Welcome to the “Making of a DM.” Change your game, change your future. If you want to realize how to get more out of life without killing yourself, then this is a must-listen. So, with that said, let's get started.
Mark: Hey there, it’s your host, Mark Evans DM. Thank you so much for being here. Today's a special day. Today is a very special day actually. As I’m sitting here talking to you, I’m sitting in the treehouse office. Take a look at the picture of MarkEvansDM.com at this podcast show. [01:04.8]
I’m sitting here talking to you, overlooking the ravine in the middle of the woods, which is absolutely perfect today. Blistering 45 degrees, about to get nasty here in Ohio, but it's done. It took 14 days to complete, about $45,000 to build this treehouse/hideaway office for me, super excited to spend amazing memories with my kids and family here.
It's really cool and I'm really excited, and I’m just sharing live details and real stuff with you guys. It is a super over the top, cedar exterior, crazy interior. It is what it is. It's something I want to do and it's something I always see people worried about doing cool shit because they're afraid to get judged. If people are judging their cool shit, that means they have a shitty life, so never let those people even infiltrate your brains. I do what I want to do and I hope you do, too, because at the end of the day, we’ve only got one shot at this thing called life and we've got to make the most of it. [02:05.7]
Also, in the last show I did, I appreciate you guys so much. Many people reached out, let me know they appreciate the realness, the rawness of what I’m talking about, because it is real life business, dealing with dickheads and thieves, and people that lie and steal. It's part of the game and you’d better know the rules of engagement that you're embarking on in your business as you evolve.
Also, thank you so much for everyone going out there and giving five-star reviews over on iTunes and the books Magician vs. Mule and MEconomy. We just got back actually from hanging out. I took 12 guys total down on the jet with me. I think 12. Yeah, 12 total. That includes me, down on the jet to Orlando and back to my boy Tim Brtaz’s event and it was epic as always. When people invest $10,000 a person to get on a jet for five hours and just connect with people, I’m telling you, absolute amazing shit happens every single time. [03:05.6]
Even when I do the yacht experience, the yacht experience is usually five grand for the day. It's people that care, people that invest in themselves, and it's really, really, really cool for me to do those. I enjoy it. I actually get a lot out of it. I love meeting the guys. I create long-term relationships with these fellows and it's really neat.
I always say, if you want to get put on the list for the jet or yacht experience, get over to Instagram and hit me up in the DM, @MarkEvansDM, and let me know, say “jet experience” or “yacht experience” are both, both experiences, “jet and yacht experience.” Be specific because I get a lot of messages over there, and we'll get you. Just include your name, your phone number and your email, and we'll put you on a list when we do it again. I don't have any coming up anytime soon, but you never know.
Today is a big opportunity to share something with you about this and I hope this could transform your business where you're at, maybe relieve a little bit of pressure and stress off you. But I want to share with you, change your game, change your future. Yep, change your game and change your future. [04:12.3]
Today I want you to kind of think about where you're at in your business. Where's your business at? Is it making a million a year, a million a month, a million a day, 100,000 a year? Whatever level you're at, you're at it. Is what it is. But I want you to think about something. I want you to think about where you're at and where you want to go.
For example, if I’m in a business right now and I want to make a million dollars a month, right? Excuse me, let's say a million dollars a year. I’m sitting here looking at my business and right now I’m only making about 80,000 a year and I’m grinding. I’m working a lot of hours. I'm making the website. I’m talking to vendors, talking to customer support. I’m talking to merchant processors and just dealing with a lot of shit, right? And you want to get to a million dollars. You're only, let's say, at 100,000 and you want to get to a million. What can you do or what do you need to do to 10X your results? [05:08.8]
See, the problem is most people are trying to go from 100 to 150 to 200 to 250. It's a slow death. This is why most businesses go out. Ninety-two percent, I believe, of businesses go out of business in the first five years because this is one of the main reasons. They get underfunded. They're not making enough money. They just get bled out and they get burnt out. It's a real thing. I’ve been there multiple times back in the day, because I would just play small, playing in a small environment, trying to do big shit in a small game.
That's what I want you to think about today, because I’ve met a lot of great people, but they're never going to be massively rich like they want to be. Not because they can't be. It's because simply the avenue they're in just does not allow it. It's going to be a lot, a lot of work. Hopefully, if you guys have businesses, which I think most people listening to me do, I want you to understand that as you're evolving your business, you're going to have to make edits for growth. [06:10.6]
I was taking notes before I did the show. It reminds me of when I started. As you know, in 1996, I bought a seamless gutter company. I had no money. I used owner financing. The seller financed me, whatever. I was a gutter guy, right? I did gutters, the things that go around your house to keep the water off your foundation, etc., and that's what I thought I was. I was like, dude, I want to make 100,000 a year doing that.
To make $100,000 a year doing gutters, I’d never met anybody that did it initially back then because you would have to work 70 hours a day. The game doesn't allow for the outcome to happen the way I had it built. The game I was playing was like, I just want to get to work, make a couple of dollars, get the jobs done and repeat the process, and my goal was 100,000. [07:03.8]
Then, as my evolution process, I was very aware, I was very curious, because, again, my target was 100 grand a year and I could see numbers. Numbers don't lie. Humans and people, emotions do lie. It lies a lot, all the time, by the way. Even if we don't think we're lying, we're lying, right, or emotions do.
But I met that guy. I don't remember his name, but he was driving a Porsche, handing me cash, smoking cigars, to do his work. A gutter job back in the day would be $450, but after my material and my labor and all that, I might have made 30 or 40–50 bucks maybe. Maybe. That was if we didn't have any waste on the gutters. That was if the guys showed up. That was if we didn't waste too much time on the project. That was if it was easy and quick and simple.
A couple of lessons in that. One, I always underbid a job, stupid. I took every job that came around, dumb, two. Three, I guess, is efficiency was not always not always a real thing for me. I didn't even understand what efficiency meant. I just said get the job done as fast as humanly possible. [08:08.0]
Business 101 back in the day, it was just show up and do the work, and work hard. That's all I knew. Back then, I actually did not even have a high-paying job. I was barely making anything, but my vision was so big, I couldn't stop. I didn't even know I had a problem, to be honest, back then. I just knew if I wanted to make that 100 grand a year, I couldn't do it in gutters only.
Like I said, I met this guy and I watched a seminar, a TV seminar back in the day, that TV infomercial, and I went and watched it. I went to a three-day live from that, a live event, and I said, “I can do that,” right? I saw the guy make a call, saw what he did and how he does, and I was like, Yep, I’ve got to do that. I genuinely had no other options because I used all the money for my projects. I didn't have money to pay my guys. I didn't have to pay for the materials and I was like, Oh shit, it has to work. It cannot maybe work. It has to work. [09:01.8]
A lot of times in business and in life, it takes a lot of faith, right? You’ve got to trust and believe in yourself. That's the game I was in. I was like, dude, I believe in myself. I’ll outwork everybody. I’ll do the right work. I’ll do the work. Just give me a chance.
Then I went and did it and started making some decent money doing real estate. But as I did real estate, I also still had the gutter company and then it was evolving because I was doing my own real estate, so I always needed maintenance. I always needed rehab. I always needed new windows, new siding, new floors, new kitchens, etc., so kind of created multiple companies inside of one.
Then I had the gutter company. I had a window siding company and then I had a rehab company and all this stuff, and I was doing it for myself and other people. Very dumb, by the way, looking back. I should have just focused on me. It would have been a lot better, a lot tighter and a lot more profitable in the long-term. But, again, what happens is there's an evolution process. I was making more money, but I was not necessarily keeping more money. [10:01.0]
I think sometimes we get so excited to like, Dude, I want to make a million dollars a year. Okay, making a million dollars a year, what do you want to net? I don't think most people are trying to figure out a net number. If your net number is 1 million a year, that's awesome, too, but if you're in a game making 200 grand a year and your balls to the wall, 24/7, my question would be, how do you get to a million a year?
This is where the auditing internally happens and it's not easy, and here's why. When I got real with myself, and this was in early-2000, I said I had to stop doing work for other people. The problem with doing that was that I had to let some people go because I didn't need all the team members that were doing all the rehabs on my projects back then because I was just going to do my own. That was a tough decision, but I had to make the decision for the better good of the vision, right? So, I made the decision. I cut. Half the team went away and we were more focused. We were more profitable. [10:57.8]
See, in business, there are really three ways to make more money. More customers, higher frequency of the customer, and a higher profit margin, right? That's what I focused on. I started figuring out like, Hey, I need to do more marketing. More marketing equals more customers typically.
Then, okay, cool, now I’ve got a customer. The fastest easiest customer to sell is the existing customer database. If you buy something for a dollar, maybe sell them something for another dollar. Boom, now just doubled my profits on a sale. One sale, one customer, doubled the profits, right?
That creates a higher profit margin, so I kicked up more customers, more frequency of their customers and increased my profit margins, because I had more volume. I could go back to my vendors. I could reduce the cost that they sold to me and then I pick up that spread, right? Say, I’m buying for 12 cents and selling for a dollar today as opposed to paying a quarter, right? It's a big increase. It's a massive increase in long-term rev. [11:55.8]
As I started doing this, I started thinking. I’d gotten into the real estate game. I was doing a lot of rentals. I was doing a lot of rehabs and retails, and I had to have the conversation again with myself. The problem is I don't want to work. This is pre-2005 because that's when I left, started traveling with my wife, but I didn't want to work. I didn't want to be in the office day to day. I didn't want to be in the field day to day. I didn't want to be making every decision day to day, so I had to become a better person, a better business owner, a better leader.
That's the game I started playing. I stopped playing business guy and started learning about leadership. Leadership would help me become a better business guy. I started just really working on myself and investing. I invested and I still do a shit ton of money in myself, personal development, understanding finances, understanding business, understanding relationships, understanding leadership, etc.
Picture you’ve got that company. You're popping 100 gees a year and you're like, Dude, I want to get to a million. The problem is your business, and we're just talking to the money side right now, making a million dollars a year is definitely doable pretty much in a lot of industries that exist out there. Now, maybe if you're doing taking, cleaning up or something, cleaning up leaves somewhere, raking leaves up, that's going to be tough, but that's a whole other story. [13:19.5]
But for you, what, what game are you in? Are you in the short-term game, long-term game? Are you in a game big enough to succeed in where you want to go? Because the thing that always pops into my mind is what got you where you're at isn't going to get you to where you want to go.
Let me say it again. What got you to where you're at isn't going to get you to where you want to go. I think about this all the time, but there's a deeper story to this, because what it really means is you'll never outgrow your skill sets through your profits.
Even if you're making 100 grand a year and then, boom, something random, maybe COVID hits again, heaven forbid, and then you get the 200k, what I’ve seen happen many, many, many times over and over and over is that your thermostat inside of you cools down back to 100k a year because the game you're in only can do 100, 200k a year. That's the game you're in. [14:20.2]
The game is really in your brain. That's the real game we're talking about, understanding where you're at, where you want to go, how I’m going to get there. Today if you look at my life, everyone thinks I’m a real estate investor. Shit, I’ve done many, many hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. I am a real estate investor, but I’m a business owner that does real estate investing, right? It's a different game. I’m not making daily decisions. I’m not in the field talking to contractors, talking to vendors, talking to city officials for permits and all that shit. I’ve done that. I’ve been there, done that. I did that for many, many, many years. I hate it. [14:57.0]
So, I started auditing my game and said, listen, some people love that game. I know my dad loves working on houses. I hate it. I don't want to do it. I know how to do it. I don't want to do it. The game I’m in is lifestyle by design. That's the game I’m in, and to allow my lifestyle that I want, that I’ve designed, I have to create businesses that allow me to do that. I’m not looking to go build the billion dollar corporate business. Why? Because I’m not fucking traveling all over the world to do a deal. I don't care about money like that. I care about my lifestyle first.
Let me say this again. What's more important to me than money is my lifestyle, my time and my lifestyle. I’m 43. Life is very finite at this point in my life. I’m halfway gone, right, or halfway there, depends on how you look at it, so I’m very clear on that. Plus, I have young children. I want to spend time. I want to invest my energies in them. I want to mold them. I want to guide them. I want to help them. I want to be there for them and with them. That includes my wife as well, right? I want to hang out with her. Yesterday we were hanging out and had breakfast. [16:00.4]
As soon as I’m done with this podcast show, I’ll be talking to my team for 20 minutes, and then I’m off for the rest of the day and I’m taking my daughter to lunch and hanging out. She's only two and a half. Daddy-daughter day, hang out, play, be silly. This is a fucking Friday afternoon. I’ve built my life to allow me to do that because of what we're talking about today—change your game, change your future.
When I’m sitting down in the office, I’m looking at, what business am I really in? It's funny, everyone is like, Dude, I’m a real estate investor. Okay, I think you're more than that, but if that's all you give yourself credit for, so be it.
Oh, man, I’m a roofer. You're probably more than a roofer, right?
Oh, yeah, I’m a bodybuilder. I work out. I do this. Cool, but you have so much more knowledge, you have so much more insight than just saying that. We've labeled ourselves. We've put ourselves in a box and we say, Oh, this is the game I’m in. [16:55.3]
Dude, I’m in a bunch of buckets. I’m in the food and bev side as a passive investor. I’m in the real estate side, mostly passive, right? I’m in the media side, very passive. I’m in the data side, ultra-passive, right? And we have all these different buckets. I’m in sports card collecting. I’m in crypto. I have all these different channels of things that I’m in. Most of them are ultra-passive, meaning that I don't have to do anything for them to work. I see the top.
My job, really, where I’m at in my life today is to drive the north star vision. Where are we at? Where are we going? And how are we getting there? Obviously, there's some funding that has to come with that. There's a lot of leadership that comes with that and building a team. I’m cool with all those pieces where I’m at in my journey.
Let me give you another example. My real estate business, and like I said, I’ve been doing real estate for over 25 years, but in my real estate business, what I realized in 2005 is I never had a business. I never had a business. Even though I worked for myself since 1996, I never really had a business. [18:04.7]
A business, what I’ve realized to me, is something I can leave for 30, 60, 90 days or more and not have to worry about things burning to the ground. If it all relied on me, then how is that a business? If Jeff Bezos goes to the moon, his business still runs without him.
In my business, I traveled, and again, I discovered this through my journey of travel. From December 31, ’05, me and my wife traveled the world and the country for seven years straight, and it was a process, right? I had to disconnect to reconnect. Things broke. People left. New people came on board. I had to change my vision. I had to change my game. My game was now “I’m chasing lifestyle.” I had a little bit of money. I had knowledge and I wanted more out of life, because I was working 16-hour days and I knew it was not sustainable. As this has kept evolving, where I’m at today is that, like I said, the game I really want is lifestyle. [19:02.0]
But in 25 years of real estate, what I’ve discovered, and I’ve helped a lot of real estate investors make massive shifts, grow multiple businesses in their vertical and make many, many, many, many, many more millions of dollars than they actually do in their regular real estate business with less stress, less headache, less heartache, less financial risk, etc. I mean, I could go down the line, but the reason is it’s not because I’m smart. It's just because I shared what I did and changed the game.
You're an influencer. We're all influencers in one way, shape or form. In real estate investing, what I don't like about it is I always had to sign documents. Back in the day, I always had to go to the house. I always had to meet the seller, always had to go to the title company, always had to go to the bank to send the wire. I never had a life. My life was the job, i.e. the business, disguised as a business, right?
It was frustrating because I was in a trap. I wanted more of a lifestyle, but I had to do all these things to maintain the lifestyle or even have the life that I wanted, because I wanted to make millions a year, but I also started having that conversation. Mark, what game do you need to be in to generate millions a year without doing all the day-to-day activities? [20:14.8]
That's when I started understanding the power of virtualization. I was virtual. I built virtual components in my real estate investing company to allow me to travel. I was sitting in South Beach, Fla., on a flip phone with a fax machine and literally a phone you plugged in the wall with a headset, true story. My team in Columbus, Ohio, we would talk one hour a day and it was more like, Where are you at? What's going on? What can I help with? Boom, here's the shit show, here's what's going on, etc.
Then I discovered that I could send wires from the bank account via. I’d have a computer back then because I didn't have a smartphone and technology doesn’t exist like it did back then. I discovered how to send him wires via computer, up to a certain amount back then. Anything over that, I had to go to the bank. Thank God the bank was in Florida as well as Ohio. [21:05.2]
Then I said, okay, how do I do paperwork? We used to do a lot of overnight FedEx, overnight paperwork, right? Because they wanted live signatures. Now we have a thing called DocuSign or RightSignature. I could literally push buttons from sitting on the back of a fucking yacht and close the deal for millions of dollars in a second, right? Boom, boom, boom, done, wire sent, doc signed, we're good to go. Let's go.
I don't even have to do that anymore because what I’ve discovered is you could create a power of attorney for specific actions that get signed on my behalf. My lawyer or someone on my team can sign on my behalf based off of X, Y, and Z. With parameters, of course, right?
So, I started building an infrastructure. What I started doing is realizing the game I’m in is my game and I want lifestyle and I want money. Don't you? I hope that's what you're chasing, lifestyle and money. We want the lifestyle. We want the money. How do we get both? That's the real secret. It’s how do we get both? This is a question we must ask ourselves continuously, how to get both. Some things work out really amazing and some things absolutely will bomb. It's part of the process, though. [22:12.2]
As this evolves over 25 years, because I was doing a lot of wholesaling and rehabbing—again, that takes a lot of deal making and negotiating in doing all this shit, which is fine, because I enjoyed it—but it also wasn't going to get me to the lifestyle piece. That's the game. That's the game for me.
Then I shifted to selling turnkey where we had a formula, buy a house at X, put X into it, rent it out for X, and sell it for a multiple of XX, right? Then that's a formula. That formula could be duplicated and replicated by multiple people in multiple states, multiple locations, etc. I started doing that and that's how we’ve got up to 50 to 100 houses a month. We had a formula. I wasn't involved in the day-to-days. I was more involved in a leadership and CEO role, but I wasn't involved in the day-to-day talk to sellers, talk to buyers, talk to contractors, talk to city officials, talk to title companies, etc. I talked to the team, the leadership team, and the leadership team waterfalled down to everybody else. They drove the rev that drove the company. [23:15.6]
Then, unfortunately, what happens in that space, we were growing so rapidly, we actually started creating or we created our own competition internally, because we were driving up prices of properties because we're buying for 35, selling for 65. Keep in mind, we're putting a lot of money in between that, but the records don't show that, so the seller doesn't realize what's going on, so it changes. What that means is the profit margin shrinks and then competitors start looking at you like, Yo, man, I could do more, whatever.
Instead of fighting it, we said, hey, this is the game we're in. How do we make a pivot? Then we pivoted out of that into data, because my guy, Peter, that ran the real estate company, he has been with me 13 years or so, maybe longer, and he's a data guy anyway. That's how he drove the company. That's how he built the company with me, through data, so we understand that. We understand how data can make you more money. We understand how data could grow businesses and we understand data is a living breathing machine, and it's a very powerful one. [24:18.0]
We pivoted, and that company, within months, was generating more money, net profit than a real estate company it took me many years to build, without me doing anything, without me being involved—again, not because I’m smarter, but because we're paying attention to the game we're in and the game we want to play, right? The games edit. The games change as you evolve. Remember the saying, what got you to where you're at is not going to get you to where you want to go. It's only a checkpoint in the journey. It's not the destination.
I always thought I was going to make all my money in rehabbing and contracting because that's how I grew up. That's all I knew—1996, gutter company, boom, that's how I’m going to retire. I’m going to be rich. That's what I want to do. [25:03.5]
Then I evolved, boom, because I’m going somewhere bigger. I’m starting to see a bigger future, a bigger picture. I’m going to start doing real estate. Boom, okay, now it doesn’t give me the life I want. Now I want the life. Boom, changed the game.
Many, many, many, many edits for me to get to where I’m at today. Many.
Now, backtrack to the e-comm world. I have many businesses in the e-comm space that I’ve built a team. Hire a COO. Create a great product, or buying a company that has this already in place is ideal, if you have the capital or wherewithal and you know how to do this. It takes a little bit of knowledge, by the way, but there are amazing opportunities. You can buy into revenue today.
I prefer to do that. Buy a company that has been around for five-plus years. Why? Like I said, 92 percent of the companies go out of business in the first five years, so if they're still around after five years and they're moving in the right direction, there's probably an opportunity there that most aren't seeing. [26:00.7]
The cool thing about the five-year mark is that that's where a lot of people start getting burnout, start getting unfocused, start realizing that they're changing their game. They're editing something else. Maybe a life thing happened with them. They had a child. Maybe their kids graduated high school, whatever. Something changes. Those are great opportunities. Then, typically, my boy, Kyle, loves to have them and has a minimum of 10 employees, right? I don't necessarily need 10 employees. I just need a great product with a great plan. Ideally, there are three to five employees minimum, but if there are 10 or above, that's fine, too, right?
Then what we're looking for is a million-dollar revenue gross number a year minimum, a million a year, because then I could take it. That means there's some sustainability going on. People will actually like the product. There's a little bit of revenue being generated gross. Maybe not even much net, but a little bit of gross, and we can take that and run with it and grow it quickly. Keep the team on tag, give them a bigger picture, give them different resources and tools, and drive rev through what I know how to do. [27:00.0]
I look at this. My real estate company required me to make all decisions. My e-comm company requires me to hire the right people, drive leadership and vision, and enjoy the profits. What's even better is, in my real estate company, let's say, I buy a million-dollar building and increase revenue through rentals and all this stuff.
The most I could ever sell it for is what it could appraise for or maybe a little more even if it's a cash deal, but, let's say, 1.2 million, 1.3 million. If it's worth a million net, my e-comm, if I could grow that company, I could sell it for a multiplier, maybe 3X, 5X, 10X, 20X, depending on the niche it's in. Does that make sense?
My real estate companies, I can't sell it really. Maybe I could sell it for a little bit, but they would want me because I’m the secret sauce. I’m not going with the company. If I sell it, I’m out. Why would I ever sell it? Therefore, it's a non-sellable asset the way it has been built. The way I’ve built it anyway. [28:00.0]
But the e-comm, I could sell those suckers all day long for real money, daily. You could arbitrage this opportunity every day, find a great deal, find a buyer willing to pay more, and collect the medal. I mean, it's a big, big, big opportunity, and it doesn't require me to be involved on the day-to-day.
Anyway, those are two different massive scenarios and I’m in both, but my roles in the way they look are drastically different than when I started, because back in the day, when I tried to start an e-comm, it was me hiring a guy to create a website, me contacting vendors to create the product, me talking to a credit card merchant, process needs to get approved. It was me, me, me, me, me, me. The business chart, who's on it? Me. Accounting? Me. Customer support? Me. Et cetera. I started thinking bigger, started painting a bigger picture for myself of what I wanted. My game was changing. By the way, it still is. [29:00.0]
Then I want to take this a step deeper. Let's say, your company is cranking right now, and one of my buddies actually I was speaking to that I’ve known for probably 12 to 14 years, he had a company doing 45 million a year in revenue in the e-commerce space, 45 million a year and he was done. He just wanted to sell. He's in the cabinet industry, let's say.
He's doing 45 million a year. Cabinet industry sells, basic marketing for that sells for 2.5X EBITDA, 2.5 EBITDA, let's say, so say if it's doing 100 grand, it might sell for 250, 350, whatever the numbers are. That's what he's doing. That's just basic math. Again, you're going to get, let's just say, 3X for simple math.
He's looking to sell it and then he got dragged through the mud for two years. He never sold it. Then he met a different guy, a guy playing a different game. This guy is called a merger-and-acquisitions attorney. They're amazing people to know in your back pocket, have great conversations. Start learning about that. If you don't understand about M&A, you need to understand it if you have a business, because these guys can make your life very amazing and you can make a lot more money doing the same exact work, just with a couple of little tweaks. [30:16.3]
Anyway, he talked to my boy and he said, Yo, tell me what business you're in? Oh, I’m a cabinet guy, blah, blah, blah, whatever, and he said, Okay, tell me how the process works in your cabinet business, if you will. He tells him and he said, Okay, you understand you're not a cabinet business. You're a technology business that sells cabinets. Let that sink in for a minute. You're not in the cabinet business. You're in the technology business that sells cabinets.
Before I tell you the rest of the story, let me just explain something to you. In my business in real estate, in mid I think it was 2015-ish, I realized I’m not in the real estate business anymore. I’m in the people business. I’m in the real estate investment business where people want cash flow. [31:08.6]
That's the business I’m in. I’m really in the cash flow business. The way they're getting their cash flow is through real estate. I changed the game. I’ve become a cash-flow driver. It just happens that real estate was the product to get them the results they wanted for the cash flow. Understand that.
Anyway, then my guy says, Okay, I’m in the tech business then, because it sounds good, and what does that look like if I go to sell? He's like, This is an 8X sell opportunity. Remember, prior, being in the cabinet business, it was only 2.5X. Now he's at an 8X. That's a 300 percent increase, 2.5 to eight. I think that's right, a 300 percent increase. It's a massive, many, many, many millions of dollars of a difference, by simply changing the game they were playing. [32:05.2]
They were already in the fucking game. They just changed the game, like, Timeout, we're not in the cabinet business anymore. We're in the technology business. Okay, back to work. That's it, to go from 2.5X to 8X. To me, it's amazing. It's powerful. A powerful game changer. It can change your life, your financial life, your business life, if you change your game, change your future. It keeps editing. It keeps evolving. Once you realize, I mean, there are certain companies out here getting 100X, right?
The interesting thing to me is I was watching it. What made me think of this was when I was talking with my guy and I was hanging out with my guy that went from 2.5X to 8X, tech play, not the cabinet play, and kind of my evolution process, and you guys are in real time. You're watching me evolve as I’m speaking to you today. [33:04.5]
Watch my Instagram. Watch my Facebook. Watch. Listen to the show. I’m evolving. I’m acquiring companies. I’m changing brands. We're evolving. We're changing the game because I want to change my future. I want to go big. Again, I could be way bigger. If I did massive leverage, if I did a lot of work myself, I could be way bigger, but that's not my game I’m playing. My game is lifestyle first. Find assets that provide the lifestyle I want.
Most people are doing the opposite. That's what I did for many years. Let's go make the money, and then, one day when I make all this money, I’m going to live. I realized that's a trap. It's a lie. It is something that you're not going to ever get out of until you pull your head up and realize what game you're in. [33:56.5]
Anyway, I was listening to this guy. He generated $10 million in his business and he's dead broke. He's literally sleeping in his fucking office in New York City, dead broke, and he's like, Dude, I want to grow, I need help. The guy, I was telling him, Tell me what you're trying to do, and he's like, I want to sell for a billion dollars.
See, the game he's in isn’t the game of selling for a billion dollars. I'm not knocking it, but if you don't have a sustainable business, by the way, he's been doing this for five years and he's still dead broke, so I commend him on his grit, his perseverance, but the problem is he's going to burn out. You only have so much time before you realize, Dude, this shit ain't going to fucking work.
Anyway, his business isn't making him money. He's not in a sustainable model. Again, a lot of companies will buy people in the start, and I’m talking about the startup world, for a massive multiplier, even if it's losing money. Have you ever been at the company where you're that person and you're like, How the fuck did they just buy that for $100 million when it's -50 million a year? Because the vertical that they're getting in or whatever they're acquiring, they're just going to move customers around and they're going to make all that money back, right? It's a whole other game. [35:09.7]
That's a different game for a different time, but they're buying, acquiring things like that for growth, for putting on their balance sheet. Maybe he has a good passive-income stream balance sheet. They can get a massive multiplier on their core business.
For you, when I’m listening to this guy, you have to make sure while your business is generating revenue today, if it can't sustain what you're trying to do, then why do it? It's pointless. It literally is just a waste of time and energy and it's just going to really jade you, and you're going to ultimately just end up working for someone else because you're just like, Dude, I don't want to deal with all that. It's not that you're doing anything wrong, except you're not building a real business. Real businesses have to make a profit. If you can't make a profit, you don't have a real business, period. Right? [36:00.5]
The problem is the guy was playing the wrong game. He's very long long-term thinking, but in the short term, he's not going to make it, right? He's going to run out of steam. He's running on flats already. Now it's just a matter of the engine blown up. What's going to push the car with no engine and flat tires another 100 miles? It's not happening.
I see a lot of people, great people, that are trying to be millionaires or billionaires, but they're playing $100,000 games. If that's what you want to do, keep doing it, but I’m telling you, audit your game. Audit the people in the game with you. See where you're at and where you want to go. There are a lot of opportunities.
Yes, you can go out and make 20 grand a month. Yes, you can go and make 200 grand a month. Yes, you can go and make 2 million a month without working. I know. It's true. You can do that. It's a different type of work. I know I said without working, but without you doing the day-to-days, I should say. But you’d better learn leadership. You’d better learn marketing. You’d better learn business-building. You’d better learn these things because, if not, you're just working way too darn hard. [37:10.0]
I’m all about working hard, but I’m also about working smart on top of that. If you can work hard and smart at the same time, you've got life by the balls. As a matter of fact, you have so much opportunity in today's market to build online businesses, to create amazing apps that serve and help people. I have a buddy who's generating, what did he say? $3.5 million a month or so in the health space by simply helping people become healthier, better fit, changing people's lives through a process, through an app, through a service, right? So, a lot of opportunities.
Today I’m getting long-winded I know. Maybe it's just because I’m fucking excited. I’m hanging in this treehouse office, but check out the picture. Let me know what you think. I’m thinking about you guys. I’m rooting for you. I want you to succeed. If there are any opportunities that pop up, please let me know. I’m here for you. Make sure to know what game you're in. Change your game, change your future.
With that said, make today count. I’ll see you on the other side. Peace. [38:12.7]
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