Welcome to the Making of a DM, show #2.
Mark: Mind your own effin' numbers, and it's all about timing. That's what we're going to talk about today.
Hey there, it's your host, Mark Evans, DM, and I hope you're having an absolutely amazing day. Mind your own effin' numbers, and it's all about timing. That's something that we're going to talk about here today because I see a lot of amazing people shifting, moving, and not ever going to become a deal maker - ever - if you continue down that path. You're going to be frustrated, overwhelmed, confused, scared, playing someone else's game that they don’t even know what game they're playing. We'll get into that later, and everything else in between. [0:01:14.1]
Guys, as I'm sitting here talking to you today, I'm in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. We just got here yesterday - me, my wife, baby DM, which is Mark III, and my daughter, Drea. I'm on the 11th floor overlooking the lake and all the boats with the blue tops. I'll have to show you a picture; check out the show notes to see the picture. But I'm sitting here getting ready to get out on the boat for the day with my wife and them at noon here. So, I wanted to shoot the show to you because I'm thinking about, I see messages and conversations and frustrations that are holding people back from a whole other world. Mind your effin' numbers. What does that mean, Mark? [0:02:00.4]
Well, I'm glad you asked. You see, there's so many people out there bragging about like, yo, man, just made a million dollars. As a real business owner, the first question you ask is, "What does that even mean?" Because we all know companies that made many millions of dollars, but went out of business because they didn't keep many millions of dollars. So it doesn’t mean anything, at all, to you. So if I said, "Hey guys, I made $400,000 this month in one of my companies." You might be like, shit, I want to make $400,000. Well the first question is do you really because that, actually this is a real story - that company actually lost 30 grand last month. True story. Because we're growing. We're moving. We're prodding. We had challenges on certain things inside of our, in that company, and it lost $30,000. But I could go around bragging and say, "We made 400 Gs!" And everyone gets excited. [0:03:02.7]
They think I'm smarter than I am, and they try to change their model. They try to change what they're doing to compete against me. Guys - the only person I'm competing against is myself. This is why I say, "Mind your own effin' numbers," is because my numbers are the only ones that I know that are real, that are true, that are telling me anything. The truth is most people that say their numbers don’t even know what the hell they're talking about. So like a lot of times in business in general, you need to know what your cost per lead acquisition is. How much does it cost you and your company to get a lead? Right? I own multiple companies. I am involved in many, many, many companies, and every company has a different number. Even in the same industry, has a different number. Like let me paint the picture. I have a real estate investment company, as you guys know or may not know. But in real estate, for a lead, I do Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio a lot, my team does. [0:04:04.8]
But to buy a house in Cleveland, Ohio might cost us, you know, $2000 to get, well that's to close, but let's call it $100 a lead to get a deal, to get a lead in to that company. If I go to San Francisco, that same exact lead might cost $1000-$2000 for a lead. Right? These are things you need to know as a business owner, so, but if you're in San Francisco and you hear me in Columbus or Cleveland, Ohio saying, "I get leads for $100," the first thing that, the question… well first of all, you shouldn’t even care. Secondly, what does it mean? And third, what are your numbers telling you? Because if you're getting a lead for 2000 and making 100,000, you're doing pretty well, or 50,000 or whatever the number is. But if I'm getting a lead for $100 and you know, my team is making $10,000, right - what does that mean? [0:05:04.0]
Because there's a lead to conversion to contract. So you have a lead cost, contract cost and close cost. Right? So let me paint the picture. I'm sorry I'm getting a little technical with this. But a lead for me costs $100. My team has to talk to 20 people, that's 20 x 100 = $2000 to get a contract to close. So $2000 to make 10, for example - I'm using these basic numbers for easy math. These are things you need to know. That's what's always funny to me because I see all these marketers, very smart by the way, for them to be marketing to you guys, saying, "Get leads for free, next to nothing." What does that fucking mean? I don’t want free leads. I want leads that convert to make me money. If they're free or not, what does it matter if I'm generating a massive profit? See, this is the difference with playing business or becoming a deal maker. [0:06:02.8]
Deal makers realize that you have to pay to play. You don’t have to initially. You're going to pay your time, by the way, but money, like to grow, you have to pay. Period. At scale, there's always a cost. See, it's easy to be in the beginning because you could do guerilla marketing, one on one, and just do the hard work. But if you want to scale in 20 markets, now it changes. Right? Are you sick and tired of not having consistency on lead flow? Well, the reason you're sick of it is because you're not doing the right work. You're not investing in proper scalable, consistent marketing. Period. Now you can make up whatever bullshit excuse you want, but the truth is you're not doing consistent, scalable marketing, i.e. direct mail. No, most people are out there doing fancy hookie, you know, 'Oh, I could get a lead on social media by doing this post." [0:07:05.3]
Okay, well you're only posting once every three months, and it's a half-ass post, as best. Yes, you can generate leads, but you're not generating a lot of leads, and you're not generating consistent leads. "But Mark, you don’t understand - I did a post and I made 5 grand, 10 grand." Okay. So do it every day. "But Mark, I don’t want to go back because someone said something mean," and like, this is the problem. You can't run business on emotions. You've got to run it on black and white paper. Direct mail works in every business, by the way, and I'm not saying online marketing doesn’t work, because that would be stupid to say because I do online marketing every day as well. But we have got to pick our battles. How big do you want to be? How small do you want to be? But where I'm going back to this is mind your own effin' numbers. No one knows - it's all so far out of context, all out of context. You don’t believe me? [0:08:01.5]
This is what I love about the restaurant business - I don’t know about you, but back in the day, well, some of you still might be doing this, but I used to go to restaurants and like, it'd be packed. And I'm like, ohhh, look at all this money, man - $7 for a beer - damn, I could buy the same beer for $1.25 at the grocery store. They're killing it! And then I go back four months later, and they're closed down because they didn't make, they couldn’t make payroll. Just because it looks good, just because it looks like it's generating… there's a lot of expenses with real life businesses - staff, workers comp, you know, facilities, overages, theft, I mean, I could go on and on and on and on. So when a company posts money and says, "I made $2,000,000 a year," I don’t hear that. I don’t care. That means nothing to me. Not only that, even if they netted $2,000,000 but they have no life, their wife hates them or their spouse hates them if it's a male or female, their kids don’t know who they are - I don’t care about it either. [0:09:03.4]
I want lifestyle. I want money. I want them both. But I'd rather have a million with a lifestyle than 2,000,000 with no lifestyle. See, it's all relative. What does it mean - mind your own effin' numbers? Truth is, mind your own fucking business. Period. That's the real thing. But talking about numbers, I see everyone out here tossing shit all the time. Get free leads! Do this for $17 per application! What does it mean, overall? What business are you really in? What things are you trying to scale? There's different scalable models. You're not scaling big with social media posts, just by that alone. Podcasts shows - I do a podcast show now, right, I'm looking at how to scale this. I talk for an hour. It gets heard hundreds of thousands of hours, and then that produces something - likability, extraction, whatever. [0:10:04.2]
I have no plan for it yet, but it ultimately will. Right? And the truth is, I would love for you guys, if my stuff helps you, to share it with your friends. Not only share it with your friends, if you're not following on Instagram, I spend a lot of time on Instagram doing daily videos. I do a wakey, wakey, 4:44 every morning, almost 7 days a week, literally, as long as it is posting on Instagram. I share a quote or I share something that's going on in my life or the day that can help benefit you. And that's on Instagram @Mark Evans DM. Follow me there. Let me know you listen to the podcast show. That's exciting to me to hear. I'm spending my time here while my family is out running around. They're downstairs. Mark is probably hitting on the fish tank, trying to wake a fish up. Dena is chasing him and all that fun stuff. Right? [0:10:59.4]
But I do this because I actually give two shits. I was talking with a guy recently and he's telling me, "Mark, I see everything you're doing. I see what this guy's doing. I see what this guy.." And I'm like, dude, no one gives a shit what everyone's doing. What are you doing? See, he's spending so much mental time worrying about what everyone else is doing. And I'm like, yo, mind your own effin' business; what do you want? This is an identity crisis, guys. This is what I talk about all the time. And the truth is, he can't answer it because he doesn’t know who he is or what he does and how he does it. You got to start getting conscious of this. We all do it, by the way. Some are just way more than others. Right? When you see me post on Instagram in front of my Rolls or new watch or whatever we do or a bank statement or you know a post about hey, I just closed this deal and made 72 grand. But again, all this stuff - what does it mean. If you keep seeing that over and over and over, hundreds, thousands, millions of times of impressions - you really can get lost in actually what's going on. [0:12:06.0]
So I challenge you to start minding your own effin' numbers. When you focus on you and what you can control, you win the game of life. Because you're in control. Like I said earlier, if you feel out of control, unfocused, unsure, scared to death, it's because you have zero visibility in what's going on. You're shooting from the hip. You're just doing what you think you should do because Steve Johnson on Facebook said that's what he does, or Suzy Jones or whatever the fuck name you use. At the end of the day, it's not serving you; it's hurting you. You got to start paying attention to this, guys. The more social, and which it's very big now, it's getting bigger - the more it's out there, the more problem it's going to become for you if you're not aware of it. It is killing people in businesses daily. [0:13:00.9]
It's making you feel inadequate. It's making you feel like a loser. Making you feel like you're not doing anything. Making you feel like you're behind the eight ball, creating massive anxiety, massive stress, massive overwhelming feeling. It's real. Listen, when I look at - I'm very conscious of knowing my numbers, and I still don’t know all my numbers. It's impossible to. So when people ask me, "Mark, you know what's the average cost per deal for you," blah, blah, blah. But one - what business are we talking about, two - what are we looking at, and three - there's so many uncontrollable variables in that because my lead to conversation to conversion ratio is so different. Why? Because I spend a lot of time on conversation to conversion with my teams. So what that means is if I get 100 leads, my team talks to 100 people for example, their conversion might be better than yours. That's going to change my lead to deal conversion rate number. Right? Let's say if you talk to 100 people and your conversion rate is only 10%, you sell 10 people. [0:14:03.8]
My team sells 30%. That's a massive difference in conversation level. See, while you're spending all your time and energy worrying about what everyone else is doing, while you're spending all your time and energy worrying about how much a lead should cost, I'm focusing on my numbers, paying attention to controllable environments that I can control by allocating time to the right pieces. Mark focus on Legion. Great - we got Legion locked in, 100 leads a day coming in - good! How do we convert that better? Lots of conversations. Let's invest money in those people. Let's invest money in the training. Let's invest money in the conversion conversation level stuff. Well, that costs… you might think that costs money. I think of it as an investment. Picture if you have a person or two people or four people or more on a conversion conversation on your team, so 100 leads come in, 4 people are conversating with your clients or prospects. If you can teach them how to double, that creates a massive compound effect in your company. [0:15:02.9]
It's not even thought as an expense in our company - ever. So what are you doing daily? What numbers are you looking at? What conversations are you having? Listen, I'm not saying it's not cool to walk around and say, yo, man - I just converted 80%. Guys, the truth is my conversion rate could be 100% depending what company I'm talking about. The Deal Maker family, my mastermind, my conversion actually is way less because I decline people. I'm not trying to convert them. I'm trying to un convert them. Big difference. Not only that, speaking of one of my companies in the Deal Maker family, that company, the maximum clients I can have is 33 people at 35 grand at the time of this recording. It's going higher - the amount is, not the amount of people, the cost, the investment. But 33 people x 35,000, that's the maximum that company can make. [0:16:01.9]
So if I paid attention to what, whoa, I own a high ticket sales company and we make 3.5 million dollars. Okay - that means I have to take my 33 people - the only way I can make that happen is charge more or get 100 people at 35,000 and/or a mixture of both. But that's not my goal. That's not my intentions. My intentions are the clients in there, to give them the best, most amazing investment experience in their life. They invest 35 grand; I want them to make 10x their return yearly, minimum. But, it's even deeper than that. It's a brotherhood. It's a connector. It's a connection piece for me, to connect with them, to understand really what they want and where they're going. We have challenges every day. We have opportunities out the wazoo every day. The key is is minding your effin' numbers and figuring out which ones are important and when. So if I'm listening, that's one of the companies that maxes out - 33 people x 35,000 - do the math. It's nothing. [0:17:06.8]
I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it for the impact. Maybe that changes, but I've been doing that for seven years. It's the most amazing thing I do, but the least profitable thing I do, per hour. Stupid, I know. Rewarding - yes. See the thing is, it's not always just about the money. So if I'm teaching and someone's like Mark, I want to learn how to create a $10,000,000 a year coaching company - I know how to do that, I just don’t want that, is where I'm going with this. It's easy to do. It takes work, but it's easy to do if you're providing value, you're creating real service and real connection and you're actually doing the shit you say you're going to do, but you got to have a fucking company before you can help people learn how to build a company. You got to have one yourself. Most people try to do it the opposite - their company is the coaching company - to teach people how to grow a company. [0:18:01.3]
That doesn’t even make sense to me. That's actually fucking retarded to even think about it like that. Seriously?! There's a guy I know - this is a true story - he's making about 5,000,000 a year and all he does is teach high ticket sales stuff. That's his business. By the way, it's not a bad business. This is a good business model. But he's never grown a real business. He has no employees. He has - his personality is, like, I'd rather - the paint on the wall is better. Right? And yet, he's out there teaching people that have real companies and he's telling them how to change their company. And I'm not knocking this model, by the way, I'm just saying it's not for everybody because it's different. You have to want and you have to bring real value. I know a lot of people this guy has hurt, and gal, by the way, it's a couple. These people have hurt their companies because they're saying stuff half loaded with what benefits them through a conversation, and then the investor, the person that's invested in them, takes it literal. They go implement it and it fucking blows up, like, it's bad. [0:19:10.6]
How the hell can someone that's never created a real company… selling high ticket shit, by the way, is not a real company necessarily … to someone that's selling, you know, a product every day. And I'm not saying you can't learn from those guys. I'm saying you can, but they're only sharing what limited information they have about high ticket and low ticket, medium ticket and etc. So I can learn from that, but I also don’t want to take it so literal that I change my entire company up where it implodes and I almost lose everything. And the truth is, I know many people that almost did lose their company. Some of them got a divorce because it became so stressful because they took this person's information so literal. This guy has no credentials to be telling a real fucking company how to run a company. Now listen - high ticket sales can be in addition to what the company is. He's like don't sell low ticket shit; that's BS and that will never work, you're always going to have headaches, you're blah, blah, blah …. Dude, you're going to have headaches no matter if you're selling high ticket or low ticket. [0:20:06.8]
Now don’t get my wrong - low ticket stuff does cause bigger headaches oftentimes, if it's set up wrong, if it's not a good product, if … I mean, there's a lot of ifs. But it also could be an amazing, great to get to know you, great to connect with you, great to learn more about you, let's start a relationship today. That comes through expectations and conversations, right? So again, I'm not knocking these pieces. We're just having a conversation here today of my frustrations of what I see a lot of great people, like yourself, that's facing. This is real. And it's affecting a lot, like not just you, but the people you can make an impact with. This is what's exciting about what's going on. Mind your own effin' numbers. Guys, I, like I said, I barely know my numbers and I still get massive anxiety because I want more. It never happens quick enough. It's not happening quick enough - ever. I've never met a company - ever - that said, holy cow, it's happening too fast. Right? [0:21:11.7]
Especially in the beginning stages. What's interesting, and there's another side of this, is when I talk to other companies including myself, when things are really cranking up, we are, things are happening very quickly and we talk about we didn't capitalize properly or we didn't capitalize enough on the momentum. So there's kind of that catch 22 inside of that, which I want you to be aware of, because it is real. As we grow in a company, we have to protect this mindset of ours, this mind, what we're talking about. And all of this comes down to timing. See, what I'm talking about, this guy selling high ticket shit and hurting small ticket companies - it's not a bad thing to learn high ticket, but it's a matter of if it's now. [0:22:04.6]
It's not a bad thing to learn about Facebook marketing or Instagram celebrity stuff or direct mail or this or that; it's a matter of is it now. Timing is the big key to this. See, a lot of times - again, I'm in the real estate business, so I'm talking a lot about real estate - but to me, like it's like buying real estate. This is a true story, by the way. When I first started in real estate, I was a buy and hold guy because that's what I learned, and that's all I knew. Now, everyone knows everything before they do anything. Me, I learned one strategy and I started implementing it. Go figure. It worked. It worked so damn well that I actually starting making so much money that I got cocky, complacent, arrogant and I almost went bankrupt - not once but I almost went bankrupt twice. Why? Because I got cocky, arrogant, and complacent again on the second time. [0:23:00.1]
But the second time, I'm kind of a hard headed person, it takes me a, I'm a slow learner with money now. By the way, these are the best clients - slow learners with money. But timing… See, I thought when I bought all these real estate deals that I would leave a legacy, give back to my grandkids and great grandkids and blah, blah, blah, blah before I even had kids. I wasn’t even thinking about me having kids yet. But I knew having cash flow assets is amazing, but these houses might make me 200 a month each, net cash flow - 200 x 50 is $10,000. Now before you get your, you know, all excited, like, yeah, I want 50 houses at $200 a month - well, that's what you're expected to make. That's not necessarily what you do make; hence, why I almost went bankrupt number one is because I had all these assets, with lots of debt load. Right? You're spending tens of thousands a month, tens of thousands, like I think it was like 30 something thousand - this was a long time ago, this was like 23 years, 22 years ago - it was like $30,000 a month, $32,000. [0:24:04.6]
So if you have a good month, it's good. If you have a bad month, it's really bad. Especially if you're dumb, like me, spending what you made. So if I was making 42 grand a month, spending 32 grand a month, I had 10,000 a month; that's what I spent. I bought stupid stuff. I wasn’t saving. I wasn’t investing in more marketing to do more deals to make more money to keep growing. Not all the time. I would do it haphazardly at random, when I was emotional, when I felt inspired, which is a major no-no. Guys, your emotions are not, like business is not built on emotions - trust me. So, it's all data, not drama. So if I was smart back then, I would have taken 5 grand, put it into the company, and 5 grand to me to pay my bills and let the company grow while I grow and vice versa. Instead I took 10 grand and just stripped the company of everything. [0:25:01.9]
Tenants stopped paying. I got in trouble. I had to have conversations with people I didn't want to have conversations with. And looking back now, it's all timing. Having a good portfolio and having cash flow is amazing. But did I want that at that moment? I could have took that same energy 100,000 a month. Instead, I was making 10,000 a month. Because it takes a lot of energy to manage 50 houses. I was my own property manager. I was my own repair man. I did everything. I screened the tenants, if you call it that. Here's how I screened tenants back in the day - how much are you putting down, and can you afford the rent every month? That was my screening process. So it was very stupid. But if I took that time and invested in learning - I didn't know about wholesaling real estate. That's actually how I saved myself from not going BK, is I learned about wholesaling. I needed to make quick pops of money with limited risk. [0:26:00.4]
So, timing forced me, like my problem created an opportunity to learn something new to solve my problem. Right? Solving my problem wouldn't be buy more rentals and make $200 a month. That was not my problem. I needed big chunks of cash to get out of the mess I was in. Timing. And yeah, so people are doing things today for the future when they need to focus on the fucking today. To now. If you don’t have money today, the future doesn’t even fucking matter. So while you're trying to equal along and make $150 a month and tell all your friends how cool you are because you have rental properties, no one gives two shits because it means nothing in reality. They might be, oh, dude that's cool, man. I wish I had a rentals. While you secretly go home and you're like, oh, shit, I'm in trouble. But yet you're out there blurt, you know, smacking your lips around, telling people how all these rentals you have, and how amazing your life is. It's bullshit. [0:27:04.3]
By the way, 90% of the people I talk to is in that situation. It might even be more. Yeah, dude, I got six rentals. Okay - what does that mean? You're telling me you have no money in the bank, less than 10 grand in the bank, literally - this is a true story, by the way - and you have $800,000 in equity that's sitting there doing absolutely nothing, which is stupid, and you're telling me you're spending 2-4 hours a day with these rentals. And yet, in the same breath, you're telling me you can't wait to leave this to your kids and all that. Dude, listen - you're going to die of stress. Your kids aren’t even going to have … it doesn't mean anything - your kids don’t care. They'd rather have you than these houses. The interesting thing about this, and by the way, this is something we all have to go through, I think, at least that's what I've experienced is the struggle, the mental struggle, that is, of thinking that we're … like, let me say it like this: Here's something a mentor told me many, many years ago, and this is very, very, very, very powerful and it probably goes against everything you've ever been taught, and I know it did me. [0:28:12.6]
So I want you to be very.. like take a second, almost pause for a second because I want you to have your mind ready for this, because you might be driving, you might be on the treadmill. It's going to, it's a deep thought question, or even statement, I should say. Ready? Save yourself before you save the world. It's worth repeating. Save yourself before you save the world. We have been taught give everybody everything. See, listen, and I'm being honest with you guys - I used to think I was a big dog when I'd go to church and give $20. Truth is, that was a big deal to me. It was a real big deal to me to give 20 bucks away because I probably only had 500 in the bank, 500 bucks that is. [0:29:03.2]
And when a mentor told me that, I was like, oh shit, save myself before I save the world. See, I thought my $20, by the way, $20 is not making an impact - heads up - lots of $20 do - one $20 bill not so much to a big purpose. When this clicked, one I had to fight it; I fought it for months. Save yourself before you save the world. Now, we're doing donations in the six figures. If I was trying to save the world before saving myself, I 100% know I wouldn’t be able to do six figures a year in donations. It's impossible. The truth is I don’t give two shits about leaving my kids anything. I'm worried about me, today. What's interesting about that, by me focusing on me and what I can control today, and where I'm going, well, I'll actually be able to leave more in the future if I want to for my kids. [0:30:11.6]
But who says we have to leave them anything? I want to leave them with manners, respect, honor, goal driven, dream bigger. If we can leave them with that shit, that's the real fucking legacy that I want to leave them. The mindset to it all. I don’t know where I would be today if my dad and mom gave me everything or left me a lot of money to start whatever I wanted, but I believe I might be in way worse shape. In my mind, I think I would be in worse shape. It's all a matter of timing. And in business - when do I start the Facebook ads? I don’t know the answer. Your data will tell you went to do it. Mark, how much should I spend on marketing? I don't know but basic math is typically 10% of your profits you put towards marketing, a minimum. Right? [0:31:11.6]
And that number changes as you get bigger and scale. It could be more. It could be less. The company I lost $30,000 in last month? It's because we actually doubled our marketing budget; therefore, we take a hit month number 1, 2, and 3 because we're frontloading something that we believe will be bigger in the future. It's called investing. See, a lot of people don’t talk about this shit in business. Real life businesses have ups and downs but that doesn’t mean it's good or bad. It just means it's ups and downs. It might look bad to you if you look at my P&L and you see a negative 30K month. It's the first negative loss we had in the last 18 months. Why? But again, if you only, if you don’t know how to read a P&L, it's like you would realize that we 100 times our marketing spend to get x, y, and z. [0:32:03.3]
We know where we're going. It's an investment in the future, in the company. So it's, again, it's mind your own effin' numbers. And when you do these things, and it's all timing, I said we have to go all in - it's now. My team agreed. They came to me with it as well, by the way. I'm not that smart all the time. So, when? When should you start doing real estate? I meet real estate people that want to do ecom. I mean, ecom want to do real estate. Listen - make a lot of fucking money and then you can do whatever you want. And by the way, $1,000,000 a year is not a lot of effin' money. It's a good amount of money, but it's not, it's not a lot of money and I'm saying $1,000,000 gross. If you're netting a million, it's a little different and that's getting up there. It's good. But dude, like, hang on… it's not a lot of money still. [0:33:00.3]
Compared to what you're capable of. If you're capable of creating a net million a year business, dude, you're capable of creating way more. Don’t get comfortable with it. Don’t think you're killing the game. Because there's a lot more people in the world that make way more than $1,000,000 net a year in your industry. I don’t care what industry you're in. I don’t care if you're selling hot dogs or buns or the warmer for those. There's opportunity galore. And as I'm talking to you, like I said, I'm in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. It's effin' beautiful out right now. Literally, it's like 72, sunny as hell. I’m getting ready to get on this boat here in a couple of hours, after I work out, which I don’t want to, but I have to because I made a commitment. I made a deal to myself, deal maker, and I will do it. But traveling like this gets my mind thinking. This is a true story. We traveled from Ohio, Cleveland, flew to Dallas to Spokane, Washington and drove down here 45 minutes away. [0:34:04.8]
But I was telling Dena, and I was like, as we're driving in the Uber, I was like, do you realize how many houses and buildings and apartments and companies we just went over in that plane? Millions and millions. And yet, we're sitting here and we think we can't just add one more piece of real estate to the portfolio. We can't just buy one more business and grow it to 50 states, to 50 countries. Our mind, our limiting beliefs are real. Like I get inspired by travelling, even though it's frustrating to deal with some of the bullshit travel stuff, checking into hotels and blah, blah, blah or whatever - just put your mind to what's actually going on. Pay attention. And I want to talk about this more and more because this is a real thing that changed my life and changed my businesses - me travelling. December 31 of 2005, I left. I left Columbus. [0:35:03.8]
Four months turned into seven years of travel, but travel expanded me. It allowed me to step back and get out of my comfort zone, my environment, my easy simple world. Like it's funny when people are like you know living, let's say live in Florida - Miami, for example. Like dude have you ever been to this place? No, why? You have lived here your whole life. You've never been to like this place. People travel all over from the world to come and visit. It's like living in Paris or you know or wherever and never going and visiting all these amazing places. It's because we get comfortable with it. We forget what we have in front of us. So for me, like when I travel and we go to really cool destination environments, there's so much amazing shit that's around us, guys. It's.. you could jump on a plane within one hour and be somewhere in a totally different world, if not less. A totally different world where opportunity is abundant or obstacles are abundant, depending where you're going. [0:36:07.3]
There's so much out there. What I love about travel - to me, this is not vacation. Vacation to me is people trying to escape from their real life. This is my life. This is my fucking life. I've created this shit. I made a deal to have this life with myself. I didn't even know this shit existed 20 years ago. Like I'm looking, as I'm talking to you, hundreds, if not billions of dollars, of real estate. Houses a million minimum, up to 40,000,000 on this lake. This is like their fourth home, by the way. This is like a home they come to two weeks a year. When you drive down in Palm Beach and you see a $65,000,000 mansion, that's one of four or five of their houses. You realize that, right? Wherever you're at, wherever you're going, whatever you think is all programming that we have had created for us by other people. [0:37:07.8]
That's why being here at this show, the Making of a DM, I truly do want to share real life shit with you to give you the tools to be successful in any way, shape or form you see. I haven’t figured this shit out. I'm still pushing the boundaries. I'm actually pissed off I'm not sitting in that $40,000,000 mansion right now talking to you. Instead, I'm talking to you from a nice suite at the Coeur d'Alene resort, which is still pretty cool. But there's more. But there's also worse. So I'm not saying I'm not grateful. I just know what I'm capable of. See a lot of people are like Mark, be grateful for what you have. Who the fuck says I'm not grateful? Truth is, I'm actually very ultra grateful. I just know what I'm capable of, though. I know there's more. It's not about the big house. It's about what the big house stands for, for me. I don’t give two shits what you think about it. [0:38:01.4]
I don’t care if you think it's cocky or showing off. That says more about you than me anyways. Right? And it's all timing. I could buy that house today, but I'd better serve it 10 years from now. Right? Because I don’t need another house. I already got multiple houses. This is the first time I've ever been here, and I'm already thinking about buying a piece of real estate. I'm going to actually look at some property here in the next couple of days, for investment reasons, because that's what I do. It's my life. Wherever I go, I'm always looking at real estate, every day. In my mind, as I've driving, this is business. It's our life. So the vacation thing, as many people are trying to figure out, when I go on vacation, I'm going to forget real life exists. I'm going to wake up late. I'm going to drink like a fish. I'm going to eat like a fat kid loves cake, and I'm just to keep going and going and going until I collapse and then I got to go home and start the bullshit life all over again. And to me, I'm like, dude, this is my life. I was up at 4:30 a.m., like I am pretty much every day. [0:39:03.0]
I went downstairs, got a coffee, and I haven’t drank coffee in a while, which you probably can tell in my voice I'm a little anxious and that's why I don’t drink coffee because it gets me super anxious. But pushing forward… and had a couple of calls, talked to my pops - I call him every morning typically and say hey, what's up, dad, working on two new books, worked on two new chapters today, and now I'm shooting a podcast. I'm going to get done with this podcast show and I'm going to go work out. Same exact shit I do when I'm at home. And then when I'm done, I'm going to go hang out with my wife and kids and go play for four or five hours or longer or whatever. Because it's my life. It's not a vacation. It's my life. Guys, my life wasn’t always like that because I didn't know this could be a life. Whatever you want, however you want it, exists. But we have to create it on paper first and then we have to start creating a path to get there. And that's what I'm talking about timing. [0:40:03.2]
Depending where you're at, if you're 44, 50, 500, whatever age you are - you might not want the big houses, the big cars and all that. You might be 72 years old and you just want 10,000 extra a month cash flow. Create an ecom store, keep it simple, make 10 grand a month, sit back and enjoy life. You don’t need to be hustling and bustling. That's so fucking easy to do it's ridiculous, by the way. Maybe you want, you're young and you're hungry and you want to go hard. Well that exists too. Maybe you don’t have a family or maybe you do have a new family. See all this stuff is timing. What's important to you? I talked about that on show number one. What the fuck do you want? Because that's what helps you figure out, when you're making those decisions that are creating obstacles or opportunity in the future for you. By the way, every obstacle you have is because of a decision you made, by the way. You know that, right? [0:41:04.4]
That obstacle exists that you're dealing with right now because you made the decision to make it exist. So we have to get better at decision making. Trust me. I've been there millions of times. I still am going to be there, but I'm trying to get better every day. I like opportunities. I like deals. Actually, I'm working on a deal right now I think I'm going to kill. And I already got a lot of money invested in it. Why? Because of timing. I have a lot of stuff going on and I don’t feel like I can give it the time it needs to be successful of where I know it can be. So therefore, instead of tinkering around, making a couple of dollars, I am going to probably just cut it and let them do what they do and move on to focus on the things I'm focused on. I'm dealing with that right now as we speak. I got the call tomorrow with the guy. The decision has to be made, for me, anyways. So there are a decision I made six months ago, and I said yes, sent some money, started working on some stuff, and it's just different now. [0:42:02.3]
I'm in a different place. It's too small for where I'm at, honestly. It's not big enough. And if I'm going to dedicate my time, I want it to be big enough to make it worth my time. I realized my value, my… like again, it's timing. In the beginning, I'll do anything. I've got bills to pay. Anything legal, ethical, of course. Right? I got to put the deals together. Some of the biggest values, me where I am today in my life as opposed to where I was at, you know, 23 years ago, is I understand the value in myself. And that's not a cocky or arrogant thing. It's just realize what you have and who you know and what you're capable of. That's a confidence thing through implementation. Right? You're only one person away, one decision away from a different life, different world. But until you identify what those even decision-making things look like, timing, you don’t know yet. So just stay in the game. Write down what you want. [0:43:01.1]
Let's start talking about it more. We got to zig when others are zagging. We got to go in a straight line or go up the hill or down the hill. Are we taking the elevator up or are we taking the stairs up? There's a big difference. Most people are taking the stairs up and taking the elevator down. We got to focus. We got to pick when is the time. So before I finish up here, I want two things, real quick, well actually maybe three or four. Number one - if this show, the Making of a DM, is making an impact and what we're talking about and getting you thinking to another level already, please share it with your friends. That's all I ask. Share it with business people. Share it with your spouse. Share it with anybody that you feel like this can make an impact in. That would be my #1 ask. Number two ask - go to iTunes and leave a 5-star review or whatever they allow you up to. Leave a post. Leave a comment. Every person that does that allows us to get rankings higher and higher and higher. I want to compete at the next level. [0:44:02.0]
This show is important to me, by the way. I care about helping you guys and gals. So if you would do that, that would mean so much to me. Seriously. And not only that, timing. Know when your time is. Pay attention. Focus on what happens. Like, I do real estate. Some people get excited and say I want to do real estate. Maybe next year. Maybe four years from now. Now is not the time. It's always going to be there. It's not going anywhere. Is it a distraction or an opportunity? And then data not drama. Mind your own effin' numbers. I'll say this until I'm blue in the face, and I know it might drive you nuts, but it drives me nuts. Every day I see amazing people changing what they do because they hear someone say something else. I get leads for $2. Well, shit, I'm paying 20. Man, I must be getting ripped off. No. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're actually making a lot more and you're doing bigger shit than the person mentioning $2. [0:45:03.5]
So focus on what matters to you - your data, not drama. And when you do this, life changes. And guys, I love everything about what we're sharing here today, and if anything you need help with, please let me know. It helps me make the show better. Your feedback is super duper important to me. And I want to deliver the stuff you guys need to hear and want to hear to help you get to where you want to go. And maybe not even know where you want to go. And that's cool too. So guys, with that said, I hope you have an amazing day. Follow me on Instagram at Mark Evans, DM, and have an amazing, amazing, day. I'm going to go jump on this boat. Talk to you soon. Bye.
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