Unlocking Business Freedom: How to Go From Operator to Owner and Build a Scalable Business with Markus Kaulius

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 25 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And in today's episode, I've got a remarkable guest. Marcus Collius is joining me in this episode. And Marcus is a serial entrepreneur. He's the founder of multiple eight and nine figure businesses in a career of more than 25 years. He's grown his supplement company from a startup to $170 million success and helped clients worldwide lose more than 3 million pounds. As a thought leader in the business and in health industries, he advises multiple eight and nine figure companies on growth strategy.

1:25 He's been featured in major media such as PBS, Fox News and CNN. With an online following of over 300,000, Marcus shares daily insights with his community, spanning business strategy, mindset, health, and most importantly of all, faith. Through his book, Play a Bigger Game, which we discuss on the podcast, and his website, playabiggergame.com. Marcus brings together the world's greatest minds and he's sharing lessons from his entrepreneurial journey to help high achievers break free from imbalance, feelings of discontent and inadequacy so that they can find fulfillment beyond career success. Look, this episode is straight fire.

2:06 We get into business and entrepreneurship. We get into personal performance. We get into how to get into the rooms that are going to expand your horizons and help you grow. We get into the reasons that you're stuck and the reasons that you're not growing. This is one of my favorite episodes to date on the Coaching Equation podcast, and you are about to get into it with me and Marcus Collius. This is episode 25 of the Coaching Equation podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And today I've got a super special guest that I'm really excited to talk to. Marcus Collius, how are you, man?

2:47 So excited to have you on the show. Ryan Lang, so excited to be here. I know we're going to have a just an unreal conversation and we're going to give some beautiful, beautiful things to our listeners that they can walk away Oh, man, I cannot wait. So, I think there are about a bazillion different places that I could start this conversation, but I would love to start here. I'd love to kind of hear from you what was a real major turning point in your life and in terms of transformation that you made, and what was kind of the CliffsNotes version of what was going on before it, and what did things look like on the opposite side of it?

3:34 That's, oh, I love this question, but I have two separate answers and I don't want to give both. Great. So I wanted to ask you, do you want to do more personal or more business? Further, you know what? Great question. I think for the context of this conversation, and this will give me a reason to have you back, by the way. You didn't know I was setting this up for a doubleheader. Let's go down the business route. I'd love to hear about that. Beautiful. Easy, easy turning point in my career. Tony Robbins, mentor of mine for over 30 years. I've been a platinum partner for some time, traveled with Tony. He asked me one of the most simple and defining questions that cut through to my heart. And he said, Marcus, are you a business owner or a business operator?

4:17 Now I want to start by saying this, there's nothing wrong with either of those. So I want to be really clear with that. But the definition, the difference here is a business owner is somebody who has operations going. And for me, the litmus test was, can you go away for 10 or 14 days on a nice vacation? and not feel overwhelmed with the things that are falling apart back at home? Will you come back to nothing but fires? Will people be emailing you and calling you constantly? And for me, the answer was, oh my God, are you kidding me? 10 to 14 days? Try seven days. I have to be there. Okay. You're a business operator. And for me, what that really meant was I've built myself a prison.

5:02 Don't get me wrong, everybody. We've built some beautiful prisons. But make no mistake, for me it was a prison. I had the beautiful gadgets, I had a great salary, but I had to be there. Those doors had to shut me in every single day. And I was not comfortable with that. Again, I wanna tell everybody, if I'm describing you and you're like, hey, screw you, I didn't build myself a prison. There's nothing wrong with that. If you are good with that, but let's not beat around the bush. If you have to be there, it's your prison. That's fine. I wasn't okay with that. And so that was the defining moment for me where I was like, I need to become a business owner.

5:43 And I started recognizing that things had to change and inviting in new wisdom, new mentors, people who could put me on that better path. And what I learned from that within six months opened me up to selling my business and having an exceptional exit and started a brand new chapter in my life, which is the best chapter so far. And man, the opportunities have been unbelievable. This is such important conversation. And Marcus, we work with so many people that are listening to this right now and going, you know what, I know I'm there. I hear about like, you know, working on my business instead of in my business.

6:27 Here's my question to you on that. How do we know that it's time for us to stop working in our business and start working on it? Oh, what a beautiful question. I would lean on this major, major question of, how are you feeling in your heart? I'm a heart-led guy. My heart kind of never does me wrong. For me, I was feeling overtaxed and I knew it. In my younger days in my business, and it's not even just being more youthful and hey, I was a younger guy, I could handle the longer hours. No, it was more like, oh, I don't have the passion I used to have for it. And so, man, these hours are starting to stack up and I'm more exhausted than I used to be.

7:12 And again, it wasn't just an age thing. Like, man, my workouts are just as good as they ever were, if not better. But going to work, it was, oh. And when there was an issue, it was, oh. I just knew, I knew. And you know, I might've fought it for some time, but I knew I don't belong here anymore. I'm not the right guy for this anymore. There's somebody who could do better things here than me. And wow, is that ever a hard thing for an entrepreneur to admit? You're absolutely right. And I've certainly been stuck in that paradigm as well. I think it's so easy to get stuck in that trap of nobody else can do it better than me. And that not only prevents you from selling, but it certainly prevents you from scaling if you want to stay in the business.

7:57 And, you know, on that front, one of the things that I notice about the, I want to talk specifically for a second about the coaching industry, since a lot of people that listen to this show are coaches or experts, you know, selling their expertise in some way, shape or form. One of the things that a really fantastic entrepreneur friend of mine brought up to me one day, she said, you know, I've met so many coaches and not one of them has ever thought about selling their business. And this is so unique, as you know, Marcus, if you're in the entrepreneurial world, so many people are starting a business with the impetus of selling it at some stage of the game.

8:38 Yes. Yeah. You've got such a rich history in entrepreneurship and such great experience. I would love to hear your take on, let's just say, there are going to be a lot of people who hear this right now and go, no way. There is no universe in which my business with my face and my name on it is ever getting sold. But... For the few people that are going to hear me out on this, I think you actually can do this. How would you advise somebody on how to start a business and format a business in a way that allows it to be sellable at one point or another? Oh, this is beautiful questioning.

9:20 And thank you for the compliments, by the way. You know, just before I answer that, I'd like to just say one last thing about this transition. So it really works well with the question to be mentally prepared. Everybody recognize that these words are probably going to come into your head at some point. If this is your primary business, maybe it's the first business that made you some good money. you're going to have this nagging question of, can I even do this again? Am I a one hit wonder? Did I just get lucky? And it's like, to me, it's the devil in my ear going, yeah, you're not good enough to do this again. Don't be so cocky. What a foolish thing. You can't sell this business.

10:01 This is your only chance to make money. Yeah. I got to tell you, everybody, you've learned so much more than you realize if you have a successful business. You've learned a billion lessons that you're not giving yourself credit for. And so if you are feeling it's time to try something else, my encouragement to you is... Go, go for it. And I want to take you back to when you were first starting or anybody who's listening who isn't quite on their entrepreneurial journey yet. It's the exact same advice. You don't have to quit your day job. You can start a side hustle right now. Not all businesses require you to be at 60 hours per week.

10:43 Many of my businesses started with me putting in a few hours here and there. Hey, it's going pretty well. I'll put in a few more hours. Hey, I can take off a few more hours from that job and put it towards this. Hey, I can go full time. So just that loving reminder, everybody, and be ready for that voice and figure out ways to deal with it. By the way, great coaches will talk you through that process. Amen. Back to your question, which I got so tied up and excited about what I was talking about. Give me a reminder. Sure. No, I'll bring it back. And that was really good, man, because I think there is a lot of doubt that creeps in about number one, whether you can do it in the first place or whether you can do it a second time if you've done it once.

11:28 I think that was really beautiful and something good to hear from somebody who's been there, done that multiple times. My question was... Prepping it for a sale. Yeah. Prepping it for a sale. How can we start a business and maybe we don't want to sell it someday, but I think a lot of times we start a business and we get so far in without ever thinking that that might happen that when we decide to do it, there's often too much to unravel in order to get there. So good. How can we start with the idea that maybe someday it could be a sellable asset? Wonderful. Listen, everybody who's listening, it doesn't necessarily have to start off that way. You don't have to build it that way. And one of the reasons I'm starting by saying that is because I believe there's a lot of entrepreneurs going, well, crap, I've been at mine for five years, 10 years, and it's too late then for me.

12:16 No way. For... 17 years, I was the face of my company. And so many people, when I first started to even consider the idea of selling, they were like, what? You are Magnum. Magnum is Marcus. You can't sell. I didn't let that determine in the slightest because I knew where I was going. So you can pivot at any point, but this is, I think, the best advice I can give you. Start pretending like you're gonna sell. What questions do you have to ask yourself about your business? What changes need to happen in your business for you to sell? What's so cool about answering those questions?

12:57 They're the same answers that are going to help you grow. Isn't that wild? So for me as an entrepreneur and as a solopreneur and like, Oh, everything's going to fall on my shoulders. I was so hesitant to give people responsibility to empower the people around me. And when you hold back that power, you are really limiting the talent you're going to get into your business. And when you limit that talent, you limit the growth. And the growth was 100% limited to how big this guy could get. And I'm not that big. So as soon as I started asking those questions, I started empowering the people around me.

13:39 And truly, when Tony asked me those questions, are you a business owner or are you an operator? To become the owner, I had to empower the people around me. And what happened? I started getting better and better talent around me. Plus the people who I was empowering were stepping into that in the most beautiful and profound ways. And I saw their lives radically change for the positive. Because think about this. I'm picturing, I won't say their names, but I was picturing some of my managers who I was now giving power to. And for so long they were like, well, but you're making the ultimate decision. And I'm like, nope, you are. You're gonna tell me what we're gonna do, but you need to make sure you research it enough so you give me a good argument and I'm gonna support you.

14:24 I'm gonna support you even if you're wrong. And by the way, entrepreneurs, this was a big one for me. Supporting someone even if they're wrong. get over it. You are not perfect. Your decisions did not always end perfectly. And I know as an entrepreneur, yeah, but it was my error so I can swallow it. If you want to grow, if you want to sell one day, you got to learn to swallow their errors too. And all I would say to them is this, if you make an error, I want to know that you learn from it. If you come to me and say, well, it's not really my fault because I put Doug in charge of that and Joe didn't do his job, then I'm staring at you and going, oh, so you're not the leader?

15:05 I'm sorry. Leaders need to take that ownership and go, whatever Joe did, that's on you. I thought you're leading Joe. If Joe is under you, maybe Joe should be above you and he can tell you what to do and collect your information. So do you see how one thing leads to another and everything equals your business gets better? and more sellable. A lot of what I just heard there was take ownership, but give ownership. Oh yes. Love that. Yeah. And that's such a great illustration too, of whether you're going to sell your business or not, unless you have designs to pretty much be a business of one.

15:45 which is fine, by the way, if that's what you want to do. That's totally cool. But if that's not what you want, it is about getting rockstar team members around you and being willing to truly empower them to go out and do the thing that you hired them to do. Yes. What would you say on that front, Marcus? What do you think is the biggest thing holding us as business owners or entrepreneurs back from empowering the people that we genuinely want to do the thing that we've Is it that fear that they're not gonna do as good a job? Is it something else? What do you see on that? So I'm gonna give you one of my favorite quotes from one of my other mentors, Ed Milet.

16:25 And what he talks about, it's a concept. He says, we are only gonna get as hot in our lives and experience as much success in our lives as our thermostat allows. And so what that means is this, if I believe I deserve this much success in life, Well, if I'm down here, man, I turn up the heat and I push and I push and I push. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Look how high. Oh, shoot. I'm doing really well. You know what's going to naturally happen? I'm going to turn up the AC and how that looks in your life. It shows up in many different ways. Maybe I don't work quite as hard. Maybe I start spending a little bit of extra money. I do all these things because I bring it down because I don't believe I deserve this much success.

17:11 So it's a great thing to have a coach in your life to go, hey, what is it? Why are you holding back so much? Why are you holding the harness on all of your good people? Why do you think you haven't moved above that in your business career? And when you even just recognize that this is what's happening, you can get people around you who will push you to those higher levels to go, hey, you can be doing way more. And with that, let me encourage everybody. get into rooms with people smarter than you. One of the best things I started to do more and more of, and I love doing is getting into those rooms where I'm talking to people who have a hundred million dollar dreams, billion dollar dreams, and not just dreams.

17:55 You start hearing them put their plans in front of you and you're like, Holy smokes. That is a, that is a billion dollar idea. Whoa. So my, my, $20 million idea kind of feels like a joke. And there's nothing wrong with that $20 million idea. But if I want to get to the $40 million ideas, if I surround myself with the billion dollar people, my brain starts thinking bigger. And then who's your coach? Who's your coach? Who do you spend time with? If you do the things that champions do, you will become a champion. I think I'm just going to leave that right where it is. That was beautifully said, and we're just going to leave that just as it is. Go back and take that last like 90 seconds in.

18:38 And I think one of the things, too, that I just want to mention to the listener right now is that hearing a consistent theme here, we're talking about, you know, success breeds success and being in the room with the right people, being in the room with people who are playing even bigger games than you're playing. Speaking of which. I want to talk about your book, man. It's right there in the background, beautifully positioned on your bookshelf. And tell us a little bit about Play a Bigger Game. Number one, before you dive into the content of the book and kind of explaining, you know, any principles that you'd love to share with us, what inspired you to write it in the first place? Oh, I love that. I was called to write this book.

19:19 when people hear my backstory and hey, maybe that's for episode two. When you hear my backstory, you'll know I come from nothing. We were so poor growing up. There's nothing about my life in the early days that make you go, oh, that guy, that guy's going to do something big. Nothing, including who I was mentally. For the first 15 years of my life, I was convinced I was a zero. I was told by everybody I was a zero and I believed it. So there's nothing about me that's like, of course he made it. I made the decisions. I made the choices. I created the habits. I forced myself to learn and learn and learn and challenge.

20:03 to become who I am today. What this book is, is the most simple read I think you will ever find on playing a bigger game in life. To experience more success, whatever success means to you. Again, I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about money, sure. But it's so much more than that. You will find so many people in this world who have all the money in the world and none of the happiness, none of the joy, none of the fulfillment, none of the relationships that you want that you might define success with. This book is about finding success in all areas of life, finding real fulfillment in life. And that's what I do. That's my specialty.

20:43 So this book is just a simple manual, a blueprint to get you there. And there's challenges throughout the books. It's just a simple read that pushes you, that has you questioning things, that has you just looking at the world in a different way. I'd love to, and yes, there definitely has to be a second episode and we'll do the full origin story in the second episode. But let's just say that somebody right now is in a position, regardless of how young or old they are, they have reached a point where it's very palpable to them that more is possible and that they're not currently accessing it.

21:26 Oh yeah. What is a simple step that we can take to at least walk over that line in the sand of, like you talked about, and I also love Ed's analogy of the thermostat, but if we've been in that spot where our thermostat only goes, you know, up to 78, we want to crank it up to 90. Yes. And we've got to step over that line. What's one simple step that we can take to move in that direction? I love this and I've got such a simple answer because the truth is you guys are doing it right now. You're listening to a great podcast. That is one very simple step. By listening to this podcast and don't just listen, don't just consume.

22:10 Pause it at any time right now or at the very least at the end of this. Stop, give yourself five minutes. Write down what are the key things you got out of today? we consume so much and every one of us consumes things during the day that go, Oh wow. What a great point that person made. Oh, that could change my life. Oh my goodness. This is so great. And then 30 minutes later, if someone said, Hey, did you learn something special today? I listened to a good podcast. That's right there. That little inch, that difference between writing it down or not, taking a minute to rehash it in your mind or not, is the difference maker in you becoming the person you want to become.

23:02 But I also want to add this. Absolutely every human being could be playing a bigger game. I don't think there's a person on this planet who, if they're being honest, if they're being authentic, can say, this is it, man. I have, I've reached it. I've done it. I am fully fulfilled and everything. You talk about the best performers on the planet. I am certain if you talked with Elon Musk, he'd go, what are you talking about? I'm just getting started. Any high achiever on this planet goes, the more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing. Every time I pick up a book, every time I listen to a podcast, I'm like, how am I not doing that?

23:42 Even the stuff I know, even the stuff I've done, how many of those things do we let slip and we stop doing them? So there's... The simplest thing I want to give everybody, if you want to become a better version of yourself, you want to increase your temperature, just aim to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today. 1%, that's it. Don't make it simple on yourself. Well, that's okay, Marcus. I already get my walks in, so I am 1% better. You're right. Those walks are very important. But they're not challenging you. So my argument is you're actually not 1% better. There has to be a challenge. So the challenge today is this. Listen to this, pause it, or stop afterwards, write down for five minutes, what did you get out of today?

24:29 Okay. That will make you 1% better than you were yesterday. And if you do it again tomorrow, you're going to keep growing. And that confidence in yourself is going to grow. I am such a confident man because I know I do the things I have to do to become the man I want to become. I love this, Marcus. And one of the things that I want to edify this point, because I can say personally that for a large portion of my life, I was a consumer. I was a consumer and man, I had read it all. I had gone to all the seminars. I had listened to all the tapes. I had watched all the videos and I was nowhere near scratching the surface of my potential.

25:13 And really, I had a mentor who really got me in tune with capturing distinctions, not just being a consumer of information, but capturing distinctions. And that was a major accelerant for me. And to take it one step further, it was regurgitating those distinctions back and then even having the gall to teach someone something that I had learned. Yes. Right? Oh, so good. I'm right in the middle right now. I'm actually really close to finishing Adam Grant's book, Hidden Potential, which is a fantastic read. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend. And in it, he talks about how much faster we have the capability to grow if we can consume and then capture and then teach things.

26:01 And basically how, when we do that, we also overcome one of the big saboteurs in our mind is that I'm not qualified. I'm not qualified to go out and teach this. Guess what? If you capture something from this podcast that Marcus said today, and you jot down the distinction and you go and share that with somebody in your life who didn't hear the podcast. Guess what? You've just taught something. And it anchors it in further for you. And you get to share it with somebody else. Brother, this is so exceptional. And by the way, you just opened up my mind to something new. It's so obvious now, listening to you say it, why we feel so stuck and feel like we know enough when we're just consuming.

26:49 Because we consume, we consume, we consume, and our life doesn't change. So of course we go... Man, I know everything I need to know. I've been consuming it. And I know what I need to know because life didn't change consuming all that stuff that I consumed. In my opinion, action is the number one issue of today. No one takes action anymore. No one does jack. We just consume and we expect our life to change. And I just want to give you guys a ridiculous hyperbole for a second. You read every book on the planet. You consume it all and you do nothing about it. Are you further ahead in life or further behind?

27:31 I'll tell you right now, you will be miserable. Why? Because you just took in all this wisdom And now you know you should be doing something more with your life. You know you are a brilliant human being because you just consumed all this information and you're doing nothing with it. Oh man, that is horrifying. And we see that every single day with geniuses who start losing their minds going, I can't change enough. So don't do that. Consume, take action. Consume, take action. I'm telling you that's my blueprint for life and that's why I am where I am. So if you think I've got anything good going on in life, I've got some confidence that you wish you had, some success you wish you had, that is it.

28:18 I am not smarter than you. I do not have a leg up on you. All I have is action. This is really good. And I hope right now somebody is listening to this feeling incredibly uncomfortable, Marcus. Yes. Yes. They're like, shit, this is me. This is totally me. And one of the things that I want to share as well, because I think that especially, and this is rampant in the coaching world, There are so many people, and I certainly used to be one of them, who are just personal development junkies. And there's a lot of consumption and not a lot of action. And honestly, a lot of them really mistakenly wear it as a badge of honor. They'll tell you, man, you know, I read 10 books a month.

29:02 I'm well over 50, 60 books a year. Awesome. How many of those did you actually do something with? I would rather you read two books a year and obsess on those books and actually implement and do something with them. So that is so good. So good. Just so you know, you just described me really well in the latter part. So when I find a good book, I don't just read it once. Like I'm back on good to great again. If you guys haven't read good to great, Jim Collins, This is one of the greatest books ever written because especially if you're a business person, but it's not just about a business person. You want to be a better leader. You want to be a better father, mother, coach, anything.

29:44 Good to Great has so many amazing points on being here at good and how to get to great. And that's not enough to read it once or read it 10 times. I'm reading it and then I'm putting it into practice immediately. I'm talking about it with my friends. I'm talking about it right now. The stuff that you can learn from that book. And by the way, the Audible is spectacular. I listen to it constantly. It's... Every time I go through it, I'm like, oh, I need to do more of that. Yes, I should be doing that. Oh, that makes perfect sense. Why am I not doing that? Write it down, taking notes. There's notes on my desk right now from good to great. That's how I'm going to take my life from good to great.

30:27 That's how I'm going to take every business I touch from good to great. But I have to implement this stuff. I have to learn it. I have to take action with it. I have to refine it. That's the craziest thing that we all forget about. I'm not going to be an expert the first time I try something. I need to try it. Try it again. Fix it. Go after it. Do it again and again and again and again. And I don't care if I strike out 25 times. You're going to remember me for number 26. Mic drop, man, that was really good. And I love too that you talk about doing the work. Notice, by the way, that we're talking to a guy who's had a lot of business success, a lot of personal success, and we're not talking about sitting back.

31:11 We're talking about doing the work and digging in again on a topic and the basics and the fundamentals that you know are gonna get you from good to great. One of the things I love about what you just shared, Marcus, is that in today's day and age, I just think there's shiny object syndrome is real. Yes. Right. And I think so often we can both personally and in business be looking for that shiny new ninja tactic that's going to get us where we think we want to go. And more often than not, it's not about the new thing. It's about what you missed the first time you went through the foundational thing. Oh, brother. So good. By the way, Ryan, you're doing such an amazing job at this podcast.

31:54 Yeah. And I don't mean this podcast. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm saying as a podcaster, one of my favorite things when podcasters are hosting, like you're doing such an amazing job hosting, is they take something that's just been said and they go, hey, listener, here's another way to view this thing. Hey, listener, I know you better than this crazy guest we have. So I'm going to give you in different words. You're doing a phenomenal job, brother. I just want to give you some praise for it. Received. I'm humbled and received to hear that. I appreciate you, man. Beautiful. Hey, Ryan, I feel compelled to share one more thing tonight. Jump in. Yeah, please do hit it. So we fight against so many people kind of holding us back.

32:36 So many haters, if you will. And I really want to encourage everybody with this thought. The only time you're going to receive that kind of hater and that kind of pushback is from somebody who hasn't done it before. Yeah. whatever it is. Just think about this. If you went to Michael Jordan and you said, I want to be a great basketball player. Do you think Michael Jordan's going to go? No, you can't. Nobody can. No, he's done it and he believes it and he will say, great. What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? If you go to somebody who's built a house and you say, I'm going to build a house too. You think they're going to go? No, you're not. Nobody can build a house.

33:17 They've built a house. They're going to go, awesome. Good. How are you going to start? The only people who say to you, you can't play basketball, are the people who've never played basketball. Oh, you're going to build a house? Well, I can't build a house, so you can't build a house. I want you to think about that for a minute. We take advice from everybody equally these days. Not everybody's voice is equal. Furthest thing from it. If you haven't built a house and you're telling me I can't build a house, your opinion is worth zero to me. Digest that one, people. That's such great advice, man. And I appreciate that. I know how many other people are going to appreciate that because I think it's really easy for any of us to get caught up in the hater talk.

34:02 Even if it's just as simple as you're starting your business and all your friends and family members think you're absolutely nutso. This is really, really sage advice. And I hope you'll heed it and take it to heart. I want to shift into something. You recently got into a new business. I'm kind of on pins and needles here because... I don't know what's about to happen. So tell us about this new business. What is it? What are you doing? Why are you excited? You're always excited, but why are you really excited about this? Okay, Ryan, without exaggeration, I don't know if I've ever been so excited about a business. And that includes my favorite business that I started in 2005. It's called yay, by the way.

34:42 Let me go ahead and go ahead and do some of that there. All right, yay. Can we see that? All right, yay, it's yay stack. I mean, you're stacking the yays. You got it, do you remember Pokemon Go? Sure. So everybody's running around with their phones. Oh my goodness, they're dropping a dragon over here. We got to get over there. And people went nuts for it. Now that's 15 to 20 year old technology. We've taken that technology and made it spectacular. And today, and what we drop... are crazy amounts of prizes, goodies, gift cards from the biggest brands in the world, like Lululemon, like Chick-fil-A, like Amazon.

35:24 And we drop it at places like the Major League Baseball games. We recently dropped at this concert of a new and upcoming artist named Taylor Swift. It is such an awesome business and it is so much fun. So you get the app. And by the way, anyone listening who's starting to get excited already, which you should be right now, we're proving our model in the Atlanta, Georgia area. And hopefully even by the time you've, you're listening to this, by the time this is coming out, it's starting to spread across the nation. And I really believe this thing's going to be global within about a year. But all you do is you download the app and it will notify you when we're dropping something within your vicinity. And of course, you want to invite your friends.

36:05 You want to get a team together because there's a whole bunch of interlaced prizes and ways that you can get extra drops and extra prizes. But when it drops, oh my goodness, there's a drop one block from me. And you go because the first person to get there gets under it and you click it to claim it. Some confetti drops, it flips around. It shows you what you just won, a $250 gift card to Lululemon. Or we're actually working with a bunch of the Rocks brands right now. So we're dropping cases of Zoa, all these amazing things. And then you get to share it with people. You get to do a video that, by the way, these companies love these videos and are watching. So I just want a Zoa 12 pack.

36:47 Thank you, rock. The rock is seeing these videos. And so people are getting so creative, so much fun, but here's what I love. We're giving back to people at a time when people need stuff so bad. This economy is tough. Let's not sugarcoat it. It is a tough time to be in this world. How beautiful to be sharing, to be giving back, to be having fun, to getting people off their butts and running with their family and friends to go have a good time, to win some incredible things. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm pretty psyched about this. You're pretty pumped. It's not a lie. Your physiology says it all, dude. I love this.

37:27 So, I mean, first of all, I want to honor you because I think that now is the time. Yes, we've got economy stuff going on. We've got so much uncertainty in the world, unrest in so many different ways. And I love that you're involved in something that truly just brings joy to people's lives. That makes me happy. And that's amazing, man. I would love to hear the CliffsNotes version of what kind of inspired you with this? Is this sort of a group project that you were able to get in on or how did this come to fruition? Oh, I love this question, by the way, because the answer is so beautiful. So first of all, I'm one of the key people now, but I'm not one of the creators.

38:09 Trey Roth. an unbelievable human being. I love this guy. When I first met him through Tony Robbins, again, there was just something about him. There was a light shining on him. And, and he says the same about me where it was like, we're supposed to do something together. And when he started describing yay to me and all that we stand for, I was like, that's who I am. And I was so drawn to this The way God created this beautiful relationship between us and drew us together and drew me into this business and for Trey to be like, I want Marcus part of this. What Marcus can bring and do for this will transform yay.

38:52 And just seeing now how all the right players are coming into the right place. Like by the time this airs, this will have already happened, but The Rock is actually doing a drop for us this weekend at a high school. Oh, wow. That's awesome. How cool is that? And just the things we get to be part of. And by the way, this high school happens to be a high school that recently had a shooting. And so it's the reason that The Rock is there. And when we heard about this, first of all, when The Rock heard about this, he's like, I'm going to be there. I'm going to be there at your opening football game. And when we heard about this, we're like, who better than to drop a whole bunch of free stuff on? Like who needs it more? Who needs some joy?

39:32 Who needs some happiness dropped on them? And now all these families are going to be there, you know, hopefully sharing a smile as opposed to just focusing on them. Like this is the kind of stuff we're part of. Man, this is exactly what I've always wanted to be part of. This is the kind of company. This is the kind of thing I want to do. Like I'm all about impact now. Love this. Love this so much. And one of the things that I want to highlight too, look at you. Oh, he's got multiple colors, man. You are really well prepared. I like it. This feels more in line with the outfit, you know? Now you got your matching with the shirt and everything. Yes, you nailed it. One of the things that I want to highlight too, I think oftentimes, first of all, I want to say congratulations on the business and being a part of something that sounds and feels really special.

40:21 And again, clearly, I think it's going to be something that's going to make a lot of people's lives better, which is so needed in the world right now. But one of the things that I want to highlight, because you mentioned this especially, you mentioned it earlier, but then it came up very specifically in what you mentioned with your connection with Trey. You know, a lot of times I think, and by the way, I was at this point at one stage of my life. I think a lot of times we can be looking up at people that are creating things, multiple businesses. There's another venture. Oh my gosh, they exited another thing and got into another thing. And we just go, oh my gosh, it feels like such a mountain to climb. And how could I possibly get there? And all the things. One key distinction that I want to highlight for you here, because there's a theme and it's that Marcus and other people who are successful at any level are, again, putting themselves in a room.

41:12 I have had exactly the same conversation with so many people over the last couple of years where it's like, gosh, I don't know what we're supposed to do together. I believe there's something. Yes. And truly, the amazing thing about that is if you will put yourself in the room... with people who are inspired and inspiring, who are doing big things, who are hustling, have great conversations, make great genuine connections, not like what are you going to do for me kind of connections, but real genuine connections. The most incredible things come to fruition and happen and you literally can't make them up. And this sounds like one of those things. That's exactly it, brother.

41:53 That's exactly what a great line to start talking about here because we don't do enough of this and we don't talk about this enough. And in my experience, I've never heard people give us the granule. Like, yeah, I was at this event. I met this really cool person, really connected. Like we knew it. We both, we shook hands. We're like, we got to stay in touch. I didn't really feel like I had a reason to reach out to them. So I maybe sent them a text once and then that's it. Okay. Allow me to connect the dots for you, everybody, because I was there for so long. So long. I went to, oh man, I must be coming close to a thousand different events.

42:36 A thousand events. I want to say I went through a few hundred with that same, I don't know what to do with this. Like I met this person, they're great. The end. Now, I don't need to know exactly what comes in the future, but I know what I can do with my timer right now. I can send them a message. At the very least, I'll send them a text message. But if you want to take it a step further like I do, I send them a video message. Hey, Ryan, I just want you to know, man, I'm thinking about you today. I've got no reason to call you, but if you want to have a call, let's jump on a Zoom for 30 minutes and see what happens. Do you know how often amazing things happen? What am I talking about?

43:16 This morning, someone connected me to an amazing human being named Chelsea Myers. Chelsea and I jumped on a call. We had no expectation. It was one of the greatest calls I've had in months. We had such an incredible connection. I have no idea what'll come of it, but I'm going to keep connecting with her. I'm going to send her messages. She's one of my favorite people now. And I'm going to be praying for her. I'm going to be thinking about her. I'm going to be giving her that kind of good energy. Do you think something amazing is not going to come of that? I would put a huge amount of money saying it will happen. I have no idea what. So why not just keep taking action like we've been talking about and move the relationship forward with messages?

44:04 Hey, just thinking about you. And if there really was that connection, I'll bet you five bucks that person goes, oh, I was thinking about you the other day. I'm so glad you reached out. Yes, let's jump on a call. I love what you just said. I want to highlight that there's something really important behind the action that you're taking and it's intention. Yeah. Because, right, we can pull out the phone, you know, and do the thing and type the text message or send the message. But if it's the intention behind it that matters and that people can feel, by the way. Yeah. And so key. Ryan, so good.

44:45 Man, you are kneeling this, by the way. Intention is everything. And here is a beautiful question for you to answer today, everybody. How much of the stuff in your life are you doing with intention? Be honest with yourself. No judgment. Nothing but mercy. I'm telling you right now, in my weaker years when I wasn't accomplishing anything, in my opinion, nothing was being done with intention. It was with like some hope. I guess I'll do this. I'll do this 50, 80%, 70%. And I hope something good happens. Now that I get crap done in my life, I get real success. I point full intention to anything I'm doing or I don't do it at all.

45:29 I am a hundred percent or zero percent. And I'm so good with that. Judge me if you want. If I'm going to spend time with my daughters, I'm a hundred percent in. I'm not going to go, okay, but hold on, hold on. Let me, uh, let me just, uh, yeah, I'm listening. Yeah. How was your day? That's bull crap. When I'm with my wife, full intention, uh, You know how far that goes with relationships? And shocker, it goes really far in business too. When I show up, I show up all the way. One of my favorite things to hear from people, when I'm having a conversation with them, I'm so locked in, they're like, I felt like I was the only person in the room. And I've had some conversations in very busy rooms, but if I'm gonna have this conversation, I'm yours.

46:13 I don't care what's going on. Oh, who's that? Oh, what's that? Oh, squirrel. Oh, no, it's you and me. And people, like you said, they feel that. They feel that energy you're putting out. And it makes them go, I'm connected to this person in a special way. And they want to see you succeed. And they, like, think about what I'm saying. This is not just business. Your kids, your wife, your husband, your boyfriend. They want to see you succeed. They want to see you succeed in your relationship with them. Wow, this guy's really putting in the effort. I'm going to put a little extra effort in for them. And I don't care if I get it back. All I can do is control me.

46:54 I can't control them. But I love putting it out. I want to be mindful of the time. And I'd love to ask you a question. I want to ask before I do. Can we get a little vulnerable? Let's go. I would love that. I'd appreciate that. What is right now the biggest challenge that you're facing in your life? And what are you doing about it? I wish I had a more like vulnerable sounding answer. I'm telling you, life is really good right now. My biggest challenge is I have so many opportunities in front of me. And I know that sounds so brutal.

47:34 I feel like an Instagram guy being like, yeah. So many opportunities, guys. No, it's good. It's honest. Hashtag living my best life. So my biggest concern is that I allow anything like pride or ego to make a decision for me to put me on a path I don't want to be on. How do you avoid that? I get these beautiful opportunities, like legit. Every week I'm seeing three to eight businesses that want me part of it. Of course I can't be part of all those businesses, but, And when I get involved with the business, I not only want to put my money in, but I want to put my time in.

48:15 I want to put my love and my energy into it. And I think that's what people really want out of me more than anything else. So I can't spread myself all over the place like that. And I want to make sure I'm being very discerning. And most importantly, that I'm doing what God wants me to do. Like he's given me all these blessings, all these giftings, money and energy and time. I want to use them properly. I don't want to just be like, well, that one's pretty cool. I'm going to start working for Ferrari so I can get a Ferrari for free each year. Like it's hard, and you know this as a coach, and all the coaches listening are going to be nodding their head when I say this. We have so much programming inside us that was set when I was seven years old, nine years old, 11 years old, that makes us move the way we move today and not know why.

49:04 Oh yeah, I took that job at Lamborghini. I don't know why. I just, I really want a Lamborghini. I don't want a Lamborghini. Part of me is like, oh yeah, I kind of want a Ferrari. Do you know why? Because I watched Magnum PI when I was a kid and I thought Magnum PI was the namiest man, right? Yes, come on, man. Seriously. And it takes us working with a good coach with someone who can help go. Okay, why? Why do you want that? Why do you think you want? Oh, I don't know. I don't really know why I want that. Okay, so that's number one. If it's current and fresh, you'll have a good answer. Do you know why I want to work with Ye? Because we give back, because we make real impact, because we bring joy to people's lives.

49:47 That's today. That's Marcus all the way right now. And maybe it was 10 years ago and 40 years ago too. I assure you it's right now. One of the things that I want to highlight about where you just went with that, it's so not Instagram living my best life kind of thing, Marcus. In all honesty, I think this is really valuable, what you just said, because what you highlighted is the value of understanding how to evaluate an opportunity and knowing when to say no. Because I think we don't have to be way down the road to be able to figure out evaluating opportunities and when to say no. And quite frankly, if you're doing the things that we've suggested you do in this podcast, go take action, put yourself in rooms, have conversations.

50:34 You're going to have a lot of opportunities. You do need to be able to figure out how to say no and how to do it in a way where you also do it honorably and you leave the door open for potential opportunity. Brother, man, this guy's nailing it. You guys got to stop right now and go give five star to this podcast. This deserves five star. Ryan deserves five star. This guy is killing it. Ryan, what a great thing to highlight. Learning to say no is so important. And I might have just glossed over it. I did. I did. It's critical to my success to know which things to say no to. And again, you might go, I am not, how do we go about it? Go back to the other answers.

51:15 Listen to your heart. Listen to your energy. Like when Ye was in front of me, I was like, yes, all in. Yes. Some of these other ones, they're great people. They are amazing humans. It's not easy to say no. It's maybe almost never easy to say no. Okay. But you will learn how to do it when you become your authentic you and you're following your North Star. You got to find out where you are supposed to go. And if it's like, oh, this is going to bring me so much energy and joy and I can't wait to put my time into it, then yes. Oh, that sounds like a lot of work. That's not really my expertise. I'm not very good at that. That makes me sad.

51:55 That scares me. This is bad. No. It reminds me, you saying this just now reminds me of a really pivotal point in my life where I had just gotten done reading Michael Singer's book, The Surrender Experiment. And which, by the way, if you haven't noticed, we've given four major book recommendations in this podcast. You got your work cut out for you. You're welcome. But I had just gotten done reading that book and I was at a really funky crossroads in my life. I knew where I wanted to go, but I couldn't see the path. I couldn't understand how I was going to get there. And after I finished reading that book, I made a decision in that moment to say for one year, I don't care what it is, whatever opportunities come to me that feel good and in alignment, I don't care how small they are, how big they are, how crazy they are, how straightforward they are.

52:48 If it feels good, I'm gonna say yes. And if it doesn't, no matter how much money is involved, no matter how much I like the person, no matter how much I think I might be criticized, if it doesn't feel right, I'm gonna say no, no matter what. And literally, I actually forgot that I told myself I was gonna do it for a year. And I kind of woke up like 18 months later going, holy shit, wow, I forgot that I was doing this. I just kept doing this and it completely changed my life, my business, my trajectory in the entrepreneurial world, all of it. So there's so much wisdom in what you just said, man. Marcus, we're just about wrapped up here.

53:29 But man, I want to just first of all, we haven't had an opportunity to spend a significant amount of time together. And one of the things that I just want to thank you for is... Again, we use this word, but your intentions for being here are so pure, so honorable. You are clearly a man who's not just had financial success, but you've had human success. Thank you. You are a good man, somebody who is going out and making a big difference in the world in so many different ways. I'm excited for the people that you've impacted today. We'll certainly push this all over the place to make sure that we get you as much impact as possible. And I just want to say thank you and honor you for who you are and the way that you're showing up in the world.

54:11 Because honestly, I'm jacked up. Like, I'm ready. I'm ready to jump out of my seat after this podcast is over. I'm ready to do something, man. Ryan, I appreciate you so much, man. Thank you. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with you. I haven't been blowing smoke up your butt here. I think you're doing a spectacular job. I think you and I were dancing together today and I think we should spend some more time together. And by the way, everybody, please connect with me. I'm not an unreachable guy. I love hearing from people, especially if I've made any kind of an impact. If even you were like, you know what? After listening, I felt compelled to do something. I did something with intention. I went and I kissed my wife with intention.

54:55 Oh, guys, if you go and do that, will you please tell me that lights me up so much? I need that fuel to keep going like this every single day. So please reach out to me. I'm at playabiggergame.com. playabiggergame.com. Or hit me up on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. You're going to get a message back from me. Like, I love hearing that stuff. And who knows? Maybe one day we're going to do business together. Like, I don't know what the future holds. So please reach out to me and show Ryan some love. What a phenomenal job you're doing, brother. And I'm going to make sure as soon as we're off, I'm going to go give you five stars because you deserve it. And man, I just hope you have the most blessed year.

55:38 And if you ever want me back on, I would be so honored to come back. Thank you, man. Likewise, it was my honor to spend the time with you. And we'll make sure that your social profiles and the website and the book and all of that good stuff is linked up in the show notes so that people can find you and grab your stuff wherever it's available. Once again, thank you, Marcus. And yes, this is definitely the first of multiple episodes. multiple opportunities to have you on the show, brother. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. And we'll see you on the next show. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

56:19 And if you got value out of this episode, we'd be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go. Thank you.