Welcome to the Making of a DM. Are a business owner or are you a high paid employee, working for a psycho? Let's get started.
Mark: Hey there. It's your host, Mark Evans, DM. That's right. Coming to you from Parkland, Florida. Actually, a lot going on over here, guys and gals, and again, I just want to stop for a second and say thank you, guys, so much for sharing the show, getting it out there to people and posting it on… you know, sending me messages privately about how powerful the show #14 is or 2 is or whatever, and it just means so much to me and then going to iTunes and like, you know, giving me props over there. [0:01:08.5]
Guys, again, this show is for us, me and you. I love to share, this is a great outlet for me to multiply my voice and just share direct with you guys. I have no financial model here. The model is to help you. If this show does inspire you and help you, please keep sharing it. Please keep it going. As the stats keep going up, I get more excited. I want to do more shows. I want to bring on cool guests. My job or my agenda here is just to simply share real stuff. It's not always easy. Some weeks, I'll miss. You'll see that in the gaps in the shows. Because I want share shit with you that is meaningful. I don’t want to just share because I think I need to. I want to share stuff that actually will help. Things that I'm going through or have went through that I can sit down and you know conversate about it, to give you the guidance, and you know, inspiration, I hope, and some clarity, if you will, as you're growing into this business owner that you're becoming and/or already are but then there's multiple levels and multiple stages. [0:02:03.3]
So the only thing I would ask is if you have something that you're dealing with direct, get over to Instagram and shoot me a message. Say Mark, this is what I'm dealing with. I won't use your name, but I would love to help create shows that will help you guys, the listeners, directly, like to the core and you know, feel free to share. Like I said, I won't use your name. I'll just, you know, it helps me help you. It's kind of like in school, like no one knows you need help until you raise your hand. Right? So, that's what we have got going on there and I do appreciate that and it means a lot to me. So we're coming up to the holiday seasons, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and all this stuff. Some people are scrambling, trying to make their goals for 2019 while others are sitting there dreaming about 2020 and I want you to understand like a lot of people talk about the different ways to set goals and all that stuff and I used to… I have bought every daily planner, every manual. I've bought all that shit. Find something that works for you. [0:03:02.9]
It could be a yellow note pad and paper. It could be on your cell phone these days because back then when I was starting, then didn't have cell phones like they do now where you could manage your stuff. The key is is what I like to do is have things that you've got going on daily and measure… like if you're supposed to work out twice a day or once a day, measure. Take score. Keep score of what's going on, you know, a scale of 1-10, how hard did you go today - 5. If you've got five days of that, that's a problem. You're going to need to change something. Right? Same thing with your calling. Same thing with your followup. Same thing with your business building. Same thing with your relationships, with your spouses or your kids - are you making it to all their school meetings - are you making it to all their sports events and such? These are things I'm constantly trying to keep score of because it does matter. We talked about that on one of the shows. Right? It matters. So find something that works for you because I've got people asking me all the time, like Mark, what do you use, what do you use? I'm looking at it. I have a basic piece of paper, you know white pad and paper and I write my stuff in there daily. Right? [0:04:00.9]
Today, this morning at 5 o'clock in the morning, I'm there jotting stuff down. I've got a huge…actually, I've got my yacht trip coming up December, what's that, 7th through the 14th in the BVIs. We have got an event prior to that, three days prior to that, 4th through the 7th with like 20, with 36 people and the BVIs. We're just getting ready and I, you know, I kind of like to think about that stuff and I'm not always in the creative mode. Right? Sometimes when your implementation, you're not in creative. So you got to kind of figure out how to isolate that, at least I do. I got to, like I got to go to a quiet space in the morning, typically is when I'm the most creative because I don’t have all this crazy noise going on throughout the day. I'm just straight implementational. So, for you guys listening, you know, what's your days look like? What's your …have you like…so there's two sides of this I guess I want to share with you today. One - what does your day look like today? The …the reason I'm asking is, I ask a lot of people this. Most people don’t really have a day planned out. Their day controls the hem. They don’t control the day. [0:05:00.0]
Again, I get that. Sometimes that will happen, but it should not be all the time. So you need to have a calendar. You need to have stuff, a page that like, you know, in the morning, up at this time, do this, do this, do this, do that. And if you follow me on Instagram, I share my schedule with you guys in front of you. You're going to see a lot of consistencies at the beginning of the day, in the middle of the day, and at the end of the day. A lot of my buddies jokingly say, "Mark, you eat like a senior citizen," because I eat, like I have dinner at 5:30ish typically is what I like to eat because, you got to remember I'm getting up at 4:30, 4:44 in the morning, you know. So I'm up. I'm cranking. I'm ready to roll. That's my time. And then, right, so I'm just sharing similarities. Like, almost every morning, 7 days a week, I'm getting up that early. Right? At 4ish in the morning, and then I'm cranking and then I'm working out. I'm usually meeting my trainer if I'm … if my trainer is with me that week, 6 a.m. and we're going to hit it hard for an hour. Right? Then I get home, but on the way home, I make three phone calls. Right? Typically calling people. My dad is one of them and I'm calling them, just saying touching base, saying what's going on, how are you doing? I've got a 20-minute drive. Right? [0:06:04.7]
So I'm being productive on my time. Sometimes I just shut the radio off and roll down the windows and roll those well, but again, consistencies. I get home. I do my thing. I go straight to the office and do whatever I do. Like get ready for the day, whatever that looks like because keep in mind, I've already planned a little bit from 5 to 5:30 before I left. Then conference calls. Often times, 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. is when our calls are. Actually today, when I'm talking to you, I've got one at 10:30 to 12:00 with my media company where we talk about all the big stuff, what's going on - hey, here's the new events we have got going on for you know, the staff, because we have got Thanksgiving, we have got Christmas, we have got New Years. So we're going to set that up and conversate about it. So, I have a lot of calls like that, but that's not me driving them. That's me participating in them. See, in the beginning, a lot of this stuff, we have got to drive and that's fine because I had to do that for many years but my team's driving it now. I'm just there kind of like listening to help and guide and just drop some knowledge. [0:07:03.6]
So, I've worked on my unique ability but I'll get to that in a second. So I do all that and then try to have lunch by noonish, right, 12 to 1, somewhere around there and then once I'm done, back at it. You know, my texting and calling, emailing, conference call, whatever it is - writing a book, recording a podcast show. I'm usually pretty much done by 5ish p.m. if not sooner. Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, I'm done actually by 3:30 because I go to Taekwondo with my son and wife, all of us, we go there and watch him and then once we get done with all that, we kind of come home, clean up and go to dinner or have dinner at the house, of course. Right? So it's like things change. You got to zig and zag. It's not always easy and convenient but it's like what's important to you? What's important to me is family. It really is. I love to hang out. I love to wake up with my family in the morning. When I get back from the gym, I usually, they're just getting up or about to get up so I kind of say, you know, when Drea comes up, like she's getting up and Dina is holding her, I'm like, oh my gosh, good morning, Drea - like you guys sometimes will see me on Instagram doing that. She's so cute. She'll just smile ear to ear. [0:08:12.3]
Mark the same way, every morning, like he's got to say good morning, dad, and you know, I just… I'm just to program in, like I just love that side of my life that we have been able to create through you know, understanding unique ability and building a business to allow me this opportunity. So, that's kind of my daily schedule, 7 days a week. Like I said, Saturdays and Sundays, they're very similar too. You know, I'm doing stuff. I'm growing and not to… you know, I might jump in the pool sometimes. I might hang out. But like, I genuinely have so much drive to do so much more and I feel like I've barely done anything and don’t get me wrong, there's some days I'm ultra anxious when I'm hanging out with the fam, and I'm trying to be super present, there's just a lot going on, especially right now. When I say there's a lot going on, it might be an understatement. It's almost, it's that weird feeling like you're like how the hell's all this going to get done. You know, what is going to happen? It's going to be wild. [0:09:07.4]
So, I bring that up because I want you guys to understand, chaos is a real thing. Chaos happens and a lot of people don’t have any chaos going on, which is always funny to me because if you don’t have any chaos going on, you're lying to yourself and/or you have lots of chaos and you just don’t even know what chaos is. In businesses, my team knows that chaos is a good thing, controlled chaos. We thrive on chaos. We know chaos creates opportunities. We know that's when most people stop. So recently one of our companies, we had a couple of things break that cost like real money to be exact, you know, high six figures, almost seven figures and issues and I don’t get mad about that. I get excited about that because every time something like that happens, I know we see another new top marker. Right? I know this business is growing because as they're called growing pains and a lot of times people shut down, they get frustrated. They see the obstacle and they don’t how to get through the weeds, so they just collapse. [0:10:05.9]
I know this is true because I've consulted many companies and their #1 reason why most people don’t get out of the weeds is because they can't see out of the weeds. They don’t even know … they know they're in the weeds. They just don’t know what the path is to escape to get out. So I want to say something and you might not understand it yet, but you will, eventually because sometimes when you're in the weeds so deep, you have to subtract to multiply. You actually have to pull backwards and slow down for a second to actually multiply the results and it sounds very counterproductive. I'm actually helping a company right now. They have about 15 employees. They're doing about, I don’t even know… probably about 25,000,000 a year and the main guy, the COO, is actually, he's just lost and you know, he's tapped out. He's freaking out. He's really causing massive disruption in a company with people and we need to figure out what the solution is and I know the solution. [0:11:07.4]
The solution is simple. Get out of the situation. Like he has to escape. He has to walk away for a while, let the dust settle and see what's really going on. So typically when shit hits the fan, we tend to like want to jump in and solve problem and drive people harder. The truth is what you need to do is step back and say, hey, where is the opportunity to maximize revenue because everything we're talking about here right now, guys, by the way, is revenue solves problems. If this company was making revenue to the level they should be, there would not be any of these problems and sometimes, with that said, revenue hides problems as well because when markets are hot, you can still be making money but shit could still be hitting the fan or brewing in the background, ready to hit the fan when something hiccups. So I can tell you this and this is smart people, these are very smart people, so even us, like you know, this is why you always got to be learning, this is why masterminds are good. This is why, you know, getting high level consultants are good. Pay someone $10,000 for a day or $25,000, whatever they charge. [0:12:06.8]
Pay them if you feel like they can help you and guide you because the truth is what guys like me and other guys that do that, and I only do a couple of those a year, but what's good about it is like we see around the corners. We have no emotional attachment to it. Obviously, you do, which is that's not a problem. Well, it is a problem, but it is to be expected, but we want to like be able to like step back and give you direct action - here's what you need to do - and you're going to be scared and you're going to be frustrated and overwhelmed, but like ideally, when you pay someone that's in your interest, what's going to happen is they're going to give you a lot more confidence that you've had in the last six months or six years, you know, floundering around in the system and just to be straight up with you guys, if you're listening to me and you've been in business for 5-10 years and you're still not making $1,000,000 a year, well, that's you. It has nothing to do about the business. It has something to do with you and your mindset and you could combat that and say, well, Mark, I want a lifestyle. Well, I can tell you for sure, you can make $1,000,000 a year with a lifestyle business, 100%. [0:13:05.2]
We're going to talk about business and you know, all that stuff here in a second, but there's lots of ways to do that. So I wish…everything I'm sharing with you guys, by the way, I wish I knew. You know, I was making a lot of money for the first 9 years of my business, but not millions of dollars and you know, I was making it but I was burning it just as quickly as possible in the background. That's why I almost went bankrupt twice, right? So, I told everyone I was a business owner and I believed it. That's even scarier. But what I was really, I was a high level paid employee for a psycho. I worked for a psycho, myself - I worked for me, and I was making decent money, more money than anybody would ever pay me, right, at a job, if you will. But I think what I'm seeing out there in the marketplace is a lot of people think they own a business when they really don’t and again, it's okay. All I'm trying to do is bring this to the forefront so we can actually identify really what the situation is and make real assessments and know how to proceed forward to get the growth that you're seeking. [0:14:03.3]
You can be frustrated and saying my business isn't growing if you don’t have a business. Right? It sounds kind of silly, but I'm telling you - I've talked to a lot of people who are like dude, my business hasn’t grown in 2 years. Well show me your business. They show me what they're doing. They don’t have a business. They have a job. That's the reason why it's not growing. That's why they're always stuck in the middle of everything. Again, that's fine. Businesses, I don’t even know the proper, you know, I guess we could look it up but a business to me, which is in my context is, you own a business that works with or without you. It runs. It produces revenue. It hires. It fires. It grows. It expands. Not to say you shouldn’t be involved in some of that, but that's what a real business does. Secondly, a business is something that gets built to be sold. It can be sold. It doesn’t have to be sold, but it is built with the mindset of being sold. A lot of people are building businesses, when I say businesses, their term of business and there's nothing sellable. There's no sellable business. They don’t have SOPs. They don’t have processes. They don’t have culture. They don’t… you know, like it's hey, what's your business? [0:15:06.7]
Oh, I just wake up and get shit done. Well, that's not a business. Right? That's a chaotic job for a psycho and we have to like really start thinking about this because you're going to wake up 10 years from now - hopefully - that's the goal, right - and you're either going to be closer or further away from your goals, financially and emotionally and all that above. So we need to build a business that actually can build, operate, scale and if you ultimately wanted to, sell that business. There's lots of ways to do that and I'm not going down that path today, but I would love to hear what kind of business you own, what does it look like, how is it running or not running with or without you, what's the goals, what's the hiccups, and all that fun stuff, right, that we all have to deal with. But as you're growing this and even I'm tossing this to you, you might get frustrated and see an obstacle here. You might even go back and revert back to your old ways, which we typically do, right. Like, oh, bullshit, Evans - you don’t what you're talking about - I really have a business, it's just different. [0:16:07.0]
I've heard that every single time, by the way. Any time I show someone how to do marketing with email, like "You don’t understand, my business is different." It's no different than any…business is business. See, that's the difference is, as a business owner, you need to be open to testing and listen, it might not be exactly the same, but there will be a lot of similarities with all businesses and I'm involved in multiple types of companies, from media to real estate to publishing to, I think I said media, but everything in between. Like I've been involved… motorcycle company, oh my gosh, like so many companies. So, I want you to understand that they all have tons of similarities and you can do it. You can like build something way bigger than you, believe it or not, and I…depending where you're at financially and business wise right now, you might be thinking I'm crazy, you just need to pay the bills, and you do. But what gets you to where you're at is not going to get you to where you want to go. [0:17:02.9]
So that's why we need to start thinking about that. We're coming to the end of 2019. Hopefully, you're doing some planning for Q1 of 2020 because did you hit your goals? What was the hiccups? Where was the problems? Did you hire enough people? What were your real goals? Because when I say "real goals" because a lot of people secretly don’t share their real goals. They share goals… numbers that they think they can hit to protect their ego, but the real goals are the number that scares the holy bejeezus out of you. Like dude, if I say this out loud or around the wrong person, someone is going to call me crazy. That's a good thing because if that's happening, you're hanging out with the wrong people, #1 and #2, you know, if you're hanging out with us and the DM family or DM alliance, typically people are setting goals so low and we're like, dude, like you can do 10 times that, and then they get the confidence to believe it and then guess what? They go out and execute it and overdo it. They make more than the 10x of their initial goal. So a lot of people are setting very low targets to protect their ego and I'm telling you guys, if you're not hitting the 7-figure number, you know, by your 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 or whatever, we need to look at what you're doing or what you're not doing and start analyzing and growing. [0:18:14.5]
Like, you know, subtracting to multiply the efforts. We got to get bigger pots. Right now has never been easier to really crank up revenue. Your buyers are on the interweb. They're everywhere. So we just need to figure out what the hook is, what the angle and strategy is to extract these people, to put them in your pipeline and start producing revenue and build a real business. And there's lots of ways to build businesses, right. You could be a consultant. You could be, you know, selling services. You could be selling cars… I mean, there's umpteen millions of different ways but really, you've got to create revenue. You've got to, you know, look at do you want to be the Walmart in your industry or do you want to be the Nordstrom in your industry? That's a big difference, by the way. Do you want to have a recurring revenue model, which is always good for business resells. Recurring revenue actually gets a bigger multiple when you go to sell because that's predictable income and then, like, what kind of business are you in? [0:19:08.3]
The industry, is there any extensions? Who are you looking to sell to? Do you even know who would buy your company if you wanted to sell it? And I got a little thing for you guys to do. Like, I would like you to call some business brokers and talk to them about your business and see what it would sell for, what's the multiples in the industry you're in. What do you need to get to the business model to sell? How much revenue? Because you may not know this, but it's a lot easier to sell companies for many millions of dollars than it is 500 grand, typically, right. Because the people looking that have that money, they want to jump into real revenue. No one is looking… you know, I'm not looking to buy a company that's producing 40,000 a year. That's not … if it can't produce a million a year minimum, I'm not even interested in looking at buying it. Not to say you couldn't - I'm just saying like there's different levels on those levels and depending where you're at in your career or journey, you're looking where can I place my money to get the biggest bang for my buck, globally. Maybe it's a strategic play to buy and just shut down. [0:20:03.1]
Maybe it's a strategic play to buy your company for your SOPs and your team, x, y… like all that. Like these are things company buyers are looking for and thinking about. So it'd be a task, a good action step to contact some local business brokers, sit down with them and talk to them about what kind of business you're in, what you're looking to do and what would it have to look like? What do you need to create to create a sellable asset, and then when you do create it, what is the multiple of that, you know, are you getting a 2x or a 10x, right? Because if you're going to put your efforts into something, why not get the maximum multiple that you can, and I'm not saying this is the only reason to build a company, by the way, based off the multiple. I'm just saying like if you have…if it's very similar and it's the same path, just a different angle or a different word even, sometimes it could be that simple by the way. You might get a 3x to 6x. That's 100% difference in your revenue that you can take home on a sell. So, I want you to start thinking about this. We have got a lot of cool stuff. I want you guys all to become business owners, not just hard-working people making decent money. [0:21:01.8]
I want you to become a real business owner. I want you to have a real infrastructure. I want you to have amazing teams. That's probably one of the best things I love about building a business. I was thinking about that today in my workout, is when I was running, I was like how amazed I am by my team. I care about these people so much. I think about them every day, for real. It may sound silly, but it's not silly to me because it's like my life. I think about them. I want them to have amazing lives. I want them to buy their dream homes. I want them to have massive revenue streams as they grow old and have families and more families and their kids have kids and you know, all that stuff to me is like so important. It's not for everybody because not everyone succeeds in our company because some people are just lazy, but the ones that stick it out and you know, work hard and do the thing that they need to do, they can develop into some amazing, amazing people and they are amazing people already, but they can develop and become more amazing, you know. And get more access to opportunities because we're very entrepreneurial style company, so you know, the door … there's no window. There's no ceilings, I should say, with our companies. So that's culture. That's thinking. [0:22:03.6]
And today is kind of just me talking about stuff I've been thinking about for the last couple of days with all the craziness and chaos going on. But really what it comes down to, I'm just grateful that I'm able to travel like I had to with the deaths in the family, you know, hang out with my family like I'm able to because I've built a company that will allow me to do that. More importantly, I set parameters for me to do that. It starts with you, by the way. It always starts with you. What do you want? And I want to be home. I want to be around my kids. I want to be around my wife. I want to do the things with the family. That's important to me. Even sometimes when I don’t want to do it, I need to do it because it's important. So, you know, yes, you could always make more. Yes, you could always be somewhere else, but like, we have got to start structuring this to build for us, build with us - you know, how does it multiply together, and you start creating a compound effect. You're going to wake up in 2 years, 3 years, 5 years from now. You're either going to be closer or further away from your goals. So just thinking about you guys over here. I want to say I hope you have an amazing day. Keep me posted. Make sure to follow me over on Instagram and Facebook at MarkEvansDM. [0:23:02.6]
If this show was important to you or positive to you, please feel free to share. Please do a post. Tag me on it. Let me know what's going on. Shoot me a private message. Let me know how I could better serve you and better help you on where you're at and where you want to go, and I'm being serious. I really do care about that stuff, and I will make every effort I can to give you the most value that I have available, and if I don’t know the answers, which I typically don’t, I will contact someone to help us get on one of these meetings, this conference calls or however we do it for this podcast show and I will get the answers for you. I'll do it with my best to make that a reality. So, I'm going to bounce off here. I've got a ton of stuff to do today, but I thought I'd squeeze this in here before the day really takes over, and if you need anything, like I said, feel free to reach out. I appreciate you being here. Hope you have an amazing day. If I don’t talk to you before the holidays, have an amazing Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years, and let's fucking crush 2020. Look forward to a happy, happy DM day.
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