Achieving Clarity & Direction Based on Life Output

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Mark Dolfini  0:00  

Before they become clients It’s trying not to get them to focus on income generation and as the only metric that matters because most of the time what they don’t recognize is that making money and keeping money are two different sets of skills and they may possess one but not the other or possess one as the detriment of the other so usually the ones that are really really hell bent on, no I need to make more money, I need to make an extra $500,000 a year if you can’t help me I’m gonna find someone else, well, who isn’t looking to make an extra $500,000 a year, that’s the thing but if that’s really all there about then they’re probably not a good coaching client for me not that I’m saying that that’s wrong, but I’m not a sales growth coach, I’m not a revenue growth coach. I’m a Strategic Coach from the top. I’m really more of a success coach and anything else. Once they become clients, and they see the vision, the infrastructure process method, they understand that probably the one that I have to battle with them a lot, is their vision, and challenging them on their vision for clarity, and depth that has nothing to do with their business.

 

Richard Matthews  1:34  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that, I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  2:29  

Hello and welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews and today I am live on the line with Mark Dolfini. Mark, are you there?

 

Mark Dolfini  2:37  

I am here. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:39  

Awesome. Glad to have you here. I know we were talking just a few minutes ago before we got to the interview. Where are you calling in from today?

 

Mark Dolfini  2:46  

From a little town of Lafayette, Indiana.

 

Richard Matthews  2:51  

So for those of us who aren’t great with geography. Where is that in relation to Indianapolis?

 

Mark Dolfini  2:58  

I’m just about an hour north as the crow flies from Indianapolis. So I could be downtown potentially watching a Colts game in about an hour with taking parking out of it if I wanted to. So it’s not that far.

 

Richard Matthews  3:15  

Are you pretty close to the Great Lake that’s up there?

 

Mark Dolfini  3:19  

So we’re pretty much almost halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis. So we’re right in Central Indiana.

 

Richard Matthews  3:29  

Nice. So for my audience who’s following around with our travels, my wife and I and our four kids are currently in Central Florida in Kissimmee, we’re here for a little while on our journeys and travels, we’re on our way back over to California at some point and then eventually we’ll get to Indiana because that’s one of the last states on our map. So what I want to do before we get too far into this is do a brief introduction for you. So my audience who doesn’t know you might know you a little bit and we’ll just dive right into your story. So Mark Dolfini is a veteran of the US Marines. Thank you for your service, by the way, and author of three real estate books, most notably The Judge: A Landlord’s Tale, The Million Dollar Lease Agreement, which was released in summer 2018. And your third book The Time-Wealthy Investor 2.0, which was released in January 2019, and teaches the exclusive VIP method of how to create a real estate business focused on a life output. So what I want to have you start off with Mark is, what is it that you’re known for? And what do you do for people?

 

Mark Dolfini  4:33  

Well, that’s a little bit of a dangerous question in terms of what I’m known for because sarcasm was what I was known for if that could be a superpower. If I could figure out how to make money at that, I probably already changed my name to assemble. But now, I’ve been described as a life coach for landlords and I thought that that was a really interesting thing. I went with the landlord coach moniker. But really about helping people get clarity and get direction in terms of their life focusing on life output, not just income generation.

 

Richard Matthews  5:10  

So it’s really interesting and how did you end up doing landlord coaching? Do you do real estate yourself? Or you’re a coach for people who invest in real estate, how did that happen?

 

Mark Dolfini  5:23  

Yeah, it’s interesting. So landlord coach really started as more of a marketing arm, the irony is I really don’t want to make people into landlords, I want to make them into business owners and help them focus on life output, but there are so many real estate entrepreneurs I know that are out there, that get started with the idea of having lots of control over their calendar, lots of time freedom, lots of money coming in, so they can do whatever it is they want to do. And then what ends up happening is they create a job for themselves and the result is the exact opposite of what they set out for. So I started with the landlord coach, but honestly, I’m working with a lot of small business owners who do write about or heard about the VIP method, the vision infrastructure process method, and I work with them as a coach and just try to help them get clarity in their vision and get infrastructure and processes put together that will really help them get the lifestyle, the life output that they want.

 

Richard Matthews  6:26  

Yeah, you have a real estate portfolio as well, right?

 

Mark Dolfini  6:33  

Yeah, I’ve got a couple of 100 properties that I own and what I manage. So that affords me the ability to have as much time freedom as I want in my calendar to coach and write books and do this stuff that I’m really passionate about.

 

Richard Matthews  6:51  

And do interviews like this one?

 

Mark Dolfini  6:52  

That’s right. Work on my sarcasm.

 

Richard Matthews  6:57  

So my first real question for you is about your origin story. So every good comic book hero has their origin story, were you born a hero, or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you get into real estate investing, and then coaching other real estate investors, or do you start out in the corporate world and eventually get into real estate and coaching? Basically want to find out, how did you become the entrepreneur you are today?

 

Mark Dolfini  7:25  

That’s a great question. I would love to say it was when I went and bought my first rental property and gained all my superpowers at the closing table and went straight to the Ferrari dealership and bought my first Ferrari. And that’s not at all. In fact, it was the exact opposite.

 

Richard Matthews  7:43  

It is the dream, though, right?

 

Mark Dolfini  7:45  

Right. That seems to be the story that’s being sold to us by all these infomercials on Facebook, and so forth. But that is 100%, not my story. I pretty much was more like the Peter Parker of making about every mistake that you could possibly make. I worked hard, I tried hard, but man, everything I seem to do does seem to blow up in my face. Going back I was in the Marine Corps for four years, I got out, went to Purdue, and got my degree in accounting and minored in finance. And while I was at Purdue, I decided to start buying some rental properties and learn how to do that while I was in school. So by the time I got out of school, I had about a dozen rental units altogether, which was just about half-million dollars worth of real estate. So I would love to say at that point, I had it all figured out and everything else but that’s where my real education started after I graduated from college, and that’s when it got really really expensive because I just went on to make a lot more mistakes from there.

 

Richard Matthews  8:56  

So what were some of your big mistakes that go from owning half a million dollars in real estate to I think in your bio, you have 40 million now that you manage your own in some form or fashion?

 

Mark Dolfini  9:08  

Yeah, so I would love to say, this is one of those things where I made just about every possible mistake that you can make in the business. Because I was pretty much stuck on stupid, I just kept buying more properties for the sake of buying more because more was better. But all I was doing was creating more and more complexity in my business. And I never fired myself from any of these little jobs that I created. So that was probably where I really started to get my real education in business. And I had built up a $6 million rental portfolio which was 92 rental units altogether. And I was doing okay, I mean from the outside looking in they knew I had it all. I was bringing $65,000 a month in revenues. I had a big house, cars, and an enviable lifestyle, but what people didn’t see was that I was working anywhere from 12 to 14 to 16 hours a day, just to keep all the balls in the air. I was doing the leasing, the showings, all the maintenance, all the opening the mail answering the phone, it was just a constant barrage of just stuff that was never ending. So I had created all of these hundreds and hundreds of little jobs for myself, that even though I was like, well, that’ll only take a few minutes. Well, when you multiply that by 300, there are not enough hours in the day to do all these little jobs.

 

Richard Matthews  10:56  

A good friend of mine works in commercial real estate. And he said, one of the biggest changes in his business was when he started to realize that he could shift from individual units to multi-unit things. And like, it’s the same amount of management for a 60 unit thing as it is for one unit. If you would hire someone there? Or both, maybe with hiring a team and actually getting other people to start using some of that revenue that top-line revenue to get an organization of people and help make it happen?

 

Mark Dolfini  11:31  

Yeah, it was the latter of the two, although, I think that’s a little bit of a misconception that multifamily units are easier just because they’re all in one location. It depends, it’s not always that simple. Because something that I refer to as multiple lines of complexity, and not to get overly complex about it for your listeners. But there’s a reason why we know, the ideal classroom size for classrooms, in schools, is somewhere between 20 and 25. That’s because you’ve got to consider that every individual student also can interact with another individual student. So student one can interact with students two and three and four, all the way up to 20 or 25. Right? Well, when you factor that mathematically, that’s over 900 lines of complexity when you start getting over 20 students, and we can handle 900 or 1000 lines of complexity fairly well because it’s the typical 80/20 rule, where you’re gonna get 80% of your problems out of 20% of your students. So that’s the typical 80/20 rule. So when you get a larger population, then it starts to be more and more problematic. So just for example, if you’re looking at a 20, or 30 unit apartment building, you have to keep in mind that every single one of those residents can interact with another one of those residents. And every single unit in there can impact potentially another unit around it, whether it’s above or below or side to side. Someone that has a water heater leak on the third floor can impact the second and third and the apartments next to it, and all the way down, it can cause a really big problem. So it’s not as straightforward as saying, oh, well, multifamily is easier just because it’s under one roof. It’s not that straightforward. Because you still have to manage the multiple lines of complexity, and you can do that with a system. And that’s what I did, that’s what I recognized. So when I was going into 2008 and 2009 with this $6 million worth of real estate, and all of a sudden, when the economy fell apart, that $65,000 a month went to $30,000 a month and it was a complete and total disaster. From a hero’s perspective that’s when I truly hit my pit moment. Because I’m working harder I’m working more hours. I’m working 18, sometimes 20 hours a day. I’m grabbing a nap wherever I could in the Lowe’s parking lot or wherever I could just to try to keep all the balls in the air working seven days a week. My phone was relentless. No one’s paying rent. I’m working more hours just trying to keep the regular maintenance up than trying to turn the properties where people are moving out of. And getting those who rented and here’s where I got from bad to worse is obviously that kind of lifestyle and that kind of pace, I got sick. And because I didn’t stop and get rest. That turned into double pneumonia and I almost died in the hospital. So it got pretty bad, pretty dark for me during that time.

 

Richard Matthews  14:53  

Interesting. So you went from it’s hard economically to one of the biggest things we talked about on the show all the time is the idea that as an entrepreneur, you have to give yourself permission to play. That’s what I call it. That as entrepreneurs, we think of rest and recreation as a reward for a job well done. And then our job is never done. So we never do it. And instead of looking at rest and recreation as a requirement to do a good job, it’s one of those scripts that we have to flip in our own heads as entrepreneurs. So it sounds like you ran into that realization really hard. So how has that shifted since then?

 

Mark Dolfini  15:36  

Yeah, that was pretty much a shovel to the face for me. So while I was in the hospital, and this is kind of when I had this massive parting of the clouds for me, I’m laying in the hospital, and the hospitalist comes in and I’m there for at least a couple of days. And the hospitalist came in and she said something to me that I never forgot. I’m 37 years old at the time. And she says, people who look like you, at your age, don’t lay in hospital beds like this. She said you need to really evaluate what’s going on in your life and change some things. And I was like, yeah, I kind of knew what she was talking about. And of course, I knew about systems and stuff. Like that wasn’t massively, I mean, Michael Gerber has been talking about this for 30 plus years with the E Myth. So it wasn’t anything that’s crazy, I read the book, people are saying, oh, you really need to get help. Well, what am I gonna do? Like, I didn’t have any systems or processes or anything. I mean, so none of that would have made a difference. Even if I did have help, they wouldn’t have known how to help. So as I’m sitting there, I couldn’t answer my phone. I was just trapped there with my thoughts. This nurse comes in with a needle. And she said I have to give you a shot in the stomach. To which I replied, you need to work on your marketing. I said, wait a minute, what’s this shot for? And she says, well, you’re going to be laying in the hospital bed for the next two or three days. And we don’t want you to get blood clots in your legs. So this is Coumadin to help thin your blood. And I said, I looked over and the machine that they had me on, which was pumping fluids into my arm. I said, well, that thing’s on wheels, right? And she says, yeah, I said, I can get out of bed and walk around, right? And of course, she looked at me like I was asking her to explain Michael Jackson. And she goes, okay, well, yeah, I guess. So she takes her needle and she goes away. So not long later, another nurse comes in with another needle. Got to give you a shot, she says.

 

Mark Dolfini  18:01  

And I said, well, what’s this for? And she says, well, the drugs we’ve got you on, we got you on a steroid, prednisone, and that is messing with your blood sugar, and I need to give you this insulin to help level you out. Well, what is it? She told me the number whatever it was, I said, okay, well, how about I just eliminate sugar and carbs from my diet while I’m here. And you can check me tomorrow morning. And if I still need it, you can give it to me then, right? So she takes her needle and she goes away. Now here’s the thing. As I’m sitting there, I’m watching this whole thing going on outside the door, and the watch of the nurse’s station, the whole thing. And I realized that these nurses were operating within a system, they weren’t trying to push drugs, they were just doing their job. Somewhere, somehow, they were told, given these parameters, this guy may need these shots or whatever, these are the things you have to do. So of course, as I’m sitting there, trapped with my thoughts in the hospital for three days, I’m kind of swimming around with all these things that are wrong in my life. And they kind of landed in three different buckets. The first bucket that I recognized is that everything was in my head. Everything that I had, like all the problems, was in my head, there were no processes at all. There’s no system of doing things. There’s no standard operating procedure. It was just whoever called whoever yells the loudest, those are the ones I took care of. Whether it was rent collection, or maintenance requests, or whatever it was, that’s the thing I did. So everything kind of landed, I didn’t have any processes really. The next thing that I recognized is I had nothing resembling a business. I didn’t have any real infrastructure. Like people were saying, you need help? Well, I didn’t have desks or chairs or a computer or software or a phone system that didn’t look like my cell phone. I didn’t have anything that resembled a business. So even if I did have help, what was I going to do, walk them into a room and yell, do work, and then run away. Like it wasn’t going to improve my life at all. So I didn’t have any processes, and I certainly didn’t have any infrastructure. And then finally, the last thing was, I really didn’t have any real vision for what I was trying to accomplish. I didn’t have any real understanding of why I was getting out of bed in the morning and doing this thing. I mean, I had been in the corporate world, and even though I fit in there, like a square peg in a round hole, I proved to myself that I could make a living that way. Why was I doing this particular thing? Like, what was it all for? So as I look at it that way, and I didn’t have it quite that literally spelled out, it wasn’t like, the VIP, it was form and birds and flew by my window or something along those lines, but that’s how I came up with the vision, infrastructure, process method.

 

Richard Matthews  21:09  

It was the first messy thoughts that became that.

 

Mark Dolfini  21:12  

That’s exactly right. It was just kind of like, well, let me put this together. But it has to be in that order, you have to put the vision infrastructure process method together in that order because that has to be vision focus to has to be vision led, because the business is just how money comes in. I mean, for all of your listeners out there, I don’t think anybody would be overly offended if they woke up tomorrow with $300 million in their bank accounts. And it didn’t have to be coming from real estate or Bitcoin or whatever. I think they’d be quite happy and content with the 300 million. So really, the infrastructure and process it’s really just the vessel that gets you from here to there. And that’s the vessel that needs to deliver your vision for you.

 

Richard Matthews  22:01  

Yeah, absolutely. And I know for me, I had the same kind of come to Jesus moment, I wasn’t in a hospital bed, I was at a mastermind group. Mine was actually if I had an analogy to the hospital moment, it was on the side of a road it was several years ago, we were just a new traveling family. And I decided my business was capable of being location independent. So we might as well be location independent, because why not. And we’re good six months into this and I am struggling to grow my business, but at the same time, struggling to figure out how to live life mobily and I remember one afternoon, the fuel pump on our motorhome died, while we were in the middle of Texas on the way up to a national park. And we were literally 100 miles from anywhere, there’s no cell service, there are no cars driving by, we’re in the middle of the desert, and we’re on the side of the hill, and the coach is dead. And it’s parked on a hill, like this kind of thing. And our bed is one of those things, it’s like at the back of the RV. And I was like if we have to sleep here tonight, we’re gonna have to turn the bed around. So we don’t die from beads blasting into our skulls. And every once in a while, there’s an 18 wheeler that goes by and it shakes the whole coach and I’m gonna have to put blocks up under the wheel and I couldn’t figure anything out. I’m like crying on the side of the road like what have I done to my family that I’ve got stuck in the middle of the desert, I can’t solve any of these problems. And I realized that my problem was I didn’t understand the systems in the RV well enough to fix the problems. And I was having the same problem in my business because one of the things I’ve learned over my life is that if your problem can be solved with money, you don’t have a problem, you have a resource problem, it’s a resource problem is what it is. And so I had a resource problem that was manifesting in my life because my business had the same kind of systems issues. So I woke up the next morning after we slept on the road and my wife helped keep the kids all sane and I was upset and all this kind of stuff. The next morning, the coach starts and just works fine. We get all the way to where we’re going. And by serendipity, the guy that’s parked next to me, I’m chatting with him about this. He knows exactly what the problem is with my coach. He’s like it’s a vapor lock issue. And your fuel line is running over the top of the coach because when someone did an upgrade to the fuel pump, they put the fuel line in the wrong spot. If you take the fuel line, move it from here, six inches over there, it won’t overheat and evaporate all your fuel in the line. So your coach isn’t getting gas, he solved it in like 30 seconds because he understood the system. He knew what was going on, super fascinating. So fast forward a few months, I’m at my mastermind with a group of people who are significantly more successful than I am in business not sure how I managed to get myself in that room. But the guy who’s running that, at the end of it, he pulls me aside cuz each one of the masterminds we all come with something that we share, like, here’s something we’re going to share with the group. And we all sort of learn from each other and talk about our goals and whatnot. And he pulls me aside at the end, he’s like, listen, you’re doing some ridiculously cool things in your business. But you are your own bottleneck because you don’t have a team. And you don’t have your systems out of your head. He’s like, so what I want you to do is when you leave this mastermind, the first thing I want you to do is I want you to hire someone. He’s like this is the person you need to hire and what you need to have them do is help you document your systems.

 

Richard Matthews  25:51  

And I remember looking at him being like, you’re crazy because I can’t afford to hire someone. Like I can’t do that. I don’t know what I would have to do. I don’t know how I’d have the money for it. And after I vacillated on that for three months. Well, I was like, I can’t do this, I don’t know how I’m gonna do it. But he was like, just promise me you’ll do it, you won’t understand it till after you’ve done it. It’s one of those, he had perspective, I didn’t have that kind of thing. I finally bit the bullet and did it. And I hired someone full-time. And we started working out processes and everything. And what was interesting is, within two weeks, it all clicked, and suddenly, I understood where the money was coming from to pay for him or pay for that person. Because now I had twice as much time available, and it changed my entire structure, instead of asking myself, should I do this myself? Or should I hire someone? I was asking myself, what can I get off of my plate and onto theirs? And what’s the best way to do that? It changes the whole conversation. And I’ve since built a much larger business. And we operate two companies now. And a lot of it is based on exactly what you’re talking about, which is learning how to put together the correct infrastructure, which in our case is a lot of digital tools for a remote team and processes that make it all happen.

 

Mark Dolfini  27:08  

Right. Well, and to your point, what I had to recognize, too, is that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle. And I started with the idea of the vision infrastructure process method because I have seven different businesses that I oversee, and several of them are software companies. And they’re not all real estate related. But I always look at something through the lens of the VIP method, and any information that has to flow through me, I’m really careful about, why is this information coming to me right now? And why do I have to make a decision? Why did the decision land on my plate? Now sometimes I want it to, sometimes I don’t mind that. But if it’s too many decisions that I’m thinking about, why is this coming to me? Why isn’t this just automated? Or why isn’t it delegated to someone else? I started looking at that pretty quickly, especially if it’s information, especially if it’s decisions the outcome isn’t all that relevant. I mean, I might miss an appointment here or there. But why can’t I automate that so I don’t miss an appointment or, why does that have to be that something that I have to look at before it goes on my calendar, I mean, that’s why I have a chief of staff. That’s why I have other people that look through that lens for me, and they love doing work like that. And that gets them doing their best thing. And I get to do my best thing, which is coaching and teaching. And that doesn’t even seem like work to me. I mean, I could literally coach all day, and have conversations all night, and it doesn’t seem like work to me, I love it.

 

Richard Matthews  28:48  

Yeah, absolutely. And one of my rules in my business now is to only do that, which only you can do. So we build all of our systems with that in mind where one of the cool things we do with our project management system, and one of our companies is each one of the process buckets is broken out by skill set. So the person who is in charge of, for instance, we do graphic design work. And all of the processes are in there. And like they own all of those, so they’re only doing that thing, and they’re not doing anything else. So they’re not doing things that are in the writer’s bucket or in the media editors bucket or they’re not even doing task management related stuff because any of the test management stuff can all be automated by robots, because robots are really good at that stuff. So we build all of our processes, so each one of the people on the team should only be doing stuff that only they can do. And then the same way hopefully I’m doing only the stuff that only I can show up and do like for instance, only I can do these interviews on this show for what I’m trying to accomplish with it. So I show up and do those but like, I don’t do anything else for the show, like, literally nothing I show up for these interviews, everything else is part of the system that I don’t do anything else for but the one thing that I have to show up and do.

 

Mark Dolfini  30:21  

Right, exactly. And that’s awesome. That’s when you can get really clear in terms of what it is that you are great at, which takes a little bit of work to get there. It took me a while to realize the things that I’m really truly great at, building a team and then getting out of their way, and then learning how to support them. I’m really careful about dictating how the work gets done, as long as the work follows a certain set of core values that I have in place. And that the result is what we’re ultimately wanting, whether that’s a satisfied customer. It’s not just always dollars in the bank, but are we getting to the result that we want. And if we’re not getting the results, we only have to look at our inputs, that’s the only thing you have to look at is the inputs. And it’s just results, there’s no failure, it’s just, well, we didn’t get the results we wanted. So how could we change our inputs? That’s it, it’s a pretty simple formula.

 

Richard Matthews  31:22  

And I feel like that’s a really great transition into my next question, which is about your superpowers. So every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by your genius intellect, or the super strength, or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills you were born with, we developed over your career that really help your customers slay their villains in their life. And the way I like to frame it is you look at all the skills that you’ve developed over the course of your entrepreneurial career, there’s probably a common thread that sort of ties all those skills together, that common thread is how to really find your superpower. So with that in mind, what do you think your superpower is?

 

Mark Dolfini  32:08  

You know, it’s funny, you’re asking this, especially where I’m at this time of my life right now. Because for a while, I really didn’t feel okay with saying it. Because it was kind of like, man, that sounds really terrible. It sounds to be that sure that you’re that good at something. But I know that I’m a great teacher, I’m great at it. And I know that I’m a great coach. And that’s not because I happen to be a coach, it’s because I became a coach because I know I’m great at it. And it was one of those things where I finally recognized I talked to my staff one day. And I was being invited to do a presentation somewhere. And I was like, Man, what am I gonna do a presentation on? And I was like, well, I don’t really know what kind of things that I could teach on? So I went to my staff, I said, hey, could you put just a short list together of some of this, maybe a topic or two that I might have taught you over the last four or five months. And it was so humbling, because they all looked at each other like, okay, you’re kidding, right? And I was like, no, I just only need a couple from you guys. They’re like that would be a really, really long list. And I was truly incredulous. Like, no, I really need your help right now. I thought they were being funny. But they’re like, no, Mark, that’s something you’re really, really good at. And I was like, oh, well, I knew I was a good teacher, I didn’t think I was that good. And really what I found is what truly makes me great. The common thread between being a great teacher and being a great coach is this ability to connect dots that most people would never connect, making that piece of information relevant to them because I’ve either experienced that, or I’ve learned about it or something along those lines. So from that aspect, because I’m always learning with the idea of re-teaching. I learned a lot for myself, but it’s almost always through the lens of how I can teach this to someone else. And that’s true, I had someone else point that out to me. So not to get super weird about it. But I feel like I really do feel comfortable owning this. This is why God put me here because I really feel that this is just something that I’m great at is that ability to connect seemingly two irrelevant dots, making them connect and then making that relevant to the individual to make them better from whatever journey that they’re on.

 

Richard Matthews  34:51  

So there are two things I want to pull out of your story there. One of them is something that I find really fascinating and that is the fine line that is the difference between confidence and arrogance. And I find that the difference between confidence and arrogance is whether or not it’s been earned. So arrogance is generally masking a lack of actual skill or lack of actual aptitude in an area where confidence is something that you’re like, I know, I’ve earned this, I’ve done the work, I’ve earned my stripes kind of thing. And in our heads, we have a hard time separating the difference between arrogance and confidence. And like you said it feels almost bad to own that. But at the same time, you have to realize that that imposter syndrome thing that pops up were like, maybe I haven’t earned this, maybe I’m not actually a good teacher, maybe I’m not as good as I think I am. But when you actually look at your body of work, you realize that no, I’ve actually earned this. I’ve done this thing and I have become world-class in this area. And it’s a mental shift. And it’s also something that other people can detect, they can detect if you’re arrogant, or if you’re truly good at what you say you are. Because our bullshit meters are really good at that kind of stuff. So that’s the first thing. And the second thing was the teaching, and only because I’m sort of in that realm as well, one of the things that I do is I teach people how to teach. So that’s one of my skill sets is teaching other people how to take the skills in their head and turn them into persuasive education. And so there’s a lot of really interesting skills that go into learning how to teach, and very few people actually know how to do it. Like how to actually teach someone else and the actual formula behind how someone learns. And I find that endlessly fascinating. So I feel like that would be something we could connect on a lot. We think of teaching as what happens in school. Certainly teachers and learning your foundational skills. But once you get past foundational skills, almost every other form of teaching is some sort of persuasive teaching, because you’re teaching someone how to do something that they didn’t have to take action to change things in their life, in order to make use of anything they’re learning. And it’s an entirely different world. And it’s a, it’s like a superpower unto itself.

 

Mark Dolfini  37:26  

That really is, that’s a great point. And I’m lighting up over what you’re saying because I think the foundation or definition of a good leader is someone who creates another leader. And teaching people how to teach is such a blessing to others. And I don’t really know that I teach how to teach, but now all of a sudden, I’m starting to get other coaches coming to me which is incredibly humbling, and other consultants coming to me, which is incredibly humbling, but because they recognize that, it requires a certain level of humility to be able to do that. And I have a coach, it’s one of those things in the past where I’m thinking, how in the world could I honestly say that you really need a coach, but I don’t have a coach, and I’ve had several coaches, and I have a coach right now. But it’s one of those things where I feel like, being in that realm of teaching and embracing and being, I don’t know how you can do without a certain sense of humility. I’m not sure that you can, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit it. But showing up as if I was already there with this fake mask on pretending I was something that I wasn’t, because I felt like that’s what I had to be, in order to be a coach or whatever it was, I was looking at the people on the internet as my role models. And those were like, the worst people that I wanted, like, man, if I had to be successful, I have to be like them. And I’m like, Man, that’s like, kissing Hitler in the mouth. Like, that’s disgusting, I don’t want to be that. But what I really recognize out there and especially if any of your listeners are ever wanting to be coaches, if they’re ever wanted to be teachers to your point, if you cannot be authentic and trust me, authenticity is not always pretty. Authentic just means raw and who you are. But if you can’t be authentic to who you are, you’re going to have a tough time teaching or coaching anybody. And I think that was probably one of the biggest lessons that I have learned.

 

Richard Matthews  39:45  

I think you mentioned that humbleness and pride in your discussion just there. And one of the things that I think is really fascinating is I think humility and pride are very similar to arrogance and confidence. Where we think that humility and pride are opposites like they’re mutually exclusive. And I don’t think they are, I think they’re actually in two separate worlds. From my perspective, it comes from understanding that we have a spark of divinity in us, and our gifts and our talents, and sometimes we work for them. But a lot of them are given to us. And we’re dependent on others and their relationships. And the other thing is that the people who have helped build us. And so there’s a humility and understanding that, I couldn’t do this on my own, I couldn’t be who I am without standing on the shoulders of giants. And pride is on the other side of like, but I’ve also earned my stripes. I’ve put in the work, I’ve done what it takes to get where I am because you can’t have one without the other kind of thing. And actually have real confidence in what you do.

 

Mark Dolfini  41:15  

Yeah, it was really interesting to that point. I mean, I remember several years ago, my Bride and I, we were really, really struggling. It’s marriage, and you’re married, you get it, and we were in a really, really bad place. And it was really interesting that I felt like I didn’t really want to share that with the world because I was embarrassed about it. I mean, I had done bad things, she’d done bad things, we were just not good to each other. We were really, really bad to each other. And we were both wrong. And I went in and took 100% of my blame, she went in and took 100% of her blame. And it was really interesting that once we started to share that story, I was a little embarrassed about it. But when I started sharing that story, people all of a sudden started to come to me organically and going, Man, I’m so glad you and your wife worked things out. Could you tell us what you guys did? And I’m like, yeah, and I’ll talk to anybody about that. Like, I can only offer you my story and the tools that are in my toolbox that helped me get out of that. But just let me be clear, I was not saying that, for the purpose of getting clients. Absolutely 100% was not. I was just offering that as a conversation piece, and then all of a sudden, they were like, well, so what’s it like to coach with you? And I’m like, wait, whoa, pump the brakes. This isn’t a sales session like that. I didn’t have this conversation for that purpose. They’re like, no, we know, but we really just want to know what your coaching is about, and all of a sudden I’m starting to get clients because of it. And I was like, what is going on? I just kind of looked at the sky and like really, this is where my life is going. And that’s what was laid at my feet, God put that in my feet and I’m thinking Holy moly. All right, well, I guess that’s what it is. It’s just people dying for some authenticity. That’s not someone you know holding up a check and going hey, I made $50,000 off this whatever deal, they’re really just wanting authenticity in whatever form that looks like. And I was just, I don’t know, I felt like that was something that really made me realize that you really have to be able to not humiliate yourself, but be humble and recognize that people that are out there and if you have a skill set, that they really just need you to be you so that you can connect with them on their level.

 

Richard Matthews  43:52  

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s super fascinating to see how when you tell your story that’s what connects with people. And I was just talking about some last interview we did today that we’re a story born people humanity as a whole, like that’s how we interact with one another, it’s how we build relationships with one another. Everything about our lives we judge on stories. And so I tell people all the time that, you might call an acquaintance as someone that you know their name but you don’t know their story. And a friend might be someone who you know their name you know, some of their stories and a close friend, you know a lot of their stories but your best friend, so many of their stories that they can’t even tell you any new ones, you have to go out and create new stories together. And so we judge our relationships on stories. Especially if you’re in the coaching business, which you are if you want to connect with people you have to share your story.

 

Mark Dolfini  44:54  

Yeah. And it wasn’t always pretty and that’s why before I wrote the book, I had to look like this, on the back of my book, it shows the assets under management and stuff like that. But even then I feel like that’s not what I want people to focus on, I want them to focus on having control over their calendar and not the dollars in their bank account, because one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about this work that I’m doing now and being a good coach and teacher for small business owners and operators, whether they’re in real estate, or whether they’re not, I mean, I coach people across the board, that are small business owners specifically, but because I recognize that there are too many marriages that are failing, there’s too many missed baseball games, there’s too many missed opportunities to make a memory with a friend or with somebody out there. And I guess that’s the fight that I do as a hero every day, as a superhero as I go out. And I want to make sure that there are people that have the tools in their toolbox that have the ability to have the whitespace on their calendar. So when light shows up at their door. They don’t have the fight that needs to happen. And it doesn’t need to be a knockdown drag, it just needs to be, you have to have that conflict, conflict isn’t bad, but unresolved conflict is, and that’s cancer that’s allowed to metastasize because it’s never dealt with. And that’s the fight that doesn’t happen because you’re working 18 hours a day, between two or three different jobs, and you’re missing great events with your children, and you’re missing weddings, and, and funerals and family reunions, and all these things that are happening because you’re so constrained by income generation.

 

Richard Matthews  46:49  

Yeah, I don’t know what to call it but the name of your business, not the public name of your business, but the one that’s on the documents, mine is Five Freedoms. And I use the five freedoms because, for me, it’s just a reminder to myself, every time I look at any of our stuff, that the thing that I’m building for are spiritual freedom and political freedom are the two big ones we know what those are. And financial freedom is the ability to not have your decisions constrained by your finances. And then the other two, the ones that people missed, are your time freedom and your location freedom. And that’s being able to decide what to do with your time and being able to decide where you want to spend your time. And I have a number of friends and clients who have had significantly more successful businesses if measured only in the financial freedom department than I have and have them look at me and tell me I am envious of your business and your life because you have the time freedom the location freedom that I just don’t have because I built myself into a box with this huge business.

 

Mark Dolfini  48:05  

Yeah, it’s interesting because I sit in a mastermind too that I look around I feel like I’m auditing the class with people that are making substantially more money than me but I have substantially more time freedom and I wouldn’t trade that I really wouldn’t have been down that road where I made a lot more money could I make more by devoting more time to that? But right now we’ve got two teenage boys at home that sooner than later they’re going to be going on and heading out to their own lives but we want to enjoy those last years with them while they’re in high school, ones in high school one’s getting ready to go into high school, we’ve got a great relationship with my family a great relationship my friends and obviously in the Rona has dismantled some of our closest connections just because of the proximity but will resurrect that over time and we’ll have more and more flexibility and freedom on that stuff. But I think the one thing that people always seem to forget is they’re so focused on money but you’re never getting back your time you’re never getting back to the time that you spend and invest but yet everybody’s still focused on the one thing which is having this the number of zeros in their bank account and I’m not saying anything that everybody already knows but yet why haven’t we shifted that paradigm maybe between you and me and a few others that will change that.

 

Richard Matthews  49:35  

Well, it’s funny because we all still want the numbers on our bank account right? I have a significant time freedom in my life now but we’re still working towards making the numbers bigger in bank count so it doesn’t go away. It’s still included in our list of things that we’re looking to build. I just think time freedom is a bigger priority. And I’m with the kids growing up. My oldest is starting Middle School, he’s gonna be 12 and Middle School next week, and I was like, I’m not ready for that. He’s ready for that. But I’m not. Because he was a baby yesterday.

 

Mark Dolfini  50:10  

Yeah, I think if you stopped feeding him for a while, I think that that slows it down, but I’m not sure.

 

Richard Matthews  50:17  

I’ve tried making a custom head just putting bricks in, it’s not making any difference. Just make him stronger.

 

Mark Dolfini  50:24  

Not working. 

 

Richard Matthews  50:25  

Yeah. I want to talk about the flip side of your superpower, which is the fatal flaw. Just like every Superman has their kryptonite, or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in growing your business. For me, there were a couple of things I struggled with perfectionism for a long time, where I wouldn’t actually ship stuff we were working on because I can always tweak it to make a little bit different a little bit better, which also meant that I was not ever shipping anything and not doing anything. So therefore we’re holding myself to a very low standard. And I also struggled with self-care for a long time where I had bad boundaries with my clients and with my time, my relationship with time and you said this to go 70 hours a week to accomplish less than what I accomplish now in four hours a week. So I think probably more important than what the flaw is that you struggled with is how have you worked to overcome it? So we might learn a little bit from your experience.

 

Mark Dolfini  51:26  

Yeah, it’s funny that as I’m thinking about the different making man fatal flaws, Like geez, just one or two, because I’ve got so many. But one of the things that I’m thinking about is where I started to recognize that I had some real self-worthiness issues. And that not feeling worthy was probably the fundamental thing that I was doing, and that worthiness was showing up in all sorts of ways. And it showed up in ways where I felt I needed to prove myself in a room. It seems like you and I would probably end up talking if we never met in person, we probably would jabber on like two monkeys in a tree for 20 hours, eventually have to have somebody that’s coming and gets us, right, I think we wouldn’t be like that. We both like to talk. But what I was doing was I would overcompensate, almost feeling like I needed to be the loudest person in the room, so I could prove that I belonged in the room. So proving it was a big thing for me. But I had so many things that related to self-sabotage. And the self-sabotage showed up in so many ways, where if I was stalling or delaying doing something or doubting whether I should have been doing it at all, seeking perfection, like you, doing the unnecessary and even though it wasn’t necessarily productive, like, it wasn’t moving the needle for me. So doing the unnecessary. This is another one hiding inactivity, where I was so busy doing nonsense, even though it wasn’t necessarily unimportant, but I would hide inactivity, because it was easier than stopping and working on me. Or the flip side where I had so much to do, that I would hide inactivity because I didn’t even know what to start on first. Where I would lie to myself and say things weren’t as bad or being overly optimistic or even setting impossible standards, all of those things and it’s funny because I tell people all this like, hey, this isn’t a judgment of you, this is a confession of me, I’ve gone through all of that stuff. And all of that self-sabotaging self-punishing, self-defeating behavior, fundamentally, was coming back to these feelings of unworthiness that I had, and it’s hard, I mean, this isn’t a conscious level thing like well Mark I don’t understand, you’re a decorated marine, you’ve got a degree from this college and you did this and you checked all these boxes, how could you feel unworthy? Well, this is the problem, it’s not a conscious level problem. It’s a problem that’s running in the base program of my subconscious of nonsense things that happened probably when I was nine or 10 years old, that I now believe are truths and that’s what’s setting me down this motion and as a result, I was bad with money. You know and if I’m bad with money in my personal life do you think I’m going to be great with money in my business life? No, it does not work that way. So I had to work through that stuff and even as I was getting higher and higher levels of success I would still choose to undo those things by spending money on things that were unnecessarily earned and doing those sorts of things, not finishing things was a perfect example of where I would start a lot of things allowing distractions to exist in my life allowing lower standards to exist in my life things like that. And probably the worst thing that I was doing related to unworthiness was kind of what we talked about before was not rewarding myself not giving my inner child that lollipop it because I’d done some good stuff and not allowing myself downtime because I was just Hey cool well now I’ve got two hours and let me try to fit in 12 more work fidgets before the end of the day rather than saying you know what, you’ve got a good day go take some time off you earned it.

 

Richard Matthews  56:08  

Yeah, one of the things we talked about earlier was, the vision infrastructure process, you can’t give yourself permission to play if you don’t know what it is you’re trying to accomplish because you don’t know when you’ve got there you don’t know if you’ve made any progress towards your vision. And if you don’t know that if I’ve made any progress you’re like since you’ve got that sort of bad relationship with self-care and it’s sort of a self-defeating cycle where you’re like, I don’t really know where I’m going so I don’t know if I’ve got there so I haven’t got enough time to get myself a reward. And then you just sort of cycle all the way down until you get a shovel in the face

 

Mark Dolfini  56:53  

And it will happen and that’s why I’m really careful about making sure I have time for self-care like at the end of the year at the end of the leasing season. This is always a busy time for us, I haven’t taken much time off for the last couple of weeks, but I’ve already told my family look I’m taking Saturday and Sunday off completely off usually I go into the office I kind of futz around I don’t really do anything overly taxing but I absolutely need some time off, I see a kayak in my future and a couple of sandwiches and probably not a cell phone. So I’m looking forward to that.

 

Richard Matthews  57:33  

I have to tell you that kayaking is my favorite sport. I love to kayak. I have one of those fold-up kayaks that fit in the storage bay and I take that out and go kayaking whenever we’re around water so I’m with you there.

 

Mark Dolfini  57:50  

I love it, maybe we’ll need to put in the kayaking time for us to do that.

 

Richard Matthews  57:56  

One of the things that I want to pull out that you said was, right now you’re working really hard because it’s a busy season and I think one of the things that we mistake as entrepreneurs is this idea about work life balance, it’s one of those legal scales where you’re trying to like get your working life into this perfect balance which is it’s a it’s a poor metaphor because it’s unreasonable and it’s not how life really works and my favorite metaphor for work life balance is a rubber band where you have to stretch the rubber band to make forward progress to actually know if you’re gonna shoot your kid with a rubber band and back ahead of the dinner table you got to stretch the rubber band a little bit to shoot the rubber band and our business and our life same way when you want to make progress you have to stretch the rubber band, but if you stretch it too far eventually it breaks and that can be devastating you’ve experienced that and it can be worse than that like you can actually kill yourself if you pull it too far. So you can stretch it too far. So you have to have those periods of work and rest, you have to let go. And that’s where you see that progress happens when you let go of the stress of the rubber band, I think it’s a better metaphor for work life balance actually works.

 

Mark Dolfini  59:17  

Yeah, I like that a lot. Something that I have heard and I’ve used this before or I’ve heard it said before by Dr. Ivan Misner, who’s the founder of BNI and I love that he says this. He says, I don’t believe in work life balance, but I do believe in harmony. And I thought man, that is so good because harmony means that they can coexist. There is no balance. It’s not like, no offense. I love my family. I don’t know that I want to spend an equal amount of time at work with my family equally. You know what I mean? I’m pretty sure my wife would also say that like, I love you but I need you to go do something. I need you to get a hobby or something. So they can’t be balanced, and  I don’t really know if they should be balanced, but I think that harmony is a better word. That’s one thing I do like but I like the rubber band metaphor as well.

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:20  

Yeah, I think they both work really well for just sort of understanding how that fits in. So I want to talk then about your common enemy and this I think fits really well with your coaching clients. Every superhero has their arch-nemesis; it’s the thing that you constantly have to fight against in your world. In business takes a lot of forms but generally, we put this in the context of your clients so when they hire you on and say hey I need your help as a coach for XYZ it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to help people overcome or mindset that the moment they sign on the dotted line if you can just pop them on the head with your magic wand and not have to deal with that so you can actually get them the results that they came to you for what is that common enemy that you constantly have to fight against in your world.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:01:13  

Before they become clients, it’s trying not to get them to focus on income generation as the only metric that matters because most of the time what they don’t recognize is that making money and keeping money are two different sets of skills, and they may possess one but not the other or possess one at the detriment of the other so usually, the ones that are really really hell-bent on, no I need to make more money, I need to make an extra $500,000 a year if you can’t help me I’m gonna find someone else. Well, who isn’t looking to make an extra $500,000 a year I mean, that’s the thing but if that’s really all they’re about then they’re probably not a good coaching client for me not that I’m saying that that’s wrong but not a sales growth coach, I’m not a revenue growth coach I’m really am a Strategic Coach from the top I’m really more of a success coach and anything else once they become clients and they see about the vision infrastructure process method they understand that probably the one that I have to battle with them a lot is their vision and challenging them on their vision for clarity and depth that has nothing to do with their business. I’ve had a coaching client now for four or five months and just now as I’ve poked and prodded and sometimes challenged and sometimes back away and other times but just now he’s starting to form a vision that has nothing to do with his business and it takes time and this guy’s like, no I’m good on my vision, I just need to know how and then he tells me all these other things and of course now having the humility to step back and look at it and go Yeah, remember this guy? This was me 12 years ago. And knowing now how to speak to him in ways that will open to, now I know how to say okay now I’m gonna challenge you a little bit on your vision here and he comes, well, maybe it isn’t about having 3000 clients that are gonna pay me $10,000 a month maybe that’s what it’s all about. Okay, so let’s get a little bit more defined in terms of what it is you’re doing this for in the first place. That’s almost always the constant battle that I have with people in getting really super clear on their vision.

 

Richard Matthews  1:04:02  

So what are some of your like encouragement for helping people clarify their vision?

 

Mark Dolfini  1:04:19  

I look at it from three basic ways, like you, I feel like the mind, body, and spirit. I think that you have to look at it from those perspectives. Some people are definitely more organized or mindful about their bodies, some people are more mindful about their thoughts and their feelings. Some people are definitely more spiritual or in the soul part of their bodies. But I think you have to have all three of those all at the same time. It’s like three legs of a stool. So people know that I have strong faith, I’m not shy about that’s what I’m about. Generally, people who aren’t, I’m not like shoving it down their throat. But I feel like that’s got to be a component to it because I feel like, I don’t know how I would coach you, I feel like I’d be inauthentic who I was. But generally, what I would say is, for our time left together, the hard thing about this is that we’re not allowing ourselves to dream. We’re not allowing ourselves to be that nine or 10 year old boy or girl that sits and just daydreams about things anymore. Because life is a stack, too many things that are just aren’t letting you do it. You’re not allowed to dream anymore. Once you get to a certain age in your life, that stops happening. I think it really starts with gratitude. I keep a gratitude journal, I keep a journal of all my accomplishments, even if the accomplishments are small, if I’ve read a book, and I read a lot of books, so that’s not really the big accomplishment, but I do I keep track of all these little micro accomplishments throughout the year, because it helps build on that self-esteem, that self-worthiness, and all of a sudden, I can start to say, you know what, if I can do that, I can surely do this. So I think those little things really do make a difference. Where trying to extract your own vision can be difficult, I’m happy to have a conversation with anybody to do that. I’m not trying to pitch me like, I’m just saying that that’s something I’m happy to help people with. Because it’s really that important. But have somebody that knows about vision, how do I help extract that from you. Some people love to put together a vision board. That’s not really my thing. I’m not a real visual person, I’m more of a kinesthetic type person. So for me, writing it down on a piece of paper, and having it in front of me, and rewriting it and re-crafting it. That’s what’s important for me. Having affirmations that I read into a recorder and read back to me is really, really important because that’s how I process information that’s going to help change my base program. So I think for most people, getting clarity in their vision, I think what they need to recognize, it’s more of an uncovering process than a constructing process, it’s more of a discovering process than something that you have to build that it’s like going up into the attic of your mind, opening up the old chest and going, hey, cool, I forgot this stuff was in here because a lot of stuff that you just covered up with years and years and years of living and life and stuff that you just decided were unimportant after so many years.

 

Richard Matthews  1:07:56  

I got disconnected for a second, but I think we’re all good. So the thing that sticks out to me there is like in my own life. I really like the idea of uncovering your vision, because it’s the way I think about it in my life. I think kinesthetics is probably the right word for it. But the way I do vision boards in my life is I like to actually go and do things. We’re in the process of trying to after we’re done with traveling, we want to move into a boat. So we’re like going to boat shows, and getting on yachts, and seeing what they look like and going out on day sales when we’re close to the ocean. Because it’s the next step that we want to do is we’re exploring and playing with it, seeing how we like it. But I do that in a lot of areas where I’m like, I want to see what it’s like to learn to play the piano or what it’s like to learn calligraphy or other things like that. And I have to play with things to see what stuff sticks, what stuff I actually enjoy having in my life, that’s not my business. Because the way I look at my business as my enabler, it needs to enable my vision, whatever that is. And you sort of have to explore and see what you want and what you want to get out of life and what you want to do with your wife and what to do with your kids and what kind of impact you want to leave. And then you sort of work backward from it. And when you find something that you want, then it’s really easy to see whether it’s something small, like, the business has discretionary income for this I can move it into my life that way or if it’s a big thing like buying a yacht traveling the world, you know exactly what needs to happen. Like you have to have certain types of systems and processes to be able to operate where you’re, hey, if I need to do it, a two-week sale, how does my business operate when I’m not available for two weeks? How many clients do I need to have to be able to pay all the bills? You could work backward from the things that you’ve done, or the things that you want to do anyways, I like that vision is the first step of your process because I don’t know how you would build a business otherwise, because like what are you building for?

 

Mark Dolfini  1:10:10  

Yeah, but you’ll be amazed at how many people get into business, focusing first on the tactics on the operation. And I’m not here to knock, there’s a lot of good gurus out there that teach some really, really good stuff. I’m not here to knock them on that, but they leave with tactics. The only problem with that, and this is I’m gonna quote San Soo here. San Soo said strategy before tactics is the noise before defeat. And I really believe there’s a ton of wisdom in that, that if you’re focused solely on tactics, I could teach you how to make $10,000 in the next 30 days, all you have to do is knock on 10,000 doors, you’re like, I’m not doing that. Like that tactic might work as a wholesaler, or selling books, door to door. But I mean, if you feel like you have to sell your soul to the devil to do it, is it worth it? And I’m not willing to do that, not give up all that time and give up all that shoe leather just to go knock on 10,000 doors. So when you’re led with tactics, that tactic might not fit your skillset, it might not fit your risk tolerance, it might not fit what you even want to do. But yet, well, I’m gonna make $10,000 in the next 30 days, because that’s what I’m going to be doing, it doesn’t matter that I’ll have to give up sleep and time away from my family or whatever else it is, you just have to determine if it’s the cost and I think it’s just a wrong approach. I think leading from the top-down, strategizing from the top down, and setting it up with a top-down is really the only way that makes sense. It’s only gonna make sense for me.

 

Richard Matthews  1:11:47  

Yeah, I completely agree. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:11:49  

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Richard Matthews  1:13:20  

Which I think is a great transition into my next question, which is about your driving force. So the flip side of your common enemy is your driving force. Just like Batman fights to save Gotham or Spider Man if I save New York or Google index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your business? What’s the mission so to speak?

 

Mark Dolfini  1:13:47  

Yeah, I think I mentioned it earlier, but I really do feel that what really gets me up and gets me going and gets me all fired up about these sorts of conversations is that the entrepreneur that’s addicted to the hustle and I think we all know what the hustle looks like. It’s get up at 4:30 am, take a shower, and take a selfie of me on my way to work. Make sure social media and everybody knows about it, in the office before six or whatever it is, and then you know doing this hustle lifestyle, which I did that I did all those things. And not only is the hustle destructive, but it’s addictive. And that lifestyle, that’s what landed me in the hospital at 37 years old. No doubt with pneumonia and if it wouldn’t have been pneumonia, it probably would have been a nervous breakdown. So I don’t think that people recognize how damaging that really is and how addictive it is. Because now you’re looking for the next adrenaline high of going from one pack day to another pack a day, and just doing it day in and day out over and over and over until what? To retire at 40, so you can have a triple bypass because you have no choice. That doesn’t make sense to me. So I think that’s why like I said earlier, to help marriages that need saving and help, so no more business baseball games and missed karate tests and all the things that happen through life, as you said, How in the world do I have a middle schooler? Well, it happens and before you know it, you’re gonna have some teenagers around your house. And then before you know it, they’re gonna be on their way to college, and like, how in the world did all this happen? But it happens day by day, and when you get too busy focusing on all the other things that are not really all that important. That’s exactly how it happens.

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:10  

Yeah, I’m here all the time. Like, I’m home all the time with my kids. And I only work four or five hours a day. And I still feel like it’s flying by super fast. And I look back when I was working 10, 15, 20 hours a day and wonder what the hell is he doing? Because I still feel like it’s flying by too fast. But yeah, you have to understand what’s important. I love that that’s what you’re working on doing. And I like the mentality that you’re like, Hey, I, I coached and I teach and I work in real estate. But really, it fits in anything, it fits in any business that you’re working on. So I’d skip a couple of my questions here and ask you about your guiding principles. So one of the few things that make Heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we get near the end of the interview here, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles you live by in your life, maybe something you wish you knew when you first started out as an entrepreneur out of college?

 

Mark Dolfini  1:17:33  

That’s a really good question. I feel like, if I was going to have a conversation with myself, at that point in time, I wish I would have learned to place a higher value on my free time. Because what I recognize is, and I sign off on my own show this way, where if you don’t place a value on your free time, someone else will. And I never recognized how little someone is going to acknowledge what your time is worth. They’re fine to put a value on their time, but they’re going to put a very low value on yours. So I wish that I had done that and been much more intentional. For me, that’s very much a guiding principle in terms of everything that I do. And if I’m spending too many hours doing things that are not in my highest and best use of my time, that is not really focusing on my core genius, then that I really need to start looking at whether I need to keep doing those activities or not, or either eliminating them, automating them, or delegating to someone else. And that’s been much more of my focus, lately, and also really is a continual and almost obsession with learning. And because growth is a big thing for me being and contribution is important to me, those are definitely my driving forces in terms of growth and contribution, they both kind of compete for one and two in order of syntax. But that has definitely been helpful for me and being humble enough to be willing to learn, and being able to show up the way that I need to show up for people when I’m sharing that information. Not that I’m the one with the answer, but showing them in a way that hey, you know what, I screwed this all up. Let me tell you, all I can tell you is the way I did it. And it’s amazing when you show up to people that way and go, hey, can I show you the way that I screwed it all up? And they’re like, Oh, absolutely,  and then but if you show up like hey, I’ve got the answer. They’re so shutting you down before you even have the opportunity. But when you show up like, hey, can I show you a way this made me look like an idiot? They’re like, oh, absolutely, and then all of a sudden it’s like, hey man, all I can do is just show you what’s worked for me and what’s not worked for me, and because I’ve got enough of that self-worthiness demon at bay where now I can say it and now I don’t care, I can’t say don’t care, I don’t care as much, or I’m not putting I’m not tying my worthiness to their potential what I think their thought of me might be. So are probably my guiding principles.

 

Richard Matthews  1:20:24  

I still struggle with the whole valuing my own time. And the problem I have is my superpower is in seeing the systems behind things, which allows me to collect skills really quickly. And then I find that I’ve collected skills and then start using them. And I end up doing work that I shouldn’t be hiring out to other people because it’s not the highest and best use of my time. Just because I can because I could pick it up and learn it really quickly doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be doing that. Because that’s not really I don’t know how to phrase it. It’s not CEO-level work if that makes sense.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:21:15  

Yeah, exactly. You’re costing yourself money in opportunity cost because you’re doing something that you can pay someone else less to do. So if you’re worth two or $300 an hour, and you’re doing $12 an hour work, you’re costing yourself $188 an hour or $288 an hour, and that’s really hard to get your head around, even though it’s like well, I’ll just go ahead and clean that apartment, I’ll go ahead and take this phone call, I’ll go ahead and insert myself. And no man, this is why you’re costing yourself money, and you’re costing yourself the time that you’re never gonna get back.

 

Richard Matthews  1:21:58  

And on the larger scale of your business, you are restricting its scale and its ability to impact because you’re becoming a bottleneck that you don’t need to be. And to this day, here I am doing something because I find the process fascinating of learning things and doing things that are learning those new skills. And I have almost become a skill order. And so one of my struggles is learning how to moderate my own desire to collect skills and learn things and do all that stuff. Because it’s fascinating, I like that it’s enjoyable. And knowing how to delegate. One of the ways that I work on that is I tried to move that into my personal life, where I’m working on things in my personal life that I find enjoyable. Like at the moment, I am rebuilding all of the cabinetry in my house, because I wanted to learn how to do woodworking. I can hire someone to do that. But it’s not my business time. It’s just stuff that I’m doing with myself, and teaching my son a little bit how to use the power tools and like learning all the processes and those kinds of things. I find it fascinating. It’s worth it to me to do that. But I have to not do that in my business if that makes sense.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:23:29  

I went and flipped our house with our sons, and it was really one of the things too, and it was also when my wife and I were reconciling, and that definitely helped a lot of things too. But when I told my son, my oldest son, we’re changing the battery on the lawn mower. And I said, go bring me a pair of vise grips and an adjustable wrench. And he came back with a hammer and a stapler. And I was like, I am so failing you as a dad right now. Like, he had no clue what these tools were. And I was like, oh my gosh. So we went and started working on the house a little bit and started showing him what tools were and it was good for all of us. And we had a good time. We didn’t make a whole lot of money on the house, which was fine. It wasn’t the point of it. The point of it was to have that time together and it was good. I’m very, very grateful for that time that we spent.

 

Richard Matthews  1:24:29  

Just the other day I had my son take off the old cabinets and I was like I’m going to show you how to use the drill son. Watching him unscrew a cabinet was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever had him do. Because as an adult unscrewing a cabinet is not that complicated with a drill. But it was really funny because I didn’t do anything for him I just explained to him I was like, here’s the drill. Here’s how you change the bit. And I just didn’t show him I just told him how to do it because he’s an auditory learner. And it was really funny. So anyway, it’s fun to do things with your kids. But anyway, that’s how I work on moderating that principle in my life where I’m like, I like to do things and collect new skills and whatnot. But I still struggle with it. So I have to be more militant about things like, we do a lot of web development, I find new stuff. I’m like, I want to test this and play with it. I’ll spend six hours playing with something and I’m like, I should just hire a developer to do that. Because there are many of them, they charge a lot less money than I do. So I totally get that. 

 

Mark Dolfini  1:25:33  

Yeah, exactly. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:25:34  

So anyway, I think that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish all of our interviews with a simple challenge I call it the hero’s challenge and it’s basically a way to find access to stories that I might not get on my own because not everyone is out looking to get on interviews like you and I might be doing so the question is do you have someone in your life or in your network who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine and why do you think they should come to share their story with us here on the Hero Show? The first person that comes to mind for you.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:26:06  

Oh, man, I do and I’m not sure if she would come on the show but it’s somebody who adopted me as her mentor. And it was really interesting because she’ll tell everybody that he’s my mentor and we’ve never exchanged money on this but she just assumed that I was her mentor and all these different things. It’s interesting because she’s got such a deep and strong faith. But one of the things that I love about her is she has such a deep and strong faith and that’s the first thing that’s always about where she’s about in her mind. She’s edited all my books. The first one she did as a proofreader and then the second and third book she was the full editor and she’s got a really really good ability to help construct sentences and using passive voice versus not passive voice I’m still not sure that I understand that but she was teaching me a lot of that stuff but it was really interesting because she would be the kind of person that you would definitely want on payroll, but I think at this point, she’s just unemployable because she does a lot of ghostwriting for people she does a lot of that stuff, but I really am just amazed at the type of person that she’s developed, she always sends me lots of referrals and things like that and I’m very humbled. Her name is Robin and I’m just very humbled by her, she’s an amazing human being. She’s the first person that came to mind because I  owe her a phone call and I’ve been thinking about her for the last couple of weeks and maybe this is the time where I just need to stop and pick up the phone and say hey, I’ve been thinking of you friend, how are you? One thing that I just love about her so much is that she’s just unapologetic in her face, that’s what she is and that’s who she is. But she’s also very quick to embrace her gifts that she’s been given. And I really appreciate that and she’s been a big driving force in my life.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:29  

We’ll reach out to you and see if we can get an introduction to Robin. We get her to come on the show. She may not say yes, but if she does we’ll get some more cool stories that way, so we appreciate that.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:28:40  

Yup, I’m happy to.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:44  

In comic books at the end there’s always the crowd of people who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism. So our analogous to that on this show is I want to know where can people find you? Where can they light up the bat signal and say hey, you know what Mark I really love to get your help in my life or my business and I think more important than where is who are the right types of people to reach out and actually light up the bat signal and say I need your help.

 

Mark Dolfini  1:29:09  

Yeah, that’s a great question. Thanks for asking that. I really like working with entrepreneurs of all kinds especially small business owners, people who have lost all control of their calendar, they can reach out to me in a number of different ways I’m on social media Mark Dolfini, you can reach out to me, send me a message send me a friend request to LandlordCoach.com you can even drop me an email at mark@landlordcoach.com any number of ways. And I’ll give you a free coaching session. It’s not a sales pitch, or anything along those lines. I’m happy to have conversations with people to help you with your vision. Let me know a little bit what I’m about and I don’t want to charge for that general plan anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes and I’m happy to help anybody any way that I can.

 

Richard Matthews  1:29:56  

Awesome, so thank you so much for coming on the show today Mark. It’s been fascinating getting to talk to you and hear your story and hear what it is that you do I really appreciate your time and I appreciate the work that you do for the people because it’s one of those things that’s it’s a ripple effect, you impact people who impact people so again I appreciate that and I know we need more heroes like you out there doing the work that you do so again thank you and then you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Mark Dolfini  1:30:31  

No but thank you so much Richard for the platform. I really do appreciate it. Maybe we’ll bump into kayaks sometime, maybe we’ll have to figure out a spot where we can meet in Indiana with our kayak. I would just probably finish it up with if you don’t place a value on your free time, someone else will, but most importantly, make sure you’re placing a value on your free time. That’s basically it.

 

Richard Matthews  1:31:01  

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today, Mark.