The Journey From Expert to Influential Leader with Dr. Marc Reynolds

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast our guest is Dr. Marc Reynolds, a professional leader and expert who shares valuable insights on career development, leadership, personal growth, and creating meaningful impact through your work. In this engaging conversation, Dr. Reynolds explores the lessons that come from building a successful career, developing expertise, navigating professional challenges, and turning experience into opportunities for growth and influence. We also discuss the importance of self-awareness, intentional leadership, continuous learning, resilience, and staying focused on the bigger picture when pursuing long-term success. Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, coach, professional, or aspiring leader, this episode offers practical perspectives and inspiration to help you develop your capabilities, lead with greater purpose, and create a career that makes a lasting difference.

You can find him on:
https://drmarcconsulting.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@DrMarcReynolds
https://foundyourvoice.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-reynolds-4076924/
Email: info@drmarcconsulting.com
Phone no. : (818) 319-3813

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

So if I was to say who did I start with, I started with mostly people who are interested in communicating and learning how to speak more healthily, speak to more people, be able to speak all day in an environment and be healthy with it. I learned how I spent a lot of time working with employees on how to be comfortable and come across as authentic in board meetings or high pressure situations, working with teams on how to present in a way that didn't feel like they were presenting, just felt like a conversation and was still engaging to people and interesting. I'd probably say that's where I started.

Davis Nguyen 0:35

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swain, and I'm a business coach and the founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars. In every episode of the podcast, you're gonna learn lessons that took our guests years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is gonna give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:19

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Dr. Mark Reynolds, who is an executive coach, leadership development strategist, and founder of Dr. Mark Consulting and Found Your Voice, FYV Consulting. He holds a doctorate in opera directing from the University of Texas at Austin and draws on his background as a former opera stage director to help corporate leaders align high-stakes teams, sharpen communication, and drive organizational performance, focusing on stakeholder alignment, post-acquisition integration, and culture transformation.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Welcome to the show, Mark. Thanks, Pedro. Thanks for having me on.

Pedro Stein 2:05

Oh, I'm excited to have you here. Okay. And um, you know, I'm kind of a comic book nerd myself. So I love the first editions, right? The origin story. And before we get into what you do now, Mark, I'm curious how this all actually started, right? So what was going on in your life when coaching became more than just an idea?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Sure. Um I've been involved in business type stuff uh my whole life. Uh in in high school, I remember giving a keynote address to a group of business executives in Los Angeles. So fast forward, I ended up going into music and ultimately got a doctoral degree in opera stage direction. So so so people aren't confused. Sometimes they get confused between a director and a conductor. Director would be everything you you see in a production would be my job, right? So how the performers move, how they deliver lines, sets, costumes, lights, all the behind the scenes stuff would be my job, right? So what was interesting is as I was doing that, uh, I did it professionally, and I also ran college opera programs and businesses and stuff like that. I just had people that would come to work with me one-on-one for a variety of different reasons, and they'd be like, hey, I think you could actually help me with this and this and this uh in business. And I was surprised every time how much the business world was just a different stage. It was almost my skills as a director were even more applicable in the business world than they were on the stage. Uh, being able to work with teams, get a wide variety of backgrounds to work together quickly, often in different languages, different ego levels, different expertise, under a tight timeline, usually brand new teams every time. Um, not my ideal. I love reworking with the team because you can refine it and you you build rapport, but that's just often the case is you have a lot of new people together and a deadline that's not going to go away, right? You have you have a large audience that's about to show up at a very specific time, and so you you can't get it wrong. And I mean, you can get it wrong, you can't back off, right? And so it is just a crucible to learn all the things that were absolutely are absolutely essential in getting people to work together well and getting people aligned in the business world. Um, and you know, having run my own companies, working with different stakeholders, board members, being on different boards of directors myself. Um ultimately uh I've just found a lot of joy in working with executives. They're very motivated. A lot of them are open to learning and growing. And when you see not just the executives, but the employees find value, not just value, but feel seen and heard and feel like not just their workplace environment is improving, but their entire life is improving because of the work that's being done, it's really satisfying. And uh again, different different stage, same skills. Um, and that's kind of how I describe my origin story. There you go.

Pedro Stein 5:43

Okay. Well, first of all, right, you're you're telling me the difference between an opera director and conductor, and you're like, oh, most people don't get it right. And I'm like, I don't I don't know the definition. I'm I'm here to hear, right? I'm like, and you enlighten me. So thank you for that. That's awesome. I didn't know that that difference. Okay, that's one thing. The second thing that I would love for us to dive in is like, as you already established, right? In the early days, it sounds like advice giving. You're like giving tips here and there, but eventually something happens, something clicks, and you're like, oh, wait a minute, I'm actually building a real business around this, you know? So when that shift happened for you, like was it like the first paying customer? Was it the first invoice, the the website launch, you know, when you realize, okay, this is actually a real business?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Sure. There were two big events, uh, two big moments that really made me think I might shift what I'm doing from opera and and universities and teaching to doing this full-time, which is what I do now. Uh, because again, along the entire road, while I was doing opera directing, I was working with businesses, it just never stopped. It was just always part of what I was doing. But this click into wait a minute, maybe corporations and um larger organizations, companies, uh, maybe I have something that they need that is unique, that they're not gonna get somewhere else. One was uh I had a uh at the time it was actually a voice student who I worked with. Uh, she worked with a company uh called uh called Checker. Um and um they had a need uh for a off it was a training thing for some of their employees in in San Francisco. And then um, and she's like, hey, I know this guy, he'd be a good fit. Because a lot of times for some reason I work with uh executives if they come to me for voice stream or whatever and it transitions into something else. Not on my purpose, they just ask and it just uh ends up going that way. So I went out to work with them on the off-site, they ended up having me come back and work with one of their executive teams. They had this big uh yearly kind of presentation they did to investors and and all their people on what was coming up next. And so I worked with their executives um on how to present, which is one of the things that that I'll I'll do, I'll work with people on. And they were they were just surprised because a lot of them they were not new to the block, they've been doing this for a while, and uh they saw a lot of value. The response was just really good. And I thought, wow, uh this is easy. I can do this in my sleep. This is like this is not a, you know, this is one of the easiest things I've ever had to do in my life. Um, and it paid really well, right? I was like, oh, how about that? Fast forward, I have another client who's been with me for a long time. She's amazing. Uh, and she's been executive for a variety of large companies. And uh she actually came to me to work with me during COVID uh because she was bored, honestly, is kind of what it was. And so she'd always wanted to learn how to sing, and so she came to me again as a voice student. Then over time she it transitioned into executive coaching. Um, she's just like, I think you could help me with this, and how about this and this, and just it went that direction. And over time, as she went into a new company, she'd say, Hey, I think I want you to do with my team what you do with me. And so I go in and we'd work with a wide variety of variety of things. I'd interview the team I'm working with, figure out where the problems are, and then we would work on those problems. And I remember one day talking to her and I was like, you know, I just want to remind you so I'm transparent. Um, you remember that I I'm not, I didn't go to to business school to do this. I'm an opera director. I just wanted to, I, you know, you know that that I just want to make sure. I don't want to be like hoodweaking you or like making you believe I'm something I'm not. You remember, right? And she's like, absolutely. And I've never stayed with someone this long, ever. Um she's like, you've been more effective. The tools have been more transformative for my people than anyone I've ever worked with. And so I want you just to shut up and keep doing what I I need you to do. And she said that in a nice way, right? She wasn't, we're we're we're close enough where that wasn't rude, right? It made me laugh. And I and I thought, you know what? Um, I can see it. I can see it in the people's face when we show up and they say things like, This is the first time in five years working at this company that I felt heard, that I felt valued, um, that I felt like I was invested in, like I mattered. And these aren't like bottom-level employees, these are actually higher-level employees saying things like this. And I thought, you know, if we can do this and not just make an impact in their workplace, but so a lot of these people would say, and I use these same tools at home after we we got them and used them and applied them, and it's transformed my home life as well. You can't really beat that, you know. Um, that's that's a great reason to wake up in the morning. So that's kind of my story. It's been a really strange journey. Um, where a lot of times I'm like, wait, why did why am I the one doing it? Um and ultimately what I come back to over and over is because no one else can do that, do it quite the same way and have the same effect, and they find value, right? It changes their lives, and that's good enough for me. If it if it works, then it works, right? If it's been that consistent every time. So love it.

Pedro Stein 11:53

I love the fact that it's about them, not you, right? If it works, it works. That that's the key part to me, at least that I picked up on what you said. Now, I'm curious about a couple things too, right? We're talking about 17 years in the game. That's a long journey. So, first of all, I would love to understand the evolution of your ideal client profile, right? The people you started serving, right? Because in the early days for coaching, sometimes we're trying to help everyone. Eventually, we sharpened the blade, we ended up attracting a certain type of people. Not sure if that happened to you, but that's what usually happens. So who did you start serving, the evolution to it? And uh, who do you serve now, Mark?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

I serve a broad range of people. And you're right. It does start with like, hey, if you're gonna pay me to do it, I'll do, I'll do it, right? And who I technically so let me let me go through your question in sequence here, so so it's it's not confusing. So if I was to say who did I start with, I started with mostly people who are interested in communicating and learning how to speak more healthily, speak to more people, uh, be able to speak all day in an environment and be healthy with it. I learned how I spent a lot of time working with employees on how to be comfortable and come across as authentic in board meetings or high pressure situations, um, working with teams on how to present in a way that didn't feel like they were presenting, just felt like a conversation, um, and was still engaging to people and interesting. Probably say that's where I started. And again, that's easy. Ultimately, over time, those all transition to something else. That's never where it stayed. Ultimately, where I've gotten to and where they always end up going. I don't know why, but this is always where it ends up going. Is it go it goes to the broad term of alignment? And for me, let me break down where that what that means for me. What that means when I work with a organization on alignment is trust and leadership. How do I help leaders and employees trust each other? I feel like there's there's legitimate trust. Two, how do I help them communicate and communicate really, really well efficiently, without putting up defense mechanisms, without all the misfires and inefficiencies that come up from just bad communication, and then off in cultural changes too, ones that actually fit and line up while being efficient all at once. That's kind of where it all comes down to. Now, if I had to boil it down even further, it's this in an age of AI, increasingly the problem is the bottleneck is humans, humans and human problems, right? The fires that humans, because we're human. No, that will only become increasingly the state where it's not skills, lack of skills, lack of knowledge, not lack of those things that traditionally you hire somebody because they have skills and knowledge, right? That's helpful, and that's still gonna be useful, but really it's going to be more and more, I believe, about people that can create connection, that can communicate well, that can add meaningful connection and value to people's life. I mean, how do you differentiate a business when AI is honestly gonna homogenize most business? Right? We're all going through the same AI systems. How are you really gonna stand out? What's gonna draw a customer? Well, it's gonna be how connected they feel, how human it feels. That's what's gonna make it different, right? So again, that's gonna become the bottleneck. So, from my vantage point, it all comes down to how do we make humans in the workplace feel seen, heard, and valued? How do we help them thrive? And how do we help work not just become a place where they come get a paycheck, but where coming to work impacts their entire life in a positive way. Where they gain skills, knowledge, ability, connections, meaningful interactions that change how they go through their day-to-day. Because that is ultimately what is going to differentiate one business from another. I mean, say you show up and you talk to a person and they're like, Yeah, hi, good to meet you, and and really an AI could just do what they do, it's not gonna stand out. But if a person can make you feel cared for, like you're a real human, have a real human interaction and connection quickly, you're gonna come back over and over and over and over and over again for that. That's gonna be business. So it's it's this irony, right, where we have this hyper focus right now on AI, where ultimately I think we're gonna learn once that settles down a little bit, that the true investment is still going to be in humans. It's just gonna be a slightly different focus and model. Sorry, I went on a tangent there for you.

Pedro Stein 17:05

You're good. Um, yeah, that is such an interesting topic. Like I've seen people using type posts on posts just so people can, oh, this is not a bot talking, right? That's right. This is not a bot, uh a post from another chat GPT, whatever Claude AI slot that we see out there. And since we're talking about a lot of consistency, I don't want to get into a rabbit hole here, but consistency on the social media. I've seen people like just posting for a posting. It's so easy today, right? To be one of one more uh part of the noise out there on the posting side. But anyhow, I don't want to digress. I want to talk about you a little bit, okay? Sure, sure. Um, and I would love for us to do a little bit of a game of pretend here. Okay. So let's pretend I'm your avatar, okay? Uh I, as I fully understood, I'm not sure. Um, it it starts with interested in communicating, right? Speaking and all that. Then we move to alignment, which considers trust, culture inside the business. Uh, then we realize the bottleneck is humans and all that you uh mentioned to me. But let's pretend I'm the avatar. You can pick uh whatever lane they're coming from. Uh now if it's top of funnel, mid of funnel, you know, whatever that looks like. I'm the avatar. I'm your ideal client profile, put it simply. So, first of all, how would I be able to find you, Mark? Like marketing-wise.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

How'd you be able to find me? Um right now you could you might find me uh, obviously, LinkedIn. I do post content there. I have a blog, I have a podcast that um I've done some work on. I have a website that you can find me. Um the way I'm hoping people will find me is obviously first is word of mouth. They'll have talked to other people. But other than that, I I actually have um a really powerful tool that I use a lot. And I'm actually about to start sharing um more assertively, more aggressively. That's not the right word, but you know what I mean. Um I'm going to be sharing it more. It's and it won't cost people for the start. And and one of there's two tools. One of the one of them is it's a personality and motivation assessment. Oh, great. Another personality test, really? Thanks. That's great. So unique. Um, really, what the interesting part is uh and and what's different is I take a lot of the really powerful ones that have been around for a long time, condense them down. I actually use this initially as a character analysis tool, a way for poor performers to dive into a fictional character quickly. Right? I developed this over years and years of teaching, of directing, of trying to help performers connect with a character. All of a sudden I go into business. I'm like, I need to know who these people are I'm talking to, like deeply and quickly. So I was like, eh, I'm just gonna create this assessment. But basically, it walks them through the process to give me the knowledge I need to be able to know them really deeply and really quickly. What makes them tick? What makes them choose what they choose? What makes them care? What makes them what makes them work, right? So I did that for myself. And I was like, wait a minute. If I was an employer, I went to I went to a few different quite large large companies to work with them. And I would have a debrief with their um, you know, the executives afterwards. And be like, did you did you know that most of your employees are uh-uh-uh-uh? And if you want them to really actually feel like they matter, you'll do X, Y, and Z. And this is what's going to motivate them. Did you know, did have you have you tried this? They're like, I had no idea. Not a clue. Oh. Then they come back two weeks later. They'd be like, oh my gosh. The supposed bad fruit, the fruit that was like infecting everyone else and making this toxic work environment that brought them in the first place. If they just applied what I did, they like, they became my best person. They became my right-hand man as soon as I understood what was going on, why they were doing it, and and addressed the situation. It was a complete 180 flip. Okay. Anyways, so short version. I am now starting to just put this out there. They get an automatic AI response. It runs it through my system, my model, and then I invite them to come and talk to me because no assessment's perfect, so we make sure it's how it should be. So that's another way that um I'm hoping people will start finding me because then we could jump in really quick, really deep, and get them what the They need to make significant changes quickly. Um, so that's another model. There's another way that people can reach me. So those those are currently kind of the tools that I'm using. I'm always looking for new ways to jump in and make it so that when people interact with me or they have their first contact with me, they find value and and that I'm helpful, right? Of other things that get me out of bed, if I can be helpful to someone, I'll bend over backwards. I love being helpful helpful to people, right? That that makes me happy. And so that's kind of where where I live.

Pedro Stein 22:36

So okay. So uh let we're still in the game of pretend I'm still your avatar, by the way. Yeah. Uh let's say uh looked at your stuff, LinkedIn, you know, your blog. Oh, and side note a uh a fellow podcast host, right? I'm feeling the pressure already, but okay. Let's say less into one of your the episodes and also uh could have taken the assessment or even was referred to you, right? They were like, hey, you gotta talk to Mark. Okay? Sure. So what happens is I reached out and I'm like, hey Mark, I heard great things about you. Would love to know how it looks like to work with you. So we have like we could speed up the sales process, we could say there's alignment and we just go from there, okay, or not if you want to add a note there. But what I would love to understand is like if you could give me a little peek behind the curtain of how does it look like to work with you and your business and the outcomes I can expect, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Absolutely. So there's two ways we would start this conversation. One, I would say, hey, where are your biggest roadblocks? Where are your biggest problem points? Where where are the biggest and most consistent fires being lit in your company? Is it a specific team, specific person, a specific area? What's giving you the most trouble? What's keeping you up at night? Then we go from there. If they're like, uh, I don't know, nothing in particular, not sure. You know, I the numbers are okay, they're great. I just think we could be better, right? I think we can grow. Um I feel like we got most of it. I'd be like, okay, great. That's what when I would come in and be like, what I would suggest is let's choose, let's start with a team. Ultimately, I think you're you're gonna find value in doing the entire organization, but let's start with a team. I want you to choose the team, and I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna apply my very specific interview method. I come in, I interview your team, I give you the report of the patterns that I'm seeing of both risks and opportunities. Where are the problems? If I come back and you you're and you learn things, you find value in it, great, let's expand this. If not, then I'm still gonna identify issues. I'll give you a game plan of where we're gonna go, how I we would solve those, and then we'll go from there. The challenge with that most executives come across, and I actually uh one of my interviews uh I don't that I had on a podcast was uh a client of mine from OpenAI. And he said, We don't know what we don't know. And if you look deeper into the science of it, you cannot find out the true story from inside the organization. You talk to any employee, you're like, are you are you really gonna tell your boss the full story? Are you gonna tell HR the full story? Who are you gonna tell the full, the full unvarnished truth to? Uh my bestie, right? That doesn't work in the company. They're not. Even if they think they are, this is the interesting part. Even if they think they are, they won't. Because subconsciously, the self-preservation that I want to keep my job, I want to keep myself alive, is going to keep them from telling the whole story. So the biggest blind spot any executive has is that they don't know what they don't know. And so they need a method to know those things, to figure out what they are. Because the reality is you don't know if that new hire you just had is the biggest risk in your company. You don't know if the lowest person on the totem pole actually has a target that is the best opportunity. They have a link, they have a connection that you just don't know about. That could be your next big breakthrough for the company. So, how? How do you how do you do this? Well, we have a very proprietary method that makes sure that people feel safe to do this. So universally, when I go through and I start doing these interviews, there's a few things that happen. One is we, for example, one company went through in a session with um 15 people, because I don't like to do less than 10, less than 10, it becomes too obvious of what's where's the information coming out. And on uh anonymity gets destroyed, kind of. We can still do it, but it's not ideal. What happens is let me give you a case study from from one company. Went through 10 million dollars of risk that if we wouldn't have discovered would have within three to six months led to 10 million dollars in lawsuits. Was discovered, solved, fixed, disappeared. 10 million dollars of a not that big company. It was big. It was about 150 employees at that point. Okay. But then on the flip side, same conversations, 15 people, and in those conversations, at least, and that's at least six million dollars worth of opportunity was identified. That they hadn't taken seriously before. It had been discovered, um, but they didn't realize they just it had never he'd never fully been heard, never fully been unraveled, right? It was actually three different individuals, three different opportunities. Same story. They've been interviewed, they brought it forward, but they just didn't, it just it never made it all the way up the chain. It just never had a chance, right? So we un un unveiled those, put to it a potential game plan of what that would look like and really what the opportunity looked like. And all of a sudden, senior management was like, oh, absolutely. They target right on in on it within a year. We're capitalizing on those opportunities and made actually much more than six million. Huh. So why why didn't they do that? Well, if they're doing a good job, they would have interviewed them, right? They would have caught that before. Their direct reports would have caught it. They did interview their direct reports, their executives were amazing. Why didn't they? For this very reason that's self-preservation. But wouldn't they share these opportunities? Wouldn't that give them more of a job? Not necessarily. Because it was going against the current direction. Right? Um, and other people, if they pushed too hard, it seemed like they got fired for pushing too hard. Or they were the newbie and and they just they didn't want to rock the boat, they just wanted to show they could do their job, they didn't think they'd actually be taken seriously. They didn't, I mean, the the reasons are actually there are many, many reasons why employees might not share even opportunities. So that alone, usually when we have those those interviews, they uncover a multitude of things that need to be addressed, opportunities and risks. I'll lay those out. You as the the executive will say, Okay, cool. I know about these ones, we already got that covered. This one's interesting, or we've been working on this, nothing's worked so far, give it a go. And we just start working through the list and we keep interviewing people, which uncovers new new risks, new opportunities, and we just keep working through it. Um, and so that's kind of where we go. Or I can say, or I can say to them also, you don't know, you probably have an offsite, if nothing else. You know, if you have your once-a-year, twice-a-year off-site with your executive team, just bring me in for half a day or a day. I'll they'll find it interesting, they'll be entertained, they'll enjoy it at the very least. But I can almost guarantee you on the flip side, you're gonna want me to come back again and work, and your employees are gonna want me to work with them more because they're gonna see tremendous value. Again, not in just their day-to-day work environment, but my goal is to change the workplace and their entire lives, how they how they function to find more value and um enjoy in what they're doing. So that's that's probably more words than I'd normally spend, but since we're on a podcast, I want to lay it out, right?

Pedro Stein 31:16

Okay, no, we're not counting words here, totally fine. Okay, it's a podcast. Now, thank you for sharing that. Very interesting. Seems like value is like uh the key word here, deliver that value, you know, so people still come back and and you can ease off the pressure on the environment so they can actually share, you know, animal animosity and all that, and and and how do you framed it? Really like it. Okay. Now, I am curious, Mark, about where you're taking all this, you know. What's the direction you're aiming this business towards? You're 17 years in the game. So are you thinking more about growth, leverage, building a team, or refining what already works? You know, what feels most exciting right now?

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Sure. So, like I said, the majority of my 17 years, this was a side gig. This was just something that clients kept just they asked me to do it, and I do it. Um, you know, I I'm not gonna turn down a job and it was enjoyable. It's just been the past few years where I was like, um, I I I'm just loving what I'm doing, and I want to make this my full-time gig. And so I'm now at the point where I am seeing I know I have the tools that are gonna change and that are gonna drive business growth as well as human capital growth so that the people themselves are gonna feel like they're growing as the company is growing rather than they're being used and abused and and chewed up and thrown at, you know, uh for the company's benefit. Um and so my goal now is to take what I have, offer it to or the organizations that I go into, but continue to start to scale, build teams so that we can offer it to more and more people. Um and as we're doing that and scaling, it's just again the goal is to how many lives can we impact for good? How many workplaces can we change so that people are excited to go to work? And that when they go home, they feel like a better person because of having gone to work, not worse. Um, so that's that's my goal right now is how do I take what I have and offer it to more people? And I can't help, I mean, again, I love teaching and I love learning, and so we'll always be refining, we'll always be improving um with each new client that comes in. We'll take the lessons learned from there and keep generating out. So um I don't want to say we're not, we like have figured it out and we have our method and it's the only way it goes. I'm I'm always taking the client in front of me and trying to generate the most powerful way to approach their specific issues.

Pedro Stein 33:57

Awesome. Okay, and you know, even when things are going well, Mark, there's always something under construction, right? So, what's the main thing you're actively working on or trying to improve in the business right now? For me, yeah, to impact more people, right? Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

No, absolutely. So uh, like I was saying, majority of my business has just landed in my lap. Uh I I didn't look for them. I didn't even expect to be coaching consulting initially. Um they saw something in what I was providing them and and ultimately wanted more of that and wanted me to provide it for the team. So now at this point when I'm going full-time, um, I get that referrals, fine, word of mouth fine. Um, but to be able to scale and go quickly, I also want to be able to reach people who have no clue who I am and be able to get them in the door. So I want a more reliable pipeline of people. And and that sounds really like I just want more money. But like we're saying, I want to help as many people as I can possibly help. Um, but if they don't know who I am or where I'm at, it doesn't matter, right? And so that's where I'm at right now is how do I get that help to the people, help them see what I have to offer, help them see that that is a tool that will benefit them and make it worth it. So that's where I'm at right now is building that reliable, consistent pipeline so that I'm reaching more and more people, and so then all the other funnels are growing and in quality and consistency.

Pedro Stein 35:34

Okay. Now, uh I'd love for us to uh step in into sci-fi territory real quick. Okay. Sure. Let's pretend, Mark, we have a time machine in front of us, okay? And you can go back in time those 17 years. You can go back to when you started the business, right? Even it was a side hustle, you know, side gig and all the thing and all that. Uh but I want you to think about one piece of business advice that you wish you knew back then, 17 years ago, when you started your business, that you know now. Okay. And what advice would you give yourself to that specific point in time?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

I think my advice would be to build the the team of people that I wanted around me earlier and with with more urgency. Right? That the reality is there is no way to really grow and scale as a single individual. You need a team. And I learned that really early as an opera director. I love teams, I loved working with teams, I knew that that's what I loved. But probably because this started as a side gig and it just kind of fell in my lap, I just kind of did it when it came along. But to really change, to really scale, to really grow and impact more people, you gotta have a team around you.

Pedro Stein 37:00

So love that. Okay. Now, before we close this out, Mark, if someone resonated with what you shared and wants to follow your work, right? Where should they go? I mean, we're gonna have all the links in the description, but the best way to find you.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Yeah, best way to find me is just our website, drmarconsulting.com. That's M-A-R-C. Not a K, M-A-R-C, two C's in the middle there, Mark Consulting. Uh, drmarkconsulting.com. And if you go there, you'll find a button that will you can meet with me, you can set a meeting, you can take our assessment, um, and that will ping me, you can check us out, phone call is uh uh our phone number is also on there, so you can phone call uh as well.

Pedro Stein 37:45

Okay, you know, there were a few moments from this conversation that really stood out to me. So I'm gonna highlight them real quick. Okay. Awesome. So first one, we were talking about your origin story, right? And how one thing that really caught my attention was like how organic it was, right? It's not something like you woke up a day and you're like, I am going to be a coach slash consultant. No, it was like advice giving, you know, uh to your peers and people reaching out, and you're like, yeah, you can do this, you can do that. And eventually you've built your own business as a side hustle at the start, but now full-time, right? So that really how organic, how natural that that that felt. That so that's really cool to watch. Uh on a side note, the the business world is a just a different stage. You mentioned something like that, right? I don't want to butcher the way you said it, but something like that. And and the more you talked, the more clear it got for me, right? I was like, opera, and then you start talking about the stage, and you're like, different uh the ego dynamics, the deadlines. I'm like, oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense because it's the culture at the end of the day, and and having that good mix of different people, right? So yeah, I'm like, that's exactly how business is. So that's also something that really interesting. Um also you mentioned like that quote. We from your actually your open AI client, we don't know what we don't know, right? And then brings it up to the self-preservation we were talking about, and uh how employees sometimes they don't share even opportunities, right? And the different reasons to it. Like I am a business owner now. I was a corporate employee, I worked in banking here in Brazil, I worked in a consulting for Ernest and Young here in Brazil. And sometimes, man, there are different reasons, and one that really pops up to my mind is like, dude, I am drowning here, right in workload. If I came up with another idea, they're gonna say, Yeah, that sounds great, run with it, right? And I'm like, I am not gonna do that, right? I'm already doing it, uh, you know, overtime. I'm busting my ass here. I don't want more work. So there's that an up a missed opportunity potentially from me that I was like, nah, uh, not doing it. Uh that's one thing. Uh the last but not least, it's like we were talking about scaling, and you were like, how many lives can we impact for good? Not just impact, right? We can impact lives for bad, but for good. And you're like, oh, and then there's the money component, but I love that because the agenda is not backwards. Uh, whenever I'm thinking about outcome, I think money, cash, uh, dollars are always means to an end, right? If you have, and I worked in sales as well. And whenever I was uh in sales and I'm thinking about closing people or my agenda, that really didn't work out. I need to think about them, I need to listen to them, what they want. Eventually, if I can help, great. I'm right there to help them. But that's not the agenda. The agenda is to serve, is to be of service, to help, to impact them in a good way. Now, this is just my long-winded way of saying that I really appreciate you taking the time and being open with us, Mark. It was great having you on.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Thanks so much for having me on, Pedro. This was an absolute pleasure.

Davis Nguyen 41:10

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business through six, seven, and eight figure years all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you and your business.