WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates.
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We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services,
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Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W four WN Radio.
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This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W. Park.
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Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do
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you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,
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and financial goals? Well? Coming up on ZVO parks Beyond Confidence,
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you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers
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who have steps into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and
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are living the life they want. You will learn how
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relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals.
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Moving your career business forward does not have to happen
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at the expense of your personal or family life or
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vice versa. Learn more at www dot Gvpork dot com
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and you can connect with tv ants contact dants gvpark
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dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host,
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g w Park.
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Good morning listeners. It's Tuesday morning, and.
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Of course I'm excited to be here.
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Especially more excited because I was traveling. I was in
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New York for some business travel and then I'm back
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and it's always.
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Wonderful to connect with you.
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So I want to share the kind of story. I
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was visiting friends and family and a few clients. So like,
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I was at a friend's place and this gardner came
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in and you know, he's been working at the place
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for quite some time, but he knocked the door and tells,
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my friend, listen, somebody has broken your lives in your driveway.
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So so just taking that moment and sharing it with her,
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you know, as to what it was going. You know,
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he could have moved the lawn been down and gone
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and she wouldn't have known. I mean, it's not a
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big deal, but still that tiny little thing paying attention
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and helping someone out is so important. So keep the
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kind of circle going. Take out time from your busy life,
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whether it is five seconds or five minutes, help someone
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out with no strings attached, and also thank you to
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each and every one of you who have got her
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books Entrepreneurs, got an Expert, to Influencer, or any of
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the other books that I've written, And I want to
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encourage you and invite you to get the books if
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you have not, because I can share with you based
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on our readers reaching out to you.
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They will be a huge help spread the message.
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And also the partial profits from the book go to
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Kiwa dot org to be helping all around.
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So let's welcome our guest.
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Did you good to see him?
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Good to see you? Welcome Marcus.
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So we start out from a moment in your childhood
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or youth. Do you have a moment or a person
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who left a positive mark on you from that time?
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I certainly think there's there's been a few I would
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point out here, though probably my mom had a big
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influence just because we you know, she grew up. She
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her and my dad were separated early, so I watched
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her have multiple jobs early on in the effect that
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that had on her, I mean talk about grinding. She
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was probably doing sixty five hours a week legitimately for
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much of my childhood, just running herself in the ground
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and trying to pay off whole debts really taught me
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a lot about the debilitating effect of debt on a family.
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As one of the reasons my parents divorce was because
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of the financial arguments that they had, right and then
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watching my mom try to raise two sons without really
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much financial support at all and working multiple jobs physically
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exhausting herself, but that's all she knew right how to
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do and just had had a lasting impact on me
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to this day. But I would say I'm very adverse
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to debt today just by watching how it affected my
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parents early on.
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Yeah, I know, and it's hard because money can be
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a divider, especially in family. So thank you for sharing that,
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and kudos to your mom. You know, would like to
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recognize her for all the efforts she put in and
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got you going, and you know.
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She made it work. She made it work, and you know,
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she's got two sons today that have done really well. Right,
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So it's just one of those things where she didn't
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you know, at least she's able to see the fruit
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of her labor. And I'm sure in the moment it
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felt quite difficult, but that's oftentimes you know, how it
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works anyway, just in business, too. Is like the old phrase,
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we often overestimate what we can do in a year
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and underestimate what we can do in ten. And I
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think the same thing applies to its parents. We don't
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always realize the impact that we've made in the short
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period of time, but you look at them in terms
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of what they become and it's like, wow, eat it
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pretty well.
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Yeah, it's congratulations on your success, because especially for a
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mom who went through all that to see her sons
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thrive and be successful, there's nothing more powerful than that
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for a mom, or for an impairent for that matter.
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So as you grew up, you did have this i'm
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a zooming that you had the desire to succeed. And
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how did that drive you in your youth?
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I will you know what benefitted with me is I
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was very involved with sports as a kid, and just
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partly because my mom she was the uh she was
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the leader of the local recreational department, right, so so
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she was doing that, which meant I was in all
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the sports, or I was refereeing the sports, or I
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was just I was involved somehow, and or I was
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working with some of the kids. As I got older
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with it, but by the time I was in high school,
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I was playing three sports. I was the captain of
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all three of those sports. And it's funny how you
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really learned to lead a team early on within the
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athletics arena. The same principles apply later on in life.
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You know, you can have, you know, a company with
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fifty employees. It's really not much different than than leading
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a you know, a baseball or football team back in
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the day's just saying concepts, right. You got to learn
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how to talk to people. You got to learn that
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each person is individual in the way that they are
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moved and motivated. Got to speak to them in their
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language right, and you just got to find creative ways
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to keep everybody on their feet. But that was really
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that was the big I think catalyst for my life
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in many ways to become what I am is the
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athletics background.
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I'm a strong proponent of sports not only brings that camaraderie,
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not only builds that spirit of being a sports person
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and learning early in life that life is not fair,
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you know, not every time things are going to go
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your way.
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Well to your point, I think we protect our kids
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too much from failure at this point as a society,
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and you know, the great thing about sport, especially if
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the parents don't intercede too aggressively, is that they are
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going to They're going to fail, oftentimes more often than
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they succeed, especially if you're you think about baseball. You know,
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the greatest baseball players in the world hit the ball
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three out of ten times at that right, three out
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of ten times, So that means seven times you fail,
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three times you succeed. That makes you a Hall of Famer.
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Absolutely, And it's like, you know, like you're talking about baseball,
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I'm a Yankees fan and Don Mattingly and it's long
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time back and all that, but still you see them practicing.
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And that's the beauty of athletics that it's a journey.
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That glory is short lived, and we work towards that.
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So it's important to also pay attention and enjoy the
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journey rather than just be in that moment of destination
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and find that it's gone.
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Yeah, it's yeah, because there's seasons of life, right, they're
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leading and the older I get today, I'm forty seven,
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and you start to see, you know what those seasons
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are like. And I've got four kids, myself, got a
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grandson now, Also it's like, you know, and it's just
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wild how time does pass by. What's weird though, and
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I'm sure listeners can relate to this. You don't feel
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like your mind is really getting older. I mean, it
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might get wiser, your body might feel older, but your
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mind feels essentially like it did when it was twenty
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years old. You're like, I don't know, understand, how's this
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all happening. This is the way, that's the way it
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was all designed, which is pretty beautiful and fascinating at
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the same time.
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You're absolutely right. Like my dad in his eighties, he learned,
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you know, I think so he was in seventies or eighties,
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I don't remember. He learned to use the computers. And
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he always said, like I feel like, you know, I
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was in college, and so we definitely feel from inside
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that eternal youth. It may not show, but it's there.
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So as you kind of like, you know, grew up.
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Which direction did your career take?
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Well, it's funny and I when I graduated college, I
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was working in the DC area. Didn't like my job,
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came back home to what is a rural part of
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Virginia called the Northern Neck of Virginia. And my two
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buddies had just started a swimming pool company called River Pools,
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and they asked me to run the retail store. They
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had a little retail store while they were installing pools
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out in the field. And so I said, okay, until,
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you know, until I figure out what I'm going to
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do with my life, I'll go ahead and do that.
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And what was interesting is within a couple of months
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they said, would you want to become a business partner?
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And I never dreamt growing up that I would be
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a pool guy growing up, but that's exactly what I
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became in my twenties. And by the time two thousands,
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those two thousand and one, two thousand and eight, we
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you know, we're fighting to grow the business. Two thousand
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and eight comes around, the market collapses and we have
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pretty big crash, and a lot of people remember this
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that we're in business at the time, and it looked
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like we were going to file bankruptcy. But the good
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thing about pain and suffering is it forces us outside
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of our comfort zones, right, and then we have essentially,
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you know, it's that yolo mindset of you know, you've
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got nothing to lose and you only live once, so
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might as well just send it. And that's when I
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started to really learn about today's buyer and things like
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the Internet and marketing and just looking at the world differently.
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And as I learned all these new fancy phrases like
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inbound marketing, content marketing, social media, stuff like that, what
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I heard in my simple pool guy mind was, you know, Marcus,
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if you just obsess of your customers questions, worries, fears, issues, concerns,
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and you're willing to address those online on your website,
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you might save your business. So I said to my
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two business partners at the time, I said, we're going
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to become the best teachers in the world when it
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comes to in our case, fiberglass whining pools. And so
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that's exactly what we did through text and video. Every
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single day I was addressing through articles and videos on
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our website and online the questions that I was getting.
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And to make a long story short, we became the
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most traffic swimming pool website in the world within the
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next two years, and it exploded so much that I
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started to write about what we were doing. And as
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I wrote about what we were doing online, I started
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getting companies say, hey, can you teach me how to
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do that, and then folks said, can you can you
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speak about that at our conference? And it led to
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this crazy, crazy life as full time speaker. I have
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an agency now today, but I still have the pool company,
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And it's amazing how how I never dreamt of being
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a pool guy, but being a pool guy is the
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thing was the catalyst to have all these other wonderful
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components of my life. Today. I'll go to you know,
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I'll be speaking in Europe or something like that. Somebody
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will come up to me and they're like, you're that
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pool guy right that I read about online? Yeah, that's
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exactly that's exactly right. What's funny though about that? Dibya
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is kind of like a powerful thing, I think in
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terms of identity. When I started as a pool guy,
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and I was in my early twenties, I had a
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family member at some family event come up to me
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and they said, hey, Marcus, I heard you're going to
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be a pool guy. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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that's what it looks like. And she said, wow, what
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a waste. And I thought, oh, geez, really is that
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what this is about? And I learned how people put
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a value on positions and titles. And what's really fascinating
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is some of my most successful and most fulfilled friends