How Honest Leaders Build Stronger Property Management Businesses - with Mark Brower

We talk about why leadership feels lonely and how honesty, humility, and clear goals create the fastest path to real growth. We connect endurance training lessons to property management leadership so you can build better habits, stronger systems, and more freedom over time. 
• leadership as a journey that can feel isolating 
• honesty with yourself and others as a lever 
• humility to admit the gap and ask for help 
• getting clear on what you actually want 
• changing your environment to change results 
• identity and systems as the real habit engine 
• small groups and accountability that make action easier 
• Ulysses pacts as a tool for commitment 
• freedom as the flywheel behind better leadership 
• thinking bigger than “achievable” goals 
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Transcript

Welcome And Friendly Banter

Tony Cline 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets to profitability, efficiency, and achieving true freedom, whether it's your time, money, or lifestyle. I'm your host, Tony Klein, and I'm here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let's get to it. Welcome back to another episode of the Property Management Success Podcast. Got Mark Brouwer on the Property Management Aid Station. Mark, I gotta say, man, you are looking more handsome and more rugged every single day. I gotta stop looking at you, buddy.

Mark Brower 0:33

Oh my gosh. You I mean, I've been growing this thing out. I was in Tulum last week, so you like the longer beard. That's what I'm hearing.

Tony Cline 0:40

I just uh yeah, it's just kind of making you look more like a uh more like a man, and you know. And less like what?

Mark Brower 0:49

Well what was I before, Tony?

Tony Cline 0:51

Well, we'll we'll save that for uh for a private conversation where I don't have to embarrass you in front of all of our peers here.

Mark Brower 0:58

Jeez, man.

Tony Cline 0:59

Well, I like the look. I like the look, I like the darker colors. Uh yeah.

Mark Brower 1:04

Yeah, you like you like the dark charcoal, sure. That's it. Okay. Sweet. Good to see you too. And you're also handsome, and you're looking more like a man every day.

Tony Cline 1:13

Well, I've been I've been looking like a man for a while, though, so I'll probably have to cut all this out, but anyway, let's let's talk a little bit. You were you were in Tulum, and uh so let's share a little bit about what you were doing out there, Mr. Man of World Travel.

Mark Brower 1:30

Yeah, heck yeah, dude. Uh Crane, Crane Horizons, the annual retreat. It was epic, it was so invigorating and restorative and restful, and that's all the R words I can come up with. It was so wonderful, though. Recreational. Um, and we saw some Mayan ruin ruins. Bienvenidos a las ruinas mayas. I'm pretty sure I said that wrong, but that means welcome to the Mayan ruins. Nice. And yeah, it was great. I mean, any time you can spend time with people who can level you up, that's bonus time. That's that's some of the most valuable stuff you can do as a leader. And we I I I I will submit to you, Tony, we are all on a leadership journey, are we not?

Tony Cline 2:21

I agree with you. And I think we'll we'll come back to that. But you said something that what was that? What is it? I thought you were reaching for a liquid death, but not. I know.

Mark Brower 2:28

I should where's my where's my liquid death? It's just a green brain.

Tony Cline 2:34

All right, a green brain. All right. You said something about the Mayan ruins, and I'm assuming people paid money to go see those. I assume so too.

Mark Brower 2:45

I just followed the person in front of me.

Tony Cline 2:47

Nice. Well, it gives me hope that uh downtown Denver will eventually come back where people will pay to come and see it because it is not the glorious place that it once was. And you know, that's where my office was for 20 years.

Mark Brower 3:02

And uh we've moved out of there. So And you and there is some connection with ancient civilizations because you called your company Cliff Dwell Cliff Cliff Dwellers,

Leadership Can Feel Lonely

Mark Brower 3:10

modern Cliff Dwellers.

Tony Cline 3:11

Yeah, hanging out on the side of these high-rise buildings. So Yeah. Just like that. Anyway, let's get back to the leadership conversation. I think that's super fascinating. Everybody is on a leadership journey, whether professionally, personally, in their family, and you can be lonely trying to be a leader. So let's dig into it.

Mark Brower 3:29

It can be lonely. You want to throw that out there. Well, it's true. It's true. Some of us focus on the positive aspects, others of us focus on the sad aspects. Well, man, you're digging into me today. I don't know. You told me.

Tony Cline 3:43

Little little quid pro quo, little tit for tat. All right.

Mark Brower 3:46

Anyway.

Tony Cline 3:47

Yeah, so I agree. You know, it's but one of the things you mentioned when we first started was being around that community, be around people that were just inspiring and empowering. And as a leader in your business or your family or your social circle, it can be a challenge to be a leader and feel like you have to have it all put together when none of us do, right? And so it's how can you surround yourself with people where you can be vulnerable enough to share what you've got going on

Honesty And Public Vulnerability

Tony Cline 4:20

so that you can get help with it.

Mark Brower 4:22

Yeah, to me that's that's about honesty too. Like I tell my kids, if you there's almost nothing you can't get through in life with a really deep commitment to honesty, honesty with yourself and honesty with people around you. And I got to give a shout out to my buddy Peter Lohman, who obviously founded Crane with Wolf Gang Krosky. And it was really Peter, starting to read his newsletter a couple years ago, when I saw that he was outing himself about the mistakes he was making in his property management company that was a very important moment in my leadership journey where I saw a live example of someone who I perceived as pretty successful, specifically talking about their failures. And I thought it was an uncommon display of confidence, humility, vulnerability. And I thought, hey, maybe I can be more like this, you

Humility Clarity And Worthiness

Mark Brower 5:20

know? It was it was a great thing.

Tony Cline 5:21

Yeah, so it is vulnerable. It does take courage to put yourself out there. But one of the things that I've learned, and I know you've learned this too in in our journey through running and running a business, they're very much on parallel with each other, where you can only improve once you've acknowledged that you've got an issue with something. So when I wanted to start going into the 200 mile distances, I had trained like I was training for 50 mile distances, and you just can't train the same way. And I was doing things over and over that wasn't giving me better results, and it wasn't until I admitted that I didn't have it figured out that I was able to surround myself with people who could help me figure it out. And once I did that, as you know the story, my my first Moab, I finished 92nd out of 168 finishers, hired a coach, went back the next year and finished in the top 10. So the reason I was able to do that was I hired somebody that had done and had been where I wanted to go. So he had finished the year that I finished 92nd, he finished first place, smashed all the course records, finished almost two full days and nights ahead of me. And uh those are the kind of people that I've I've learned I need to be the dumbest per person in the room or the person who is the lowest on the ladder, or at least towards the lower end, so that I can surround myself with people who are performing at that high level.

Mark Brower 6:52

There's an antecedent to um to greatness. And it is there's an antecedent even to putting yourself in the right rooms with people that can help us level up as leaders. And and you touched on it, you you hinted at it. It was to be humble enough to think that, well, there there's a gap here. You know, I don't have this all figured out. And there's another antecedent, which is to get really clear about what it is we want. And there's so many of us, myself included, that just don't have enough clarity. I remember as a kid, my dad was building a dental practice. I was in fourth grade. He comes home one day, he's like, This is a great book, Tony Robbins Unlimited Power. And he also brought home a tape series. And in fourth grade, I started digging into this stuff. I'm like, this is fantastic. I'm gonna transform my life. And uh a little side story is I peaked in fifth grade, and then the rest is an afterthought. But but I wish I had known you back then. That'd have been I was such a cool fifth grader. I had the cutest girlfriends, the whole thing crumbled. But anyway, so what one of the uh one of the things I learned at that point was, you know, Tony Robbins would say, like, somebody comes to me and it's like, Tony's like, what do you want? And they're like, I want more money. And he's like, here's 10 bucks, get out of here. That in the point he was making is so few of us spend the time to get really crystal clear about what we want. So the humility to acknowledge we we don't have what it takes yet, uh getting really crystal clear about what it is we want, and then feeling worthy to ask for it. And these three things, I think they are the blend of these three things is the recipe of greatness. And it's the recipe of becoming the leader

Change The Environment To Change Outcomes

Mark Brower 8:40

you are intended to become.

Tony Cline 8:42

I agree with that. I think that the you you do yourself a disservice, though, if you stop short of what comes after that. You have to know what you want, you have to decide, you have to be humble enough to ask for help to get it. But then you have to change the environment. And we've talked about this a little bit on previous episodes, but you know, a lot of people that go to rehab and then they come back from rehab, they go right back into that same environment. Even though they have great intentions, they just can't fight all the outside forces. And so if you want to change the outcome, you have to change the environment. You have to change where you go to do the work or how you structure the work getting done. Something has to change because we are all just a series of habits that have been stacked on top of each other. And most of the things we do throughout the day, case in point, in between my last meeting and us recording this, I had about 12 minutes. So I ran downstairs, walked through the kitchen. And since I was in the kitchen, I decided I'd need a couple cookies. I wasn't hungry, but those cookies were good for about 30 seconds, and now I'm like, shoot, why'd I eat those cookies? It was just, I was in that environment. That's where you go to eat. And so that's what I

Identity Systems And Atomic Habits

Tony Cline 9:55

did.

Mark Brower 9:55

Beautiful. I'm reading Atomic Habits right now. In a couple days, I'm leading a book club on atomic habits. And in Atomic Habits, he talked about three levels of habit. The first level is outcome. You know, we want a certain outcome. I want to develop the habit of running. The deeper level, the second level, is system. Do I have the system, the environment, the tools, the network that facilitates that outcome happening? And the third layer, the deepest layer, is identity. Do I see myself as a runner? And I'm fascinated about what you just said, the system, the environment, the process, right, the support. It is such a powerful thing to do, to put yourself in a design, intentionally design a system where intersecting with the level of success you want is inevitable. It's a matter of fact because you're vibrating at that level and around the people doing that thing. But even and even deeper than that, before you'll before you'll put that system in place is a shift in how you see yourself. And if you see yourself, if you identify fundamentally, existentially as I'm a runner, it's intolerable that you don't have a system that fosters running, that produces that outcome. And so I think that's a beautiful thing.

Tony Cline 11:32

I know a lot of times we leave it as inferred, and I think our listeners and our our viewers are sharp enough to pick up and connect the dots.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yeah.

Tony Cline 11:41

But I want to I want to specifically connect the dots in this case. When I'm training for a long distance race and I've got my crew and my pacers that are gonna run that race with me, we'll train together, and it's a lot harder for me to decide to not show up to go train at 4:30 or 5 in the morning if I know that my crew is gonna be waiting there for me. If the people are going to be there, it's hard for me to say, I guess I won't show up today. And so by creating that community, that level of accountability,

Community Accountability And Coaching Groups

Tony Cline 12:15

the interaction with others that are believing in that same vision and same dream, it makes it easier. And I'm gonna tie this back to property management, where when I was running my property management business, I didn't really have any other people I could lean on because everybody that worked for me counted on me to have it all figured out. And so that's why we started the coaching business. And back, you know, in 2017, we started doing this in the last few years, five years, whatever, we've been doing this full time. But even with that, we've shifted from doing a lot of one-on-one coaching to doing what we call the Champions Edge program, where we bring people together who are all working hard to achieve the same thing, and we bring them together, not in a big group, not in 50 people at a time or whatever, but a handful of people, again, going back to the pallbearers. You know, you want to you want to pick your pallbearers, the people that are gonna help carry you across the finish line if necessary. And we have seen a dramatic improvement in people's success because now they're not just on their own road, they're on the road with other people, they're training with other people and they're doing the exercises and and having that small group community where it's okay to be vulnerable and talk about what you're struggling with. And so that's just one of the things I've noticed in running, again, that's parallel with our coaching business, which is parallel with just being an entrepreneur in general, is being around the right group of people.

Mark Brower 13:47

Yeah, two ideas I want to share uh that really connect with this and uh what you're talking about deeply resonates. One of my favorite author speakers is Jordan Peterson, and he wrote in his book, 12 Rules for Life, he pointed out that studies show that people are more likely to give medicine

Ulysses Pacts And Commitment Leverage

Mark Brower 14:05

to their pets than they are to take their own organ transplant anti-rejection drugs. This is crazy. But you know what? It's it tells us something about human behavior. We will often do more for other people than we will for ourselves. So your your little anecdote about meeting your crew somewhere at 5 a.m., you know, because you've committed to that, I think, I think not only is like about Tony doing what Tony wants to do, but it's also, hey, I've obligated myself to to uh uh other people that I don't want to let down because we've decided to do this together. And that is such a powerful way of moving us forward through life. I want to tell a quick story. Let's go to Greek mythology. You know who Ulysses is? I know Ulysses S. Grant. Ulysses. No, yeah, no, no. Ulysses, somebody's gonna fact check me on on this. Ulysses was the guy on the ship. He had a crew, he had his men, and he told his men to tie him to the mast of the ship. Why did he do this?

Tony Cline 15:10

I think I've heard this, right? He was afraid of the siren call of the mermaid. That is it.

Mark Brower 15:17

And if if and he knew he he knew that um he would it would be irresistible. And so he had his men tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could hear the siren call and not steer the ship into the rocks. And there's something called a Ulysses contract or a Ulysses pact now that when you make an agreement with people to do or not do something, and they and they and they help you fulfill that commitment. It's called a Ulysses pact or a Ulysses contract. And I'll tell you that I have done more. I've gotten greater leverage on myself through Ulysses contracts and Ulysses packs than I have with just feeling like, well, I want to achieve a lot. It's it's that that sense of loyalty, honor, and commitment and duty to the people you've committed to and working together that has an exponential impact on our ability to create value and add impact in the world. And I think it's a great thing.

Carpe Diem And The Freedom Flywheel

Tony Cline 16:20

I love that. Um agree a hundred percent. But you have me so curious about this green brain in your hand. I've got to hear about that. You want to hear about this?

Mark Brower 16:32

Yeah, what is this? This is such a this is such a distraction. You know what? I stole this and I kind of feel bad about it. I walked into my therapist's office yesterday, and she had this on the couch, and I was just like squeezing it as we were exploring my inner child wounds, and then at the end, I just walked out with it in my hand. So I don't know. It's my fidget toy right now. Let's go.

Tony Cline 17:01

So here's here's my fidget toy. You see this? This is uh I I have had this on the desk. I have one of those July. So talk about joining with a bunch of people that have the similar goal. This was our coin that we had from the Grand Canyon. So this was our Onyx coin that we printed for everybody for the says Champion's Edge on the back, property management coaching, and then it says Grand Canyon National Park Rim to Rim 2025. And this was special when we gave these out, but this is even more special to me now. And the reason why I keep it on my desk, number one, is we had a great time with everybody that went. But the reason that this is even more special to me now is can you guess? I'm gonna give you three guesses. Two of them can be totally wrong.

Mark Brower 17:51

Because it ages, it ages like a fine wine. That's my first guess. Number two, number two, the resale value on eBay just doubled. That's my second guess. Number three, because you're gonna you're gonna create a series of five of these events, and if anybody cashes in all five tokens, it's worth a five thousand dollar discount on Champion's Edge. Those are my three guesses.

Tony Cline 18:12

Oh, that was that was good. I wasn't counting on that, but uh we'll dig into that later. The reason I love this is it says rim to rim 2025. And for those of you that are listening that don't follow the rim to rim or the Grand Canyon, like those of us that went. Shortly after we went, a fire raged through the Grand Canyon, burned down the North Rim Lodge, historic North Rim Lodge, and uh burned down a lot of the trail on the North Rim. And so the North Rim is closed, you cannot take the North Rim. And so this is a reminder that when you want to do something spectacular, set your heart to it, set your mind to it, and then go after it because while we think we we have time, things happen. And and so that's this I keep this on my desk to remind me that when it's time to have that courageous growth, that you just go for it. You just go and go after the things that you want. And we had a lot of challenges on that trip that made the trip even more fun. And we've talked about that on previous episodes. But since you shared your show and tell from your therapist's office, I would show a little bit of my therapy of the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim coin. These are not parallel sharings, but yours is one way.

Mark Brower 19:36

Yeah, I didn't steal mine, I guess. Yeah, yeah. So um, so it made me think of carp carpe diem. Carpe diem. Here's here's a few other Latin phrases for our listeners, because I'm sure they're all dying to know. Carpe momentum sees the moment, carpe vitam sees life, and then carpe libertatum, which is sees freedom. And I'm gonna tie this back because the leadership journey that we're on as we're building property management companies, I would propose, I would submit, is a journey of the pursuit of freedom. And as we level up who we are, first by leveling up our perception of who we are and and changing our identity so that then our systems and our outcomes absolutely follow. Because when you change the way you view something, your behavior and the environment and the things that you will tolerate completely shift. Um, and so um as we're as we're going through this leadership journey, one of the outcomes is increased freedom. And then with increased freedom, we have more time and resources to invest even more in our leadership journey, which then creates more abundance and that flywheel keeps turning and it's a beautiful thing. And for those of us who want to, I was at an event a couple of weeks ago and I got this bracelet. So here's my other show and tell. And this bracelet, I don't know if that's backwards or if you can see that. In pursuit of a life well lived. This is this is what it's all about for me. I I am in pursuit. I am striving for a life well lived, both because someday I want to stand before God with confidence and say, yes, I used my gifts and talents and I loved people, and I and I'm I'm really happy with, you know, not only what I did, but who I became in the process. But I think most of us, most entrepreneurs, are the type that we want to kind of suck the marrow out of the bones of life and we want to, we want to live life to its fullest. And so that's part of what we're doing in this leadership journey, and it's a great honor.

Tony Cline 21:44

I

From Business Success To Doing Good

Tony Cline 21:45

want to touch on that a little bit because we talk, I've talked and shared on this podcast in the past about working with leaders of property management businesses that have hit a certain level of success, but then sort of plateaued. They've built a Business around them. They're the genius with a bunch of assistants. They can't pull themselves out of the business. And you and I have had conversations a lot about freedom. And at one point we we were having a text chat back and forth where we were talking about freedom and the fact that freedom of time, money, and lifestyle are very much combined, but they are very separate. Each one of them leads you in a different direction. And they all compile to make something great. But what we don't talk about on this show is the people that we work with that have actually mastered that extraction, where we've helped them extract themselves from the business, and they're now doing things that are in pursuit of that higher calling. Where, and this is the part that I get really excited about. This is the part that is one of the reasons why I do this, is I get to surround myself with people who we've helped figure out how to achieve a level of success. And now they have time freedom, money freedom, and lifestyle freedom to say, okay, I have things figured out to run a business. Now, what is more important than business? What is what am I passionate about? And I get to surround myself with people who are creating charities and funding charities and donating their time to help people. I know you have a mission to help young men become leaders. Mark Melznus is doing the same thing with young men. Nick, one of our clients, long-term clients, he's now uh has a charity called 100 Orphanages, where their goal is to be the primary donor, primary sponsor for 100 orphanages throughout the world. And it's just a different level of conversation and communication and empowerment. I mean, that that gives me so much energy when I walk away from those conversations because you realize a lot of us are playing way too small.

Mark Brower 24:01

I love this. I love this so much, Tony. You know, you know, my purpose in my life and in my business is um helping good people do more good. And to me, that permeates the property management company I'm building. Uh, it permeates the construction business that I have in a partnership with my partner who runs that. And it and it really informs and and future casts for me what I'm doing this for. I don't need more than five million dollars to retire on, for instance. But but I sure would love to have $50 million net worth in my lifetime so that I can do a lot of good with that money. And um and I think for those of us that want to want to pursue a life well lived and want to make a meaningful difference. I remember reading in uh Ray Dalio. It's either in his book Principles, I think it was in his book Principles, where he talked about that he'd accumulated so much wealth and he'd done so well in his business. And and then he started shifting at a certain point of his life and giving that money away. And he said that he worked just as hard at giving that money away as he did in earning the money to make sure that it was having the absolute most impact it possibly could. What a meaningful life, what a beautiful way of using our gifts and talents to create value, so much value that people vote with their wallets and voluntarily exchange lots of money for the things we've built, and then at some point be able to turn around and use that abundance and create lasting, meaningful impact. Um, that's exactly what I want to do. And and um and I want to surround myself with other people that want to do the same thing.

Tony Cline 25:52

So, how do we how do we tie this back? So we've got

A Roadmap When You Feel Stuck

Tony Cline 25:55

listeners uh from uh I don't even know how many different cities. I know 70 different countries at this point. I thought we had like 10 people that listen to this. They travel around.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Are we up to like 20? This is great. I don't know. We've doubled our list of counts.

Tony Cline 26:15

We but we do have, we we are in uh 70 different countries now at this point. So the but the but I want to tie it back. So we've got people that are struggling, still growing their business, people that are at 10 doors, 50 doors, 100 doors, 200, 2,000, all all in between. And some of them are listening to this going, hey Mark, hey Tony, that that's a cool, that's a cool desire. I'm still trying to make sure I can hit payroll this month. I I haven't built my business in a way that can sustain without me. I haven't, you know, leasing season's coming up. I'm dreading having to figure that out. How do we tie this back to giving them some hope and giving them some vision of a better future where it's not just all about maintenance orders and tenants and signing leases and all of that? You know, we're talking about this big picture stuff. And if you haven't been able to connect and and build that bridge yet, uh this could almost sound rather than motivating, this could sound soul crushing, I guess, if you haven't figured that out. How do we tie it back? How do we give people a path or uh a roadmap of how do we get from where they are to where we're talking about?

Mark Brower 27:36

Yeah, well, my question back to you, Tony, is when something seems impassably long and soul crushingly difficult, how do you do how do you proceed?

Tony Cline 27:47

I think the first is I I need to know that there is a way to do it and to hear stories from people who have done it, and to figure out how to be in their presence. And you know, one of the things that I say when I'm in my training plans, and you know, you've seen me when I've been in the deep in the middle of a training block, and it's just I've lost all passion for the sport. I just want to like, I look at my what my coach has for my training block for that week, and I'm just like, I cannot do 30 miles on a Saturday and then 26 miles on a Sunday again, like if I'm in my peak training weeks or whatever. But knowing that there is a proven system out there that somebody can follow and just that people have done it before. And I think a lot of property management companies are isolated, and unless you're in a group like Narpham or Crane or you know what what we have going on, unless you're in a group like that, you can feel very isolated and it looks like from the outside that everybody's got it figured out. But everybody has a struggle that they're dealing with. They may have figured out the struggles that you're dealing with, but as they've elevated themselves, they're dealing with bigger struggles. And so when I'm in the deep training block, I say, is this plan been laid out by somebody that knows how to get where I'm going? And then the second thing is one of our core values for our racing team is you don't quit with time on the clock, and zero unproductive time is another one. And so we say if we can take one more step, we take one more step. So it's that relentless forward progress of just knowing I am moving in the right direction. I'm not just treading water until I drown. I'm taking step after step in the right direction.

Mark Brower 29:39

Exactly right.

Overwhelm Private Victories And Momentum

Mark Brower 29:40

Yeah. And having people around you that have been there before. I think, I think our brains, I I experienced this earlier today. I think our brains can go to overwhelm. You know, things feel heavy, they feel big, they feel beyond us. That's normal. This morning I was feeling overwhelmed. So I pulled out Notion, I journaled, I put everything down, everything out of my head, then I organized it, then I prioritized it, and then I decided what I could do and what I couldn't do. And then I got my energy back. So that's something that I wasn't born doing. Somebody told me, hey, this is a good idea, this is a good approach. You know, each of us are unique, and we each have things that can trigger overwhelm, that can trigger feelings of like uh of not being willing to take the next step. And those are the private victories that overcoming overcoming those private battles, man versus himself, woman versus herself, those are the real successes. And when you when you when you when you run an ultra, like you've run so many, and I've I've run several, we know that race day is is not is not the uh race day isn't the victory. The real victory was the hundreds of small private victories that led up to race day. And race day is the celebration. Race day and just like who's this girl that just won gold in figure skating for America, she wasn't even running for a freaking medal. She wasn't she wasn't skating for a medal, she wasn't even performing. She's just like, I just I need to share my art with the world. And she did it with so much freaking confidence and joy because she wasn't worried about being measured, she wasn't worried about performing, and she went out there and celebrated. That's what success is. But but it comes after all the really tiny, small private victories that don't feel so meaningful, but are truly meaningful um that that build up to that. And and those those are those victories become possible when you surround yourself with the right people and you have the right system. Um because otherwise we just get we just um we get log jammed with our own uh emotional um stressors.

Tony Cline 32:03

I think something else that if if you go back and watch, so I have a Colt Runners channel, YouTube channel, where we posted some of our races early on. And the second year I ran, I think it's the second year, the second year I ran Moab, I'm running with a guy who finished either second or third that year, and we're only like 10 miles in, maybe 11, 12 miles in. And I realize I'm running with the guy that finished in second place last year, and I'm like, oh man, I'm if I'm running with you, I'm going way too fast. And uh he's like, nah, this is you, this is exactly where you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be here with me in this moment, and we're gonna talk about what this journey is all about. And we started talking about the longer the the longer the race, the bigger your goals, the smaller your obstacles become. And I kind of framed it as your your goals define your obstacles. Meaning if if your goals are really small, the small obstacles look really big. But if your goals are really big, you don't even notice those small obstacles because you're focused on the thing that's so big that your mindset is like, well, I can't let that slow me down. I've got to go and and I'm trying to run 200 miles, and we were even talking about okay, if this was a thousand mile race, we'd only have two hundred and thirty miles left, like we'd be almost done. And so it's like, what is your goal? And and then how can you surround yourself with people that have done it before and can help you change your mindset? I think that's the biggest thing for me that I've learned in being in these competitive sports is it's you when you're alone, you have limited beliefs. But when you surround yourself with other people who are doing things that are crazy and doing things that are much bigger than you even thought possible, well, what you're trying to do seems small. Of course, it's it's doable.

Mark Brower 34:02

So that made me think of a book that is sort

Think Bigger Than Smart Goals

Mark Brower 34:05

of an OG self-help book. It's been around for a long time, and it was The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, 1959. And he talks about how success isn't about intelligence. It's not necessarily about capability, it's about belief. Think bigger, act confidently, and you perform at a higher level. I love what you said so much. Makes me think of Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who co-wrote the books with Dan Sullivan when he talks about time. Like dare to dream or set audacious, ridiculously time-constrained goals, because when you do so, you can filter, you can find the signal through the noise. If you only dare to 2x what you're doing, there's almost infinite paths to getting there. And there's a lot of noise. But if you want to truly 10x what you're doing and you dare to try, you dare to declare that I'm going to 10x in this ridiculously short amount of time, now suddenly there's only one or two ways you could possibly do that. And you're using you're using audacious belief and time as tools. So you're throwing off the constraints. And I I um I posted something on LinkedIn a year ago, I think, that I said smart goals are stupid. And and I got some flack for that. Like here we are. We're a bunch of we're a bunch of lemmings, we're a bunch of sheep saying, like, oh yeah, smart goals, smart goals are the way, smart goals are smart. Yep, yep. Sign me up. I agree with this ideology that smart goals are smart. Well, are they really smart? Because the A stands for achievable. And if we're only going to dare to do the thing that we can conceive of right now that is achievable, are we really giving ourselves the opportunity to transform at the rate and to the degree that could be possible? I love about really, really, really big goals in really shorts amount of time is it's uncomfortable. And guess what? Do we really need to beat ourselves up if we don't achieve everything we set out to do? Elon Musk hasn't produced a roadster yet. I'm still waiting, dude. You know, you're supposed to have a zero to 60 miles an hour, one second roadster a few years ago. Does anybody think less of Elon Musk because he aspired to produce a roadster that nobody's seen and he nobody's talking about anymore? No. No. But what we do get inspired and excited about is following someone that dares to dream really big on really short time frames with a lot of enthusiasm and does their very best to marshal the resources to make that happen. And that's how I want to live my life. And that's what I want to inspire other people to try to do.

Tony Cline 36:47

Love it. Sign me up. I'm in. Uh, I want to hang out with Mark Brouwer more. Let's do it. So, how do I do that?

Mark Brower 36:53

Well, join Onyx. Yeah.

Tony Cline 36:57

All right. Uh, let's uh let's bring this

Health Adversity And What We Are Proud Of

Tony Cline 37:00

back. I I was listening, so we we've shared on the podcast. I told so tomorrow when this airs, it'll already be over. So either I'll have good news or bad news. But tomorrow I go to the cardiologist to have them determine whether or not I'm a candidate for an ablasion, which is a procedure they go in through the groin, in through an artery, and they do a catheter, they send a laser up into all four chambers of your heart, and they basically shock or laser some of the nerves in there to kill off some of the nerves that are triggering an improper heartbeat. So I'll be doing that. But as I've been in AFib since right before Systems Conference back in January, I have tried to determine who I am and what I am now made of because I have not been able to go out and train. This is the actually the driest, warmest winter on record in Colorado, and I've been on about four or five trail runs since since like December. But I have been spending a lot of time on my treadmill, and I have a 42-inch TV, whatever mounted right in front of my treadmill. So I listened to a, I watch a lot of videos on YouTube on a lot of this stuff that we're talking about right now. And one of the things that one of the people I was watching, I was watching some interviews, and he said, What are you the most proud of? He was asking the other person, he's he's been asking this in a series. He said, What are you the most proud of? And so I think I'll I'll close out my portion of the show with what I'm most proud of is the game. In the face of adversity, in the face of things happening, I surrounded myself with people like you, with my running coach, with Scott, who is on my running team who I met in the Grand Canyon, Jared, who is a client of ours who has paced or crewed me for different races, Jason, who was a client of ours who ran his first marathon 50K, 50 miler, 100 miler, and then went out and paced me like 60 miles at Moab. You don't have to be a runner to hang out with us, but it inspires people to, when they're around, other people who are dreaming big, it inspires them. And so for my takeaway from this, is even in the face of adversity of my heart performing at a much uh reduced rate than what it normally has, I'm still going out and getting an hour a day on the treadmill and I'm not wasting the time. I'm like, okay, if I got to be on the treadmill, I'm feeding my brain with all of the things that I need to keep my mindset right so that when my heart is back ready to go, I can go out and perform. And I still have all those relationships to help me kill those great crazy dreams that I've got.

Mark Brower 39:55

I love it, man. I'll share what I'm proud of as well. I am proud of my commitment to want to help people see themselves more accurately. I love, I love to help people see how worthy of love and belonging and success they are. Because when we shift the view that we have of ourselves, then we change our environment, we change our systems, and our outcomes change. That's probably the main reason I'm I'm on Earth. You know, I'm 48 years old, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what it is I'm supposed to contribute in this life. And I think a big part of it is I get really enthusiastic about people's potential and about helping them see themselves differently in a way that raises their floor and helps them uh become intolerable of the status quo and and demand uh more from life and from themselves. And that's man, that just that that just fills me up. So I'm I'm proud that I'm committed to that that

Sponsor Jokes And Closing Calls

Mark Brower 40:55

purpose.

Tony Cline 40:55

Very good. Let's wrap up here with one single question. Have you been sponsored yet?

Mark Brower 41:02

No, I'm not apparently I'm not featuring liquid death enough in my videos.

Tony Cline 41:07

Okay. Liquid death, you're out. Uh so polar, if you are uh if you're watching this, let's show Mark how to get a sponsor.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

So you're already sponsored.

Tony Cline 41:19

Polar Seltzer. Black cherry is a great flavor. Fantastic. Send me a sponsorship agreement. I'll sign it right away. I like this. Polar, let's get you on board.

Mark Brower 41:29

I like this. I think we should just keep bringing random products in that we have absolutely no getting no benefit from.

Tony Cline 41:35

All right, Mark, uh, let's get them out of here.

Mark Brower 41:37

All right, you got this. You are more incredible than you can possibly imagine. Okay. It's one foot in front of the other. You are infinitely worthy of love and belonging. Even if you don't make it to the next aid station, you're incredible. Go out there and try.

Tony Cline 41:54

All right, but we'll see you at the next aid station. We will see you there. Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We'll be back with another value packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you've got something valuable out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, here's your success.