Creating Impact and Freedom through Bold Goals with Mark Stern

What does it take to leave a high-powered corporate career and find true fulfillment as an entrepreneur? Mark Stern, CEO of Custom Box Agency, candidly shares his transformative journey from corporate life at Deloitte to building a thriving business that supports 30 team members. We explore how Mark's courageous leap into entrepreneurship in 2018 revitalized his health and well-being, allowing him to create impactful solutions and find a new sense of freedom and satisfaction. His story is a testament to the power of setting ambitious goals and embracing challenges to foster personal growth and build confidence.

Join us on an inspiring exploration of how setting ambitious goals, like monthly 5K runs and tackling a Spartan race, can lead to transformative personal and professional growth. We discuss how the gamified experience of these challenges helped Mark shift from self-doubt to confidence, ultimately leading to the completion of an empowering half marathon mud run. Mark's story highlights the importance of having others hold a bigger vision for us, inspiring similar transformative experiences in both business and personal life. Discover how focusing on impact over financial gain and creating meaningful customer journeys can drive real transformation and results.

We also uncover the secrets of niching down and trusting intuition in business decision-making. Mark shares valuable insights on prioritizing his custom box business over other ventures, listening to gut feelings, and navigating challenging situations by focusing efforts on a niche. Emphasizing a growth mindset, he reveals how obstacles become opportunities for learning, and how the law of reciprocity can foster a supportive network that facilitates mutual success. Learn how making it easier for others to help us succeed can enhance both personal and professional journeys.

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:00 Entrepreneurship and Fulfillment
• 10:05 Overcoming Challenges and Achieving Impact
• 17:26 Uncovering Niche and Deep Expertise
• 27:15 The Power of Niching Down

Transcript

Mark: 0:00

I don't need the Lamborghini, I don't need the big, flashy jet, I don't need a lot to live. But I get a lot of fulfillment out of knowing that I'm creating things that actually truly help people, because I feel like we're in a world right now that people are in a lot of pain and they are asking for help, and I also see a lot of business owners that have the solution to their problems, but they're so in their way that they're choosing not to help these people who need their help because they have a story in their brain that they can't break through, but they have the solutions and the products to help them. So that impact piece is really important to me. It's not necessarily about me, it's about them.

Nico: 0:48

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with our next guest, mark Stern.

Nico: 1:25

Mark is the CEO of Custom Box Agency, an award-winning agency that services many of the top names in the online space. He was recognized by Forbes as one of the next 1,000 entrepreneurs to watch and was featured in Joe Coleman's last Wall Street Journal bestseller Never Lose an Employee Again. That's a very specific title there, mark. His agency has launched well over 100 campaigns for six-, seven and eight-figure business owners, so he has a unique perspective on modern-day business practices, and I have had a very small taste of it right before we started the podcast. Welcome to the show, mark. Introduce yourself. Who is Mark Stern?

Mark: 2:12

Well, first of all, nico, thank you for having me here. I'm thrilled to be here, really excited for this conversation. But yeah, who is Mark Stern? I was born and raised in Montgomery, alabama and, like my peers, I was raised to believe that there's just one natural progression to life that you graduate high school, you go to college, you graduate college, you get the job, then you go to grad school and you get the dream job in the house with the picket fence and the family, and that's life. And I used to joke to say I was the poster child of that journey, because when I do things, I typically go all in, and I had one job.

Mark: 2:46

From undergrad to business school, I had this dream to do national marketing for liquor brands, so like launching new products for Absolute and Jameson and Malibu. Then I got my MBA at Duke and after Duke, worked for a big consulting firm Deloitte for many years, and it was 2012 that I graduated with my MBA. I was $165,000 in student loan debt. I had this inner entrepreneurial desire. Yet I just signed a two-year commitment to this consulting firm and I had no quality of life. If you're familiar with any kind of working for a big firm, 4.45 AM, a cab would pick me up, they would take me to the airport. I'd fly to my client, fly back on Thursday night or Friday morning and then Monday do it again. I did that for six years straight and while doing that, I got exposed to the digital marketing realm, the online entrepreneurial space and just the company I worked for. The rule was, as long as you work for us, anything you produce in and outside the firm they own. So I could not even have a side hustle, but I didn't have the mental capacity because all I was doing was working and just had this moment in time.

Mark: 3:55

It was December of 2017, that it was between Christmas and December 27th.

Mark: 4:01

I had this weird premonition that if I stay in this job, it will kill me, and I was on the verge of becoming a junior partner at the firm and I thought that's where I'd be and came back and January 3rd of 2018, sat down with the partner that I reported to and just said I got to go, and that kind of jumpstarted this itch to explore entrepreneurship and it has been one of the most incredible journeys.

Mark: 4:23

I can't believe that I've been playing this game for six years at this point, because it has been one of the best like healing to the soul things that I've ever done, and with the simple realization that, as an entrepreneur, you can truly come up with a concept or come up with a way to serve and then bring it to life, and the only person who's telling, typically, is what's between your two ears. And so to navigate that and realize if I'm in a corporate job, I'm limited to the bracket that I was hired in or the role that I was hired in, and I may be in a job that I don't even enjoy, but as an entrepreneur, I have the power to create and I can create whatever I want and truly bring it to life in a really powerful way in the marketplace and have it be a product that can help people.

Nico: 5:11

Yeah, that's a beautiful story. Actually, it's a beautiful reality because you're telling the story, but it's a beautiful reality. So can I imagine that you haven't been sick physically or mentally since you did start your business?

Mark: 5:22

Sick. Do you say yeah, yeah, it's crazy, because the game is. I always joke and say to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little bit nutty, because you are literally walking off a cliff hoping something works and that your livelihood is dependent on it. And as you grow, our team is now 30 people, and so now the livelihood is not me, it's also the families that are also growing this vision and growing this mission as well.

Mark: 5:45

And so, like it when I was at Deloitte the last year, every time I would get on an airplane I can truly feel my body breaking down, and it was this feeling that and it was one of my friends. The best way I can describe it is in corporate America, any recommendation you make has to be backed up by data, so it doesn't matter what your intuition says or what your gut says. Everything that we did in that corporate setting was you have to back it up and what does the data say? And the thing that I learned to exercise a lot more was tapping into more of the intuition, the woo, this part that is more. Some people may say it's spiritual, and that was just not something I learned to exercise in corporate America, but as an entrepreneur, one of my friends, who is incredibly woo. She looked at me and said the universe is sending you signs that you were so off track, so like body breaking down these premonitions that I was getting the things that were happening.

Nico: 6:39

She was looking at. Yeah, that's my dog.

Mark: 6:41

She was looking at it, saying you are getting signs from the universe and you're not listening, and the second that I made the decision to leave corporate America and transition on my own. I'm sure I've gotten sick here and there, but it's not been nearly the experience that I had with while I was in corporate, and she keeps that up all the time.

Nico: 7:00

Yeah, it's very recognizable, I think the only real. I might have ate something wrong, being sick from that, but in all this time I've been in business, it's yeah, okay, you have this little virus that went through the world that kind of hit me as well, but all the rest of the stuff I've never been sick since. Then used to be with IBM and Verizon and so on, and these companies made you sick because you were running around like a chicken without a head and, like you said, everything had to be valued with data or a necessary confirmation from whomever who had the biggest hat on or whatever. I completely understand what you're saying, so for me it sounds like you're really one of the one of the persons that I call a high achiever. Am I correct in that?

Mark: 7:48

I like to achieve. I'm a hard worker, I'll tell you that. But for me I hold a big vision and I'm pretty ruthless in that sense, and so ruthless in the most loving, supportive way, because if I see something I could see the impact, I'm going to go for it and I'll move fast for it. But yeah, I guess I'm a high achiever or I like to achieve high things.

Nico: 8:08

Okay, so what? From your point of view? What is the number one thing that a high achiever needs?

Mark: 8:14

There's a couple of things. I think that the thing that I keep finding myself is what are my beliefs and what do I believe in? Because you are constantly being challenged by certain situations that if I go back to what are my core beliefs around this idea, your beliefs shape your reality in a really powerful way. And when I started the game and was building a business initially and it was a whole different space than Custom Box Agency, what we have today I was building this business in virtual events. We were doing low six figures and I didn't hold a belief that I was worthy or capable of growing the business to seven figures and beyond. And when I shifted the belief around that and shifted that I am worthy of it, all of a sudden the conversation changed in a really powerful way. And I was not able to do that alone. I was able to do that with the help of mentors and finding people that could hold a bit bigger vision for me than I help for myself. And that is the other thing that I'll highlight is I think it's the role of the entrepreneur that we have to hold a bit bigger vision for our people than they hold for themselves, and in doing so we can hold space for them to achieve bigger things or hit milestones that they weren't, and I can give you an example to bring this to life, if that's helpful. Yeah, have you ever heard of a Spartartan race? It's a mud run, obstacle course race. They do it globally.

Mark: 9:28

So when I turned 30, I set a goal to do one 5k a month for 12 months straight and for me, I was not a runner. I didn't consider myself an athlete actually, and if you know my core story, when I was a kid my feet towed in pretty badly and so when I tried to play sports as a kid, I would always trip over my feet and just accept it at a very young age that I'm not athletic. And if you see me today, my feet tone a little bit but you don't really notice it. So I've grown out of it in a little really power, like I've grown out of it through throughout adulthood but did not have a belief that I could be a runner, that I was an athlete. And I started this track of doing these 5Ks every month and I did it January, february, march, april and I quickly realized I am capable of doing this, but I was getting bored with them. But I set the goal and I'm going to achieve this goal.

Mark: 10:27

I saw an ad on Groupon for a Spartan race and was like oh, this is a 5k and it's a mud run, and it was the last weekend of May. So I signed up for it. And as we got closer and closer to the event, I remember thinking what did I just sign up for? What is this thing I've now signed up for? And then I started researching this race and started to realize that what if I can't do the obstacles? What if I make a fool of myself? I don't look like these people, I'm not an athlete and almost talked myself out of doing it, but I knew if I didn't do it I would not be able to achieve this goal.

Mark: 10:51

I set for the year and mustered the courage to get to the race, to go line up at the starting line and then start the race. And while doing it I was giggling the whole time. I was having a blast. It was such an amazing experience, the support of the people in the field. It wasn't about finishing the race. For us it was.

Mark: 11:09

We finished this race together and what Spartan did in the spirit of holding a bigger vision for me than I held for myself. I'm curious. Oh, I do have it here. I can actually show you. When you cross the finish line, spartan gives you a medal for completing the race, but what they also did is give you a third of a medal, and so that's what you see here is a third of a wedge of a medal, and they said congratulations on completing the race.

Mark: 11:37

Now it's time for you to go for your trifecta, which means I needed to do an eight to 10 miler and then a half marathon. And what was so cool about that is they gamified this experience in a way that, because they held this vision of me achieving a trifecta and doing these higher tier races once, I had one way, which I'm the type of person that is, I have to close the loop. I need to collect all the pieces. So then I did the eight to 10 miler in another city that year, and then the rule is you have to do all three in the same calendar year. So had you told me at the beginning of that was 2015, I would be doing a half marathon, mud run, when I could barely see myself doing a 5K. I would have said you lost your mind.

Mark: 12:19

But because of Spartan and they held such a big vision for me.

Mark: 12:26

I was like, if I have to drag my body across that finish line, I am doing that half marathon mud run and this is actually the completed trifecta from 2015, the year I did it and you can see all the three wedges coming together to make the new metal.

Mark: 12:38

So I'm using this as an example that if Spartan didn't hold a bigger vision for me, I went from this transformation of going I'm not an athlete to I am an athlete.

Mark: 12:47

I am like these people. I do belong here, and the other cool thing about this is Spartan's also a business. So not only does this represent recognition and achievement for me, but this also represents a lifetime value to them. I paid them more money because they also held a bigger vision for me, and I think that there's so much that you can learn for this that we apply. It's a big thing that's inspired so much of my business and how we start to think about the experiences we create for customers. But it's all in the spirit that, had they not held that vision for me, I would have never achieved a half marathon in 2015, at a time that I didn't think I was an athlete. So that's what's powerful about that intention. I go like the role that I think to be a high achiever and to think like why I think it's really important that we do hold that space for our people.

Nico: 13:32

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful way of looking at it from a different perspective, because I think that's something that usually doesn't trigger anybody, when, at start, you would know what would happen. That's the whole basic thing, isn't it? If you tell everybody we're going in that direction and you explain to them exactly what the result will be, they will not even start their story. Indeed, and that's beautiful. If they give you these little nudges every few, so on, then, yeah you, you start to think that it's, it is becoming possible. No, it's not becoming possible, it is actually possible.

Mark: 14:08

Yeah.

Nico: 14:09

So what do you think is the number one thing that a high achiever wants?

Mark: 14:13

Yes, what does the high achiever want? For me, we build these box experiences out for our clients. We get into their business and say, how do we optimize the customer journey to get them the transformation faster? And then through doing so, you unlock all these new opportunities, you create sales collateral, you create a clear pathway to help them get bigger results and achieve bigger things. But I think that for a high achiever, for me it's impact. What's so cool is every time we release a new box for one of our clients to market to see the impact it has and like directly on it. I'm someone who doesn't love courses because I don't like just sitting there just nodding my head and going. I just watched the course. I want immersion experiences, I want results, I want to know that I come out here having gone through a transformation and got an outcome. And so that impact piece I think is really important to get clear of it is that I'm not driven by money. I don't need a lot of money to live. I don't, do I like money.

Mark: 15:10

Yeah, because money allows me to have a bigger impact. But money is not the thing that. I don't need the Lamborghini, I don't need the big, flashy jet, I don't need a lot to live. But I get a lot of fulfillment out of knowing that I'm creating things that actually truly help people, because I feel like we're in a world right now that people are in a lot of pain and they are asking for help, and I also see a lot of business owners that have the solution to their problems, but they're so in their way that they're choosing not to help these people who need their help, because they have a story in their brain that they can't break through, but they have the solutions and the products to help them. So that impact piece is really important to me.

Nico: 15:49

It's not necessarily about me, it's about them does come to the surface when I talk to a lot of high achievers or C-levels or founders who are in that space, that it is not about only what they create themselves, but the effect or the outcome, like you say, the impact that one thing that they are creating with their team or themselves or whatever, has on the world. Now, if you look at all what you've done, you've really achieved some major things. What are the things that you hated the most during that time?

Mark: 16:31

Oh gosh, I will say I've come to learn that everything is a learning opportunity and to see the silver lining of everything that you experience Things that I hate. Early on, I had a mentor that was very much publish every single day, publish, publish, publish and repurpose it to 30 other platforms. And it was something that I hated simply because I started doing it and I realized it wasn't sustainable for the way that you know, for the lifestyle that I was designing, and it burnt me out and put me in this hole that I was putting out a lot of content and then, all of a sudden, I shut down because it wasn't sustainable for the systems and the team and the structure that I had in place. And I find that I've learned that I get overwhelmed really easily and I have to figure out a way to de-stress or get back, and so that's just me personally is that I love to be around people. I'm a total people person, but when my cup is full, I got to go and that was something that's what I felt like at the time. We've grown this business not by putting a lot of stuff on social media. To me, if I publish, I want the content to mean something, because that's easier for me to tell that story, and I want it to be something that when I publish, like people listen because they know that this isn't just garbage that's throwing out, just things that are just about getting people to click. I want people to sense that heart of me and that was something that I think I like early on.

Mark: 17:49

I hated and I also don't love in this game. I like complexity. I like to know that the products that we're building aren't just something that we're just taking a template, changing out the copy and then going. I like to know that. I like to get into my client's business. I like to really understand what it is that they're trying to achieve.

Mark: 18:06

I like to create something. So the hard work like design is hard, and I don't want design to be pretty. Design needs to be functional in terms of how you lay out the content and information to help people get the result, and so for me, we play a game that is hard to replicate because there's so much intentionality with what we do. But when you work with us, it's effortless on your end because I don't need you to deal with the complexity. We've built the systems to handle the complexity, so that's the other piece about it is if it's too simple, the products that are being put in front of me, I tend to get very bored and it's just one of those things. That's just not the type of businesses that I would want to build.

Nico: 18:50

Yes. So you bring out the triggers that you love with your customers. So when you start discussing what they want to create, you'll probably one of the persons who says come on, you can go deeper than that. So what's the next level? What's the extra transformation? Is that what you do when you're in conversation with a customer at that point?

Mark: 19:03

It's one of the best lessons I could ever teach any entrepreneur and this is something that my mentor really pushed me on was the more you niche down, I honestly think, the easier the game gets. And what I mean by that is I had a business in virtual events and I had this custom box business that we were building. And he looked at me one day and was like I asked a bunch of people who was Mark Stern? Half of them said you're the custom box guy. The other half said you're the virtual event guy. And he was like which one are you? Because if you're 50% one thing and 50% the other, you're not a hundred percent anything.

Mark: 19:34

And with custom box agency, what's so cool about it is because I killed the business I'd been building for three years the virtual event business and went all in on these box experiences.

Mark: 19:44

100% of my mental capacity gets to go thinking about experience and thinking about how we think of physical and digital coming together. So all my brain power gets to go there and that's the power of building that expertise and going very deep into your zone of genius. And so to your question because I get to think through it so much more intimately to a client that is spending all their mental capacity on their business. When they start to realize what is possible, it transforms how they think about their business, and that's the thing that I think is really exciting about what we do is that boxes are a vehicle Nobody's thinking about the merriment of or I don't want to say nobody, but most people are not thinking about how I can tie a physical to a digital experience in a really powerful way, and they're only thinking about everything else that they deliver their programs, because when we're activating the kinesthetic, there's so much more that you can do blending the two worlds the physical world and the digital world.

Nico: 20:45

Yeah, okay yeah, it's very exciting the way you look at it. Um, I've seen so many different people working on on different products or businesses, or maybe two or three different businesses, and one of them is their core, and then they have this side business on a side business and stuff like that. I must admit, I myself I've a certain sort of business for a while now where I've said, okay, I enjoy it more when I am working one-on-one with people, so I'm trying to focus on that one as well. And it does split your mind in two because you're on one side working for that basic business that you're running to make the income and all the stability and everything else, but then on the side you're actually dabbling in something and not really focusing on it, and it's pretty challenging to make that final cut decision. So how did that work for you to really say, okay, this is the business I'm going for and that's not the business I'm going for?

Mark: 21:44

you know what? It was really hard because, like we're talking, when I built this business, it was during covid, and so world went into lockdown. Was it may of march of 2020? Is that about right? Yeah, and you would think that virtual events in this business and virtual events would be the logical decision, because I was a leg up on anyone else who had done any type of virtual events. And now everyone in the world because all live events were canceled were begging for support because no one had really defined a model for how virtual events should work, and so the natural thing would be you are well positioned, get loud and become the virtual event guy, and custom boxes were something that we always did to supplement the experiences that we'd build, whether it was a course, whether it was a coaching program, whether it was a virtual event and people told me oh, you should sunset that business and go all in on the virtual event business. And I just went out for a walk and really thought and just listened to my gut and I was like, since COVID has happened, everyone and their mother and father and sister and cousins are now virtual event experts. If you are a local market event planner, a wedding planner, any type of planner, you are a virtual event expert instantly.

Mark: 22:55

So this blue ocean became bloody red and I was just like am I excited about doing virtual events? No, but what I am excited about is there seems to be this untapped opportunity with ways that we can leverage a physical box to really set people up for success and give them what they needed. And it was this thing that was just like. I can't explain it, but it was an itch that I couldn't stop scratching and ultimately leaned in on it, and one of the decisions I had to make pretty early on is people would come to me and say oh, because you're building out our box, can you build out our website and build out our social media graphics and build out our online course platform? And, in the power of niching down and physical products, I literally had to draw a line in the sand and even though at early days, that's money and money that would have been helpful at the time, I had to put my foot in the ground and say we focus on the physical, Like we will provide you with the graphics to influence the digital, but our world is physical and just even owning that space it allowed me to again focus and niche down on just physical products and how we design these experiences niche down on just physical products and how we design these experiences and it allowed me to be a better partner to anyone who had a digital business. That would allow us to win together. So they could bring me business or I could say I have solutions for you on the digital front. So it kept my lines very clean. So I can continue to go deep on that, but that's what it was like.

Mark: 24:13

There was just something that I saw that I literally like the hardest part of what I've had to do is show other people and say do you see what I see? And it started with one person seeing the vision, and then the second person saw it after we delivered it from them, and then the third, and then it starts to snowball there and I feel like I've been on this journey of having other people see what I see. And now it's getting fun because we're carving out our own little space in the market. We built out probably about 150 plus experiences at this point and it's just.

Mark: 24:43

It's like eating candy, Like the fact that I'm that excited about what we do. Every single client is like a new adventure. I don't care if you think it's the most boring space and you could say working, have a lawyer as a client and building experience off of a lawyer or a credit repair company would be like snooze fest. No, it is like eating candy. It is the most fun thing to delve into businesses that I may not be an expert in, but when they go through our process. To be able to pull out that experience in a really powerful way has been just amazing.

Nico: 25:11

That's a completely different approach from a lot of people that thought, indeed, yeah, at that point everybody was going virtual, like you said, and keeping that physical space there actually gave you a very big advantage towards in comparison with the others, because they're all jumping on that boat and, indeed, red Ocean. It's a nice way to see that. I find it amazing what you said now several times, that you really listen to your gut feeling Now several times, that you really listen to your gut feeling, and that's something that I really noticed with successful entrepreneurs, high achievers like yourself. They don't look at or listen to all the mainstream stories or all the input from other sources. It's what comes down in that basic human belly saying yes or no. That's the point where the decisions really come from. Is that something that you probably know? A lot of entrepreneurs Do you see that in your space happening with a lot of people?

Mark: 26:10

I wish more people would tune in and listen to their intuition, because I know when I don't listen to it it bites me in the ass. So excuse my language, but it totally is like one of those things that it was just like oh, I knew not to do that and yet I did it. And now I'm getting like I'm being punished for it, to everything punished loose term, but like the amount of times that an opportunity has presented itself. That logically, yeah, it sounds great, but there's something energetically or there's a feeling inside that you're like something feels off. Generally, my general sentiment is I don't mess with that if it doesn't feel right.

Mark: 26:44

And again, I'm a corporate guy. I worked in corporate consulting for years, and so to be able to lean in and trust myself more has been such a really empowering thing. And I've had conversations with amazing entrepreneurs who are very stuck in their own ways and they tell me what they know that they need to be doing, yet their actions demonstrate that they're doing the thing that they know they shouldn't be doing, and I'm looking at them going but why are you doing this?

Nico: 27:06

and I just they just don't trust themselves yeah, indeed, it's something that it's an evolution as well. At some point, you you come to a point where there is no logical way of explaining something, even with numbers, or with the classic two-list position, where you list up the positive and the negatives and then make your figure calculation and say I'm going to do this. That stomach or that belly feeling is primordial, I would say in that decision, but I understand what you mean. Primordial, I would say in that decision, but I understand what you mean that there are not a lot of people who take that as a source of decision making. Have you had, then, the experience as well when your gut feeling says absolute, yes, I need to do this, but at some point, that decision did bring you in a very difficult situation or challenging situation, but brought you more.

Mark: 28:04

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I have any off the top of my mind that were just like, oh my God, it's saying I should totally do this. And then the end result was like, well, that was a mistake. Sometimes, when things don't go exactly as you planned, then the question becomes and this was a big growth moment for me when I started looking at the world this way what's the lesson that I needed to learn here? What is the thing that we had to go through in order to prepare the business? We just went through a process that we had to let go a client. We let go the client because the way that the client showed up, they disrespected my team, they harassed my team, they demanded things that were out of scope and within a month in, there was really no other alternative other than to protect the team. And now there's an aftermath that has drug out, even though everything that we did was perfectly in line with the rules in our agreement and what we had agreed upon. They just were not happy that we terminated them. But it was justified why we did it. We terminated them, but it was justified why we did it. And so the lessons learned from this.

Mark: 29:13

Constantly I could say, oh my God, I never will do that again. And, honestly, this was another example. I should have trusted my gut because I knew from the get go this probably wasn't going to work out well, and I don't often have that feeling. But once you start harassing my team, I have to step in and protect my team. So in this situation, it's easy to say, oh gosh, that was a mess, that will never happen again. But the reality is it made me look at our agreements and make sure that the agreements were sound. It made me look at the policies that I have in place to protect my team, to make sure that if this incident ever happened again, like I'm here to protect my team is my greatest asset and I want to make sure that what we do is so impactful that I want them to be inspired. The way that I'm inspired and it forced me to look at the business through a different lens, in a way that I'm like the way I walked away going.

Mark: 29:58

There were lessons learned that needed to happen in order to make sure I put the systems in place or the agreements in place to protect my team, to protect the business, to protect my clients, to protect their customers. But had I not gone through this experience, I don't know if I would have learned the lesson. And it's better to learn this lesson now and have terminated this client within the first month of working with them, rather than letting it go on for years and then now millions of dollars of inventory later and all these things. It's a much bigger issue. We weren't even in like into the design phase at that point, so it was very early in the process. So that's like the sentiment that I generally have is around. Sometimes as an entrepreneur you have highs and lows. But what's the lowest I can learn here? And is this the universe preparing me for something bigger that's going to happen, making sure that the business is sound and where it needs to be?

Nico: 30:49

going to happen, making sure that the business is sound and where it needs to be.

Nico: 30:54

Yeah, I solemnly believe in the fact that the universe only brings you, or I would say, you yourself, because I really find, from my perspective, the universe is who we are in our own world and in our own universe we are the ones that create, and, from my point of view is, I will not create something for myself that might be too big for me to handle.

Nico: 31:11

That's the idea that I sometimes bring out. It's the same thing where you're saying the universe doesn't challenge you with things that you cannot cope with, and it always brings you to a point that makes you grow in a way, and there's no definition of up or down or left or right. It just makes you grow as a human being, and I always like that, when people really do understand the effect of the simple question what does this teach me or what can I learn from this? Which is the major growth mindset story, in essence. So that's wonderful to hear that you're also working that way. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, so if you would be able to give a recommendation to other leaders or that are striving to achieve a specific desire or a way to enjoy their journey more. What would you say out of your own experience?

Mark: 32:08

Yeah, that's a good question. One of the things that was a big aha for me was, if so, I genuinely want other people to win, like I want good people to win, I want to see them take the stage. I want to see them get loud and, like, when I see people like with the Molly Mahoney's of the world I love Molly, I see the impact she's driving I want her to win, I genuinely want her to win. The law of reciprocity tells us that if I want other people to win, there's a good chance that other people want me to win, and so that was a big shift that I had to think about, which then I talked about the power of niching down. But you have to think about how do I make it easier for other people to help me win? And when you overcome like when your business is too complex, or if you were like how I was I had a business in custom boxes and business and virtual events or the for the people who do Facebook ads and funnel building and YouTube ads, and you're just like split across all these different domains when someone says who does Facebook ads, are they going to go after? The person that does 20 things Are they going to go after. The person that is going 100% in on Facebook ads, and so that's the power of niching down is that if you're going to ask me who does Facebook ads or who can help me with YouTube videos, the people that go all in and are just building their brand because they've niched down are going to be the people that I can recommend because they made it easy for me to help them win. The people that are awesome but split their time between 30 different things. I don't know how to represent you in the marketplace because it's too complex and I'm not a hundred percent clear on if you were mastering one of these or specializing in one or whatnot, so I'm less likely to recommend you.

Mark: 33:41

And so that's this whole idea that if I had any advice to anyone, it's okay to do other things, but when I was in corporate America, at Deloitte, they celebrated you for being the world's greatest generalist. They wanted you to be good at everything. You needed to be good at strategy and working with clients and then flipping it into an implementation plan. In entrepreneurship, they do not celebrate being a generalist. If you're good at everything, you are nothing to anyone in this game.

Mark: 34:07

And so the power of niching down. Part of it is just this idea of you're making it easy for other people to help you win. And again, think about what we do at Custom Box Agency. If anyone says, who does these custom boxes the amount of people that flood the threads with Mark Stern and Custom Box Agency part of that is that I made it very easy for them to know what we represent and what we do to help us win. And vice versa. When we find people that are looking for experts, it's easy for me to represent the same style of person. That is all in on that piece.

Nico: 34:41

That's some great advice right there. Yeah, absolutely, niching down, really putting the focus on the story where it really counts and will influence and make it clear to others what the heck are you doing? Yeah, absolutely so, mark. It's been very inspiring to talk to you and I would love for people to know where they can find you and how they can approach you, and especially if you have anything other to add to the story.

Mark: 35:11

Yeah, the best place to find me. You can always visit our website, customboxagencycom. And then, for me, you can find me on LinkedIn. Just look for Mark Stern or me It'd be under Mark R Stern and the same thing on Facebook just look me up.

Mark: 35:23

I love connecting with new people. I love meeting new people. I love hearing what people are up to. That is things that inspire me. But the only thing I would add is just this idea of I see so many people in the entrepreneur space. They have a brilliant idea and they're like, but I can't tell you about it because I don't want you to steal my idea.

Mark: 35:41

And I remember having that mindset of I can't share what I'm working on in my idea out there because I don't want other people to take it. And the reality is nobody's going to implement what you do, the way you do it, and part of other people doing something comparable is great because it helps educate the marketplace faster, it builds competition. There's just a lot of benefits to it. But for me, I can happily give people an entire blueprint to what we do and how we do it, but the reality is no one's going to do it the way that I do it. No one's going to show up the way I do, because you are not me and I am not you, and so, in that sense, like I have no desire to start any new businesses other than the things that we're doing and we have our own products that we're launching now with our own box experiences. But, like, I love talking about things, even if they haven't launched yet, because it drums up excitement and you find connection point and you find potential partnerships, because playing this game with other people is 10 times more fun than locking yourself in a room and doing it by yourself. So this is where it's just, unless you feel like it's a proprietary idea and there are people who are just out there to steal it.

Mark: 36:40

I've just learned that I'm happy to share with the things that I'm working on and even if people steal my ideas, they don't know the essence and the heart and how that came to be. And the reality is, if you take my ideas, I have 20 other ones that I can pull out of any moment in time. So there's no shortage of things to do when you change your lens in terms of like how you can show up and serve. So that would be. The other thing is share your story, tell people what you're going to do. You don't know what journey it's going to lead you on. It may connect you with people that may help you evolve the vision and hold a bigger vision than you ever could have done yourself. True, very true.

Nico: 37:13

Thank you very much, mark, for your time, for your inspiration, for answering all these questions. It's always a bit challenging to find a way on how we build these stories, but I find it very nice to see how you, what you have created and what you bring to the world, and thank you very much for that, because we need people like you.

Mark: 37:34

I need to go, thank you, and I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Nico: 37:38

Yeah, it was great I'll. I'm going to re-invite you. I'm absolutely sure about that. I do that with a lot of people with a lot of people Awesome. And for the listeners, thank you very much again. To listen to the podcast, remember to jump from head to heart and feel the beat within. Have a great one, everybody. Bye.