, I always say I'm a key business strategist, critical thinker and financial advisor. I always put that third because I think the first two are more critical.

Yeah. So I love what you're saying with regards to investing in yourself should be thought of like a business. And how much time and, and effort and resources are you putting against growing yourself and your leadership? Clearly I'd be totally on board on that, on that conversation because it does make the difference. How do you know you're making the right level of investment? And the reason I say that is because I think most are underinvesting. But have you ever come across a situation where you think somebody's over investing in that?

Well, I think if you're, if you believe you're getting a 4 or 5 to 1 return on your money or more, the answer is, the answer is it's possible, but rarely, but you know, it is, it certainly is possible. But I think what you have to do if you're an entrepreneur is you have to start with a concept called cash confidence. Meaning I think the first thing you have to do is to make sure that you have cash confidence so you have the ability to make the long term investments in your business. I think, you know, the reason why people don't achieve the success that they want or sometimes get stalled is because they, the plan gets interrupted because there's either cash confidence in the business, there's a lack of cash confidence in the business, or in their personal lives where they cannot make the necessary investments. They need to grow the business. You know, they see the path, but they don't have the ability to do that. So it starts, I think with cash, with, with cash confidence and that's, that's.

Essentially cash flow or yeah, you're having.

The ability to have either that money in the bank or, or ARR annual recurring revenue that comes from other sources so that they have the wherewithal to be able to do that if you have to. You know, you know, so many people, and we're not talking about people making hundreds of, just hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but making millions of dollars and even, even beyond millions of dollars a year oftentimes are dependent upon that paycheck for their lifestyle. And so they really can't make long term investments in the business if they don't have, you know, the ability to, you know, the ability to see it out. You know, one of the things you mentioned, I love the, your concept of conscious leader. And, and to me, the kind of, the turning point of that was I used to think that kind of core values was sort of like a consultant term, you know, where people talk about their core values and create core values and those sort of things. And you know, I was kind of young and not, didn't, didn't really understand it clearly and you know, kind of embraced it intellectually, but didn't really embrace it internally. And, and I think the, the, the change, the, the, the change in my mindset was as following when I stopped thinking about people as expenses and I started thinking about investing in the people in our company, that's when the thing just didn't grow. You know, we were successful, but it grew geometrically when I started to think of them as investments. You know, so when people say to me, you know, when I hear a business owner say, you know, my payroll is my biggest expense, well, I've said, well, if they're an expense, you should fire them all. But if they're an investment, you know, how do you pour in those people? And then, and then the. So, so once you get that mindset, then the second mindset is, is the mistake that at least I made for a long time was I would just throw bodies and money at problems because we had the ability to do that. And, and all I did was kind of create more complexity and more confusion and more other things that were undesirable. And then as you, as you got, you kind of got that core values and I sort of sat down finally and I started to work on what I thought was important and the core values to me, and when I started to get those crystallized, it then became clear is that I interviewed every employee and I interviewed every prospective employee on my core values. And it was clear to me that people that did not have one or two of my core values could not be long term successful in that business. And there Was exit visas imminent? And if they were being interviewed, they certainly wouldn't be part of the organization. And it's. It's amazing to me that when you have a group that really, you know, understands what you're doing and has the capability to do their job, but has your core values, you've got an organization that, that. That can fly. So to give you an example, say one of our core values is. I would sit down with somebody and say, hey, Susan, you know, one of our core values is we not only want to create an experience, we want to create a wow experience for every single client we have. So if you don't wake up every day totally jazzed to create that experience for that client, you are going to be miserable here. And those people outside my door are going to hate your guts. They're going to hate you, because that's what they do. They wake up every day and you sort of go value by value by value. And the idea is that once you start to get those people that are aligned with you, and then you, you know, and then, you know, it's amazing how much smarter I got when I got people that were aligned with my values and, and, you know, and wanted to be there and had the capability.

Couldn't agree more. I've recently had the same thing, understanding that for me, authenticity is such a core value. Being willing to speak up about challenges but successes, and most recently realized that some new people hired weren't quite aligned with that, and I didn't. They wouldn't speak up with an authentic voice, and that doesn't fit our culture ultimately.

So I do agree.

Now, what's the term emotional fitness mean? Tell me about that.

Well, I think when you're, you know, you talk about the four types of intelligence. You know, everybody knows what IQ is and, you know, just raw, natural intelligence. And. And people are very familiar with, you know, the emotional intelligence. Can you read, you know, you know, can you read the room? Can you see people? Can I see that Susan's happy or engaged or she's folding her arms and, you know, is not with me or angry or something? I think people have written, spoken a lot about that for a long time, you know, that you then have social quotient. You know, how do I move in a room? Do people like me? You know, do they, you know, do do. Is it appropriate, that sort of stuff? I think that's there, but I think one of the most prized intelligence is adversity quotient, where the idea is that when you're handling people's money or you're in a difficult situation or you're negotiating or you're doing whatever when everything's going fine, everybody's great. It's all. It's all, you know, champagne and caviar. It's all, you know, hugs and kisses. But when that adversity comes, do you have the ability to flip that script and turn that problem into an opportunity? And do you need to be emotionally fit when that occurs? Because you see so many people that are really bright, capable, extraordinary people that when the heat gets turned up or that adversity occurs, you see some of the worst behavior or say things that I, you know, like you kind of turn in a meeting, you go, I can't believe that person just said that. This person is brilliant. They. What could you have possibly thought to make that, to make that happen?

I love this. Also, we have an incredible assessment I should tell you about called WEQ that we use. It's not ours, but we partner with a company who runs the assessment. And what it does is measure your internal experience under stress or conflict. And what that internal experience, what you think, feel and believe and what the other person can you best judge what the other person thinks, feels, and wants. Sorry, it should be what I think, feel and want. And how cognizant am I of that and the other person in the middle of stress and conflict? Because I do think this adversity quotient is super important. We may be one way, but, man, when we're under stress or conflict, what shows up and what's the internal dialogue that's going on that's going to really impact can you show up as a conscious leader or not?

Well, absolutely. The other thing, I've spent a lot of time over the last 30 years with Dan Sullivan, the strategic coach. And so one of the first concepts you learn in the very beginning is you learn about how to identify and create your own unique ability. And so one of the things we do in our organization is make sure that we are having people work in their unique ability. You know, I mean, that we talk about. There's only, you know, a few things you could do. There's. There's kind of crappy things. There's things you're either good or competent at or your unique ability. And so, you know, getting rid of the crappy stuff is easy and, and. But I think the hard part is kind of breaking up with busy and getting rid of the stuff that you're either good or competent at so you can focus on your unique, unique ability. And I Think. Then the other conversation that I hear people working on and I hear like you hear my parents voice in my ear, which I think they were wrong, was, you know, they take a look and they say, well, here's a weakness. I think you should work on your weakness. And so, you know, if I was a championship tennis player and I had an amazing backhand but a weak forehand, I don't think I could win the US Open or Wimbledon with only one stroke. I need to have a strong, you know, forehand and backhand and serve. I'd need to work on my weakness. But I think in most times in business, when you create an organization, you don't want people having strong weaknesses. You want to really focus on their unique ability where they're in creation and fascination mode. And that just creates, encourage, increases the culture that you have and the joy that people have coming to work because they're always in creation and fascination mode rather than doing things they're just either competent at or crappy work, you know.

Yeah. And it, you know, it can have you stay in your comfort zone as well. I know how to do this. It's easy for me. Or run into all sorts of delegation challenges. Well, I don't trust the other person to do it as well, well as I can. Even though I can do it, I'm competent at it. It's not really where my inspiration and joy is. And to me that's a wasted day in your life. If you can connect to the inspiration and joy that fuels you, you're actually not giving, giving your all. And, and I really want to approach every day where I do that. So I've got to find something hopefully most of my day that brings that out in me.

The other concept that you've got, you're also getting good at. And I think this is a, it's a quintessential definition of being an entrepreneur is Everybody's working at 120% capacity. You know, there's very few people that they're listening to your podcast that are playing Candy Crush all day or you know, you know, getting their, you know, their nails done is. So the hard part is not only breaking up with busy, but it's letting go of something good to create room for something that's great. And, and, and so we spend an awful, an awful lot of time with, with that. The other thing I, I also have focused on and become clear is that I think too many people, including us early in my career, we would focus on sort of the thing we do. Like we'd say we're wealth managers, we're estate planners, we're retirement specialists, we're tax advisor. You know, we're, you know, go. I can go through a whole litany of 20 things that are, let's call core competencies in what we do. But I think ultimately what you want to be is you want to be a marketing firm first, you want to be a training company second, you want to be a human capital firm or human, you know, public, you know, human. Human capital from third. And then you want to be all those various core competencies. So I don't think that they can ever be higher than fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth down the list. And ultimately I've just come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how good your business is or how great it is, and you hope it's great, but there are so many, there's so many great people that we get to meet who can't get their message out and are either not, not successful or clearly not as successful as they could be because the world cannot. Does not know and can't get to the. And can't get to their business. And I think that's where we spend a lot of times with clients. You know, as a, like, as a key business strategist or critical thinker. You also, I think, want to focus on, as I said, not just your core competencies, but, but I think in our business we focus on kind of fixing problems. Like as an example, you know, one of the famous cases I was involved in, and this was now going on, you know, 18 or 20 years ago, it was front page of the Wall Street Journal when we sold whole notes music catalog tax free or, or, you know, the story I'm proudest of because my son was involved in it and he was, you know, he's been part of our company for a couple of years. We had a, we had a family in Afghanistan that was on the death list because they were working for the United States government against the Taliban. And they had four little children. And we were able to use our contacts to be able to get on the phone within an hour with a Taliban commander and get that family with those four little kids where they were looking, where they were killing people and they were looking to kill that, not the entire family, and got them through the checkpoints and out of the country. And so, you know, I think that the fun part of that business is not, you know, that, that the value and the magic always occurs in just being an incredible listener and being seen as a resource to people. That's where the magic occurs as opposed to, you know, sitting down. And you know, what's a core competency is to sit down and say to somebody, you know, there's only two asset classes. Even though I, I know there's dozens and dozens of asset classes. And we, we believe that when we, when we manage money. But there's only two classes of money where you sit down and you say for our purpose, it's only paychecks and either free capital or playchecks. And so the idea is, what we want to do is create a series of assets where people can either get a guaranteed or a highly reliable or reliable rate of return on their money and we'll call those paychecks. And then we want to have another series of assets where you can spend it, you can save it, you can give it away, but the important thing is it will not be responsible for producing income for that family. So if you have both paychecks and playchecks, you have financial freedom. But there's still one more level. The other thing we try to also do is make sure that people have earned income beyond normal retirement age. I think too many people are selling their companies, paying off debt, paying lots of income taxes, and then winding up with a, with a pot of money. But then they have to figure out how to redeploy that money as opposed to, you know, as opposed to continuing to, to nurture and gain that asset. So I call that their money machine. So that's why I always say if you have $1, we want to feed the money machine first. Kind of a complicated answer that you've.

Said are so different. I mean, first of all, you're far beyond just a traditional wealth manager. You're getting people out of hostage sit situation. That's pretty incredible. Well, clearly that's a mindset that extends far beyond the tactical of managing your money. How is it that you end up playing in those spaces as well?

Well, you know, I, I think also it's, you know, it's people around you. I think, I think that, you know, say in the money management space, you know, I mean, I don't think you would have anybody working for you that wasn't a cfa. I want people that have, have run their own funds before to manage our clients money. On the insurance side of our business, we have a medical director. I want to keep the, you know, a doctor on staff at all times so that I can go my doctor to the insurance companies underwriters and make sure our clients are getting the best offer. You Know, I want to be able to negotiate, you know, for instance, you know, one of the. You know, I want to be able to negotiate with our clients. Let's. For instance, let's say they're in the health care field. I want to develop strategies to get insurance companies to pay them more money for the same work, or I want them to be able to be able to get some buying power, to be able to lower their cost of acquisition, you know, so they can increase their profitability, or ebitda. I think the idea is that, you know, ultimately, it's. It's, you know, it's really. I mean, I think our business is really about being a great listener. And I think if you. If you. If you're a good listener, Susan, as I know you're an amazing listener. If you're a great listener and you ask powerful questions, people will tell you what they want. And then it's really easy to figure out how to get hired or how to get paid. If you can add more value than anybody else, and more importantly, if you can deliver exactly what the person has asked you. Remember, I think that the interesting thing is that the thing that's so Confounding to me 37 years later is you'll sit down with somebody and talk to them and have a process of, let's call it intelligent questions, and you'll sit down and ask them those pointed questions for, I don't know, 45 minutes, an hour, two hours, until you really get a handle of who they are. And then you'll come back at maybe a second meeting where you'll kind of make some comments and some recommendations and maybe lay out a clear strategy. And virtually every time, they'll sit with me and they'll say, how did you know that? That's exactly what I was thinking. And I keep thinking to myself, I'm not a mind reader. It's exactly what you told me in our first meeting. Like, it was.

It was like I listened and I.

Was like, exactly like you said. You wanted a, B, C, C and D. And I said, well, here's a plan to get a, B, C and D. They're going, this is amazing. Nobody's ever. And like, I. I'm like, I, like, hold my hand and I. And I'm like, I am still mesmerized this many years later that, you know, like, they think I've. I'm a mind reader. And I'm not a mind reader. You just ask good questions. And I think people want to be helped. They want to be able to trust somebody they want to be able to, to unburden. You know, I think sometimes when you're at a senior level at a very big company and there's a lot of politics there, or you're the CEO of your, your own company, I think it's a pretty lonely place sometimes, you know. You know, part of it is that it's hard to know who to trust. It's hard to unburden your fears. Let's call it to your employees. You want to cause panic in the, in the office, or if you're in a competitive world, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to, you know, share this opportunity that you have that maybe somebody will steal or, or a weakness you may have that somebody could capitalize on. And so I think, you know, part of it is, is it just. Just being somebody that can listen and ask great questions and then have the resources to help solve those problems. You know, it's a, it's a pretty fun way to get to make a living, you know?

Yeah, Yeah. I want to go back to something you said earlier on, because it could be taken perhaps the wrong way, or maybe I'm questioning myself if it only works in your field, which was if you don't meet you as my employee and tell me if I have this wrong, if you don't aren't giving me a 4 to 5 return in on my investment, then you're out the door, essentially. In your world, that's easy to measure because you're in financial services and the scorecard is very clear. In many other professions, the scorecard is not so clear, it's not so easily measurable. So how do I even know I'm getting four to five or even double my investment in that? And so I just want to ask you how your. If I have that philosophy right, and if so, how would someone outside of a pure numbers scorecard apply that?

Well, first of all, I think it all starts with humility, because I think hubris is the ruination of all who have it. So if you were able to talk to maybe my ex wife, she would say to you, she could tell you all of the things that I might have spent, say, $10,000 or more and invested in that did not work. But I own one of those. And she would have been correct, but especially when I was younger and was trying to figure things out more. Not that we're not always learning and growing, but I also would say to her, if we didn't do those half dozen things that didn't work, we wouldn't have done the other two or three things that made us millions or tens of millions of dollars. And so part of it is more of a, it's more of an art rather than a science. It's a scientific guess. And you get better and better at with experience and bringing the right team around. You bring the right people around. Me, I started making better decisions with not only a little wisdom and a little bit of trial and error, but also with bringing good people around you. I also think it's, you also have to have to allow for its lead behavior lag results. You know, oftentimes, you know, the hard thing in marketing as an example is to say, would we have gotten that business had we not done that marketing? Yeah. You know, would we have gotten that or would we have gotten that client anyway or would have come from some. Somebody else or, you know, maybe somebody re engaged deeper in our company that already had a relationship with. But we took it to a new level because they saw what we were doing. I think there's a lot of that and I think you have to allow that. It's not going to be scientific where you're going to be able to accurately predict what's, what's there. But, but I think, but I think that, I think as a rule of thumb to me would be in a general business, generally in a business, I think that, I think that people should be looking, and again, this is just kind of pulling it out of the air is I think, I think you should be willing to put maybe 20% of your profits and looking to reinvest that, to grow not only the value of your enterprise, but to grow your annual recurring revenue. And, and, and, and the one thing I would never do is, you know, I would never starve my money machine, which is my business. But then I would use, you know, the additional money that I did not put in my business to then invest in those businesses that I referred to as paychecks so that it would have recurring annual revenue or annual recurring revenue and cash flow from those other businesses, which would make me truly financially independent. And so, so, but the first part of your answer is you don't know for sure because if, if I could guarantee you that if you spent a dollar, you'd make five dollars or more.

Right.

You do that all day. Yeah, but I, but, but I think that, you know, that's part of being the entrepreneur. Is that part of the, part of the ability to, I don't want to say take risks, but maybe take some risks. To believe in your own ability to succeed. And if you're truly an expert in your field and your business, even the right people around you, I think you can reduce the risk so that you're taking very few uncompensated risks. And that doesn't mean that it won't succeed, but it won't be uncompensated. It's not something where you have to find a needle in a haystack or it's a billion to one kind of thing where the capital you're risking is a lot less than what the potential upside would be. And so I think that works in any, in any business. And I think that, you know, like it's, it's clear to me as an example for people with cash confidence is we're clearly, in my opinion, it's not a matter of with when or if or when. It's when we go into a recession now. It's, it's a, it's a matter of opinion whether it'll be deep or it'll be shallow. But I don't see a position where there's not going to be. You're already seeing layoffs, you're seeing people curry back, there's a hold back their spending. But if you have truly cash confidence, most of the wealth in this world doesn't happen during the boom times. All of the great investments, all of the great wealth that I have created and help people create, not all of it, but most of it or a lot of it or it was certainly accelerated when you had cash and people needed cash. You know, when things were on sale, when you had opportunities, you know, you have, you know, like you talk. I. The first book I wrote was on mergers and acquisitions. And so the idea is that, you know, when, whenever, when, when the economy is going well in any industry, people that run mediocre businesses are doing well. So if you say to them, hey Susan, I'd like to go buy your business, they're like, you know, go, you know, go to hell. Just. But when they're either over levered or they're not run properly or they're not there, when you go into recessionary times, they start leaking oil, they start going into the red very quickly. And so that's when we teach our clients to go in and steal that company who was not for sale for pennies on the dollar. And then when the world comes back, they've created exponential wealth. Yeah, I think you want to do that in every single industry. It's, you know, bad times for good companies are A time to succeed. You know, remember Covid? I mean, what's the one lesson we learned out of COVID I mean, we learned a lot of lessons, but I think the one lesson that I took from COVID or one of the lessons was that if you are a great company, you use Covid as an opportunity to explode and turbocharge your company, create new capabilities and to adapt and get ahead of the curve of what the new environment would be. And if you were a poorly run or mediocre company, you use Covid as an excuse why all the things didn't work out well in your life. And companies are no different than people.

Never waste a crisis and an ability to turn that into an opportunity. And ultimately it's, what are you choosing? Are you choosing fear in the face of a recession or dealing with reception? Are you going to buy into the fear around you? Are you going to choose differently and choose expansion because that will make the difference in your success or not. You actually have to choose a different mindset and not succumb to the sense of fear around you.

One of my. There's a book that came out about, I don't know, I think it's two years ago that described our business perfectly like or described our business. I wish I had written the book. I just wasn't articulate enough or smart enough to put the concepts together. But it was exactly the concept that we put together 35 years ago. I decided that I wanted to be a hero to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking people. And I've created a business around aligning with other firms and other people that wanted to be a hero to the same group so that we had that immediate entrepreneurial synergy where the client instantly recognized there is something different going on here. This is not your father's Oldsmobile. This is not, you know, the, you know, going to be the, you know, the. The same old, same old. We are going to be doing things. We are, you know, we want people that are not afraid to be different. They're afraid to be the same. And then the concept of who, not how, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, was in that book they talked about that the question people are always asking in any industry is, is the four questions, how do I grow my business? How do I grow my income? How do I grow my freedom of time? How do I grow my freedom of relationships? And it's wrapped around one of those questions or multiple questions. And the book really says that that's the wrong question to ask. The right question is, who do I need to Collaborate with to grow my business. Who do I need to collaborate with to grow my income or my freedom of time or freedom of relationships? And I think that when you put that together, it's an unbeatable force and it creates a lot of entrepreneurial synergy.

Well, how you collaborate and having the mindset for collaboration is, is really the foundation of leadership. Leadership is about relationships and collaborating and aligning others and creating capacity in others. So it's truly, yes, you have to lead yourself, but it's also very other focused. And if you're going to stay holed up in your own little shell, you're going to find you won't advance as quickly, your business won't grow.

Right.

I just want to end on asking you what's one thing that you would suggest entrepreneurs and those who want to push forward with entrepreneurial thinking within large companies do today or do tomorrow to get a different result in their life?

You started the question with emotional fitness. You brought that at the very top of the hour. And as I do, I think the number one job of an entrepreneur is to protect his or her confidence. And so the one thing that I would do differently now moving, you know, going to be 6, turning 60 is in my 20s and 30s and even to my mid-40s. I worried about a lot of things. I worried about our business, I worried about money, I worried about a variety of things because you know, I grew up dumb and broke and suffered New York and grew up, you know, grew up Irish Catholic. So there was a lot of guilt there. We were, we learned and you know, a lot of worries about those things. And the one thing I would wish if I could talk to my 21 year old self would have been just not to worry so much. It was, it's going to be okay that I tied up a lot of, you know, sleepless nights or weekends that I was, you know, that, that endless loop of thinking going through in my head of stuff I was worried about, you know, people wouldn't, wouldn't bring me any bad news on Friday afternoon because I'd, I'd ruminate on it all weekend and ruin my weekend. And I, and I, and about 15 years ago I sort of let that go and my life not only got better but it allowed, it opened up then possibility to free that time to have much more joy in my life. You know, remember the, the, you know, you know, to, to not only create even more wealth, but I could work on my health, I could work on more purpose, I could work on, more on, on what I wanted to do and to have the incredible joy in my life where, and crowd out that, that worry. So I just want to thank you.

I love that. Certainly.

Thank you.

In my, my experience, too, and it goes back to, are you going to choose fear and. Because the anxiety and the stress is a form of fear. And are you going to choose that ability to see opportunity and confidence that you're going to be. It's all going to work out. So thank you so much.

I'm just so, just so honored to be part of this podcast. I'm just such a big fan. Just keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for your confidence in me.

Oh, thank you. And where can people learn more about you, Mark?

You can reach us at info@neastprivate.com and, and I think you can find my book at least the latest one at any airport in America or on Amazon. And you know what? Right now we're number one on Amazon. So I'm, I'm very proud. My parents, my parents, you know, so I'm, I just feel good because I thought the only person that would buy my book would be my mother. So now, now that we sold more, we've, we've sold at least two books. It's terrific. It's just, I can't believe the amount of books that are being sold. So thank you very much.

Oh, that's excellent. Well, congratulations. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Bob Glazier, whose passion is helping individuals and organizations build their capacity and elevate their performance. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.

Sa.