Chase Purpose — Money Will Chase You | Marc Von Musser

We take a raw, real-world journey from crisis to purpose—showing how gratitude, clarity, and service can turn any setback into fuel for your next level. Marc Von Musser shares the battle-tested insights that shaped his leadership, his environment, and the daily habits that make growth inevitable.

In this episode we dive into:

• The mindset shift from chasing money to serving purpose
• How gratitude instantly resets your thoughts, energy, and outcomes
• The three traps that keep people stuck: vague goals, weak environment, no coach
• Leadership built on vision, congruence, and customer obsession
• Billion-dollar brand mistakes—and the lessons every entrepreneur must learn
• How to reframe failure and build a true comeback team
• The five-day jumpstart: goals, brag book, gratitude practice, health resets
• Aligning your actions with “U 2.0” and using daily visualization to stay locked in
• Why the right coach accelerates clarity, confidence, and results

Connect with Marc:

https://www.marcvonmusser.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Purpose Over Profit Awakening
• 3:20 Gratitude Shift And Recovery
• 7:30 Thought Patterns, Energy, And Results
• 9:50 Common Traps Between Here And There
• 15:20 Environment, Mentors, And Accountability
• 20:00 Modern Leadership And Vision
• 25:00 Serving Customers Versus Losing The Plot
• 29:30 Failure Reframed And Comeback Story
• 36:00 Mindset Beats Prognosis
• 40:30 Five-Day Jumpstart Plan

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

When I started chasing purpose, money started chasing me. Welcome to the Five Questions Podcast, where we unlock real estate and business insights one question at a time. Welcome to the Five Questions Podcast. I am your host, Mario Lamar. Our guest on today's show is the CEO of SOAR and War Roar, Inc., the founder of a human optimization program called 111 Days of Great to Greatness. Awakening the greatness in others and helping people become their greatest self and live their dream life. He is also a highly sought-after sales and coaching expert who has helped thousands of companies, large and small, grow their profits by over 100, 500, and even a thousand percent. Welcome, Mark Von Muser. Mark, welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mark, the uh concept of the podcast, real simple. I ask uh five questions, uh, either about business or real estate. In your case, it's gonna be more business, and we get straight to the point. You ready? Let's do it. The first question I have for you. Um, we all start somewhere, uh, even in business or life. What's the biggest mindset shift that you had to make in your life or business that changed the trajectory of everything? And and how did you know you needed that mindset shift?

SPEAKER_01: 1:43

I would say probably the shift that I made was when I had been diagnosed uh in with stage three non-Hodgins lymphoma. And up until that point, I was doing what everybody said, you know, go for the brass ring, go for the money, go, you know, sell, sell, sell, you know, get into real estate, buy properties, et cetera, et cetera. And so what I found was um all of that can be taken away. And I remember I was standing in the back row of a Tony Robbins event. I had just been uh diagnosed a month or two before with stage three non-Hodglin's lymphoma, and I had just had surgery, and they had removed 19 of my lymph nodes to try and identify which type of the non-Hodgins lymphoma I had. And I remember in that moment, um I had heard a voice that asked me, you know, would I take the cancer for my girls? And it was so loud, everybody's jumping, everybody's at you ever been to a Tony Robbins event, everybody's jumping, doing, going crazy. And in that moment, um, I heard a voice and it said, Would you take the cancer for your girls? And I looked around, I was the last road, the last seat, wasn't really happy to be there. And it said it again. And I after that, I said, Yes, I would. And it said, somewhere a parent doesn't get that choice. And I found gratitude. I started crying and I found gratitude, and I felt like a rush of gratitude. And I remember in that moment, I decided that I no matter what, how much time I had one week, one month, one year, five years, I was going to pursue my purpose. And my purpose was to help others identify, inspire, and awaken the greatness in others until they own it themselves. And collectively, let's go out and help people become the best versions of themselves, how to get past the trauma, how to get over their shortcomings, how to overcome obstacles and help them really set a path and achieve it. And it was very soon after that I stopped chasing the money and started chasing my purpose. I'm not against money, don't mistake that. But in reality, I found that when I started chasing purpose, money started chasing me and opportunity started coming to me. I remember on one day I got a phone call from Tony Robbins' organization, uh, as well as Solar City back then, Elon Musk's company, because I had trained a lot of their top people and my name kept popping up, and they needed a director in both of their positions. And on the same day, and the I ended up at Tony's uh company and ended up there and took over the coaching department and turned that around and then started doing his sales training for his teams and then grew those 300%. But it was interesting when I started serving my purpose, the money came to me in droves. And that was, I would say, the game changer. And so there's a couple of aspects within that that when you find your purpose, it's almost as if God unlocks the vault of your superpowers. And so what happens, all of a sudden, you're getting insights you normally wouldn't do. You're getting people calling you, you're starting to create momentum, and magic just shows up over and over again. So I would say that was the moment. I would, I want to say it was about 2011. And I had a lot of success in real estate, I had a lot of success in sales up until that point, but what came in went right back out. And once I started chasing my purpose, uh, I started to live a magical life, and and I would say that's that was the moment.

SPEAKER_00: 5:07

I love the story, your story. Um, and it's true the mindset shift sometimes you have to accept it for yourself first before you can actually take it further and and help people. You had to accept you know the the outcome you were diagnosed with with uh you know uh um a uh a type of cancer. The type of cancer, this for some people, this is not an easy thing to accept. Some people can shut down and that's it. You have you have to have the resilience to accept that and then not only accept it for yourself, but then turn it, and then you help other people's lives.

SPEAKER_01: 5:53

Yeah, the great part about it, I would say, um, and I'm very blessed, but I had just had surgery, and about two months later, I still hadn't got a call from the doctor saying, Hey, we're gonna start your your um chemo and your radiation. And they're calling me to schedule me. And I remember when I left that, and it wasn't anything Tony said from stage, it was almost like an internal dialogue, but I remember I started to obsess on gratitude, and you were talking about mindset. And in that moment, I remember thinking there, I still had a lot of opportunity. And then I remember thinking to myself, I can go back and tell my girls I love them. I don't know if I have a week, a month, a year. I don't know. I just lost both of my parents to cancer. And so I didn't know how much time I had, but I remember how grateful I was because right today there's about 4,000 people that will never ever get to tell their loved ones goodbye. And every single day, about four or five thousand people die per year. And I was thinking, wow, at least I get the chance to tell my girls, at least I can go make money and set them up, at least I can go hug them. And and just I remember I started to obsess on gratitude. I was grateful sitting in traffic because I wasn't gonna get a speeding ticket. I was grateful, I was grateful that I had a cell phone. I was grateful my radio worked. I mean, the stupidest things, I started getting really grateful, which was a huge shift from are you effing kidding me, which had been my previous frequency. So I had a huge energetic shift. Now, the good news, within 60 days, I would say I accepted the cancer instead of my girl. So I was grateful for it, but I started living my purpose. I got a call and ended up at Tony's, but I started living my purpose every day. And within 60 or 90 days, I got a phone call from the doctor, and he said, I'm first, he goes, I'm a scientist, and then I'm a healer and a medical professional. I've been doing this for 40 years and I've always wanted to make this call. I can't explain, but you're cancer free. We don't know why, we don't know how, but we no longer we double-checked and triple-checked the pathology. And you did have stage three non-hodges lymphoma, but we can't tell, we can't figure out why it's gone. And I kind of knew that beforehand. So I would say that energy and frequency is such a big part of this. And again, that starts in your thoughts. We have 60 to 100 thoughts a day. When you don't train them, uh, who's it? Bro, Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza talk about this, and they say about 90-95% are disempowering. They're negative. Kind of like, why does this always happen to me? What's wrong with me? And so, what happens? Those thoughts create words, those words create frequency, those frequencies create our reality. So I I had shifted dramatically, shifted my thoughts, became grateful about everything. My words changed, my energy changed, my frequency changed, and great things started to happen. So there's a direct correlation to our thoughts and what we create.

SPEAKER_00: 8:51

That that is that is amazing. Let's let's move on to question number two and and maybe uh add on that. Many people feel stuck between where they are now and where they want to be. Maybe uh can you give uh I you know I say three three common traps, but two, three, four, four, uh, that you see in that gap of how people and how people can navigate uh these these traps. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 9:20

I would say the first is not having a clear goal, outcome, or purpose. So what happens is people say, you know, I want to be successful. Well, if you don't define success in your terms, your subconscious mind, your frequency, the universe has no idea what that means. It's kind of like I want to go somewhere. Where do you want to go? I don't know. Well, how do you know you're not already there? So what happens is here you have almost like a laser-guided missile system, but you have not programmed it to send your all your power towards an outcome. So the biggest mistake I see on the beginning is people don't know where they're going, they don't have a goal, they don't have an outcome or a purpose. So that will set you back in no uh in a way because you could be taking the right, let me ask you a question as well, Mario. Yeah, if you want to lose, let's say you want to get on a diet, what's the best diet?

SPEAKER_00: 10:09

Well, that's a good question because I don't even know. Is it, you know, some people there's there's a million diets out there, which one you pick? That's right. It depends on what you want.

SPEAKER_01: 10:19

So, for example, and this is where people don't quite get this, where you'll hear somebody, oh, you gotta be vegan, oh, you gotta be carnivore, oh, you gotta be this. Well, let's say, for example, I'm gonna coach you, Mario, and I'm gonna coach you, and I'm gonna say, skip breakfast, skip lunch, and at dinner, I want you to eat 10,000 calories at one meal. And I want you to have fatty foods, I want you to have as much crap as you can shove into your mouth. Now, that sounds like a really bad diet. What they didn't know is your real dream is to be a sumo wrestler in Japan. Okay. Now, in context, oh, okay, that's why they eat 10,000 calories at one meal. In any other context, it's a terrible diet. Now, let's say I want you want to be a runner. Well, you're gonna have a runner's diet. That's different than if you wanted to be a bodybuilder. So if you don't know what you want, it's nearly impossible to find the right strategy to get you there. So the first thing is not having a clearly defined goal, outcome, and purpose. The second thing that I would say is a huge, huge problem is that people will surround themselves that are are less than where they want to go. So that that old saying that people um you if you hang around with five obese people, you'll be the six. If you hang around with five broke people, you'll be the six. So what happens is that our environment reinforces generally the lower behavior. So and it's the sort of thing you see this in the Marine Corps or this or the Navy SEALs. If you get in a better, higher level group, you will start getting in shape. You have no alternative. If you hang around with a bunch of guys just sitting there gaming, eating bonbons and Doritos, you're gonna get fat. So you want to make sure that your environment is conducive and supportive of your goal and your outcome and your purpose. And so that's a big, big gap. The third is that people try and do it themselves. This has been something I would say that I tried to do it. I tried to do it yourself. And there's a place for that. But the fastest way to get where somebody wants to go, know what you want, find a coach that can support you in that, and then be accountable to your dream, not the coach, to your dream. So it doesn't matter, you know, you're up to big, big things with your businesses and you know where you're going, you know what the vision is, and then you've been always surrounding yourself with people that can give you insights on how to do it. Most people don't do that. And they confuse an education in college with having a specialty as opposed to, oh, I have a business degree. Okay, well, great. I have a map marketing degree, but that's 40 years old technology. Yeah. So that's those would be the big three that I would say that make a big pro big difference.

SPEAKER_00: 12:54

You know, the second one, you said uh surround yourselves with with people that where you want to go. Um, I agree with that. And I actually did that and I continue doing that. The problem is people are afraid sometimes to offend others or their friends. They think that by choosing a different group of friends that aligns where where they want to go, they put those aside and they it's like, oh, you're not my friend anymore. No, it's not the case. And correct me if I'm wrong, it's not that I don't love you anymore, or it's just that we don't align. And and the more time I spend with you or with someone else that aligns more with my direction, I have to make choices. It's not about leaving people or not liking them anymore. It's about putting your, like you said, your priorities of where you want to go first.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

So you bring up a really great point. Um, when I was 21, it was the last time I ever drank. And I decided to stop drinking when I was 21. And it and it wasn't to make other people feel bad, it's because I was um showing all the wrong signs about drinking. I had alcoholic parents, I had alcoholic cousins, and my entire life had been centered around drinking. And I started to realize that wow, everybody I know, everything I did was centered around drinking. If we go to Mexico, it's about getting getting um, you know, Mexican beer, you know, double X or Trise X or something like that in tequila. If I went to Chinese, it was Qingdao. If I went to Japanese, it was all about the Sapporo and the uh Sapporo and the sake. And I started to, you know, barbecues was Heineken, you know, and so what happened was I started to notice this. So I say made a conscious decision. It's in our decisions where our destiny is laid. And I I reclaimed my sovereignty and I said, I'm gonna take a year off and decide. And I decided to stop drinking just for one year. And I remember thinking it wasn't making me better than anybody, I wasn't judging anybody. I simply knew for me it was a bad decision. And I replaced my obsessive behavior in things like martial arts, uh, weight training and bodybuilding, running, cardiovascular, tracking animals, scuba diving, surfing, anything that was a positive outlet. I made those my obsessions instead of drinking. And I remember how when I would go to a party with the same friends I had had for years, and they saw me without a drink, they wanted to come up and hand me a beer so bad. And the only way I could get around it was without making them uncomfortable, was a glass with water and ice. And they they thought, oh, it must be vodka. Yeah, and so it was really odd. But I remember after about a year, I realized, wow, I really don't like it. I don't like the three-day and seven-day hangover. And for me, it wasn't a fit. Uh, I didn't sit in judgment of people that didn't, but very soon I started spending more and more time with martial artists. I spent more time with people in the gym, and then my diet got cleaned up. I started putting on weight, I started doing more productive things with my time. And I wanted to be the inspiration when other people looked and go, Wow, do I want to be drunk all the time or do I want to have a life like that? And that was one of the ones, too. A coach of mine back in the day said, if somebody looked at your life from the outside, would they be inspired enough to change their own? And it was really a very, very powerful statement because my girls, my daughters were always watching, my friends were always watching. And I can honestly say I'm so proud of my brother after a lifetime of drug abuse and alcohol, he's been sober now for 15 years. And there are people watching you, good or bad, whether it's creating wealth out of a poverty family, whether it's getting in shape when you had obesity in your family, whether it's stop drinking. But I will I wanted to be the example, not a victim to it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

Yeah. This is uh this is very powerful stuff. So uh I'm glad that you're sharing even personal stories with us. Um, question number three I have for you is when you're helping someone cultivate leadership, uh, whatever their domain is, how do you blend skills, mindset, and habits? Uh and what tends to matter most, but often gets ignored by sure.

SPEAKER_01: 17:08

Um, I would say my belief around leadership, and I've been in leadership my whole life. Everywhere I go, I I even when I tried to avoid it, I was put in leadership positions. And the reason is because we always got phenomenal results. And one of the things that I noticed the leaders of tomorrow will be the most aligned, congruent, and willing to serve their fellow man. We are in a transition on leadership. In in the old days, if you were a leader, you had leader in title only. And so you could be a leader, you're appointed, and then you're gonna kind of wing it, you're hopefully hire good people. So that was pretty traditional. But over the years, as humanity is evolving, leadership also has to evolve, just like the enrollment and sales process needs to evolve. And what I noticed the leaders that really move the needle are people that can create a vision and share the vision and share it with people that want to be a part of it. Far too often, leaders think it's just data, it's just a spreadsheet. And that's important. But if you are inept and you don't include a vision where people are included, you're never going to be a leader of consequence. So, one of the biggest, biggest issues for people is to be a leader that can share the vision. You can apply this. I don't care, this isn't political. I don't care if you talk about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, um, Richard Branson, um, Mark Cuban, um, you know, any of the leaders that you you point to, right or left, it doesn't matter. The most successful ones are the ones that can express a vision. Even Martin Luther King, I have a dream. So these are people that could transmute the vision. And people out there are sitting there saying, Wow, I get it. I want to be a part of that. And that that's arguably what I say is the biggest thing. Far too many leaders I see, um, they have this belief. And I had a leader do this to me. He goes, Mark, he got he had a glass of water. He goes, I can remove anyone in this business as fast as I pull my finger out of the water. And I'm thinking to myself, that's a way to lead, but it's not a great way to lead. That company, by just so you know, doesn't have a front door, it has a turnstile because they can't keep good people in there. Their glass door ratings was one out of five stars. And this is a very, very big company. As opposed to like what Zappos did, Zappos created a culture. Zappos created a whole environment where, and that's the shoe online shoe company, and they created this whole magic where everyone wanted to be a part of it. If you look at Amazon, part of the reason Amazon became a household name is because the vision included everybody, everybody could see themselves you utilizing within that. So I would say it's important for the leaders of tomorrow is how big is your vision? How good are you at articulating it and messaging it? And that's something the the last thing, too, is I had talked about was congruence. This is where a lot of big leaders are missing the boat. They ignore, I don't care how big you are, I don't care how big you are, I don't care if it's Ford, General Motors, Amazon. When you forget about who you serve and you think you're too big to fail, you've already lost. And a lot of companies do this where I could look at the Bud Light, uh, Bud Light. And again, this isn't right, left, or straight or trans. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with they had a brand, Bud Light, which was predominantly football play guys, big old dudes that like football, who, you know, frat parties or whatever. They wanted to be more inclusive, key buzzword, and all of a sudden they brought in Dylan Mulvaney. It's well known. This was a male transitioning to a female, and he really wasn't even female, it was almost like a caricature of a female. Well, that cost him, I've read, somewhere between 20 to 40 billion dollars because they alienated their customer. Now, again, it would have been a smarter move if you want to get an all-inclusive beer, create one for the gay or the trans community. That would have been a brilliant move. But instead, they decided to go after a group, alienate that group, and they they imploded. Yeah, and it's going to be talked about in marketing, but again, the leader came out and started doubling down saying, we have too many frat bros, we have too many, you know, yeah. So they really pushed them away. It cost them billions and billions and billions of dollars. That's poor leadership in my case, because they answer to stockholders. And if you answer to stockholders, your job is to get the most stock you can and and the highest premium for that stock. So, and again, it's not a right or left. It's like when people do that, they're they're making it about the wrong thing. You can I can make an argument on the left, I can make an argument on the right, I can make an argument for straights, gays. You may you tell me. It's about are you catering to your your audience? So that's the one that I see a lot of them far too often. They forget about who they serve. Blockbuster, the last one I'll talk about. Blockbuster hired the CEO from 7-Eleven, a direct, you know, 24 hours, you know, convenience store. Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for$12 million. Netflix wanted to sell it to him for$12 million. The know-it-all did not understand his client. He did not understand the market. He's thought, no, everybody wants to go to the store and get it. This is a dumb idea. Nobody would want to sit at home and just be able to watch streaming movies. That's so stupid. Well, we all want what happened to Blockbuster, they're gone too. Yeah, and Netflix started to do the same thing. They became this big giant giant in their industry. And guess what? They stopped listening to their customer, and their their subscriptions are plummeting. So I don't care how big you are, if you're a leader, you answer. The CEO answers to the consumer, period. And far too many of them forget that. They think they're too big to fail.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

That's uh it's it's very true. Don't don't uh once you're on top of the mountain or you think you're on top top of the mountain, uh, don't get comfortable. Always push for more to be not money-wise, but uh push yourself, your skills, your how do I retain my customers, how do I create more sales, how do I create more experiences for my customers, more value for your customers, how do I serve them at a higher level?

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

Um the CEO of Ritz Carlton did that, and that's when they became a household name in that hotel industry. They decided to listen to the customer, started creating the check-in process and everything to create that experience from the moment you walk in. And that's what allows them to charge a lot more money for their hotel rooms than other places. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:31

Um, talking about failure, uh, that question number four I got for you. Uh, maybe can you share a moment of uh failure, or I would call it a messy uh lesson in your journey? And more specifically, what we want to know is how you turned it into a breakthrough and you know what someone listening can apply today from that experience.

SPEAKER_01: 23:56

Yeah, I could give you thousands of learning moments, and again, it starts with the belief about it. What if every failure, there was no such thing as failure, but there's feedback and there's learning moments. And so that's the first thing that I would throw out to everybody. I'll give you an example. Um, I had finally gotten the best shape of my life. I had set a goal. I was coming up, I don't know, I think I was 57, 58 years old, and I got in great shape. I wanted to be in better shape than James Bond coming out of the water, right? That was my goal. And I was gonna be Baywatch, Baywatch Rocket. Okay, as you know, as we get older, it's it requires more effort. Yeah, so I finally get in there, and then I we we see a party barge. We're in Turks and Caicos, we see a party barge, three levels, 15 feet, about eight feet on water level, and there was a trampoline. And so there's swings, slides, trampolines, and you go out on party barge, you got music, and and I was on the 15-foot ledge, jumping down to the um eight-foot ledge, so about a seven-foot drop, and then you hit the trampoline, you're supposed to jump in the water, right? Do a backflip or a front flip or whatever. So it just came out of dry dock after COVID, and I jumped off. I'm in the best shape of my life, and I mean, I could run, I can lift, I mean, it's all happening finally, right? Yeah, and then I jump off, not thinking through, not realizing I'm not 21 anymore, and I jumped off, hit the platform, and it didn't budge at all. It did the trampoline didn't move at all. So I jumped, I ruptured my left quadricept tendon, my patella tendon on the right side, and I fractured both kneecaps in several places. Oh my god. And I couldn't walk. And it was so painful. I almost passed out, and I was navigating between throwing up and passing out. And it was like um in that moment, though, I remember when I got finally got to the hospital, they had to carry me in there and they had a bunch of people putting me in the back of the truck, um, having to go over stairs. It was just a really tough time. And I remember again, I had a clear goal, outcome, and purpose. That was to be better than I was before. I didn't know how. My optimism was leading the way. I'm like, oh, it's just a dislocated kneecaps. Oh, I'll be back, I'll be back at the beach tonight. And so uh I kept that belief until it was said, no, you really jacked it up. We don't know how you did it, but you completely ruptured the left and the right at different places. So I'm like, okay, got it. So then I'm in the hospital, and then it took three days to be able to get the insurance to fly me back to San Diego. So I had to fly back to San Diego, and then the surgeons that in in Turks kept telling me, don't have a regular surgeon do this. If you want to walk again normally, you have to get a specialist. Well, I got very clear. I held that vision. The people around me held that vision. And the first doctor's only done it once in the last five years. He was the head of surgery, and he's like, he he told me, I don't know what you're expecting. You're never gonna walk again like you did before. You'll be if you walk in you, it's good, but you're not gonna run, you're not doing martial arts, you're not gonna do that. The knee was so bad, the legs were so bad, he called in a specialist. The specialist, again, the specialist had done 50 of these in the last two years alone. He does the Charger, San Diego Chargers, he does the Padres, any professionals that have a ruptured quadricep and patella. This is one of the foremost authorities in the world. So he comes over and he goes, I got you. But again, notice the correlation. I didn't just want to have it fixed, I wanted to go back to where I was. And then while I was sitting in the in the hospital, people would call me and I wanted to make this a win for everybody. And I was in excruciating pain. And so then I remember saying that pain is is you can't uh what did I say? It was basically that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. And so I remember thinking to myself that I can't change what happened, but I can decide how I go through the process. And it was a big setback. I had to become vulnerable and ask for help. Um, a bunch of people came to my rescue. David Thunder ran point on my physical therapy and my rehab. Dr. Val Frank helped me with my nutrition to supercharge my that. My brother helped me every day when I had to learn how to walk again, and he would be there with my walker. Uh, Jesse worked on social to keep people in my social media. My sister made sure that I had the tools and supplies. So there was a lot of things that happened, but it all goes back to that original goal and outcome and purpose. I was very clear. I wanted to be better. That's a big task when I wasn't sure I could walk again. So, long story short, I was supposed to stay bedridden for 16 weeks, no weight bearing, 16 weeks. And so for 16 weeks, we met every day with my team. I stayed focused, I visualized, I imagined running in the hills like I used to. I imagined throwing kicks in martial arts, I imagined squatting like I did in the gym. I imagined being able to climb stairs. That's where my mind lived. And 10 weeks later, I had a follow-up with the doctor. I'm supposed to be bedridden, non-weight bearing. And I walked into his office with no cane and no crutch. And the doctor, surgeon, who'd been doing this for 40 years, he looked and he couldn't complete a sentence. He goes, Where you you walked in with without a cane? You're supposed to be bedridden. How did you do that? And this is amazing. He goes, I got a guy out there two years who can't walk really. And you're walking in here like, what did you do? And again, we are so much more powerful than we imagine. So again, I had to look at this. Was this a failure or was this an opportunity for me to go ahead and pull a team together and find another level for me? Now, when I would go out and speak, I had a new depth of empathy I could help people with. I had to know, I know what it's like to wonder, am I going to walk again? Or having it all ripped away again. So there's a lot of things like that, Mario. And it would just be that that's it's really, really important that you are clear on your goal and then you pay whatever price your dream asks. Don't don't go to the dollar store on your on your dream. You pay whatever price it is and pay it gladly. So that's What I would say would be transmitting darkness and the light.

SPEAKER_00: 30:03

And uh I'll add the point where it made me uh reflect on this, is nobody has control over your outcome except yourself. Right. What you just explained there is yeah, you could have listened to the doctor, and the doctor would have had uh control over your outcome if you listened to every single step that he said to do, you know, stay bedridden for 16 weeks and all that. You add the mindset and the power and the determination that for the outcome that you wanted, and nobody could get in your way. So if you take that principle and then apply it in whatever you try to achieve, whether if it's business, real estate, or even personal journey, you can change your life over and over again to what you're really striving to, and that's powerful.

SPEAKER_01: 30:59

Yeah, and you're absolutely right. This is applicable. The story happened to be physical, but it's applicable to business. I could give you different ones in business as well. Adam Newman, who did WeWork, you know, he had a dream. He wasn't really the most skilled guy to do it. He didn't have shoes half the time. He's the one that did we work, he built it up to a$40 billion company, ended up imploding it from at one point, but he still walked away with a billion dollars. Him and his partner both had a billion dollars. And if you study the businesses, everybody thinks that it's a straight shot. It's not, it's built on you're gonna have challenges that are gonna kick you in the nuts. They are gonna hit you in the throat with a two by four. And the question is do you stand back up? Do you learn from it, learn what you needed to learn, and come back even stronger? And those are the ones that make it to the finish line, those are the ones that stand on the podium holding up the trophy or the or see their dream fulfilled. It's you have to kind of walk into that knowing you're you're it's part of the game. Yeah, it's like expecting to be a heavyweight champion of the world in boxing and you get offended when somebody hits you in the face. You know, you just can't do that. It's like yeah, you're gonna have your nose broken, you're gonna get the wind knocked out of you, you're gonna see stars, you're gonna dread your life decisions. But if you want it bad enough, you pay that price gladly.

SPEAKER_00: 32:13

Well, Mark, uh last and final question for us today. Uh, we're taking a little bit longer than usual, but this is all good value and and thank you again. Uh, the last question I have uh for you is if listeners wanted to make progress fast, okay, right. What would be your let's call it five-day jumpstart plan? And what would it look like? Like, give me some examples of maybe uh daily practices, mindset shifts, uh, small changes that overall will produce big results.

SPEAKER_01: 32:44

Sure. Great question. So, first thing that I would say is you have to take some time, get quiet, turn off your distractions. That's your television, your social media, turn it off for for five days. Trust me on this one. Put that time instead into designing your life. Okay. When you design your life, you reactivate parts of you, and that most people don't do this. They they have to pay the bills. I have to do this, I have to do this. Okay, so go to work. And when you come back, don't turn on the TV. Give your goals in your life that I'd recommend you design your version of U 2.0. And I would say physically, spiritually, mentally, uh, business-wise, and financially, relationships-wise, start designing what would great success look like for you. Most people have no clarity on this, so it doesn't really matter what their action had action plan is if they don't know where they're gonna go. Most people, the last time they had a goal was in high school is to graduate, right? They didn't think much, some may had a goal to get to college and they graduated, but most people have very diffuse and weak and impotent goals. And nobody likes impotence anywhere, right? It doesn't work in the bedroom or your dreams. So you get really clear, spend time writing out. Then I want you to run back through that, and then I want you to look and ask yourself what when I look at my goals, is that my goal or is that what my dad wanted for me? Does it activate me? I want to run a filter over it and decide: is this really what I want? If I hate running, why is it a marathon on my my goal list? Well, my family always said it was the ultimate achievement, and that's their goal. I want my goal. So the second thing is I'm gonna do that. Second thing I want you to do is a brag book. This is a game changer. You take a book and a handwritten book, don't do this on a laptop or an iPad, and start writing out all the great shit you've done. People forget about this. It's a brag book. You can call it a courage journal and a victory journal, but I want you to write out when you stood up to the bully in third grade, when you got up and won the piano recital, when you got up and won a spelling bee, when you were stood up to a bully, when you uh decided you didn't know how you're gonna get to college and you found a way and you graduated, uh, when you picked yourself up, when you showed kindness to somebody, everything about you that was exceptional, big and small. We we are so in touch with uh our failures, but we forget about the thousands and tens of thousands of great things we did. You cannot achieve your dreams if you're so focused and though dominant negative ones are going to run the show. You have to reprogram your brain with the positives too, right? Give yourself a fair chance. So I started doing that, writing out my brag book, right? And then I was like, wow, I'm not a piece of shit. Oh my God, I've done a lot of great things, but I was so busy about what I didn't do, beating myself up, that I forgot that I had had a ton of success. So a brag book is the second one. The third one is for your spirit, and that is a gratitude journal. I don't care what you have, you will lose it if you do not start to embody gratitude every single day, right? All of us listening to this are much more. There is about probably four to eight billion people that would trade places with you in a heartbeat. And I was the one that was so upset about what wasn't right, I never gave credit or energy to what I was grateful for. And so if you have gratitude, it doesn't matter. You're gonna start looking at everything. You get more opportunities. Things change when gratitude is your thing. If I, for example, am on and sitting in traffic, I'm pretty high strung. Now, when I'm sitting in traffic, I'm like, wow, I'm not gonna get a speeding ticket, you know? And it's like, oh, okay, I can return my phone calls. How cool is my car? I love my car. And it's like, I'm so lucky. This car is so kick-ass, you know. And it's like I start thinking about that instead of getting pissed off because somebody's texting and driving and created a traffic jam. So three is a gratitude journal. Four is you have to take care of you. It is your job to take care of your body and your temple and your health. That means you need to learn about sleep, do some homework, make sleep a priority. If you don't, you will start increasing your cortisol. You can't heal in time, you're gonna start putting on weight, you're gonna be exhausted, you will not have the energy to get to your finish line. So you have to make that a priority. If all you do is walk 30 minutes a day, you will have improve your life. If you put 10 minutes into the Chinese movement and all the kind of Tai Chi and stuff, you will start increasing your range of motion. And there's a lot of things that you can do, but people a lot of times skip the health aspect. Bad call. Make it a priority. Uh, if you do those, and then every day, Mario, if you're reconnecting to your goals, the key on your goals is to feel it as if you have it. Every day, give yourself that gift. You are 90% of the way to your dream, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 37:30

Uh, and and some people that are not, most people that are not achieving their dreams and will hear what you just said, they're gonna say, yeah, this is just like a bunch of rah-rah, and you have to act as if you already own it. Well, I challenge you to do so, honestly and with humility, and you will see the results because I've done it both sides, and the better side, the side that you actually not only imagine but live the life. You start living the life in the small aspects, everything starts coming to you. And I it's never finished, it's never finished, but don't get you don't, it's not done once and and done for all. You you constantly have to to live this way. I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 38:17

I I used to think it was you know goody two shoe hogwash, you know what I mean. But I I started a habit when I was very young, when I was 18, reading every book on the subject of and I remember reading these books and Thinking Grow Rich and As a Man Thinketh and Uh See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar and the The Magnificence of Obsession and countless, countless. That's all I read. You can ask me about Shakespeare. I've only read Macbeth three times. I didn't enjoy it. I'm ignorant when it comes to classic literature, but if it's about self-help, I've read them all. And I am literally, my library is thousands of books on this subject. And I remember for a long time, I thought this is goody two shoe hogwash. I'd look at business, I'd watch the dog eat dog, I watch people be take advantage and steal to get ahead. And I thought it was crap. Over 30, 40, 50 years of this, I started to see the genius in this philosophy. And you you still have to work your ass off. But what happens is that when I know where I'm going, I know the frequency of what it's like, and I live there every day. My subconscious mind and my vibration starts to change what happens. I decide to turn left instead of right. I decide to hire somebody instead of a different person. I make a call that I normally wouldn't make, and all of a sudden I become lucky. And I started to notice that when I didn't just rely on hard work, guys, the hardest working people are in your in your dishwashers and your and your your labors. Trust me, I've done that too. I've washed dishes, I've dug ditches, I've worked landscaping, I painted, you know, I was the grunt and I've worked hard labor. I've worked way harder than multimillionaires. It is not just hard work. You have to have it in alignment with some big outcome that inspires you. And if you don't, you'll work your ass off and you'll wonder why you don't have success. Because underneath all of it is you're going to have a set of beliefs about the way you see the world. And the books can help you change that. But also, we didn't talk about it, Mario. But getting a great coach can fast track you on all of this because they can steer you and save you decades. That's the biggest mistake I made was I didn't get a coach soon enough.

SPEAKER_00: 40:15

Mark, uh, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to discuss with us today uh on these subjects. Uh, I hope our listeners will take one or probably more than one piece of advice uh on their journey and apply it because these are I would call it gold nuggets. I uh uh it's it's a term that I use often, but these are more than gold, they're probably diamond nuggets. Uh so thank you again. And um I hope we'll get to speak soon again. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 40:46

Thanks for having me, Mario. And guys, to everybody listening, guys, I don't work in the theory realm, I work in what really works. Just so you know, I've created thousands and assisted thousands and thousands and thousands of people to go from broke to become millionaires. It works, bottom line. And again, if your way's not working, go ahead and start uh implementing some of the things we talked about because uh it's not luck that makes millionaires, okay?

SPEAKER_00: 41:09

Just think about that. So Mark, once again, thank you so much for the very nice discussion we had. Thanks, Mario. Blessings to everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the Five Questions Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, like, and hit the notification bell on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more insights and tips to transform your real estate and business game. See you next time.