On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. I think my ability to ignore things is super power. So if you let things stress here or hold you down. Yeah. And you're not going to succeed. But we have because I have 10 or 15 companies, a lot of products, but to, like, 10 core companies, Right. And 2 are breaking even or losing some money, 10, 20 grand, whatever month. My my boys are like, are you not you're okay with that? I'm like, I'm not I'm not okay with Chaz.
We'll figure it out, but I'm not I'm not gonna let it hold me back for the other companies that are maybe profiting 40 or $50. You don't wanna let one thing pull you back. And Santa Chaz a microcosm. You have to ignore that and figure out the path forward that, you know, it's most beneficial for your client. Benefit you. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars.
From business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be. We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the real of the real on what it takes to build a successful business today. Your picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest.
Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the Kings podcast today. I've got Mark Baumann here on the King stage. Mark, how we doing? Great. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful, man. It's it's Thursday. Kind of a little bit of a rainy Thursday, but what a great day to do a podcast. Right? Like, Another another part of the world. You're out in Cali. Glad to have you on the show, brother. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Let's let's start with, I mean, you're you're a man of many businesses, a portfolio, if you will. Won't you tell us what's your what you got your hands into? Yeah. Sure. I, basically, just kind of have media company, which then I started adding on layering in businesses over the last 10 years. Okay. And mainly because my main company had gotten up to, like, 40 or 50,000,000, and then there was, like, a downturn within that industry.
So I decided to leverage some of that revenue to build another revenue streams. Chaz took me on another path. At the same time, I was working with a gentleman I got introduced to in Canada who built some really smart digital fingerprinting. Digital fingerprinting is something that YouTube uses to recognize content. There there's this called content ID.
Nice. So that gentleman came up with had a great technology that was out Chaz had outperformed at a speed test, relevancy test, data test, with YouTube. So we built a platform around that. And then in that industry, with just EMCA enforcement, we and kinda relative claiming in rights We Okay. Expanded by acquiring other businesses in the industry. I acquired a business Chaz was protect called DMCA force. It has textingmasterclass.com and SiriusXM already and a couple other large studios.
So that was nice. So we got into that realm ended up working with another company. Who was generating royalty rights for Warner Brothers. So that was fun, and we ended up, like, creating, you know, I think it was, like, 10 or 15% additional revenue for Warner Brothers on their royalty claiming on their Wow. Royalty rights.
Yeah. And then since then acquired a lot of other companies too, because I own an advertising agency, so it started acquiring products that would complement the traffic that we have access to well Yeah. That we saw margins for. Those are great. Those went up 310X depending on the product. And then I've just been acquired other products.
Just recently, I decided to acquire an Amazon kind of fulfillment company to see not like a 3pl, but just a Amazon store and brand because it had great rankings on Amazon just to see if we add products into this store with great rankings. How well does that product do, you know, feeding off those rankings? And then how do we how do we grow that by because you can grow it by pushing traffic into Amazon.
The Amazon compensates you with other audiences if you're driving traffic or you're driving a lot of sales. So that's been pretty interesting. Thing. Yeah. Yeah. I also buy a music licensing site called sound.com.com. And that, like, it spills out the dot com. .Com. You can rebrand that to pick music.com, and we're gonna tie it into these creator platforms, allow people to distribute music Chaz doesn't require a license. Got a lot of other stuff.
You know, some not successful, like, a way to Cbd company would acquired the person that want to run that kind of just wasn't Chaz big dreams, but didn't didn't actually want to take action. No. I like what you should talk about. Yeah. So it kinda sat set on the shelf a little bit. Reviving that a little bit this year. I own 1500 domain names, really like domains, everything from, like, daphne.comtomoviecontoogcush.com and all kinds of cool stuff if you're into weed.
Yeah. And then we were on I forgot what it was. Some kind of news news site, but also there's a Netflix documentary about it. Part of the reason I started the enforce it's size. I I was building something called face checks, which is a kind of hasn't come to fruition yet, but that was to identify people and monitor their images online girlfriend at the time had her images put up online without her consent.
And it was somebody hacked her, and I guess this guy was going around paying a Russian guy hacked women, and that's say it was over at revenge point. He ended up going to jail with the FBI, and they did a series on it on Netflix and the Leon. Wow. As Netflix, is anyone up is is what the site was, but I crashed the website for a few days to you know, in order for them to remove the content. Yeah. And so that that worked.
And I got this lady contacting me who also had her her daughter was hacked, and I helped them remove the content. She then falls through and goes through to the FBI and gets this guy put in jail. Now there's a Netflix documentary. It just came out back in July. Can't remember the name of the most hated man on the internet. So that's Wow. Yeah. So we're not in it because we decided we didn't want to kind of be part of the dramatization of it.
Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, that was so that was integral in back in 2013. I think. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure a just a prevalent thing as as the Internet and And, unfortunately, hackers, scammers, you know, the whole deal becomes more prevalent. You you have you're obviously well established. You got a lot of cool things happening. I think that the perspective that you're gonna be able to give listeners today is is incredible.
So I definitely wanna get into some some situational things where we can pick out some of your mindset and the way that you think, I think anybody who's who's listening is, like, Woah. So just just appreciate all that. I think that there's a serial entrepreneur piece to you, obviously. You know, we'll get into some of this in your journey as well, but a lot of people a serial entrepreneurism is sexy, but it doesn't it doesn't always just happen to where you just start acquiring companies.
Like, there's a little bit of a process to maybe building that first company like you mentioned and then adding on. So maybe we can get into that as well. I wanna know, but before we get into the story and kinda like the the journey, for you, like, at this level, you're talking about some major success. You threw out some pretty big numbers. There's short lifestyle and things that, you know, pretty much you have well taken care of. Why push? Why go buy more businesses? Why acquire new things?
Why revive a Cbd company? Like, what what what's got you pushing even now? Yeah. That's a good question. It's kinda the same question that people propose themselves of why sell? So, Almost so I I bought a another website and company called Starttrading.com, which is educate people how to trade stocks. That's all also developed into this other platform, educated people on how to create their own buy and sell signals where they pro can programmatically purchase.
Yeah. Yeah. And in that, like, when you're investing, you need cash flow. You need, you know, dry powder to use to buy stocks, and you need it to continually to them because they they go on downturns, and that's the best time to buy is when they're, like, downturn, downturn, downturn, bye bye, and then it goes starts going upturn. Yep. But even if you bought up here, you'd still, like, bring down your cost for getting into that investment when it's at this level.
It's almost like you bought them here just so you can be in the game to see when it's gonna dip. Right. And that's when you get your your best op best opportunities. I I, a lot of times, failed it by once it goes back up because I'm like, oh, great. Hope you know if it's gonna Keep going. And then you're like, okay. Well, you're a little greedy. Yeah. But same principle. You need residual You you need money to flow that and fund your life.
I like to live a, you know, good, comfortable life, like to travel, every month, like, the interaction with people, like, business development keeps the brain going. I just heard 40 this year, so not, like, that old or anything, but Yes. I can't speak of, like, huge reverence for the past, but I I like to, you know, just basically be comfortable in what I'm doing. And you know, not really have to beholden to anything in particular in choices of my life on what what I wanna do on a daily basis.
If I want to continue to live that lifestyle, I need to have that residual income pumping, especially if I wanna live a more relaxed lifestyle. And so with these businesses, I could eventually sell them. I could possibly sell them now. But, you know, it's all a lot of work. And then the game, typically, you could sell business for, like, 2 years, maybe 4 years profits. Right. There's no 10 x selling happening at least that I know over the last 5 years, and we help people broker businesses.
So 4 x is the best you're gonna get. And then what are you gonna do in 4 years when you do not have a better solution that you're going to then do to take over a business. So what's your new business plan? You have to come up with an entirely new business plan, new structure, then you gotta rebuild all these structures. You'd hopefully buy something. But most things are maybe generating 5, 10, 20 grand in profit among most businesses.
You know, there's just those few that are generating the 100,000 plus a month. In profits, and I'm not talking about revenue. Like, we did 40 something 1,000,000 in in revenue in 1 year, and I still made only a 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 of profit Yeah. Maybe at the end. So and then we then the following year, we did 20,000,000. It still made a 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 in profit. So it's, you know, it's just it's all relative. The size aspect.
And it's great if you're getting somebody else's money, but I was never good at taking other people's money and then, you know, capitalizing on other people's It's just not my Yeah. On my stick and on my thing. Yeah. It you bring an interesting dynamic. Obviously, there's the it's not how much you make. It's how much keep perspective. And I think that this it's a it's applicable to every business along the way.
I guess my question to you though is, is there a difference between a guy listening right now who's at let's say 500 k for the year. And it's just him and a guy, and he's thinking, well, if I if I go to I go to 5,000,000, it's just a bunch of stress, a bunch of extra and and Right. Probably I'm only gonna make, you know, double. Right? Is it really that worth it?
And so I guess my question to you is because that's the same mindset, but at some point, what I have found is that it gets big enough to where it's easier. So even though maybe you make maybe less per dollar, it becomes easier. Is that true for you and what you've seen in your experience? Yeah. I I think once you get comfortable in a business, you may be, you know, there's ongoing costs and there's plateaus of the business. So, yeah, I I could say I'd see Chaz. But that's why it's good too.
Instead of doing something else or selling is maybe finding something that would complement the business well. I was fortunate that somebody, when I was offered a line of credit of, like, half a $1,000,000 from BofA. So he's like, well, if the money's there, you should probably take it. So we ended up taking Chaz, leveraging in that, into acquiring a business later on when we needed to, even though we the we didn't necessarily need the capital the time, but I still went for it anyways.
So that's definitely something that you should look at if somebody's offering to give you money at a at a decent rate, you know, so you should probably maybe not jump at it, but you should consider it. Yeah. I I I'll echo that. And I don't I don't tell many stories on my end in the shows, but you're a 100% right. It's usually when when you don't need any sort of funding that you should look for it.
It's when you when you do need it or when you want it to be able to move something forward that something something's in the way and then you get jammed up. So that's a that's a great little nugget for the listener. I appreciate that. Let's let's talk about your story. Let's talk about before you even entrepreneur. Like, how did you get into business to begin with? What was your 1st venture? Give us the story of the younger you?
Yeah. Sure. I had a friend that was doing the whole, like, getting paid to surf online to click on things. That was a big thing a few years ago where you get paid to just click around on things. Yeah. And that was back in 2000, like, 97 to 2000. They just get paid to surf the internet and people make a 1000 of dollars just literally going around clicking on things because that's, you know, stores were green, and they were just paying for clicks. They thought, oh, get customers in the door.
Yeah. And we turned a profit, but, you know, lo and behold, so we took advantage of that. Weird. So so that that was kinda what was happening then. I wouldn't say we were, like, taking advantage of maybe the the person that brought me in was. And so were some other people that were kinda in our, like, sphere in high school and whatnot. And so that was kind of like a big thing then. So we're doing that. And then that person's like, hey. You know, we could expand this.
We could do, like, an entertainment company. And so we did that together. That became real big. We started promoting Other products became like a super affiliate. And then this thing called the dialer came out. The dialer is where you Wolfe is before the internet. In order to get on the internet, you have to get this software, and then you'd pay per minute you were on the Internet.
So every minute, you'd be paying, like, a dollar, and you get thousands of people paying a dollar a minute just to serve the Internet. It's a lot of money. And so we're figuring out how to drive the best users. So that then to turning on these market pages and most of it was video games. Naked women or, well, that was pretty much an email. That was the entire internet. Like, game code is the Zelda.
So there's using a lot of that that content to just basically get users to go to a page and then try to surf around. And so that was pretty much where we started. And then viable lesson there. Since I was, like, 17, I think when we started it, most of it was under his father's name. And so I didn't really have ownership, although we were we're partnering. And so that later down the road became a problem. I ended up suing that as a partner, like 2008, 2009. It's a good learning lesson.
Learned a lot about internet marketing, how to write code, how to decipher web pages, how to build web pages. Yeah. Build some good connections. Which then, you know, led to my marketing company. And from there, you know, pardon with another person that would a little bit better, but definitely learn to basically, even though you're, like, 17 or 18, especially if you're starting a business with a friend, you gotta make sure you have, like, contracts in place. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal.
It it's a easy thing to oversight for sure. One thing that I just picked up from your story that I can totally relate to even in my own, and I wanna know if you'll agree is that each thing I've done along the way because I've been in several industries, you know, along the way, and it it always seems like the one thing prepared me for the next.
Just like you just said, like, even though it was kind of a tragic situation, you kinda had to go through a lawsuit and stuff like that and, you know, there's some learning points Chaz actually prepared you for the next thing. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Okay. Yeah. If you're not learning, then you, you know, obviously, you're you shouldn't be doing what you're doing if you if you feel you're not learning at some point. Still. Yeah. Unless you think you're done. Right?
Like, if if the story ends here, then then what's left. But if you if you're on this journey for fulfillment or the next version of yourself or the next thing that you can create, whatever it is. Right? Right. The next the next business that can that can provide the lifestyle. What about what about a trait? I wanna know something that you feel like that you have that's kept you from success. Unexpectedly, maybe. Yeah. So my ability to ignore things is our superpower.
So if you let things stress here or hold you down Yeah. And you're not going to succeed, but we have, like, you know, because I have, like, 10 or 15 companies, you know, a lot of products, but to, like, 10 core companies. Right. And 2 are you know, breaking even or losing some money, 10, 20 grand, whatever month. You know, my my boys are like, are you you're not you're okay with that? I'm like, I'm not I'm not okay with that.
Like, you'll figure it out, but I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna, like, let it hold me back for the other companies that are maybe profit 40 or $50. So it's like Right. You know, you don't wanna let one thing pull you back. And and Santa Chaz a microcosm if there's one client for customer, like, granted. Most businesses that have a 8020 rule, 20 percent of your customers are gonna provide 80 percent of your revenue. So if that's one of those clients, I get it.
You know, you you need to cater to that client. And in that case, you know, it's hard hard to avoid stressing over Chaz, those types of things, but you have to ignore that and kinda figure out the path forward that, you know, it's most beneficial for your client to benefit you. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good perspective. I think that the the language that I've used over the course of time is that you have to look the other way. Yeah. As you said, ignore. And it's not about not being profitable.
It's about the overall picture, right, especially if you own multiple businesses. You have to have a global perspective, which sometimes over over over steps or supersedes the the individual. What what about what about a good decision?
I wanna know maybe early on when you're kinda just, you know, figuring some stuff out, maybe in that first initial media company, a good decision that you made that you can look back on and go, this one decision that I made change the trajectory forever for all of us. I would say one decision I made at that point, that while I was within the company or exiting, Yeah. Either either. I think both would be a great perspective, but, yeah, either one either one that comes to mind.
Yeah. I'd say within the company, I guess reliance on affiliate marketers and identifying. So if you have a website, so there's It's funny because my partner at the time couldn't understand well, didn't either chose not to understand or didn't want to kinda factor it into our costs. But when you have If you get a 100,000 users sent to your website, about thou 1000 to 10000 of those will come back.
So when you're building and you're trying to attract marketers, trying to attract more users and traffic, Typically, the best course of action is you'll have about 10 to 20% of your users if So so say an affiliate sends you a 100,000 users and you break even with that affiliate, but you notice you gotta pay attention to your type and traffic and your your web traffic and return users and social media boost and whatnot, you know, it's all kind of stuff now, but you'll you'll see an uptick there.
And if you don't if you wanna be competitive, you need to, you know, compensate for that or somehow drop back those customers because you see this residual income coming in. And it might not pay off right away, but is that affiliate now, if you have 10% coming back, you that means you could pay this guy 10 more, especially that 10% obviously is purchasing. So a lot of that people don't don't kinda take back to that end, and they're just, you know, their competitors do.
Or their competitors buy 6 months out. So they expect to get their money back in 6 months instead of 1 month or, you know, 60 days and whatnot. So Chaz that's one thing that I think was super integral. We Chaz, like, a million users coming to the website, how those million users get there. You know, it wasn't just all from us marketing. You know, it was just Yeah. You know, it had to be from our affiliates because that's where most of the marketing was coming from. Yeah. Exactly.
I think that's even for business owners that maybe don't have affiliates. Maybe they're not in the online space. It's strategic partnerships. Right? Like, other people that run-in the similar vein, that can pass their traffic to you. It's the same idea, same thought. Would you say that that decision I mean, obviously, it's leverage. Right? You're leveraging you know, this this this point of traffic. If if you hadn't have done that or or what would have been the repercussion, I guess.
If someone hasn't done that yet, what are they missing out on? Of, obviously, other than the the traffic, but what's the compound effect over that over, you know, 10 plus years of building? Yeah. I'd say if if you haven't done that yet, you're probably holding back your built your growth potential.
So if you're not factoring in all the vector points to how your business is growing, and how they contribute to Chaz, you you know, you're not just you didn't just come up with a genius product and everybody wants to go see it Right. To drive it there somehow so that you could need to pay attention to that. And then figure out, you know, because if you don't, then you're not gonna compensate those affiliates, for example, appropriately, and maybe they're gonna go promote something else.
Yeah. You know, it's it's funny. I had a guy, a flex screen on my show a week or so ago, and he got a deal on shark tank, and he's a partner with Lori. And It's the same thing. Right? Like, that exposure or that now partnership, that strategic partner, has enabled him to get into arenas that maybe he wouldn't have before. And we all think of that as like, oh, that's Shark Tank. Like, we all get it. Right? Like, it's TV show. We get it. It's notoriety. It's it's authority.
It's a huge partnership. But these things can happen, what you're saying, without necessarily a TV show, well, you can go create partnerships or affiliates that can be a a movement for your growth And what would be the best way for, you know, a guy listening right now? Maybe he's in the tech space. Maybe media. Maybe he's a maybe he's an electrician. I don't know. How how would you suggest going and getting affiliates?
Yeah. There's the easiest way is just affiliate networks, and they just take a a small percentage and they basically already have a pool of affiliates that pertain to particular industry. Yeah. And there's, you know, it's probably about a 100 of them. And so that's the easiest thing.
It's just to get yourself out there into that space, get yourself into Facebook groups, Instagram groups, stuff like that pertaining to your industry, pertaining to your space, or, you know, have somebody do that if you're not such a good marketer or social social aid. Love it. Good stuff. Good practical stuff. Hope the listeners pay attention. And taking notes because you're giving them good stuff. What about a bad decision?
Something that you did, you know, that just didn't work out really well at all. Yeah. I'd say, you know, the the initial friend and business thing that would I would say that was probably the board's decision rely on Chaz, but, like, on a business level. They've been playing a bad decision. I think it was a lot of it was probably, you know, employee related and oversight.
You know, it's hard to pinpoint, like, bad decisions that I would have made except for maybe keeping good people just because they want a little extra. Even though at the time, it wasn't, you know, possible. And and there's a little bit of a dynamic. There's still, you know, could have let go of John to say, Peter, and, you know, John went away anyways, and Peter would have been a much better keep. So it's kinda, you know, you know, and without been playing specific people and stuff like Chaz.
But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It says those are probably the more integral decisions business wise, like, you know, I've I've bought businesses that when they're about a business Chaz really they've all gone up with Chaz. I've had businesses that have acquired that maybe, like, I've had to, like, pursue litigation against people because they misrepresented the business. But Sure. Sure. It's hard to avoid that. You just have a due diligence period Yeah.
And assume everything's fine, but, you know, there's businesses I bought that, like, it's doing, like, 10 k a month, and then, like, you take it over to 0. Oh, okay. So it was fake. Wait a second. Yeah. And but that was contracts around that person, like, staying on to manage etcetera, etcetera. He just violated and lives in the UK. So I have to assume this was almost 2 years ago. That's the reality. I mean, I think I think you gotta given a good perspective of you can make bad decisions.
You even gave us several examples, partnership, employees, even the mismanagement of maybe relationships, I think all of that is super applicable, but then even in addition to that to the the last little situation there with with, you know, the UK situation but would you say, I mean, obviously, at your level, like, you have a you have you have teams, multiple teams. And so is is people, people management, key roles, you know, the development, obviously, of business is done by your people.
So is that mostly what you're focused on now when you're thinking of, like, good decisions, obviously acquiring good businesses, but also you know, the people that are inside. Yeah. And I think the hardest thing for any employee to understand is how to become a business owner because they they keep themselves stuck in that employee bubble. Yeah. And so it's basically taking, like, how how do you instill in that employee how to stack money. Right?
So it's like, Okay. I give you these clients to work with. These clients generate, you know, a $100,000 a month for my company. You now have to generate a 100,010,000 you know, $110,000 for these clients to be successful. Super easy thing to do Chaz an individual to grow, like, 10% of your client base employees Wolfe then take on that role, but they only look at it as a role. They don't see it as a ability to then leverage that for bigger prospects.
It's the same thing as something giving you a $100,000. So a lot of them look at it as work versus reward opportunity. Right? So every job is an opportunity. And so trying to instill Chaz in people that Yeah. All all us you, whoever has a business could do is provide you an opportunity And the opportunity might be I'm getting a $100,000 client base. That's huge. Right? That's a 1,000,000 over a $1,000,000 a year. So you just really acquired a $1,000,000 business for nothing.
You didn't do anything. Right. The employee coming to the company, you know, they have their own self worth, but they're literally worthless to the company in company terms until they actually create something. Right? And a lot of people I think it's media and and things like Chaz. Build up employees and and miss there's like misnomers out there. I'm like, Wolfe, life should be as an employee of blah blah blah blah blah.
But now you should just think of yourself as an entrepreneur business owner at all times because then you're gonna be more successful. Yeah. It gets you into the mindset of money, which then makes you more valuable. It's funny that what the the the way my brain was understanding what you're saying is, you know, that you gave me a $100,000 and the employee thinks, okay. You're gonna pay me to count it.
You're gonna pay me to count it, put it in the right order, make sure it's a nice little stacks, And it's like, well, no, actually, that's good. Like, I like my money in order. I like it all face the right way. But we gotta well, we gotta we gotta add to it. How do we use it? To add 2 is. And then so Right. Wolfe you agree with that understanding? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And so the the the game now becomes how do I how do I teach? Right? How do I motivate? How do I inspire?
How do I agree with people on my team into this another level of thinking? So that way, we we're not just counting it and putting it in the right order. We're we're using it to to be able to grow. Yeah. And how do you agree with overly agreeable people or overly disagreeable people? Yes. Downtown. Yeah. Yeah. We can we can take a whole rabbit trail on culture and personalities and leadership and We can talk with days days days days days.
Okay. I wanna know in our speed round here, my first question is around KPIs. You've obviously got a lot of different types of businesses in your portfolio. But if you could only pick one thing to track in all of the businesses, what would that one thing be? Yeah. Just gross net revenue. So cash flow off of gross net revenue coming in. So if you if you know your business is at 10,000 a month and you have 10,000 a month flowing in, And you know your expenses.
You just have to keep an eye on your gross net revenue. So you know your credit card is always at this level. You know, your your payroll is always at this level. You know, your marketing budgets at this level, you gotta make sure that none of those levels change unless your gross net profit is changing and then just keep an eye on Chaz. And that's that's the best metric you possibly do. Yeah. All the other all the other stuff just contributes to it anyways. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
I love how you gave the couple different depictions there of some of the stabilizers other things that you're paying attention to, those are obviously important, but they all flow into the one you're right. Yeah. Mark, we'll try to compartmentalize those categories so it's easier to keep track of that gross net revenue. It is. Don't worry about, you know, your membership at blah blah blah, whatever software you're paying for. It's all that all falls under their operations or marketing.
And probably fall under operations or, you know, marketing. You you categorize them. Those two ways are just payroll. You know, just don't don't try to over complicate you literally only have this much for you. You're like, oh, but this guy is so amazing. Kinda amazing guy if he's in this category in your business and that the part of the business is not doing so well. That guy's not gonna be with you much longer, and it's probably a contributing factor. Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. I think that the the ability that you said you have to ignore or in this case, kinda maybe just group things together, not be overly detailed, not split hairs, gives you the ability to maybe make bigger, maybe quicker decisions. Obviously always a point to be granular and and to manage money Wolfe, but overall, it's probably more about the growth factor or what's prohibiting the growth as opposed to counting the sense and getting rid of a few things here and there. Would you agree?
Yeah. For sure. And and an example of that is if you are if you if you focus on how do you, you know, squeeze a little bit more out of this over here, you have to think, alright, if I if I focus more on the marketing and I can grow the business 10 or 20 percent more, Right. What is 10 or 20 percent of my existing business? Well, I guess those would be equal, but say say that's only gonna increase your increase your bottom line 5%, but Wolfe.
Obviously, in the marketing Wolfe increase your overall business and your longevity. As always, marketing will always out outpace, like, squeezing money out of a out of a, you know, of a rock, you know, swedish water out of a rock, so so to speak. Yeah. Exactly. And and I think I think although this is a a really simple concept in guys like you and I, we kick it back and forth like this is no big deal.
It's actually a a leverage point that most business owners, I think, what keeps them probably from 7 figures to even begin with, is just this idea of just just go grow, man. There's just so many customers out there just go Wolfe about his points. And I'm like, I talked about Xanax points. I'm like, I don't have time to look at my Amex points. Yeah. No. I think I have, like, a million points. I'm like, yeah. Like, what how Chaz that gonna benefit me? It's like, like, oh, yeah.
I don't wanna use my lasers to stress it over, like, using points. And I'm like, what does that have to do with, like, what you're doing? Like Anything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and most it's weird. Like, 90% of business people love their AmEx points. They love, like, for these point systems and stuff Chaz if, like, that's their end all income. Maybe they're just their businesses are breaking even. I don't know, you know, with it. Yeah. Points are great residual.
It is it is funny how those get tossed into the conversation. My yeah. It it's true. It's really is true. I haven't necessarily had the conversation where, like, someone's been so detailed about it, although it gets brought conversation for sure. All the time. Right? It's the conversation of Amex calling me or get the email of like, hey. We should spend time categorizing your top 3. I'm like, No. I don't have no. I just swipe. I just swipe. I pay. I swipe. I pay. I don't have time for that.
I I had somebody visit me at my building here, and they hilariously enough. They're like, hey. Your spend went from, like, 3 or 400,000 a month down to 200,000 a month. We're just wondering, like, what can we do to get you to spend more? And, like, really? Like, you're coming to my office to ask you to spend more in my Amex is so weird. That's funny. I mean, that's their business, and it makes perfect sense. It's just I would never would never have expected that happening.
Yeah. It's funny because I've had I've had a similar the MX, but on the opposite end, so with my franchises, it's it's it's seasonal. Right? So we've got Valentine's day coming up. So we'll spend a ton in expected inventory And but it's it's 10 x from the rest of the year. And so MX always freaks out on me. They're like, Wolfe. Woah. Woah. You know, I've been with them for 10 plus years. I've got all different accounts. We flow, you know, 1,000,000 of dollars. Over a certain amount. Oh, yeah.
They freak out. I mean, they're charge cards. Oh, there's no there's no limit to them, but they just they go, woah, wait a second. Well, what's going on here? You know, every year, just like, guys, we do we've been through this. You know? It's like, oh, okay. Okay. Sounds good. We appreciate you. You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last time. Is a whole another podcast, man. They're they're Oh, yeah. You love them, behave them. It's just like, ugh. You know?
Yeah. They froze all my accounts last month because one account owed, like, 5000 that bounced back because of some accounting error with the bank. Yes. I've had that same thing happen. And it froze all 6 of my Amex card literally. Except for my LLC card. So if you have your Amex and a business LLC, there's only last thing I'll say is that your Amex and a business LLC, that will not get impacted every single one of your other Amexes are all tied to just you. That's you. That's right.
Yeah. So you gotta get, like, put up under somebody else's name or something. Or get them all under an LLC, and then, you know, it's a little bit more expensive each year. But if one thing happens, one of them just freezes all your spending. And I was in Vegas at the time. It wasn't that big of a deal, but I was in Vegas. I was like, You're frustrated. Yeah. A little frustrated. It froze in for, like, 3 to 5 days, which is not good when you pass it. No. Not when you're spending big big amounts.
Yeah. No. I had the same thing happen, and and it's frustrating. For sure. But first world problems. Right? You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's a good problem, man. Yeah. Exactly. What book would you recommend, Mark, for a business owner trying to trying to grow the business? Yeah. So for books, I don't I I like the 1 minute manager. And I like the ones. So so that's a great book because and I'll get into this later because some of the topics I think that you wanna discuss, like, as thinking about them.
And, basically, like, another superpower I'd say of mine is just to be able to focus on something for, like, 15 minutes come up with the solution and then delegate the solution. You know, don't spend more than try not spending more than 30 minutes on particular thing. Especially filling out forms. I hate filling out forms, but, you know, that's probably the most time consuming stuff Chaz in banking.
So I try to avoid a lot of that stuff, but Chaz far as, like, books, I'd say one man manager is great because if you could spend just a minute managing each of your people freeze up your time for the rest of the Yep. Of your development, personal development, learning new things Chaz well as building new workflows and things or just addressing the existing workflows and improving. Yeah. Yeah. There's obviously efficiency in there. There's intentionality too.
You know, if you can if you can, you know, be concise in your communication, then then there's intentionality. You have to be intentional if it's concise. If you're only gonna spend 15 minutes on a task, then you gotta be pretty dialed in an intentional 15 minutes. So I'll let the mindset there. What do you think about intentionally networking or master mining with other entrepreneurs? Yeah. And so I think we kinda like oh, yeah.
I think we generally discussed this earlier, but I don't think we're on on the podcast side. So I had actually started a a mastermind. Well, I was one of the bridging mastermind people is my friend's idea. He he he manages 1 of the, like, biggest and oldest business development coaches out there, Brian Tracy. Yeah. These companies are branded ties. Great company. They're like doctor Mike and some other people. They they manage money.
Basically, started his mastermind group, and I thought it was great. You know, he's with some other big marketers in the space. Yeah. You know, 2 of them sold 2 companies for 20 to 40,000,000 plus. Which is cool. This is great talking to those guys just about business, and they're still friends and everything, but the mastermind group for marketing, a lot of the marketing all revolves around. Facebook, Instagram, or Google, and me, I was acquiring directly from websites.
So it kinda you got in a lot of discussions, but a lot had always trailed over to that side, so I kinda I couldn't relate. But I still, you know, I still like to just discuss general business Yeah. Employee business structural business, stuff like Chaz, still helpful doing these mastermind groups, for sure. Understood. Yeah. It's a it's a big deal, especially when you have maybe some differences.
Like, even though maybe you didn't relate to the marketing play that they were all running, but that perspective probably has impacted some other things that you've been able to grow for sure. Yeah. And I I think I've even made perspective when I started acquiring products, not just SAS, because it was I was all SAS before. Yeah. So it's hard to find other SAS businesses is not a ton of them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or or SAS founders specifically willing to come together and share.
It's a little bit of a siloed which I think is actually accurate for most businesses. Most business owners are siloed themselves. Right. That's why that's why getting together with other entrepreneurs even if they're in different industries is still a a huge benefit. I've got a question for you around habits. I asked you about something that kept you or that that allowed you to be successful, but What do you think that, you know, what do you think of someone that inspires you?
What do you think that they have that that maybe you're working on it? That you don't have or that you would recommend that the listener jump into or that they press into a characteristic trait, maybe a habit that maybe all successful people have or this person that inspires you Chaz. Yeah. I'd say just in the same realm as, you know, my inability to to worry about, like, points and things like Chaz.
More financial specific things I do have some friends that are more tailored and more kind of buttoned up in terms of their operations. Yep. And try to find. There's a lot of and there's a lot of people that will become their operational managers, but they really don't you know, they don't they don't set something you're gonna visualize. So as being a visual person myself and, like, I think most people are visual. Right? I try to cater to that and a lot of these operational folks.
You gotta be aware of that because they'll come in and they'll charge you 5, 10 grand a month to come in and help you with their operations and consultancy, etcetera, but the and they'll say, you know, they'll have their templates of things they do and templates and whatnot.
But then if you're not getting an overall picture and and vision, mean, you could probably set this beforehand as what I learned is for them to kinda share, walk you through that vision, see how well they can visualize it for you, and you can you can visualize this to take a little time to discuss that with them. Yeah. Yeah. But if they can't, then they're just really just, like, organizing. They're, like, an accountant essentially.
And you're paying, like, a huge price for an accountant to kinda help structure thing structure things, but not actually structuring anything. They're just kinda providing more spreadsheets that you're gonna lose. So it's not we're not sharing with your employees. So Yeah. Yeah. The sharing aspect is always instill a challenge is is how do you get people to self educate because you don't have enough time to educate everybody.
And that's why you hire managers so that they can literally just educate people and make sure that they're all educating and doing what they're supposed to do in a in a positive functional way. Yeah. But the crux of that is you can't hire a manager until you're at least 20, 30 people strong because it's just lost revenue at that point at some cost. Yeah. Yeah. And you're doing it yourself until then along with all the other things. And so Right.
Here we here Wolfe find the small business owner stuck. Yes. I wish I had more of that structural trail. I'm I'm I live in chaos. It's a little bit I got five people I Chaz help live in chaos as well, but can still find structure. And then I, you know, and then you have to be mindful of always rhyming yourself to provide that structure. Yeah. They ask because not many people can do that. Yeah. Exactly. Love that perspective. I think most entrepreneurs or at least a lot can can relate to that.
And there's, you know, there's VA services. There's, you know, fractional CFO services even at that level. If you're looking for the financial piece, there's lots of options that, you can build a team around before maybe you have to, you know, bring those people on full time. And so I think there's a lot of especially now more than ever with with softwares and and fractional services. I think that people can do that, but you still have to take the chance. You still have to still gotta go do it.
It's still it's still an expense. You still have to take a chance, a risk, because a lot of most originaries and organized chaos is kind of it doesn't really get much better than that. It's okay that chaos. I just, like, organized where it has to be before You know? Organized guess is what all of our strong suits are probably. Yeah. Exactly. Mark, I got one last question here for you. I wanna know if you could whisper in the younger Mark's ear. What would you say? Oh, get contracts.
Chaz a Jamie, but that was the only big mistake. I think it's not having appropriate contracts in place. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I can't stress enough, like, setting up yourself foreseeing the failure ahead of time. So when and it's not failure, I guess, foreseeing the exit ahead of time because nobody sees themselves exiting a business when they're starting a business because they're passionate about their excited about it. I'll try to give another another example.
When I started the advertising company, we saw an a it's taken over managing some existing websites and saw that brokers were taking were selling an ad for $50,000 and paying the website 20,000. That's how I started my advertising agency because there's this massive, a 150% gap. Only because one of the advertisers reached out because we had they had asked for a rate reduction Chaz couldn't get it. And it was, you know, the broker is being strong with them.
And I was like, well, yeah, we could bring you down. What what are you looking to pay? They're like, 40,000. I was like, oh, Alex, we're getting 20,000. I was like, what were you paying before in, like, 50, like, Jesus. So even that business, that that was a great business because that that's the one that went up to 40 mill there's 48,000, 38,000,000. I can't remember now, but, basically, that that learning experience when I sold that business or, sorry, when I I saw that business.
So when I bought my partner out of that business, I said, hey. You know, what do you want as a buyout? He's like, And I think I don't think it's past the end of the year period, but there's some somewhere. It was 7 figures. And I was like, okay. Done. You know? And that partner then pursued to go to all of our friends and say, hey. Don't hang out with them anymore. And it wasn't, you know, At some point, it's not about the money.
It's more about the principle, and he didn't like being bought out. And our failure, and and I think most people's failures is you're not you're not what happens at the type of exit, type of sale? Nobody thinks about that unless you've been in several businesses, and that's funny because it becomes a trait where it's more important to where, like, If I talk to a guy about getting him to business together, and the first thing he says is, alright.
So what happens on the exit or what happens when we said we don't wanna work together? I know that guy's been through some shit. Yep. Because Yep. He his mind says focus on that is a primary thing. Yep. And he that is the only thing that you can't like, you could tell people that but they don't learn it until that happens to them. Until it happens. And most people, I'd say 90% of all entrepreneurs, at least 90%. Don't realize that factor until later. And I still doubted it. You know?
That's not the first thing I bring up because I'm I'm less concerned about Chaz. I'm more concerned about generating revenue and and making money and and building great business. Yeah. Let's just go. Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's go and, like, you can just tell when these guys are like, So what does it look like an accident? Then that's the hardest thing is then you have to you have to ponder that. Like, alright. If we do, you know, and then you're like, wait.
We're gonna need a 100,000,000 of everything you're gonna do a 100,000,000 with. Right? So we Chaz a 100,000,000 that just set that as your baseline because that's where you wanna be. And to set that goal. And then, you know, if you get to 100,000,000 this and you get to 10,000,000 this, you know, 1,000,000 this. You know? Yep. And when who decides to sell when and, anyway, same way.
So that that's, I think, the the most determining most important factor in education, I think people need to kind of is absorbed for when they're gonna get into business with somebody. Yeah. It's just being honest about the about the road. You said it. Most people don't think about it because maybe they haven't been part of it, but Whether the whether the end result is to sell, to exit, to hand off to your children, sell to your partner, all of those things, one of those things will happen.
At some point, even if you hold onto it to the last day that you're alive Yeah. One of those things is then gonna happen. So why not at least talk about it, prepare for it? And then that way, if it were to happen a little sooner than expected, you know, you're not in a in a in a show of craziness. Right? Exactly. 100%. You got it. Mark, you've been incredible. So much of your knowledge dropped here today, but so much more. I wish we could keep going. Where can the listener find you?
If they wanna continue to pick your brain, maybe there's a maybe they maybe they have a company that that that you need to acquire or maybe vice versa, maybe they wanna do a partnership with you. Of course, talk contracts first. How can they, how can they find you? Yeah. So, yeah, I'm always acquiring businesses. We also broker businesses. So the best way to find me is just market media reps.com.
Social media is somebody else checks and probably doesn't check, so don't even try to message me on social media and or, you know, on my cell phone as best as I'm very direct. I don't you know, it's funny. I always put my cell phone, get on my cell phone to probably be, like, five million people over my time. Yeah. And, you know, between emails, between cards, you know, thousands of people each, maybe a thousand people every convention.
I'd say I've gone to, and I've gone to a convention once every month. For 22nd years. Right? So that's 12,000 times, you know, how many years? 12, 20 years. Yeah. So, like, 120,000 right there. Right? And then, you know, on emails, who knows about my emails and nobody's saying nobody phone calls you. Nobody calls you. So don't be afraid to give out your your cell phone. Your direct contact. The worst thing that could happen is you block them, especially nowadays.
Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say do that and but, yeah, you can reach me on my cell or just direct on my email. My company media reps. Yeah. We'll put all that in the show notes as well for them to be able to connect with you. And and, again, just thank you for making yourself available. Think entrepreneurs everywhere appreciate your intelligence, number 1, but then also just just the the grit that you've been through. Some of the realness that you're able to share was super incredible.
So personally appreciate it. Look forward to getting to know you even better. Blessings upon your businesses and your teams. And we wish you nothing but success and all that, and thank you for being here. Cool. Thanks, Janice. You too. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own. Carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing literally over 2 or 300. Other Berry Successful 789 figure business owners is Chaz It's tough to do it alone.
And so gathering the Kings literally exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you.
And you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit. To 1000 kings. Talk soon.