Welcome to the “Making of a DM.” If you want more success, life easier, and to be happier, I want to share something with you that I truly believe is one of the biggest pieces to help you accomplish all that and way more. So, with that said, let's get started.
Mark: Hey, there. It’s your boy, Mark Evans DM. I appreciate you guys being here and a lot of cool stuff to share with you. Real quick, today's show is going to be a lot shorter than normal because it's just one topic I really want to hammer home to you and help you, and really get the point across, but also I don't want to harp on it too much. [01:08.7]
But as I'm sitting here, I'm in Parkland, Fla., and a lot of crazy stuff is going on. I’ll give you a quick glimpse behind the scenes of my world, if you even care, but I care, so I want to talk about it.
I'm in Parkland, Fla., and as I'm recording this, in 48 hours, I’ll be hopping on the jet heading back to Ohio for five months. I've been doing this since ’05 like this. I’ve really been traveling since ’05, but we've been splitting time in Ohio and Florida now for about five or six years now, and with kids and stuff, it's kind of different, right? We have a great teacher. She's actually downstairs teach Mark, Ms. Erica. We have a great nanny, Carly, and all this stuff. We're going to miss these guys because they're not coming to Ohio with us, but we do have other people up in Ohio locked and loaded and ready to go. [01:56.8]
But it's always interesting, when I travel, I'm very conscious through my thought-audits in the morning about the travel effect, meaning when I'm getting ready to leave in 48 hours—by the way, in Ohio, we're redoing our basement. It's a $300,000-renovation. We’ve got the sauna, the bar, the theaters, and cigar rooms and all this fun stuff, whatever is going on—and, again, 48 hours before we arrive, it's massive chaos. Everyone is freaking out. Everyone is going crazy, because if you know any contractors, they like to procrastinate. Not all of them, and Mike has been amazing. My boy, Mike, is absolutely a stud, but it's just called a project. That happens. Then, all of a sudden, within 48 hours, you see this turd turn into an amazing, beautiful facility. I don't know if that's a good comparison, but that's how I see it.
That is going on in Ohio. I'm here kind of calm, even though the house we're in right now will be boxed up and packed up and ready to roll because we bought a new pad down the street, and I won't be doing it. I'm not saying this to impress, but to impress upon. I absolutely hate moving, so I have an amazing assistant and she’ll hire some great people to come in, box up stuff, put stuff in the truck, and move and do all that good stuff. [03:15.2]
That's why I love making money because I hate moving, and if I don't have money, I can't pay people to move me. That's one thing. I like luxuries. If I don't like it, why do I keep doing it? I hate ironing clothes.
Therefore, I have a person and they iron for us. I hate cleaning the house. Therefore, you hire a cleaner. I hate mowing the lawn. Actually, I enjoy mowing the lawn, but it's not the best thing for my time, so hire the lawn out. I hate cleaning the pool. Hire someone to do the pool. I hate washing windows. We just had the window washer at our house in Ohio before we got there. I spent $750 and washed the windows, cleaned the windows. It's a good gig for everybody. Everyone wins. [03:57.4]
Again, I'm just sharing behind the scenes. This is stuff that's going on every day in my world, and just moving along and growing and expanding. I couldn't imagine, 20 years ago, thinking I was going to pay someone $750 to put Windex on my windows in a house and clean them. It was foreign to me, and I’d say, seriously, it was absolutely foreign to me.
It's cool, though. All the cars are getting there today, tomorrow, and I’ll be up there for my birthday. My birthday is June 19. I'll be the big 43 and I'm excited for it for a couple reasons. One, it's better than the alternative. If you don't age, you are dead, so that's definitely better than the alternative.
Secondly, I have a new book coming out called The ME Economy and I'm very excited about that. I was honored to hand it off to almost 600 people in Utah a couple of weeks ago. We've had hundreds of responses and feedback on it. People are loving it. If you guys get a chance, I'd love for you to support that. A hundred percent of the profits go to charity. I'll keep you guys posted on that as we're doing some really neat things there. Plus, we're going to give away some cool stuff and do some neat things to get the word out. [05:08.2]
But The Me Economy, it's going to be big. I hope you guys can protect partake in that. That will obviously be on Amazon on Saturday, June 19. It will be on Amazon Saturday, June 19. Until then, be ready. Saturday. If you want to get super specific, Saturday at 11:00 a.m., June 19, I’ll be going live on Instagram and Facebook sharing about what's going on and where to get the book exactly and get the bonuses and all the cool stuff. Plus, that happens at 11:00–11:30, and then I have a big pool party at my house with my family and friends for my birthday, coming there at 12 o'clock with the chef cooking it up and all that. I'm excited for a big couple of weeks here.
But today's show is something that's a little … It's not little. This is huge. I believe, I truly believe what I'm about to share with you, and most of you following me do this and I appreciate that and I respect the hell out of it, but there are good people that struggle with this. You see people that they're good people, but they're always struggling. You're like, Dude, why can't they just get ahead in life? What is going on? What is their problem? What's holding them back? [06:20.8]
Something happened recently to me, so it made me thought-audit on this particular subject, because, to me, to be honest with you, this is just a part of me. I'm not saying that to sound silly. This is just who I am. It's been ingrained from my parents all the way down, more importantly, I saw it in action. But what's that one thing, Mark? I'm glad you asked. The thing is called “honor your word.”
Now, it sounds maybe petty. That sounds very small, but every fucking buddy honors their word when it's easy. See, I'm not talking honoring your word when it's easy. I'm talking honoring your word 100 percent of the time. [07:01.6]
I've done many, many, many, many thousands of business, real estate transactions, etc., and I can promise you, you can ask any lawyer that has ever worked for me, any lawyer, because I’ve had many lawyers—I still have the same lawyers actually. I have many of the same lawyers—but here's how it goes. Does Mark owe me money?
My question, if I'm getting sued or whatever, some fucking dickhead buys a property and six years later, it's like, Dude, I didn't know the hot water tank would break. It's a house. What don't you know? And then some stupid-ass lawyer would take that case. It's whatever. That's silly stuff, but it does happen often and I call my lawyer. It’s like, Did we mess up? Yes or no? Is that maybe or it's kind of gray? It's either we fucking messed up or we didn't, right? Do I owe him or do I not?
I promise you, mark my word, on my children's life, if he says, “You owe money,” I'm like, Cool. Contact them. Let's settle and move on. Period. Not how do I fucking get out of it? Not what loophole? Not what the contract, the Page 7, delete it, what Page 42 line 7.5 said. No, we fucking said it. We do it, period. [08:10.6]
I don't give a fuck what a contract says, by the way. If I said I’ll do it, I will do it. Same as on the other side. If I said, No, I will not do it, I will not do it, period. My word is my honor. I will fucking shake your hand. I'm going to have to shake your hand. If I say it and I mean it, it's a deal, period.
I don't know what's going on in this world with the old handshake. When someone pulls out a 40-page contract, I get worried. I really do, because I get screwed by people that pull up big contracts. By the way, I got screwed by people with big contracts and no contracts, but most of the time it's because they're trying to look at a way or for loopholes to get out.
It just happened recently with someone very close to me, someone I loved dearly, and this is what made me start thought-auditing about this and she's a little girl. When I say little, twenties. Someone in my family. I care about her a lot. [09:09.5]
I helped her out on something and I went above and beyond. I want to be the best person for them. I want to be a great role model. I want to lead by example for this individual, right? I did something and she was supposed to come to the table after I did it because we talked about it multiple times. Like I said, I did exactly above and beyond what I said I would do, way above and beyond, and the deal happened. At first I was like, Hey, what's going on with this? keeping her accountable, and she was like, Oh, I’ll pay you the difference later. Huh? What do you mean later?
By the way, it's not about the money. Let me just be clear here. What I'm sharing with you, honoring your words is not just about the money. It's if you tell someone you're fucking showing up at five o'clock, you show up at 4:59, because you said you'd show up at five o'clock, period. [10:03.8]
But this particular situation is about money. More importantly, it's about her behavior and what I'm educating her on is, if you say you're going to do something, do it. I get it. It might suck. It might hurt. It might be painful. But you said you were going to do it. Figure the fucking thing out, period.
See, where I roll, you can ask anybody that knows me and I'm talking employees, teammates, friends, lawyers, partners, whatever, if I say it's happening, it's happening. I look back on my life and I think about sometimes how my life is very easy, pretty easy. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of shit crazy stuff going on, whatever, but you get in life what you put into it. But, overall, I have a pretty easy life. I work hard and play hard. I have a lot of cool stuff. I know what I want. I know what I don't want. [11:09.0]
I really truly believe the reason I have great relationships, people come to me with great opportunities, my life gets easier, because I attract great people into my life over these years. Keep in mind, I've been in business almost 25 years now, but I fucking honor my word. I really do and I don't take it lightly.
You can ask the sales guys that work with me. If they say, Mark, I'm good for five deals this week. That means you will cut off your left arm if you don't do five deals. That's how serious it is to me. This is who I am. Most of you are out here, fucking playing around like everything is going to work itself out. It will work itself out, but not in an easy way potentially.
When I'm doing five deals in a week and I tell someone I'm doing this or that, let's say, five deals in a week, I'm overdoing it. I'm going to overdo five. I'm going to do seven, six, nine, whatever. But I ain't going to wait until Thursday to close two more people on Friday. [12:11.5]
See, too many people are preparing for the best, not the worst, and that's something I don't understand. Again, if you say you're going to do something, just fucking do it. It literally is that easy. I know it's hard sometimes and, listen, there have been times I said I was going to do stuff and I'm like, Shit, why did I say that? But I didn't bail out. I did exactly what I said I would do and this is a lost thing that I'm seeing more and more.
I see, like I said, good people struggling way more than they have to and I ask myself, Why are they always struggling? The common denominator is there are moments in their life that they don't honor their word. They're constantly looking for ways out, not ways in. They're constantly saying, Yeah, I'm in, but then they bail out. [13:05.8]
You know the people that say, Yeah, man, I’ll do it, and then when you call them to do it, they go MIA or they don't answer your phone or they don't answer your fucking text, and then it's like, Dude, what's up? Oh, I got a new phone. I didn't know how to see the text or to call. Bullshit. You're fucking liar. You know it and I know it.
See, this is why I'm a very confident person in my businesses. Anybody in my teams can tell you in all my companies, if fucking Evan says he's doing it, it gets done. There's no “What if we don't do this?” and it doesn't happen. No, if he says he's going to do it, yep, then it's done.
It's very important to understand this. This is a muscle. This is something so many people are lazy on. So many people fuck it. Oh, I said I was going to do this or that. It's easy when it's easy. The real magic happens when it's hard. The universe is testing you to see if you're serious about what you truly believe about honoring your word. [14:11.4]
Listen, there are checks I’ve cut and I'm like, Fuck. By the way, let me just be very crystal clear, if someone in my company said something and my name is attached to it, I honor their word, and I’ve written checks, many checks, very big checks on shit that I didn't personally honor the word, but I brought the people in and they did, and I honored their shit.
This is what we have to do as good companies. As a leader, you have to honor your shit This is why I don't get flustered when people talk shit because I know who the fuck I am. I know what I stand for. I know what I do. When people get rattled, it's because they typically are worried about being confronted. They're worried about being outed, like, Dude, you know that one time you did blah, blah. Dude, listen, I don't have any skeletons like that. [15:12.8]
We've all done stupid shit, don't get me wrong, but I can tell you one thing, I honor my word to a fault. Sometimes I give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm like, Shit, did I really say that? There's no way in the world I ever said that, but maybe I did, and then I take care of it. As crazy as that sounds, I truly believe it's a separator in success and joy and life, just knowing.
You can ask my wife. She actually gets annoyed by it. If I tell someone I'm at their house at 12 o'clock, noon, I will literally bite off my arm, do whatever I have to do to get there at 11:59. It's that important to me. I'm not saying I'm a hundred percent with that, but I'm telling you, that's the mentality. I'm damn near a hundred percent. I literally don't ever [delay]. [16:05.5]
I'm very ultra-rarely late, unless it's a storm and whatever. I don't even know. I try not to make excuses. If there's a storm coming, I'm trying to leave early. Once in a while, I guess things are out of our control, whatever, car breaks down, this happens, that happens whatever. It's still in our control because we could have left early. Again, I go down that path. But you can ask my wife, I'm very like, Deena, it's now … And it could be something simple like if we say we're leaving the house to go to the store at 12:00.
Deena, it's 11:59. Let's go.
It's only the store.
You said 12. Let's go now.
It causes arguments because, again, little things like that are ginormous to me. Ginormous. If your word is not [kept]. Again, it's so easy to get lax on it. Oh, it's no big deal. I'm not in a rush. Fuck I'm not. We said we're leaving at 9:30. We're leaving at 9:30. Let's go, period. You can ask my kid. Mark would know more than Dria, but I'm very on it. [17:04.8]
Your word is your word, and guys and gals, it's the only thing we’ve got. If you say you're going to do something, fucking do it, and this goes to yourself, by the way, too. That investment you've been prolonging on. You said you were going to do it when you're 30. Now you're 35. What the hell are you waiting on?
Recently, I had a guy. We pushed him and he's joining our team, one of our teams, which I'm super ecstatic about. He's going to change his life one hundred percent and I pushed him and I honored my word. More importantly, I put my fucking money where my mouth is because I told him, I’ll do this for you and I’ll do this for you and I’ll do this for you. I want him to know, I stand behind my bullshit. I stand behind my shit, I should say. It's real.
When everyone is out here, talking shit, but, again, when you start ponying up real money, when you start ponying up, because I know where we stand. I know what the opportunity looks like. I know what we're capable of. But, again, it all comes down to honoring your word. [18:03.3]
I believe, if you're struggling, this is a flaw that you're struggling with and you might not even know it. It's something that's constantly hindering you all the time. All the time, it's chipping away at you, beating you down little by little.
Focus on this. Thought audit about it. Think about the times that when you didn't honor your word, what the ripple effect looked like. I'm telling you, it's a real thing. We might call it karma. I truly believe in that, but it's a real thing, and if you fuck over this one person for something so small, it will snag you and you won't even know it's coming. It will blindside you, but just know it is coming if you do that kind of bullshit.
I'm not saying if you honor your word, bad things don't happen. I'm not saying that at all. It's just less bad things happen that I’ve seen and personally experienced. Like I said, everything is pretty laid back. I’ve got a lot of amazing people in my life and I’ve kicked a lot of non-amazing people out of my life because I know where I'm at. I know where they stand. [19:06.5]
By the way, honoring your word, pay attention to your people you're rolling with. Are they honoring their word? Are they showing up when they say they're going to show up? I’ve talked about this in the past on the show, but we have family members that we have a joke and my family truly does tell them that the event is an hour earlier than it really is because they always show up an hour late. It's almost like, to me, it's one of the most disrespectful things you can do to a host, you know what I mean?
Anyways, I'm going to get off on a tangent here, but I want you to pay attention to when you haven't honored your word. We've all done it. We've all not honored our word, by the way, so I'm not acting like I'm a saint here. But I’ve been very conscious over my 25 years in business life, when you say something, you fucking do it, and if you don't and you allow that to creep in and become the norm, then, all of a sudden, you start moving the lines to the wrong side and then you start struggling. [20:03.8]
Then you start to understand, like, Why don’t believe me? Why don't people trust me? Hey, man, why can't I make a deal happen? Hey, I can't really get out of my funk. It's because you're a fucking liar. Straight up, that's why. They might not say this to your face, but it's the truth. I don't do business with liars. If I find out you're a liar, I'm out. I'm out. I'm donzo. If I catch you doing anything that's out of and not aligned with who I am and what I stand for, I'm out.
Remember what I said earlier. If I'm involved in a company or involved in an individual, in a company, specifically, if you say you're going to do something, I back it because I brought you into the mix. I'm the leader. Why wouldn't I back that shit? Again, Johnny signed an affiliate contract and that didn't happen and this didn’t happen and blah, blah, blah. No, dude, you brought him in. The shit happened. Now you pay the piper. That's how it works. [21:00.8]
When you truly know you do that and you really do that, life gets a lot easier. Profits really crank up. You make a lot more money. You have a lot more fun life. Life isn't meant to be so hard. I mean, some people have very hard lives and I look and ask why. I have people in my personal life that have very tough lives. They're always sick. There’s always something going on. There's always something tragic. I look back and I'm like, They're just fucking lying all the time, that's why. It's the common denominator of pain and of struggle that I know of. Again, I'm not saying you won't have pain and struggle sometimes, but if it's constant, there's an issue. It's the individual issue. I want you to pay attention to it. [21:48.3]
This is it. I just went on a rant today because, again, someone close to me really pissed me off and it's actually sad. Here’s another side of this, one more second. Another side of this coin is I had so much lined up for them in the future. I had so much I’ve done for them, and, literally, for the last 15 years of their life, I’ve been doing some cool stuff behind the scenes to make their life so much easier, and in one fell swoop of not honoring their word, vanished. Vanished. She may never know, but she would have had a life so much easier two more years from now, five more years from now, 15 years from now.
That's how it works and I want you to, again, I challenge you, pay attention. You might be going through some shit now that you’ve said you're going to do, but it's starting to look easier to not do. Buckle down and fucking do it. It's now. There's a reason you're hearing this. There's a reason that that's going on. I look at those, honestly, I'm telling you, this is a game I play, it's a test. Do I believe my shit? Yes or no? That's where I look. It's a game. It's a test. [23:06.8]
The universe is throwing you curveballs 24/7. They're looking for when you're weak. The universe is looking for weak moments. But when you lean into that and you make this into just a core value that it’s, for real, a part of your life, I truly believe life will be easier, more fruitful, more profitable, and just so much more enjoyable. It doesn't always feel enjoyable, but it will.
I just want to say I appreciate you guys, and thank you to everyone at Repost. All the podcast shows on social media, I get tons of it. If you please attach me to it, just tag my name so I can see it. I oftentimes share it as well with the group, so you'd get some followers and get some visibility on your side as well, but share the love. If you get over to iTunes and leave a five star review, it'd be amazing as well. Always helps people get the show. [24:00.0]
But I'm thinking about you guys I'm rooting for you, and I'm just here doing the show because I honored my word that I was going to do the show to help people, and I'm here and I'm present, and I will be here to keep helping as long as you keep showing up.
Appreciate you being here. Have an amazing day, and the next time I talk to you, I’ll be in the crib in Ohio. Make today count. Peace.
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