Marc Trachtenberg | Why Athletes Go Broke After Retirement (CEO Explains)

Marc Trachtenberg is the founder, chairman, president and CEO of Silk Title Co, leading organizations of over 1,000 employees across real estate and financial services. On this episode of Intangible he sits down to talk about the intangibles that actually built his career, and none of it is the version people assume when they see the success from the outside.

Marc opens up about going bankrupt in his first business, the exact moment he realized the failure was his own fault, and how he rebuilt his mindset from the ground up. He breaks down what he calls the Degree of Suck, why hiring people smarter than you is the smartest move a leader can make, and why most entrepreneurs underestimate how many mistakes it actually takes to scale a company. He also gets personal about dropping from 345 pounds to 167 pounds while running his business, what pressure really feels like as a founder, and why he shows up for the athlete community trying to figure out life after the game.

This conversation connects directly to what every competitor and every athlete in transition needs to hear: your second act does not care about your first act's resume, discipline is not one size fits all, and the hardest work happens when nobody is watching.

If you are an athlete, a coach, or anyone trying to build the mental game behind the physical one, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Well, I'm excited to be back here at the Tangible Podcast. Um this is an interesting one. I you know I got a chance to meet Mark probably about a little bit of a month ago. And hearing his story and hearing him, you know, talk about what he's done and how he's done it, it was so fascinating to me that I just knew I had to get him on a on this podcast because when we talk about intangibles, he exhibits all intangibles that you you can think of when it when it comes to building things and and growing as a human. And so uh Mark, welcome to the intangible podcast, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mark, I'm gonna give a quick highlight of you just so people know who you are. You know, you're the founder and chairman, president, and CEO of Silk Title Co. You have 20 plus years leading businesses in real estate and financial services. You've led organizations with over a thousand employees, which is, man, I don't know how you do it managing that many people. Um you've built and scaled operations at high levels across complex industries, um, known for execution operations, leadership, and scaling systems. Mark, man, you've done some amazing things in your life, and I'm sure it hasn't been easy. And so I'm really excited to dive into your story, my friend. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Thank you, thank you. Yes, it's always been a challenge, but I think if it was easy, everybody would do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Mark, we're gonna jump into, you know, just you know, the opportunities that you saw in your vision. And so you started to you started to really build in a space what most people ignored. Um, you know, what made you lean into that space and and give it everything you got to really see it grow?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I think when I saw the challenges of a good experience, and it doesn't matter what business you're in, I think what people yearn for is a good experience. And when you get into certain industries or certain businesses, you gotta understand where what is the experience that you're driving for. But not only what am I driving for, what does the consumer want? Right? Like I think as business owners, people always get enough about an idea, and that idea is theirs. So they are passionate about that idea, but then they drive so hard on what that idea is that they stop listening to what people actually, the reasons why they buy. Right. And I think the reality of it is that just because you have an idea doesn't mean your product meets the consumer needs or meets uh the needs of what people are looking for. And I think the hardest part in the business aspect of it is understanding that. What I saw is an um an industry that was really behind the times. Mortgage, finance, title and closing, I saw this opportunity and said, man, like it's still driven like it was 1986 when the savings and loan crisis happened, right? And you start looking at it going, I'm like, why in this information age does getting a mortgage, getting a home equity line of credit, getting certain financial vehicles, why is it so painful? And why, with all the access to data, like I look at appraisals, I look at credit, I look at all this stuff, and it's like, man, we have all these resources at our fingertips, but it still could take 30 to 45 days to close on a loan. And you're like, why? Like, and that kind of drove me into okay, what does the consumer want? Right? Back in the day, you went to your bank, you sat at the table with the loan officer and you signed the documents. Nowadays, no one wants to go anywhere. They want to be able to do it at the comfort either of their own home or they want to be able to do it at their office because everybody's lives are busy now. Why should it take somebody three hours to close on a house? Right? Why is why is that so painful? I mean, in most transactions, it doesn't change, right? Like the documents are the documents, are the documents. When you look at those hundred pages of documents in a residential mortgage, you ain't changing them, otherwise you ain't getting a loan. So what why are we arguing that side of it? And and why are we taking so much energy and effort on something that should be so simple? And I don't think that just relates to finance and mortgages. I think that relates to a lot of industries. And you know, I think one of the things too that's come to life is there's so many choices, right? So I think there's a lot more, the information age has changed how decision making has changed how you need to deliver a great experience.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

I mean, Mark, I I tell you, when you look at where we are right now, AI and all the different things that the tools that we can use, things that even in my own company, things that we had in Q4 is now being released at the end of at the end of May, which is unbelievable. I mean, when you're releasing apps and things like that, and you can do it at the speed at which we can do it at, it's amazing how quickly changed. So not just from the 80s to to how it looks now. I mean, we're talking about from months ago to what it looks like now. So things are moving really fast, and people are super busy.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Business owner as a leader, you better you better stay on top of this stuff because I always look at it. It's funny, I tell a lot of people in my industry, it's called the degree of suckage. If I suck less than my competitors, I start winning, right? And that's reality because at the end of the day, you can't just say we're living in a world that you can't say you made it. It's kind of like being a professional athlete, right? Like you're buying for your job every game, you're buying for your job every practice, right? And I look at that and correlate sports to business because there's no difference. And the hardest part as a leader is putting all that together so people work in synergy. And you saw that on the field in football, right? Like you could have some of the most superstar athletes and lose champion and lose games all the time because people aren't working together, right? Some of the best teams don't actually have all superstars. They have great players that are in synergy that know how to operate together, and that's very similar in business.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Well, I mean, it doesn't change because I can tell you, even as a first-round draft pick, I was standing on the standing on the podium holding my first round jersey, and the head coach Mike Hongram and Tim Russell to GM was standing next to me and said, Hey, enjoy this moment. We start looking for your replacement tomorrow. So it's it's competitive across the board. It's reality, and it's reality.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

It's reality, you know, you're only as good as what you did yesterday, right? And absolutely. You know, I I think people miss out on that. I think people realize, and you know, from viewership from an athlete to to where I sit, people, there's jealousy. So people are enamored by it and they think, okay, well, if I just do what he does, I'm gonna be successful. Well, I'm not telling you all the stuff behind the curtain that I'm doing, too, right? You see what you want to see, but reality then says, okay, I'll give you an example, dude. Like yesterday I didn't leave the office almost 9:30, 10 o'clock at night. Okay, people don't see that. People see all the cool stuff. They see me up on stage at PAC, they see this, and it's like, all right, yeah, that's the cool stuff. But it's kind of like going to practice, right? They see you guys on Sunday, but they don't see the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday shit that you go through, right? And it's like the grind. You want to see what the success looks like. Let's talk you, let's walk you through the process. Right? The process people don't really want to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Well, speaking of the process, which uh you're a fascinated bring about things, when you think about businesses, when you're looking at businesses and starting to evaluate them, what are for young entrepreneurs who are you know looking to get into the game and start to um you know expand their careers, you know, what tells you that there's there's a real opportunity in that business that you're looking at?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Most people think it's the product or the concept, and I actually look at the people first. Okay, because people drive the product, drive the drive the the mousetrap, drive whatever it is that you're doing, right? If you don't if you don't do that, right, you can have the best idea with bad execution, and bad execution is usually the people behind the execution behind it. Like AI is not replacing execution. AI is supplementing, yes, you'll need some less resources, but the human being's not going to a sum zero with with AI. Maybe some jobs and and roles will will not be needed, right? But as a company, I'm not going to sum zero, no people, right? So, number one, I look at who the people are. What is their intellect? What is their drive? At certain ages, bro, you can't teach work ethic, right? By the time you graduate high school, you either got it or you don't. And at my age right now, 48 years old, I'm not looking to teach somebody work ethic. I'm looking to teach them opportunity, right? So I'm gonna first look at the people, then I'm gonna look at um, you know, the product. Is it something that's even does the does the does the world want it? Does the consumer want it? All right. Then I'm gonna say, okay, let's take the people and the product, and now I'll say, okay, what is your plan? Right. And I think I think at the end of the day, if there's those three things, you know, I do look at a people, process, and product, right? Okay, well, the people are the most important things. You you can have the best idea of what, like I said, bad execution process. Have you spent time on your workflows? Have you spent time on how to deliver whatever it is that you're delivering? And is it convenient for people? Right? Because we're in an instant age right now with the phones and the technology, you better know how people want to ingest that information, ingest your product, uh, where to go to, right? And I think one of the things that you got to look at as a business person is what is your company? What is your product? What are you trying to deliver? And does it meet the needs of the of your target audience?

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Yeah. Well, Mark, you you talk about you know, people and these processes. You know, I want to go back to your upbringing. You know, what was in your upbringing that that taught you that work ethic that taught you to care about people in a way that you do?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I had a really interesting upbringing, right? Um, you know, I my my father was a doctor in upstate New York. Um, he ended up cheating on my mother with the marriage counselor, married the marriage counselor. Um, and in turn, my mother got got into some some heavy alcohol and some other things. And, you know, I really had to defend for myself and and really, again, I didn't call I didn't grow up poor, but there's just because somebody has money doesn't mean you have a rich life. And I think there's a huge difference between, you know, money doesn't make you happy, right? Now, it doesn't mean that you can't do some things with money, and I'm not gonna sit here and say money hasn't doesn't have a great uh impact on life, but you know, I found a big void in my life because while I would when I was playing basketball, I looked up in the stands, my parents were never there, right? When I was playing soccer, my parents were never there, right? And it it was there was a void, and I realized that you know, if I was gonna do this, I needed to do it on my own. I needed to figure it out. I didn't want to ever have to rely on somebody, I didn't want to have to be indebted to somebody. Now, that was good and bad, right? The goodness of it was I was able to figure some shit out on my own because I had the tenacity, I had that work ethic. I didn't, you know, if I wanted to do something, I had to do it on my own. The bad part is I had to learn how to deal with people because I didn't really have anybody showing me what love was, what what you know how how to operate. Like so, and that made me in my younger life make bad decisions because it was all about me. Right. And that's why I went bankrupt 16 years ago, because when I first started my my first business, it was just about me. And I didn't really care about other people, even though I told people I cared about them. I really didn't. I cared about making money and what was in it for me. And when I realized that that was a bad approach, and then I got back into my own business again and everything else, and I realized, okay, you know, Richard Branson said it best. Don't worry about your customer, worry about your employees, worry about your people, take care of them, and they'll take care of your customer. Right. And when I realized that was the most important thing, and being the dumbest person in the room is actually the smartest move. 100%. And those are the two things I realized throughout all of it was like, man, hire a bunch of smarter people than I am, let them do their job, coach them, motivate them, but get the fuck out of their way.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Get out the way. You just hit on something, you know, going bankrupt and have to figure out that, you know, you you were saying one thing, but you were doing a different thing, you know. What shifted for you? What you know, what was that moment that, you know, outside of the bankruptcy that said, okay, Mark, how do I rebuild myself? How do I how do I get to a place where I actually care about people and truly mean that I care about people? And then and then how did I get the mindset to then get back on the horse and keep taking swings?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, I think what really the aha moment was is when you go to that vulnerability level and you don't really have anything left. You have two choices. It's the fight or flight mentality, right? Like you go, okay, I could sit here and feel sorry for myself, get nowhere, continue to be self-destructive, or I could look myself in the mirror, point the finger that way, watch it come back to me. And I what I did was I literally sat down and wrote all the reasons why I failed. I did the little T thing, the successes and the failures. And guess what? That failure list was way longer than the success list. And when I realized why I failed and took the time and energy to understand that that finger was right at me, and I realized, okay, this it was always an if-then. I was ungodly great at math. And the if-then scenario when I started doing that was as man, how would I feel if I was the employee? How would I feel if I worked for myself? Right? And I don't mean being a self-employed person. I meant, would I work for me? And the answer was goddamn no. And when I realized I wouldn't work for myself, I realized I had to change my behavior, I had to change my approach, I had to change my vision. And it didn't mean I didn't have to hold people accountable, it didn't mean I didn't have to have expectations. It meant I had to change that humility, humbleness, compassion was really the drive. And it was also okay not trying to make everything work. There's certain employees that it just doesn't fit. That's okay, just like certain business partners, certain clients. We're not, I say it all day long. All my businesses are not for everybody. When you know that and recognize that, you put your energy in the right spot. The other thing, too, is being willing to listen to your team. It's a novel, it's a novel approach, right? But us as leaders have a vision, and we're so guided by that vision that you know we all sit there and go, we do that, and the answer is no, we don't. And to this day, I'm still awful at it. I'm better than what I was 15 years ago, but I still suck at it. And admitting that is okay too. I mean, I think as leaders, we don't want to admit our vulnerabilities because when everybody see our successes, and I'll tell you, I tell people all day long, be a great listener. I got a lot to work on on that. Be a great communicator. Okay, I said it on stage, there's a difference between communicating and an effective communication. Okay, communication is one thing. Effective can be very short, sweet, and to the point, and you're getting a lot more out of it than just talking at people.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Right, right. Well, I mean, you think about, you know, again, being that kind of leader and surrounding yourself with, you know, some the right people, you know, did you find that was there someone that alone weighed along your journey that that really influenced you to think about leadership and business in a different way?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

You know, I think my I think a couple of them were actually clients of mine. And and there was a gentleman, um, he sold this company to SoFi. It was his name was Jeff Douglas. He built Wyndham Capital. Um, and you know, when I first got into the silk side of it, he was one of our first clients, and you know, he pushed me to levels that I'm like, man, this dude's never happy. And I'm never gonna appease him, I'm never gonna satisfy him. And he not only became a great business partner of ours, but he also became a great leader. And you know, that challenge was something I got uncomfortable with, right? I got uncomfortable, I got comfortable being uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable, and I think that was if I if I were to go back to where the aha moment had, it was that it was like, man, I didn't understand it at first. I was like, man, why is this guy always coming at me? And I, you know, after he sold, I realized it was like, ah, all right, we're a better company customer, right? But it meant a lot of uncomfortable conversations. And to this day, everyone's like, Mark, you love uncomfortable conversations. I'm like, no, I really don't. I like the result of the uncomfortable conversation. But if you think I wake up everybody going, yeah, sitting in the room with all these uncomfortable conversations, the answer is no, right? No, I don't think anybody likes them. I just have realized that the result is so important that I've got to be as a leader willing to have those because there's other, you look at all the employees I have, there's other employees that rely on certain things that you know I owe it to the mass whole than I just owe it to one individual, right? And that that's kind of where you get to the more success you have, the more willingness you have to be to have those.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah. And that you, you know, you operate inside you know a very complex business. Um, there's a lot of transactions, a lot of different things happening within your business. You know, what do what do people underestimate, especially uh entrepreneurs that's trying to scale a company? What do they underestimate about scaling a business? How many mistakes you're gonna make?

SPEAKER_01 16:53

How many mistakes you're gonna make? I uh you know, I how do you deal with those?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

How do you deal with those mistakes?

SPEAKER_01 16:59

And too, I'm still figuring it out at this level. Like I'll be the first to tell you, you know, everybody see how they tell everybody thinks they got an answer just because they have they've they've had success. Sometimes the success for us happened to be the right timing. Yeah, we created our own luck because we were at the right place at the right time, we had the right infrastructure, right? Um, you know, I think that the hardest part is is recognizing when you made the mistake and when to pivot quick enough. Um what did you learn from that mistake, right? Allowing your teams to understand that you know building greatness is not a hundred percent accurate all the time. Building greatness comes from those mistakes, building greatness, you know, but I think a lot of startup companies, a lot of entrepreneurs, their budget doesn't allow them to fail because they haven't calculated that, right? So when everybody somebody comes to me and says, Well, I need a million dollars for this. No, you really need three. Yeah. Okay, a million, a million is is what because people don't want to ask for more. They only ask to say, okay, this is this is what I I need because is the but when somebody asks for that, it's the bare minimum of what they need. They haven't calculated for a payroll issue, they haven't calculated for a change in the economic news, they haven't calculated for I need this, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Well, uh Mark, we're gonna take a quick pause here and do a quick two-minute here, and it's just gonna be some rapid fire questions. It's that it's like going like two minutes going into halftime. Um all right, I want to give you one question here. Uh, a decision that changed your trajectory.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Wow, that's a good one. Um I think really double downing on technology, data, and AI. I think really like when times got tough, the decision of double downing on spend was the smartest decision I made. What great operators do different? Get enough sleep, eat healthy, ignore the noise. A lot of times when you're younger, you think you're gonna outwork everybody, and that's not reality. Working smarter, not harder is also a thing. Um, and being in the now is also important. As a leader, visionary, be six, twelve, eighteen, twenty four months ahead of everybody, but also be in the now to understand what's happening and realize that being in the now means being present. It also means being attentive, but also means that as a leader, our responsibility is to be rested and ready to go for our organization and our teams. And sleeping three hours a night, going to the gym for seven hours a day, that's not allowing you to be the best leader. At some point in time, you got to pivot and say, hey, seven hours of quality sleep, good out, good, good uh water intake, good healthy eating, um, as well as as having a proper plan is just as important as outworking people. Because sometimes when you're outworking people, you're not really outworking them, you're outworking yourself.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

That's good. That's good. Um what breaks first in a growing company that you've seen? Simple. Um, one habit that keeps you sharp.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Food. I went from 345 pounds down to 167. Wow. And it wasn't exercise, it was food intake. It was being cutting out certain things. Um, I went on intermittent fasting. So I went from 345, 167, and it was a life-changing thing because business consumed me, dude. I was eating out, having those drinks, having the pre-dinner drinks, having uh, you know, after dinner drink, and all of a sudden it's like, all right, I consume daily caloric intake at the at dinner, and then I went home, and cracker cuts is one of the worst inventions in America because you think you're eating one and you eat the whole block of cheese.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Oh, spoken like you're uh office alignment there. Um what does what does people get what do people get wrong about leadership?

SPEAKER_01 20:58

You know, I think the biggest piece of what people get wrong on leadership is communication. You know, I I think one of the hardest struggles you see is is you can't make everybody happy.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Right?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

You've gotta you've gotta be able to be real about it. You've got to be able to have the direct conversations and what you do with it, as long as I'm coming to you with facts and not nonsense and not embellishing and not BS. I I guess from a leadership standpoint, as an employee or as a teammate, you wanna know what to do to be successful and you want to know what you're doing that isn't helping out the organization. And as a leader, I think it's it's it's effective communication of not dancing. I think there's so many people that dance, and you see it in personal lives, you see it in business. It's like that water cooler talk. It's like get rid of the noise and you'll accomplish more because the noise actually is very time consuming. By dancing with somebody uh on a conversation, you're Wasting time because you never really solve the problem because you mask what the real issue is and you and you get to the surface. It's kind of like going to the doctor. And you know, if they never solve the problem but only give you a symptom, and if they only give you, you know, a symptom to clear up your nose, but you got chest congestion. Well, they didn't really solve this whole problem, they they solved a whole portion of it. Yes, you might feel a little bit better, but you don't feel 100% better. And it's the same thing with communication and businesses.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yeah, awesome. Last one. What separates one thing that you think that separates builders from talkers? Execution.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Just pure execution, dude. I mean, at the end of the day, talking about your ideas, not executing. And then being direct with who's going to do what in that execution is extremely important. So there's no confusion. And then the follow-up to hold people accountable, right? And coach, mentor, and guide. Right? Like at the end of the day, you can't expect perfection, right? Like the pursuit of perfection, or what I say, paralysis by analysis, is one of the biggest inhibitors. I'd rather see somebody make the mistake and fail, but understand why they did it quicker than somebody who's just there pontificates on something for too long.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

That's wrong. All right, we're gonna jump back in here. We only, you know, we only got several more minutes here, but um, when I think about pressure and responsibility, you know, you seem like you've carried a lot of a lot of pressure uh over over the years, a lot of responsibility over the years. You know, are you able to identify what point does that pressure actually hit?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah. When your business is failing and you're struggling to make payroll, that pressure's coming really fast. When when when you've got you know employees that are relying on you and the market changes, uh the pressure comes really fast. When you wake up and you're tired and you can't be tired, that pressure comes really fast. Right? Like there's not a luxury of being tired in successful businesses. There just isn't. Like you may not feel like it that day, but you have a responsibility to everybody in your organization. Right? Like the common cold is no longer call out and and you know aren't present. As a leader and as a business person, I don't have the luxury of like you know, having the yeah, I may be down and out, but I'm I'm I'm still on the couch making sure that I've got things going on. Or at the other piece of the problem, it's like there's no difference between a Sunday and a Tuesday for me in business, they're all the same, right? So I'm running my business, even if the business isn't open on a Saturday. I still got things I'm doing to be prepared for money and be ready to go for my team. So, you know, I think what people gotta realize in entrepreneur is it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop because five or six o'clock happens, it doesn't stop because it's Tuesday at five o'clock. It's your responsibility. You dedicated your life to being an entrepreneur, you dedicated your life to being uh uh a business person. And the reality of it too is if you have families and everything else, you better be on the same page with everybody and your family. And sacrifice is not just you, sacrifice is if you have a wife and kids, your wife and kids, understanding, making sure everybody's on the same page because there's only one you you can't be everywhere, you can't be doing everything, and you know, the pushback you see where people fail because they have those outside influences that everybody's not on the same page, and you know, it's very important. That goes back to the effect of communication.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I'm learning more and more about you, I see why you're successful. And so when I think about successful people, um, what do you think that they have? What do you think that thing is consistently that they have in common? Discipline, a plan.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Um, I think at the end of the day, uh you know, discipline's a very interesting thing. Well, you could choose discipline maybe something different for me. And what I think is in common is they're confident enough to whatever decision they've made, they're confident in that decision. They know that it's the right decision for them and their organizations. I think I think a lot of lead a lot of unsuccessful people try and make everybody happy, and it's impossible. I can't make everybody happy 24-7. And I'm not here to also make everybody happy. I'm here to do a job, I'm here to build the right team. I and you see the difference of those things. And I think as a leader, you know, successful leaders, they're not regimented. Everybody goes, somebody asked me that on stage a couple weeks ago, and I'm like, no, I'm not gonna do the same thing as everybody else does. What works for you may not work for me. If you wake up at three in the morning and that's your jam because you went to bed at eight o'clock, well, maybe I can operate like that. And you know, I don't think there's a successful rule book that says all successful leaders, they wake up at five o'clock, they do Pilates, they do yoga, they do this. Like, no, you do you know whatever works for you. Just be consistent, whatever that is. And when you find out whatever it is that's making you successful, keep doing and pour for you on that fire. Like, but if you like to do one thing doesn't mean that I'm gonna want to do it, it doesn't mean that like 5 a.m. wake-up call. That's a party. If you wake me up at 5 a.m., I'm gonna be one of the most ineffective leaders. I got beauty rest at this point.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Oh man, that's awesome. Well, you know, I I got a chance to see you speak at the pack event, and and you know, it's always great to see, you know, strong leaders who are willing to pour back into you know, guys who are making that guys and gals who are making those transitions out of sports, who's still in it and trying to think bigger than what their sport has has uh provided for them. You know, um, what made you wanna what what drew you to the pack community to want to come back and lean your voice and give back your support to a group of athletes who's trying to figure it out outside of their game?

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Through the years I've met a lot of great athletes, and I realized that, you know, from an athlete perspective, you dedicated your whole life to play ball, whether that's basketball, football, play hockey, whatever that is. That's really dedicated. And what most people don't realize is that you played in the league for 10 years and you're not 10 years behind the business person. Yeah, you made some money, but your your act two is actually tougher than my act one, right? Because my act one, I've that's all I've been doing, right? Your act two is very, very, very, very difficult because it has nothing to do with education. There's plenty of athletes that have gotten their college degree, right? It has to do with experience. It has to do with 10 years of experience, 10 years of those failures, right? The hardest part of an athlete, in my opinion, is you went from somebody to nobody overnight.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

You went from no locker to no locker room overnight. You went from not being home all the time to being home all the time. Like it all, like, dude, like that was create a lot of challenges that most people don't see. So, you know, it was also numbers that were really eye-opening to me, which is how many people go bankrupt after getting out of the out of the league, how many people had financial times. What other people don't realize is what they're trying to make 40, 50, 60 million dollars. That's the whole entire sport area, right? Well, it does okay money, but after you take out taxes, after you take everything else out, you're lucky if that athlete actually had a million and a half, two million dollars stay. And that's not that they're broke, dude, but you ain't retired in this day and age off of that. Exactly. Right? So as much as everybody wants to be an acrobat, there's a lot more. And I think as a society, we've it's not just business ours, it's everybody. The two first words are just what you are. The last word is what's more important, and the community is not just about being an athlete. We gotta get back as Americans to understand what community is.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Mark, I got a couple more questions for you, man. This is this has been fantastic. Um if you can go back, and it's more of a reflection question. If you can go back to your younger self um right when you were starting out, what would you tell him? Patience.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

I would say that, you know, um, wealth doesn't happen overnight. Um, I think at the end of the day, um, you know, I think communication and patience and and and working on that networking and team is ridiculously important. And you know, younger version of us, especially in the world within today, it's it's an immediate summer world. And I think when you're trying to make it, you don't necessarily make the best decision. You make the decision of what you think's gonna get you to the next level quicker. I think at times it goes back to the process. People don't get wealthy overnight. Like there's very small people that come into uh trust funds, family inheritance, and everything else, right? Like it's a process. Building great companies, building wealth is a process, just like being a professional athlete. You didn't come out of the womb going to hide in football.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Man, Mark, when you think back to your upbringing and where you are today, man, what do you think those give me a several tangibles that that has made you who you are today? I think the failures, dude.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

I think coming and growing in an environment and understanding that, you know, when you're backed up against the wall, you got a couple decisions to make. And you know, doing it the right way does take time, it does take challenging. I think one of the things too is um just being real with yourself, going to bed and knowing, hey, I say like this, I don't fucked up, and that's okay. And and I gotta be able to understand how I did, why I did, and then be real with the people around me as to why that happened, and that's tough because the more successful you want to be, right? Like, because you you figured out you made it. Um, and then when you're younger, you fake it till you make it, right? Like you want to try to believe something that's really not reality, right? And then there's a fine line between all of that, and I think the reality of it is no matter where you are in your life, you can overcome anything. Like as long as you have the right drive and you want to build the right network and you surround yourself with the right people, the other thing is we don't want to cut some people off. No one wants to become toxic, knowing when it's not good stuff. Doesn't mean they're a bad person, it just means it's not a good stuff for you. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Well, Mark, man, I this has been this has been awesome. I'm sure there's gonna be some nuggets in there that somebody here and and and it's able to apply to their lives. So thank you for your vulnerability. Thank you for your time. Uh, thank you for pulling back into the PAX community and being a leader uh that we can learn from as we continue to um relearn and regrow and grow into a new era of what we we have the skill set to be able to become. And so um, and that comes with discipline and consistency. And so, man, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate being on the show.