Welcome to the making of a DM. How do you deal with stealing, betrayal and cheating in your business? Huh? This show gets real and raw and deep. So with that said, let's get started. Busy. It, what I know and how I did it, to discover freedom. There ain't no question mark. Kevin's when he's stepping to die, he's closing deals, time to tell him what the deal stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker, but I'm not just a deal maker, dream maker.
0:44 Hey, there. It's your boy. Mark Evans, DM, welcome to another making of the DM podcast show. That's right, you are the deal maker and dream maker of your life. I'm excited to be here with you today as I sit here in the tree house, overlooking this beautiful fall morning. It's about 70 degrees, perfect in Ohio, the tree collars are absolutely amazing. I don't know about you, but I love fall. It's absolutely the best time of the year for me. Little bit of a sweatshirt weather, Jean weather, hanging out with the kids, the smells, the views, the looks. It's just pretty cool season. Anyways, I want to let you know I appreciate you. I appreciate you following me on this journey. Being here, we're getting up to our you know, I think almost four years of doing podcast shows the making of the DMT. I remember sitting at the park shooting my first episode to you guys and just connecting. I just want to share. Doesn't cost you anything to be here. Your time is very valuable, so that's the biggest cost, and I take that very serious. I'm not here just to talk shit. I'm not here to make friends. I'm not. I'm just really here to give you insights. If you're sitting in the tree house with me right now, we're overlooking this 200 foot down in the ravine. We got animals running around, Turkey, deer, you know, squirrels, Fox, Coyote, probably checking things out. And I just want to let you know you're over in the chair with me, and it's like you and I talking, and I have the privilege to work with 1000s of entrepreneurs over the years. I'm 28 and a half years in the game of entrepreneurship, and I want to let you know is like, I do this because I want to give back to a most amazing community in the world, entrepreneurs.
Obviously, we're dealing with the election cycle right now. We're only a couple weeks out or the last get out there and vote FYI, and a lot of chaos, a lot of craziness, a lot of people doing stuff out of the ordinary, and it's different. It's weird. And I want to talk to you guys about stuff when I'm talking to entrepreneurs, and I have 150 something people in the deal maker Alliance, 30 guys in the DM family, you know, and all these guys are investing a lot of money to be a part of these communities, to change their life in other people's life that they care about. So I take this stuff very serious. These podcast shows. Last week, I was hanging out with the DM family. About 20 guys came out to Ohio. We hung out at the farm for a day, and then we hung out at the factory for a day. Just to connect, I brought in, you know, 71 year old guy that does billion dollar projects. You want to see him on social media. He's not on social media. No one even knows this guy is very wealthy, not just mentally, but financially, right? He just has a massive amounts of wealth mentally in the game of business that a lot of people don't understand. So being in the right community, being in the right groups, really can make or break you with where you're going. A lot of you listen to my voice. I don't know if you've ever been a part of an amazing community or not, and if you are, that's awesome. But the deal maker Alliance is a special place. It is amazing human beings. I believe, literally anything you need help with in your business. I don't care what business you're in, it could change your life. I've seen it happen over and over and over, and it will continue to do so, and it actually only happens quicker and easier as we do more. Not say there's not work required, but as Diem Alliance gets bigger, we have more connections. We always talked about the six degrees of separation.
Well, with the social media and the internet, we're only one separation away from a massive connection. And I think a lot of people don't really understand the value of relationships at that next level, which I'm talking today to the Diem Alliance, about massive collaboration. It is the ultimate currency. If you have relationship capital stored up, you could literally generate so much money. There's so many people listening to my voice right now. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but a positive way. You're working way too hard for way too little, and it's not that and again, I'm not saying hard work's not required, but smart hard work is. Where the magic is at. So anyways, these kind of things we talk about in the deal maker Alliance and the DM family, and if it's something you're interested in, you could always reach out to me on social media, on Instagram at Mark Evans DM, just say podcast DMA talk. Podcast dash DMA talk. I know it's you. I communicate with you 100% I don't have staff doing that for me on social I will do that. But I want to talk to you guys about sharing the show, letting other people know about it. Share it on social media. Leave your five star review, let people know the show exist. I wish it was 10 times bigger. I wish it was 1000 times bigger, and we're working on it, so stay tuned. We are up to some cool stuff here, and without you. It doesn't exist. So I get asked a lot. It's been happening a lot more lately. You know, they're coming to me saying, Mark, I have employees and vendors, people stealing from me. What do I do? And weird circumstance? Well, number one, what do you do? You fire them. That's the simple answer. But I want to, I want to share some stories with you that's happened to me and it's going to happen again, I'm sure, in the future, just not as many times, and you know, all that good stuff, and I'll talk about that, but my biggest thing is the reason I want to share this. I don't want you to lose your niceness. I don't want you to lose I don't want you to see the world as bad.
I don't want you to see the world through a lens of bitterness. I don't want you to see the world in negative lens at all. Right. We live in a beautiful world, and I know if you listen to me, it's not that way. But like, I get to connect with amazing team members every day, amazing entrepreneurs every day, amazing family. Like, I love people. I love connecting with people, and unfortunately, sometimes we get taken advantage of, we get stolen from, we get ripped off. We have betrayal, right with what we think our friends that are literally just in the game because we're paying them, and they're acting like your friend. And when that changes, the cycles, when it's like, hey, I need you to send me money back now, all of a sudden, you're the devil. So we'll talk about these things, because I do know we all deal with them. I remember I was small time business guy, actually crazy entrepreneur, psycho entrepreneur, to be honest, small town. I was in Columbus, Ohio, back then on executive drive. Her name, I forget her name. Her name was Jessica, or something like that. It was an assistant I hired, and she had access to my credit card, and I'm so busy running and gunning to be honest with you, I never really checked my credit card statements ever. I didn't have checks and balances. So I'm going to share with you lessons of what I've done over the years to minimize, not prevent, but minimize these things and ideally prevent. That'd be amazing, but that's just not how real world works. But I remember Jessica, she had my credit card, and my accountant called me one day, and she's like, Wow, you are literally, must be crazy busy, but I don't see more revenue coming in. And I'm like, What do you mean? And she's like, you're spending a lot of money at gas stations. And, you know, like, daily, like, you know, $600
8:00 a day. I'm like, What are you talking about? Like, you know, we fill up once a day. That's it. We have two trucks. No big deal. And this is when I did, like, construction on my projects. I had multiple is my car, and we had another truck out in the field done maintenance and rehab, you know, just project management and stuff. So I didn't think anything about it. Just kind of kept going on. Like, yeah, we're crushing it, right? You know, very delusional entrepreneur. So a couple weeks goes by and she calls me. She's like, Mark, this is in the 1000s of dollars, like, we have to see what's going on. Keep mine this Jessica girl showing up every day. She's all chipper and smiling and happy. And come to find out, every day, she was meeting her friends at the gas station and filling up all their gas tanks with my credit card. And once I discovered this, I really felt saddened, because I thought she was a good person. She acted like a good person. She, you know, showed up for work every day, and you know, clearly why, because she was hooking up all her friends. So I immediately fired her. I actually was going to press charges on her, because that's what my lawyer told me to do. I ended up not doing that. I don't know if that's right or wrong. Maybe I should have, but at the end of the day, I mean, this is a college girl, right? That I felt like, you know, listen, stupid mistake. She's just trying to be cool, whatever. So that goes by, and I kind of started getting, like, pissed, so like, now all of a sudden, and you've heard me talk about, like, when people are buying stuff on my card, I'd like, you know, oh, I got post it notes for 40 cents. And I'm like, why'd you do that? You could have for 32 cents. It made me focus on a lot of little things that I normally wouldn't focus on, and I shouldn't have done that. What I should have done is created a checks and balance system with accounting, someone that was measuring what was actually happening and keep mine two weeks prior, my bookkeeper called me and said something, but I was so busy, I just didn't do it. You know, you and I are all the same. We we have stuff on our credit card. If you've ever, by the way, I've never balanced a checkbook. Me, personally, I. I've never looked at my credit card statements and, you know, done this versus that necessarily, ever. So I have team members where, you know, okay, they're charging now, they have a card with their name on it, so we know all the charges that they're running through it, and we have a checks and balance. It's like, cool.
What is that for? What, you know, just a quick verification process. And, you know, so I wish I'd have done that a lot sooner. That was like six years in the game for me, so I could only imagine how much I lost. And the truth is, where I'm at today. My journey is, I had a partner in the beginning of my game where this guy stole hundreds of 1000s of dollars from me. This guy was building stuff at his house. He was process, you know, he was hanging out all the time. By the time. By the way, there's different ways of stealing, stealing time, stealing money and stealing, you know, paychecks, like taking a paycheck and not working, doing other stuff, right? You know, I know some, but kids are out there. Guys and gals are out there, adults, even where they have multiple jobs because they're virtual, and they actually have systems out there that makes you look like you're working and now you're collecting two or three checks from different companies that's fucking stealing, straight up. That's a massive issue. So anyways, this guy stole from me. I was thankful for it. This sounds crazy, but I was thankful for it because I always thought, like, man, it could have been so much more if he played his cards, right. He could have stole so much more from me. By the way, it wasn't his fault. It's my fault. It was my company. Even though we are partners, it was my responsibility to have checks and balances. You know, this is a learning experience, and I you're going to hear this repetitive through me. This is how this moves forward, because if not, you will be bitter.
You will very rarely take massive moves, because you'll be stuck in fear. And I don't want that to happen, because there's so much amazing opportunities with great people that exist, and I want to share it with you. So that happened checks and balances, Jessica, happened checks and balances. It made me better. It started making me better. But it's not always 100% so as you're scaling, growing, moving, shifting. And then I went virtual 105 right? I went down to Florida, turned it into a seven year trip around the world. I don't know if I've ever shared the story. I don't think I have, actually, but one time I got a phone call, and I very actually, I never answer unknown numbers, like numbers that I don't know who it is. They'll go to voicemail. They don't leave me a voicemail because I tell them not to. If they have my email, they can email me, then I'll get back with them. But I had a feeling to answer this call one day, I remember this very clear. I was sitting in Florida, out back by the pool. I just answered the phone, and it was Chase Bank. And they're like, Hey, your payments past due? I'm like, What are you talking about? I don't have a Chase credit card. They're like, yes, you do. It's $160,000 on it that you've charged, and it's past due. I'm like, what? So I get the details. I ask them, Who opened the account? How long it's been open? It's been open for 14 months. And I'm like, Cool, send me the statements. I don't have login. I don't I don't even know what they're talking about, right? But it's under my name, it's under my credit, everything, it's under me, everything under my company, all this stuff. So someone that had access to my business documents, someone forged my name, someone did a lot of stuff they shouldn't have done. So I get the information and I start digging deep.
It was a top tier person in one of my companies. They've been around for a long time. Come to find out that on that 160 uncovered, they literally stole over $4 million from our organizations, and some of it's been paid back now, thank God. But it was millions of dollars of discovery, millions. And I think about this because I have checks and balances. And the way they were running it, they're very smart people, the way they're running it, they were diverting the thing. So, like, my team never even saw that on the books. So it was never on the books. It was off the books. It was, it was always like it was a different P like they were running it kind of like a separate business that was my business, but wasn't my business, if you will, right? So we never could, we never saw it. So what we had to start doing, one, one, that's a massive fraud case, and two, like I felt on, to be honest with you, I thought this individual was a ride or die individual, like we're gonna go to the moon together, or we're gonna crash together. And I never in a million years thought that someone would done this to me and my family and my future. And it sucked. It was a very real conversation, a lot of crying from the other individual, this man, or what he thinks to be a man, and, you know, it got deep, it got real, and he could go to prison because of it right? He could have and so we had a real talk. Thank God there was a solution. He made it right, and we're out of that. But these are things that can happen and will happen, and I'm sharing raw, real stuff with you.
This is not fluff. Bs make you feel good, and I'm not trying to talk you out of business. I'm talking you in to business because I want you to know that this is a part of the game. There's no way to get over it, but people can steal it from you, like it could be a vendor, right? I've had lawyers where they just send multiple bills and they over bill you, right? 10s of 1000s of dollars. So you catch it, you address it, and you move on, right? You don't pay them. This happens when I used to build houses all the time, right? You're getting multiple lumber packages, multiple contractors are overcharging you. This happens in real estate all the time, real estate property management, right? They nickel and dime you. They're charging you $1,700 for this, and then 350 for that, for a service charge. And it's like, dude, like they're stealing from you. That's stealing unless it's outlined and what they're going to do, they're not getting paid. We have to have a very clear understanding of this is what you get paid for, and this is what we pay right? So it makes you tighten up the ship, slow down a little bit on certain things. And again, this is shit for me. I absolutely hate but it's mandatory, because this is your job as a CEO, business owner, business leader. Your job is to protect the ultimate domain, the business at all cost. Right? So people are stealing from you. You got to whack them. You got to cut them. If people are, you know, over billing you, got to address it, put in processes in place. And if it happens consistently, you got to let them go and go find new vendors. But, yeah, this is real stuff. I just want you to know another one. This is another thing that happened. So we have companies that have affiliates, right? And an affiliate is someone that else here promotes your product or services, and they get paid a fee. Well, we had some situations going on.
We had all these great affiliates. I mean, they're making a lot of money with us. And one, actually two guys in particular, and again, I'm a I'm a relationship loyalty guy. So I treat people how I want to be treated. I do the right thing, even if it sucks. Blah, blah, blah. So I went to this individual, because when there's refunds, well, you refund the money back to the money back to the client. So this individuals brought clients, and they collected the money and they got paid whatever, and but these clients wanted a refund, and that's what we do, so we refunded, and sure enough, the affiliates said, F you, I'm not giving you money back.
17:18 It's like, wait a minute, that's 1000s of dollars. That's the deal. That's the agreement. There is agreements there. And sure enough, they pretty much said, Mfu, you know, you're the devil. You know, all this crazy stuff. And keep in mind, they've made many, many, many, many more 1000s of dollars than what we were asking them back for to do the right thing, to the point where it actually almost caused that company to go bankrupt. It was that bad because I actually had to step in and backfill a lot, a lot a lot of money to do the right thing. So you look at these situations, and if you ever wonder why the bigger someone is in the game of business and life, you'll see that their circle is very small. It's very, very, very hard to penetrate in we don't need any more friends, because it's like, I know the ones to trust. I know the loyal ones. I know the ones that will be around forever. I know the ones that will do the right thing, right? And this happens at all levels, right? Like, I just want you to know some of my best investments are investing with people that don't need my money. They have more money than me. Right? Those are my best investments. They always do the right thing. They have money.
They're not they don't need my money. They want it to participate and grow with them. Have you ever understood why big developments always have multiple joint venture partners? Have you ever understood why these big companies that ever that all of them go big, always bring on strategic Capital Partners, right? If the company doesn't need, necessarily always need the money. The money is a good, good component, but the company might be generating way more money, and not only that, what they're really looking for is guidance and relationship capital. So those are the best deals, as opposed to the person that you always hear me talk about, when with winners, right? We have a tendency. All of us listening to my voice, have a tendency to help losers, help people with problems. Well, listen, I don't mind helping you if you have a problem, as long as you have money to solve the problem. Are you a loser? Meaning, do you steal? Do you lie? Do you cheat? Do you not want to do the work? Are you not willing to do the work like I don't want to try to fix broken people. They can't even fix themselves, right? So it's something that drives me bananas, because I genuinely want to help people, and if you're like me, you almost try to help them more than they want to help themselves. And you're going to do that in the beginning, but you'll quickly realize it's a waste of time, energy, effort, money, mental, power. Because why you're spending 90% of your time on these fucking losers? You're only spending 10% on the winners. And guess what? The winners keep winning. But if I could spend 100% with winners, we're all winning 1000 times bigger. I want you to take that nugget and think about that. Love. Look at who you're hanging with. Look at who you're trying to help. Are you pushing them? Are you pulling them? Are you dragging them?
Are they fucking stuck in concrete? Like, what is going on? I want you to really think about that and adjust accordingly, because when you win with winners, winning becomes more fun, right? You don't have to feel guilty. Like, you know you when you're working with losers, dude, you got to be careful in what you say. You got to be careful how you say it. You got to tiptoe with around. Well, you know, Jim, you've been doing an okay job. But like, Listen, man, no motherfucker, you're suck at what you're doing. You know better. You got to do this. You said you're gonna make 10 calls. You made two calls. Step it up, or step out period. You say it to a winner, they go make 100 calls. You say it to a loser, they go online and they bash you and call you a fucking dick. That's the truth, and we're better than that. We are in control of that, by the way. So if it keeps happening, you got to stop look in the mirror and ask yourself, what is the common denominator? It's you. So the only thing I can control is me. Therefore, I gotta change the way I bring on friends. I gotta change the way I bring on employees. I gotta change the way I manage my accounting practices.
21:13 I gotta change these things. And every time this happens, even with this guy that snagged for 4 million, I swear on my life. Before immediate flash, I want to break this guy's neck. Secondly, I said, Thank God it's 4 million instead of 40 million. It could always be worse. So that's the key to this talk today. What do you do when someone steals from you. What do you do when someone betrays you? It's okay to get pissed, but don't let the fear. Don't let the pissness. Don't let you know you getting upset. Don't let the betrayal control you. You control it. Use it as fuel. I remember when me and my partner split up, I literally was gonna fucking stomp on this guy's throat. I was pissed. I was naive. I was pissed. I used that as fuel to grow millions of times bigger than this guy. He could never compete with me. He never can, never will. He doesn't think like me, doesn't move like me, doesn't act like me, doesn't do anything like me, and I've been winning every day since now, I don't wish him harm, but he'll never fucking be allowed in my circle ever again, for obvious reasons, and that goes for anybody that's ever stolen. So I want you to, like, think about these things. Look at your situations as you get bigger. Accounting teams you could audit, right? You could have someone looking at your Books Weekly, your documents, your books, your invoices, and have a checks and balance system. If something's funky, if something looks off, it probably is. So you got to find out who it is. You got to address it accordingly, and you got to make sure like you're on top of this. This is not the sexy side of the business. This is actually something very hard for people like me to do. I don't like it. So every Thursday, at 10am I'm talking with my team on accounting about these particular situations.
Now I'm big enough at this point, honestly, where I have multiple layers, where I have people looking at it daily and weekly with me, and I have people driving it, people doing checks and balances. By the way, shit still falls through the cracks, not as much, but it definitely will happen. So this is why, anytime I even participate in businesses, I got a call coming up this week with a guy that we've done business with where he's been literally taking 20,000 a month out of the company I've invested in and saying the company's not making any money. It's like, yeah, because you're taking a quarter million dollars a year out of it, how do you expect it to make money? You know? So again, if I'm in the business and I'm running the books, my books look way different, very tight, very organized, very structured in the beginning. It was not like that. It's very sloppy, very overwhelming, you know. So you gotta hire good people in there. If you need help with that, let me know. I have people that I've hired over the years, third party companies. Now. We have all in house, mostly. But there are third party companies. There's some good ones, and there's some really, really shitty ones, really shitty ones. And the truth is, if I'm shooting straight with you, the majority are shitty. Straight up. They don't care. You're just a number. You just send them money every month. They send you reports 15 days after the month's over. So everything's reactive business planning, not proactive business planning. So there's the right way to do this and the wrong way to do this. So anyways, these are the things I want you to think about. And then one more thing you ever as an entrepreneur.
Have you ever thought like, Dude, why would anybody work for me? Why wouldn't everybody be an entrepreneur? Have you ever thought like that? Well, this is why. This is why. Because there is betrayal. You. Because it is hard, because you have to generate revenue. Your employees get paid before you do. Vendors get paid before you do. I know all these cool things say you got to pay yourself, and that's true, but like at the end of the day, it all is on your shoulders. As an entrepreneur, we make it look easy because we just do the work. We just keep staying moving. We never stop. We never quit. We will figure it out just through time. When you get in the right rooms, though, you're going to do this anyways, you're going to have these situations. We our goal is just to help you minimize them, help you push through a little faster. That's what the deal maker Alliance does. Is there to support you, to be there to guide you, to give you the tools and resources to help you grow. But this is why, truthfully, the majority of the world will never, ever, ever be an entrepreneur. It is not for the faint heart. It's tough. It's attacking. It's time consuming. It's stressful, it's exciting. It's scary as hell. A lot, you know, if you need to know how everything works before doing anything, you're never it's going to be very, very, very, very complicated for you over the years. Can be a tough life. Get around winners. Start winning with winners. Enjoy winning with winners. Winners win. They always win. They'll always figure out, even if they're getting punched in the fucking face and there's blood everywhere, they will figure out a way to win. That's what winners do. Stop focusing on the losers. Stop trying to fix broken people. Broken people can't even fix themselves. Why do you think we can? We can't let them discover that through their journey, and when they start winning, then they step in your arena. Focus on this game. Know that you're not alone, and trust me, keep your feet moving. Get in the right rooms and enjoy the process.
26:38 So with that said, make the day count. Forgiveness. Hurting, helping teach them what I know and how I did it, to discover freedom. There ain't no question mark. Kevin's when he's stepping the dial, he's closing deals, time to tell him what the DM stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker, but I'm not just a deal maker. I'm a dream maker. The journey's where it's at. It's all about the process. I'm the kid over to the DM project, small town in Ohio, so I know how it is. And I come from a lot of money. I remember it as a kid. Wanted to make a money brat and see no one making more than that, graduated high school with a 1.8 sure they help me back. All my principals and teachers are alive just to witness this. I'm on ball. Somehow you're running to a bigger businesses. Walk away from it, and I'll be good. But I've been called to help people, just like y'all learn again. It's come to Paul. Everybody chasing the money. But I'm not chasing the money. I'm out here chasing the purpose. Yo. I've been working my whole life. Get us where we at? Is it gonna get us where we want to go? I'm hurting helping teach him about what I know and how I did it to discover freedom. There ain't no question mark. Kevin's when he's stepping it down, he's closing down to tell him what the DM stand for. I'm a deal maker, a deal maker, but I'm not just a deal maker. I'm a dream maker. The journey's where it's at. It's all about the process. I'm the kids over to the TV, film project. I'm working here. Deal maker, deal maker, maker, deal maker, deal maker, go project.
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