Mick Unplugged - Marquel Russell | Empowering Success- From High School Dropout to Successful Entrepreneur

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Welcome back to another enlightening episode of *Mick Unplugged*! In today's session, our host Mick Hunt sits down with the remarkable Marquel Russell. Known for his unparalleled ability to simplify complex business concepts and make them accessible for entrepreneurs and business leaders alike, Marquel shares his inspirational journey from high school dropout to a globe-trotting entrepreneur and founder of Client Attraction University. We'll uncover his deeper purpose and how he views his work as a spiritual mission, dive into his impactful strategies that have helped millions, and explore the concept of intrapreneurship—highlighting how entrepreneurial skills can thrive within existing companies. Tune in as Marquel discusses everything from his background and transition from drug dealing to legal and successful ventures to his innovative approaches in marketing and business scaling. Whether you're an aspiring business owner, a seasoned entrepreneur, or looking to make a mark within your organization, this episode is packed with invaluable insights and motivational stories that you won't want to miss. Stay tuned to *Mick Unplugged*! Takeaways: Being available and visible as a leader is a mark of true leadership. Retargeting is a powerful strategy that allows businesses to reach potential customers who have shown interest but haven't taken action. Meaningful work and aligning goals with values are key to creating a fulfilling life. Sound Bites "You can have as many leads as you want, but if they're not moving through your process, you just have a very heavy top end and at some point that top end falls down “To be available, to be visible for those that are striving to get to where you are, to me is a mark of true leadership." Connect and DiscoverLinkedIn:  linkedin.com/in/marquel-russell Instagram:  Instagram.com/marquelrussell Facebook:  facebook.com/ceomarquelrussell Website: scalemadeeasy.com Podcast: Strategic Scale with Marquel Russell        See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're not having multiple ways to communicate with people, you're losing. On your platform, I got a client of mine doing $250,000, $300,000 a month, and he does a TikTok live every day, right? He jumps on, he engages with his audience, and he keeps his enrollment team calendar filled because of the nurturing that he's doing with his community. And I discovered throughout my process and people getting results that my gift was taking these complicated concepts and then breaking them down simple so anybody can take them and implement it and actually get results because ain't nothing gonna force you to grow or expose you more than entrepreneurship.

Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game-changing conversations. Buckle up. Here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged, and today I've got a banger for you. We're talking to an exceptional guest that is a highly successful entrepreneur, speaker, author, and business coach, known for his expertise in helping businesses scale

and generate significant revenue. And I mean significant. With a proven track record of transforming startups into profitable enterprises, he has been a driving force behind numerous success stories. His strategic insights and motivational approach have empowered countless of individuals to unlock their potential and achieve remarkable results. Please join me in welcoming the innovator, the dynamic, the king of attraction, Mr. Markwell Russell. Markwell, how are you doing today, brother? Thank you, man. I love it. I got to take you on the road, man, and just like to introduce me everywhere. Hey, I'm available. Flavor Flavin' got nothing on me anymore, you know what I'm saying? Thank you, man. I got nothing on me anymore. You know what I'm saying?

Thank you, man. I've been a huge fan. You know, we were introduced through Sean Anthony, but even before that, I was a big follower of yours, subscribed to I think, you know, for a lot of people, they forget that. Right. Once you reach a certain level of success to be available, to be visible for those that are striving to get to where you are, to me is a mark of true leadership. So, again, I just want to say thank you for that, brother. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I mean, more than you know, I appreciate it. So let's go into it, man. Let's talk about your journey a little bit, right? Like, you know, I've heard a lot of your interviews, a lot of your writings and everything. And you talk about, you know, initially, you know, am I going to be accepted with gold and tats and all that? And then you said, hey, I'm me. And that's what it's about. So I'd love to let the listeners and viewers know a little bit about your journey that got you to where you are today.

Yeah, so first of all, thank you for having me. And once again, I definitely never take this lightly. So yeah, it's interesting. I had a very interesting journey. So I actually dropped out of high school in 10th grade. I tell people all the time I come come from the pharmaceutical industry, right? So that was my first run in business. I was selling drugs early in my life because when I was growing up, the only mentors I knew,

we didn't use the word mentors, but the only mentors I knew was people who sold drugs. So that was the path I went down. But I was always entrepreneurial. I just didn't know how to channel it the right way. I didn't know it was entrepreneurship. But then, fast forward, like I said, I dropped out of school in 10th grade, started getting in trouble. When my first son was born, I was 19. And the first time I met him, I was in visitation.

I met him in visitation, which was pretty crazy. And then this light bulb basically was like, man, like I'm going down the path of my dad. It seems like my dad went down because my dad wasn't around when I was growing up. So I got out. I was like, I'm gonna do two jobs. I'm gonna do the legit thing. That that was short lived for me because it just wasn't fast enough for me. So I was like, all right, I went back into the streets. I was like, I'm gonna take the money I'm making and I'm to take that and put it into starting an entertainment label, a record label. So I grew up on Master P and all those guys.

And they all came from where I came from. And they started record labels, independent labels. I never rapped. I never did beats. I never had the desire to be famous. But I knew people who rapped. I knew people who did beats. And I had the desire to be famous.

And I was a visionary. I always had some leadership and some influence. So I was like was like okay how can I bring that together and create this label and that's what I did it was called get to it enterprises so uh so we started that that led me to doing I was in the club every night if you ever been people who listen ever been to Atlanta you know clubs are open every night in Atlanta like Monday through Sunday every night and during the day so um so yeah so I started that and by me being in the club every night people Atlanta, like Monday through Sunday, every night and during the day. So, yeah, so I started that. And by me being in the club every night, people started to know my face.

And then a buddy of mine introduced me to his cousin. His cousin was managing a club here. And the club scene is driven by club promoters, right? That's how they get people in there. So he was like, hey, man, I want to give you a night and let you promote the night and you can do whatever you want to do. And I was like, well, do I make money off the bar? And he was like, well, no, you'll make money off the bar, but you can make, you can get the a hundred percent of the door. Like anybody you bring in, you can get the door. And I was like, cool. So it was a Tuesday night. So we did that. So I,

that started to build up. Now, fast forward from there, I was in a club one night at a buddy of mine's mixtape release party and I was pitched on network marketing. Right? And network marketing, for those who don't know, that's like, some people call it a pyramid scheme, some people call it MLM, people call it different things. So I went to one of those meetings and they were like, hey, all you got to do is get two people and they'll get two people and they'll get two people and so forth and so on. So I dove in head first and it didn't blow up as fast as they said it was going to blow up. The beautiful thing it did for me though was introduce me to personal development. So it introduced me to guys like Jim Rohn and Miles Monroe and John Maxwell and Darren Hardy. It introduced me to this world and all these guys was just talking about something i had never heard of so that helped me begin to change how i viewed myself right um because it was a game change i didn't make

a ton of money in the oil marketing i became like number one recruiter in one company and won awards and all the different type of stuff but income wise i didn't make a ton of money however the personal development changed the game for me and it led me into it helped me overcome my fear of public speaking, right? Which I guess God knew that I was going to eventually be on stages and so forth all across the world. So I had to go through that to break through that, right? So that also led me into online marketing. And that's where I learned direct response marketing, lead generation, how to acquire clients, things like write and copy, all those different skillsets,

which led to us starting a company called client attraction university and we grew that one um significantly and we helped thousands of companies install automated acquisition systems but what we quit and it became an 5 000 fastest growing company and what we quickly found out was that client acquisition is just part of growing the business right like we was helping individuals attract more clients, but it's like a lot of times they didn't have the infrastructure and the systems and so forth to actually deal. They wanted double or triple the clients they were bringing in. However, they didn't have the infrastructure to actually deal with that growth.

So it was like, okay, cool. So what we looked at, okay, what did we do when we scale? So we knew we had systems, we had process, we had team, we had a whole process, but we weren't really teaching it right outside of our high level private clients. So we started another company, another division, I should say, called Strategic Scale Institute, where it's all about. And that's our main focus right now. We still help businesses with the client acquisition process, but it's part of our greater eight pillars. And it's just one eighth of it. So that's kind of where we are now helping businesses scale. So now they have businesses that's more profitable, more sustainable, more scalable, more enjoyable, and potentially sellable if they desire

to sell. But even if they don't want to sell the company, they can still exit it and hire a CEO, or if they want to have it systemized where they can pass it over to their family, you know, they can do that as well. Love it. And we're about to unplug a whole lot of what you just said, man, because we have so much in common. And again, some of the things that I've even learned from you, and one of those things is this, and I want everyone that's listening to pay attention to what Marquell's about to get into. One of the things that I admire, Marquell, is you talk about, it's not about leads. You can have as many leads as you want, right? But if they're not moving through your process, you just have a very heavy

top end. And at some point that top end falls down, right? You say it much differently than I do, but you get what I'm saying. Like, let's talk to the listeners and viewers about that because so many people get focused on, oh, I just need eyeballs. I just need leads. It's great, but you can't close them. If you can't move them through a funnel, it doesn't really matter. 100%. So we have this mechanism called, because the traditional, a lot of times people teach the funnel process is awareness. People become aware of you. Some of them are going to be interested. Some are going to engage, and then some are going to become a client. We take that a bit further with this mechanism that we have called the client attraction flywheel.

So basically the client attraction flywheel, you know, of course, a flywheel is designed to create momentum and sustainability. So with the flywheel, it's four components. So the first component is captivate. So you have to captivate people's attention, which is also awareness, which you want to, once they become aware of you, you have to captivate them and capture and keep them, right? And then once you captivate them, I kind of jumped the gun. The second stage is capture. To your point, now they saw you. Now, how do you now they become a lead, right? So now they're going to, they like, okay, this is very interesting. Now they become, they give you their name, their email, and their phone number. And if you're dynamic with your marketing, you can actually build what we call an invisible list because now you got

pixels and so forth where you can actually capture individuals' data without them actually opting in in a legit way, right? Not in a weird, like spammy way, but like in a legit way. So now you capture their details. Now, a lot of people miss this part. The third piece of that is cultivate. So if you learn if you've learned any sales training or network marketing or whatever, we've always heard ABC always be closing. I believe in ABC always be cultivating. Right. So you always cultivate in the relationship, always cultivate in the relationship. And there's multiple ways to do it because you want to be building three assets at all times. You want to be building an audience asset, right? You want to be building an audience. I mean like social media, right? Social media, whatever platforms

you're on, that's one asset. You also want to be building a email list asset because that's the only asset you actually own. I know people who have massive social media followers. I was talking to a gentleman the other day and he has almost 2 million followers across all his social medias, but he has no email list. I was like, man, that is detrimental because at any moment, YouTube could shut you down, Instagram should shut you down, could shut you down. And that'll kill your whole business, right? That's detrimental. So you want to have your email asset

because you actually own that. You can actually shut down an autoresponder and you can move your list over somewhere. That's something you actually own. It's people that sell their email list, like newsletter companies, not sell it for people to spam it, but they can build a newsletter company and sell it for 10, 15. I was reading the other day, a guy, they sold a newsletter for $75

million, right? It's an email list. So it's a massive asset. So that's your email list. And then you want to have a pixeled audience. I mean, a pixeled asset. A pixeled asset, if somebody gets engaged with your content, they go to your website or anything, now you can actually start retargeting them and showing them the stuff you want. And now you're going to stay on a news feed. So in that cultivation phase, you want to be building that asset in the capture phase. Now, when it comes to cultivation, how are you? What's like your content rhythm? Right. So are you creating a podcast? Right. Where you're cultivating relationships and giving value? Right. Are you sending out emails? Like sometimes I talk to people to your point, you was like, how do we move them through?

Like I ask people, I'm like, I'm like, hey, how many of y'all got an email list? And everybody raised their hand. And I'm like, well, how many of y'all email your list every day? Everybody's hand go down. And I'm like, what was the last time you emailed your list?

And it was like months ago. And it was like, so you came to us because you want to get more leads and you want to get more clients, but you're being a bad steward to the leads that you already have. You're not even having conversations with those. You're not even reaching out to them. Like in sales teams are typically the worst because they're like, they want fresh new leads, but they're not even maximizing their existing pipeline. Right. And that's what it comes

to the cultivation. And it's not like you follow them up with them every day. Like, Hey, you ready to buy? Hey, you ready to buy? Hey, you ready to buy? It could literally be like, hey, we just released this new piece of content. It's about X, Y, Z. I thought of you, check this out. Or, hey, we just released this new podcast episode. I thought about you, check this out. Let me know if you got any questions. So again, we're cultivating those relationships. So that's going to be through daily content, just through daily email. People be like, daily? I'm like, yeah, daily. Because your social media platforms is literally like your own TV channel, your own TV show, right? So it's like, if you think about the most successful TV shows ever, they typically come on pretty regular,

got a regular cadence, regardless if that's daily, weekly, or whatever. So what's your regular cadence, right? Especially with social media becoming so much more noisy, how are you standing out and being consistent? So we got that cultivation phase. And when you cultivate consistently, then the last phase is close, right? And it's not you closing them, it's them closing themselves because at this point they're like, I'm ready to enroll. So prime example, I actually, I spoke at an event this past weekend. And when I I went there because we do so much in the captivate capture cultivate when I go out people are like oh my god it's you I didn't see you

everywhere blah blah I started talking to this gentleman he has an amazing company and he's like man I've been checking out this stuff for so long he came into my breakout with the thing and I'm like hey he he was going to be scheduled to chat with my team but I was like hey man since we already you know let's just have a conversation there's no need make this formal like let's just continue the conversation so we chatted before you and I got on here and uh he's like I'm like what I'm like what stopped you from like you know what's working before he was like it's just timing man he was like now it's just the time again because people buy when they want to buy not when you want them to buy so that's why we got to continue to be moving through that process.

I didn't have to close him. Right. He already canceled the call with his mind made up that was going to work together. He's going to figure out how he's going to work it out logistically to make it happen. Yeah, I totally agree. I had that same type of conversation with one of my clients and they have a really good close ratio. Right. And they wanted to get better. So I was like, let's break down your sales process. And everything on the front end was good from your term cultivating, everything was great, except once they do a proposal, there was no follow-up. And after X amount of time in their system, it moves that lead or prospect to dead or closed. I'm like, wait a second.

One, why is your sales team not following up? Two, what is your follow-up communication method? And did you find out how that client or prospect likes to be communicated? Right? Just because you like to do email doesn't mean that they respond well to email. So we did a few minor tweaks. They're closing far more than they were closing before, which was really, really good. But more importantly, they have a true system of just because someone didn't respond today or tomorrow doesn't mean it's a closed deal or that it's obsolete.

And so just by understanding how customers and prospects want to be communicated with, is it social? Is it email? Is it text message? Is it send me a form? If you're not having multiple ways to communicate with people, you're losing. So I'd love to have your feedback on that tape. I agree 100%, especially today's day and age, right? Email, depending on your email, is like as email is evolving and as these ESP, these email service providers are evolving, they're making it harder to get into these individuals' inbox, right?

So you got to get really creative. It's important. And it's not even more so having the biggest email list. It's having the most engaged email list. So getting people to reply to your emails, getting people to make your emails priority, like you really stand out so you can actually show up in the inbox. Outside of that, another thing is, that's why we, part of, again, part of our eight pillars is having a multi-dimensional marketing system. Like if you're

only relying on one methodology, like you're missing it. So it's like, you want to have email, right? You want to have this ecosystem. You want to have email. You want to have social media, right? You want to have like whatever your live weekly show is. It could be a podcast. It could be a live Zoom where you're just bringing on doing Q&A. It could be a live stream on your platform. I got a client of mine doing 250, 300,000 a month and he does a TikTok live every day, right? He jumps on, he engages with his audience and he keeps his enrollment team calendar filled because of the nurturing that he's doing with his community. So you want text message. Right. You you're not going to email. You're not going to text as much as you email. But having that touch point is going to be a game changer.

Even a lot of people, a lot of people think because I know we're in the AI and the digital world, but people miss the opportunity, what it looks like when it comes to in-person stuff. Like what kind of in-person events are you putting on? But my partner and I, we're looking at doing like this in-person networking event where like high level business owners can come through monthly and connect and build and create that collaborative connecting, you know, environment. And then also even direct mail. Like people think direct mail is old school and doesn't work no more. No, direct mail is still extremely powerful. You even see politicians doing it, right? So we do that as well.

So it's like, what are the different ways, even DMs, right? Personal text messages. It's like, what are the different ways that we can touch individuals and get in front of them? Because again, I was telling somebody the other day, it's like, everybody, just because you check your email every day, multiple times a day, doesn't mean everybody else

check their email every day, multiple times a day. So you literally got to be touching them, you know, multiple different ways. Same, man. Like, and again, that same client we were talking about, you know, their main method of follow-up

was leaving a voicemail, right? I was like, I'm going to break this down to you. My kids who are in their 20s don't even set up voicemail. Like most people today, voicemail is so obsolete. Like if a number comes on my phone and a name doesn't pop up, right? Like if someone calls me and it's just a number, it's going to voicemail and I'm probably not checking it for 30 days. Yeah, I never check voicemail.

Right. And so for those that are listening and watching, you have to understand it's 2024. As much as people talk about things used to change at a rapid pace in the past, it has nothing on today's time. And this, I don't even want to call it this new generation because it's not even generational. It's just the time and technology

we have today. If you're doing voicemail drops, please stop. You're going nowhere with your efforts. On my voicemail, I say, hey, don't leave me a voicemail. If you got this number,

it means we got some kind of connection. Shoot me a text. I just don't check boards so you just ask the response if you text me same way 100 100 and i want to i want to let you educate the audience on something that you were talking about because i know this is something that most people need to start understanding which is retargeting so you talked about you know the pixels and the retargeting Can you break that down for us and help us understand what the concept is and why it's a strategy that you've got to have as an entrepreneur and business leader today? What we found when somebody goes to a website, let's say,

let's say you're selling something on your website for $97 or less, right? Typically, if your sales page converts strongly, you're probably going to get about a three percent conversion rate. Right. What about those other 97 percent of people? Right. Even like a higher ticket call funnel model. So when we work with service providers and they have like a call funnel, when they get like a lead that opts in and they have somebody book a call, show up for the call. What we found is about on average, about 10% of those people book a call, right? Of those 10% that book a call, about 70% are going to show up for the call. So again, even if we just stop right there at the 10% who book a call, what about those 90%

who didn't book a call for whatever reason, right? That doesn't mean they're not interested. They could have been about to get on the flight. They could have been in the back of the Uber. They could have been scrolling their phone while why they was on the toilet. Right. And then they just didn't book the kids. There was probably about the book, but the kids walked in and got distracted, whatever. So now it's our job to get back in front of them. Like, Hey, what happened? I saw you was on the page. You didn't book a call. Right. What does that look like? So now we want to make sure we're showing them ads that's relevant to them. It could be testimonials. It could be, you know, other content of you showing like who you are,

how valuable you are, so you can actually move them to the next phase of your process. So it's everything because, again, you're only going to get, only 2% to 3% of the market is ready to buy right now at any given time. So now you want to be touching them in those other phases as well to continue to move them, you know, down through your process. I hope everybody was writing that down because, again, when I saw his video breaking that down, five pages of notes, and I immediately called my marketing team and said, hey, we have to change,

and we have to change right now because it is that valuable, and it works. What he's talking about literally works, and I'm living proof that it works. So thank you for that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, I'll make unplugged. I like to talk about people's because, right? Like that, that deeper purpose that we all have going beyond your why, what inspired you to do this? So I think this was, I think this was a call and I honestly think like God like called me into this, to be honest with you, right? Because I had, there were times, you spoke to it earlier. There were times when I had some like, why me moments, right?

So I came into this world and was like, because when I came into this world, it wasn't like, because you see a lot of like black experts and so forth, teaching and so forth now, marketing and different things, right? You see some influencers and so forth. But when I came into this world about 14-ish years ago, you didn't see that, right? It was all the guys, it was like white guys, older guys, they had backgrounds in real estate or corporate or whatever, and you just didn't see it so here i was coming out in this thing i'm 25 or so uh fresh off the streets goals tattoos um from atlanta so i talk a little fast got a different type of um vernacular so to speak right um and it's like man are people gonna actually listen to me like this is what i'm up against so it it was almost like when God called Moses and Moses was like, like, why me? Right. Uh, it was like, well, because I, cause I'm going to be with you and I'm, you're going to, you're going to, I'm going to speak through you. So I

was like, it took me a while to like get that. But, um, but also I understood that there were a lot of business owners that were underserved, right? Because a lot of times people talked about this business stuff at such a high level, people couldn't get it, right? And I discovered throughout my process and people getting results that my gift was taking these complicated concepts and then breaking them down simple so anybody can take them and implement it and actually get results. And from there, other people winning. That's what drove.

That's what drives me seeing them win because they implement and how that changes their life. Right. Their lives. Right. So I get to impact. I think just in just I would say just directly through our videos. We've impacted millions of people. Right.

And we got like the data. Yeah, you being one of them. And here's the crazy thing. We just met today, right? And of course, we're going to go way deeper from this particular point. Like we locked in now, so we're going to go way deeper. I'm definitely looking forward to having more conversations with you. But it's like you being one and we never even communicated. Right. So just think about that. So now through the work that for me and you connected and now you call your team like, hey, we need to implement this right now. And now because of you doing that, now all the millions of people you've been able to impact. That's how we impact billions of individuals through working with and impacting brilliant individuals like you, and it becomes a ripple effect. And then I can also show my kids and my family and those directly connected to me what's possible. Like even if they don't want, a lot of people say they want their kids to be

entrepreneurs. It's like me, I like to expose my kids to entrepreneurship and then they can decide, right? Because I don't think entrepreneurship is for everybody, right? But I like to expose them though, and then they can decide. Right. And I think even if they decide to go into corporate or whatever they decide to do, the skills and the mindset and the mentality and everything that you get from being an entrepreneur, you can take that and be an amazing employee or you can take it to be an amazing teacher or you can take it to be an amazing parent or whatever. But I think that's the thing that excites me and drives me and also growth, because ain't nothing gonna force you to grow or expose you more than entrepreneurship. So I think the growth opportunity and all that drives me as well, man. You just said something that I swear we're almost like the same. Like I was having this conversation this weekend

and it caused a little bit of an argument, but in a good way. I told like three of my best friends, everybody shouldn't be an entrepreneur. And they were like, well, why are you going to limit people's dreams? And I'm like, because sometimes we give people dreams that aren't their dreams. They're ours that we're trying to give them because every entrepreneur isn't a good leader and every good leader isn't an entrepreneur and the world needs both. We need good entrepreneurs and good leaders. Very rarely are they the same person. The ones that are the same people, you know about, right? You read about, you see them, but that doesn't mean they're the only ones. And so

I love that you said that because it sealed the fact that I won the argument this weekend with my buddies. But more importantly, it's a true thing. Everybody doesn't have to be an entrepreneur. And sometimes being a good leader is what you should just strive to be. Just strive to be a very good leader or a good contributor to human society. How about that? Bingo. And one thing that's not talked about enough is entrepreneurship, right? So you don't have to be an entrepreneur. You can be an entrepreneur. So an entrepreneur, for those who are listening, not familiar with what that term is, an entrepreneur is somebody who has a skill.

And now you bring that skill into the company and to somebody else's vision and they help them grow that. So, for example, Steve Wozniak, who helped start Apple, wasn't an entrepreneur. Like Steve Jobs was a visionary. He was an entrepreneur. Steve Wozniak was the tech guy. He had the technology. He had the software and all that. Steve Jobs didn't really create anything. He was a visionary though, and he went out front to make

these things happen. But Steve Wozniak was like, okay, I can bring the skill. Even if you look at Steve Ballmer, who owns the LA Clippers, multi-billionaire. He's a multi-billionaire because of the work that he did at Microsoft, right? But he didn't start Microsoft. Bill Gates started Microsoft. We all know that, right? And I think Paul Allen was his guy who was probably an entrepreneur. However, Steve Ballmer had a job there. And because he was in the right position and he brought

value in his role, now he's a multi-billionaire as well. And of course, we can name we can't name actually all the other billionaires that were created through Apple, through Microsoft, through Facebook who we never heard of. They didn't start businesses, but because they was entrepreneurs and they brought

skills to those startups, when the IPO happened, they all made billions. And most people would never, never know who they are. But a lot of times we think that we have to start something and we have to be entrepreneurs and we don't have to be like find the dope entrepreneur who's doing some things. And you may be amazing at operations. And this entrepreneur is great at running and gunning and they got ideas, but they just aren't organized. Now, you come in as an operator. I was talking to a guy the other day.

They he sold a company. They sold a company for like nine figures. And he was like, man, I've never really been entrepreneurial. He was like, I've just always been an entrepreneurial person. So he was like, I teamed up with these guys. We created this company. We sold it for eight figures one time. And then we we kept a percentage of it and then we sold it again for nine figures, but he was like, my role wasn't creating anything. My role was operations, but because he brought that skill set, and he didn't have ego about, I got to be the guy, I got to be the guy. He was like, I just know my stuff, and I don't know what I know. I know what

I don't know. He focused on that, but again, to your point, that's not talked about enough, because a lot of times we make entrepreneurship so grand, so glamorous, which many times is not to be honest with you. Man, you know, I can do this all day. I can talk to you all day. I feel blessed to have you here, man. So I want to make sure I give you your proper due. What do you have going on? What's coming up for Mr. Marquell? So, I mean, we just, we just, so I am, I'm more so, I'm at a place right now where a couple of things. I'm very intentional about working with business owners who we know we can serve and they're doing amazing things. And then also just clear on my values and so clear on my values and operating from that place and not and making sure

i'm not operating and building my life based on somebody else's scoreboard because a lot of times the the society and social media would tell you that you need to have these things or you should want these things or these should be your goals and And at some points, honest, transparently, I was sucked into some of those things. But when I sat back, I was like, man, what's the things that's really important to me? And to be honest with you, the other day, I was kind of going through this thing we have called a lifestyle design calculator. And I was going through it like, okay, what do I really want? Based on our goals, why do I want that goal? Is that really my goal? Or is that somebody else's goal that I just thought I should have just on mimetic desires, right? But I was like, what do I really want? And I sat down and we ran through,

I ran through our numbers, how much it takes us to live our ideal life, investments, travel, travel fund, all that good stuff because we love to travel. And I ran the numbers, right? And I was like, okay, if we invested this at a conservative 10% a year or i did not did based on six percent and that snowballs over 10 years that would have us here and this would pretty much cover that lifestyle without me doing anything and i could still do this work because i'm never gonna retire i love this work and i texted my wife i was like what are you i was like what else do you think we need to what we require to add to for this to be our dream life and the first thing she was like for these kids to get jobs talking about our older kids but then the second thing she was basically

like nothing so it's like we because a lot of times we can be living in our dream life but because of continuous desire for more just more meaningless right um just more more more more more bigger bigger bigger faster faster faster we'll get caught up in like this rat race and then we'll miss all the abundance. Everything that we thrive for for years, we'll miss that. Man, I'm living in that right now. But because I continue to move the scoreboard, I mean, the goalposts, I'm not even enjoying what I work for. So I'm more so working on it. And again, I'm learning a lot of this through therapy, which I highly recommend all entrepreneurs have a therapist, is I'm learning more about just being present and enjoying the process, enjoying the moment and being aware of what's happening around me so I can really take this in and not to look, you know, I got a dope life. Like I heard a

billionaire say a few years ago on a video, he was like, money is great, but he was like, the real win is having adult kids who still want to hang out with you. Right. And I have that. I got a 23 year old still likes hanging out. And I got my son to be 21 still likes hanging out. I mean, I have a four year old, a nine year old, an 11 year old that likes hanging out with me, right? So I'm winning. So I'm just, my focus is more being present with that and enjoying the process while doing the work God created me to do and having meaningful conversations like this and really doing real meaningful work.

And then the money is just like a byproduct, you know, to take care of the stuff. But it's like, I think meaningful work is even more important. So that's what we get with that in terms of, um, making that happen and not just chasing arbitrary goals just to be tracing arbitrary goals. Does that make sense? I love it. I love it. I love it. So where, where do you want people to follow and find you? Yeah. So a couple of different ways. So number one, whatever your favorite social media platform is, I'm there. So, um, if you, if So if you send me a direct message, I typically reply to all my messages on any platform. But if you message me, I think we're

probably most active on Instagram. If you message me on Instagram, send me a direct message and be like, tell me you saw me on the Make Unplugged show. Let's connect. I got some cool stuff that I can send you. Also, if you go to scalemadeeasy.com, that's scal scalemadeeasy.com. Got a ton of free resources over there that you can dive into, whether that's marketing, whether that's sales, whether that's operations, whether that's scaling. We got this cool thing called the Scale Ready Assessment that shows you how scale ready your business is and what holes to fix. So all that is going to be there. You can dive into it all for free. So it's a lot of fun there. And it breaks down our whole predictable scale flywood that we talked about a little bit here as well and again my god i got a show called the strategic scale um strategic scale show where we do legit

deep dives with businesses it's not like an interview show which i love interview shows but it's literally like we're sitting down with businesses and we're doing like a real-time deep dive and mapping out a game plan to help them scale to the next one five ten million it's really really cool so we just launched that so that's the scale ready show that's on our youtube so uh marco ross will go check that out and um yeah so like we got put tons of content out we own all the different social media platforms so whatever favorite one is connect with me there and um let's have some conversation and go to scale made easy dot com to get all the other cool resources that we put together for you. There we go. I'll make sure that all of that information is in the show notes. So everybody do me a huge favor and make sure that you are following, make sure that you get access

to all the crazy cool tools that Marquell has out there. And I promise you the show that he's talking about, if you're a business leader, entrepreneur, thinking about becoming a business leader, entrepreneur, it's a must watch. It's a must subscribe. And I promise you it will be worth every moment of the time that you spend there. So Marquell, brother, thank you so much for blessing us with the wisdom and information that you gave us today. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. You got it. And to all the listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time, stay unstoppable.