Entrepreneurial Alchemy: Transforming Fear into Success with Mark Josephson

Mark Josephson
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[00:00:00] This is an Undiscovered Legacy production and proud member of Podnation Media Network.

Hello, scuba leavers, and welcome to episode number 1 0 3 of the undiscovered entrepreneur. And it's me scoob coming at you to whatever device you happen to be listening on. All right. Today we're sitting down with an experienced entrepreneur. This guy is great.

Today we're sitting down with Mark. 

Mark turned his fear of failure into a superpower that led to three successful company exits, and now guides others to do the same. 

For being raised by entrepreneurs who taught him early lessons at hospital cafeteria networking sessions, Mark learned that success isn't about avoiding failure. It's about embracing the journey Of consistent learning as a lifelong entrepreneur who built multiple tech companies. He discovered that every no is just one step closer to yes.[00:01:00] 

That changes everything. After experiencing severe burnout, trying to do everything all by himself, Mark now coaches CEOs and new entrepreneurs to build successful companies the right way by building strong teams and focusing on sustainable growth from day one. So let's listen to Mark.

Are you ready to unlock your entrepreneur potential? Are you ready to break free from all the barriers holding you back? Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Undiscovered Entrepreneur, your first step of getting across the start line.

I'm your host and guide Scoop, and I'm here with one mission. To help you overcome the obstacles standing between you and the start of your adventure. Whether you're dreaming of launching a startup, creating the next big app, or turning your passion into a thriving business, this podcast is your launchpad.[00:02:00] 

Together we'll navigate the challenges. Overcome hidden boundaries that stop us from starting and learn how to overcome them with the help of others. Experience them right along with you. So are you ready to take that crucial step to transform from aspiring to inspiring? Then let's get across that start line together right here, right now on the Undiscovered Entrepreneur.

skoob: Salutations school believers. And we are here again with another amazing entrepreneur today. We're here with Mark. Hey Mark. How's it going? 

Mark: It is going really well and I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

skoob: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be the undiscovered entrepreneur.

Get across the start line. 

Mark: I'm so happy to be here. It's one of my favorite topics. 

skoob: All 

Mark: right. Awesome. 

skoob: So before we do anything else, I got to come on a semi serious question to ask you. Okay. Are you ready? All right. Hold on. [00:03:00] Hit me. All right. Are you a school believer? Oh yeah. All right. All right. Thanks, Mark.

Thanks for being a school believer. I super appreciate you. All right, Mark. So right here at the very beginning, I'd like to know kind of how you got across the starlight in your entrepreneur adventure. What was that like for you? 

Mark: Sure. I am a lifelong entrepreneur. I was raised by entrepreneurs. My parents were entrepreneurs and I always knew.

But even before I could put it into words that I was going to be an entrepreneur, that I was going to work for myself. And my father told me gave me advice one day that has stuck with me forever, which is it doesn't matter who you work for. It doesn't matter who signs your checks. You work for yourself.

And that has always stuck with me. So I was I have had a 30 year career, a professional career of. Internet and technology software startups varying sizes and stages. And even before [00:04:00] that, I was working in grocery stores as a teenager, starting businesses as a teenager and working all the way through high school and college.

Until I began my quote unquote professional career. So it's in my blood. I knew it doesn't matter what I was doing. I've always been entrepreneurial. 

skoob: I was, that was kind of the same way for me too. I would say, I think my first real experience as being an entrepreneur is I was at the flea market with my family.

My dad gave me 10 bucks and just sent me out of my way. Right. So I'm going over there. I think I came back with two cameras, a baseball glove and all kinds of stuff and still had five bucks left in my pocket. 

Mark: Pretty great. Yeah, I remember. That was awesome. I remember my dad who was a doctor was trying to build his referral prep base and he was on practice.

He was on staff at a hospital and he worked all the time and on the weekends he would take my brother and me to the cafeteria, the hospital cafeteria for breakfast. I mean, and we must have been three, four, five, six years old, really young. But he would do that, [00:05:00] A, to spend time with us. But B, he was looking to meet other doctors who could refer to his practice.

And he was always working, always. It's the blessing and a curse of being an entrepreneur. You're thinking about it all the time. And I remember that so vividly. And I was like, wow, this guy really, I mean, I didn't know it then, but looking back, he was, he was working. 

skoob: That's the power of networking, my friend.

No matter what you do or where you go, you always have that opportunity to be able to talk to somebody else that might be that one opportunity to bring you a new client or anything like that for that matter. 

Mark: It's so true. It's always the next one. And I saw a quote somebody said something recently.

If I guarantee you, you'd make a million dollars after you nos, how quickly would you go out to get those nos? You would, you would like, go so hard and ask for so many things as fast as you could and get told no a hundred times to get that one yes at the end? And that's, you just got to keep [00:06:00] going.

It's a numbers game sometimes. 

skoob: Oh, it certainly is. Yeah. I do the same thing with some of my clients too. I tell them, okay, here's a challenge for you. I want you to go out and get 10 no's. And they're like, wait a minute. Don't you mean 10 yeses? I'm like, no, I want you to get 10 no's. 

Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, and you learn so much from it and you get better.

I totally agree. 

skoob: So you say your dad worked all the time. It sounds like you kind of picked up on some of those, some of those work habits. 

Mark: Yeah, I think I, I've always loved what I've been doing and I've always been working in technology and I've always been working on advanced or cutting edge kinds of things, which get me really excited.

But also there was never work life balance. If you're building a business, like good luck finding work life balance. But if you love what you do. You can solve for some things and still have a good life, I believe. 

skoob: Yeah, finding those special boundaries for your business, for what you're doing, is going to be really super important when you're first getting started.

For [00:07:00] example, for me, I work two full time jobs on top of podcasting, I'm taught to opportunity or coaching on top of editing, and taking care of a podcast network and family. So yeah, I'm the, I'm the same way too. I work a lot. I do a lot of different things. But having that boundary to be able to spend time with the thing that's the most important is family is going to be crucial.

Mark: Yeah. And look, I learned that again, back to that story from my dad is he taught me about the importance of rituals. So I, and there's many other examples of things that we did growing up and as, as a, before I was on my own of my parents who are both entrepreneurs who both worked a lot. But the times that we had together were special and.

I do that with my kids today, like there, we have rituals and traditions that we still honor, my kids are now older but that are very important and will continue forever because I'm always going to be working, I'm always going to be dedicated to, what I'm [00:08:00] obsessed with right now, which is my business, and That doesn't mean you can't have great relationships with the people who are important to you.

You just have to make it a priority. 

skoob: Exactly. Make it a priority. That's, that's 100 percent right. So what are you working on right now currently as far as the businesses? Now, you said you've had several businesses. So I'm kind of, I'm kind of like interested in what you started with, what your first one was, and how you compare that to what you're actually doing right now.

Mark: So in my professional career my first real startup, I was a member of the team at a company called about. com. And that was a business in. com one in the 1990s. For those of us who remember what the world was like back then. And that was a rocket ship experience where over five years, I had 12 different jobs and at 27 had a thousand people working for me.

I mean, it was truly a rocket. And then at 28, having 300 people worked for me because the, the bubble. Burst, but I was part of the team and then part of the leadership team that took that company to an [00:09:00] IPO Took it through a sale and I learned so so much in that experience. It was incredible It was really incredible.

skoob: So if you don't mind me asking how old were you at that time doing that? 

Mark: I was 25 26 something still pretty young still. Yeah, still pretty young still pretty young and then I then I went on to do a couple of other entrepreneurial roles in small, but fast growing tech companies. And then I went on to be a CEO three times of technology kind of software companies, venture capital backed software companies.

The first one we sold to AOL in 2011. The second one we sold to private equity in 2017. And the third one we sold to a strategic buyer in 2024. So. For, for me, my, my whole career has been building high growth startups. It's what I do. It's what I love. I've done it relatively well, but I've learned so, so [00:10:00] much about what not to do.

So now at this stage of my career, to answer your question, I'm now coaching CEOs full time. So I coach CEOs and leaders of high growth technology companies and startups. 

skoob: So it sounds like to me. That the tech and to everything you set up and that whole thing was all about tech companies So what actually got you started in that?

What was the thing that what's the catalyst that started you in the tech industry? I mean, what was what happened there? 

Mark: Yeah, it was a curiosity and comfort with technology from the start. So my dad was an early adopter. We had a VCR before anybody else. We were the first ones on the block with cable TV, like literally always buying the newest thing.

And so I was always interested in that. And the actual real moment was my first real job after college was working at a marketing agency. And it was a traditional marketing agency working on consumer products and sporting goods. I worked on roller, roller blade brand inline skates. Right. Like I worked on like traditional consumer product, but then the internet started to happen.

And what [00:11:00] happened was this foreign, innovative, scary thing today that could be AI. It's a great, parallel comes rolling through the entire business world. And I'm this young buck who had email address for years already and was like, I'm not afraid of that. Like literally I'm like, Oh, I'm comfortable with new things.

I'm comfortable with risk. I'm comfortable. With technology, and so I raised my hand, and that, and I got on the first piece of business that was internet in 1996, 1995, and that was just, that opened up the door for me. And it just went from there. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work, and a lot of luck, and a lot of mentors, and a lot of a lot of luck but yeah, yeah, it was being comfortable with new things and raising my hand.

skoob: Yeah, getting out of your comfort zone to try something new, especially if it, if it piques your interest or puts you in that zone of genius like I like to talk [00:12:00] about, then go for it. I mean, if you have an opportunity, take it. 

Mark: I think that's right. And I think, look, I was in a really lucky position in which, I had a job.

I was supporting myself on some level, on a very real level. I wasn't like making a lot of money, but I was paying my bills. And I had ambition and I had hopes and dreams and, opportunity, I'm going to butcher the quote because I'm, I can't even, I'm sure I'm going to get it wrong, but it's like opportunity, luck, and like initiative, like create, like success or something like that, because I was in a place where there was opportunity.

I took the initiative and then I got really lucky. So, I think that's, that's a that's a big piece of it. And that's a lot of what I talk with my clients today about is even when you're running. a billion dollar company or, and I've clients who are running billion dollar companies and smaller and bigger, but [00:13:00] like it's, it's about the same things.

What are you doing today to maximize the opportunity that you have? How are you setting up the business in your efforts to be successful? What step are you taking now to move forward? And that doesn't matter if you're starting, we need to get over the starting line. Or over the finish line. You have to take action and 

skoob: move.

Yeah, because you're not going to be doing anything sitting still doing nothing. Because if not, if you're not doing anything, then nothing's going to happen. So we got to get across the start line. You got to get moving. All right. All right, so what I'd like to know here is, what do you, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, but what do you think stops most entrepreneurs from getting across the start line in their entrepreneur adventures?

Mark: Fear of failure, fear of, fear of failure, full stop, and let me tell you, they are right to be afraid of it, because it is scary, it is hard, it is likely, for, if you're going to start a company, you are likely to [00:14:00] fail, because that's what the math says, but, I'm from New York, so I would swear, but I'm not going to swear on your, on your podcast, but what's the worst thing that's going to happen get going if you want something to happen, Happens.

You have to take risk. You have to put yourself out there. And then, once you that fear of failure, you then start to think about imposter syndrome. And do I have any idea what does everybody know? I have no idea what I'm doing, right? Yeah, everybody knows and that's okay, because we're all the same.

So I do think there's so much of the unknown that scares people from, from putting themselves out 

skoob: there. That's exactly, and you've actually touched in, in less than three sentences. You touched on all my , all my hurdles of stop. But the thing, fear and failure are definitely two of the biggest ones that I, that I come across when I talk to new entrepreneurs.

And they seem to intermingle like all the time. It's a fear of failure. It's a fear of, what's going to happen next. But I always have to say this acronym for fear, false [00:15:00] evidence appearing real. It's just like you said, what is the worst that's going to happen? What can actually change? I mean, you're no better off than you are right now.

And, and 

Mark: yeah. And I, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think that the there, there's an equation that I think is true for starting a company and building a business. There's some constants in there. But there's some unknowns that we got to figure out. I'm not particularly a math guy, but I think I see this as an equation or like a formula or an algorithm, which is you have an idea, you do something.

You measure the results. You ask yourself, what did I learn from these results? Then you say, based on those learnings, what am I going to do differently tomorrow? And then you do the, do that, and then you measure the results. Then you ask yourself, what have we learned? Then you say, based on those learnings, what am I going to do differently tomorrow?

And then you do that, and you measure the results over and over [00:16:00] and over and over again. So, by definition, you're going to know a certain amount on day one, but on day two, you're going to know more, and your decisions will get better. And if you think about them strategically or thoughtfully, With a plan, you increase the likelihood of your success.

skoob: We got to be able to have the mindset to be able to do that, to be able to finish that equation over and over again, because if we don't have the right mindset, we get the information and then we throw our hands up in the air and say, okay, I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore. Instead, let's take the information that we learned from that failure.

And put it into something else. What have we exactly what you said? What have we learned from it? What can we do next? That's different. That's we can learn from that too. And on and on until we reach wherever it is where we want to go. 

Mark: It takes a lot of effort and a lot of learning, and you can call it failures, micro failures, you can call it whatever you want.

You, building a company is a [00:17:00] massive flood of learning moments. And if you do reframe them as saying, okay I know I'm not going to do that ever again, right? That was a mistake. I'm going to do it this way. Now I'm not going to charge 2 because I should have could have sold it for 5. Okay. That's a really helpful learning, right?

And that it's that the mindset of I know I'm gonna make this happen, because you have to believe in yourself. But you also have to know that you don't know everything. And part of it, part of it is the journey of figuring it out. 

skoob: That could be part of the fun too, cause then you learn something that somebody else, you could possibly even teach somebody else.

Mark: Yeah, look, I, I'm biased. I think being an entrepreneur is incredibly exciting and a lot of fun because you can be creative. You can be thoughtful. You can be the boss. You can be a leader. The results and the returns are outsized to your role than they are to anybody else's. So the opportunity is, is greater.[00:18:00] 

And. If you like solving problems and doing puzzles and working harder than everybody else, go start a company, get over the starting line and, and find out really quickly if it's gonna work or not. 

skoob: That sounds right up your alley there, mark. 

Mark: Yeah, it's, I'm, I'm passionate about it. Clearly . 

skoob: That's awesome.

So you said that, that the thing that stops a lot of entrepreneurs from getting started is fear of failure. So when you were first getting started, is that what you were experiencing too? 

Mark: When I was a first time I didn't have a fear of failure because I was pretty sure that that was going to happen.

At some point, I was, I did have imposter syndrome. I knew I was going to fail. I knew I was because I had, I had done my homework enough to know that I had chosen a career path that

you're going to [00:19:00] fail. It's just I was going to fail during the couple of times a day. I was going to fail many times a month, many times a quarter. And I would probably have a company that would fail to and I was okay with that. That was never that I was never afraid of that. My ego was, was, wasn't probably as big enough to withstand that.

But it was standing in front of a team for the first time, knowing that I was the guy that had to I had investors over here, clients over here, a team over there, my family over here, me over there. What do I do? Right? And like what you actually do to build a company and build a business that is successful and the, and learning, Jesse, about like the space between what I thought everybody needed to hear and see and what I needed to do versus what was real.

That's a constant, that space between who I really am and who I think the world needs to see. A big part of the journey is [00:20:00] squishing those down into the same thing and showing up as yourself and authentic in a real way. 

skoob: Yeah, I'll be authentic. That's actually right where I was going to go with that too.

It's, it's tough to, I mean, there's things, like in your head, you want these people want to hear something specific from you, but you know, in your heart, that's not exactly what's going on. And you want to be able to be authentic to yourself, to be honest with these people and say, Hey, this is what I'm feeling.

This is the way it is. That's something I had to get over to. Imposter syndrome is actually the one thing I also experienced when I was first getting started. Who, who am I to do this? That's, that was what was going through my head at that particular time. I'm just a guy, I have sales experience, but I mean, who's going to listen to me?

Three years later, here I am, I'm still doing it. So. 

Mark: Yeah. And I think there's nothing stopping you. 

skoob: So yeah, I'm proud of you. Good job. Nothing. It was nothing stopping me, but me, right? I'm the only one that would be stopping myself. So I'm not going to stop myself. I want to keep going. [00:21:00] So what, what got you over that imposter syndrome?

Did somebody say something to you? Was an experience that you had? 

Mark: I a couple of things happened. One was I had a real coach, a CEO coach who helped coach me and teach me how to be a better CEO. The other was I had a very real moment where I was Commuting over two rivers leave, from New Jersey.

If you can picture the map from New Jersey into Manhattan, out to Brooklyn every day, and then back again with three young kids, first time CEO. My parents weren't doing particularly well at that time. There's a lot of stuff going on. And I was the first one in the office, the last one to leave.

I thought I had to do it all by myself. I'm very egocentric. And there was a day when I physically couldn't get out of bed. And it wasn't physical. It was, like, my brain and my body saying, Dude, you're doing this wrong. Your body, what's the, what's the quote? Your [00:22:00] body keeps score. It's gonna it's gonna come back and get you at some point.

And that's what happened to me. And I, and I I'm fast forwarding through a lot of self discovery therapy, like discussions, like really understanding what's really going on. It's not physically, you can't, you can't expect people to do what you want them to do if you don't tell them. You can't tell, you can't expect people to read your mind on what's important and you can't do it all yourself.

So I've reframed a lot of how I thought about being a CEO as being less about being a boss and more about being a leader at that point and built better teams. And really tried to study on how to be a better leader for companies and for people. 

skoob: You don't have to do it all by yourself. You can't. No, you just can't, especially when you get to that point where you're doing so much.

You can only wear so many hats before you experience that burnout that that you experienced. 

Mark: Yeah. 

skoob: What good are you to anybody if you're laid out on the bed for a week and a half? [00:23:00] 

Mark: Yeah. And thankfully it wasn't that long for me. But what is true is that. The best results and look, we're, we're entrepreneurs because we love the weird masochistic and, or we love the process and we love doing that, or we have this drive to be in charge, being control, or we want to have outsized returns and results.

And right, we want to be our boss. We want to make more money. We want to have a certain version of success. And it, unless you are, I don't know I'm struggling to think of anyone who could actually just do it all by themselves. You need a team and you need a well run team. It can be small or it can be big, but very quickly, the job of a CEO or a founder or of an entrepreneur is from.

The product is the product to the company is the product. And when you think about it that way, your whole perspective on the job changes. I'm no longer selling widgets. I'm running a company that's selling a lot of [00:24:00] widgets. 

skoob: All right. That's awesome. Thank you for that answer. I hope, I hope that points out to some of my scuba leavers out there not to do it all by themselves when they get to that point of Wearing too many hats, 

Mark: yeah and ask for help ask for help.

skoob: Don't be afraid to ask for help

All right So I i'm a little different when it comes to this particular question now And i'm sure you get this question all the time. What was your hardest pitfall? What was the hardest thing you went through blah blah blah blah blah So I like being a little bit different when it comes to this I'd like to know what pitfall you came across that you're most proud of What pitfall that actually happened to you, but you're like, if I didn't go through that pitfall, I wouldn't have had this amazing moment.

What's that like for you, Mark? 

Mark: Thank you for that question. At the risk of repeating myself, the pitfall of thinking I could do it all as a first time CEO and hitting real burnout was a pitfall, but the payoff from that was, let's say a year and a half to two years later. Sitting with my team [00:25:00] at a steakhouse in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the middle of February, right?

The opposite of glamorous, by the way, whatever you're picturing is so, was so not glamorous. And we had just sold the company. And everybody did well, and we all looked around the table, I can see us, I'm feeling that being in that moment now, and I can picture the picture of, this was 15 years ago, of realizing, and certainly me realizing that this was a major success in my career, right?

Like it is a big check plus on my career, but I knew that I would not have happened if not for all these other people around the table. And there was an immense love and affection and appreciation. For the team and what we had accomplished that transcended any personal sense of accomplishment.[00:26:00] 

Winning as a team is the best. It is the best. And so I would, I don't think, I know I would not have been able to have been at that table in Atlantic city, but for having realized that I needed to change how I was building. The company. 

skoob: It's nice to have something for yourself and oh, I accomplished that and that's fine.

But when you could share that accomplishment with other people on your teams and see the looks on their faces and how you help change their lives. Yes. By what you've accomplished. That's a whole nother ballgame when it comes to being happy, not just for yourself. But for the other people that are around you that you helped make possible.

Mark: That's right. It's a, it's a drug to which I am addicted. 

skoob: And no side effects except for happiness. Except 

Mark: for happiness. Yes. It keeps, it keeps going, bringing me back to doing really hard things. So, that's the side effect maybe. 

skoob: I don't 

Mark: know. 

skoob: We'll see. That's awesome. [00:27:00] So I'd like to know now you've had several businesses.

Yes. But what is the biggest accomplishment you've had for yourself? When it comes to your businesses, what was one of your biggest accomplishments? Was it selling the business? Was it, what was that like for you? 

Mark: I was really lucky to be asked to, in the second time as a CEO take over a beloved, used, but under monetized business, and it was a company.

Is a company called Bitly, which is the link shortening company. So if you've seen bit. ly and my team and I came in in 2013 to a business that had massive global product usage, we're talking about billions of stuff, not thousands or hundreds, billions, and it had raised a fair amount of money. But was losing a lot of money.

And over the course of three years, the team was able [00:28:00] to get profitable and growing, and we sold to private equity and then spent another three years working at Bitly, scaling and growing, continuing to grow the business. That the further away I get from that, the more I appreciate how hard that was. And what an accomplishment that was because I felt like we had the, the internet would have been worse off if that business went away.

It's a much bigger business today than I ever would have dreamed, which is amazing. I left in 2019, but the

rescuing that business and putting it on solid footing, I mean, the, the volume and the, the millions of literally millions of customers who rely on that product in that business to help them accomplish important things I'm proud of that. And I'm proud of all the people that work there. I'm proud of all the people we hired.

I'm proud of the relationships that we built and all of that. I'm really proud of that. 

skoob: There's nothing like swooping in like Superman and saving the day when it comes to [00:29:00] something like that. That's such an awesome feeling, being able to save a company like that. 

Mark: Yeah, note that I don't feel like Superman.

That's your words, not me. Because it certainly wasn't, it was certainly not a straight line like Superman taking off. It was a lot of hard work, perilous, flying, more, more Icarus, perhaps flying too close to the sun a couple of times, but in Sisyphus as well. But that's, that's more in the rear view mirror.

It was a really hard job and a really fun one. I'm quite 

skoob: familiar with Bitly especially in the 2018 19 mark there when I actually started all my research in on my entrepreneur adventure. Pat Flynn talked about Bitly a lot and using Bitly in his, his in his business, so I kind of looked into it myself.

So that's pretty awesome. I really, that's fantastic. 

Mark: Thanks. 

skoob: So, I told you earlier that most of my, pretty much all my listeners are brand new entrepreneurs that are just getting started. In their entrepreneurial adventure, getting across the start line. So if you came across somebody that's just getting started, what [00:30:00] kind of advice would you give them?

What steps would you have them take? 

Mark: The headline is get busy. And it is. The most important thing is to take that first step, and whatever that first step might be, but get moving. The, the only thing that's worse than if, than trying something and it not working, is you spending way too much time trying to do it and then it doesn't work.

You want to find out as fast as you possibly can. If this is going to work or not, that's the advice I would give them. I would not say, Oh, it's awesome. Of course it's going to work. It's a great idea. It's good. You're going to be awesome. It's going to be hard. It might be a great idea, but there's a lot of.

A lot in the execution, a lot in the, a lot of luck and there's a lot of things you can't control, but you don't know until you start. And why can't it be you? Why can't it be you who, who knocks it out of the park? Why can't it help you accomplish all the things [00:31:00] that you've set, set as your goals? So, I would encourage folks to get, start, start, get moving.

And then we can talk about like how to break that down into something and how to set goals and how to work backwards and all that, but,

Go, 

skoob: go, go, go. And that's why I say get across the start line. Cause once you get across the start line, it's a race to the, to the next thing. 

Mark: That's right. Milestones are super important. And that first one is getting moving. Even 

skoob: if it's just reading a book about a subject or into, even it's just talking to somebody that's, that's trying to do the same thing that you're trying to do, even the smallest increment of.

Doing what you want to do will help you get across the start line and get going, going, going, going, like you said. So, yeah, go, go, go. That's right. Awesome. So I like to do this with all my guests, Mark. I'd like to know that your six month goal for you and your company, what do you expect you and your company to do in the next six months?[00:32:00] 

Mark: It is. The beginning of the year. So I'm, I'm thinking about I'm my new business. I'm about 3. 5 months in to running this new business full time as a coach. I have a a roster of really special human beings that have allowed me to coach them. I would like to add a few more to them to that list.

And it's, it's hard for me to answer in six months. Like I have financial goals, honestly, I do. I'm not going to share them, but I have goals about what I want, what I want to, what the business to be. It's more about what's the life I want to live. And this is the blessing in the curse of being an entrepreneur is I don't have a paycheck guaranteed in six months.

Right. So I got to I got stuff I got to do to make that happen. But I also have the opportunity to craft the life that I want to live or try to anyway. So I want to, choose, I want to be selective on, on with whom I work and people and problems I really love and really passionate about.

[00:33:00] I want to be present. At home with my wife. We have three sons with one left at home. I want to be present in his life before he goes off and flies the nest. I want to be active and physically fit. I want to read books. I might want to learn to play guitar. I want that's how I'm thinking.

I want, I think about the whole. thing, not just the business. And how does the business play into that? 

skoob: Yeah, because you really need to wrap the business around what you're doing instead of the other way around. 

Mark: I, I think at this stage of my life and career, yes. Not necessarily my 20s, 30s, or 40s. 

skoob: Yeah, exactly.

How many, so let me change the question a little bit. How many new clients do you think you can get to in six months? 

Mark: I think I can I would conservatively say five. Five. Okay. 

skoob: So what I like to do with you, Mark, is actually follow up with you in six months. Great. I love it. I love it. Accountability part.

Accountability. That's right. I want to should have said three. Right. Now you're stuck [00:34:00] with it. Yeah. And see if you've actually gotten those clients. I'd also like to know if you actually learned to play guitar. 

Mark: That's great. Joke that I want to buy a guitar that I'll never learn how to play. But I, there's a couple of tunes I wouldn't mind learning how to play.

skoob: Maybe you need, maybe you and me need to get together and learn how to play guitar together. Cause I've been trying to do that for years. Have you really any tips? Just get your first chord out, get started. Do it. Just get started. There you 

Mark: go. That's fair. Touche. 

skoob: Yeah. Just do 

Mark: it. 

skoob: All right. All right, Mark.

This is your time to shine. This is your time. I want you to advertise yourself. Tell us what you're doing and how to get a hold of you and all that good stuff. Okay. Ready, set, go. 

Mark: So thank you for this opportunity. Love talking to you and hopefully getting to meet some of the folks who are listening.

Anyone who wants to reach out to me, I'm active on LinkedIn. Also on my website at MarkJosephson. net. You can learn about my coaching practice and my business there. If you want to reach out and have a shorter, smaller conversation, [00:35:00] I'm on intro, which is at intro. com. And you can book a meeting with me anytime.

And so, I love to help. So I love to have those conversations. So don't be shy. 

skoob: All right. Fantastic. And everybody check the guest forms in my website. to get more information about Mark and what he's up to. Okay. Mark, thank you so much for being on the undiscovered entrepreneur. Get across the start line.

It's been an amazing conversation. I think we have a lot of great things to talk about in to our entrepreneur friends and school believers out there. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody. Make sure you stay tuned for the wrap up. All right, everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. 

All right, Skoo Believers, that was Mark. Loved this interview, had a lot of great information, and I just really love his energy, and his, he talked a lot about

being authentic, and that is so important when we are going along in our entrepreneur adventures, to be authentic about ourselves. But there are still a couple of things I really like to talk about [00:36:00] here. If I guarantee you, you would make a million dollars after a hundred nose, how quickly would you get to those nose?

I mean, Mark's insight reveals a profound truth. Success isn't about avoiding failure. It's about embracing each no. As one step closer to your breakthrough. And remember that your body keeps score when Mark couldn't physically get out of bed from burnout and taught him that true leadership isn't about being Superman.



It's about building a team and learning that the greatest victories are the ones that you share together with your team.

Let's always remember that as we go along in our entrepreneur adventure. All right, school believers, thank you so much for another episode and I will see you soon. Bye bye. And there you have it future entrepreneurs. We've taken another step towards our journey to get across that start line. Remember every great business starts with a single idea and the courage to pursue it. You've [00:37:00] already shown that courage by joining us here today. As we wrap up this episode of the undiscovered entrepreneur, I want to remind you that the start line isn't as far away as you might think with each bit of knowledge you gain each fear you face.

You're getting closer to launching your dream until our next episode together. Keep pushing, keep dreaming, and most importantly, keep taking those steps across the start line. They'll all add up to big strides in your entrepreneur adventure. This is Scoob, your guide across the starlight. Remember, your future is waiting.

I can, I am, I will, and I'm doing it today.