On today's episode of gathering the Kings. I'm just saying, you know, embrace yourself. I'm saying to embrace your upsets. Don't walk away from them. Don't stuff them down. Those are great learning, tools and they are on the way. They're not in the way. Everything that happens is on the way for you. It's never in the way. It looks like it's in the way, but what we think is in the way is really on the way.
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 reel of the reel. On what it takes to build a successful business today.
We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate 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, Chaz? Wolf, I'm back at you this week. My guest, Mark Tassoni. I'm telling you what, guys.
This guy brings decades of experience and in multiple industries, security, as well as solar, and and he even talks about kinda almost like no big deal, his side real estate stuff that would probably be considered full time for almost anybody else. This guy is a absolute king of the business. You know, I only bring a king's but this guy is a good one. Super high performer doing tens of 1,000,000 in the business. Love everything about this show. Grab that pen and paper. It's coming to you.
Alright, everybody. Chaz, Wolfe, I'm your host, gathering the Kings. Mark is is live with us on the stage. Thanks for thanks for coming to the show, man. So excited. So excited. You know, we're just chatting right before. We hit the record button here, and I didn't tell you this. But there's so many things that you just shared with me that I'm like, yes. Yes. That are already aligning things that I've done, wanted to do, you know, been a part of. Like, this is gonna be a really, really fun show.
So First off, Mark, tell us what kind of business that you're in now? I know you've been in several, but let's let's talk about where you are now. Yeah. My primary business is solar. 4 years ago, I got a phone call from a friend of mine in the alarm systems business. That's where we come from. And, we were looking to get out of it because of the financial malls had shifted, and we were looking to do something different. He called me up.
He said I got a young guy in, Saint Pete, Florida, who started a solar company. And he wants to say, you know, he wants to scale it. And so would you be open to a conversation? I said, yes. He had 5 employees doing 8 $100,000 a year in sales. We had a conversation, and he's a really, really sharp sharp guy. Today, he's my partner. He's only thirty three years old. But super, super sharp.
And, we've been able to take the company from there to about a 175 employees and, do it over 50,000,000 a year in sales. And, our big accomplishment last year was hitting it in 5000 at number 14. For 2021. So we were pretty psyched about that. Yeah. Amazing. Continue to continue to grow it and scale it. Well, congratulations on that. That's a big deal. And I'm sure that, the the listener just perked up.
I always like to give that moment in the beginning of the those shows to just establish your authority because obviously Chaz an eight figure business owner, but more than that, you've come from multiple other businesses. And then I know that you've got, what do you call side hustle of of real estate, but it's no side hustle, to be compared.
So, well, I'm sure we'll get into all of Chaz, but, you know, at this stage in the game, in essence, you kinda picked up the project, not because you had to, but because you wanted to. That was a that's what it sounded like. That was your decision. And even from our conversation off area, it was you wanted to press into something that was, life giving, and that's kinda how you're designed. But at this stage, why? Why do you keep pushing? Is it just because you're designed that way?
Or is it because you just want 50,000,000 bucks? Or what is it? That that's such a great question. That's such a great question. There is something inside of me and I presume, you know, our values come from our void. And, so as a kid, some of those voids were money. And not being able to have the things I wanted. So there's this, insatiable drive. I presume I'll always be in business in some way, shape, or form. And, there's just a this drive.
What I've noticed about myself is regardless of how much money I earn or generate, I'm not really a big spender. My wife is. You know, she's buying my kids, Gucci shoes, and stuff. And we live in a beautiful home, but You know, like, I'm just a really, really simple guy. Money money makes you more of who you are. I really believe that. Yeah. And for me, I'm just a simple guy at my core, but I keep going. It's like, you know, I come from, like, sort of immigrant Italian roots.
Sure. And so that work ethic got instilled when I was really young. Started working at, you know, at twelve years old. And, I just wanted to, like, make my my parents proud and just, like, do something legit. You know? And then you get doing it. And for me, I just keep going. I just keep buying more real estate and just, like, every chance I get, I'm just moving it So Yeah.
Yeah. I love I love the hunger piece, and you kind of been you even mentioned that off air and not a not a selfishness of grabbing all that you can, but a hunger of, like, I'm made for more. And I think that there's a big mindset shift there from selfishness to actually, in order to help others, I need to play the cards right.
And and that's what we talk about be, you know, being a king and being a king in business, and we've kinda talking about that as well, but you can't help your Wolfe, your kids, your your employees, your 175 employees that are now part of the team that weren't part of the team before, they get to be part of it because of the things that you put your neck out on the line for. So that's exciting.
Okay. So, obviously, you've had a journey here of multiple businesses and you sold or you've done exits along the way or you've gotten out of industries. You've been keeping your real estate along the way. I'm curious. We try to go into, like, decisions. So the the person listening here, 6 figures, trying to get to the 7 figure mark, you know, 9% or less of all do seven figures. So that's who we're talking to. And along the journey for you, what do you think helped you make good decisions?
And then I'm gonna ask you for a good decision. So what what's your process of making good decisions? Okay. So for starters, the 1st 5 years of my life were an or a business life sales life where it was an insane struggle. It got to the point at right about age twenty five that I was contemplating doing something illegal. I come from a place where that would not have been a far stretch. We grew up with a lot of kids who went down the wrong road, and I was actually contemplating that.
That's how bad it got I needed money. I couldn't get money. I wasn't that great at sales naturally, and I Chaz actually worked harder to be good at sales than most people. Which in hindsight turned out to be a real gift, but at the end of the day, I was sort of praying quietly in my own way like, literally asking god, send me somebody. I feel like I need somebody to help me.
Twenty five years old, he sends me a a mentor in an industry that I absolutely fell in love with, which was the alarm systems business. And my life just changed forever. So My decision making process even to this day as I surround myself around very wise counselors, younger and older. My primary business partner is a lot younger than me. He could be my son. And I wanted that. I desired that.
I I consciously created that because I wanted someone who was more connected online who thought beautifully. And so I just surround myself around a lot of wise counselors I have a business coach who, he scaled his company to 200,000,000 with 1000 employees. Wow. I have real estate people counseling me who, you know, know how to do syndicates and this type of thing. I have personal development people surrounding me.
I know one of your questions coming up, so I'll save it as how much you spend on personal development. Long story short to answer it, I surround myself around a a lot of very, very bright people. And I'm really, really like, open minded to possibility. 1 of my close friends, who I'll likely refer to, he, travels the world with Tony Roberts. And, Mike and I, we've been friends since 1992. His name is Mike Milio. If you YouTube him, you'll you'll see. He speaks on stage with Tony all the time.
And Mike is he's very wealthy. He's extremely successful. He is the most humble guy I have ever met. One time, he's on his way to do Pierce Morgan at CNN. And he's going to meet Tony Robbins to do the Pierce Morgan interview. Sure. And he he's calling me saying, what do I do? And I'm and I'm saying and I'm saying to him, Mike, why don't you call Tony? Maybe he'll tell you what to do. You know, Right?
He's so open minded and pliable, and I've really, really learned that from him and watched his ascent and and Ben right next to him. You know, I wasn't with him when he was homeless. I was with him at about the 250,000 a year marker. But I've been with him on the ascent ever since then, and he's know, it's probably worth over $50,000,000, maybe even more. But, you know, long story short, it's just you gotta surround yourself around wise counselors. That that's my answer to that. Yeah. I love it.
It's like you pulled Chaz out of a proverbs or something. Okay. So let's flip the coin on it, Mark, and let's talk about Wolfe, actually, you you kinda gave us you gave us several examples there before I flip over the coin. You gave us how you make good decisions. Give us an example of a good decision that was made along the way Chaz particularly if you can helped you get to 7 figures.
Okay. So the well, this is this is interesting because there is another piece to it, which I would call intuition. And, so I found myself in the office one day, but of a gentleman named Mike who became my mentor. Mike mentored Mike Emilio and me. So we were both mentored from the same same gentleman. Sure. And, he he says, see that box over there? And I'm like, yeah, what, you know, what the heck is it? I'm twenty five years old. I don't it's this little box. You know?
He's like, that's a bare metric alarm system, and I just sold 3 of them. And he's like, how would you like to join me in a venture in the armed He saw something in me. I didn't see him myself. And without any thought, this is going back then without any thought. I was like, let's do it. You know? And so sometimes my decision making process is very intuitive. Like, at that early stage in life, it was purely an intuitive thing. Like, this is the way to go. I knew it. I felt it, and I ran with it.
So there's kind of the the two sides to that. So you know, there's the seeking advice and counsel and I also wanna add at that age, I didn't seek advice. So I I would like to say that, you know, God's hand was kind of in my life at that point because I needed that intervention and had I not got it. I I don't know where I would up. I really don't. I think it would have been messy. But at that point in time, I never listened to anyone.
You know, like, if you told me left, I'd go right just just to go right. Just I was so furious back then. I'd never listened to my father. My father, was a very, very smart guy. But he wasn't an entrepreneur. He was afraid to make investments, and I I kinda saw that as weak. And I was like, I'm not gonna be like, and he had his PhD, and he was smart and all Chaz. But I'm like, I'm not gonna be like like him. I'm gonna be rich. So, like, if he said go this way, I was going the other way. Right.
And, but, you know, you get smacked around a little bit and then you learn to start seek the wise counsel. That's right. That's right. That's so good and and relatable too. I mean, I can only imagine the guys and gals listening right now that are you know, in the twenties, thirties, even forties. Like, it's not like it's too late to start a business and try to get to 7 figures. And so what I'm hearing you say is not only wise counsel, but We all have ego. Oh my goodness. We all have ego.
And whether it takes you 2 months or 2 years or 20 years to realize that you will have all the answers, I did the same thing for many years, and I was multiple seven figures even. Like, it didn't stop me from getting to 7 figures, but it it stopped me from growing past that. Because I just sheer just grunt effort work, just make it happen. It wasn't gonna stop me, but, man, my mindset around thinking that I kinda had it all already has limited my thinking many, many times.
And so I'm hearing what you're saying. The listeners are writing it down. Let's flip the coin and go over to the bad the bad decision. Any anything specific that that held you back that, would just be something that you would clear away if you could go back and hit the delete button. I think the the bad decisions I've made in a life, even up to recently, I fell into a little bit of a business trap. Most of those decisions have been based on fear, but I wasn't fully aware I was in fear.
Sure. It's all good. Or somehow greed slipped there. And the one that happened recently was so we're in solar, and we we were subbing out roofs. Yeah. And so we're like, you know, before you know it, we're doing fifteen roofs a week. We're like, why don't we just take this on ourselves? And which we did, and, you know, got the license that we took on the roofing. So we so we have a roofing company also. But the guy we took it out with, he's like, let's do commercial roofing.
And and that totally put us in a different trajectory. We knew nothing about it, and he's like, we could do a 100,000,000 a year. Kinda got us on that greet button and I learned a really, really valuable lesson for it and it got it got messy and, I was the partner that kinda pulled us out of commercial roofing We have no business being in there. We are the kings of the kitchen table. That's where we belong. That's what we are great at. That's what we do. We got no business being over there.
And it it got really painful. So I would say from fear, making a decision from fear, but a lot of times you're unaware when that's happening because your brain, we got this little thing back here. We got a lot of names for it in my camp. We call it the trickster. The mental midget. We call it the, the drunk monkey. Like, we we got a lot of names for it, but it's basically the amygdala part of the brain. And when that thing is in fear, it's, you know, it's triggering you. It's triggering you.
And if if you're lacking money or something, a lot of times, you don't make a decision for So am I coaching? I teach people to get aligned. I'm I'm 2 things primarily 1st and foremost. Number 1 are their values and number 2 is their mission. And if you're more spiritually oriented oriented, you could forward slash the mission to ministry because it's really the same thing.
And so long story short, I help them get aligned with that because once you're on your values and on your mission, you're not gonna go off. And so for me, I've literally re tooled over the last 6 months. I've retooled my values and my mission, again, updated them. And I'm just kinda waiting for you know, the enemy or the tempter or whatever you wanna call that to come in and offer me some kind of business deal so I could just walk away from it. You know? To comment about walking away.
Like, that's the the best leverage to have in any negotiation is the ability to walk away. So, I loved how you worded basically empowering yourself with the tools to be able to walk away from any maybe, negative or greed or bad wrong decision or temp tatation, I guess, is probably the right word by arming yourself with the 2 things. You said you gotta align yourself with values and then also your mission. And if you know who you are, we can we can we can float the word identity in there.
I use a word identity in business all the time. And so if you know who you are, And to your point, if you're spiritually focused, if you know who's you are, if you know how you're designed, then that then guides how you operate and make decisions.
It also determines helps you determine kind of what it is that you want, which then from that place you make good decisions, outside of just, like, you know, fumbling around in business like we all do, Was there a moment in time for you that was just like, okay. This is I need I need my values and on my mission, or was it just kind of like, over time, you you you've you've built this the structure.
The mission, it was interesting when I when I got connected with Mike, my mentor, we built a multimillion dollar bond company. We had over a 100 employees. I was young, and I was probably turning 26. And at the time, this is going back into the early, early nineties, just like 9192. We were doing, like, $8,000,000 a year in sales, which today sounds like a joke. But that then, it was, like, decent numbers. You know?
Yeah. And we were doing 200 accounts a So we were bringing on these alarm accounts Chaz paid $25 a month and out of 5 year contract. So that in itself over a 3 year period of time made us multimillionaires because of the account base. Right? Right. Right. So 3 years went forward and our main distributor, which happened to be AT and T at the time. AT and T was a manufacturer of alarm system. So we could tell a market back in the day and we could call up.
I'm calling on behalf of AT and T security. Everybody knew AT and T back then. And then we would offer them a little I'm totally dating myself here. These young guys, they're gonna be laughing, but, we were offering them an AT and T discount card. Yeah. And we just wanna come out and introduce the system to you and show it to you and wait till you see it, pick it up above it. And so we we would go through all that and get the appointment. We were just racking appointments up.
So we built this big thing. AT and T pulls out. We were not sophisticated. We knew how to sell. We did not go about a business. We knew how to sell our brains up. Tell them market, get in the house, get the deal. That's what we do. Nothing to do with technology. No actual alarm systems. It was just sell the product. We were just good at that. So AT and T pulls out of it. We lost the name. When we lost the name, we also kinda, we tried to recoup our vision, but we lost our vision.
Ultimately, we lost the company. And so it was in that time when I lost that company, that valley Here I am. I'm in the best neighborhood where I'm from. Like, predominantly Jewish. I got a vowel on the end of my name. The the people are coming over asking my ex Wolfe, like, what does he do for a living? You know, they're they're curious. She's like, he sells alarms and he's really good. It. You know? Yeah. And, but it was in that valley.
I was out in front of my house, and in those days, I would always do things to hurt myself. Something went wrong in my life. I would smoke cigarettes. I would drink, and do even other stupid things. But I'm out there smoking and and talking to god and you know, asking them what happened and how did this happen? And I literally got, like, a message that I thought I was God. So talk about the ego. That's that's the that's the downside of making money too fast. Yeah. And that's what happened to me.
I was making, you know, like, serious money and, you know, became a millionaire and just, like, thought I was all Chaz. And and it just went my head. So I got that message from the But most importantly, I was left with 3 questions. What the heck just happened? Yeah. How do I prevent that from ever happening again as long as I freaking live in this life? And what do I gotta do to get back and then some? Yeah. And I became obsessed with those three questions.
To this day, I still live on those three questions. And how to get it back and then some and how to prevent it Yeah. Has just obsessed me with mindset and and what I call heartset and spirituality and flow and the brain and wiring. It's totally obsessed me because it was so painful for me to go through that. I'm not a female, so I don't know what it's like to lose a baby. But for the men in here who built a business and you've lost a business Yeah.
I think that's about the close I think men are getting not close like a baby, but that's our experience of using a baby. The closest thing we can come to, which is still, like, Eons away. Yeah. Eon's away, but that was my baby, and I lost it. And it it literally took me 20 years to totally, like, process and realign that that situation that happened to me. I remember my mentor saying I was so depressed and I came from a family who meant the wellness. So depression and hurting yourself.
These were, like, go to protocols for me. Right. And and I call them up. I can't believe it. We screwed this up. Yada yada yada. And he goes, This is Mike, the mentor of me and Mike Miliam. Right. I still got money in a bag. He's flat broke, and I'm buying real estate. He's totally flat broke. He goes, know, everybody should fail as bad as we just did. And I was like, so I had, like, great people always put things in perspective for me Yeah.
And I've been so blessed to, like, just have so many great thinkers around me because Yeah. I could tell you if I was just left to my own devices. And left it out a little trickster mechanism in the back of my brain. Yeah. It just wouldn't have been pretty. Yeah. It's a downward spiral, left to most of our own devices. And so I I love that perspective of you. You fail, you fall, and sometimes it hurts really, really bad.
And then the response from a good dad or a good mentor or whoever you have speaking into your life, you know, I was using the exam example of falling, you skin in your knee as a kid or whatever, but their response is good. Good. Now let's get up. Let's dust it off. And and let's do it again because now you know what it feels like to to skin the knee or to to to go down and the lessons that you pulled away from, which is, you know, how do I prevent that?
I remember I don't share too too much from my story on these shows, but, man, makes me think of my first Valentine's Day. I had, you know, edible arrangements was my first business, my first legit, you know, at twenty four years old, I bought my first store. Couple weeks later was Mother's Day and that, like, smacked me in the face, but I didn't know really what it was. And about a year later, I had two locations, and it was my first Valentine's Day.
And I had no idea what Valentine's Day was for edible arrangements and how many thousands of pounds of strawberries we were gonna dip in chocolate. And, the way I felt afterwards was how you just described. And it was, like, the most successful holiday. I Chaz made a ton of money. You know, the businesses were doing good. Like, everything was good. It wasn't even like a failure, quote, unquote, but, man, I felt like I got my face kicked in.
And I said to myself, I didn't make sure that never ever ever happens again. And so it's not even fear. It's just like this fuel on the inside of us of going, okay. I'm so thankful for that, but that's never happened again. Yep. And so tell us, like, from that moment, like, what what how has that burned you forward, with with the other endeavors, real estate or or now solar? Like, is that just, like, constantly playing in the back of your mind?
It's funny. Mike Milley and I talk about this a lot, and he says that every year I ask him the same question, what's your secret, Mike? What's your secret? And, he'll tell me fear motivates him. And A lot of people say fear is bad, and I think it I think it serves. And I'm not here to ignore it. I'm here to listen to it. And, it it's motivating me. I don't ever wanna go back to that place. I don't ever wanna have to live through that again.
And so I'm gonna use every available resource I have spiritually coaches friends, you know, accountants, CFOs, I'm using every I'm bringing in, like, the whole infantry to to help me. Yeah. And so I don't ever have to, like, live through that experience again. So I think those defining moments in life when when you have a good a dose of pain. If you're a fighter, and I think that was my saving grace. I came up fighting. I played hockey my whole life.
I came from a neighborhood where you had to fight. And so so when when when things kicked in, it was like, you know, let's go. Let's put them up and do it. So I had that that inner fight within me as well to to strike back, but it doesn't alleviate the psychological pain we go through. We gotta process those moments, those upsets.
In my coaching, Chaz, what I do is I essentially teach people the way the brain works is when we have a trauma and it could be anything, it could be being picked last for basketball in the 3rd grade could be liking a girl and she rejected you or vice versa. Could be anything. We first suppress it. And then later on in life, if you I call it, I I coined this term called matrix acuity. And so look at your matrix, your Wolfe, Yeah. And in that case, they're in my world. I just lost the business.
Right? Right. You feed that back because something is coming up in the unconscious to clear And so I would just recommend to anybody listening to this. Don't ignore those moments because you cannot stuff beach balls under the water and hold them there for very long. Right? And, eventually, these upsets come up and they come up to clear. And when you clear them, you you reach a new point of what I like called neutrality.
And when you're in neutrality, you're not polarized to one side or the other. I love to point to Jesus on this one. Here here's a man on a cross. Right? Yeah. You know, he didn't get shot. Like, that would have been easy. Right? Right. He's getting nailed to a cross and he says, forgive them father for they know not what they do. So a Diane's words, there's gotta be a lot of truth to it. He's neutral. Right? He's neutral to his enemy.
So in personal development, I like to I like to go, like, debunk a lot of personal development stuff. Because I think that there's a lot of this thing about positive thinking. You gotta be positive. Doctor Norman Vincent Peele wrote the book. The power of positive thinking they asked his wife, why did he write the book? He's in a seminar one day. They asked him, why'd you write the book or the one? The wife says he's the most negative guy around.
And so I share this with you because to me, I think of myself as an accurate thinker, and I'm an accurate thinker because I think positive and I think negative. The balance of the 2 becomes accurate. So negative thinking has its place. It's your brain trying to protect you but you gotta understand what it's saying. You gotta learn to interpret the language of what it's saying. And don't get me wrong. The bulk of my if you were to crawl in my head today, you'd really like the conversation.
We most millions money money comes to me, you know, like, everything I touched turns to gold. It's a really good conversation. If you got me in my twenties, it was like a ping pong game, you know, back and forth, back and forth. I'm just saying, you know, embrace yourself. I'm saying to embrace your upsets. Don't walk away from them. Don't stuff them down. Those are great learning, tools, and they are on the way. They're not in the way. Everything that happens is on the way for you.
It's never in the way. It looks like it's in the way, but what we think is in the way is really on the way. Yeah. I I mean, I could just hit the pause button in real time and play back what you just said, I think that that could be like, like, just a hit on repeat and just play it and listen to it sleep, listeners. Yeah. You know, just just just soak in in in all of that. So I genuinely hope the listener does that, because I think that even though it's so funny.
I I mentioned this on a couple shows ago Chaz a lot of success principles feel, you know, cheesy or been around for a long time. I've oh, I've heard that before, you know, that type of a feeling, but they're timeless for a reason. And especially if you know, like, how and where they came from, specifically, And so I just think that you've given us. I mean, we could hit the end button, and I could I could be a happy man for the rest of the day knowing that I interviewed you today.
So it's just been incredible. I'm gonna switch over to the speed round for us. And we're gonna get some some more practicals coming coming out of your your experience here. But you've been in different industries and then even in real estate. And so I know I know that you've got a bunch going on like, how to track. And so my my question is what metric? If you could boil it all down to 1, would you track? And and I'm actually curious.
My secondary question that I'm already gonna ask you is, is that different for you with your real estate investments Chaz it would be inside your business? And if so, what is it? Okay. So to answer the question, yes, it's different at this moment. K. And the reason it's different is because I have leverage. I have a really, really good partner. So the the main metric for my business is the p and l. K. And so what are you looking for on the p and l? There's so much information on there.
We're looking for, you know, lead cost. We're looking at our sales cost. We're looking at cost of goods. We're looking at insurances. Sure. We're looking at, you know, vehicle fleet. We're looking at expenses, really dialing in on every number because when you're running a business, If you're in sales, your P and L is merely your weekly lease. Demo. Conversion ratio. How many did you close?
Yeah. I'm gonna actually got installed or delivered or whatever that is for you and were approved and you got paid on. That's your P and L. Yep. When you're running a business Chaz p and l is a bigger thing, but you're still measuring the metrics. So we measure that and we meet we meet with our CFO, like, every week. And so we're constantly looking at these things so that you can get sometimes 10th of a percent, improvements, sometimes a half of a percent, sometimes 1, sometimes 3.
So if you get a half a percent in a lot of different areas, you can improve your bottom line profit. So we're always looking at that tweak in it. So that that's my main metric. On the real estate side, I I do happen to have an amazing partner and I do something very different in real estate Chaz most people do. I've been investing in real estate for actively for 14 years. I started when I was in my twenties. I had a big failure And this was the time when the that company failed.
I also had a real estate failure at that time. Wow. And, I got out of it for 12 years, and that's one of my great regrets because time is everything when it comes to real estate. But long story short, I don't take profits from my real estate at this point. So our money is going back into the business and we buy new stuff. That's it. We buy new stuff. We improve. We rehab. We up level rents and my real estate partners on board with it, we're we're both doing the same thing.
And, I'm not grant card owned, but we've got 250,000 a month in rent. So Yeah. It's it's pretty good. So That's awesome. I I so, just appreciate your perspective there, especially on the real estate side, because we haven't interviewed a bunch of, folks in real estate. But in your position specifically, I just relate so much because that's what I've done.
I've got several businesses, but then, you know, the the the behind the scenes legacy play is just shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle to the side by real estate, by real estate, by real estate, and sometimes I've known what I've do what I was doing. Sometimes it was a a good play. Sometimes it was a bad play, but it was just buy another piece of real estate. Just go and buy. Go and buy. Oh, we got money. Great. Go buy another one. Go buy now.
Oh, we've got we've got we've got we've got equity in the property. Okay. Let's do a cash out refi and go buy another one. You know, like, bye bye bye. And and I think that you're right when you say that time is everything, but I think that you're an amazing example of only 14 years ago, and, like, it's the the coined phrase of, like, the best time to buy, real estate is now. Yep. So, it doesn't matter the market. It doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter the income that you have.
Like, you just if that's a play that you think that you need to play, then then you just gotta get started. Chaz, one one thing I'd like to share with you, I've learned from I was very fortunate to work with, in the alarm business myself and one of my current partners. We worked with a man in the alarm business. He was worth $400,000,000. And we learned off from him painfully. He was a very tough guy, really difficult teacher, and he was our money guy.
So we dealt with him, like, you know, every single day for years. But I've watched what he did in Chaz alarm business. When we were young, we were all making money. 500,000,700,000,000. We were killing it. Young, just young kids making tons of money. Porsche, Jaguars, you know, Mercedes. Like, all that stuff. This guy's driving around in an accurate freaking legend. If you guys remember Oh, I remember that car. And then he went from that to, like, a Chevy pickup truck.
And we're like, what is he doing? Delayed gratification. So this is the hardest lesson, and I wanna just tune into this for a moment because it's so important. You're a amygdala part of your brain. Wolfe never ever go long term delayed gratification. Your prefrontal cortex will go go delayed gratification. This preapproval cortex has your best, highest version of you in mind. This a amygdala part of your brain has the same same old, simple, just get by version of you in mind.
Whisper Whisper Whisper. Yeah. If you're being dictated by this, which I was for years, I didn't know how to do the delayed gratification thing. My kids I I have a twelve year old, nine year old boy. I also have older girls, but the the boys who are coming up right now, like, I'm teaching them these things every single day.
The limited gratification is the key because what I've been able to do in real estate is just multiply this portfolio So when the day comes, which is coming soon, where I just say, okay. You know, cash flow time, it's big Monday. But it's all been because we've been putting it back in. And a lot of people don't teach us Chaz, and I'm so grateful that I got to learn that from a a really, really tough teacher just observing him and watching how he created his wealth. And so I modeled that.
So I made my money in business, Yep. I'll put it in real estate. Don't even think about money. Just think about adding value. Just create value in real estate. Value value value value. Make my money. Live off my money. The extra goes into real estate simple 12 formula, and it works. It does. It works. It for sure does. I can attest to that. Okay. What book would you recommend that a 6 figure earner or a business owner read to try and get to that same figure mark?
Yeah. So I was thinking about this. If if it were a business person, Emith, if it's somebody, you know, who's in business, if it's got to do with sales, there's so many books out there, you know, on the sales side, but I think if if you're climbing, I I would be looking at two things, on the sales side. I'd be looking at the mindset of sales, and I have a myriad of people I work with I would actually read my book coming out with Ben Gaye. They, you know, master the poser's mindset.
Like, I've been in his mindset game for a long time. But on the sales side, you know, for me, there were a couple of books that were very, very impactful. So I'd like to I'm really into ninja style selling, but it's gotta be done with, you know, integrity and authenticity. And, so the the main book I read that that got me on a real track went back in the day. It was called unlimited selling power, and much of it is very relevant today.
It's by a guy named Doctor Donna Moi, and he was the 1st person to sort of, move NLP into the sales space Chaz in the in the eighties. That book was really, really profound for me. I have another book coming out, and I'm partial to my own stuff because I'm a good study. And it's called the no it's called the no close close. And it's just about done. You can actually view it on on the no close close.com, but it's not quite done yet. So Love it.
But this one, I teach a dialogue based process, which I call GERD Downselling. And in today's environment, the customer is really, really smart. They have access to information. So you gotta be operating from pure intent and your process shouldn't be pitchy, like, you know, shotgun and boom boom boom or machine gunning. It should be more dialogue, socratic, questions, pulling the questions out. Right. And and you're you're a facilitator, steering people to the conclusion.
Steering them to understand. I I was raised, Catherine, so I used the term, make the confession. Let them make the confession that they need it. Let them see for themselves where their pain is. Help them see where the pain is, and then help them see where you can solve it. And so the only other sales train trainer I would mention today who I feel, with respect is the best in the game. Is, Jeremy Minor. And, so I'm sure you know who he is. Yeah. Of course. To me, he's the best in the game.
And, you know, when I look at what he does, I literally was writing concepts in the first book I wrote, sell like crazy without going insane. I wrote this book in 1998 and I was talking about things like dry your fangs, you know, like, just silly concepts And but I was already understanding that people I have this intuitive sense just from being in the house so much. You know, doing demos. And I had this intuitive sense that that questioning just worked better.
Like, go in there with greed, you're gonna get smacked around, and that was you know, 25 years ago. Today, it's worse than ever. Oh, yeah. Go in with green and you're just looking for yourself. It's not gonna work. Again, when you're amygdala based, You're about yourself. When you pre frontal cortex base, when you learn the process, how to move your consciousness, your energy from back here, to up here, over here, you're more likely to serve. Over here, it's more about you.
Sure. You're not gonna get away with that as much in today's day and eight because people are very skeptical today. You know? Yeah. And and at the 6 figure mark, what I'm hearing you say, I mean, obviously, you gave tons of book recommendations more than anything, what I heard you say is you need to get good at sales. Yes. Right? I mean, I think that that's, the overall arching message there, so that's great.
Two questions kinda in 1, do you intentionally network and mastermind, with other entrepreneurs? And then you mentioned earlier that sometimes I'd like to ask do you ever, like, put your budget or do you spend money on personal developments? I'll kinda put those things together. Do you do you mastermind and do you spend money on it or other personal development? I do, and I I do it primarily virtually at the moment only because of time.
I'm I'm super, super busy, but I have been involved in many programs through the years. I did, Dan Kennedy's strategic coach. I used to go to Canada for that. I don't have time to go to Canada for that anymore. I got soccer and, moving tie for my kids and to do. Last year, I spent a $125,000 on coaches. Yeah. Love it. So I am not shy with coaching. I am always coached at all times. I believe that the the higher you go Chaz you hit new somebody said, I love the same, new levels, new devils.
And when you hit new levels, it's like you vacuum up things that are in the mind and things that don't necessarily want you going to the next level. So Chaz you go to next levels, I'm I'm a big believer in, investing in, coaching. Masterminds, I'm involved in different groups at the moment, but they're they're virtual. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense for today. Okay. Last question. You ready? Yep. Mark, if you lost it all, what would you do? I knew you were gonna ask that.
I would dust my briefcase off, and I would go sell. Just go sell. And everything worked its way out, just the way it worked its way out to this point, it would work its way out all over again. Yeah. It all starts with sales, and that's It does. It does in in action because you said the first thing is dust off. Don't don't don't sit back, dust off, and and go.
I had I had a, a meeting this morning with one of my clients, actually, but we were talking about, you know, he's got some friends, and I've got some friends that kinda say the same things, which is, you know, oh, man. And, like, every time I turn around, there's another thing that you're doing or another success that you've had, you know, everything you turn turns to go or everything touch turns to gold. And my response to a lot of those people is, no, I'm just touching a lot.
You know, like, yeah, just because you don't see all the things that don't turn to gold, that just I'm just I'm just doing more. And so I love that that action place that you just took us. So Mark, if if someone connected with you today, they wanna get coached by you. They want to just connect with you. They wanna do a real estate deal with you. I don't know what there is. They wanna buy your book. How do they find you, website, social media? What what you got? The books they could go to Amazon.
All my books are on Amazon. Social media is everything's at mark to sonycoach, and then, of course, mark to sony.com, which at the moment is down, but it will be up here in probably the next 10 days. We'll redo all Yeah. Absolutely. We'll put the we'll put some links and slash your name and stuff in the in the comments, and so you can always just click there and find his stuff, of course, but, Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure for you to be on the show here. And thank you for just serving.
You talked a lot about that and giving back, and that's really what a king does. And so we just still thank you for your time and being able to pour into us today. Really appreciate it. Glad to be here. It was amazing. Thanks for listening to Gathering the Kings. We hope you got a ton of value today and learned a thing or 2 about taking your business to 7 figures and beyond.
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