Welcome to the “Making of a DM.” Are you playing business owner? This is something I discovered over 15 years ago that changed my life and changed my business, and it can change yours, too. So, with that said, let's get started.
Mark: What’s up? It’s your boy, Mark Evans DM from coming to you live here for Parkland, Fla., in the office again. Nice and warm over here. Hope you guys are doing amazing. Cheers to the coffee. Got some new cigars that just came in.
Anyway, I've been thinking about all you guys and gals and thinking about how important it is about business, and so many people are entrepreneurs now and a lot of people you follow say they’re entrepreneurs. A lot of people say they're business owners. We're going to discuss some of that today. My question to you is, are you playing business owner? This is what I discovered 15 years ago. Maybe a little longer actually. [01:17.5]
Again, everybody, thank you so much for all the birthday messages. I'm still trying to get back to everyone. I have a lot of messages over there and it's been pretty wild and very honored to say the least.
So, business owner. I'm sitting here talking with my DM family guys today. I got up at 4:30 this morning, wrote a pretty big thing to them, talking about all the different ways that business owners can generate a million dollars a year. It's never been easier. There's so many paths to generate a million dollars a year. When I say make a million dollars a year, I'm not talking gross. That's easy to do. I'm talking at least net a million dollars a year. That's the ultimate goal for everyone for some reason. The initial goal I should say. It started getting me thinking about this business owner stuff and, really, what it comes down to is probably about…I started doing business in ’96. [02:06.8]
First and foremost, before I get started, actually, today is my parents' 43rd anniversary that they've been married 43 years. You guys may or may not know this, but my mom got married at 17. My dad was 18. They had to go to Indiana to get married because literally she was underage. They had me in ’78. They got married in ’77 today and then they had me on June 19, ’78, but super awesome to see that, 43 years, talking about commitment, right? Look, they're a little bit committed, wouldn’t you say?
Anyways, back to this business thing. I was playing business. I had the office. I had staff members. Always had an assistant, had a couple of salespeople, marketing, a wannabe marketing person in the office, had a small one-room office back then. Literally, we'd have six people in a 10x10 section, it was pretty wild, and I always felt like I couldn't afford it. It's $250 a month. I'm like, This is silly. I can take this money and use so much more with it, like to pay my electric bill at home. I can do this. I can do that. Again, I was playing business. [03:08.7]
So many of you guys are trying to grow something inside of your checking account and it's very tough to do that. I remember back in ’96 to 2002 or ’03, me playing business. I would make 30 grand on a deal. I'd go blow it with all my friends, and a week later, I'd be back in the grind. I'd be stressing. I'd be hammering the phones. I'd be meeting the people. I'd be shaking the hands. I was the business owner for that day. Then I’d make some money and then I wasn't a business owner. I got complacent. I was lazy. I was ignorant. I was wasting money. I had fun, don't get me wrong, but I also knew I was doing it wrong.
Then I started really asking myself how to become a better business person. I want to be a better person, which if I'm better, my business would get better, and this is kind of the journey that started me thinking about how to uplift my team as well. I can't make you do business better for me, but I can show you how to become a better person. If you become a better person, that carries over to everything, including the business you're in. [04:10.8]
And so, I was playing business for years. I made money. I made money. I lost a lot of money. I have wasted a lot of money and I was always playing business. I didn't have a process. I didn’t have a procedure. If a lead called in, I took the lead. I got a napkin and wrote down the number, wrote down the deals, went and met them and jumped in the car and ran over to meet them, shook their hands, got the contract and closed the deal. That's what I did and that's not a business. That's a job, at best, and the job you work for, you work for a psycho. You, yourself, you're the psycho. You would never hire yourself.
You know you're non-hireable, right? Most people that I know as entrepreneurs would never hire themselves. We're inconsistent at best. Actually, we're very consistent being inconsistent, right? They say consistency is our problem. We're very inconsistent, and so we're consistent on that. [05:03.2]
Not only that, what does your team look like? What does your business look like that you want? Not what you have, but what do you want it to look like? What are the people involved? What are the processes? What are the procedures?
Mark, you would come in and say hi? Everyone here wants to say hi to you, buddy. Come here. What does Daddy do? Does Daddy have a business or a job?
[Son]: A job?
Mark: A job? I’ll say you're out into the will. All right, get out of here. Daddy is working.
So, business. What do you want it to look like? Who's on the team? What are the rules? What are the responsibilities? When you own a real business, you're doing a lot of shit that you don't like to do. It sucks. A lot of days suck. So, if you're always happy and feel like you're moving in the right direction, you should get to do what you love to do, that's not business. There's nothing fun about business, typically. You're having very tough conversations with legal advisors, financial advisors, your staff members that are not done their job or this or that. You're hiring. You're firing. You're managing. You're asking yourself, Why the hell can't they get this? They've been doing it for a year. How don't they understand what to do? That's the stuff. That's frustrating to real business owners. [06:15.1]
Then we have to uplift them. We have to get them. We have to invest money to send them to the best training. We have to invest money to get them online training. We have to invest money to get them coached up, clients, etc.
So, as I'm sitting here thinking about the business, what does it look like for you? A good action step for you is to pull out a piece of paper and ask yourself, What does your organization chart look like? You as the visionary, you as the implementer, you as the assistant, you as the controller, you as the bookkeeper, you as the marketer.
This is why most businesses are businesses. I'm saying this very loosely, by the way. This is why businesses are always up and down for the average person, because when you're marketing, you're getting a lot of influx of opportunity. [07:07.7]
You're so busy on your opportunity, you dropped the ball on marketing, and then when you dropped the ball on marketing, it's a delayed reaction a month later and you're sitting around with your thumb up your ass, wondering why no money's coming in the door this month or why the phones aren’t blowing up, or why you're not closing deals. It's because there's a process. There's a delay.
See, oftentimes, especially in most businesses, you're looking at the sale as the action. That's the action after 27 other actions prior, marketing, managing the inventory, blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of moving pieces. So, what we need to do is look at our org chart and ask yourself, Where do I shine? Where am I the best producer? The org chart could be you as the visionary, you as the implementer, you as the accountant, you as the manager, you as the acquisitions person, use the dispositions person, use the accounting controller. There's a million different things. [08:02.3]
Then you look at this and say, Okay, how the hell can I be good at all these? It's impossible. I see why I'm stressed out. Now, you'd see a visual representation of why you feel the way you do, why you're writing the financial and emotional ups and downs like you do. We all do in the beginning, but why? You don't have to forever. It's a storm, but that storm doesn't stop until we start looking up and seeing what's really going on, and how to make it better.
See, when you look at that and you have 27 things on that organization chart and you're in all the boxes, now my next question is which one is the least important and this is how you're doing your days whether you know it or not. You're only doing what's urgent and important. This is why you feel like a firefighter. When I talked to you guys one on one, I'm like, Yo, what's going on, man? I feel like a firefighter. I put fires out all day. Have you ever thought that you might be the arsonist creating the fires, so you actually have fires to put out tomorrow? Have you ever thought about that? [09:04.2]
What would your life, what would your business look like if there were no fires to put out? What would you be doing all day? See, you're trying to fill a void in your brain. You're trying to fill a void, so that you become needed in your company. By the way, that's not a real company. They don't need you. Real companies don't need you as the leader, as an owner. It doesn't hurt it necessarily. Oftentimes, it could hurt it actually, if you're small-minded, trying to suppress the system, instead of letting it open up and grow.
But at the end of the day, for you, we need to realize that if we're growing a real organization, I don't even want to be a CEO. I don't want to be the implementer. I never have been really the high-level implementer. That's not my personality, but things have to get done initially.
So, what I'm looking at is I would rather be on the board. I own multiple [companies]. I'm involved in multiple companies, many, many companies, but I don't need to be involved in the day to day. I want more to be on the board. I don't mind casting the vision, but when it comes down to all the details and who's doing what and how it's getting done, that's not necessarily my angle. That's not my skill set. [10:12.0]
But I'm honest with myself about it. I don't act like it is. I focus on what I can control. With business, for me, it’s all about growth. It's about paying attention to the team. The real question you should be asking yourself if you own a real business is how are you not involved in the day to day? How are you not involved in the bottleneck conversations? The only thing that should be coming to you, actually you should be going to them as well, is asking high-level, action-driven, goal-oriented questions?
For example, I hit up one of my partners yesterday. He's making about $280,000 a month. That's not bad considering he's only been doing it for about 20 months, pretty decent, great profit margins, and I told him I'm pissed off. Why am I mad? I'm not doing anything. I make a good royalty residual off that company. But I'm mad because we're playing small. I'm mad because it can be so much bigger. [11:13.9]
See, what's interesting about growth, I've never met anybody that came to me and said, Mark, I wish I would have grown slower. Of course, there's some people that might say that because they did it wrong or they didn't have the pieces in tact that I'm talking about. I'm family first. I won't grow a company, if you came to me and said, Mark, you've got to be on the road 100 days a year, I'm out. I won't do it. I don't care how much it pays. Why? Because it doesn't align with my day to day lifestyle, what I want my personal life to be, so no amount of money is going to take me, excuse me, from what I want. I'm not chasing the money. As a company, I'm trying to build an overall vision of the company of how big it can be, share it, cast it, hire amazing people, work with them. [12:03.9]
These guys, these folks are way smarter than me, way smarter than me, but when I called the partner yesterday, this was last night on my walk. I'm hyped up. I'm stressed out. I'm like, Dude, you need to be at 500 grand a month like clockwork in the next 60, 90 days.
My question to you is what do you need from me to make that happen? See, when you ask questions like that, it changes the narrative in their brain, because the first thing most people do is like, I'm at 270. How do I get to 500? I’ve got to double my efforts. Doubling your efforts is not getting you to 500. If it was, you'd already be there. We’ve got to think differently. We’ve got to be projecting a different conversation to extract a different result. We know how to get to 270. How do I get to 500? If you knew, wouldn't you be there? If you're on the path of trajectory, you'll get there. [13:00.0]
Then the next question I would ask, okay, if he came to me and said, Mark, I’ll be there in 12 months, I'm like, Why does it take so long? And then he would have an explanation in his brain through his conversations he's had with himself of why that is the case. Then I'm going to take my knowledge of 24 years in business and have a way different conversation and show the path of three months or less, because it's not that much harder at this point. The hard parts done, the wherewithal, the customers, the knowledge, blah, blah, blah. Now we just need to scale and there might only be two hires you need to do to go from 270 to 500, only two, not the 12 he already has on the team.
See, all the hard work has been done. I see so many people working so hard, they don't have time to get wealthy. I'm not necessarily worried about the hours. I'm worried about what we're spending the hours on. Too many of you guys are trying to oversimplify complexity and under-simplify simplicity, but over-complicating all of it. It's really not that hard. [14:05.3]
I talked about this in my one book, The 10 Minute Business Owner. I call it the island effect. You're on an Island. You have 10 minutes a day. That's it. You have coconuts, palm trees. Your kids are playing. Your spouse right beside you. The yacht is in the far. You’ve got 10 minutes today to talk to people in your company. What are you talking about? More importantly, who you're talking to? And the rest of the day, you’ve got to sit on that island and enjoy your life and relax, and if you're not talking about the right stuff and you're not talking to the right people, you might drown yourself in that ocean because you can't handle the anxiety. It's overwhelming because you have zero control.
See, that's the difference. It's like when you start controlling everything, you have no control of anything. How in the world can you run 27 divisions in one company or five or six, or however many are in there? Let's just bring it down to simplicity. Implementer, manager, accounting, marketer. Let's call it four or five. How are you able to go up and control four spaceships? You're the pilot of four airplanes, taking people to four different continents. How? [15:17.2]
How could you ever be good? Why do you think you should get more by being crazier? Just because you work harder? It's not about working harder. We talk about this every day. It's about working smarter. I'm not saying not to work hard, but working hard and smart at the same time will give you so much better results. The problem is you don't even know you're working hard. You know you are. You just don't know how to do it.
I work many hours. A lot of people confuse it. Don't get it twisted. I'm working. When I'm out in the pool, hanging out with my son, I'm working. I'm thinking about big picture stuff. I'm watching the golfers go by and thinking about where there's a need, where there's a want, where there's an opportunity, where there's a certain… Working for me is not what most people would consider working. I get to live in my… I get to do exactly what I love to do, create and delegate. [16:07.0]
That's what I love to do. I don't like to manage. I don't like to talk about it. I just want to go do. I want to see it. I want to see it come to fruition. I want to implement. I want people to implement. I'll start it and then I’ll hand it off. I don't know if it takes an hour or 100 hours. See, the difference, I was telling my buddy today, I can't even remember the last time I'd been paid per hour. I don't do hourly stuff nor have I ever. I can't remember last time it's ever happened. If I don't kill it, I don't make money. If I don't go out and do a deal, I don't make money. If I don't set up my business, my business doesn’t make money. We have to make money. If you're in business, you have to make money.
So, are you playing any business owner or are you a business owner? Because real business owners have a team. A real business owner has a vision. A real business owner has goals. A real business owner has daily accountability tracking. Who's doing the work? Who's not? I'm good at a lot of things, but only great at one thing. I focus on building businesses where I only do that one thing, I love it, man. Paul, let’s call it create and then delegate. [17:07.7]
Dude, the truth is I create, eliminate or delegate. Oftentimes, the stuff I'm creating will never see the light of day. Do you know how many courses, how many software programs, how many companies I’ve started that never started? Because I eliminated them. The opportunity wasn't big enough. I’ve got out of them because it just wasn't there. I lost passion. I lost purpose. I lost focus and/or it was just too small. It was cool in the beginning, but once I started going down the path, I said, yeah, I don't want to work that hard for that little, and that's the truth.
I have stuff like that going on all the time, but, again, I'm a real business owner. I wasn't always a real business owner. It took me 15 years to figure out what I'm sharing with you guys, 15 years. It was a kick in the balls. It hurt. I was frustrated. I was sad. I was scared. I was excited because the guy had told me I paid him to tell me that. I didn't know what I was paying him to tell me, but I knew I needed to hear something. [18:11.0]
He was like, Dude, what are you doing? Stop playing. Start being. Be the change. Be the leader. Be the driver. Be the business owner. You're not the business owner. I saw you on the phone in the hallway for the last five hours. I saw you on the computer for six hours prior to that. You look like you're stressed out. You're overeating. Your skin looks terrible. What are you doing?
Dude, I’m making money.
No, you're not. Maybe you're making a little bit of money, but you're not a business owner and you're not going to make a lot of money. You're too busy making money that you can't get wealthy, Mark. Straighten up. You're better than that. You want more, right?
Yes.
Well, we've got to do more. We've got to change what we do. We've got to do more differently.
I'm like, But I don't understand. [18:58.4]
He's like, You will. It's going to be scary. It's going to be bumpy. It’s going to be tiring. It’s going to be frustrating. It's going to be exciting. But, dude, if everything comes through you like, Hey, Mark, can you sign off on this check? No, dude, I already signed off on it when I sent you the email to send a wire for $7,000. Send the wire. What I need to check off for it again. I trust you. That's why I sent it to you. Can you do the job? Yes or no? Yes. The leave me the fuck alone. I’ve got a company to run. Next question.
See, the problem is what happens is if everything's bottlenecking you, that's your ego. That's not a reality of a business. I genuinely believe most of you watching this or listening to my voice right down, you aren't even important to your company. Your company, if you had a real company, wouldn't even know if you were gone. You're not that important. You're not changing the world by doing real estate deals. You're changing your world maybe, but you're not changing the world. [20:02.6]
You have the local mom and pop ice cream shop down the street. You're working hard. You're making a couple bucks, but you can’t get wealthy like that. It's a start, but we've got to evolve. We've going to develop. We’ve got to become a business owner.
Dude, I always see people like Ben, what's his name, he was in there before and after everybody. That sounds like he was a terrible dad. That’s what it sounds like to me. Dude, if I’ve got to be in before my employees, why do I hire them? If I’ve got to be there after, why? It's a cool story. It makes you feel good. But what it really does is a bullshit story to make you keep working harder, to make you keep feeling like that's how it's the normal.
Dude, I get every morning at 4:44. I love it. I don't “love it” love it, but I love the feeling of it after I'm up and rolling. I hate getting up, but I’ve got to. I’ve got so much to do and I'm still behind the eight ball. I was up writing today. I'm was up editing something I'm working on. Then I'm working out. Then I get the kids getting up. Then I’ve got to do a video with you guys. After this video, I’ve got three other videos. Plus, I’ve got to actually do work and get stuff done. [21:14.8]
I'm still working. It’s just different types of work. You can create a life once you understand that you have a real business. No one is texting me saying, Mark, should I market this? Should I send this message? Dude, what do I pay you for? You know the vision. You get it. You want it and you have the capacity to do it. Go do it. Why else would you hire someone if every time they’ve got to do it, Hey, man, I’ve got a deal. Can you give me a call or not sure what I should do next? Close the fucking deal. That's what you do next. It's really simple. But you don't understand. Well, I do understand. Can do the job, yes or no?
See, that's the difference. Back in the day, 15 years ago, I used to say, give me the phone. Let's call them together and close the deal. Gave them false hope. They acted like they were doing the work because they were getting the results. [22:06.9]
Andrea, if it takes 100 hours, then you're a poor businessman. Your goal is one hour to accomplish what other people take 100 hours for. Automation, delegations, my man. Again, I hear you. I don't believe you. I believe what you're saying because you probably believe it, but I would say send me your bank statements. Send me your P&Ls. I'll send you mine. Let's compare. Dude, listen, everyone's fucking King Dingaling. Everyone has a 12 inch wiener on this video right now if you're a guy, of course. If you're a woman, you're the best looking girl in the world, right? So we think.
See, that's the difference with me, guys. I'm not here to be your friend. I could give two fucks about you actually. We're here to help you. I want to help. That's all I care about. I want to help you. I don't believe the bullshit you're saying out loud. I genuinely believe you believe it in your brain, but you don't run real businesses. There's no way you do. Do you know how I know? Because of the way you talk, the bullshit you say. [23:04.6]
Show me your bank statements today. Show me your P&Ls of all your companies. I'm guessing you have none or one and you'll send it to me on a Vistaprint letterhead. If not, shut the fuck up. Quit regurgitating. You're the fucking problem with the internet. You're regurgitating bullshit. By the way, I'm mad. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad that you believe that bullshit you're saying because it's holding you back. It's not helping you get successful. It sure in hell isn’t helping people around them get successful, because they're buying that shit, you're lying to them. You're lying to yourself and you're lying to them.
See, I really wish all these want to be guys that say stuff like they say, show me your P&Ls. Here's one thing I realized growing up poor. Every poor person has a million-dollar ideas. Every poor person has the best financial advice in the world. Every poor person has figured it out. Why are they poor? [24:06.7]
See, it's easy to talk shit, but during the work where the rubber meets the road is where the big dogs live. That's where the real opportunity is happening. We're so busy doing, we're not really talking about it. Let's get the P&Ls out, my man. I'm in. I have nothing to hide. My companies generate millions of dollars a month, let alone a year, and I’ve got the fucking proof to back it up, my man. This goes for anybody.
Andrea, “I came to the United States in 2002 with only a hundred bucks in my pocket. Now I’m a multimillionaire.” That's awesome. “Why are you talking shit?” I'm not talking shit. I'm talking shit about people that talk like you. You're regurgitating information. Hop on here, please. You're regurgitating information. Again, dude, you don't have a business. If you have a wholesale real estate company, it's not a business. It's a job. I'm sorry to burst your bubble. I have a company that does wholesale real estate. It's a business/job. [25:01.3]
How do you know if you have a business? Very simple. Can you sell it? What's the multiples? More importantly, show me 10 companies that sold in the last 12 months in that same exact industry, same exact category, the same exact product. It doesn't exist in wholesale. Wholesale companies are not businesses. It's simply a high-paying job that you couldn't hire people to help you grow it and generate millions of dollars.
So, I'm not talking shit. I'm just saying, dude, you can't tell me. I've been in too many businesses. I own too many companies. And I'm not talking shit to you, dude. I'm trying to help you. And that's how I know you don't have money. If you think I'm talking shit, you realize, dude, what I'm saying is real to real business owners.
Real business owners know it takes a lot of work. Real business owners know it takes more than one fucking hour a week to run a company, and, dude, I own a lot of them and I work less than an hour in some of them, but I'm not running them. I'm on the board, my man. I don't need to run them. I don't even need to look at KPIs. [26:01.8]
So, when you come with that weak shit like you are, I know you're not a multimillionaire. Maybe you are on paper. I want to see the fucking money in the bank. I’ve got multi-millions and I’ll show you, so don't come at me with your weak shit, dude. I don't need to know you. I know the way you talk. You're full of shit.
And, listen, you can help people being full of shit. I used to do it because I didn't know better. I didn't have someone like me telling me straight up. I could help many more people if I had someone like me telling me the shit I'm telling you right now, and you had $100 more than I had to get started because I started with nothing except the dream and a goal. I was 18 years old, no credit, lived at my parents' house with zero money.
Again, running a real company has to be sellable. If you can't sell it, it's not a company. If you can't sell it without you being involved, it's not a company. It's a job. This guy’s is a company. [27:03.0]
I'm not saying you can't sell it and be a part of it. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, when people come at me and say this stuff they say, I know if they're real or not. I’ve made millions, many millions of dollars in real estate and still do, but it's not a business. It's a job. You're not managing and growing a real company in wholesale real estate at all at one hour a week. It's impossible. I know because I’ve been there. Dude, I had the best team in the game. It requires a lot of stress, a lot of work, a lot of moving parts.
Again, guys, don't let anybody… You’ve got to question this shit. This is why people aren't getting the success they deserve because they're following the wrong people. Just because you could make a million dollars, by the way, does not mean you know what you're doing. It just means you’ve figured something else out and you're making a couple bucks.
Then my next question is on the P&L, how much of the money is being made doing the work as opposed to coaching people on how to do the work. I'm not talking shit about either, but they're two totally, totally different types of industries, massively different. Massively different. I know because I'm in them both. [28:09.2]
You guys understand the types of companies. I'm in the publishing world. I'm in the email media space world. I'm in the real estate investment space world. I'm in the franchise/licensing world. I mean, the nutraceutical world. Every company, every business is different. I'm not coming to you, one path, like, Do real estate. It's the only way to get rich. Dude, it’s not. If that was the case, everyone would be doing real estate. There's many ways to get wealthy. Real estate is a great stepping stone to make some money, then to go build or buy a company, ideally buy, buy something performing with all this money.
Andre, I'm sure I have less millions than you in the moment. “How about if we…?” Dude, I don't need to do a fucking bet. I don't bet with clowns anyway. Go make it anyway. If I show you, I’ll show me now. Dude, everyone's getting millions. Fuck, I've never met someone that’s like, Dude, I'm going to have less millions next year. Why are you kicking the can down the road, my man? Pony up. Pull down your pants, buddy. Let's see what you’ve got. [29:10.2]
See, that's the difference, man? Fuck, everyone's got money next year, everyone, until next year comes. By the way, I'm not just saying it's all about the money, but in this case, it definitely is because you're saying stuff that's hurting people. You, mostly. It's hurting you. I'll pay a million dollars to the nonprofit right now. Well, what have you’ve got?
See, that's the thing. Your $1,000, it shows you don't have the money mentality. You're going to show me that you're making millions, but we're going to bet $1,000? It's a pussy bet, dude. It's a bet that doesn't drive you to go do what you say you're going to do because it's so easy to pay $1,000. There's no pain to it. Well, I was going to give 1,100 this year anyway on my charity budget. I guess I'll give 1,000 here because he’s right, I didn't get the job. Come on, man. For a bet, let’s bet real money. It's Mickey Mouse, dude, 1,000 bucks. [30:04.1]
See, this is the problem, folks. This is the problem affecting everyone around us. You guys are listening to the wrong people. By the way, I'm not everyone's cup of tea. If you're not looking for the truth, I'm definitely not your guy. You paid 30k to charity last [year]. Yeah, exactly, I forgot about that. I don't even think I ever mentioned that. Dude, we have to grow a real business.
By the way, I'm sharing this because I want you guys to grow a real business. Steve, how is tearing him a new asshole helping? I don't know. I'm shooting straight with him. Hopefully, he has arity in the moment. Everyone sees it differently. I don't think I'm tearing him a new asshole. You shoot straight to them.
By the way, it does not help anybody if it hurts you. I’m not trying to hurt you. I want to be the guy that helps you. It doesn't benefit me if I hurt you. It only benefits if we can win together. It only benefits me if you send me a message next year like, Dude, what you said, blah, blah, blah, you were right. Here's where I'm at now. [31:02.3]
This is the thing. I'm not looking to make a friend. I'm looking to help you. I'm not trying to tear you an ass. I'm trying to give you guidance. It's just the way I deliver. It might not be necessarily the way you'd like to hear it. It's not coming from a bad place. It's not even coming from a judgmental place. It's coming from a caring, passionate place of truth.
I would be a thousand times further if someone talked the truth to me when I was in the beginning stages, a thousand times. Everyone was dicking me around because they just wanted my pocket, wanted more money, more money. Mark, I'll teach you that. Give me more money. Mark, I’ll teach you that. Give me more money. Dude, I don't mind paying for it, but, shit, let's get it done. Quit telling me what I want to hear. Tell me what I need to hear.
See, that’s the difference. You guys know that's a real thing. We are going to tell you what you want to hear and sell you, and give you what you need. That's what real marketers do. I'm not here to sell you anything except to help you. I'm here for free. One hour a day of my life is here, because I'm trying to hurt you? It’s because I want to help you. [32:03.0]
Guys, again, I’ve got goosebumps. Do you know why? I genuinely, I promise you, I promise you, a year from now, Andrea—if I'm saying the wrong name, please tell me how to say it right. Andre, Andrew, Andrew, Andrea—when he does what he's going to do, because this has been a real talk for him and some people think I'm going to chew his ass out, but I'm not. It’s literally a year to two years from now, there will be a moment when we connect, in person or video or phone or whatever, and this call made a change in someone's life. I know it to be true. I don't know if it's going to be him or a spectator. It's going to be someone.
See, the difference, what I’ve realized if I was trying to be vanilla about it and I'm like, Yeah, man, that's a great deal, great call. Yeah, work an hour a week doing nothing, I'd be lying to myself and I'd be lying to you. More importantly, I have a duty and obligation to my audience to shoot straight to you. So, when that stuff comes in there, I’ve got to address it. I can’t let it slip. [33:08.3]
See, too many of you’re slipping. Too many of you are allowing things to creep in. Too many of you are allowing to be complacent. This is why you don't have a business. This is why, and if you do, it's on slippery slopes. I know. I’ve had them fail. They fail every time when I take my eye off the ball. They fell every time when I overpromise and underdeliver to my team. It's real.
Yes, Curtis knows best. Large wealth creation in real estate requires you to run it as a business, not as an investment, a hundred percent. Curtis, true story—great guy, by the way—the biggest thing I always see people mess up, they say, I'm a real estate investor. When I hear it, you're not even a business owner, because a business owner, I'm a real estate business owner. I use investments as my vehicle for my company. It's a way different, way different visual, way different picture, way different cadence. Everything is different. [34:02.7]
When you're a real estate investor, man, it's in the streets. You're getting punched in the face. You're punching people back. You're screaming, kicking for a $5,000 wholesale fee, a $13,000 rehab deal that went south that you thought you were going to make 80 on and then net 13. That's if you're lucky, right?
We’ve got Rob that wants to hop on. “Andrea, I am not interested in wholesaling because it's not truly scalable.” Facts. “I'm launching an online company based on AI-powered education. That's how I win next year. I'd like to talk to you about it.” Awesome. I'm down.
Layton, “Greta transparency, Mark. Keep shooting straight.” Guys, I appreciate you guys. I have nothing to sell. I want to help you. I want to see you succeed. If you love your wife, it doesn't mean I can't love my wife. If you love your business, it doesn't mean I can't love my business. If you make $10 million today, it doesn't mean I can't make $10 million a day. I don't believe in “If you get, I can't get.” To me, true abundance is just being genuinely real. By the way, it's not easy to shoot straight with people initially, but it has to be done. [35:03.0]
Think about the people you respect and care about the most. They always tell you straight, and if you have never had that experience, I feel sorry for you because it's tough to swallow, get kicked in the nuts, punched in the face, slapped in the throat, jugular, right? But, at the end of the day, I get mad.
I remember football of senior year. I’ve got pulled out of the game because the guy threw an interception and he was holding me, blah, blah, excuses. He was holding me. There was a real excuse, but it still was an excuse. The guy got thrown the ball. He intercepted, whatever. Refs didn't see it. Coach sits me on the thing. I was on the sidelines crying. I was mad because I knew, at the end of the day, it's an excuse, but I’ve got to do something about it. It made me work harder. It made me work smarter. It made me work tight. Everything became tighter.
I didn't like it in the moment. I didn't want to hear what he had to tell me. I didn't want to have to sit on the bench and feel ashamed and embarrassed, but so many adults are doing this now with their life. They’ve got their kids watching, their spouses watching, their friends watching. Even if they're not talking positively, they're watching. They might be talking like they want you to fail, but, true, deep down inside, if you're a winner, you're a winner. That's going to happen no matter what. [36:12.7]
You’ve got to keep your head on straight. You’ve got to get focused. You’ve got to get pissed, get mad. When you do, use that negative and turn it into a positive. I don't work out good when I'm happy. Oh, I'm happy. Let's get a good workout in. I’ve got to get mad. It's like, Hey, you fat fuck, we’ve got to get on that treadmill. We’ve got to work hard today. Evans, you're weak as fuck. Go grab that 40. Stop playing around with the 25. Let's go.
You’ve got to use this energy. You’ve got to know what drives you. It's not that everyone is the same obviously, but what drives you? What gets you excited? We've got to look at the company structure, CEO, COO, accounting, manager, acquisitions, marketing department. You’ve got to say, Okay, I'm doing all of these. How am I good at any of them? Which one am I really good at? That’s easy. Which one do I really hate? Sucks. I need to hire for the sucky pieces, do a coordination, accounting, marketing. All those pieces that consistently have to be done, that's the stuff. That's the stuff that has to be done. That's the stuff you hire out. [37:14.0]
Anything consistent, you must hire out. You need to consistently have good books. You need to consistently have marketing going on. You need to consistently have someone managing people. You need to consistently be doing acquisitions and disposition, bringing product in and bringing product out. If there are consistent actions, you have to do that. That does not mean you have to do it.
Then, once you get that all established and you start hiring, you need to ask yourself, Who is selling a company like mine? I like that question. Who has a company infrastructure like mine and how much is it worth? How much do they make? How big can it really get? And what can I sell it for? What's the multiple of EBITDA?
That's what companies talk. That's what companies are doing. They're not thinking, How do I build a job to make a hundred grand a year? They're thinking, How do I build this thing into hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars a year, sell it for XXXXXXX dollars to XYZ? [38:03.1]
They've already identified the top 20 people that might buy them strategically. They've already identified how much they could sell it for. If they’ve got to that point, it's going to be 5X or 7X. Okay, cool, that gives me a baseline. Then, okay, what are we looking at? So, we've got all this stuff going on. We've got to figure it out.
For you guys, definitely business build. It will serve you. I lost 15 years of my life not building a real business. I had a business I thought, but I had a high, an ultra-high paying job and I had team members. I had people doing the work. It's still not a business. It's a high-paying job. I can't sell my company that I put my blood, sweat and tears into for many, many years. I'm not saying not to do that kind of stuff. I'm just saying know and treat as it is.
Jalen, “I always do something good when I'm mad. I always thought that was weird or not right.” Thanks for sharing. Dude, I use it. I get excited when I get mad. That's why I don't mind when people say I can't do something. I'm going to do. I use it as fuel. [39:07.7]
Some people are like, Dude, the naysayers. Naysayers actually feed me. They don't take from me. For some people, it does the opposite, of course, but I actually like it. I enjoy it, honestly. I think it's funny and it gets me excited, because I know the more I hear no, the more I'm going to do, because that's when most people play.
How many people are telling you no and you just stop? How many people are telling you no and you just question? Dude, you tell me no, I go that instant to like, Oh, yeah, it's on now, and then you tell me no again, I’m like, I'm definitely going to figure this out and I just get more excited. You know what I mean?
So, you’ve got to find out what you think, but we've got this business. We’ve got the org chart. We've hired a couple of people. We’ve contacted a couple of brokers in the business industry asking them, Hey, this kind of company I have. Do you have any companies that are for sale in this industry I'd like to look at? [40:00.0]
You’ve got to understand what a P&L looks like. You're not trying to buy. You're just trying to understand what a real company looks like. Have you ever looked at a real P&L? Have you understood what real daily profits look like, hourly, per minute, profit margin, flows look like? How quickly ROI, we call it ROAS, return on advertising spend, how that looks? Is it day 1, day 20, day 90, day 300?
Why is that important? Because it's going to show you what your cash flow pipeline looks like. How much money do I need and for how long, and how big does it…? There's a lot of moving parts. If I could spend a dollar today and get a dollar back today, I can spend an infinite amount of money. If I spend a dollar today and only get 20 cents back today, it takes me eight months to get my whole dollar back, that’s a different path. It's a different conversation, different marketing, a different growth process. Do I need to bring in outside money? Do I need to go slower? Do I need to take it fast? There are different conversations with that. [40:55.6]
So, as a business owner, we need to go to the business broker, talk to them about what kind of business you're in and tell them you're looking to acquire to build, insert seeing some data, ask them what do they typically see as EBITDA on something like that, like, Yo, man, I'm typically see an XYZ, 5X EBITDA. Cool, that's good news. You're like, Fuck, what does EBITDA mean? It means you don't have a company either. You need to get online and type in “EBITDA”. These are things that we need to know as business owners, company owners.
When you're having these conversations, things start changing, and then you need to start looking at your tax department. You need to start looking at your investment department. All these things start building. Where are you spending your time?
Folks, I could go on and on here, but get the book, Magician vs. Mule. Appreciate everyone who has gotten it. Straight talk, real talk, tactical stuff, get you out of the weeds a little bit, hopefully, all the way, but you've got to start somewhere. I truly do believe that every single person listening to my voice can build a multimillion-dollar company that produces revenue for you. [42:03.1]
“You're hitting on points that no one focuses on.” Thank you. Because it's packed with great... Awesome, thank you guys. But I can tell you this. If you don't stop doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting the same results. You're going to keep getting the same results, and then you're going to get frustrated, but my big fear is that you're going to lose 10 years of your life in the process, just like I lost 15 years of my life, my business, my youngest 15 years or my business-development life. Can't take it back. I'm not mad. It is what it is, but knowing that that was the thing, I have to shoot straight with you. I have to give the real truth. I have to deliver even when it salts or hurts. I can't see you guys continue to go down this path of fakeness. I can't see you continue to sit at home and suffer in silence.
You have to know you're not alone. Business is hard. It's okay. Understand it. Use it as fuel. Drive your revenue. Get excited about revenue. Get excited about wins. See your team starting to develop. I don't care if you're delivering products in your garage, it's a stepping stone to the next level. As long as there's another level. [43:14.1]
See, in real estate, I was just like, Do more deals. I had the team. I had the company. I had the culture. I had everything. But what I missed is I didn't have a sellable company. It's not sellable. It's very hard to scale and you deal with a lot of crazy people. It's a tough industry at scale.
It's easy to make a good living doing the work, but don't confuse. Don't tell people you own a business when you have a high-paying job. Just because you don't go to work, it doesn't mean you don't have a job. We all have a job. What does a job entail? What does it look like? Are you paid hourly? Are you paid for performance? [44:00.0]
We have to understand we are building a real company and I want you to get so wealthy. I want you to build it right. I want you to become super wealthy from it because that's what it’s about to me. Why wouldn't I want that for you? Why would I want that for you?
Jeremy said something cool. “The takeaway so far is less control equals more control. It's about what you control, not how much, quality versus quantity.” Yes, I wanted to hit that because that is key and he is right.
See, if you're controlling customer and admin, if you're controlling accounting and bookkeeping, it's important, but if that's what you're controlling, all that energy should be focused on business dev, customer acquisition, deepening relationships with customers you have already and growing your bottom line. You can't do that when you're heads down on the computer and you're typing the numbers in a spreadsheet. Just can't do it.
I’ve got to bounce because I’ve got a business to run, but I appreciate you guys being here and, genuinely, I genuinely do care about you guys. I want to see you succeed. I do want more friends in my life, but I want friends that are progressing and growing, and grinding and driving, and being real providers to the world, shooting straight with people, giving them real talk and just being better human beings every day. [45:16.8]
When I say I don't want friends, I'm not saying I don't want friends. Just, I don't need friends. I want more. I just don't need them, and when, well, we all need some, I guess. But I want you to succeed. For a while, you might not like me because I am going to push on you. I'm going to push you on where you're sensitive. I'm going to push on where you're scared. I'm going to push when you don't want to be pushed anymore, that annoying push.
I'm not doing it to hurt you. I genuinely am not. I'm doing it because deep down inside, I actually care, probably more than you do at that moment. I know what's on the other side of that storm. It's amazing and you deserve it if you're willing to put in the effort. I promise you, it's there if you're willing to do it. Build the company. I’ll build it with you. I'll help in any way I can. [46:03.6]
I'm thinking about you guys. Have an amazing day. Make sure to check me out over at MagicianVsMule.com. Get the book. Thank you, guys. Have an amazing day. Happy Wednesday.
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