We have Mark Drager with us today with Phanta Media. And what we’re going to be talking about is doing hard things. And this is actually taking a little bit of a personal spin. But what I found is that when you’re talking about business, you actually really need to have your inside game, your mindset, your personal game in top shape in order to really perform business wise. Because at least what I found is that any business can only do as well as the people who are running it. And if you have a small business, the people who are running it is you’re every department. And so if you don’t have your own game at top notch, then that means you’re going to prematurely cap-out how far your business can go. But anyway, Mark, don’t let me talk too much here.
Well, thank you for having me, Doug. I appreciate it. I am an entrepreneur. I started an agency back in 2006. I was 23 years old, not making a lot of money, but I thought, you know what, I’m not making very much money in corporate. I can go make more money somewhere else. Which eventually happened, but it didn’t start out that way.
I’m just going to interrupt you real quick. I promise I’ll let you go again. So the thing is, you are actually very blessed that way because I spent 20 years in corporate and the more money you make in corporate, the harder it gets to tear yourself away. I think I now seem to love one of my many favorite things, he said. But he said the three most addictive substances in the world are carbohydrates, heroin and a predictable income.
I was going to say status must be one of them. Yeah, but predictable income will lead to that status. You know what, you say that. You say that and I believe it’s true. But it’s true of every single person in every single situation at a certain point. So whether you spent 20 years in corporate and it’s hard to walk away from the security of the six figure income or whatever it might be, whether you’re like me, I spent 14,13 years building up a multimillion dollar agency for COVID. I had 24 staff. We were multimillion dollar company. But for the last few years before COVID, I was not happy. I was trapped, just as trapped as someone in corporate. Maybe I felt more trapped.
Well actually, this is the thing. If you build a bad business, you’re actually even more trapped than a career.
Because if you can’t bail.
Because you can’t bail, nobody’s going to buy it. Yeah. Sell to who? Nobody’s going to buy it.
It hit me at a certain point where I realized, oh, like this career, this company, this brand, this thing I’m doing is like a stepping stone on each of my staff’s career paths. This isn’t my stepping stone. This is like a shackle around my ankle. So I like many people who spent many years working in business or in corporate or pursuing a career before they step out on their own. I did that building a company the improper, immature way and then had to deconstruct it very painfully to work on rebuilding it. And it’s just as painful. And ultimately we’re talking about we do hard things, doing hard things. I mean, like, no matter what, everything in life is hard all the time.
Yeah, because like, the story you’re telling is very typical. And so I think the linear type a way of thinking about it would be, okay, well, what you do is just learn how to do everything right and then just do it that way. And if you do that, I 100% guarantee you’ll never start. So here’s what you do. Bumble your way forward and then figure it out as you’re going along. And it sounds completely counterintuitive, but that’s the only way anything meaningful has ever happened.
Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve had the opportunity to start and a lot of people, when I go on podcasts and I speak, they want to know the origin story. What did you do in 2006 and 2007? How did you survive the recession? How did you build to a million dollars the first time? And I made a lot of small mistakes and then we figured everything out. And then what I didn’t realize is year seven, year ten in the business, year twelve in the business, I was making bigger mistakes, but I had thought I had gotten overstar up. I thought I had it figured out. I didn’t even know until much later that I was making much more expensive, much bigger mistakes. And then having to let the business contract completely restructure, have to buy people out and let them go, have to completely shift our client base and then start again, almost start again. I’ve learned, I’ve learned that it’s a never ending cycle of making mistakes, learning and going. It’s not just reserved for the first few years you do.
Yes, especially because you’re talking about business growth trajectory. And I would say the biggest thing misconception a lot of people have is they’ll hear, okay, so and so has a million dollar business or a $5 million business or $10 million business. I’m like that’s the revenue. I could make a $10 million business. I could grow business at $10 million very quickly if I was willing to lose $50 million. On the other hand, trying to grow 10 million where, say, like I keep five of that, is very difficult because everybody, they talk about the top line, but they kind of ignore the bottom line. And that’s kind of important because that’s what you’re going to pay for everything that isn’t an ordinary necessary business expense with.
I agree.
But anyway, okay, we’re viewing not entirely off topic, but we’re doing the meandering podcast episode tab which is completely awesome. But let’s get back to doing hard things because this strikes us accord with my soul because at least one of the things I’ve found is that more or less everything you want to meaningfully accomplish will come back to doing hard things that you really don’t want to, would rather ignore. So unlock the box for us.
Well, we’re actually not meandering at all. This is in line with my greatest passion in my heart, which is I believe that you are worth pursuing your passions for. I believe that everyone should pursue their passions at all costs. And because we were talking about earlier during your time in corporate or being an entrepreneur and feeling trapped by the very outward success that others would kind of pat me on the back for but frankly, I just didn’t find fun anymore. I didn’t find enjoyable. We look at relationships, we could look at health, we could look at finance, we could look at all areas of our life. But what I found is so many of us are really willing to do things for others, maybe our team, especially our clients or our customers. We’re always willing to put others first but we always take a backseat. And there’s this funny thing that happens. I’ve worked with I don’t even know how many, I’ve worked with tons and tons of startup entrepreneurs. And when startup entrepreneurs jump into business there’s this idea that you can build something and grow it without maybe too much risk which just frankly isn’t true or that you could do it without really any startup capital which might happen very slowly. Organically. But you still have to spend money on something like you still need some money or that you somehow do it without any people and it’s like and I keep bumping up against and I couldn’t figure out why I would be trying to help these people and they would feel like they are entitled to are capable of growing this amazing thing without putting anything in. Without putting anything on the line. Without risking anything. Without sacrificing anything. And I realized we all do this if you spend 20 years in corporate. You’re right, it is very hard to walk away from all of that status and all of that security and maybe the pension and maybe the medical coverage and the income and everything else. You don’t want to take a hit, you don’t want to sacrifice the next three to five years doing what you have to do to spend the next 20 or 30 years doing what you love. Yeah, you should. When I put it that way, doesn’t it just make sense to spend three to five years taking a bit of a hit either financially or with relationships or emotionally or even on the status side? Doesn’t it make sense to make that investment, to spend the next decades doing what you love.
So yes and I’m going to come at risk of stealing a little bit of your thunder by explaining why. Here’s the why. The first why is from a career perspective, at some point you’re going to base the age out of a corporate career. Typically that happens somewhere between upper 50s and 60s. Okay. Well essentially one of the things we found recently is that if people stay mentally engaged, particularly if they’re doing something that they actually enjoy and have developed competency in, they can be very successful. They can actually statistically be materially more successful than the average person up until a very advanced age. Upper 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Sometimes it all depends on how you maintain your mental acuity and whether you stay physically fit. Those are the two keys to the box. I go, all right, well that is a nonstarter in corporate. Basically, by the time you hit the end of your runway, you’d better have enough money stashed away or you’re going to have to go through this painful startup process in your upper 50s or 60s, you’re trying to figure out all the stuff that your It and HR and facilities departments were doing for you before. So that’s one thing is it gives you that career direction. The other thing is that if you do it right, you can create a life that is built around being authentically you, which is not an option for 99.99% of corporate, unless you’re the person that owns the place, in which case if you’re public, you still have to do the song and dance for the board directors, for the investors, et cetera, et cetera. And I’ve become increasingly sensitized to how important really building a life around being authentically you is just because after a while you get so good at being fake that there’s not a you left. In my story what happened was I was actually kind of a big corporate career doing really well. Futures bright new Chief Information officer comes in and says, oh, this Doug guy, program Management Office director. He’s too close to the CFO. I want to be the one who manages all of the executive communication. I got a half hour meeting on my calendar and then I got told that I was being let go, cut off my network, asked access five minutes later, and then I got a message to my personal mail with the Paltry severance package. And now of course, since I took the severance package, I gave up my ability to sue, which I probably could have done, but whatever. But I kind of hit it really abruptly and it created a lot of chaos in my personal professional life because of course I hit the pandemic. I was unemployed at the same time as about 40 million other people. So you kind of had to go through this fourth journey of selfdiscovery. But I think that if you are going to live a really full life, you have to go through that, because if you are pretending to be what you need think you need to for somebody else, you’re not going to get more than about 80% of the way there, and that’s better than a lot of people get to. But if you want to get all the way to the end of the road to see what’s on the other side of the mountain, you’re going to have to figure out how to do it being you without having to fake it anyway. Rant over. You are the guest on the show, so please continue providing your thoughts.
Well, I agree with everything you said, and I wish more people would realize the importance of this because a few things happened to me. The first is I realized that I had spent 15 years building a brand, whether you’re an entrepreneur, in corporate or whatever, like, my company, my brand fantasy guy was my everything. That was my identity. I was the entrepreneur. I was in marketing. I was in advertising. I was a creative strategist. I ran a team, and I could make stuff, and I made money. Frankly, like, my wife and I don’t live a crazy lavish lifestyle, but we could do anything we wanted anytime we wanted. Yeah, again, that’s all within reason. We couldn’t take three years off and not make any money or anything. But if we wanted to go away, we go away. If we wanted to buy something, we bought something. Like, we just totally comfortable.
I’m sorry I’m interrupting you so much, but you just triggered a thought because I would say probably one of the best feelings of financial fulfillment that I’ve ever had was the first time that I had enough income and savings to where when I went to the grocery store, I didn’t have to pay attention to how much I spent. Never been able to equal that at any point in my life. No amount of capital, appreciation, money gained, whatever, never equals that feeling. And I’m like, wait a second. I don’t have to worry about what I buy at the grocery store. It’s just that all of a sudden, there’s this feeling of intense freedom, and you only get it once. It only happens once.
Well, the studies show that there’s three levels of wealth that matter when you can cover all of your monthly expenses without worry. So rent, electricity, water, food, right? Second, when you could go to a restaurant and not look at the prices on the menu and care. And the third is when you can go on a vacation without worry. Anything above that. Like, if you’re listening to this and you can cover all your monthly expenses, you can go to a restaurant and not, you know, not like, go like, oh, you know what? I probably shouldn’t get that steak. I probably should get the chicken because it’s cheaper or whatever, and when you can go on vacation and not feel like it’s hurting you, anything above that, you are already living in gravy land, my friend. You do not need anything more than that because everything else just has diminishing returns on happiness. Now, I’d also say money is awesome. Money is amazing. It helps you out. And anyone who says it’s not important is totally lying with you because having money to be able to cover everything, to be able to do what you want, to take your creative ideas, to have freedom and comfort, to know that you could pay your hospital bills if you have to, or whatever it might be, all of that stuff is awesome. It removes worry and it frees up mental space for you to do those creative things, those bold things, those big things. And so I do that little caveat. But what I was saying earlier was something that really helped me in realizing that I was pouring everything into my brand and into my company was the moment that I realized that I am the product. I am the product. And if I spend time and money on R-amp-d, on my products and services in my company, am I spending time on my R-amp-d? If my health, like, if I need to show up with a certain energy, looking a certain way, with a certain amount of confidence, why would I spend all of those hours on client projects but not spend hours in the gym? Why would I spend time agonizing over finances at work, but then not spend time, maybe with my kids or my wife, helping them with homework or school work or whatever it might be, and the realization that it was like, oh, whatever I build, whatever I have, my home, whatever it might be, whatever you have is irrelevant and eroding. But you, your knowledge, your skill sets, your abilities, how you feel, how you look, how you show up, your level of confidence, you are the product and your life is very, very long and you don’t want to get to the end of it. And people always say you don’t want to die with regrets. That didn’t mean anything to me, my friend. Evan Carmichael.
You’re always going to die with regrets. No matter who you are, you’re going to die with regret.
I don’t think so. I totally disagree. You think you’re going to die with regrets? What are those regrets going to be?
Well, okay, I guess the thing is, my main one will be well. My principal regret is I really wish I jumped sooner. I can’t do anything about that.
What do you mean? You jump from corporate sooner?
Yes.
How old are you?
I’m 45.
45? Dude, you’re nothing.
I know that.
You’re not going to die, let’s say, God willing, you’re 88 years old and you’re lying on your deathbed. You’re not going to say, oh, man, I wish 43 years ago I had actually jumped 52 years ago. Like, that won’t matter to you at all, man. It won’t matter at all. And if even now, the fact that you’re two years later and you’re still holding on to it, there’s nothing you do about that, man. Give yourself and move on.
That was where I was going in a roundabout way, is that
No matter what you do, there will always be some kind of regrets, but what you ultimately have to do is understand it, let go of it, and then just focus on moving forward.
Well, and hopefully you do that work before you’re dying, right? Exactly. So there’s this amazing book. The Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it or not.
I have not read that one yet.
Yeah, so she was this kind of, like I don’t know how else to say it, I mean, other than an Australian hippie, okay. Grew up and wanted to leave her country home, but didn’t really want to do much. So she, like, lived in the outback for a bit, and then she kind of fell into house sitting wealthy homes. So she didn’t own a home. She didn’t do anything. She just went from one friend’s wealthy home to another friend’s wealthy home. And she lives in these amazing places because all she did was house sit. And then at a certain point, someone asked her to help a family member through the end of life care. So to be palliative, care to be there rather than how sit instead. Can you watch, like, my auntie and, like, make sure she’s okay? And this got her into a whole career of helping very compassionately helping people transition through the end of life. And she noticed that a lot of people had the same five regrets. Regrets like, I wish I didn’t work so hard, or another regret was, I wish that I put my own needs above everyone else’s once in a while. I wish I did what I want to do. Like, pretty simple stuff. But I read this book two years ago, and so I was in, like, kind of my mid to late 30s. I’m turning 40 next year, but I’m like 37. And I’m thinking to myself, if most people at 80, 90, God willing, they live a long time, most people hit their dying moments and they know that they’re about to die and they have these regrets. Here’s what I ask myself. Could I proactively accept these regrets as truth? Can I imagine that I will have these same regrets that these other people have? And can I get ahead of this and at this point in my life, make the changes I need to make today? So that way when I get there, I don’t have these regrets. And we were talking about hard things, deciding to do this, to take this leap of faith that you know what it looks like. The first one I wish I didn’t work so hard. I’m an entrepreneur. I like working hard. I really like working hard. It makes me feel really, really good to put in hours, to put in a lot of time, to be really focused, to come up with new things, to push the boundaries, to take the risk and have it work out. I love that. Can I not work so hard? Will I regret that? Oh, that means I need to spend less time or rejig my schedule or let people down or move slower, make less money? Am I willing to do those things? You know, to be able to not have the regret later or not doing things for others. Hey, guess what? I’m in a service based business. I spent all day, every day working on other people’s businesses, helping them with brand strategy, helping them develop who they need to be and What they need to say and how they need to look up or show up. And I spend all of my time doing Things For others, for my wife and my kids. I do almost everything out of duty. Will I start prioritizing myself? And so this showed up in really small ways. For example, every day now, I work out during business hours. Now. Up until three years ago, I never worked out at all. Didn’t work out at all. Didn’t get healthy. I lost 70 pounds. I’ve done all this fitness stuff. I’m, like, super aggressively working out now. But a big part of it was I had work life and family life. Where was I going to steal the time to work out from?
I was going to say yes. So if you lost 70 pounds, then you were previously you’re past dad Bod. That’s like getting into a time bomb. Your time bombs.
I was moving to size 40 pants and I was moving to extra large shirts. I’m Canadian, actually. So our clothing is a little bit smaller than American. So I had to go shopping in Pennsylvania kind of thing to start grabbing some bigger sizes and clothing and things. And so not against anyone who happens to be that size. It’s just I just didn’t feel comfortable being that way. But where this went was like when I decided that I had to prioritize working out and it had to come from somewhere even. It took me, like, six months to be comfortable working out at 9:30 in the morning, knowing that it’s important for not only my health, but how I show up and how I look and the confidence I have. And it’s actually important for business. But it felt so wrong to spend time on me when it’s, “business hours”. So we all have these stories we tell ourselves of what’s right and what’s wrong, how people should act. What being a good girl or good boy is from your childhood or whatever it is. And when you start to question it and you start to face it and decide to do things differently, this is where things get really hard because you’re actually rebuilding how you think and who you are, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable.
Well, and the thing is and it’s not, at least what I’ve experienced is that the hardest part of that is that in order to prioritize your own needs, that will result in uncomfortable conversations with other people and could compromise and or possibly in some relationships that will, if they mean anything at all to you, will be extremely uncomfortable. That’s the part where I struggle with the most.
It’s not that it could. It will.
I’m putting the full construction on it.
But let’s not. But let’s not. It will cost you misunderstandings because you are starting to think in a different way. You’re influenced by different people or different circles. You’re taking in new information.
You will hear things like what happened to you? You used to be such a nice person.
Yeah, listen, I went in 2018, I got really depressed. Like, really depressed. And I told my friend Evan, I told him that I was really really down, and he invited me over to his condo, and he’s like, spend the day with me. And let’s just say, I don’t know if you know Evan Carmichael. He is a YouTube channel.
The name really rings a bell. I’ve gone through a I don’t know if I want to say an obsessive selfstudy, because it’s gone on for, like, six years now. But yes, I’ve been burning through a lot of different YouTubers authors, etc. And so the name really, really rings a bell, and I’m going to be going and digging into it and do it after we’re done talking.
And I only say it just in case people know is and it’ll help explain the story a bit because it’s a bit of a weird story. So I got really depressed because of all the reasons that we just talked about business, my business. I was not aligned with it, and so I got depressed. And Evans like, Mark, you hate your life. And I’m like, no, I don’t. What are you talking about? I’ve got a great company, and I’ve got a great team, which I did, and I’ve got great clients, which I did, with great people and a great family, and I had money and I had all that stuff. He’s like, no, Mark, you just hate your life. And I would just, like, fight him so hard. So anyway, a few months later, he invited me to Tony Robbins unleash the Power Within, because he works with Tony’s team. And so we show up. Like, I’m a guest of Evan, who is a guest of Tony. We show up. And what I didn’t realize was, when you work with Tony’s team, you don’t sit in, like, kind of the normal stadium area. You sit in this little place off stage where all the special guests sit. So it’s like I’m just some dude.
What’s funny is because now this A one of Tony’s events is on my bucket list, and then B the next level would be to be, like, at the VIP box. But from what I’ve read in one day of a Tony Robbins live event, I think he’s actually kind of plugged in all the biometric monitors. I think he burns something like 600 calories.
He says a lot of stuff because he jumps up and down a lot. He talks about impact on his legs and his knees, and he does one of those things. But we’re in this special section just offstage, so I’m in the very front row, so it’s like me, and then there’s, like, the metal gate, and then you look up, and then there’s Tony Robbins. And this is before COVID, but Tony is really into it. So when he’s talking and when we say he’s spitting fire, like he’s spitting on you, it’s just like there’s, like, sweat hitting and stuff, but there’s me. There’s, like, Olympic snowboarders. There’s actors, there’s all of these amazing people. It’s just me. So I go to this event with Evan, and it is completely transformative for me. It completely helps me understand what’s been holding me up. It completely helps me redefine how I need to focus on health, which is really what kicked off my health change the fact that my goal, the goal that I set for myself at that event, my ten year goal, my current business, my current thinking, my current network, my current approach, everything I was doing would not help me hit that goal. I could not hit my goal by doing what I was doing that day. And so when I came home, just like you said, quite honestly, I heard from my team, Mark’s gone crazy. He’s joined a cult. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why he thinks he can do this. I decided to start becoming an influencer and put out stuff on social media. And when my team members was like, Mark, you’re not Gary Vee. I don’t know why you think anyone will listen to you, like, not the nicest things. But at the same time, I was like, I believe that I’m capable of more, because I spent so many years feeling like I flirted with greatness but never actually touch it. Like, I was working really, really, really hard to try and keep the house of cards up, playing average every single place in my business. But if I had stopped, everything would crumble around with me. Which meant if it wasn’t real, everything felt kind of fake. And it was an impostor syndrome. It was me knowing truthfully that what I was doing all day, every day, and what I was telling people wasn’t actually what I wanted and where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my life or what I wanted to build. And as soon as I started taking steps towards that, prioritizing my health, being very direct and honest with people, as opposed to just hedging all the time gaining more. Confidence, making big decisions in my business that people were not happy with. Guess what it cost me? It cost me their trust and respect. It cost me relationships. It cost me a lot of money. A lot of money. But each step, I started to realize the truth more and more. And once you start to move forward this messy way you talked about and each one confirms that the direction you’re heading is the true way you should be heading, the more the old stuff feels really uncomfortable and gives you PTSD, and it’s like, oh, I can’t do that anymore. Which just further proves that you need to take more steps forward, which just costs you even more behind you, until ultimately, you hit the point where you have to ask yourself, am I worth it? Like, am I worth putting myself first? Am I worth making these sacrifices and trying to do it respectfully with everyone? For sure. But am I worth actually doing this hard thing today so I can spend those decades in the future doing what I want to do? And then the really scary thing is, what if it doesn’t work? What if it doesn’t work? What if they were right? What if I am a little crazy? What if I’m so delusional I tricked myself? What if I have joined a call? Like, what if, what if, what if? And you’re so tempted to just run back to the old way of doing things because it’s known and it’s safe and all of those things. This is why, above average outcome.
you have a guaranteed and almost guaranteed pretty good, but not amazing outcome.
And you won’t be happy, and you won’t like it, and you won’t have that spark or that energy or that joy. You won’t have that energy. You won’t show up to others being able to pour a ton of value into them because you’re spending so much time and energy just dragging your ass out of bed just so that way you can drive to a place you don’t like just so you can do work that you’re not excited about. Trust me, I’ve lived in the three places that you can live, which is like mediocrity, just getting by. Then when I started to change, I actually took a big step backwards and got really hopeless. When I talked about that crazy for the first time in my life, about a year and a half ago, I came to know the truth so much that I realized, like, oh, what if the future isn’t as good as the past? What if I blew it? What if I only had this one shot? What if, what if, what if? And then on the other side of that, when I realized the truth, which is, oh, my goodness, there’s so much opportunity out there, and we are so like, I can say this by myself. I am so good at what we do. And what we do as an agency, what I do on my podcast, the things that we spend time and energy on, we’re doing the right things in the right order, and this is going to work out and it’s going to be amazing. And the future is going to be so much better than the past. Because now I’m not just trying to get by with things that are broken now. I’m building something the right way for the long run. And so having lived in all three of those mindsets, like mediocrity hopeless future and optimistic, crazy exciting future, let me tell you, that last one is the place you want to spend your time.
Yeah. Yes. But I think the price of admission, right, the ticket price, is basically that you have to be fully and completely, and I guess I would say irreversibly committed to it because if you try to hang on, you’ll spend so much time patching holes that you’ll never be able to get there.
But if you are the product, you can do anything.
Yup, that’s the truth.
You can take off. Like, I’m a host, I’m a professional conversationalist, so I get paid to help host live events, so MC events, host moderate panels. I have my podcast. All of this stuff is in preparation for my ten year vision I have in my head for the Netflix show and for all of these other things that we’ll be pursuing. Cool. I can put that version of me on. And at the same time, I’m a brand strategist who runs a creative agency and we help entrepreneurs and consultants and coaches develop badass brands that drive more sales, that say the right things, that show up looking crazy good, that gets attention. Like, we do all of that stuff. But if I’m not doing the agency, let’s say it’s just an asset I own. Or maybe I just had to shut it down and one day I was like, you know what, this whole hosting thing, maybe the Internet changes in such a way that it’s just like it’s not a thing anymore. Somehow, I don’t know, maybe AI somehow takes over. Then what am I going to do? It doesn’t matter. I’ll just do whatever’s next.
Yes, exactly.
That’s the difference in mindset between me building an agency and trying to hold onto it. Or you building a career or you building corporate. Are you starting something up? Or you being a freelancer and just desperately hoping that this thing you have doesn’t go away.
It doesn’t fall apart before you hit the end of the sidewalk.
Exactly. But when you are the product, you go, oh, okay, I learned a lot. And it even makes risk a little bit easier because it’s like, well, I know that I’m spending a lot of money right now, but okay, cool. I’m going to learn a lot, and I’m going to be able to take this with me wherever I go a lot of people struggled with the pandemic and COVID and I spent a lot of money. We lost a lot of money. Like, a lot of money. Our balance sheet pretty much ran out during that time, and I spent a year or so of it kicking myself for being, like, such an idiot, for losing all this stuff and wasting all this. And then at a certain point, I was like, oh, I’ve never went to university or college. I didn’t do that route. And I was like, oh, that was my university tuition. I just paid all that money. Bam. That’s my tuition. That’s my living and keeping the house fed. That’s my dorm, the food budget for my kids. That’s your budget, I guess, that college students would use or whatever? Yeah. Like, cool. That was my university and college career. I learned a lot, and now I’ve graduated. Let’s go. Right? Like, I am the product. I am going to live a long time. If I’m not doing this, I will do something else. And there’s a confidence in that.
Yeah. All right. I think we’re at a really good end point. So we got everybody jacked up. So what’s? That one last thing you want to let everyone know before they come, before we hit end on the recording? That one last nugget.
If you’re not willing to do everything I just described, then you don’t really love yourself. And I’m sorry to say that, but you may love your kids more than yourself or your spouse or your partner more than yourself or your work or your career or your car or your house or whatever it is, you might love everything more than yourself. But if you’re not willing to make a sacrifice, a big sacrifice, for your own happiness, for your own future, and frankly, for the next level of success that will come when you align all of these things, if you’re not willing to do that, that doesn’t say anything about the world or the economy or the opportunities. It’s whether you actually love yourself or not. Some people are willing to move states for their job or their career or their business. Some people are willing to give up family relationships because they’re holding them back, or they’re willing to take that hit and move down into an apartment from a huge home or whatever. And then you see them on the other side and somehow they have done an amazing thing, and you’re like, oh, man, I wish I had what they had. They were willing to do the sacrifice because they value themselves enough to do it. So if you are keep bumping up against this, don’t start looking at everyone else or blaming all these things outside. I hate to say it.
You need to look at yourself because you are worth it.
That is awesome. So I think we’ll end on that. You are worth it. Mark, let everybody know where they can find you online.
If you want to check out the podcast, it’s called We Do Hard Things. My name is Mark Drager. You can head over to YouTube and do a quick search on it or it’s on all of your podcast listening apps. If you want to send me a message directly, head over to IG. My handle is @MarkDrager and you can send me a message. Let me know what your take away was from this conversation. I would love to hear from you.
Sounds beautiful, Mark. You are worth it. So mine. So is everybody who’s listening. And everybody, you have a wonderful day.
