Rebuilding from Rock Bottom: Marques Ogden's Journey of Redemption

Marcus Ogden is a former NFL player turned successful entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Marcus shares his powerful journey from rising through the NFL ranks to experiencing a dramatic business fail due to ego and poor decisions.

In this deeply personal conversation, Marcus recounts how excessive spending and chasing material success led to the collapse of his multi million dollar construction business, bringing him to an all time low. He opens up about his emotional struggles, having to start over as a low wage custodian and facing significant mental health challenges. Marcus then made a successful career pivot towards public speaking and podcasting.

We'll hear how he rebuilt his life from rock bottom using strategies learned through therapy and focused goal setting. Plus, Marcus offers valuable advice for entrepreneurs on branding, marketing and sales while also unveiling his new initiative, Inner Game Community, aimed at fostering personal and professional growth. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe now. Here's my conversation with Marcus Ogden. Enjoy.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast. I'm your host Dave Goulis and this week my guest is the former NFL player and the host of the Getting Authentic with Marcus podcast, Marcus Ogden. Welcome Marcus. Hey, doing Dave, doing great, doing great. How about yourself? Doing well, my friend. No complaints, just taking care of business. You know, you're my last talk of the day.

I was always excited this help me with podcast because I'm all about sharing, giving knowledge and actually we got not that long ago a new webcam. So excited. That's doing really well, coming across with the picture and sound. So all's a good day. Beautiful, beautiful.

So if you could for everyone, can you just tell us your backstory and how you came to be an entrepreneur? Sure. So I'm from Washington D.C. i played in the National Football League for almost six years with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans. My brother Jonathan was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens in 1996. First Battle hall of Famer.

I went to Howard University and the NFL taught me a lot, Dave, about grit, you know, and I already had all these things in me but it made me even dig deeper to grit, perseverance, adaptability, things we call attributes. And those attributes have helped me greatly in my entrepreneur, my entrepreneurial journey from leaving the NFL to getting into a multi eight figure construction company. We were over 20 million at our height. Lost that company Dave, in 2013 because of my ego.

The bank told me two days before Christmas, right Dave, two days before Christmas they were shutting us down and that was it. They were just boom, getting rid of everything. And that was it. And so from there I moved to Raleigh, $4 to my name. Fired from two jobs in the same week, became a custodian in Downtown Raleigh, made 825 per hour. Had to bounce back from my rock bottom moment with somebody's trash and rotten meat and nasty protruding, horrible smelling garbage got all over me.

And that was my wake up call. I wanted to start speaking, helping others. Started speaking in 2013, September, begin a paid job. Didn't get a paid job for two and a half years. Got my first paid job in April 2016 and got coached, got developed. Now here we are. Work for over 70 they fortune 500 clients in eight years. Four time bestselling author, twice by ourselves, twice as a co author, top rated podcast, one of the top half percent most popular podcast worldwide.

Very. People love our show and you know, brand ambassador, business owner, you name it. But again, right, Dave, I'm a guy that has been at rock bottom, had no money, been almost homeless, had $400 to my name, had no friends, nowhere to go, what up? But it took me a long time to go up, right Dave? Because it took me a while to realize that I was the one that knocked me down. And once I did that, that's when life started to get a lot better in that regard. Okay, wow.

So quite a story, quite a journey, a lot to unpack there. So let's just start real quick with the early days in the NFL. So I mean making, making it to the NFL is the pinnacle of, of anyone that plays football, right? I mean, did you, was that always a goal of yours, a dream of yours? Good question, Dave. No, I want to always be an investment banker like my dad. And when I left high school I was about 6 foot 3, right. But then when I ended up getting to the college, I got to be almost 6 foot 6.

So I grew about 3 inches between my last year between graduating high school and entering college. And then I was like, oh, I would become a one year starter, two at Howard. That's awesome. You know, that'd be fantastic.

Well, I became a four year starter, I red shirted my first year, became a red shirt freshman, starting office of tackle for the Bison, had a great career, played with some great guys and right around going into my junior year, right, they that's what I was like, maybe I can do this. And I saw my name in a couple of pre draft books, I was like, oh, I really can do this. And so that's when I started to really dig deep into those action things.

We talked about earlier, trained hard, worked hard, increased my school efforts, increased my workouts, increased my football efforts, and I was very fortunate, right. They had to get drafted into the national football league in 2003. Okay, and what was that experience like, coming from? Not really thinking it was a possibility till maybe a couple years prior to making it to the league, Getting drafted, being on, you know, the Jacksonville Jaguars and then being in the NFL.

Like, what was that whole process like for you? It was amazing because I realized that I could do almost anything relatively with my abilities as long as I put the effort in. And it taught me a lot about discipline, work ethic, showing up, out, working people again, right? They say things you have in business, you got to show up, you got to show out. You know, what is it that separates you from the competition? Are you going to outwork people? Right?

Are you going to have the backbone to do what's necessary to get where you want to go? Right? Do you have that? And if you don't have that, then you're going to end up in a spot where you're going to always be like, wow, man, what if I could. I had done that. Well, what if I had. Should did that, right? I was doing a podcast with somebody else, and she's had a great work. Powerful. Saying should is a dangerous word, right? I should do this, I should do that.

Well, no, you're either going to do it or you're not. And so what I realized is that when I did it, right, did I put the effort in. I could do this in football. And what happens, right? I went to the Hula bowl, you're ready to go to the draft. And I was going against guys from Florida State, Miami, Rice, Texas, Notre Dame, you know, Miami, like all the big schools at that time. And I was doing just.

I was doing better, Dave, than all the opposite linemen from Notre Dame, you know, Miami, Rice, you know, Texas, like, all these things, I was like, yep, I do belong in the national football. I'm gonna have to work hard and develop myself, but I do belong in this league. So that really helped me to see, right, Dave, I put my mind to it. I could do anything. Love that. Love that. Okay, so you played for. Was it six years, and then what. What was the transition? Transition out of football?

Like, I. Clearly, you made some good money, and you. You went right in and started a business. Like what? Like what was. What made you decide to go into the construction business? Be honest, Dave. I was doing what I tell my clients never to do. I chase the money. I Wanted to have the money. I wanted to have the fame. I wanted to have the notoriety, and I wanted the big check syndrome. I just got really, really lucky day to find a good partner.

Turned out to be good for the time for the long haul was not so. And I filled a boy, a gap in Baltimore city. Baltimore lacked minority contractors that were certified with the city and. Or the state, and we were a minority certified contractor. When one of my mentors went out of business, we stepped in and that's when we got all the contracts with the big developers, big general contractors, and we were just rolling, babe, rolling. But again, you know, I got into something for the wrong reason.

And it was just a matter of time for it to catch up with me. And about five and a half years in, it caught up with me. And it, Dave, completely knocked me down on my butt. And I had to start over from scratch to get myself back to where I am, you know, back to like, you know, some sense of, like, normalcy. After losing my home, both my cars, all my money, all of my resources, everything was gone in less than 90 days. Okay, wow.

And you're very open about that in some of your content, too, in terms of, like, your. I guess you said your. Your ego was a big part of the problem. And, and can you just talk about. You said you, you learned the hard way, too, in terms of the, you know, it's. I'm just looking to see exactly what. But you. You were tyrannical and you treated employees like objects instead of people. That's right. All day. And, Dave, human capital is the most important capital on earth.

And all I cared about, all I wanted was money, money, money and more money. That's it. I didn't care about my team. Like, perfect example, right, Dave, One of my team members today told me. She came, she. She was open with me, said, marcus, I've been feeling a little flustered lately. I. I'm sorry for not getting this done or that done. That. I said. I told her, I said, look, I've thrown a lot at you the last few weeks. Helping get people's schedules straight, okay?

Abby and Danny, helping us get media things done into the media, helping us get things turned in for speaking opportunities, right? Helping us get all of our automation things integrated and set up. I said, look at this list. Okay? Look at this list. All these things are done except for one, a YouTube person, and the other one, which is finishing up our speaker match, which is going to be done today. I said, you have accomplished so much.

Don't worry about A little bit of hiccup in one area, we'll fix that. And I then told her, what are our main priorities, our main points of our business? She understood. And I said, look, that's okay. We'll get it back on track. It's not a big deal. The old Marcus from 2012 would have been yelling at her, screaming at her, what are you doing? You suck and I pay you.

Would have caused more stress, more anxiety, would have caused her to shut down versus what her saying, Marcus, thank you so much for understanding and showing me grace and empathy. And that's the whole thing today, right? I have empathy, grace, compassion. Back then, that didn't exist in my heart. And that's why I lost everything, because I deserve to. Wow. Okay, so, I mean, clearly, right?

I mean, do you think it was like, like you said, your role and like the money went to your head and of course. Oh, yeah, Dave, big time, you know, you know, I, I, I had, I was making millions of dollars, Dave. Hummers, you know, Denali XL, big F, 250, 350 trucks, nice home. Go to the bar, buy it out. Take my employees out, you know, in stretch limos and spend five grand a night, you know, drinking alcohol.

This is back in 2012, you know, all this stuff and I didn't give a darn about people, honestly, I was just trying to show off for myself and it caught up with me and I tell everybody what happened to me. I needed it to happen to me. Otherwise who I am today and how I am as a person wouldn't be. And for Jaslyn to tell me how she just feels so connected with me as a leader that she could tell me and know I wasn't going to judge her, I said, no, of course I'm not going to judge you.

Because at the end of the day, right, Jasmine, we all have issues, we all have struggles. I'm just glad that you were able to work through yours. And we're going to get back on track. 1, 2, 3. Winning deals is as simple as the sales tools that you use. Pipedrive's easy and effective CRM lets you track your sales pipeline, manage deals, and automate the whole process so you can focus on one thing. Selling. Join over 100,000 users worldwide, driving business growth with Pipedrive.

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Okay, so business falls apart, right? You lose everything. And you, you went from making eight figures to literally losing everything and then starting over at, at a 8, 25 per hour job. And clearly, right, like you said, the NFL, you learned a lot of grit, resilience, discipline, hard work. But wow, I mean that's, that's quite a fall from grace. Like how, what was the process like?

Just dealing with that mentally because you know how your mind will just mess with you and you know, accentuate the negative and I mean, I can only imagine the mental conversations, but how difficult was that, just dealing with that mentally? Dealing with that mentally is like living in a fun house where there's no exit doors and you're just always stuck in insanity. You're always stuck in your own mind. You're always stuck in a sense of negativity and self doubt.

And what happens is, right, Dave, that's when people's mindset breaks. It breaks when challenges get so big, so large, so overwhelming, your mind and body can't process it. So what it's, what does it exert, right? You know, cortisol do what? Cause stress, cause anxiety, cause depression, cause, you know, horrific thoughts of ending your life, which I've had many times in my life from failure in business and in a marriage, all this stuff, right, Dave? And I'm hopeful people get from this.

If you want to control your mindset, look at challenges in small actionable steps you can implement to get to the other side of that challenge. When I lost everything, right, Dave, that was why I was in the dumps for almost what I moved here. So December 23rd, I get the phone call, 2012, it's over. Bank, shut it down, we're out. You're out of here. We're coming out to everything. Then January I start to pack up. April I move. It took me till September of that year, my rock bottom moment.

We hit a complete ground floor at the basement with nowhere to go but up. It took that for me to realize that I need to look at my issues and my challenges and not try to look at a big picture, but take a small action step every day. And that's what I did, Dave. And I started to move and do that in a form of getting my life back on track, getting myself moving in the right direction. And once I did that right, they, that's when things start to snowball, right?

Started speaking, had some success, didn't get paid anything. Wrote a book. 2015. The next year, get my first paid speaking job. Same thing happened when I got divorced in 2020.

I filed for divorce. Most times it's women that do it. I was the one that filed for the divorce. Right. Because I just couldn't take where I was. But it was hard when I got to that apartment date after moving out because I had to stay in the house with her for about five months. We went to a mediator and reluctantly, Dave, reluctantly, I agreed to move out. And I had two weeks to get out. Went to a crappy apartment and they. My mind started throwing me everything negative. Oh, Marcus, you suck.

Haha. You're divorcing. Haha. Your dad did. Haha. You can't rebound. Haha. You're going to. This is going to ruin your life. Two and a half months, Dave. It was just negative, negative, negative. Then I said, wait a second. Okay, the challenge, moving on in life as a single person. Okay, step one, get your business back in line. Step two, get a house so you're not in an apartment where your daughter's growing up in an environment. She says it's not healthy for her.

Step three, get yourself into therapy, which I was already on, but more intensive, dot, dot, dot. That was January day of 2023. By. By February, business got back in line. By March, I was in intensive therapy. By May, I had bought my dream house to get myself going. So again, Dave, what I did after feeling down the dumps with my business, all these things, right, Dave, Every time in my life where I stop and I say, okay, what's the challenge? What are the steps to alleviate that challenge?

Life gets better. Wow. Well, that's quite a turnaround too, right? From moving out. You're an apartment you don't want to be in. Like you said, you needed to get therapy to really help with the mindset and everything you're dealing with. And then literally within just a few months, you're able to buy your dream home. Yeah. You know what's funny, Dave?

When business got back in line, my clients really rallied around me because I found this new surge of energy to really help people get out and tell their stories on different platforms. So I started a PR media side of the business that took off. And when that took off, the podcast was growing, so sponsorships picked up. So everything was tied to that thing of the podcast, which was really day my biggest lifeline because I started in June of 2022. I filed for divorce in July 2022.

So entire time I was still podcasting, doing shows, working on stuff, but I just kept going. And then I got into my apartment and I got through with feeling bad for myself. I said, what am I going to do? Right, Dave? I focused back on what got me through that challenging time with divorce through the podcast. And that became sponsorships, media, more speaking. And now, right, Dave, our podcast is growing. People love it, and it's just a big function of how we operate as a business overall.

Yeah. And let's talk more about the podcast, because again, right, you're just over two years into it and you're already top half percent. I mean, for people that don't know, again, how many podcasts start and fail and how there's such a small percentage that do well, for you to do that so quickly is incredible. Like, what, what's that journey of podcasting been like for you?

You know, it's been like, Dave is just being real, being authentic, going on other podcasts like yours, telling people about ours and our mission and our, our mantra, and interviewing just some amazing people, but treating them just like that. People, people I've interviewed people like Sebastian Bach from Skid Row, Scott Page from Pink Floyd, Dave Archuleta to Val Chemorovsky to Travis Payne, who was Michael Jackson's choreographer. You know, all these amazing human beings. And you know what?

They, we treat them just as regular human beings that we allow them to talk about what it is they're trying to promote or believe in or want to really tie into authenticity. And by doing that, it's really snowballed into a very well respected media product. So if you're listening to this and you want to start something, or like podcasts, whatever, start something for the right reason.

We podcast to help our audience hear great messages, and we start our podcast to have our guests share their important, powerful message. Love that. Okay. And you know, like you said too, you've been heavily involved in speaking, getting your message out there, as well as coaching other people. And so many different entrepreneurs, you know, particularly listen to this show. Like they're. I'm sure, sure those are same people you coach.

In terms of people in business, entrepreneurs, what are some of the, like, the biggest challenges and commonalities you see with your clients that are going on in business today? Two big areas or three, actually, they lack branding, so they don't. People don't know that what they, their logo, what they stand for, what they believe in. So they have. They lack branding, they lack marketing. They don't get out there, get on great podcasts like Yours or do things on social.

If you, you see me on social, Dave, all the time. Or they don't do any type of like targeted ads or they don't start a podcast, they don't do a community. And it's like, oh, here I am. I had this product won't buy me. No, that's not how it works. And then a lot of people are not good at sales, right? They try to go for the sale too quickly and they end up missing the Mark. If you listen to this podcast, you want to be better at sales. Number one, be curious. Number two, add value.

Number three, then ask for that call or that meeting or that next meeting. If you say, hey, here's the value I can bring to you, but you don't know what their problem is, you're hoping and praying that what you bring value wise matches their issue. If it does, you got lucky. We probably get a meeting. If it doesn't, you won't get a meeting.

But if you just ask curiosity questions, what they're struggling with, what they need, where they're at, provide value, how you can help them, what product and or service. Then ask for that meeting to then explain in more detail and hear from them where they are, tell them where you are. Boom, move forward. I'm actually going to be working with this with all of my clients next week. Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned LinkedIn a minute ago. Just talk about that.

Because I can only imagine you get the same thing I constantly get reached out to by people where it's just, it's called a pitch slap, right? Where they connect with you and then the first thing they do, it's, it's like automated, right? They're just, it's not like automated. It is automated. And people are never going to buy from you if they don't trust you. Right? And what happens? I get automated things. Pow. I delete.

I delete it and I then I remove that connection from that person because I don't want anything to do with it. Right? Again, you don't even know my problems. Oh, Marcus, I can help you with body composition to get better in shape. I work out all the time. You know what I'm saying? I'm working on that. Like, you know, you don't know where I'm at. You know what my struggles are. Okay, well, Mark, I could, I could. You need more coaching clients. You need more high fit people.

I'm like, bro, I'm fine there too. I would love to have more where it's around this item or this item, I don't need more clients in that regard. Right. So I mean for goodness sakes man, be curious, ask questions, get information, then provide your value or make your statement and then look for a meeting to go through your product and service and go from there. We've done that.

Our businesses, we've done it with our people. We're building a mindset community right now. Right now. Building a mindset community. If you want to check it out, it's called go to inner I n n e r game community.com inner game community. It's a mindset community to help bring about people, to collaborate, to inspire, to raise each other up. We're going to have great contributors in our community like Bob Berg who wrote the Go Giver series.

Scott Page from Pink Floyd, Ed Lattimore, former heavyweight boxer coach David Kitchen, the youngest strength coach from college football. When he got the job he was 23 years old. This is what it's about, right? They were putting something together based off a huge need that we know people need. So again we've been curious, now it's value time. Bring the value. Then we'll have people that want to do like some coaching hires for speaking, but if they don't, it will be in the community.

You could be in for free. You can upsell some more access to more courses, more high end level content, but that's on you. You'll decide when it's time to buy something from us. When you see that the value you're getting for free isn't enough and you want more. But that's for you to decide the curiosity portion. We've been doing that study providing gear. I'm getting book days so much on mindset stuff, it's a perfect fit.

Again, innergamecommunity.com you can check us out and it's all about bringing you tons of value around mindset, grit, perseverance, collaboration and attributes. Things you're born with. When your attributes are strong, Dave, your skills can shine, shine through at the brightest light. If you have great skills but have low attributes, at some point you will burn out. Yeah, yeah, well said. And you mentioned you've been book getting booked so much with mindset.

Why do you think that's such a challenge for people in today's world? Because everybody did media, politics, war, you know, disagreeing like I don't care who you vote for, that's on you, you Republican there, it doesn't matter. But we should have the right, right Dave, to disagree and say I like this, I like that. One of my clients is female Caucasian pro Trump. Her daughter, same female Caucasian pro Harris. They both have, they have assigned Trump in the yard and Harrison.

Er, that's what it should be, right? It should be whomever you want. That's what you want, right? You don't have to explain yourself to somebody else. And because of that day, people get nervous. Right. We talked about earlier what causes people's mindset to bend and unfortunately sometimes break. Challenges, arguments, stress, lack of momentum. So Dave, right now our world needs more of people to lean into their attributes and not just your skills. Right?

Because again, your skills are great, but who you are as a person, that makes you. You. Absolutely. All right. And so, Marcus, if people want to get in touch more about you or more get in touch with you and learn more about what you're doing about with the, the inner game community and all the other things you have going, what's the best way that people can reach out to you? So what they can do is people can reach out to us through our app. We have the Marcus Ogden app.

M A R Q U E S O G D E n dot com. I'm sorry, Marcus Ogden. That's our app. You can go to our website, marcusausden.com Shoot me an email, Marcus. Marcusaugman.com or just, you know, connect us on LinkedIn, Marcus Ogden Instagram at Marcus Ogden Facebook markets, Ogden. And just have a conversation. Right. How can we help you? We're going to be curious, we're going to add value and see if it's a fit for us to serve you with some capacity. Speaking, coaching, consulting, joining our game.

Go to our mindset community, you know, and that our inner game community dot com. That's our mindset community. Come check us out and see what you think. If you think we can can help you, come and join our team. All right. And we'll link all that in the show. Notes for everyone. Thank you, sir. All right, Marcus, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Enjoy the conversation. You shared a lot of wisdom from your journey, so thank you again for that.

And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.