Mark Sieverkropp is a friend, business coach, and the author of “Find Your 20: The Six-Figure Business Owner’s Guide to More Focus, Greater Results and More Time.”
His passion is simply helping people as much as possible—especially entrepreneurs.
He has worked with industry leaders such as Michael Hyatt, Ray Edwards, Lewis Howes, Jeff Goins, Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Shark Tank’s Kevin Harrington, yours truly and many many more.
Through his coaching, Mark loves helping six-figure business owners create businesses that work for them, instead of the other way around. This isn’t to say business owners won’t work, but that at the end of the day they should love the work they do, rather than feel enslaved by it.
In this interview we get to dig into Mark’s journey into coaching, the 80/20 principle, which is the basis of his book Find your 20, and so much more.
I’ve personally had the chance to see Mark in action many times and love the way he works. He’s really good at what he does. I’m excited to share this interview with you!
Listen in here:
Subscribe: Apple | Google Play | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify | AmazonIn this episode you’ll learn:
- What Mark does
- How he decided to be his own boss
- Mark’s early hustle-years in business
- Transitioning into his independent coaching career
- Tips for a smooth transition and why it’s important
- How to be consistent in developing your skills and relationships
- Why when freedom and autonomy are your top two values — you wouldn’t want a boss
- Mark’s approach to coaching
- Why do we need coaches?
- The 80-20 principle — and its versatility
- Building a business that serves you, using the 80-20 principle
- BOOK GIVEAWAY ALERT!
- Mark’s motivation behind the book
- Suzanne’s story — stay focused on your goal
- Mark’s purpose: “How can I help more people?”x
- Check out his book online!
Resources Mentioned:
Find Your 20: The Six-Figure Business Owner’s Guide to More Focus, Greater Results and More Time
Software Generated Transcription:
Dan
Mark, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the Meaning Movement podcast.
Mark
Thanks for having me. This is so much fun. I’m excited.
Dan
I love it. I love it. The question I like to start with is how do you begin to talk about the work that you do?
Mark
So that’s an interesting question. I was curious how I was going to answer this because I have the real answer and then I have the answer I always tell when people around here ask me, my joke is my wife hates this, so don’t tell my wife, I told you this. But my joke is when everybody says, what do you do? I say, I sell drugs to kids, mostly because if I tell them what I actually do, they’re like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. So that’s like my joke.
Mark
And my wife’s like, don’t say that to the wrong person. They’re not going to get it. They’re not going to think it’s a joke. But no, seriously, what I do is I help six figure business owners really create a business that they love rather than becoming a slave to their business. I’ve seen so many people that get to that six figure level right around there, and they’ve created this, like this monster, essentially that only works if they work. And the only way they know to continue doing it is by continuing to work harder and continue to do more of the same things. And by doing that, they start working longer hours and they start working weekends and evenings and holidays and missing kids’ activities, and all of a sudden they hate their job because it really has become a job. So that’s what I do.
Dan
I love it. I love it. How did you get into this? Let’s rewind here. Have you always wanted to be a business coach for six figure business owners?
Mark
How did I get into this? Well, I mean, I always knew I wanted to do something in business. I always knew I wanted to work for myself. Well, I wouldn’t say I always knew that. I realized now that I knew that. I didn’t consciously realize that. But growing up, my dad was a farmer, which you don’t think of as being a small business owner, but 100% is. I mean, he made his own schedule. He worked when he wanted to. He had things that had to get done, and he was working a lot. And that’s certainly why I’m not a farmer to work for myself. But I realize looking back now, that sense of freedom, that sense of being able to make the decisions of when I was going to work, when I wasn’t going to work, what I wanted to do was really important to me. So I’ve done a ton of jobs. I made compost out of cow manure, which I always tell people was literally a crappy job. And that’s really where I started to realize how important that freedom was to me because I was working 70 hours a week. I was working six days a week.
Mark
I was working out of town. I was staying out of town a few nights a week. I missed birthdays, I missed anniversaries. And it helped me realize that autonomy was one of the most important things to me. So from there, I became an insurance underwriter. And from there, I started working with a friend of mine, which is actually how you and I met Scott Barlow. And I think you were an affiliate for Scott early on when we were working together. And so he and I started doing some stuff on the side. And in the process of that, I ended up getting into affiliate marketing and online marketing and did that, wrote a bunch of emails, create a bunch of sales pages, that kind of thing for several years, and really realize that what I like doing is coaching. And it sounds really noble and exciting. But what it comes down to is I’m not a detail person, and I’d much rather meet with you for 45 minutes or an hour, give you really cool ideas that you never thought of pulling out the things that you didn’t notice, then walk away and let you implement it.
Mark
Because I’m not a detailed person. It’s been a process of figuring out. Several years ago, I said, I wish I could just make money talking to people. And that’s really what I’ve got to is meeting with business owners, listening to what their challenges are and noticing things that they don’t notice. It’s that you can’t see the forest through the trees thing. There’s so many things that you get so close to that you don’t notice. And so I love helping business owners see those things and help them to create a business that they love.
Dan
I love that. That’s fantastic. Thank you for that. Just a great summary I want to know about kind of Zoom in on your transition from working with we worked with Scott Barlow. You worked with Matt McWilliams, who I’ve had both of those great guys on the show. I’ll make sure to link to those episodes and the show notes. Now we have the whole full trifecta, right?
Mark
Yeah.
Dan
Of friends here. But transitioning from working with them to your own business, being going solo, it’s a big shift, right? Like from relying on even though they’re running smallish businesses, you’re helping them, whatever. But to really owning, being fully responsible. Fully accountable. Fully. I mean, all those things. That sounds bad to say it that way, but going solo.
Mark
Oh, you’re accountable.
Dan
Yeah. No accountability. You can do whatever you want. No one cares. No. But like to just go it out on your own. Like, that’s a big shift. And I know a lot of people listening might be in places where they’re thinking about going out and doing their own thing. It’s helpful to hear some of the details of how that transition went for you?
Mark
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things I realized when I was working with Scott, I still had a fulltime job. We did a lot of podcast, recording, and work early in the mornings. We met at Starbucks a lot and worked there. And this will point out kind of how long ago it was. We used Microsoft OneNote and we thought it was like the coolest thing that we could both see what was happening because there was no Google Docs at that point. It’s so funny to think back on. We just thought it was so cool. So with him, that’s what it was. When I started working with Matt, I quit my job and I worked with him pretty much full time. I was an independent contractor, but in a lot of ways I was still working for somebody. He was my main client, and he and I worked together for five or six years. And when he first hired me, one of the things he told me was, if you and I are working together in five years, one of us did something wrong. His point was, you should grow. You should develop and have different things.
Mark
And it was right about that five year Mark that I started really feeling like I’m not going to do what I need to do if I’m still here. And for me, it was really what’s that story about the dog that’s laying on a porch? And he’ll yelp every once a while and it’s like, what’s the deal? Well, he’s laying on a nail. Why does he move? It doesn’t hurt that bad. And that’s kind of where I was at. I wanted to have several clients. I wanted to get out and do more coaching, but I also had this really steady retainer every month and steady work, and I didn’t have to think through it a lot. It’s just like I knew what I had to do. I was assigned tasks and it was easy. And I just got to the point where I realized if I was ever going to do it, I needed to just make that break so that I was forcing myself to just step out and do it. And that’s what I finally did. I was like, okay, I’m going to contrary to my wife’s feelings because she’s very security oriented and she’s like, you’re going to do what we get like these thousands of dollars every month and now it’s just going to be gone.
Mark
What are we going to do? Before I stepped away from that, I’d started working with another client in coaching for her program. So it wasn’t much of a stretch, but it certainly was a trial. And I can tell you that 2021 was a year of, well, we’re going to figure out how this works. And there was some I look back and I’m like, I don’t know how I paid my bills sometimes, but it worked. And we’re here. And it really was what I needed. I needed to just do the proverbial entrepreneurial thing of jumping off the cliff and building my airplane or my parachute on the way down. And that’s what I did.
Dan
I love it. Hopefully it’s an airplane or a parachute, not a boat or something that you end up building.
Mark
Right.
Dan
I built a submarine. Maybe 2021 was when you went solo.
Mark
The end of 2020. So it’s like October, November or something like that. So, yeah, it’s been about almost 18 months.
Dan
Yeah. I mean, I know I’ve been kind of watching your work for a long time since you were working with both Scott and Matt, and it feels like you’ve been on your own. That’s not even the right word. But it feels like it’s been longer, which is hopefully a testament to just how rooted it feels like you are in what you’re doing.
Mark
Thank you.
Dan
So good work. It’s exciting. A couple of things that just kind of stand out to me of that story is just the side hustle, how you started as a side hustle, built up some projects, built up the other coaching to supplement. So it wasn’t like you were at a job working nine to five and then you quit, and then it’s like, okay, now I’m going to do this coaching thing, but it’s like you already had some other it wasn’t a hard stop or hard transition, which I think for listeners, it’s important to think through. How can you make that transition less scary, less risky? How can you make it more of a gradual thing instead of just a hard stop? Sometimes you just have to take a hard break. But the other thing that I think is super interesting is how just that analogy of the nail that just kind of hurts the dog just a little bit. Often people come into these conversations about work and meaning and purpose and what am I going to do with my life when there is a major life event, a death, a divorce, they get fired or whatever it might be because something just kind of propels them into the conversation.
Dan
But for you, if it feels like maybe that just came from inside, which I think is a really healthy way for it to go because you have more margin, I think a lot of times people reach out to me and they’re like, hey, I just quit my job or I can’t stand this. I’m totally burnt out and help me figure out what to do with my life.
Mark
What do I do Monday?
Dan
Yeah, like Monday, you got to go get another job and then shoot me an email and maybe start helping you then. So there’s another point that I feel like something you did well is to take the leap when you had the brain space and the margin for it rather than when you had a midlife crisis or something along the way.
Mark
Yeah. I mean, I think both of those things are interesting because one of the things that I think is really important for people is realizing that there’s a couple of things that even if you’re doing a side hustle or you have a job that’s really valuable is the relationships you make and the skills that you develop. Looking back, I realized that I was developing skills all along that time, whether it was with Scott on the side hustle or whether it was my job or whether it was the other things I was doing by myself or when I started working with Matt. Like all of those skills. I look back now and it’s like, I know how to do a lot of things. And I didn’t at the time realized, oh, this is all going to help. But now it does. And the other one is just the relationships. So many of the relationships that I’ve used to make this coaching business work and continue to grow and the relationships that I developed. You’re a great example. You and I knew each other because of Scott. I know we’ll get into talking my book, but a lot of the people that wrote really nice things about me and my book were from relationships I had when I was working with Scott or I was working with Matt, and I just developed those relationships.
Mark
And so I think it’s so important to realize that even if you’re not where you want to be, those two things, your relationships and your skills are always there’s always a reason you’re learning things. There’s always a reason you’re connecting with people and keep those relationships develop those relationships. And the second one you mentioned, get a job on Monday things actually, when I quit working at the job where I was making compost, I actually did. I quit on a Friday and I was like halfway through the day. And it’s a long story. The longer short of it was I was told I was on the school board, and I was told by the owner that when I got the school board position, he’s like, yeah, when you need to have school board meetings, absolutely. There’s no problem. Well, then he hired a manager, and the manager wasn’t quite so kind. And he told me one day, hey, I need you to be out of town Monday. I need you to be gone all that week. And I was like, I can’t, I have a meeting at night. He’s like, well, you got to figure it out.
Mark
I need you to do it. And so I called or texted my wife halfway through the day on Friday and said, I’m done, I quit. I’m so down with this guy. And we’ve been probably for several months kind of butting heads. And he was asserting that he was the boss. And I didn’t like it because I had a lot of just freedom to decide when I went places and what I did. And so my wife’s only comment was to me was, you need to have a job before you can quit. And I was like, seriously? So I had a company pick up. So I drove to pick up home that night on Friday, I was like, texting people, calling people all weekend. Saturday evening, I had a buddy that had a tree cutting business. He’s like, yeah, I could use your help for a week. I need some help with people next week. So I’m like I told my wife I’m like, got a job next week. And so I drove to pick up back, left a note and was like, see you, I quit. Good luck figuring out what you’re going to do. And then by that Thursday, I had another job lined up.
Mark
I was working temporarily for somebody and turned into full time for about six months. And then I got another job. So it worked out. My wife wasn’t happy about it, but I did do that.
Dan
There you go. Maybe you learned your lesson. Or maybe I think what that tells me.
Mark
Yeah, I don’t want to work for people. That’s what I learned.
Dan
One, like, that freedom and autonomy again, that theme shows up there. That that’s really high value for you. But then two, again, you bet on yourself. And just like, I’m going to figure this out and figure it out as I go. And so good on you for making those transitions. I love it. I love it.
Mark
Okay.
Dan
I want to jump into the book, but before we get there, I want to just there it is for listeners. Mark just held up a copy of the book. We’re going to at the end of the episode. Stay tuned to the end. We’re going to give away a couple of copies of this, which is exciting, but I want to just kind of focus in on coaching and what you do with clients both in one-on-one settings, group settings, because I feel like it was hard for me to imagine until I actually saw you in action, what coaching actually looks like, what it is. And this is even something I’ve talked about with Adam, my business partner in Trescow. He’s like, he doesn’t get coaching. He’s not the kind of guy who is going to hire someone like Mark to coach him. But it was one just super fun for me to see you in action. But two, I think I just learned so much even just watching you and how you engage things that I take even been thinking about as I talk with even team members and different people about their work. And I’m curious for you, the question here is how do you describe what happens when you’re in a coaching session?
Dan
That’s a direction. Choose Your Own Adventure podcast interview here.
Mark
Okay.
Dan
Another direction is maybe even just to say what’s the low hanging fruit of things that the problems that people have that come up in your coaching sessions that maybe listeners might identify with. So you can choose which or both of those questions.
Mark
Or a third option.
Dan
I can just keep giving you options so you start answering.
Mark
All of the above.
Mark
It’s interesting because I remember having that conversation, and like you said, you and I have worked together in a partnership. I guess you would say as I was coaching some of the people that you guys hadn’t trust out. I remember having that conversation with you and Adam, and we’re like, yeah, we’ll do some coaching, and Adam just had this blank look on his face, like, why would somebody pay for that? I don’t understand.
Mark
First off, I firmly believe that everybody needs a coach, and I’ll get more into that. But I think with Adam is just one of those guys that he’s just super motivated. Like, he’s just, I’m going to do this and I do it. What did he say? He created like 30 courses in six months or something like that. So some people are just ultra motivated and they’re ultra accountable to themselves and they can just do it. And so for people like that, they’re like, I don’t understand, what am I selling? Why would I buy this? But for most of us, and I would say the vast majority of us, we need somebody to in some ways be a mirror. I find the most important things I do when I’m coaching is really just kind of reflect back what somebody is saying and say, okay, so what you said was this. And they’re like, oh, and we’ve all had that experience where you said something and then somebody repeats it, and then you’re like, oh, when you put it that way, it sounds terrible. It’s like we don’t notice it on our own. And so I think that’s one of the things.
Mark
Sometimes it’s just being a mirror. Sometimes it’s just having somebody listen to us. I was listening to I think it’s Steve Chandler, who’s a pretty famous, well known coach. He quoted somebody. I can’t remember who he quoted, but he said that if somebody would just go every night after work and talk to a light post for ten minutes, their life would improve. Like just that verbal processing, just that ability to talk through makes a difference. And most people don’t have that person. Most people don’t have somebody that they can just say, I’m struggling with this. And I think one of the coolest things for me is I’m focused mostly on business coaching, but we talk about family stuff, and we talk about relationships because it all intertwines. If you’re really worried about your family or a relationship with somebody or your health or something like that, we can talk about business all we want, but it’s not going to get anywhere because that’s what you’re focused on. That’s what’s important to you. So it’s really just having somebody that listens, having somebody that mirrors back. What’s going on. It’s also accountability. I tell this to my clients all the time.
Mark
It’s interesting that I think you’re probably this way, too. I know I’m this way, and most of your listeners probably are. We value and we put a lot of stock in being people of our word and doing what we say we’re going to do and keeping our commitments. And that’s really important to us unless it’s ourselves. And the minute we make a commitment to ourselves, it’s like, well, I can do that next week or that really wasn’t that important. And so I think it’s somebody having somebody that helps you be accountable, having somebody that says, hey, you said you were going to do that thing. How’d that go? And I’ve had clients that have told me they’re like, man, I did what I told you I was going to do two weeks ago because I knew you would ask me about it today. And it was like they did it the day before because they knew they were going to be asked about it. Nobody wants to be the person that’s like, no, I didn’t do it again. And I’ve even went so far with some of my clients as telling them, look, we’re going to identify one thing that you need to do.
Mark
You’re going to identify it. You’re going to tell me what’s most important. And if you don’t do it by our next call, we’re not having that next call. I will say, okay, cool. You’ve got 30 minutes or an hour to work on that now. See you later. And that really it’s because most business owners I’ve seen, it’s not that they don’t know what to do. It’s not that they don’t have the skills to do it. It’s that they don’t focus, they don’t stay focused on that one thing. We get busy or some fire comes up or an employee says, this happened and all of a sudden you’re off track and you never do that one thing that you were going to do. And now you wonder, why am I spending in circles? Well, it’s because you keep jumping from thing to thing rather than focusing on that one thing until you complete it.
Dan
Yeah.
Mark
I think that’s what coaching is.
Dan
So good. Yeah. I think you really answered both questions in some ways, at least alluded to it, because I feel like so often there’s so many things as a business owner that you do just to stay in maintenance mode, and all those things are important to some degree, but to really identify what is actually going to move the needle significantly on your business, or even if for listeners who aren’t in business, I think this applies like move the needle on your life, whatever that is, your career, whatever your goals are. Sometimes it’s really hard to identify, I don’t know, maybe that you can talk about it as an 80-20 rule. Maybe this is kind of a segue. I’m queuing this up here, giving you, lobbing you a ball, because it really is true to really see where your effective is really challenging, which is a perfect transition to the book. So can you tell us a little bit about this book you wrote?
Mark
Yeah. Well, let me jump back real quick, because I think I said at the beginning I didn’t really get to it. I forgot. But I really believe that everybody needs a coach. Whether that comes in the form of somebody you pay, whether that’s a mentor, even down to the podcast, you listen to the books you read, you need that outside input, you need that. And I think it’s so funny that a lot of us get to this point in our lives where we’re like, well, I know what I’m doing. I don’t really need a coach. But then you look at elite performers, you don’t have coaches, you look at any sports team. They have a myriad of coaches, offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, quarterback coach, kicking coach, like goalkeeper coach, Tiger Woods has a coach. All these people have coaches that help them. And it’s not that the coach is better than that person. And this is one of the things that my wife and I always talk about. She’s like, well, how can you coach somebody that’s got like, I have one client that she just told me that I think she’s between 4— and $600,000 right now in her business.
Mark
So my wife is like, how can you coach someone like that? You’re not making that. It’s a totally different skill. It’s not that I can do what they’re doing better than they can. It’s that I’m outside of it and I can see things that they can’t. And so I think really, regardless of how you do it, whether it’s finding a mentor, finding somebody you follow books, podcasts, or paying somebody to be a coach, it’s so valuable. I have a coach. I have a couple of different coaches that I pay a lot of money to because it’s important to me. And when you invest in something, you take it seriously. And so that’s something that I do for my personal growth. And I think everybody needs to do it on some level because you’re missing out on really the key to growth if you’re not being coached by somebody. That being said, I wrote this book called Find Your 20 and Marvelous Segue there Dan. Just fantastic.
Dan
It’s all about I’m hoping you would compliment me on that.
Mark
Yeah. So the 80-20 principle, many of you may have heard of it, some of you may have not. But it initially was called the Pareto principle. It was, I guess, discovered by Vilfredo Pereto, who was an economist in Italy. And essentially he realized as he was looking at, I think, the distribution of land and wealth in Italy, he was like, hey, most of the land or most of the wealth is owned by a small percentage of the people. And this became known as the 80 20 rule because that’s how it broke down, was 20% of the input creates 80% of the output. And the interesting thing is the 80-20 rule applies to just about everything. It’s actually kind of freaky when you sit down and figure it out. I do this for fun. Now. It’s like, oh, I wonder if this applies to the 80-20 principle. I actually wrote an email today and I found I was talking about— this is a total side note, but have you played this game, Wordle? Have you seen this with the little green block? Okay. Do you play it? Yes.
Dan
My wife loves word games.
Mark
So it’s very much up her I just started and it’s interesting because I was writing this email about it and how it applies to the 80-20 principle. And I realized that if you go back to Wheel of Fortune, they always gave you certain letters, right? Rstlne. And I’m like, I wonder if that’s because that’s the majority of letters. Well, those six letters, five letters in a vowel are 23% of the Alphabet. And they make up I think I looked up it’s like 45% of the words and letters in the English language. So it’s not exactly 80 20, but it’s that same idea of a small percent of the inputs create a large percent of the outputs, which, by the way and this isn’t my email today, but I’ll give it to your listeners free. So here’s a little trick. This is what I do in Wordle to and this could be a terrible idea. I don’t know. I always start with the word rent, R-E-N-T-S because it has five of those six letters. That’s what I do, because the likelihood is nobody wants to do, like, what is it like links?
Because.
Mark
Actually links. Yeah. Y and X won’t be real good, but LNN wouldn’t be too bad. So 80 20 applies to everything down to I asked my daughter, I was like, hey, how many pairs of shoes do you use or have? And she’s like, oh, I think I have ten. And I’m like, do you wear like, two of them? Most of the time? She’s like, yes, if you look on your phone, guaranteed, 20% of your apps are the ones you use 80% of the time. I text my wife one day, her parents own a restaurant and my wife is the manager. And I said, hey, how many employees do you have? And I think she said they had 23 or 24. And I was like, okay, would it be fair to say that four of them cause most of the problems? She kind of chuckled and said, yes. And I said, okay. And this is the cool thing about 80 20 is it’s fractal, which means that 20% of the 20% will make up 64% of the results or something like that I said, okay, so of those four, is it fair to say that one of those people causes most of the problems that those four cause?
Mark
And she goes, yes. And then she named a person and I was like, it works again. I love that she looks at me and she’s like, you’re dumb. But it’s like it works with everything. And the book really takes that principle, that idea and says, okay, how could we apply this to our business so that we can be more focused, we can get more done but not spend more time? Because remember, really the book, yes, it’s about the 80-20 principle. But the underlying thing is I want you to have a business that serves you. I want to have a business that serves your lifestyle, does the things you want it to do, not owns you, not makes you work nights, weekends, miss kids activities. So we go through in the book and we say, okay, how can we apply the 80-20 principle to the products that you have, the products and services and the tasks that you do? And I walked through a series of exercises and there’s worksheets that you can download for these. And it’s really just identifying what are the key things, the 20%. That’s what the 20 comes from.
Mark
Find your 20%. What are the key things in your business that most directly result in revenue? And that’s really what it comes down to, because I think a lot of us think, oh, this is important. Oh, that’s important. But if it doesn’t specifically directly contribute to revenue, you’re probably wasting your time. It’s just the way it is. That’s the quick overview of the book.
Dan
I love it.
Mark
I love reading.
Dan
No, I think even more reason to read it. And I know I’ve been dragging my feet about reading it, mostly because I don’t have a lot of time to sit and read. But also, that’s really an excuse.
Mark
And I really such a conundrum because you get more time by reading the book.
Dan
Exactly. Because I need it. I need it even more. It just proves that I need it in my life, which is awesome. One of the things we talked about is giving away a couple of books, a copy of Mark’s book. We’re going to give away two copies to the first two people that leave a rating and review for the podcast. Apple is primarily the most helpful place, but also Amazon is now the podcast is on Amazon, have some listeners there and rating and review there as well. So I’ll take either of those options. But if you could leave a rating and review, take a screenshot of that or even just email me and tell me what your username is or wherever you left it, then I will just double check and make sure you actually did it. And then we’ll send you a copy of the book. So if you’re not on the email list. Go to themeaningmovement.com and put your email address into any of the subscribe boxes around the site and you’ll get an email from me. You can just hit reply to that and send along your screenshot or just tell me where to find your review and you can get a copy.
Mark
You should send your mailing address, too. Yes, because you’re talking physical copy. I will sign it. This is a signed copy. This is a really big deal. You know, I’m just kidding. Everybody’s like, okay, I will sign it, I will put it in a box, and I will mail it to you. So as soon as you let Dan know that you’ve done that and you give him his address or give them your address and we’ll get those dropped in the mail.
Dan
Probably right now, while you’re listening to this, you can hit the pause button. We can wait. Just go and leave a rating review. A good one would be great. I would ask for that, like a positive rating review, but I’ll take what I can get that person.
Mark
Okay. All right. That’s like my biggest pet peeve. Like, you go to RVs or you go to Home Depot and they’re like, we’re shooting for all five stars. And I’m like, I don’t want to live here with you anymore. If you’re just, like, trying to get me to give you what you want. No, sorry. Sometimes I want to leave a review and it’s like one star. It was going to be five, but then they told me to rate five stars, so I’m not doing it.
Dan
You’re a rebel at heart.
Mark
Yeah, that’s true.
Dan
What’s your hope with this book? Why did you write this?
Mark
Honestly, it’s exactly what we were talking about. If people can use these principles and create more margin in their life, create more results and success that aren’t at the expense of their family or their friends or their hobbies or whatever it is, that’s really what’s important to me. I honestly have a goal of giving away, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m willing to give away two to your audiences. I have a goal of giving away 202 copies in 2022 because it sounded really cool.
Dan
I love it.
Mark
That’s part of it. I just want to get it in people’s hands. And I firmly believe that by doing that, I’ll get things from it, too. I’ll find clients, I’ll find people to work with. I’ll find people that want to share the book. I’ll find people that want to interview me. And I’ll be able to share this message with more people because Zig Ziggler famously said, this is one of my favorite quotes. You can have everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what you want. And I think that’s true in all aspects of our lives. So I want to get in as many people’s hands as possible. Heck, I’m giving away copies. Actually, if it’s okay with you, I’ll share how people can get a free audio version of it. If they like audio, if they want to buy a copy, they’re happy to do that. I’m never going to turn that down. I can tell you that. You can get it on Amazon or you can get it cheaper on my website. So pick whichever one you want to carry. Either way, we don’t really talk about Susan, who I tell the story of in the book, but I want people to have the experience of Susan.
Mark
Suzanne. Sorry, Suzanne. If you’re listening to this man, Jeez, I can’t believe I said her name wrong. I want people to have the experience she had when she was implementing this, which was that by implementing this process and by being really focused on what was most important, she took a goal that she wanted to accomplish in five years, and she accomplished it in five months. And I’m not guaranteeing that’s happened. This is like the whole results, not typical, so on and so forth. But just the matter that she set a goal and she was focused on it, and it really did contribute to the bottom line. She had massive results. She brought her husband home. So I mean, this is the results not typical. I can’t promise that you’re going to read the book and then accomplish your five year goal in five months. I can’t promise that. But that’s really what happens when you get focused. She had a goal. She set the goal, and it was really directly related to revenue, like it was directly related to creating revenue in our business. And because of that, this goal of having her husband come home from his job and work full time in the business once their kids were all graduated, five years from now turned into five months.
Mark
From the time that her and I started working together, she was able to generate $19,000 in the first 30 days, and she was able to create, I think, three grand or a little over three in recurring revenue every month from the things we implemented to tell people that story. It’s funny because they’re always like, well, what did she do? And I’m like, you’re missing the point. It’s not what she did. It’s the process and it’s her mindset and it’s her focus that really were the theme, because there’s a million things you can do to have that kind of success, but it’s really are you willing to be focused? So that’s my hope. My hope is that I can help other people have those types of experiences where they can get whatever it is they want, whether that’s more time with their family or increasing their revenue or creating a business that they can at one point step out of and either sell or turn over to their kids or whatever it is. It really requires you to be clear on what’s important and what’s not important.
Dan
Yeah, I love that. That’s really fantastic. One question. I think this may be just a transition. This is like that’s your hope for the book. That’s why you wrote this, and that’s your motivation there. But I just want to Zoom out just a little bit more. And I imagine it’s very related. But just to your work as a whole, how do you think about meaning and purpose in all of your work?
Mark
For me, honestly, it comes back to kind of my faith and my beliefs there, which is really just about the whole golden rule thing, like doing to others that you’d have them do unto you. I was a year ago. Yes, it was about a year ago now. I was thinking and I was praying about my business. I’m like, man, I just want to help more people. I want to serve more people. And I was like, how do I do that? What do I do? It’s like, do I start a podcast? Do I do this? Do I do that? And as I was thinking about one day, this thought came to my mind, and it’s one of those where it just smacks you in the head and you’re like, duh. And the thought was, if you want to serve more people, just serve more people. Like, just find ways to serve more people, find ways to help more people. And that’s for me, that’s really what it comes down to. I really believe that as I serve more people, like I said, that I’ll be taken care of, my family will have food and we’ll be able to pay our bills and be able to enjoy the things that we want to enjoy.
Mark
And it really comes down to how can I help more people? And that’s why I’m willing to give away copies of the book. That’s why I wrote the book. I can only work with so many people individually. The book is a great way for people to raise their hand and say, hey, I want to work with you, or hey, I can take this book and I can use it to make that impact on my own. For me, that’s where I find meaning. When I have a client that emails me and says, oh my gosh, I made $19,000 or hey, Brad’s coming home from his job two weeks from now, or even people that I just do free calls for. Sometimes I’ll say, hey, let’s jump on a call, let me help you out. And I’ll give them some ideas and they would follow up and say, oh, my gosh, that changed everything. Or that helped with this. That’s what I love doing. And that’s really what it comes down to. Because again, kind of going all the way back to what we talked about, the beginning is the relationships. You never know what helping that one person is going to do.
Mark
I mean, who they might know or who they become or how they help me at some point when I need something. So just serve more people. I’ve got a facing wall across from me, and next to me I have signs that say just serve more people. And that’s really whenever I get stuck, that’s what I come back to, that’s how can I serve somebody?
Dan
That’s beautiful. What a great reminder. Mantra is the word that came to mind. Just a guiding principle for your work. I love it. I love it. It’s been so much fun. I feel like we could just go on indefinitely, Mark.
Mark
Okay.
Dan
Yeah. But we’re going to have to wrap it up for our own schedule sake as well as for listeners. I know you promised that you’d give away some copy of the audio version of the book, as well as just want to get the opportunity for you as well for people who want to follow along with what you’re doing. What would you like to invite people to?
Mark
Yes, totally. So as a gift, as a thank you, Dan, to you and your listeners for putting up with me and listening to me, I’m happy to give away the audio version. I mean, you can go to Audible and buy it and use a credit. And that’s cool, too. I get money for that. But you can also just go to findyour20.com/audio and you can just download a Zip file there of the audio version read by the author. I know that’s a big selling point for a lot of people. I don’t know if it is or not, but yeah. So you’re welcome to do that. And if you want to get a physical copy of the book, I can tell you. So here’s a little hint, Dan. You got the physical copy of the book, and there’s some extra things in there. I haven’t asked you what your experience with the packaging and everything was, but I can tell you that I’ve had people tell me that the packaging was on Parliament. It felt like opening something from Apple. I’ve had people tell me that it was like first class. My favorite was and this was a friend of mine who’s a marketer.
Mark
She said it was what did she tell me? She said it was like magic sparkle dust for her marketer soul.
Dan
I was like, this is really well done. And I was like, when I write a book, I am going to be consulting with Mark about all the things that he’s doing because I was just really impressed and really blown away by it. So well done.
Mark
So I’m not telling your listeners that they have to get the physical help you. But if you order it from me, not from Amazon. If you get from Amazon, it comes on a Brown bubble wrapper. And it’s not really that exciting. But if you order it from my website, one, you save $5, which is pretty cool. And two, you’ll get the entire experience and it really comes down to it. I’m not going to tell you what’s in it because you just got to find out. But it’s a lot of things that really are just geared around having you and encouraging you to actually read the book because so many times this is an 80-20 things, I guarantee you we can find the stats for this. 20% of the people that buy a book actually read it. It’s just the way it is. I have bookshelves full of books that I haven’t finished reading, but it’s all really geared around how can I help you be motivated to read the book and that’s kind of what the whole package is about. So it’s kind of fun and there’s some fun things in there that’s great so findyour20.com if you want to buy a copy.
Dan
Perfect we’ll link up to all the options in the show notes here so people can choose their own item adventure and to follow along with your work with the book there so. Mark this is so fun. Love the work that you do. I’m a fan and looking forward to staying connected.
Mark
Awesome. Thanks my friend.
