Things Will Get Hard but Never Give Up on Yourself with Mark Drager

AUDREY
Welcome to The Business Shop podcast, where our guests speak on meeting the challenges of entrepreneurship, as well as offer tips and advice on business, marketing, technology, and more. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned professional, this episode is for you. I am your host, Audrey Wiggins. Let's chop it up.

Our guest today is Mark Drager, and he's from, A suburb of Toronto, Canada. Yes. C-a-n-a-d-a. 

MARK
Canada. That's how we say it, right? Canada, right.

AUDREY
So we're going international today. Okay. Mark actually founded his creative production company in 2006, and he grew it to a little over $2 million in annual revenue. Then slowly watched as it all crumbled around him. And he's gonna expand and tell us more about that and how he, , he put the crumbles back together, so to speak. So through the hard lessons he learned in working to not make the same mistakes again, or twice. 

Today, he has Phantom Media and it focuses less on growth and keeping the machine fed and more on doing the extraordinary work with cool people and I like that. Are really cool people, that's awesome, Mark. That's a good story right there. So you're a brand strategist. He also understands, the need to be courageous. And Mark, believe it or not, that's my word for the year. Courageous. Every year. 

MARK
Oh, I love it. 

AUDREY
Lot of folks, they pick a word and that's mine. So Mark, welcome to the show again. And, let's let her rip. I'm excited to have your energy it's just amazing. 

MARK
Audrey, thank you so much. Let's, let's get to the chop, right?

AUDREY
Right, right. Let's chop it up, baby!

So obviously you're not at the foot of that hill looking up again. You're back on top. But give us kind of a journey. I mean, you know, folks wanna know because it might happen. It might happen to somebody else, who's listening, or even me and, and you just never know where we're gonna end up on our, on our journey. 

MARK
Well, so yeah. You know what, here's, here's the truth is I'm not back. Yet you know, I'm, I'm getting back up, but a few hard lessons along the way. I did start my creative agency in 2006. I was 23 years old. My wife wasn't working because she just graduated college. And while she, while she was in college, we, we had our first daughter and so 23 newly married have our daughter. And she's a few months old and I decide that I'm gonna quit my. I'm the sole breadwinner. We're, we're living in Toronto, which you know, is, is kind of like the New York City of, of Canada. So a lot of money, certainly a lot of business, a lot of careers. Mm-hmm. A lot of things happening, but man, is it expensive to live there?

So I'm the sole breadwinner. I'm earning 45 grand a year and side. I'm gonna quit my job and start this company. And my pitch to my wife at the time was like, honey, We're gonna make so much money. And she was like, I'm not sure. Is this a good idea? And I'm like, don't trust me. Like, like I have this skill. I help people, I help people communicate with video, and I make videos and videos gonna pop and YouTube's a thing. And there's this new thing called social media at the time. And, and I'm like, if, if I have a job at a company making videos for people and I, and I make 45 grand doing this for one, Imagine if I do this for 10 or 15 or 20, how we're gonna make so much money. Right? And as it turns out, that , that wasn't, that wasn't really the case apparently, that that's not how business works to start off with. But flash forward a number of years and hard years at that and, and we figure some things out and we start making money. And as you mentioned, you know, by the time Covid hit over 2 million in revenue, I have 24 full-time staff.

AUDREY
Wow. 

MARK
Over the course of those 10 plus years, we moved from making like really bad. I may, I moved from me being alone. It was just me and a camera and some lights, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm just trying to, I'm selling and I'm delivering and I'm editing and I'm staying up late. I'm trying to do everything myself, and we grow from that, doing some training videos for companies, the types of things that. Since 1988, you know, X, Y, Z company has been known for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like the stuff that no one wanted to watch, right? That no one wanted to pay attention. But we started there and by this time Covid hit, we're doing national commercial campaigns with the N B A.

We're doing radio campaigns, we're launching, we're helping entrepreneurs and startups, launch brands and business, and we're just doing all these different things. But here was the problem. I had a seven figure payroll. That I had to meet I had to keep growing because if you're not growing, what are you doing? Right? Like if you're not, if you're not getting bigger in terms of team, or you're not getting bigger in terms of revenue, or you're not working on cooler and cooler projects all the time, then you're not growing. And if you're not growing, you're standing still. And if you're standing still, you're falling behind.

And, and so there was this, this, this machine I created, as I mentioned, like keeping the machine fed. We had to do hundreds of projects a year, like two or 300 projects a year. 

AUDREY
Wow. 

MARK
We had to have 30 or 40 clients on the go at any given time. That's a lot. That's a lot. It's a lot. And we were doing more work with more people that was outside of our, our core skill set. And so we were doing bad work and we were making mistakes, and so it's like this effort to get more and more and more hit the point where it's just like, I couldn't keep it up. I was burning out, I was having panic attacks. It was year after year after year of, of me feeling like I just didn't like the, the answer was more, but I didn't even want more.

Like I didn't even want what I had, but I had spent over a decade building this company, right? And my wealth, like my family's wealth and money, you know, my, other than my life insurance policy for my wife, if something happened to me, my wife, my kids, their. Also, all of our wealth is tied up in the company. All of my self worth is tied up in this company. All of my personality and what people knew about me and my, my persona is as the guy who runs this company, and I just couldn't figure out what to do. Hmm. So what happened? Well the pandemic. Which was disastrous actually. It was, it was, I mean, for everyone, it was terrible, right? But, but it was especially terrible for us because 70%, 80% of our business happened in person. And so suddenly it's like we're having, I don't know what, we had the exact numbers, maybe six or $700,000 of work got put on hold overnight. Wow. And my, and my, my payroll still has to be met. And my, and now I'm in Canada, the, the government immediately acted with some subsidies, which.

Earlier off camera, we were talking before we hit record, we were talking about offices and I said, yeah, we had to get rid of our office. That saved me $60,000 a year. Like I had to just start cutting stuff. Like, just, just cutting, like, is this important or not? But the other thing that happened during the pandemic in the first few months of lockdown was I felt free. I felt, I felt this tremendous sense of freedom because my phone, I don't know about you, but my phone used to ring and every time it rang, Oh, what now? You know, or my, I would go to check my email and I would be in two or three hours of meeting, I'd come out and I'd have 350 emails waiting for me. And I would go, Ugh, what now? Right. And you know, just like, you know, I would wake up on a Monday morning and and go like, okay, it's another week again. And I didn't become an entrepreneur for that. I don't know about you. No. I dunno about anyone who's listening, but we don't become entrepreneurs to be less free.

AUDREY
That's correct. 

MARK
Or be more trapped or to be more depressed and, and or to trade in your boss and your paycheck for, for 30 or 40 clients. And I had amazing clients. Mm-hmm. , they were amazing people. They, none of them even realized I just wasn't happy. Wow. And so, When the lockdown ended, and I only noticed this, so, okay, so, so I'm building this company, I'm, I got all these plans. Go, go, go, go, go. Mm-hmm.  lockdown happens and suddenly I feel free because I had an excuse, I had an excuse like, we can't move forward on projects. Oh, I don't have to worry about it. Clients aren't calling me cuz they're the ones putting things on hold to thank goodness I don't have to worry about it. But we come out of lockdown and suddenly my wife and everyone in my life, they're feeling more free.

They're saying, thank goodness we can now go visit friends and thank goodness we can travel and thank goodness we can, like everyone else, felt more free as we came out of lockdown. Yes, I felt, I felt more restricted again. Suddenly all of I realized in that moment that the life I had been living the, and again, great people, great friends, great community, great relationships, great clients, but I was doing so much stuff I didn't wanna do for other people that suddenly now I started feeling that...going back into the old role. Mm-hmm. , you know, going, going out for dinners. I didn't want to go out for maybe, or inviting people over that are great people, but it's just like when, you know, you see your calendar, you're like, oh, right, we gotta do that thing. Like, everything started to feel like a chore and a burden and I was like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. Like, I, I don't think any amount of money is worth it and I don't think the stress is worth it. And I don't think dying of a heart attack at let's say 45 or 50 is worth it. 

AUDREY
Absolutely. 

MARK
And I just, I just don't think any of this is worth it anymore. So. Mm. Then you're faced with the next question. If you're not doing this, what are you doing?

If you're not the person you thought you were, who are you? Mm-hmm.  and, and the reason I started big, long answer, but the reason I started saying I'm not top yet. The story is powerful. You're bringing us through, you know, this whole process. And I'm like, you know, well, the reason I'm not on top yet is 2020 was a very painful year of facing hard truths and starting to unwind some of the commitments I made. And I felt like a cheater to people. Yeah. Because I'd spent years promising to them that I would be the person who would help 'em.  And now suddenly I realized I don't think I wanna do this anymore. Yeah. And I had to get our company out of legal contracts where people had paid us for stuff that suddenly now I didn't have the.  and the ability to deliver profitably. So now I'm facing like either bankruptcy or hard conversations. Mm-hmm. , and suddenly I'm trying to figure out if I'm not this person or doing these things, then what am I doing and who am I?

And so that was 2020. 2021 was a lot of just messing around because I just giving time to recover from, from kind of being burnt out. Realizing that I did have. That I thought I didn't have anymore. Realizing that I still loved this, but I only loved it in certain times, in certain ways with certain people. So how could I do more of that? Yeah. And really getting to the core of like, you know what I am at my at, at my, in my heart, I'm still an entrepreneur. I still want to help people. And so we spent, I spent 12 months on top of financial issues and legal issues and all of this stuff, really going like, okay, what is the what?

When I started my company, why, what was the core? What was at the heart of it? And does that still spark me? Does that still light me up and, and am I willing to do the hard work again? And so that was 2021. And then 2022 was developing products, developing services, talking to people, networking, testing it in market, taking it to the market. Working with people to figure out, Hey, is this product something, this, this thing that we do, that I think we're amazing at and we're better at? And I realize looking back, you know, this, this was the reason people worked with us. Now are people in today's market willing to pay for it? Or in today's market, does it drive value?

And so it's been like three years . And I don't know, I, I wish I had done it faster. And when I was younger, I was super impatient, but I don't know if I could have gone about it any other way. 

AUDREY
No, you, no, you had to, you had to do it, like you said, like the name of your your podcast. You do things hard. You, you had to do it that way, it or otherwise, you wouldn't have learned the lesson and then you wouldn't be telling your story, helping other people. So you aren't just helping people with with your agency, you know, the actual products and services that you offer. You're, you're helping us with your journey.  Because we're all entrepreneurs. Like you said, you know, some things we didn't sign up for. Some things we didn't know we were signing up for, because it just comes with with the territory.

But, you know, what I'm hearing, from your conversation is, clarity. You know, getting clarity, really understanding,  who you are,  who we are,  inside, and what is, how does that mesh with the people that we want to serve. Yeah. And, and bringing that service into, you know, bringing our talents into, into that service, into play or...

MARK
We're bringing it, bringing it all, all together. And you know what I wish I had learned younger, but, if, if I could give my younger self advice anyone who's younger themselves or earlier in their entrepreneurial journey, or maybe you're just stepping into this mm-hmm. ,here's the truth. I, I had to make the mistakes to learn the lessons, and I used to think that there was a right way and a wrong way to do things.

And if I could just find the right way, I could avoid all the wrong ways. Mm-hmm. . And then I talked to really successful entrepreneurs and I've spent a lot of years now studying artists and creatives and, you know, some of the people I look up to. And, and I realized that every single person is going about things for the first time in real time.

And so, you know, I like I, I look up to the Beatles for example. You know, now a lot of people like them or hate them. They think they're good musicians or bad musicians. It doesn't matter. That's not the point. The point of the story, right, with the Beatles is when the Beatles broke from the UK into America and had the top five singles. First, second, third, fourth, and fifth on the billboard. 100 charts. No one had ever done that before. Mm-hmm.  when they, when, when it became Beatlemania. No one had done that before, but not right. Only had no one done that. They hadn't done that. Their managers hadn't done it. EMI records hadn't done it. All the smart business people, no one in the company, in the management or in the band had ever done this or seen this before.

So, guess what. They're gonna make mistakes. That's right. And when I, when I, when you look at their story and you go from album to album or record to record, it looks like highlights. But when you actually study their story and realize, oh, you know, in 1965, they went to, they went to the Philippines and they were invited to the dictator's home in  Manila. In Manila they were invited to the dictator's home but because of a scheduling conflict, they accidentally didn't show up. The dictator felt that they slighted hi wife. And there was, there was almost riots in the streets. They had to be escaped out of the Philippines overnight into another country and flown to safety because of a scheduling issue. And the press goes, how could the Beatles have done this to world order to, to the dictators? But if you get into the story, it's literally just a scheduling issue. Right.  

And so I used to look at my entrepreneurial journey and my clients and my projects and my revenue and my team, and I go, how could we make these mistakes? How could we have not known? How could we have not seen this? And now I take a lot of comfort, Ashley, in just looking at some of my heroes and going, oh man, they made so many mistakes because we're all figuring this out  for the first time in real time, and there's no way around that. That's right. 

AUDREY
You're gonna make mistakes. Mm-hmm.  Right. Exactly. So when you say to our newbies or people on their journey, one to five years, you might just keep your armor on, you know,  don't look for it, but just know, you'll be more ready when it comes or if it comes. You have to, after we, you know, get, feel that initial shock that, oh, okay, I remember that guy Mark Drager was talking about something like this.

It's okay. And then, you know, it's like, it's okay that, that we fail. And it's like, okay, I mean, going through whatever it is, at some point,  some really hard time and I'm thinking about it feeling down on myself. All of a sudden I think, well, God knew this was gonna happen. And so then all of a sudden I just, I just relax and, and go with the flow. Okay, so what do I need? What do I, what do I need to do next to, to pick myself up? Like you, like you, you're saying, and, and move on. 

MARK
And that's, and that's really the question. It's like you need to have urgency. And, and, and hustle and, and har work hard, but working 10 hours a day or working 16 hours a day doesn't actually move you that much further faster.

I, I kind of equate it like I used to drive, so I used to run my business and I used to drive like, like the person who would always just drive a little quicker than everyone else. So everyone's speeding, but I'm speeding. Okay. Everyone's changing lanes, but I'm changing a lot of lanes, right? We used to do these trips from Toronto down to Florida and I know that if with weather and certain times of day, and if you leave, you can do the, the drive in 22 hours. So if I'm on the road and I'm on a mission, then I'm like, I'm setting my cruise control for, 10 or 20 miles over the limit. I'm watching for breaks up ahead in case that there's a, you know, a cop with radar. You know, I'm, I'm switching lanes. I'm, I'm going in and out. I'm never being dangerous in my mind. Uhhuh, I'm on a mission and I'm in a. And, and here's what I've learned. Doing all of that is all great. It makes you feel like you're moving and you're hustling and you're efficient and you know, you stop at the rest, stop and you run into the bathroom and you run back up and you've refuel and you're eating as you drive and all of that stuff.

And that's cool. But if you do, if, if you run your business or your life or you drive that way or you just kind of go with the speed of traffic and rather than try to run in and out of the bathroom and get really impatient, cuz there's a long lineup in the restroom, you just go like it takes what it takes. Yeah. By the time I go from Toronto to Florida in 22 hours, or if I just go with the flow and have a really easy time, I might only be adding like 45 minutes to my overall trip. But the journey is like, is like not 22 hours of nonstop stress.  and, and fight or flight and everything key, making me upset. And the fact that we're hitting traffic in Charlotte, and again, in business it's like, it's like you're gonna run into the roadblocks of the client. You wanna sign the client today cuz you want the revenue, but they wanna wait two weeks to start. Yeah. Okay. You know, they said yes, but then the project gets canned and sold halfway through.

The people buy something, but then they come back and they return half. , like you, the, the, the person who's gonna go into business with you. Like with me, when we started, I had a business partner a week before incorporation. He approached me and said, mark, I just can't. Okay. So, so now I'm starting it alone, or I guess I'm not starting at all, right? Like, there's just gonna be setback after setback, after setback. And I lived my life originally just like the, the efficiency, the man on the mission, the push, push, push, push, push. I think I got, I think it worked. It worked really well, but it only worked until it stopped working. Because I couldn't do it forever. And if you can't do this forever, which is literally the secret to success? The secret to success is your business is not gonna last forever. Your clients aren't gonna last forever. Your product is that what makes you unique? What makes you different? Everything is changing all the time. None of that stuff's gonna last forever.

Companies rise, companies fail, fall you know, revenue goes up, revenue goes down, profitability's change the way you advertise, the way you market, the platforms change. Everything changes all the time. Nothing is static. I used to think I could build something and I would be doing it for the rest of my life. And I've now learned that everything has a season. So you're gonna make money a certain way for two or three years, and then the next two or three years, it'll be different and different. So, the secret to success is, is you being able to, to continually make money or make profits or whatever your goal is forever.

And if you need to be able to do this forever, you gotta be able to do this consistently. Day after day after day. You can't, you can't go crazy hard for eight months and then have to take six months off because, because you've burnt out. I could not live that. It worked until it stopped working. And when it stopped working, it really stopped. Mm-hmm. . And so now what I have to do, and I wish younger me could realize this is it. It is. It's uncomfortably slow. Yes. I still need to take action. I still need to make investments. I still have to have plans. I still have to work on it every day. I still have to make myself uncomfortable, but I used to look at the uncomfortability of like, how big can it be?

How scary can it be like that? Uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. And my current thing that makes me uncomfortable is how big picture patient can I be? Right? How comfortable can I be? Both saying no and me going, okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna accept your no, but I'm gonna go look for someone else who will give me a yes.

Is that and like, , I don't know about you in business. Mm-hmm. . I don't know if it's, I don't know if you feel this way or not, but, but it's, it's gotta be the thing. You are the product. You are the service. You are the one who's gonna keep doing this forever. And successful people just do that. Yeah. 

AUDREY
Well, you're right. I agree. It is. Yeah. It is me. So today,  Phanta Media, tell me about your company. 

MARK
Yeah, so we started as a video company and I think many entrepreneurs start with the skill that they have. And when I was busy selling video no one would buy nobody. Nobody wanted,  like some people wanted a video, but most people needed a video or, but, but it wasn't a video. They were buying. What they were buying was an outcome. Mm-hmm. . And so I realized a, a few years in, oh, people actually video's just a medium. What we're actually best at is under is, is communications. Or marketing tools or sales tools, or training tools, or, there was always a reason, you know, no one wants the hammer. They say they want the picture up on the wall. 

AUDREY
Exactly. 

MARK
And so  we've been doing this now for 16 years and we've produced 13, 14, 15 million dollars of, of creative content. When I said that, I took that year to figure out what made us us, I realized that the, the truth is people always came to us for us to be able to help them figure out and clarify what is it you want to do, who do you want to connect with or speak to, and what is your competition or market doing so, so we can create something that helps you stand out. And this idea of like, what do you really wanna accomplish? I can tell you that Audrey, like honestly, I've worked on projects where we had like a two or $300,000 budget. Mm-hmm.  to do national commercial campaigns with some of the biggest companies in the world. And the brief they gave me  had total holes in it. Like there was never a sound business strategy. And so if you're just starting or if you're an entrepreneur or you're running a small business, or you're growing, even the, even the people in the biggest roles in the biggest companies don't really get specific enough with what they want.

Okay. And so I work today what we do is we help entrepreneurs and coaches and consultants figure out their positioning, figure out their brand, and figure out their messaging to help 'em sell more. What do you need to look like? Who do you need to be? Who are you connecting with? What do they care about? What do you need to say to engage people? Right? Basic but important questions. Oh my goodness. Questions that most people don't answer. So it's, it's things like, well, you know, everybody is told, they go to events, they go to conferences. You work with business coaches and they say you need a website you need a funnel. You need a landing page, you need a course, you need a download. You need a white paper, you need to start a podcast. You need all of these things. And then they try or they start and eventually they go, is it working? Is it worth my time, my money, my effort? Is it working? Mm-hmm. . But they don't know. And the reason most of us don't know if what we're doing is working or not is because we didn't start with like a goal or an objective, or even a way to measure this, right? So if you wanted to launch a podcast and your goal was to get better at presenting, it doesn't really matter how many people watch or. Your goal is to become a better presenter. It's to get the reps in and you're gonna use those skill sets for the rest of your life in pitches and presentations and whatever it is in, in coaching and communications.

And so if that is your goal, but you, you start a podcast and you're busy worrying about how many people are watching, and you go, oh, I don't know if anyone's watching, you can always go back to your goal and go, oh, right. It doesn't matter. I, I was only doing this to get better at it. Okay. But if your goal is to build an audience and you're doing it week after week after week, month after month after month, and your audience isn't growing, what you're doing isn't working. Like, let's be honest, right? Like, so what else are you gonna try? What else are you gonna do? What are other people doing? Can you take a course? Can you learn? Can you hire a coach? Do you need to advertise? Like, and so we run off and we do all of these different things, but, but step number one is just like, why am I doing this? What do I wanna do? Why am I spending the time? Why am I spending the money? How will I measure if this is working or not? We help people figure that. Okay. And then when you're doing marketing or advertising or sales or whatever, the vast majority of time and money is wasted cuz the wrong message is sent to the wrong people at the wrong time.

Hmm. We help people figure that out. And then lastly, they don't create compelling enough reasons or there's no urgency, there's no real reason to pick you versus your competitors. There's no real reason to, to work with you and say, I gotta sign up today. Like, like, if I don't get started on this today, I will be lose missing out on what? What Lost potential and people don't know this, and we help them figure that out. And once you know those things, like what you're, why you're spending the money you're spending, or what you're doing and who you're speaking to, and what message you need to say to actually connect with them and how to do it in a way that's different than your competition, like in, in the middle of this weird triangle, if you can visualize it or this overlap. Is what makes you unique. It's what makes you different. It's what makes you stand out. It's the reason people buy and they'll move forward with you. 

And I'm not making stuff up. It's, it's not like me inventing a new version of you. This is true to who you are because we started with you. That process is what we help people with. And I've watched too many smart businesses with a lot of money fail because they just didn't answer these questions.  So what happens when most people start is they don't ever answer any of these questions, and that's fine and they do see success, but then, you wanna scale or you wanna grow or you know, like you can, you can sell if you're speaking to a network or family or friends or referrals, but you wanna start advertising and, and as soon as you step outside of whatever it is that you've been doing that works for you for the last year or two years or three years, when you're ready, when you're itching to then hit that next stage and grow, whatever has been working for you will not work out there. And so you end up spending way too much money. It's, it's a, it's a different process. It's a different approach. 

And so most people don't come to us when they're like, I wanna start a business. They come to us when they're a few years into their business and they're seeing success, but every time they try to grow outside of what's working, they run into a roadblock cuz it's a different place, a different audience, a different message, a different approach. Like everything is. And so that's when people come to us and that's when we can help. 

AUDREY
So how can how can we get in touch with you? How can we so we can get to that point? 

MARK
Well, I have two offers for you, and these are not, I've actually never said this on a podcast before, so.

AUDREY
Oh, wow. 

MARK
Audience listeners, you guys are, you guys are the first. Here's the first offer. I don't have. I should, but I don't have a funnel. I don't have, you know, all, all of this stuff set up where it's like you're entered into my email list. I don't even have an email list. But if you head over to Instagram and send me a direct message, my, Instagram handle is @MarkDrager.

Send me a direct message and ask for the Badass Brand Playbook. Yeah.  the Badass Brand Playbook. And here's, here's what I'm gonna give you. It's actually an internal document that I made for my team. It explains all of what I just explained in greater detail and why you might want to consider this, but it's gonna teach you. The very process that we have used, that I've used for over a decade, that we've produced over 12 million of content with, and that's not, that's like people have paid us 12 million to use this process time and time again. And I've used this from everything from landing pages to videos to email marketing, to my, the speech I gave, the toast I gave at my brother's wedding. Like this. This is how you need to, if you want to connect with someone, you need to follow these steps. I will give it to you. So just send me a message. I will send it to you personally OR, if you think your business is ready to make an investment and hit the next level, I would be happy to jump on a call with you.

If you're listening right now and you think, you know what, I'm not just starting. I'm a few years in. I can definitely sell, but I just can't grow sales. I will jump on a free 30 minute call with you one-on-one. Head over to Instagram and tell me you're listening to this podcast. Cause again, this is not. I'm worried I'm gonna get inundated. This is not something that I normally offer up, but head over to my Instagram channel. Tell me that you'd love a free 30 minute strategy call, and you were listening to this podcast, reference this podcast, and I would be happy to jump on a free call with you and work through your goals, your audience, and give you completely free advice and, and send you on your way.

AUDREY
That's awesome, Mark. So folks you heard him get that DM over on Instagram @MarkDrager. And it's Drager, d-r-a-g-e-r do it fast. This offer may run out before, you know it. 

MARK
If I get inundated then I might be like, I won't, I'm not gonna reneg. But it might be like, listen, we're two months booked out.

AUDREY
You're right. And you still have to keep the lights on. Right.  

MARK
Exactly. 

AUDREY
Feed your family. So, but that's an awesome offer, really really appreciate that...to get  the process that you use to grow your business and also that a free 30 minute consultation, that would be awesome. So folks definitely head over to Instagram and, and DM @MarkDrager.

All right. Well Mark, that's that's gonna be a wrap for us unless there is...

MARK
...one job. Chop right there before we go up...


AUDREY
I like that. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that in there. So if you have a last word or two? The, the mic's yours.

MARK
I appreciate it. Things are gonna feel great. When things are awesome and you're excited, they're not as good as you think. When things are terrible and bad and it's the end of the world and everything is crumbling around you, they're not as bad as you think. The, the only secret to success is to, is to keep going and never give up on yourself. Give up on a product, give up on a service. Change things. Businesses come and go. The way you make money will change. All that stuff's cool. You can never give up on yourself because I've watched me, myself, build up a multi-million dollar. And I thought, oh gosh, you know, if this disappears and goes bankrupt, I'm over. I didn't realize, no, I could shrink my company. No, I could get out. I'm the first one in, that means I'm the last one out

Right. That's a pretty safe place to be, isn't it? Exactly. And while it's, it's not great for my team, not great for my employees,  you know, to have to downsize, but I always thought that if, if things ended, I was over, it turns out I'm gonna be okay and you're gonna be okay too. You're the first person in to the last person out. Never give up on yourself and keep going, you will get through almost anything. 

AUDREY
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