Dan Martell - October 10, 2019


Business Dreams & Nightmares with Marc @ DPLWireless.com - Escape Velocity Show #12


Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

183.77318

Word count

8,275

Sentence count

487

Harmful content

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with my brother and former co-founder of DPL, Mark McElroy. We talk about how he built a company from the ground up and how he went from a small start-up to a multi-million dollar company in less than a decade.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 For the longest time I was coming at it from a position of fear. It's like, oh, I can't live
00:00:05.220 without, I can't even think about, you know, what it's going to be like to hire, to replace that
00:00:10.260 person. You know, it's going to be more work for me in the interim. I just, I can't handle it,
00:00:15.700 right? So, but the reality is, is that once you free up capital, a seat, and if you have the
00:00:25.620 mechanism in place if you have the culture in place that attracts talent
00:00:28.560 once you can just get over that hump and you you have that new talent in the
00:00:32.740 right seat they're gonna blow your mind right and then you you're gonna kick 0.98
00:00:36.780 yourself in the ass for not having done sooner and that's kind of what I 0.99
00:00:39.440 realized because there's definitely some positions that we waited like years and 0.99
00:00:45.120 years and years too long before acting we knew way back in the day we knew five
00:00:49.200 years before that it was the wrong person but we just said we got to just
00:00:52.500 Keep afloat.
00:00:53.000 Keep this thing going.
00:00:54.000 But once you kind of have realized that, just pull the Band-Aid.
00:00:59.520 And things are good.
00:01:00.320 We're going to survive through this.
00:01:01.680 And we're going to be better off for it.
00:01:03.360 Ignition sequence start.
00:01:05.580 Three, two, one.
00:01:18.000 Jeez, that's loud.
00:01:18.880 Mark, what's up, man?
00:01:20.340 Welcome to my home, my brother.
00:01:21.580 Thanks, man.
00:01:22.080 Dude, it's good to have you here.
00:01:23.640 For those that don't know, you're one of my good buddies.
00:01:26.760 We're here in my house in Moncton, New Brunswick.
00:01:29.620 And I'm excited to chat with you.
00:01:32.160 We've known each other for five years now, four years?
00:01:37.180 Five years for sure.
00:01:38.400 OK, five years, maybe six.
00:01:40.800 Newish friends, but I mean, vacation together,
00:01:44.080 play dates with the kids.
00:01:45.900 I hijacked your house to organize an event a couple weeks ago.
00:01:49.860 There wasn't really a question if you were doing it or not.
00:01:52.060 I was like surfing turf at Mark's house,
00:01:54.160 and I invited some people.
00:01:56.720 Let's start off with DPL, your company, technology company.
00:02:01.280 How long ago did you start it?
00:02:03.700 Who's your customer, and how's that journey been so far?
00:02:07.620 Wow, all right.
00:02:08.400 Well, I'm more of a re-founder than a founder.
00:02:12.100 Company itself was founded in 1974.
00:02:15.180 So when I came in as an employee in 1997,
00:02:19.020 the place was a well-established industrial engineering
00:02:21.580 firm, and I started working in R&D and doing a lot of kind
00:02:25.480 of prototyping of new markets that we
00:02:27.880 wanted to kind of get into in the telecom industry.
00:02:30.820 And yeah, I eventually just quickly
00:02:34.040 went from new employee to leading the team
00:02:36.680 to really spearheading some new wireless.
00:02:39.700 This was really, really early days of wireless, right?
00:02:41.920 This was analog days, right, before digital networks.
00:02:45.120 Is that what the StarTac ran on, analog?
00:02:47.300 Yeah.
00:02:47.740 StarTac was my favorite cell phone.
00:02:49.380 Yeah.
00:02:49.920 Like, I almost wish they made an iPhone StarTac.
00:02:52.240 Was that the little black flip one?
00:02:53.540 Yeah, they just flip, man.
00:02:54.640 That was my first flip.
00:02:55.200 Motorola?
00:02:55.860 Just, yeah, it was a great phone.
00:02:57.460 Yeah.
00:02:57.800 No, well, that's the early days.
00:02:59.600 And the way that you actually transfer data on that
00:03:02.180 was using, like, the Daltones.
00:03:04.380 So yeah, it was super, like, you can only transfer, like,
00:03:06.700 I don't know, like 48 bits.
00:03:08.840 No, 48 bits of data.
00:03:11.120 So we were transferring, like, GPS locations
00:03:13.360 through that, that means.
00:03:15.360 And yeah, so this was really, really early days.
00:03:17.960 And the two original owners, they wanted to, they were kind of looking at retirement.
00:03:22.080 They were like early 50s at that point.
00:03:24.860 And they sold off all the other divisions.
00:03:26.680 And all of a sudden, we were stuck with like this R&D, all this IP that we had worked on.
00:03:31.640 And yeah, so we kind of all got together and decided, well, how about we reboot this?
00:03:37.460 Yeah, commercialize some of this stuff and see if we can actually make a go at it.
00:03:41.220 Because we really didn't have any markets.
00:03:42.660 And we had a couple of ideas and really early, early prototypes.
00:03:46.660 and yeah I was lucky enough to actually have some really good early mentors like that and they kind
00:03:52.360 of helped me they brought me along for the ride and we we started kind of equal partnership so
00:03:57.460 you would have been late 20s I would have been late 20s at that point yeah and these guys were
00:04:02.420 in their 50s looking for kind of uh yeah they were looking for new blood but they were smart because
00:04:06.940 they they they saw they saw talent myself and and my other partner and and the hustle and the drive
00:04:14.080 that may be like super smart yeah i mean today dpl's got how many customers around the world
00:04:18.800 uh it's 1300 customers 40 almost 40 000 atms using our gear and it's a reoccurring revenue model so
00:04:27.280 yeah yeah so subscription and and for those uh that don't understand the dpl model what is it
00:04:32.240 who's your customer what's the product today because i know there's been iterations but
00:04:35.600 today what does it look like yeah so the biggest part of our market is uh wireless connectivity
00:04:41.120 and management for ATM machines.
00:04:43.660 Cool.
00:04:44.160 Yeah.
00:04:44.660 So it replaces network lines and phone lines
00:04:47.480 for your ATM machines.
00:04:48.620 And this is the kind of ATM that you see in corner stores
00:04:51.620 and bars.
00:04:52.460 They're called white label.
00:04:53.480 Yeah, the ones that charge me $5 for.
00:04:55.340 Yeah, someone's making money.
00:04:56.540 Oh, jeez.
00:04:57.200 I know it.
00:04:57.700 I'm like, OK.
00:04:58.640 I always want to pay 1%, so I'm like, how much max
00:05:01.000 can I take out in cash to not have to pay those fees?
00:05:04.400 But they get you because they're in a convenient location.
00:05:06.600 So you provide the connectivity, because a lot of people
00:05:09.560 realize that they don't come with a built-in EVDO card
00:05:14.340 or some kind of connectivity.
00:05:15.780 You have to pay almost for a phone line.
00:05:19.680 And then what's your pricing model like?
00:05:21.400 Is it like $15 a month or how does that?
00:05:24.680 We charge $10.
00:05:25.380 I mean, back in the day, we were charging almost $30 a month.
00:05:28.380 Because we were replacing phone lines, which
00:05:30.060 cost a lot more than that for business lines.
00:05:32.800 But now it's all internet lines, and oftentimes,
00:05:35.540 there's local internet.
00:05:36.480 So we've had to kind of adjust our prices down.
00:05:38.980 So our sweet spot has been like $9.99.
00:05:41.620 So there's some companies that sell just wireless modems
00:05:46.360 around the $5 mark.
00:05:47.800 But we've really targeted the premium model.
00:05:50.840 And what makes it premium?
00:05:52.100 And the reason I ask is I think what's
00:05:54.640 interesting about your story, Mark, and I've told you this,
00:05:56.380 is the fact that you were a technical founder,
00:06:01.000 didn't really lend yourself to the management side.
00:06:03.920 And a few years ago, you stepped up and you're CEO.
00:06:07.120 Yeah.
00:06:07.620 You run the company and have brought it to new levels of growth.
00:06:13.120 But when it comes to having to navigate that innovation,
00:06:19.040 the pricing structure, how have you
00:06:20.880 been able, because you've been doing it for a long time,
00:06:24.620 what did you learn about being competitive in a market?
00:06:28.120 Because I think it's easy to get complacent,
00:06:30.820 and you've been able to do a good job at that.
00:06:33.120 It's a lot of things.
00:06:35.500 I don't know that there's any one singular thing.
00:06:37.740 I think it's really understanding what your ideal customer really,
00:06:44.060 really needs.
00:06:44.980 And it's more than just a commoditized part.
00:06:47.020 Did you ever go all over the place with the customer side,
00:06:49.740 like choosing the customer?
00:06:51.340 Like, have you always had ATM?
00:06:52.660 Like, it sounds like it's very crystal clear premium ATM
00:06:56.020 owners, and I mean.
00:06:57.400 Yeah, and there's branch offs from that, too.
00:06:59.440 But I think for us, when we kind of fell into this market
00:07:02.740 almost sideways because we were doing like a GPS anti-theft for heavy
00:07:06.980 construction on the vehicle side and all of a sudden one of my business
00:07:10.580 partners, he, he had a, you know,
00:07:12.500 one of those lottery booths where you can get tickets and whatnot.
00:07:15.020 And there was an ATM there they got broken into and they were talking,
00:07:19.480 he was talking with the owner and he said, Oh, well, you know,
00:07:21.980 what if we offered you like GPS anti-theft for your ATM machine?
00:07:25.260 And the guy mentioned, well, geez, yeah,
00:07:27.020 but I don't want to pay extra fees.
00:07:28.320 So it'd be nice if I could get rid of these phone line fees.
00:07:30.960 Just, just like that.
00:07:32.000 Wow.
00:07:32.500 I know.
00:07:32.880 And then all of a sudden, it's like, wow, geez.
00:07:34.640 And we didn't even do any business.
00:07:38.960 We didn't check to see if there was competing products
00:07:41.380 or whatever.
00:07:41.880 You just built it.
00:07:42.640 We could do that.
00:07:43.220 So we built it, and all of a sudden,
00:07:44.300 we realized that we're almost the only ones out there
00:07:47.360 that can do this.
00:07:48.600 And we solved really, really complicated problems
00:07:52.400 as we went further down the line.
00:07:54.040 And we created almost like a monopoly early, early on.
00:07:58.740 Yeah.
00:07:59.040 How long ago was that moment?
00:08:00.380 This was in 2006.
00:08:01.880 OK, so 13 years ago.
00:08:04.060 13 years ago.
00:08:04.760 So a lot of things have changed, including
00:08:06.720 a lot of new blood into the market.
00:08:09.880 And what we realized was that we had a great product,
00:08:17.540 but we had no sales team.
00:08:19.380 And so we were kind of the victim of our own success,
00:08:22.020 in a way, because we would show up at a trade show,
00:08:24.000 and then everybody would be like, oh my god,
00:08:25.660 they were like seagulls, right, like order takers.
00:08:28.160 And then our customers would sell to their friends.
00:08:30.880 And so that was kind of our sales team, you know?
00:08:33.580 Yeah, yeah, word of mouth.
00:08:34.420 Just build something great.
00:08:36.200 Automatically, we had super fans,
00:08:37.760 and they would sell to each other.
00:08:40.060 But when competition set in, you know?
00:08:44.560 How long ago did that start?
00:08:46.600 Probably a couple of years after that, so around 20.
00:08:49.320 So you had like two or three years of like, oh my gosh,
00:08:52.200 here's a bit of a gold rush.
00:08:53.800 Try to keep the lightning in the bottle.
00:08:57.820 And because you built a really incredible product
00:09:00.460 to a problem that was in the market that didn't exist.
00:09:03.560 So it's interesting, because you were in it,
00:09:06.700 you know what I mean, for so many years, from R&D
00:09:10.860 to the vehicle stuff.
00:09:12.360 So it was like, there was a lot of looking back,
00:09:15.020 the whole connecting the dots.
00:09:16.220 To me, it's like, oh, it's obvious in hindsight.
00:09:18.380 But then there was this moment where you're like, OK,
00:09:20.620 let's do it.
00:09:22.420 Some people don't pull the trigger,
00:09:23.760 don't decide to go down that path.
00:09:25.420 You guys did.
00:09:28.540 And then how long do you think, because the market's also
00:09:32.140 probably growing, the ATM market,
00:09:34.460 how long were you working in that market
00:09:37.300 before you felt the competition, and all of a sudden
00:09:40.100 you started maybe losing against deals,
00:09:42.540 or you felt like other people are?
00:09:44.020 It was really, if you look at the chart,
00:09:45.820 and I think I've probably shared this online before,
00:09:48.140 but we had hockey stick growth, say 2006 to 2012.
00:09:53.800 2012, flatlined.
00:09:55.760 We flatlined.
00:09:56.500 We hit the wall.
00:09:57.300 You see the chart just boom.
00:09:59.180 Yeah, complete flat line.
00:10:01.120 And we stayed flat line for five years, four or five years,
00:10:05.520 until the last two years.
00:10:08.320 And that's been my biggest challenge.
00:10:10.900 It's like all of a sudden you realize
00:10:12.480 that you were only like half a company, right?
00:10:16.640 And you were successful for all sorts of reasons.
00:10:19.080 Half a company, and you say that because you
00:10:21.500 didn't have the other part of.
00:10:23.040 Yeah, vital part.
00:10:24.100 And the problem is that all of a sudden you realize, hey,
00:10:26.940 man, this is easy, right? And you don't realize what you don't know. And certainly from my
00:10:33.220 perspective, and I think you're right, I mean, I was in the dungeon and I was building product,
00:10:37.200 you know, and I was happy there. That's how I kind of perceived myself, right? I had kind of
00:10:41.740 put myself in that box. Oh, I'm a developer or I'm a product architect or whatever. Like,
00:10:47.220 I'm the CTO. That's where I operate. I'm going to do the best job. But ultimately the company
00:10:53.020 needed, we realized that the company needed a lot more
00:10:56.420 than we had.
00:10:57.740 And then that became, I guess, the biggest challenge
00:11:00.820 that we had to face.
00:11:02.560 That's crazy.
00:11:03.160 So was it a reaction rate at the beginning
00:11:06.320 when you seen it flatline?
00:11:07.600 Or was it?
00:11:08.100 No, no.
00:11:08.600 See, we were making so much money coming in,
00:11:12.860 even when we were flatline.
00:11:14.200 I never like to tell people's numbers,
00:11:15.540 but I know the numbers.
00:11:16.780 It's an incredible business.
00:11:19.960 So it's kind of like the problem is it's not broken.
00:11:23.060 It's not broken.
00:11:23.980 Yeah, you're not growing, but you're making a ton of money.
00:11:26.440 I'm in the dungeon building product,
00:11:28.200 and I'm still taking home ridiculous money.
00:11:30.580 So I'm like, hey, there's no problem, right?
00:11:33.640 No problem with me.
00:11:34.660 No, there's no problem there.
00:11:35.960 And I wasn't paying attention to the numbers,
00:11:38.680 and I'm sure someone was maybe looking at, but maybe not.
00:11:42.400 But yeah, we were just basically money was coming in, right?
00:11:45.580 Then what happened?
00:11:47.000 That went on for sounds like five years.
00:11:48.980 What happened on year four or five that made you realize,
00:11:55.400 there's a problem to be solved?
00:11:56.980 Was it the profit?
00:11:58.240 Was it the culture?
00:12:00.500 Was it the fresh?
00:12:02.540 Yeah.
00:12:03.040 Yeah, it's a bunch of things.
00:12:05.040 During that time, the amount of work that I had to do,
00:12:09.980 I was really, really unhappy.
00:12:11.660 So at the time when the business was the most successful,
00:12:14.420 maybe not like we were flatline, right?
00:12:16.260 But we were successful, say, from a monetary point of view.
00:12:19.800 And I was really, really, really unhappy and burnt out.
00:12:25.920 I had worked myself to the bone for so many years.
00:12:30.960 I don't have a lot of natural self-regulation.
00:12:35.660 I don't know when to stop.
00:12:36.960 I will just keep working and working and working,
00:12:39.040 grinding it out until.
00:12:40.640 And there's just so many things that just piled up.
00:12:43.360 Was this right around when Melodie, your first, was born?
00:12:46.800 Yeah, well, that's 2010.
00:12:48.640 So yeah, that was really starting.
00:12:50.260 Did that act as?
00:12:51.340 Yeah, that really, like we had my first daughter
00:12:54.520 when we were really cresting.
00:12:57.920 And just before we flatlined, and we were scaling so fast,
00:13:01.720 and we were just trying, keeping everything together
00:13:04.720 and patched up just so that we could keep growing and selling,
00:13:09.100 put a lot of stress.
00:13:10.000 And we had complications with my wife having our daughter
00:13:13.820 and the health complications and stuff
00:13:15.360 with both the child and the mom.
00:13:17.400 And yeah, I just ended up being kind of the catalyst
00:13:22.120 for feeling like this is just not worth it anymore.
00:13:26.720 Do you remember the moment, the rock bottom in that moment?
00:13:30.380 Yeah, I do.
00:13:31.980 Yeah, I was ready to sell.
00:13:32.920 We were two weeks away.
00:13:34.940 Our main competitor in the US came in,
00:13:36.700 and they made us an offer, and we said, okay, well, let's just sell.
00:13:42.340 My heart wasn't in it anymore.
00:13:43.720 I hated everything about this.
00:13:46.040 Not everything, but so many things about my situation and the company.
00:13:49.720 The culture was absolutely rotten to the core, and I had the wrong people.
00:13:56.240 I had some right people, but there was a lot of wrong people in the wrong seats,
00:14:00.780 and a culture of fear.
00:14:04.160 like everybody was had to be micromanaged to get anything out of them and um yeah so we were like
00:14:10.980 we signed you know a letter of intents we went through probably two hundred thousand dollars
00:14:15.500 worth of u.s and canadian accountants and lawyers and whatnot and we were two weeks away from signing
00:14:21.160 and then then we just sat down and me and my my three partners and we just said
00:14:30.120 something it didn't smell right you know like this was our baby i had worked so hard for this
00:14:36.740 and we just kind of agreed to well if we're going to stick if we're not going to sell
00:14:45.220 things have to change drastically and they gave me a carte blanche
00:14:51.180 you know so they believe they saw in me like i didn't think that i was going to be that guy
00:14:57.200 I didn't think I was going to be the CEO or the guy
00:15:00.040 to lead this charge, but they believed in me.
00:15:03.520 And this was the two older, original, we'll call them the OGs,
00:15:08.500 and your current partner said to you, Mark, if we're
00:15:13.060 going to do this, here's a white piece of paper.
00:15:17.280 Pretty much, yeah.
00:15:19.000 What are we doing?
00:15:20.080 Yeah.
00:15:21.700 And so I did.
00:15:26.260 I did.
00:15:27.260 But to me, what I was hunting for was not necessarily at that time.
00:15:30.560 We hadn't really realized the full impact of what the flattening out meant to the business.
00:15:35.380 Money was still coming in.
00:15:36.440 So I was after being happy.
00:15:38.340 I wanted to be happy.
00:15:40.220 And so that's really what my objectives were.
00:15:44.600 So the first thing I did was basically figure out and learn everything I could about what
00:15:51.220 it takes to be a CEO, but also how to build a culture
00:15:55.000 that I could actually be happy, actually go to work every day
00:15:58.100 and actually enjoy myself and see other people around me
00:16:02.220 actually thriving and being the best version of themselves
00:16:05.500 that they can be.
00:16:06.460 And so that was a big challenge.
00:16:07.800 How did you fix the culture side?
00:16:09.780 Because I mean, it's one thing to recognize
00:16:12.840 that you've got the wrong people on the bus,
00:16:15.260 but then there's also work that needs to get done.
00:16:18.460 There's people that probably have been with you for a while
00:16:21.780 that had a lot of deep domain expertise that might not
00:16:24.460 be easy to hire.
00:16:26.320 There's all these challenges when you're like,
00:16:28.220 one person on your team has to go, let alone.
00:16:31.460 How many people did you end up having to transition?
00:16:35.240 Yeah, and it is transition, because some were let go,
00:16:39.220 but a lot also left on their own accord.
00:16:41.680 Because once you start building something
00:16:45.780 that's for a very specific target employee,
00:16:49.320 right, that part of the team.
00:16:50.900 You're trying to design an ecosystem for a different team.
00:16:55.320 People are naturally going to be either attracted to it
00:16:57.360 or they're going to be pushed away by it, right?
00:16:59.700 It's like, oh, geez.
00:17:00.440 Polarizing.
00:17:01.240 No, no.
00:17:01.740 Yeah, it's very polarizing, but that's a good thing.
00:17:03.780 Because then it's more black and white, right?
00:17:06.160 Then you really know who you're attracting,
00:17:08.880 and it's engineered that way.
00:17:10.780 So yeah, I think, I mean, look, I'm
00:17:13.380 not the most deliberate guy out there. So I think that the idea was that I was going to do this
00:17:18.740 first and foremost for me. What do I want to see? And it's like building a family, right?
00:17:25.720 So you're building a home, you're building a family, you're making choices so that everybody
00:17:30.000 can kind of like be, you know, be safe, a place that they can do their best work, a place that
00:17:36.300 they actually want to go.
00:17:38.820 And ultimately, if it works for me,
00:17:42.760 then I hope that it's the right decision enough
00:17:44.880 that it's going to work for others as well, right?
00:17:47.100 And how many people as a percentage
00:17:48.680 were impacted transition-wise?
00:17:51.000 At least half.
00:17:51.840 So if you look back on who's here now
00:17:54.720 and who was here five years ago, at least half the people are gone.
00:17:58.140 Wow.
00:17:58.740 Yeah, and we're 25 now.
00:18:01.360 Yeah.
00:18:01.940 So that's a big amount of money and a lot of transition.
00:18:04.620 And it's scary.
00:18:06.100 For those that stayed, you're seeing a lot of people
00:18:08.980 like kind of go like that, right?
00:18:11.040 It's, you know, I know from my perspective,
00:18:15.360 it's like it's exciting because every time one of those things
00:18:19.840 moves, right, it brings me closer to my angle, to the vision,
00:18:23.700 right?
00:18:24.200 But for someone who's sitting next to someone who's
00:18:27.380 been there for seven years, who you would never think
00:18:31.000 would be one of the ones to go, and all of a sudden
00:18:33.120 to see that they're gone.
00:18:33.820 What have you learned about that transition in regards
00:18:36.340 to the beliefs you had prior to going into it
00:18:38.620 versus how it's ended up today?
00:18:41.600 About myself?
00:18:43.300 No, just like often I find, personally,
00:18:47.520 it's like tough decisions are tough.
00:18:51.500 And then in hindsight, typically you
00:18:53.140 discover that it was never as bad,
00:18:55.700 or there was these new opportunities.
00:18:57.100 And I'm not saying that's what happened,
00:18:58.500 but I'm just curious, if you look back at before you
00:19:01.300 had to make those transitions, you decide, OK,
00:19:03.660 Culture's changing.
00:19:04.560 I'm creating a place I love to work.
00:19:06.060 Because the reality of it is, as an entrepreneur,
00:19:08.160 is that the superpower is the passionate entrepreneur.
00:19:11.720 And if that's not present, then the business
00:19:13.620 is not going to grow.
00:19:14.900 So you gave yourself permission to say,
00:19:17.160 I'm going to start throwing some hand grenades.
00:19:18.780 Because if this doesn't get fixed,
00:19:20.280 there's nothing going to be here anyway, because I'm not happy.
00:19:23.560 So it's kind of liberating and also scary.
00:19:25.640 So what did you believe prior to making those changes
00:19:29.160 versus what was the reality afterwards?
00:19:31.420 And maybe it was exactly what you thought?
00:19:33.420 No, it wasn't. I mean, look, I was coming, for the longest time, I was coming at it from a position of fear.
00:19:38.900 It's like, oh, I can't live without, I can't even think about, you know, what it's going to be like to hire, to replace that person.
00:19:47.300 You know, it's going to be more work for me in the interim. I just, I can't handle it, right?
00:19:51.860 So, but the reality is, is that once you free up capital, a seat, and if you have the mechanism in place,
00:20:02.040 If you have the culture in place that attracts talent, once you can just get over that hump
00:20:06.440 and you have that new talent in the right seat, they're going to blow your mind, right? 0.99
00:20:11.200 And then you're going to kick yourself in the ass for not having done it sooner. 0.98
00:20:14.440 And that's kind of what I realized because there's definitely some positions 0.99
00:20:17.620 that we waited like years and years and years too long before acting.
00:20:22.620 We knew way back in the day.
00:20:24.300 We knew five years before that it was the wrong person.
00:20:26.620 But we just said, oh, we got to just keep afloat, keep this thing going, right?
00:20:30.120 So we just had a lot of Klingons that just were there. 1.00
00:20:36.960 I've never heard that term, but I love it.
00:20:39.660 That were there, they're the wrong person in the wrong seat.
00:20:43.800 And yeah, it was scary.
00:20:45.300 But once you have realized that, just pull the Band-Aid.
00:20:50.880 And we're going to survive through this.
00:20:53.040 And we're going to be better off for it.
00:20:54.660 And how did you go about fixing, or learning, or you
00:20:59.120 said the other half we were half of a business how did you figure that stuff
00:21:02.720 out go go where the knowledge is at right expose myself to the best of the
00:21:14.360 best out there I mean we're lucky because you're a you're a flight away
00:21:19.460 from having access nowadays right so I had the money so I have money I can fly
00:21:24.500 anywhere I want. I can talk to anyone that I can have access to. But really, just read, read, read,
00:21:31.160 read. I mean, I read, I'm always reading a book. I don't read a book a week, that's crazy. But I'm
00:21:38.560 always reading something. And I don't know, I mean, at some point, you just, you go from the time you
00:21:45.140 spent trying to learn something, and then you just start executing. And over time, it just kind of
00:21:49.300 grows and grows. And then all of a sudden, you realize that two years down the line, you kind of
00:21:53.880 know what you're doing but it's an accumulation of risks that you're
00:21:58.020 taking with new knowledge that you don't know whether it's gonna work or not
00:22:01.080 when you look back at your habits or your daily routine prior you know seven
00:22:06.340 years plus versus today on a daily weekly basis yeah like what's the big
00:22:12.060 difference like if somebody could watch the game tape yeah versus today's what
00:22:16.560 would they see different I think that if you were that's a good question I think
00:22:21.640 you were to look at who I was back then, you would say that I'm like a wild animal in a cage,
00:22:27.480 right? Or not in a cage in a lot of ways. I'm just mindlessly, non-deliberately just doing
00:22:36.200 whatever it takes. It's like putting out fires, right? I was an expert at just like always fire
00:22:40.520 putting, right? But that's not the skill set that you need to really grow and thrive and build a
00:22:47.880 business, you have to be deliberate. And I think there's a lot more of that organization in my
00:22:55.720 process nowadays. How does that look? What's some of those habits on a weekly, daily, monthly?
00:23:01.080 Self-care, right? If I don't watch myself, I would work myself to death.
00:23:06.760 Okay. And what do you consider self-care?
00:23:09.320 Self-care as in knowing when to shut off, knowing when to stop. Don't work till two,
00:23:16.200 three o'clock in the morning every night you know you have to stop so you can take care of your sleep
00:23:20.580 patterns like i mean i suffered from insomnia for years and years and years and i was like popping
00:23:26.160 like you know sleeping pills and stuff trying to fix that and like everything was broken right
00:23:30.220 again like it's i was untamed you know and through this process i think that at least i'm not perfect
00:23:36.100 by any means but i think that i've found a way to tame my less desirable instincts right so you
00:23:43.860 don't have you never felt like there was an issue like putting in the work you didn't have that
00:23:47.360 issue no well no I'm driven you have to watch yourself I do when you bite into something yeah
00:23:52.840 I and so I I have a hard time giving advice to people on on how to motivate yourself because
00:23:58.220 I'm naturally like just obsessive about something that I'm passionate about and I'm going to spend
00:24:04.620 like an insane amount of hours doing it so I'm not a good if someone needs help on on how to get
00:24:11.300 there i i that's not me because i'm that's that's my superpower in a sense and also my biggest
00:24:17.420 kryptonite yeah right because i could kill myself and kill my relationship and like just like spread
00:24:22.900 unhappiness around me yeah so i i've had to like really figure out like what do i want because i
00:24:29.520 never asked myself that question before right like i was just doing so until i actually started
00:24:34.920 figuring out well what is it do i actually want do i because i was never motivated by i sorry i was
00:24:40.700 never motivated by money I was just motivated by doing creating the creative part of kind of what
00:24:47.020 I do and and then I would just obsess about it and just put in the hours whatever right so there's
00:24:53.000 there's there's people out there that are they know everything about everything right so a
00:24:57.160 developer you're a software developer there's developers out there that know every design
00:25:01.080 pattern there is they know the syntax they've read every manual on it and then and then that's
00:25:05.660 how they operate, not me.
00:25:07.740 I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to my own knowledge base,
00:25:11.540 but I'm obsessed about what it takes to create something
00:25:16.160 and put it out into the real world
00:25:18.100 and not touching it for 10 years.
00:25:20.980 So to me, that's kind of the bar.
00:25:22.540 If you're going to build a physical product
00:25:24.320 and put it out there, you can't build a business
00:25:27.560 unless it's at such a high level,
00:25:30.860 like quality-wise and everything else,
00:25:32.640 that it's going to stand the test of time.
00:25:34.180 Software updates easily in your world.
00:25:35.940 Like it's physical hardware in a machine.
00:25:39.180 It's got to stand the test of time.
00:25:41.740 It's going to be well tested.
00:25:43.120 You said that you asked yourself, what did you want?
00:25:47.300 What was the answer to that question?
00:25:50.900 Well, I wanted to be happy.
00:25:52.180 So hunting on, like what does that mean for me?
00:25:54.420 Well, when it came to my work, well,
00:25:57.340 I wanted to have balance, first of all,
00:25:59.500 so that I could actually maintain a family.
00:26:03.500 So that was really important so that I could spend time with my kids and my wife and have that as my anchor.
00:26:09.580 But on the business side, I think that I needed to provide, I think, for others what I didn't get, right?
00:26:19.260 Like, you know, this sense of overwhelming weight on your shoulders that you have from kind of living in chaos, right?
00:26:29.020 I wanted to see if I could actually create something completely different and I guess take care of my employees, you know, and give them that.
00:26:37.700 And and I think that I think that we're pretty much there in terms of kind of the balance between environment, good, good culture and also optimize for for being able to to to to do the best work.
00:26:56.880 Because we're still a business at the end of the day, right?
00:26:59.180 So I need output from my employees.
00:27:02.640 It's not just a country club, right?
00:27:04.440 So yeah, I mean, they're happy, I'm happy.
00:27:08.540 And the business has turned around.
00:27:09.980 The business has turned around.
00:27:11.340 Yeah, we've developed this whole sales team.
00:27:12.880 Did you just have a record month last month
00:27:13.940 or something like that, or two months ago?
00:27:15.340 In the last one, two, three, four, I think since Christmas,
00:27:19.280 we've had three record months, and we keep busting.
00:27:21.680 So August, it's kind of a funny thing.
00:27:23.160 August has always been our worst month traditionally.
00:27:26.280 It's always been this weird thing, right?
00:27:28.220 Yeah, people are on vacation.
00:27:29.120 Yeah, people are on vacation, whatever.
00:27:30.520 They don't make decisions.
00:27:31.120 There's almost no sales in August every year.
00:27:33.320 And this year, it's going to be a regular month.
00:27:35.580 Like, yeah.
00:27:36.480 So it's like we're going to three times.
00:27:38.940 So what did you change in the business to make that happen?
00:27:43.620 Like, what was the other half, and how did you fix that?
00:27:46.040 The sales part?
00:27:47.040 Whatever the other.
00:27:47.860 You said you had half a business.
00:27:49.080 Yeah, half a business, yeah.
00:27:50.080 So engineering.
00:27:51.460 And I think that there's a lot of companies
00:27:53.400 like that in this area.
00:27:54.500 Totally.
00:27:55.000 There's great engineering companies around here.
00:27:57.820 But how do you actually sell on the global market?
00:28:01.560 And I think that a lot of companies,
00:28:03.700 we were very much like a lot of other companies
00:28:05.640 in that we really didn't have it.
00:28:08.360 And there's not a lot of culture of sales
00:28:10.760 around here for this sort of company.
00:28:14.040 But yeah, we just, look, I got a lot
00:28:17.020 of really smart people around me.
00:28:19.040 I have a really good leadership team.
00:28:21.580 And I like to, I like what, tactically, what did you do?
00:28:29.020 Like, did you hire some people?
00:28:31.620 Did you start doing marketing?
00:28:32.920 Did you go to, like what?
00:28:34.360 Somebody's listening to this, and they're like,
00:28:35.720 hey, I'm in your boat, Mark.
00:28:37.240 OK, all right.
00:28:37.960 Please give me a checklist, because I need to fix this.
00:28:40.540 All of it.
00:28:41.060 All of it.
00:28:41.560 So we basically built a customer journey.
00:28:45.600 First of all, figuring out who is going
00:28:47.020 to be our ideal customer, right?
00:28:48.700 So we really didn't know.
00:28:50.500 We were just selling.
00:28:51.340 When you're taking orders, you're not really looking to see
00:28:53.380 and questioning who's taking orders.
00:28:54.940 You've got to pulse, you've got to check, let's do it.
00:28:57.060 Yeah, so really figuring out what does our ideal customer is.
00:28:59.540 We didn't really even know what our core value proposition
00:29:02.580 was, right?
00:29:03.780 We didn't understand our product's value to the customer.
00:29:06.900 So once we figured out that through a series of whether it
00:29:11.900 was analyzing the data we had, looking to see who cared the most
00:29:17.300 about our product.
00:29:18.500 And then when we started hiring, we first
00:29:20.420 started hiring one sales guy.
00:29:22.520 And then we spent the next year experimenting.
00:29:26.740 OK, if we try selling this way, if we do this pitch,
00:29:31.100 what's going to work?
00:29:32.180 What actually works?
00:29:33.320 Because you're competing against a whole bunch
00:29:34.880 of other companies who are kind of trying their own tactics.
00:29:39.940 And they're doing their own thing.
00:29:41.000 But we didn't know what's going to work for us.
00:29:43.100 Because we're a premium product.
00:29:45.020 Because if we were selling just the lowest price
00:29:47.980 product well that's easy right just find that price lower your price but we didn't want to do
00:29:52.880 that so we experimented in on price but to a point right so finding the ideal price where we're going
00:29:59.280 to be able to convert as many people you're fighting off competition so you have to be aware
00:30:02.760 of that um articulating the values that are actually useful so when you talk about the
00:30:09.960 features and the benefits that you have when you actually mention those that it converts so which
00:30:16.600 ones actually convert?
00:30:17.460 Because you can say, OK, so one of the features of our product
00:30:21.480 is that you can remotely hard reset an ATM machine.
00:30:25.480 Some people care about that.
00:30:26.780 Some don't.
00:30:28.060 Some people were using it.
00:30:29.120 We weren't even marketing to these features, right?
00:30:31.900 So we're coming at it, well, we have this product.
00:30:33.820 We have this add-on feature.
00:30:36.200 Who cares about this?
00:30:38.240 If we're going to actually sell using that feature,
00:30:41.560 do people actually care?
00:30:43.040 We can think that it's pretty cool.
00:30:45.220 But unless you can actually phrase it and formulate some sort of a marketing and sales strategy based on that and prove that there's actually a valid and valuable reason for a customer to care, it's just us, a bunch of geeks behind the scenes that think that it's going to work.
00:31:02.220 How did you get the leads for that sales guy to test those?
00:31:06.240 Well, first, inbound.
00:31:08.360 We still have 1,200 customers that are always buying from us.
00:31:12.620 Right.
00:31:13.120 Yeah.
00:31:13.620 No, and so existing customers, right?
00:31:15.520 So existing customers that don't use those features,
00:31:18.120 you can try to upsell, and see how that converts.
00:31:22.760 A lot of people just didn't know about it.
00:31:24.520 So for us, all of a sudden, it's like.
00:31:25.860 So he just called on existing customers,
00:31:27.960 did a needs assessment, and then say, hey,
00:31:30.200 you've got these things.
00:31:31.500 And they were just add-ons, so expansion revenue.
00:31:35.260 Well, so exactly.
00:31:36.160 So expansion revenue, but then you're
00:31:38.340 figuring out, well, because communications for a modem
00:31:41.780 is the commodity part.
00:31:43.740 You can go off and buy a whole bunch of off-the-shelf gear
00:31:47.820 and the competition, that's where they live.
00:31:50.940 But if you're trying to just sell on commodity,
00:31:53.660 the only thing you can really talk about
00:31:55.780 is the price and the quality.
00:31:59.660 But you never want to fight that fight.
00:32:02.660 Oh, yeah, our product is higher quality.
00:32:05.120 Get it.
00:32:06.040 That doesn't work.
00:32:07.460 But now, if there's this belief in the industry
00:32:11.520 that you have a higher quality product,
00:32:12.980 you can leverage that fact.
00:32:14.580 But you can't actually, a new customer that doesn't know you,
00:32:17.320 you can't try to sell something based on quality,
00:32:19.800 because they're not going to pay the premium.
00:32:21.320 They don't get it.
00:32:22.060 Yeah.
00:32:23.280 It's like buying insurance.
00:32:24.140 They don't know they need it until they have an issue.
00:32:25.900 Exactly.
00:32:26.520 They just assume quality.
00:32:27.500 Yeah, but that's our ideal customer.
00:32:29.160 We've realized that our ideal customer is not necessarily
00:32:32.340 the guy that's new in the game.
00:32:37.980 It's the person that actually has felt the pain
00:32:39.940 that we can actually address in our marketing sales.
00:32:42.060 Oh, so somebody's been around longer
00:32:43.780 that's had to go physically drive to reboot a machine
00:32:46.880 or had those machines stolen.
00:32:49.180 So it's almost like in your sales call,
00:32:50.700 it could be like, have you ever had these really bad things
00:32:53.060 happen to you?
00:32:53.760 Exactly.
00:32:54.260 If it's 100% yes, you're like, giddy up, let's go.
00:32:57.760 Oh, that's really neat.
00:32:58.840 And then so did that iteration with the inbound,
00:33:02.320 but then obviously had to build a marketing process.
00:33:06.180 And yeah, we were kind of doing everything at the same time.
00:33:08.320 So the marketing part is for driving, for us anyways,
00:33:11.560 it was to drive interest and brand building
00:33:15.700 and kind of really build ourselves up
00:33:17.220 as being the authority for whatever we chose that
00:33:21.420 to be within the industry.
00:33:22.820 And we do some inbound, but like 99% of our conversion
00:33:28.320 is phone.
00:33:30.700 You talk to the guy, and we have a high conversion rate.
00:33:33.720 But are you doing outbound calls on that,
00:33:35.120 or are they coming to you?
00:33:36.080 Well, not, yeah, we're doing outbound calls as well.
00:33:38.720 Is it cold calls?
00:33:39.440 We're doing some cold calls.
00:33:40.840 Yeah, so we'll go through the internet
00:33:43.220 and generate lists of potential targets.
00:33:46.840 Like, what's our target?
00:33:47.820 Well, every company that has ATMs, right?
00:33:51.060 So anybody that doesn't know DPL, we just call them.
00:33:54.740 And usually, it's a process of multiple months
00:33:58.040 of multiple calls.
00:34:00.400 But it's not sophisticated from that sense.
00:34:04.160 You have to talk to people.
00:34:05.960 And once you're on the radar, and one thing
00:34:09.740 that we found works really well is doing things
00:34:13.400 like free demos, right?
00:34:15.860 We'll send you a device.
00:34:17.260 And now we're doing a free.
00:34:18.380 Like the Zappos model for shoes.
00:34:19.480 Yeah, now we're doing a free device for life.
00:34:21.180 So we'll give you a device for free, free and no charge
00:34:25.240 for life.
00:34:26.300 Even on the monthly subscription?
00:34:27.500 Yeah, yeah.
00:34:28.160 Whoa.
00:34:28.580 Yeah, your first device is free.
00:34:30.460 Because you know.
00:34:31.360 We know that we're going to convert.
00:34:33.880 Whoa, that's a great offer.
00:34:35.860 So we know how much that's going to cost.
00:34:37.400 But think about it.
00:34:38.160 We're either going to pay for Facebook ads or whatever,
00:34:41.440 which don't convert for us, or we're
00:34:43.080 going to put that money.
00:34:44.420 Because we know that every company that
00:34:46.360 buys one of our devices is going to,
00:34:48.320 for every device they buy, they're
00:34:49.440 going to keep paying us first for the hardware,
00:34:51.480 and then they're going to pay us for the next seven, eight,
00:34:53.680 nine years.
00:34:54.380 So lifetime value of the customer is high.
00:34:55.540 Lifetime value is super high.
00:34:56.880 And it's not one device per customer.
00:34:59.260 It's 50, 100, 500 devices.
00:35:00.880 That is brilliant.
00:35:01.780 Like you say, look, this is what it costs us
00:35:03.580 to acquire a customer.
00:35:04.180 Here's what I'm willing to invest to get a customer.
00:35:06.760 You kind of know like, I mean, how many customers
00:35:09.340 in the market in the world that have ATM?
00:35:12.420 Like your target segment, it's like 20,000 probably?
00:35:14.940 Well, probably not that much.
00:35:15.980 OK, so not even.
00:35:16.860 So it's like, you know that if I just,
00:35:19.300 and what a great conversation.
00:35:20.500 It's like, hey, we believe so much in our product.
00:35:22.620 We're just going to send you one for free, no service.
00:35:25.500 No strings.
00:35:26.080 No strings attached.
00:35:27.540 I know it sounds too great.
00:35:29.140 Just try it.
00:35:30.380 Because essentially, you're going to love it,
00:35:33.400 And you're going to want to upgrade all your other machines
00:35:35.300 because you can't believe they don't have these features.
00:35:37.280 Exactly.
00:35:38.560 Dude, that's amazing.
00:35:39.740 Yeah.
00:35:39.980 So it's really trying to uncover what that is for your company
00:35:44.260 to the market you want to serve, right?
00:35:46.220 Like the market, the target market, the value proposition
00:35:48.880 that they care about.
00:35:50.120 Yeah.
00:35:51.120 And then just figure out how can you create an irresistible offer.
00:35:54.300 Exactly.
00:35:55.380 Man, I didn't know that.
00:35:56.360 That's really cool, Mark.
00:35:57.400 Yeah.
00:35:58.380 What book, if an entrepreneur is struggling with where you were at,
00:36:02.780 what book would you tell them to start with?
00:36:04.420 Or what's the top three?
00:36:07.180 Which part of the struggle?
00:36:08.600 Because there's been a lot, right?
00:36:09.720 There's been my personal struggle.
00:36:11.560 Let's start with just not happy in the business.
00:36:14.780 Is there anything that comes to mind?
00:36:17.320 Yeah.
00:36:18.140 I mean, one of my favorite authors is Ryan Holiday.
00:36:22.580 And something like Ego is the Enemy, and Obstacle is the Way.
00:36:26.000 And it's really reframing the struggle
00:36:29.660 so that you can actually start seeing it
00:36:32.540 not so much as a negative, right?
00:36:34.080 It's you have to start shedding that weight
00:36:36.100 from your shoulders and you start seeing it
00:36:38.840 as a positive thing, right?
00:36:40.300 Like, okay, this is what it is.
00:36:41.940 It doesn't have to be this way.
00:36:43.780 There's like this world of opportunity
00:36:45.140 that I can change the way that I think.
00:36:46.880 I can detach the outcome from myself.
00:36:50.080 It doesn't have to be me and own me.
00:36:53.040 And also the cool thing about kind of transitioning
00:36:57.780 into kind of a growth mindset is that you can separate yourself from the outcome, right?
00:37:05.340 Which is kind of the ego is the enemy thing.
00:37:10.560 If you screw up, which you will all the time, especially when you're pushing yourself and
00:37:14.740 you're driving yourself, it's like, how do you not be hard on yourself, right?
00:37:18.920 How do you like somehow like become okay with exposing yourself to really the harsh reality
00:37:25.680 of growth and not let that take you down and i think that you have to have that conversation with
00:37:30.320 yourself and figuring out like what are your motivations why are you doing what you do why
00:37:36.720 are you how you are what what motivates you right because if you don't understand yourself then
00:37:42.560 you're going to make a whole bunch of decisions that you're not going to understand why you're
00:37:45.280 doing them so that's the first thing i find is that's the foundational part right because
00:37:50.880 there's a lot of entrepreneurs that self-sabotage right and and if what do you mean by that
00:37:58.320 well you know like we keep doing the same things and expecting different results and
00:38:03.280 we end up like just diving over the deep end so it's like for instance imagine that you've been
00:38:09.280 uh your product is your baby right and it is all that work that you put into a particular product
00:38:14.480 it got you where it's at you self-identify with all that work that you've done that thing becomes
00:38:20.480 you, you're one in it, and then you never know when to quit. You never know when to-
00:38:24.160 Your self-worth is tied up into that business, that product.
00:38:28.240 That business, that product. And you don't, I call it shooting your baby in the head. You're 0.98
00:38:33.920 unable to shoot your baby in the head when your baby needs to die, right? So you just hold on, 1.00
00:38:39.280 you hold on and you go down with the ship because you're wrapped up in this thing at such a deep
00:38:44.160 level that it will tear you down and bring you down so you gotta you gotta be deeply committed
00:38:50.800 but yet also being able to actually separate yourself from it and question it is this thing
00:38:56.320 gonna get me where i need to go because you know how it is like in business at some point you got
00:39:02.400 to pivot at some point you have to reinvent so it's there's no there's no like black and white
00:39:07.680 prescription for when that should be done it's an art more than a science in a lot of ways right
00:39:12.960 you got to trust yourself but at the same time you got to be aware enough about this whole reality
00:39:18.080 that you know when to act because if you don't act at the right time then you're gonna the ship's
00:39:23.120 gonna go down or you're gonna self-destruct right so i think that uh i think it's important to
00:39:29.200 really understand yourself and also your your relationships with your employees with your
00:39:32.960 business partners if you don't realize what role ego has in that right then you're not able to
00:39:39.120 actually say, I'm wrong. I'm sorry. I was wrong. That was totally screwed up. You were right.
00:39:47.920 I'm going to think about this more. I'm going to change. I'm not going to let this define me.
00:39:52.880 So all these conversations are really, really hard for driven, big type A personalities,
00:40:00.640 because we have this fire inside and we can easily think that we're always right.
00:40:06.480 And that can be the death of us.
00:40:07.760 And get frustrated with the people around us.
00:40:09.520 Get super frustrated.
00:40:11.040 So one of the things that I've learned how to be better at is instead of being frustrated all
00:40:19.520 the time at my maybe perceived impression that people are doing the wrong thing or that it's about
00:40:25.760 now it's about I try to take a step back and figure out, okay, what am I not doing right
00:40:31.040 that's not providing the right environment for that employee to be able to be able to give me
00:40:37.740 what I need from them? That's a different question, right? How come they're not doing
00:40:42.060 the thing that I need them to do versus what am I not providing them to that that's going to lead
00:40:46.460 them to the outcome that I need from them? One is you're in almost like a subservient or a slave to
00:40:54.120 that situation. The other one, you're empowered. You're empowered to do something, change something
00:40:58.020 instead of just being frustrated all the time.
00:41:00.120 So that's made a big, big difference.
00:41:01.820 What a reframe.
00:41:03.000 Yeah.
00:41:04.040 What do you think the mark of 10 years ago
00:41:06.040 would say listening to it? 0.99
00:41:07.860 You're crazy. 0.99
00:41:08.680 Like, what's this stuff? 1.00
00:41:10.020 Yeah.
00:41:10.980 It's a strange thing,
00:41:12.660 but I think it's part of the stuff
00:41:14.980 you have to kind of like just let go
00:41:17.000 if you're going to grow.
00:41:18.380 I just love because it gives you back the power.
00:41:21.700 Yeah.
00:41:22.020 What you just shared for me is this,
00:41:24.140 you know, we can either feel powerless
00:41:26.860 or empowered, same situation, different lens.
00:41:30.620 And in one case, we get angry and frustrated at people.
00:41:35.040 And the other one, it's this beautiful question
00:41:37.800 to change the situation.
00:41:41.260 That's really powerful.
00:41:42.900 It's freeing.
00:41:43.940 I know we've been talking a lot about this conversation,
00:41:46.460 but who did you need to become to be the CEO
00:41:52.100 of a successful, growing DPL?
00:41:56.860 And I needed to stop being the kid that was afraid of being someone they didn't think they were.
00:42:06.240 You know, I needed to be, I needed to start seeing myself through the lens of maybe other people rather than seeing through my own limited lens view of myself, right?
00:42:17.880 I never, I never ever thought and viewed myself as a leader, but I was in a lot of ways.
00:42:24.500 I was very much a leader in my own realm, but I never really perceived myself as one.
00:42:30.800 And so when it came time to become CEO, I was really, really insecure.
00:42:34.940 And I didn't know if I was capable because I didn't see myself like that.
00:42:41.440 But it took being well surrounded by other entrepreneurs, yourself included,
00:42:49.300 who saw in me, I think, things that I didn't see in myself,
00:42:53.620 or at least didn't see the same barriers that I saw in myself, right?
00:42:57.300 You know, at that time, I don't think you didn't know me all that well,
00:42:59.560 but you knew enough to not hold me accountable for things
00:43:04.900 you didn't really know about me, right?
00:43:06.920 So you didn't have those limiting beliefs
00:43:08.800 in the same way that I had about myself, right?
00:43:11.620 You saw potential.
00:43:12.780 That's the kind of way that you operate.
00:43:14.140 You see potential in others.
00:43:15.340 But I didn't see potential in myself in that way.
00:43:18.380 I was very, very confident in some ways,
00:43:20.200 but very, very insecure in others.
00:43:23.620 But then after that, it's just applying the same ethic that I've had, the same obsessive ethic at becoming a leader, the best leader that I could, that I've kind of proven that I could do in other realm.
00:43:36.280 As soon as I could just shed that limiting belief, then I could just move forward and run, right, instead of crawl.
00:43:45.400 And the rest is just work, right?
00:43:48.420 You learn, you lead, you make mistakes, you get back up, you say you're sorry, you do better next time.
00:43:55.140 And if you do that well enough, then you're going to notice that you have a team that is always watching out for you
00:44:01.740 and wants the best for you, supportive, and they believe in you.
00:44:06.540 And if you pick the right people to surround yourself with, there's nothing you can't do, really.
00:44:11.900 Mark, where do people follow along?
00:44:13.560 I know you share a lot.
00:44:14.540 That's what I love about you guys, shooting videos, getting yourself in trouble sometimes.
00:44:18.420 Where should people go, A, if they have an ATM machine,
00:44:21.160 and they should make the switch over?
00:44:22.660 If they're not a DPL customer, and your personal stuff,
00:44:25.800 where would you think people should go?
00:44:27.580 So the business is dplwireless.com.
00:44:29.460 My personal stuff is Marc Albert, just on Facebook.
00:44:32.160 I share a lot.
00:44:32.880 I have a bunch of things.
00:44:34.240 I'm obsessed about more than one thing in life.
00:44:36.020 I do music.
00:44:37.080 I'm a singer-songwriter.
00:44:39.600 Yeah, I love sharing with people.
00:44:42.640 I know you've got a big heart, and you
00:44:43.840 like to mentor others and give advice.
00:44:45.520 So if anybody's interested, follow Marc.
00:44:48.020 Dude.
00:44:48.360 Good stuff.
00:44:48.860 Appreciate you, man.
00:44:49.700 Thanks, man.
00:44:50.100 Thank you for coming on.
00:44:50.900 Thanks.
00:44:51.680 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.
00:44:54.920 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment with your biggest insight from our conversation.
00:45:00.400 Be sure to check out the next episode.