The Growth-Drive Hot Seat

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Hi, this is George Sandman. I am the founder and CEO of Growth Drive, and this is the Business Advisor Hot Seat. In the hot seat, you're going to hear from industry leaders and thought leaders as they share their victories and failures building advisory businesses, helping you and your colleagues, and helping clients get the results they want.

I'm also the author of the Growth Driving Advisor, Proven Strategies for Leading Businesses from Stuck to Best in Class. And in this book, we share a methodology and process for leading clients to growing profits and transferable value. It's available on Amazon and Kindle. And if you like it, please be sure to leave a positive review.

George (00:48)
player. Marcus and I share the experience of having lost everything and built our lives back. Marcus is a great guy and we're going to get into authenticity. His mantra is that authenticity creates victory. I agree. I believe authenticity and transparency and senior leadership teams makes a difference between an okay business and a

best in class business. So Marcus and I are going to have a great conversation. Hang on. Here we go.

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This episode is brought to you by Growth Drive. Growth Drive is the number one best -selling business advising platform with training, technology, and support you need to get the success you want. Find a way to engagements, expand your reach and impact, and build a thriving advisory business based on delivering client wins. Growth Drive, find out more at growthdrive .com.

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Well, welcome everyone. And thank you. Listen, this week our guest is my friend, Marcus Ogden. And Marcus is a public speaker. He's an author, a coach. You have your hands on a lot of different businesses and a really inspiring background and story. And maybe we should start there, Marcus. Welcome, first of all. Thank you, George. How are you doing today, sir? Doing very well, doing very well. And you and I normally talk.

about business, but today we're gonna, we'll expand the conversation a bit. You know, maybe Marcus, we should start with your, maybe your story, three or four minutes on your story. Yeah, so George, I'm from Washington, DC. I live now in a little bitty town called Fuqua Verena, North Carolina, which is about half hour outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm really very fortunate.

And what I do now as a international national keynote speaker, I'm actually going to Cabo on March 15th through the 17th for a big client, which is Thousand Mile Travel, United Airlines, Carnival Cruise, and SBRE Technology. And then I also am a business coach, business consultant. I'm a brand ambassador. I'm a business owner. I'm a bestselling author, four -time bestselling author, and I'm also the host of

Get Authentic with Marcus Ogden. We are ranked in the top 0 .5 % most popular podcasts worldwide. And we're really excited about where we're going, George. And George, you are one of my business advisors. We meet weekly to go over strategy to help me get much more digitized and technology savvy in my approach, which is phenomenal. And really excited about where we are and where we're going. And...

This very fortunate. Oh, by the way, I'm also a former NFL athlete. I forgot that. Oh, yeah. By the way, that yeah. No, you know, it's funny. I mean, that's all that's all in the rearview mirror. And it's I've got to say, yes, we work together and it is it. We have a we have a good time and you are you're knocking the leather off the ball. So it's always fun. Always fun. Listen, maybe maybe we can take just a minute or two to talk about. So you.

You were an NFL player. You played for a variety of teams. How did you end up with Ogden Ventures and the authenticity, which is what we're gonna talk about today, your mission to promote authenticity inside corporations? So George, what happened is I ended up after I got out of the NFL, I got into construction, built a massive eight figure year owning construction earning and really,

revenue generating construction company. We were a earthwork contractor, demolition concrete, site work, utilities, you name it. And our company took off as a minority certified contractor, which means a minority certified contractor just when the company is owned at least 51 % controlling and ownership stock by a minority African -American, a female as a minority white, it doesn't matter white, black or whatever.

Hispanic, Eskimo, anybody that's not a predominant culture that's correct, like yourself, is gonna be a minority. And so we were minority certified with the city of Baltimore, the state of Maryland, Pennsylvania, DC, or DC is not a state, but the area of DC and also Virginia.

and we crushed it and we made a ton of money. But unfortunately, as the money started coming in in groves, in large bunches, I wasn't prepared to handle that. And I got very egocentric. I got very focused on what I call things that don't matter, like all that money, all that fame, all that notoriety, which meant absolutely nothing. And I got really focused on those negative things. And because I took my eye off the ball,

I ended up losing everything in 2013, moved to Raleigh, fired from two jobs in the same week, worked as a custodian, finally had my rock bottom moment as a custodian with somebody's trash, rotten meat, nasty smelling, horrible, protruding garbage gets all over my body, my skin and my clothes. And that was my wake up call.

more accountable and be more responsible. I just actually told this same story to the gentleman right before our awesome podcast interview about my life story. Cause we're trying to have us maybe go and speak in San Diego for his company, which is really blue collar construction workers. And I can fit that, you know, in as office alignment in the NFL, that's by as blue collar as it gets, right?

If you do something wrong, you get pointed out, you do something right, no one knows, no one cares, right? It's very hard for you to get called out in a positive fashion. So that's what we do. We help people now as a speaker, that we can move into coaching, move into consulting. So Ogden Ventures was started in September, 2013 with the foundational piece of speaking, trying to help others. And it didn't go very far for the first two and a half years.

got my first paid job in April, 2016. Started getting coached in February, March of 2018. And now here we are eight years later since our first paid job, we've worked for 55 Fortune 500 companies of the 55, 15 plus are Fortune 100 like Home Depot, Equitable, Intel.

New York Life, MetLife, Living Mutual Insurance, Cisco, Seen, let's just name a few. And we have written two books by ourselves, bestsellers, to be co -authored. We have our podcast, we are brand ambassador, we've owned our physical businesses. And William and Trulia, right George, we bring to the table a full gamut of helping people really overcome challenges through starting Ogden Business. Our real mission is authenticity.

creates victory. Yeah, authenticity creates victory. And I absolutely love that. You know, you and I met, I think we met briefly in an elevator down in Tampa, no, in St. Pete. And then I saw you speak doing what you do best and doing a workshop on authenticity. And we took it from there. You know, part of your story sitting by that dumpster and being at the bottom of the barrel like you, I lost, I flew a business into the...

into the wallet was a business that was great for my wallet was great for my ego. I flew it into the wall and went to rock bottom as well. Absolutely unable to get a job no matter what I tried and 81 job interviews to end up with where you can unload trucks for Home Depot. That was my wake up moment. Different but having nothing. I could fit all of my belongings. I went from quite successful to fitting all my belongings in a car.

And I remember George getting divorced, having to file for divorce in July of 2022, moving out November 1st, 2022. I packed up everything I owned in my Honda pilot. I still own to the day I should go get a new car as I say that. But I remember having that and my little trinkets and clothes and shoes and.

you know, photos and, you know, my little football things, like everything I owned fit into that car. And when I moved out, my ex kept all the furniture, kept everything. And I had to go into a, I had two weeks to find a place that was fully furnished, at least two bedrooms, because I had a nine year old splitting time. And I found a place, but it was dingy. It was dark. It was depressing.

It was really horrifying to think about how I went from where I was in my town home with a family to now a two bedroom apartment that I don't own a piece of furniture in this place, nothing. Not even a TV, George. George, I didn't own a TV. When I moved out of that house, I had zero, nothing. And when I got to my house, I bought a brand new dream house that I dreamed of.

eight months after being forced to leave my home. And when I came to the house, George, to have authenticity, it was bad. There was nothing in it, no fridge. I had a stove, a dishwasher. That's it. That's it. You're sitting in it right now, right? I'm in it right now. And like I didn't have a piece of furniture in the house. I didn't have a piece of art on the wall. I didn't have a couch. I mean, I had zero. Yep. Zero.

Yep. So I had to start all over and that's been only 18 months. Yeah. That's it. That's it. So if you're listening, being authentic, in my opinion, is the key to success and creating victory, no matter who you are and what you're trying to do. You know, it's interesting that you say that,

Because I thoroughly agree. And when the first time you said it, and you and I worked on authenticity creates victory, I mean, it was 100 % your tagline, your idea, your words. In our world, so you advise businesses, and we'll talk about that in a sec, you work with senior leadership teams, right? And in my world, when I heard you say authenticity creates victory,

In our world, it's vulnerability and transparency and the willingness to be all in, to be 100 % in is what makes the difference. Best -in -class businesses have authentic leaders. Now, there are good companies that have less good leaders, but the best of the best, those charismatic, authentic, real people who are leading businesses, and that really resonated.

You want to talk for a sec, if you would Marcus. So when you go, you go on the road and you give your a speaker. Let's take an upcoming talk. Do you want to share a little bit about how you get the, you know, help the room understand authenticity?

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This episode is brought to you by Growth Drive. Growth Drive is the number one best -selling business advising platform with training, technology, and support you need to get the success you want. Find a way to engagements, expand your reach and impact, and build a thriving advisory business based on delivering client wins. Growth Drive, find out more at growthdrive .com.

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Yeah. So basically I always want to know from my clients what they're looking for. So I'm heading to Cabo this weekend.

doing the talk on is striving to thrive. And they had a real big thing on innovation, movement and being dynamic. So I'm gonna talk about how authenticity is important in being innovative because you have to be real in what you know you can and or can't do. And then you have to authentically move with passion. I was just talking to the guy on that sales call he said, Marcus, I can tell.

you can hold a room for 90 minutes. And let me tell you something, holding a room with blue collar construction workers, right? Is not something every speaker can do because they're not gonna be able to relate to the high up lingo, the high up talk. They're gonna be, which is totally fine. They are the guys out there getting it done in the field. Here's the thing, right? And they work in the electrical space. If you don't do something correctly, someone could lose their life.

in electrician. So it's so important that you do everything correctly and you're accountable and you're responsible, you take ownership. So again, that's something I've kind of brought to him and he loved that he's gonna take an after the call, right, George? I gave him my, I shared my screen saying, here's my website. Boom. Here is my 360 link. Boom. You can go check out my testimonials. You can go check out what I've done. Boom. You'll fit right in. And so,

That's part of it also as a really good speaker. It's not about what you think you need to say. It's about what your clients need from you. So when it comes to thousand mile travel in this event in Cabo, it's tying in being striving to be thriving through again, making sure you move well, that's your innovative and your dynamic.

So these are the things that I'm gonna be talking about and tied into my story. And when I did things correctly in business, I was innovative, dynamic, and I moved well. But unfortunately, and what happened to me is as the company started to get more success, I became less innovative, I became less dynamic, and I moved less. I didn't do as much because I was like, oh, it's okay. Things are gonna come my way. Oh, it's okay. They're gonna love me. Like I said, right, me?

The guy emailed me last night, right, George, at eight o 'clock at night, my time. He got a response back by 8 .02. We were chatting back and forth. We had our call today at 12 .30 Eastern, right? Don't waste time, right? That's movement, right? You gotta move towards what you want. Don't sit around, right? Don't wait. I got told this to the guy. I said, look, I'm gonna tell your guys if you hire me the same thing that my...

hard -nosed kick -ass linebacker coach, Jack Del Rio, who's an NFL linebacker for the Vikings out of USC, who was a hard -nosed, hit -you -right -in -your -mouth kind of linebacker, who was my rookie head coach, told us as a 20 -tier rookie, be your own CEO. If you wait for me to tell you what to do, where to go, how to be, you're not gonna make it. You're not gonna make it. So again,

It's such an important factor in the process. So again, tying in my story to striving to thrive again through innovation, dynamic and movement that sold the client. And now here we are with me leaving for Cabo Friday morning, coming back Sunday night. Nice. Not a bad spot to be going to. Hey, you know the things that, one of the, there are two comments you just made that I absolutely love.

One, and this is how, this is how, you know, something I apply to myself, maybe it resonates, but don't buy your own bullshit, right? You need to be real, you need to be in the moment and you need, you know, you need to be authentic. And yeah, well, just don't, I try not to buy my own bullshit, right? And the other, I love, be your own CEO. You know, have personal, I think what you're saying, if I understand correctly is, you know, have personal accountability.

understand where you're going. In my world, the fundamental role of the CEO is to maximize shareholder value. What does that mean to an employee? That means that your career, your life, your family, your stakeholders, your business, your teammates, they depend on you getting it done. And you need to hold yourself accountable. Get up in the morning, be there on time, and get it done. I mean, you ...

Talk about being in the moment responding to someone at eight o 'clock at night, which I may be guilty of doing, is, you know, that's the name of the game. Heck, you and I text at 5 .30 in the morning and it, yeah, just get it done and get it done right now. You have to, because if you don't, you could miss a potential opportunity, right? And if you're not doing anything, why not, right? Why not? And so it's in...

if you are not doing something and you have a chance to do something, do it. That way you can hold your head high and say, you know what, I know that I tried and I know that I was there. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. But I know I was there, I was in the moment and I was ready to rock and roll when the opportunity presented itself. Yeah, absolutely. And that's being authentic, man. Marcus, I gotta ask you, do you love what you do? Absolutely.

There's absolutely nothing that I would be rather doing what I'm doing now. Coaching people, helping people, going on podcasts, having my own podcast, outreach, building systems, building a CRM, working with my awesome team, working with our awesome clients. There's nothing that I'd rather be doing right now. Yeah, and it shows. It shows in every conversation we've ever had. I feel the same way. Absolutely wouldn't be doing anything differently.

And what also shows is that you care very deeply. So what's interesting is this is something we preach that's always resonated in our conversations. You don't work with just anybody who shows up, right? When you start, when the first conversation, you're making sure that they have a need that you fit, right? Oh, absolutely. If you don't fit the need or I can't help you,

I don't want to work with you because I don't want to take your money if I can't help you. So if I can't help you, then I'm not going to work with you. Cause at the end of the day, right, George, I'm all about working with people and being on things and doing things that makes sense for everybody. So that's where I, that's who I am. That's what I'm about. And so again, if you're not willing to put things into perspective and get to that next level and work hard, then I'm not your guy. Because again, at the end of the day, I said, notice for my own show, I'm actually interviewing some people in 10 minutes.

It's like, hey, look, how did you all get to a point of being such awesome producers, directors, you know, for Disney, the hard work, right? And if you're not gonna do the work that's required when us, like people like George or myself are coaching you and trying to help you, then we don't want your money. Cause I don't want somebody to take money. I don't want to take somebody's money that I know is not gonna put the effort and work in. And then at that point, right, George?

look at me like, well, why is this not working? Like, well, what are you doing outside of our calls? Right, George? Like you and I have calls every week, but if I'm not out there talking to my team, building systems, trying to implement the systems, meeting with my team, being authentic, working hard, shooting podcasts, making phone calls, doing sales calls, then it doesn't matter what you and I talk about, because in the end of the day, nothing's going to get done.

That's true. So to meet with me for half an hour a week, but you don't do any type of other work outside of half an hour a week than what we got. I mean, like I've got some clients that, you know, we're working with on trying to help them get more speaking jobs, but they haven't really come up with the theme. They haven't really redone their website. They haven't done the outreach. They haven't focused on how they need to like get their messaging all together. They haven't really put it together. Anything in type of collateral. I'm like,

I've been introducing to people, but getting introduced to somebody is not enough. I was on that sales call, right? With Brian from that company in San Diego. On the call, I said, oh, by the way, Brian, here's my website. You can see videos. You can see past clients. Oh, by the way, Brian, here's our 360 lane. You can go to testimonials. State of South Dakota, blue collar workers, field workers. Boom, loved us. Tulsa Welding School. Those are the...

Creme of the creme of the frontline workers. They're doing welding. Like they loved our talk. Boom. Right? So again, even though he approached me, right, George, it's my job to show him the value. Right? If you just say, Hey, nice to meet you, Marks. I want to hire you. Oh man, great. I can talk on this and this. Oh, okay. Great. Where's your proof? Oh, you're talking to it. Oh, it's me. Like what? That's your proof?

I tell people all the time, you have to reassure people that whatever they pay you is not your first rodeo and you're going to bring the value at least matching and hopefully more than what they pay you. Absolutely. So qualifying people showing up, being in the moment. And then let's talk for a sec about...

So you give talks, right? You go and you stand in front of rooms full of people and you give a talk. And those talks very often turn into ongoing consulting. You want to talk about that pivot? Because there's a parallel in our world. Hey, business advisor, I want you to help me understand X, Y, or Z. And there's a path for that becoming, really transforming that business. How does that work in your world?

So George, when you go and speak for somebody, it's an amazing, impactful talk. It's an amazing, impactful experience, but it's one time. One, consulting allows you to follow up with people and stay in touch with them and build something that is long -term and systemic through responsibly being there for the client every week or every month.

So most of our consulting, we meet people monthly, right? On group calls, Teams or Zoom. And we work with our clients on a theme that they have around either DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, or leadership, or marketing and sales, or culture, whatever the client needs. And then we create PowerPoints that we utilize and we use with them monthly. So some of our past consulting clients had been,

Red Gold Quality, a very large tomato brand based out of Indiana. Another client of ours has been Weaver Popcorn, a very successful, privately owned popcorn brand out of Indiana. We have done some work coming up here with one of our large clients coming up here shortly in the housing business. We have people that are working with their in the multifamily real estate space. And we do consulting around helping people based off of.

theme of what they need consistently throughout the year. Great consulting is giving people that ability to understand that you'll be there for them in a partnership that's more than just one time and gone. So all of our consulting is at least a year because this way we have clients for the long term, clients that need our help.

outside of the calls, their team can call us, they can text us, they can reach out to us. And we really love bringing the people that value through helping them to see exactly what it is that we know we can bring to the table that they need help with, not just one time. It's a continual movement of getting people caught up based upon whatever their problem is. Right, George? We can provide a solution.

Yeah, that's exactly. You know, it's funny, Marcus, because the parallel strikes me, you know, and we did not rehearse this, but the parallel strikes me that what you're talking about is, you know, what we do is, you know, we come in and we say, okay, let's figure out where you want to go. What's your strategic intent? And then what are you going, what's your capacity to get there? And we're going to create a strategy. Well, that's great. And I could liken that to you doing your qualification and doing your initial talk.

But then how do we turn that strategy into reality? How do you turn your talking points and the motivation you're delivering in that room into long -term behaviors? And that's execution, right? You're helping them execute against their vision, which is why by qualifying them, you are actually ensuring that you're gonna deliver results. Absolute parallel, it's not surprising because you're consulting, advising, helping businesses move forward. Absolute parallel to our world. You know, quick.

You and I have had a couple of small world moments. I used to have the, that's a family that owns Red Gold used to be customers of mine in another life. They're great people, really great people. The Rikers are awesome people. They serve all, yep, they serve, Ryan Riker. Yeah, that's hysterical. Man, I hadn't, I've thought of them, but not for a while. Cool.

So what's next? As you're evolving, as we're working together, I just provide the sounding board, right? But what's next? So you've gotten into public speaking, you're a published author, you're getting into business consulting, you have your podcast, you coach people who are trying to launch podcasts. What is this all? It's really fascinating to watch you. I mean, you're incredibly hardworking and intelligent and authentic. You're the real deal.

Where do you think this goes? It goes to a level of us being able to create different programs, doing virtual master lines, doing teachings, helping people to launch podcasts, sustain podcasts, monetize podcasts, virtual master lines with some big time speakers, some awesome people, bringing on other coaches, making it evergreen, rolling it out. And then from there, allowing me to really work with people on a more high ticket level.

that I can pick more in that regard is always great. And at the same time for me and for our brand is becoming much more well known and where we're trying to help as many people as possible get to the next level. So we're all about helping people get to that next level consistently and get there authentically and live the best version of their lives with being who they are, being confident in who they are and understand that who they are is good enough.

is valuable enough and they can be great no matter what. Yeah. And that, that man, I, I, you and I are kindred spirits, you know, helping people, helping people move forward, helping people achieve their dreams, large or small, uh, is, is really, is the greatest reward, right? And it's a greatest word and it'll be good for you. It'll be good for your family, but, uh, but it's, it's, you know, it, it's the best for them. And, um, that's super cool. Yeah.

Uh, man, I gotta say, Marcus, I know we're butting up against, uh, against the bottom of the hour, but, uh, any thoughts you want to share before we, uh, before we hang this up? Right. So, you know, uh, you know, no, absolutely not. So in that regard, at the end of the day, it's all about this. At the end of the day, you need to really and truly be in the best position based upon your ability to understand where you need to go.

what has to be done and moving in the right direction. When you have that thought process, nothing else matters. So just be very, very positive, be very forward thinking and be very innovative in that regard. When you do that, everything else will take care of itself. Yeah, focus, focus, focus, focus. And then commitment to execution. I like it. Correct. Well, Marcus, listen, thanks, man. I know you and I'll be talking, I think tomorrow, but this was a fun conversation. I really appreciate it.

And yeah, I'll see you on the other side. See you soon, my friend. Thank you very much, Marcus. I appreciate it. Always, always, man. Talk to you soon. Talk to you soon. Bye.

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Hi this is George, thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, you can subscribe, like, and please take two seconds to leave a review. It tells the world that you like what we're doing and it helps us understand how we can improve the show. Thank you and see you next time.