Ever wondered how one goes from living on the streets to running a million dollar enterprise in just six years? Meet Mark J Silverman, who walked this incredible path. His journey, filled with determination, grit, and the right mindset, is a testament to the power of change that begins within oneself. Marred by homelessness at 27, Mark surrounded himself with positivity, changing his environment and perspective, leading him to a whole new level of success.
Mark's life-altering journey doesn't end with his financial success. He brings to light the essence of personal transformation and talks about how maintaining a balance between success and well-being is vital. We take a deep dive into the importance of mental health, physical well-being, relationships, and spirituality, which Mark stresses are as crucial as professional triumphs. One of his clients shares how incorporating exercise and wellness routines into his lifestyle helped him combat anger issues and find tranquility.
The episode wraps up with a comprehensive dialogue on leadership. Drawing insights from life coach Tim's Story, we emphasize how often ignored aspects of fear-driven behavior and the inadequacy of one-size-fits-all approaches can impact leadership styles. We introduce our book, the Rising Leader Handbook, that examines leadership from four perspectives: across, above, within, and beyond. Join us to explore the promise of continued growth and personal development, as Mark shares more resources available on his website and the Rising Leader Podcast. Tune in to this inspiring episode and be prepared to change your perspective on success, well-being, and leadership.
How to Reach Mark:
Website: https://www.markjsilverman.com/
To Reach Jordan:
Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/
Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.
Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call
Ever wondered how one goes from living on the streets to running a million dollar enterprise in just six years? Meet Mark J Silverman, who walked this incredible path. His journey, filled with determination, grit, and the right mindset, is a testament to the power of change that begins within oneself. Marred by homelessness at 27, Mark surrounded himself with positivity, changing his environment and perspective, leading him to a whole new level of success.
Mark's life-altering journey doesn't end with his financial success. He brings to light the essence of personal transformation and talks about how maintaining a balance between success and well-being is vital. We take a deep dive into the importance of mental health, physical well-being, relationships, and spirituality, which Mark stresses are as crucial as professional triumphs. One of his clients shares how incorporating exercise and wellness routines into his lifestyle helped him combat anger issues and find tranquility.
The episode wraps up with a comprehensive dialogue on leadership. Drawing insights from life coach Tim's Story, we emphasize how often ignored aspects of fear-driven behavior and the inadequacy of one-size-fits-all approaches can impact leadership styles. We introduce our book, the Rising Leader Handbook, that examines leadership from four perspectives: across, above, within, and beyond. Join us to explore the promise of continued growth and personal development, as Mark shares more resources available on his website and the Rising Leader Podcast. Tune in to this inspiring episode and be prepared to change your perspective on success, well-being, and leadership.
How to Reach Mark:
Website: https://www.markjsilverman.com/
To Reach Jordan:
Email: Jordan@Edwards.Consulting
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ejFXH1_BjdnxG4J8u93Zw
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.edwards.7503
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordanfedwards/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanedwards5/
Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.
Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call
Hey, what's going on, guys? We have a special guest here today. We have Mark J Silverman. His story is a roller coaster of learning who he is and what makes him and his clients tick. He went from homeless at 27 to a millionaire in six years. How, that's what we're going to find out today. So, mark, tell us a little bit about what happened at 27 that really changed everything for you.
Speaker 2:So I was living in my truck, I had been thrown out of where I was living and I was trying to figure out what to do and I was looking at homeless shelters out on the West Coast. And I drove into Seattle, which scared the hell out of me. I didn't know, it was such a big city. There was a girl that I waited on tables with in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who I had a crush on, and she moved back to Seattle. So when I got thrown out of where I was living, I was like I'm going to go see her in Seattle. That's how well thought out my life was. When I got there, I had no money. I was looking at homeless shelters and I called my brother, who was living in Washington DC, to see if I could borrow some money.
Speaker 2:This was way before Venmo and PayPal. This is actually before the internet. It was 1989. So it was a thing called Western Union and you wired money to people and you had to go find the exact Western Union to get your money. We couldn't figure that system out, so he suggested I drive to Washington DC. So I started driving to DC living in my truck and I had a little bit of money left on a Unicall 76 card. So I ate at gas stations and lived in my truck and when I got to DC I was 135 pounds, with no prospects for life. So the turning point, it's really simple. He said you can come live with me. He owned a bunch of the most famous restaurants in DC. He says you can come live with me, but you're going to have to go to AA and NA meetings with me and gets over. You're going to have to go to take college classes and you're going to go to the gym with me and my friends.
Speaker 2:I was like I got nothing else to do so and you know he fed me really good. So I wound up hanging out with him and his friends and they were all sober and they were all getting their shit together. They were all super successful alcoholics. And so I got a job waiting tables and just started putting one foot in front of the other, creating something different than what I had.
Speaker 1:I love that because I think it's what a lot of people get. There is oh, mark was struggling and he joined this different group and now he's suddenly better and it's. But what it is for everyone in the audience to realize is that changing your environment can change everything Getting around the right people and Mark figuratively because of 1989, he figuratively got around the right people. Nowadays you could just do it on your cell phone. You can listen to this podcast, you can listen to positive things that can change your perspective, because the things we listen to, the things we watch and the things we read are what's going to reprogram our mind to have these different habits.
Speaker 2:So there's 12 types of programs online. So you can go to a and you can go to debtors anonymous online. You can go to sex a hoax anonymous If you have a problem with porn, you know you can. There's things like you can do anonymously online to get the help that you need, which wasn't available back then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's become so accessible at this point, but we don't even try to look at the correct direction, right?
Speaker 2:So so what happened was it was. It was really slowly, it was one step at a time. It was it was taking a college class here, taking college class there, and I want to. You know, I flunked out of college when I was 18.
Speaker 2:And I got straight A's as an adult because I actually cared and I wanted to be there, Like I had a new lease on life. And a few years later I wound up going up meeting a wonderful woman who I ended up marrying and we had two kids, and I was still waiting on tables.
Speaker 2:It was, it was it was it was a long, arduous trip to going from waiting on tables and bartending to getting a professional job. And I was working at the Four Seasons in Georgetown and I'm they told me I was the first one ever that they hired from the restaurant into a professional position in the hotel. And I remember I got a job in the accounts receivable department and they, they, they gave me a computer and there was no such thing as laptops. Then I had a computer and a. I was like what's this thing? They say it's a fax machine. I'm like what do you do with that? I didn't even know what a fax machine was Like. I knew a copy or like. But they, I it was, it was really. It was really. It was a real learning experience for me to to no longer be dirty with with greasy food and stuff like that and have a professional job and actually have to iron shirts and a tie and that kind of thing. I wound up getting it.
Speaker 1:It changes the entire perspective of and this is something I was talking about, because today is the day after Thanksgiving is that definition of what work hard means? And I talked to this about with some of my friends and they're like yeah, I feel like I'm never going to quote, unquote, work hard again and I'm like would? Your definition of work hard is different than it was before, so now you're doing different activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:It was really interesting because I remember I remember thinking how stressful it was to have a job different than waiting on tables, because waiting on tables it got it got intense really fast and then everybody left and you would go with a desk job, you have work to do and it's waiting for you there when you get back and in the middle of the night and you're thinking about that stuff and you never occurred to me. But what happened was I was on the fast track to go through management at the four seasons and I had only known the restaurant business and my whole family knew the restaurant business and I realized I was on the fast track to someday possibly make $50,000 a year managing a department in the hotel, which to me actually, had I not been married, had I not started having kids, would have been a revelation to do something like that would have been a career move for me, but I knew that I was having children and I wanted a life and I took some aptitude tests and one of them said I should be a salesman.
Speaker 2:Now I'm shy, I don't like to bother people, so I took a job. I went looking for jobs as a salesperson and I remember my first. My first interview was with a copy salesman. You just have to go door, you have to go to office to office, to office to sell these copiers to people.
Speaker 2:Back then this is how ancient history it was. And I came back from my first day and the sales manager looked at me and he said Silverman, you're a really nice guy. You should not be a salesman. That's a bad idea. I was like I was just dejected. So I wound up getting a sales job and I sucked at it. I was so bad and I didn't know what to do and they weren't paying us a salary, it was commission only. And I was again married.
Speaker 2:kids, like what to do and I'm doing terrible. And then I realized that selling wasn't my thing, that if I made friends with people, if people liked me, something would happen. And I started to connect with people over the phone, with my phone calls, and all of a sudden I went from last place to the number one sales guy selling computer learning services. And then I got another job selling Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I just want to hop in right there, because what a lot of people might not realize there is that Mark had a transition period where he wasn't desperate, Like he might've needed the money, but there wasn't that desperate nature which causes you to start thinking differently. He built emotional rapport with the individuals, which allowed him to build a better connection. And it's like Mark, I'm just helping a friend, Like do you want the services? Is that how you felt about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, needy is creepy right. I learned later when I became a coach. When I became a coach. As a coach, if you need clients, you can't take clients because needy is creepy. But yeah, you're right, I realized that my job was to create a rapport, was to create relationship. And then the next job I had was there was a technology called a smart board, where you wrote on the whiteboard.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And it would download to your computer. This was a fricking, mind-blowing revelation. And I saw this thing and I talked the company into giving me a job. I said I can sell this. This is the most incredible thing. So I went from $26,000 a year to $52,000 a year to $125,000 a year. I remember calling my brother going I make $125,000 a year, like I am the shit man. And then I got another job. A friend of mine said you are not really selling.
Speaker 2:And I remember my mother when I was growing up we were pretty poor. My father ran a hardy's a burger can. That was the kind of people we were. And my mother worked in a dress shop and she made $0.25 a dress commission. And my aunt said to her once could you work any harder? And my mother said no. She said what you're doing is you're selling small things. You're a good salesperson. You should sell bigger things. And my mother went and got a job in a furniture store and she started getting commissions for furniture. Then all of a sudden our quality of life went up. So I thought about that when I was a sales guy Like I'm selling computer storage and I'm selling smart boards and then someone gave me an opportunity to go sell enterprise kind of big technology and this was around in the late 90s and I got that job and I was terrified, terrified.
Speaker 2:These people were, they're from a prep school across place. Terrifying. But I went to work every day scared. I showed up every day scared. I would go do presentations and I would sweat through my suit. Terrifying. And the first year in this technology company called NetApp I sold a million and a half dollars worth of stuff, which was a huge sale for a startup to USA.
Speaker 2:Today I wound up getting presidents club and all these accolades, and I find myself in Hawaii with my wife celebrating the fact that I am the shit man and I'm at the Four Seasons in Linae in Hawaii and I'm like what the fuck is happening here, like I used to be waiting on these people, like they don't even know I was homeless, right? None of these people know any of this, so that's where. And then my income just kept going up. So I went from this homeless guy to having stocks in these tech companies and living in a million dollar house around doctors and lawyers and stuff like that. So I had that kind of whiplash thing. So that was how I went from being homeless to now wearing Hugo Boss suits.
Speaker 1:It's incredible because it's just the tool that you're presenting to the people, which I found so fascinating. Because we're all in these systems Everybody listening is in a program, everyone is in a company or they're in a place, and if you just adjust that circle, everything might change for you. Because this is a conversation that happens pretty frequently with a lot of different people where it's like, hey, you might be upset about this, but that's just your circle. There's another circle where you can be doing exponentially better financially purposes, but that will allow you to do more with your life and handle more. So what was that transition like for you? Because I feel like it's one thing to do it financially, it's another thing to do it mentally, with your family, with all those different parameters, because now it's oh, dad, we couldn't get a bacon and cheese, now we can get whatever we want, like it's a big transition.
Speaker 2:It's so funny because my son is one of my sons is Rabbi, and we were talking about like dude, if you're going to go this route, it's going to be poverty for you to figure out until you figure this out. And he says I could do that. I said no, I lived in poverty. You grew up rich Like you do not know what it's like to not be able to have food, so it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:But my mental capacity actually that's the whole point of the story is that didn't catch up. So we go through. We go a decade or so. My kids are growing up, we have nice, we live in great, but my insights didn't match the outsides. I didn't deal with the traumas that led to all that. So you and I were talking off camera before. I said show me an Uber successful, a really ridiculously successful person, and I'll show you a trauma, a pathology, something driving them that is unhealthy. That's saying that it's bad to be successful. I'm saying that people who are really driven to success are usually running away from it. Something I was running away from that homeless guy. I didn't want anybody to ever see that I was that homeless guy, that I had the chink in the armor.
Speaker 2:I had this as thought and I couldn't hold it together. So it was like cotton candy instead of fuel that I was running on. So, about 2009, everything started falling apart. The inside started coming out. I started having panic attacks. I would walk into these companies and I would have a panic attack in front of the CIO who I had worked with for years. I would start sweating, I would break out in hives and I started getting sick. My marriage started falling apart. I lost a really good job because I couldn't sell anymore. So all of a sudden, stone cold, sober, never taking a drink or a drug, my life started falling apart, as if.
Speaker 2:Because those traumas start happening and my friend Dr Jeff Spencer calls it the zone of doom somewhere between 38 and 45, when those cracks in life starts to ask something different of you, when you have to figure out how to pivot and how to come from a different place. I'm going from smarts and gumption and hustle and grind to something smarter, to a different place, and if you don't do that, it all falls apart. And I watched that happen to so many of my contemporaries. But it happened to me and it was that when I thought I was going to die. I was 48 years old, 47 years old, and I thought I was going to die. My career was in the toilet and I was sick and I was miserable and depressed and suicidal and I decided I couldn't commit suicide because I thought now the real mark, everybody sees the real mark, right?
Speaker 2:That was all I was saying. I made the decision in 2009 that I was going to run the Marine Corps Marathon. I couldn't run a mile, but I wanted kids to see me do something crazily great. When everything fell apart, I decided I needed to make a million dollars to leave to them so that they would be OK, and I was going to get a $60,000 charity. And that year I wound up running the Marine Corps Marathon an hour faster than my best time.
Speaker 2:So, I was really proud of that. I made the million dollars took about a year and a half and I gave the $60,000 charity. The miracle from that was my career was back on fire. My health was back. We found out I was misdiagnosed over and over again and my kids and my ex-wife were doing better and I was doing OK. But while I was running and while I was training, I was listening to every self-help book known to man on my headset. I was listening to philosophers' notes, which were the first summaries of all these best books. I was listening to spirituality books. I was meditating, I was journaling. I was doing everything every Twitter bro says you're supposed to do to become the person you want to become. Yeah, and that's the revelation. That's when a real new life showed up for me and that you know. So that's when everything changed and that held the trajectory of where now I'm like an ex-smoker.
Speaker 2:I've got to teach people how to be successful without killing themselves. I have to teach people to be successful and thrive. You know that hustle and grind, if it's gonna cost you relationship, if it's gonna cost you your health or your mental health, that hustle and grind is bullshit, it's poison.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's funny because you say that, because I grew up in New Jersey and in Jersey a lot of people want to go to New York City after college and I have a lot of friends who went to New York and the big apple is the rat race on the rat race it's the most consuming of. We need to chase finances and sacrifice everything else we have for the success of what it's like to eat at the big steakhouse or what it's like to do this, and a majority of the time, that trade-off is never really worth it. And that's where we have these different ideas and different perspectives that we come up with. And I think it's so amazing that you transitioned, because you overcame to start sharing these and you've created these new pillars and these new lifestyles and this new exciting dynamic of something that actually makes you happy, something that you're actually proud of.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, that's why I love you, know, when you, you know, we both researched each other before we had this conversation and I was so thrilled to see that you had your five pillars of mental health, physical health, right, community service and philanthropy. And spirituality and relationship. Yes, I wrote those down, that you know, that you know you're not just about, hey, wealth, get money, hustle, grind, right, it's. Let's have a holistic life For me. I work with executives who are right in the middle of New York City, right in the middle of Toronto, right in the middle of London, right, right in the thick of it, and my job is to teach them how to do all that again without destroying everything else in life, so they can thrive, and that actually doing these things will make them even more successful. Right, I believe that these are rocket fuel. This is rocket fuel for your career, not detrimental. It's not. Let's take away from our career to take care of these things. It's, these things will make you exponentially more successful.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I found that so many times working with clients where people are so preoccupied with hey, if I'm not focused on this 100%, but in the reality is that you can't focus on it 100% because you're gonna burn yourself out. And if you give your things that will fuel you like maybe it's having a nice walk with your partner or reading a new book or exploring different ideas, or listening to a new podcast or doing anything or going back to your childhoods ways of I enjoy skateboarding, I enjoy rollerblading, I enjoy just doing those activities can expand your horizon exponentially. And then when you find that it pushes towards that five year vision, changes everything.
Speaker 2:Well, if we go back to my story, my career was in the toilet. I decided to run a marathon. That running the marathon fueled me, fueled my creativity, changed everything about me so that I could go make a million dollars and I had the best year I ever had in my entire life. While I was all consumed in running.
Speaker 1:How did you? Because I actually had a very similar thing happen to me with the marathon. How did you feel that it helped your perspective on things? Because most people think it's the act of the running. In reality, it's the training and it's the waking up at 4 am, running the 20 miles on a random Thursday and your friends are like what are you doing? Like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of things. One is it gave me a discipline. Yes, that I didn't have right, Like I had to find the time to do these things. The other was it made me fascinating to people.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So I was raising money for charity, so I would tell people I'm running the marathon and if you'd like to donate, and then people were following my progress and so it made me a really interesting person to have something outside. I remember I posted a picture of myself after a half marathon and I've never considered myself much of a stud, right, I'm a short Jewish kind of guy and I posted a picture of myself finishing a half marathon with these sunglasses. It looks really, really good. And I remember a vice president at my company sending me a message saying I'm coming back and my next life is you. Right, I've never had that kind of attention from people that I'm someone to look up to, that I'm someone to emulate. So it changed my confidence around other people in such an incredible way. So that's why I teach that to my clients now, because, again, I tell them I'm like and I talk to myself out of sales all the time I'm like I don't give a shit if you're successful, I just don't care how much money you have. I'm not impressed by that. I wanna know, right, I'm the ghost of Christmas future. I wanna know, in 10 years, is the love of your life still gonna be by your side. I wanna know Like I have a rule with all my clients, because most of them are young.
Speaker 2:I'm 61, right? You're not allowed none of my clients are allowed to be in worse shape than I am. I'm like I'm 61. If I'm in better shape than you are, there is no excuse. You can afford personal trainers and chefs and stuff like that. Like no way can I be in better shape than you, right? And then I teach them. So your pillars we just talked about my pillars are your relationship is first. I want your relationship with your spouse, with your friends. I wanna make sure you have friends, cause men tend to let, especially when they, after they have kids and stuff, let their friendships go to the wayside. How's your health? How's your mental health and your physical health? What are you putting in your body? And I keep into a real close eye on how they're taking care of themselves.
Speaker 2:Then I think there's something that's missing from everybody and it's that ability to be alone, that ability to sit and contemplate, so some kind of a meditation, contemplation practice. It doesn't have to be sitting on a pillow. I do the one minute. I teach a lot of these New York finance guys who are my clients, the one minute meditation, and they're like one minute meditation. I'm like, yes, I want you to sit at your kitchen table, I want you to stare at the window, can't have your phone. Just stare at the window, drink your cup of coffee and just breathe for one minute. They're like a whole minute, like, yes, a whole minute without your phone. And then I can't tell you how many of them like actually create meditation practices. Six months later they're like, yeah, no, no, I sit for 20 minutes every single day. It's a game changer, man. Like I breathe in meetings, I don't get triggered as often, right? So if you have that contemplation practice, if you take care of your physical and you take care of that mental, you're in a good space.
Speaker 2:I have one client who is an ex professional athlete. I was six foot four, like big guy, and he's got anger issues and that's why they hired me and I said, dude, I'm not gonna coach you. Oh, I asked him when was the last time you were at the gym? Cause he was really overweight. So when was the last time you were at the gym? He says I haven't been in the gym in two years, like weren't you a former athlete. He says yes, I was a professional athlete up until my thirties.
Speaker 2:I said so I am not gonna coach you until you send me a picture of yourself in the gym eight times. I don't care if you do anything, I just need you to show up in the gym eight times. If you show up, you're probably gonna do something, cause you'll be embarrassed, but then I will coach you. He says why would you do that? I said because you're, like you know, a five year old in kindergarten with ADHD, and we want you to sit at a desk and be civilized and you have no recess. You have to punch things, you have to throw things around. You know like you're this animal.
Speaker 2:You can't be under the fluorescent lights and he wound up losing a ton of weight. Hey, his wife is a marathoner. He's starting, you know he's-.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2:You know, now he's man, you know matching his wife. So that's important. Then spirituality, you know, like it doesn't have to be, it's not religion, it's not. You know, like what do you see outside yourself? Right, how do you and for me, the spiritual, the most important piece about spirituality is what is bigger than the sale, what is bigger than the slight? Your boss, you know like, your boss cheered you out. What's bigger than that, what's more important.
Speaker 2:So many of my clients, when they have kids, I say look, your perspective is this is everything your job, your success, the numbers, how people treat you is everything. When you have a child, you're going to see the perspective is your daughter is everything. And everything else takes a second. You know you'll have perspective, right, so that spirituality is separating yourself from the ups and downs of how the world treats you. You know what you think about things. And then last is creativity. Is what are you doing? And it could be side businesses, Like it doesn't have to be drawing but what creativity are you adding to your life so that that creativity seeps into your business? So for me, relationship, health, groundedness, some kind of contemplation practice, spirituality and creativity are the, are the rocket fuel that that makes sure that when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 60, like me, your life is expanding, you're thriving, you're more supple, you're more interesting and interested than closing down, because most people close down as they get older.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've been seeing it from my age, where people are and I'm 27 and people are closing down. People are closing down at 22,. They're like my life's over, I got a job, blah, blah, blah, and it's like no, like this is the beginning. This is where it all starts. So the ones I want to dive into are the ones I find most interesting, are the ones that are outside of my realm. So it's the creativity, and then the groundedness and centeredness, because everything else pretty much aligns. But that creativity element, well, let's dive into that one first, because I think that one's very important, because it is.
Speaker 1:It is true, there are, there's a lot of people who obsess about work and then they'll bring it home and they'll bring negative vibes to their family because they're like work was a bad day and it's not that thing. But, like you were saying, creativity can literally be working on a puzzle, or it could be starting a blog, or it could be starting a new business, or it could be a lot of different things. So where do you find creativity and where do your clients find creativity? Because it does expand people's horizons and sometimes it's people working out or it could be anything.
Speaker 2:For me, I paint, I draw, I do, I do these wooden puzzles and I turn them into pictures and give them to people. But for the creativity pieces, if you want to be successful, you have to be better at something than everybody else. You have to be more competitive and better. If you want to be exponentially successful, you have to be different than everybody else. And you can't be different if you're not creative, if you can't think, if you can't think outside the box, you're not going to leapfrog and you're going to be pushing a rock up the hill.
Speaker 2:Creativity, you know, if you, if you're like one of my, one of my clients. When I first met him, he's a, he's a tech CEO and I said what did you want to be? He said I wanted to be an artist. I said draw something for me. And he takes a napkin and he draws a basil. He just draws basil. I'm like that fucking looks like basil. Oh my God, because I haven't drawn anything in 20 years. I'm like can I keep that napkin? That is beautiful. I said I.
Speaker 2:You know, if we're going to work together, I need you to draw, you know, a couple times a week. He's like no, not going to. That part of my life is done. It took me years. I've been working with him for six years now. He's now taking art classes, he's now creating Christmas cards. He's now now because we wanted, we wanted a 5X company. So you're not going to 5X your company if you're, if you're not thinking outside the box. And now he's doing all this creative stuff and it's changed everything and he's so excited and he's lost weight and he's and he's on fire, you know, in his late 50s, to 5X his company, right.
Speaker 2:And he's got creativity, that creative juice, and he says now I want to build my company to a hundred million dollars so I can sell my company and go live in Italy and be an artist Like that's got something to live for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it causes you to think differently.
Speaker 2:Five years. He told me no, I'm not going to draw anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it causes you to think differently, because now he's like oh, maybe we could partner this way, maybe we could do this, because what it's really doing it's not the act of the painting or that, it's you putting your stuff down, focusing on one activity at a time, because 95% of us are doing a hundred different things. Like prior to this podcast, I was working on three different things, and then the podcast comes in and I'm like presence, like this is my creative zone. Where it's like oh, we can have a deep conversation. It's just us two. I have other things pop up, but no, I want to get the most out of this conversation, which I think is the importance of finding a creative outlet in some capacity. Yeah, I think it's invaluable.
Speaker 2:And for me again, my happy place is with a pen. And if people say, you know, if you had one thing to bring on a desert island, what would it be? And it would be pen and paper. If I could just have pen and paper, I'm good because I just doodle, draw, you know that kind of thing Absolutely. And then let's dive into the other one.
Speaker 1:So it was centeredness and groudness. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2:So, if you look, if you think about it, you walk into the world and you're buffeted about by the world, the news who cuts you off, how people feel about you. Did you make a sale? Did you not make a sale? Right, you're. You know, you're a victim to the circumstances that you find yourself in and the only way not to be a victim of the circumstances you find yourself in. And also, by the way, if you're a bulldozer, if you're a bull in a china closet and you're like I'm not a victim of anything, I'm going to punch through a wall. That's just the flip side of being a victim, right, right, I'm just going to go on the offensive. So I'm not a victim, right, that's not a sustainable and that's not a supple way of being. So. Contemplation practice helps you to figure out the difference between everything. That's what? So the old, the ancients, say basically that we're not in relationship with the world. We're in relationship with what we think about the world.
Speaker 2:So that lens with which we think about the world is how is our experience of the world? So if we can't pull back from the lens and see that it is a lens and see something different, then we're just going to be in that conditioned state, right? And they say the mind. Trying to tame the human mind is like trying to tame a drunk monkey stung by a scorpion Not just a monkey, not just a drunk monkey, a drunk monkey stung by a scorpion. So if the ancients thought that, how are we ever going to do that with Twitter and Facebook and all the stuff? Right? So the only way to do that is a contemplation practice. It's a quiet and the contemplation practice could be going on a walk without your phone. It does not have to be home, home, you know, and yoga and all that stuff. It's just quiet down so that you can figure out, remember who you are.
Speaker 2:Without that conditioning, that you can remember that the news is not your experience of life, that your boss you know, just because your boss yelled at you doesn't mean you need to take it on.
Speaker 2:And the only way to do that is to strengthen those muscles of being grounded, right, if you so, if you're in a meeting and you get caught off guard by something. If you don't know how to breathe, through that and get yourself, get your nervous system present, you're not going to be able to respond without being defensive or nervous. But if you're practiced right, I did a video about how not to be triggered on Thanksgiving, right, and it was great video and everybody loved the video and everybody thinks I'm, you know, guru Mark, because don't get triggered on Thanksgiving from your family and I got triggered last night. So bad, so bad. But I realized the second that I have anger. The second that I have anger especially if it's over a four or five on the scale of one to 10, it's no longer the thing. It's something going on with me and underneath anger is almost always fear or sadness.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was able to, because I'm practiced, because I've had a contemplation practice.
Speaker 2:I got rageful Because I'm and then I breathe through it and I went what's going on? You're rageful, it's not the thing. Oh, you're scared. Here's my fear. So I took a couple more deep breaths and I was able to communicate. I said you know? The person said oh, you seem so upset with me. I said actually, I'm not upset with you, I'm scared. Now we can have a conversation because I'm taking responsibility for what's happening to me. But that can only happen with a contemplation practice for me to know that anger it's. I'm not angry, I'm scared about something, and anger is much more fun and useful than being scared. I'd rather blast them than go. That scares me. That's too vulnerable, right, but that's now. I had it. We had an honest conversation, came out the other side in such a good place. But that comes from the practicing before any given situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the focusing on oneself to make yourself happy and to do the activities that are important to you in the morning or before the day starts getting to you is super important. And, like you just brought up right there, whenever anyone's in an argument or they're in a defensive place, an argument is me going like if me and Mark got in an argument, it would be like you're wrong. You're wrong. They focus on the other person. So, like Mark did right there, mark does such a good job of it that it's like oh wait, it just happened. How do you do that? No, but like what he really did there was, he went, no.
Speaker 1:This is something that I'm afraid of and if someone goes like that, like you can feel that people will lean in on that moment because they're like what do you mean? You're afraid? How did? Because you brought it on yourself instead of pushing it out onto the person, and that's a really good tactic for whenever you're in a big disagreement, it's not what can the other person do right, but what can you do right? What can you do differently to change the outcome of what occurred? Because you're in the conversation? I mean you did something, like something you did must have impacted something, and most of the time we don't take that accountability.
Speaker 2:I'm going to travel around with you as my explainer. This is great yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think it brings us to a good point about, like, as we're going through these different things, like leaders have a lot of challenges, like you're explaining right now that you're like, oh wait, I don't fully like, leaders have a lot of difficulties because they're at these points where they want to, like you said about your client, they want to 5X themselves you know what I mean and they don't know how to do that. They're just going through the path, trying to get through. So how do you find and think about leadership?
Speaker 2:For me, leadership is again, the way leadership is portrayed is you have to eat raw meat and throw iron around and be the alpha wolf, whether you're a man or a woman, in any given situation. And for me, leadership is showing up being willing to have the conversations, the difficult conversations, feedback, right, encouragement, interest, support, being vulnerable, like all those things. To be in relationship with people is the first step for me for leadership, and also like being willing to take it on right, stepping up first, being in relationship, being willing to have the difficult conversations and basically that's for me, that's leadership. Then those, that's who you need to be to be a leader. Then there's this, of course, the skills of planning, creating vision, right, so all of those things. But that mindset of being a leader is just being willing to support the people the way they need to be supported around you to get the job done.
Speaker 1:And I think this is really important, because most of the time, we view leadership as someone who has a role, not as the intangibles of what a leader actually is, and that is the biggest misconception that occurs in a lot of corporate dynamics or even in in everywhere where you look around and you go.
Speaker 1:That's not leadership. I didn't like that. That person didn't make me feel good and like to realize these things of like wait, if I'm a leader, I don't want to be a leader and make people feel bad. I want to be able to be straight up with them, but I don't want them to feel bad or feel that I don't appreciate them or respect them or any of that. And it's just, most of the time, no one's trained in this, so they sit there and they just make judgments or act unintentionally. Let's go with that. They'll act unintentionally and not have this proper training of hey, everybody's different, we're all humans, but that doesn't mean that you need to generalize us. Everyone needs different things, everyone has different morals, everyone has different things pushing towards them, and that doesn't mean that you can just treat people as a one-size-fits-all, and that's something that, yeah.
Speaker 2:So people get to. So when leaders, when leaders are not being leaders and they treat people like one-size-fits-all, everything's a nail and I'm a hammer it's usually because they don't have a grounding and a centeredness in themselves. It's usually coming Most bad behavior comes from fear of some sort. So if you can't get that groundedness and that self-worth and self-esteem in yourself and know who you are in your position, it's really hard to be a leader. You wind up being a manager, you wind up being a tyrant because of fear.
Speaker 2:The more secure you can be in yourself, and, by, the only way to be secure in yourself again is some of these practices that we were talking about, and then having a posse of people. You have to have a community of people. You run masterminds. Yes, Having people who have your back, having people who you can have a conversation with so that you can get back on track. Half of my coaching practice is spot calls. All my clients get 24-7 access to me anytime. I set really good boundaries so if I can't answer a phone, I don't but them calling me up and saying I'm about to go in this meeting and I'm furious. Talk me off the ledge so I can go in and be my best. Having a group of people who can help you get back onto that center is also essential.
Speaker 1:Especially if you are the one running the business, or the CEO, because a lot of those times, or the head of the desk or any of those dynamics, because in those locations you don't want to show weakness, so you need somebody outside your circle to speak to you in a way of hey, I think you might be right there, you might be wrong there, and these are things that you have to be open to, because that's the biggest thing I found with the group coaching I run in.
Speaker 1:The mastermind I run is that everyone needs a perspective and everyone needs to have an outlet outside of work. That isn't because you can't just go in and be like, dude, I'm struggling, like what do you think the other sales guys are going to think? If you're a salesperson, you go, I'm struggling, they're going to try to take your lunch, like you're all friends and stuff, but they're going to try to take advantage of you. But if you have a coach or you have someone outside your circle maybe your dad, maybe your brother, maybe whoever so when you trust the advisor, they'll be like, hey, like, thinking about it this way, and then you're prioritizing your best interests, not, hey, it's okay, go be sad and like sit out for three weeks while I can get all the sales because my numbers are bad. You know what I mean, because too many people are everyone's focused on their number one priority. So that's why if you get paid, if you pay someone to be on your team, that helps a lot. It's very valuable.
Speaker 2:I did a keynote in Nashville and I followed Tim's story. Tim's story is the number one life coach on the planet. He's responsible for Robert Downey Jr's turnaround and Friends with Oprah and he's getting his own TV show and all this stuff and I follow him, which you know talk about just being an imposter syndrome coming on stage. But before he left he goes. He said you know, I have two therapists and a coach. He says why would you? He said, ask me why the top life coach in the world? He has two therapists and a coach.
Speaker 2:And he says because one of them might have the day off. He says but also he says I live in a world where I live in an unreal world of celebrity, of riches. I'm on jets, I know all these things and the only way for me to say get grounded and centered is to have someone to give me perspective, have someone you know, talk to me like a regular person. So I have my support group in order for me to be Tim's story and I was like thank you, tim, for being so vulnerable and not saying you're the man, you're the guy, you're self-sufficient, but it takes a village for all of us to be 100%.
Speaker 1:And even Tim came on the podcast and it was these fascinating concepts that you come up with, because it changes everything. And when you said that, it made me think of Tony Robbins and he's like, yeah, like I might know some stuff about personal development, but if we're talking financial literacy, I'm going to call Tudor Jones. He's my client. I'm not going to tell him how to run his finances. He's actually going to coach me because that's the way it works.
Speaker 1:You learn from the people who you work with and it's every relationship is a two-way street. It's not just a one-way, so it's. It's. There's deeper relationships, and the other major thing is that a lot of people are struggling with loneliness. So these groups foster this perspective of how do we help one another. So if you want to create your own group super beneficial. We definitely recommend that because it's something that outside of your usual, or it's signing up for a softball league or doing something outside the norm that you're not used to Absolutely Mark. How do you think about the different lanes of leadership? There's leadership across, leadership above. How do you think about that?
Speaker 2:I think about that all the time because it's what I do all day, every day. In fact, my new book, the Rising Leader Handbook, looks at leadership from those four perspectives. When you're either growing an entrepreneurial business like when you're growing first, you're everything to all people all the time, and then you start adding people to the mix. When you're climbing the ladder, it's the same thing you have to learn how to lead up. You have to learn how to follow and lead while becoming a trusted advisor to whoever your boss is For me, most of my people, it's the CEO Then you have to learn how to lead on a team of other leaders.
Speaker 2:You have to learn how to take into account other people's agendas, other people's ambitions, how everything that you're bringing to the table affects them. How do you speak up, speak truth to power, while being in relationship with those people? That's really, really hard. Then, leading your team that's what we most talk about is leading your people and then leading yourself, which is what we've been talking about this whole time. For me, the only reason I care about teaching people to lead up and lead across and lead their teams is so that they can lead themselves and have a better experience of life. We just use all of that as a lab in order to become the best person you can, to have the best experience of life that you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's a lot of people not fully enjoying it, so why not make the most of it?
Speaker 2:How many miserable rich people do you know what's the point?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Mark. Are times winding down, where can people find more about you? If you want to leave any closing thoughts, I'll have to hear them.
Speaker 2:Sure, Everything is at markjsilvermancom. Mark the letter jsilvermancom.
Speaker 1:I'll put that on the show notes.
Speaker 2:Or on the socials. You can get really sick of me. I put a video out of my face every single day. You can also, if you go to my website, you can get a free copy of my book Only Tens A Confrontor to Do List Transform your Life is a free copy there. It talks about a lot of the concepts that we talked about here, and then my podcast is called the Rising Leader Podcast Turning High Achievers into Effective Leaders.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark. This has been amazing.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you. I love the call we had before the call and this was really fascinating. Thank you,