Episode 087 – Mark Kumar

Richard Matthews 4:49
Hello, and welcome to The Heroes Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And I am live on the line today with Mark Kumar. Mark, are you there?

Mark Kumar 5:03
I’m right here.

Richard Matthews 5:05
Awesome. So glad to have you here, Mark. Even despite all of the wonderful COVID-19 crisis we have going on in our world, we can still get on and do these cool interviews and hopefully inspire people a little bit. Before we get into the actual interview, I’m gonna introduce you for guests who are our listeners who may not know who you are. Mark is a lifestyle entrepreneur, and he is the host of the Mark Kumar Podcast, which you can find by just Googling his name Mark Kumar, and you should be able to find that podcast. I was recently a guest on your show. So thank you for having me on there and coming back onto my show. To start with, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you’re known for? What’s your business like? What is it that you offer to this world?

Mark Kumar 5:42
My business is basically I help entrepreneurs who are looking to create online businesses I help them create digital assets, digital assets being whether it be a digital product, a membership site or video course things of that nature so that way they can utilize their time. spend with your family, their loved ones and have freedom to choose whatever they want to do. That’s what I try to help out. entrepreneurs.

Richard Matthews 6:06
Awesome. How long have you been doing that? how long you’ve been in that business?

Mark Kumar 6:09
My God, almost a decade or more. Feels like forever.

Richard Matthews 6:14
Nice. As long as I’ve been doing doing that kind of work. So, it’s a it’s been a fun 10 years, hasn’t it?

Mark Kumar 6:19
It definitely has. I learned a whole lot of things. I’ve met a lot of nice, amazing people, including yourself, obviously, and it’s been interesting, a learning journey. And I’m looking forward to what I can do in next five years.

Richard Matthews 6:34
Awesome. So my next question for you has to do with your origin story, right? We talk on this show all the time. Every hero has their origin story. It’s where you started to realize that maybe you were different that maybe you had superpowers and maybe you could use them to help other people. How did you get started on this journey of entrepreneurship?

Mark Kumar 6:51
Its actually, its a really interesting and a funny and a coincidental, if you want to call it that. I started when I – my first business when I was doing the photography where I just got my camera as a Christmas present. And then I started taking pictures. And then one thing led to another, I started doing this side business, in addition to my job. I was doing portraits for my family members at one time, my family members said, “I’ll pay you if you take pictures of my family, I was like, you gonna pay me for something that I do for fun? “Sure, no problem.” And then, I started doing that. I was like, Wow, that was a wow moment, for me. It’s like, “My God, someone is gonna actually pay me to do something, I will actually do it for free.” And then one thing led to another, I did the family member pictures, and then they turn around to somebody else. And then they have my little portrait business and then went on to doing the weddings. And that’s not where the whole thing started. For me. What it started was like, I was only doing that for like three months from getting a camera, doing a wedding and portraits within three months. But the next phase we’re like other photographers who were like, “Hey, I like the way you shoot. I like the way you had to communicate with people. I like the way you how you can help other people or stranger pose in a way that they feel very comfortable. I want to learn how to do that.” I was like, “Wait a second, I’m onto something. So, I’m doing something I love. And then other people are appreciating, and they want to learn how to do that. So what I did was I got on a webinar that was like my go to webinar, where I was literally sitting on my home and in boxers, or my shorts and T shirt on it. And that’s when I realized, “Oh, my God, this is something powerful.” And at that moment, I’m like, I need to learn how to do this thing. And when I first did my webinar, I had no idea what I was doing. Literally, I had no idea at one point in doing the webinar. My mic went out, like 10 minutes and no one could hear me and someone chatted like, “Hey, we can’t hear you.” And I was going on with my whole spiel presentation. I was like, Wow. And then despite all that everybody was helped, like, really surprised, and then they actually find the information relevant on that and that’s what I like. I got to learn how to do this webinar thing and did that for a while and then automated the whole thing where I recorded it, and then shot email out to people with my email list and so on so forth. So that was like the quarter kind of like. That was interesting. And now here I am talking to you.

Richard Matthews 9:15
Nice. So you actually started with a sort of a passion business and turn that into an online course sales business.

Mark Kumar 9:22
Yep. Absolutely.

Richard Matthews 9:24
It’s awesome. I actually, I paid my way through college with a camera, very much like the one I’m using here for this interview. I’m doing portraits and weddings and stuff. I discovered however, I didn’t like it as a business. So I didn’t continue. I like it much better as a hobby.

Mark Kumar 9:40
Okay. It’s like one of those things if you’re a people person, when I used to do wedding or portrait or whatever, everybody or at least my family members, not anybody who I – was my client. They were like, “Oh my god, you’re like this guy like a little kid in a candy store.” You have a camera. You do all these weird things to make other people more comfortable. And then you get them this, I guess I just have the personality where like, I can just get you to do whatever I want. And then people love the pictures and the outcome out of it. So I was like, “Wow, that’s crazy.”

Richard Matthews 10:12
I had the talent for the pictures and I could do the whole talking to people thing, but I just didn’t like the whole aspect of like, your creative work is like someone else’s. I don’t know what to call it. It’s like the rest of their life is going to be captured by that moment. And so they’re very picky about certain things. And I didn’t like it. I was like, it’s not as fun if it’s a business and not just a creative outlet for me, so I didn’t continue.

Mark Kumar 10:42
I mean, especially in the wedding photography, or any photography business it is all emotional based. If you take too long to deliver their pictures, then that’s where the technicality comes in. And then your good picture comes, will look like a bad picture as compared to let’s just say Jeremy, first you take the pictures, right? And then within the first two weeks, you can give them pictures and the average picture, they would love it, because still in that mortal state. So it’s like a little psychology behind it, but it’s pretty cool.

Richard Matthews 11:13
And that’s a back in the day when I was doing it was like pre-internet and social media. So nowadays, I imagine photographers like you have to have your pictures up that evening on the Instagram page for the bride and whatnot. I was like, “Man, it’s gotta be a tough business nowadays.”

Mark Kumar 11:30
Absolutely. Just like anything else. – clients,

Richard Matthews 11:36
I remember, my favorite thing I did. I did some math. You know, the little memory cards, you stick in your camera. The first memory card I bought was one half of a gigabyte. So it’s 512 megabytes, and it cost me $110 for that. And the last memory card I bought was 64 gigabytes and it’s like this big. It’s like a little miniature thing. So it’s like 100 times smaller than the one that I bought when I was in college. And it cost me like $23 and I did the math and I think something like 8000 times cheaper per gigabyte than what I paid for per gigabyte in college.

Mark Kumar 12:16
If you compare that with this memory card with the film 36 pictures, in a weird time, and you get the half a gig of memory card, which is obviously as time goes on, you want to be having more options, so on and so forth.

Richard Matthews 12:28
It’s crazy what technology has done for that. So my next question for you has to do with your own superpower, right? This is what you do or build our office world that helps solve problems for people, the things you use to help slay this world’s villains. And what I’ve been framing this for my guests lately has been if you look at all the skills you have in your business, you’d probably have one skill if you really looked at them that energizes the rest. The thing that makes the other skills possible, and your zone of genius, so to speak. Do you know what that is for you?

Mark Kumar 12:59
Absolutely, I think that’s something that every superhero should have is the ability to transform somebody’s state of mind. That’s all it is. Ability to transform somebody’s state of mind. So let’s say you are a prime example I can give you is like the fitness industry, right? So if you are in a position where you feel like you are not getting result, and then you go in there and you tell them like, “Hey, if you do X, Y, and Z, then you won’t be able to get that very first time.” Somebody hears that advice. They’re not gonna listen to you, because first of all, they don’t know you. They don’t know what you can do, even though you might be the expert. But if you start to ask them a certain question, “Why do they feel like they cannot do it?” So it’s like playing little therapist, like, “Hey, why you feel like you can’t do it?” And then sooner or later, they’re gonna tell you “Why I can’t do it.” And the reason they’re gonna give you it’s gonna be completely BS. It’s just their own way of getting in the ways like, “Hey, I can’t do it because of X, Y and Z. And then, you when you ask like, “Why can’t you do X, Y, Z?” Because blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So the way that I communicate with other people like that, ask them a very action-oriented questions. Like, going back to the thing. “I can’t lose weight, because -” “What’s the reason?” And then, I go further. So one of the reasons will be “Cause’ I don’t have time.” Or, “My schedule is too busy,” things like that. Okay. “How much time do you actually need to work out?” “30 minutes.” You don’t have 30 minutes in 24 hours? How much time do you actually spend on Facebook scrolling? or watching YouTube video.” A typical answer, two to three hours. So you can’t find 30 minutes out of the 24 hour period, and then pork on yourself. That’s number one, right? And then you label it with like, what benefit you want to get out of it? So typically, if the person is single, “If you want to get a nice gorgeous, beautiful girl who wants to be with you?” Don’t you think that someone will be able to get that if you are more shaped, not only just because you look great, because you will be able to do things when you go out on a date. So you attach emotion to it. So that’s another benefit. So that’s state of mind happens within them believe it or not one second, literally in one second. And once that state of mind happens, results comes in. So that’s the …

Richard Matthews 15:29
So that’s the the superpower is learning how to – I like to call it, learning how to ask better questions, right. So when you ask better questions, people get better answers.

Mark Kumar 15:38
Yep.

Richard Matthews 15:38
So your superpower is knowing how to ask those better questions, people so you can change their state of mind.

Mark Kumar 15:45
Absolutely. Yes.

Richard Matthews 15:48
Awesome. So the flip side of a superpower then, of course, is the fatal flaw, right? Just like Superman had his kryptonite or Batman. It’s not really a superhero. He’s just really dedicated at Ninja. What would you say your fatal flaw? If you’ve struggled with in your business that’s kept you from growing and more importantly, how have you dealt with that in your own business in your own life so someone else who might be struggling with the same fatal flaw might learn from you.

Mark Kumar 16:12
One of them that are still to this day, sometimes they’ll struggle to his ability to say “No.” It’s like, when I when I started project, I normally now I don’t start a project until I know I can hundred percent commit to it. Like in the past, I will start 20 different projects at the same time. And then I will spend literally a lot of time on every single one of them because I wanted to succeed. But nowadays, I have to like okay, start a project, knowing the fact if it’s going to transform other people’s life in a great massive scale. Otherwise, there’s no point for me, and then sometimes – how to say how hardcore entrepreneurs like yourself like me and other people out there, we don’t want to say “No,” because we don’t like that word. But at the same time, we have to transition into like, “Hey, I can say no,.” Not not say no, but I can say “Not right now. I may come back to a later on, but not right now.” That has been a struggle for me. Like I can’t say no, but I’ll say okay, I’m not saying no, but I’ll come back later on two, three months from now, if I still feel strong enough that that thing is gonna help a lot of people in the long run.

Richard Matthews 17:27
I’ve actually heard a number of times that the most successful entrepreneurs are the most skilled at saying no, and it’s a hard thing to get good at because especially as you’re growing your business, you make money when you say yes, you don’t make money when you say no. And we need to put food on the table. So it’s like you have to say yes, a lot in the beginning and then as you grow and get better and really hone in on your skills and what you’re doing for people, it gets easier to say no in your business and realize, “Hey, this is the best fit for me,” or “This isn’t a good fit for me,” that kind of thing.

Mark Kumar 18:02
Can I just say, as somebody also wants on to this, like, when you are saying when to say no, because you know, when somebody who’s starting out, people will listen to it, “Hey, I need to put food on the table.” So therefore, I need to say yes to everything that comes your way. But the thing that I would caution you with, think about the amount of time that you’re going to spend, the thing that you’re saying yes to. If it’s going to take, let’s say, if you are a married man or a couple, your couple who has, let’s just go with couples now, how much time are you going to be able to spend within a 24 hour period on this one thing working on it, and then not spend enough time with their significant other. So try to balance that, that’s the key thing. But if you can say no to this one day, and it gives me an extra two hour with your significant other, that will also add a lot value to a personal life. And at the end of the day, you’re going to be a lot more happier at compared if you made extra $200?

Richard Matthews 19:03
My solution to that in my business has been to hire people. And then I can say yes to more things and it doesn’t take more of my time. So that’s been the biggest one in my business over the last year or so is learning how to have people to delegate to and then learning how to delegate. So you can say yes, more often and not have it impact your life balance kind of thing.

Mark Kumar 19:26
I mean, if you have the ability like yourself, to hire other people, that’s great, you could say yes to everything that comes your way because you’re gonna delegate. You’re at a manager level, like, you could do this, you can do that. And also, somebody starting out may not be in the same position, but one day hope to get to your position.

Richard Matthews 19:43
It’s still interesting too, because you have to know what to say yes, to, what to say no to. But now instead of looking at your own capabilities, you’re looking at your team’s capabilities and your team’s time and like the other projects that everyone has on their plates, but like it’s just the same problem compounded but you still have to know how to say no.

Mark Kumar 20:03
Just different level of noise. Yes.

Richard Matthews 20:05
Absolutely. So I want to transition and talk a little about your common enemy, right. And your common enemy is in the frame of your clients when you bring a client on to do the work that you do for them. Imagine like this, your common enemy is the thing that like you run into this with every client, and you sometimes wish you had a magic wand. You could just wave it and make this like mindset or problem go away, that you could get them better, cheaper, faster results every time if you didn’t run into this roadblock, right? Run into this common enemy. What is that common enemy in your business?

Mark Kumar 20:36
One of the common enemies is like when someone comes to me, first what I do is I put them into process like, “Hey, make sure we -You and I are the right fit.” Meaning I can help you get where you want. Right? That’s number one. If I can’t, then there is no point for me to spend time with you or you spend time with me. Once we figure out okay, we’re at the right place. And then the next thing what I do Is that “Hey, what result are you looking to get?” That’s the most critical thing. Forget the money part. If you’re like coming to me and like, “Hey, money’s more important, then I’m not your guy. I’m not the most, cheapest guy, I probably the most expensive guy out there. But the thing that you want to have when you come talk to me, it’s like, Hey, can you get me result? Number one, number two, can you get me a result faster? If you’re not one of those two type we are not going to get along. If you’re thinking like, “Hey, I want to get the cheapest thing. And I want to do X, Y, and Z. And then I’m gonna keep giving you more headache. And I will get all of this thing and then the very, very low price. I am not that guy for you. Right? So I want to work with somebody who is result-oriented like “Why – don’t care about the money. I’ll figure out how to get it if I don’t have it, but I want this X, Y and Z with salt. That’s the most thing and I think that is everyone should focus on result oriented clients, because those are the ones who are serious because if you go to a cheaper route, they say, “I’m gonna pay you, $200 for this one project.” And then like, “I’m gonna go and go look for somewhere else.” These are clients what I call as a coupon clients, no matter how low you go, if they don’t like a quote, find somebody else. If you tell them like, “Hey, I’ll do is for dollar.” Like, “No, I’m gonna go somebody who could do 50 cents.” Like, when I get to that point, that’s all I got.

Richard Matthews 22:26
So the the common enemy is people who are not result-oriented, and learning how to find clients or filter clients that are results oriented in your business.

Mark Kumar 22:36
Yep.

Richard Matthews 22:36
So what’s your process nowadays for filtering clients and finding out whether or not they’re going to be a result-oriented client or someone who’s always looking for a coupon or a deal as you put it?

Mark Kumar 22:46
The way that I do is like when they come into my legislative sales funnel, if you will, they opt into email. Let’s see, let’s look at an email funnel from that point where they come into my funnel, I send them two three emails. And then, the first email will be just the information email, “Hey, I am this blah, blah, blah. Second, will be here, go watch this thing. If they watched it and have taken some kind of action, third email will be like, “Hey, what can I do to help you reply back to this email.” So that’s how I’m driving to take action and get resolved. And when they send me an email, they want to state their problem, and then I’ll answer back to them, “Hey, do X, Y, and Z, then you want to get this result.” And then when you don’t want that, then email me back. And if they do that, and they get the result, then I know there are result-oriented person as compared to you get in the first email, I tell you a little bit about me. Secondly, we’ll watch this video but you’ve never watched it, then this person is not for me, or I’m not the right fit for that person.

Richard Matthews 23:44
I really like that sort of flow of actually asking your customers to go do things or your potential customers to go do things and sort of prove themselves worthy of your time and effort.

Mark Kumar 23:56
Right, exactly. So that way, I’m the right fit for you, right fit for me and and then we can move forward otherwise, that’s great.

Richard Matthews 24:04
So the flip side of the common enemy then, is if you know common enemy, something you fight against your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fights fight to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your business?

Mark Kumar 24:21
I fight for freedom to have the ability or have the time to spend where I want to spend, not because I want to go look for clients, I want to set up automation systems where this one a thing is going to get me this B is going to get me that. C it’s going to get me that and with all those system I will have the time to go on a vacation, spend time with my family, go talk to somebody else or watch a movie. So – is the most thing that I fight for.

Richard Matthews 24:52
I feel you there because my business name that I use for the back end of all of our business stuff is Five Freedoms. And I talked about that pretty regularly that the Five Freedoms that make up a free life are everyone knows that; political freedom, and spiritual freedom, and financial freedom but the ones most people miss time freedom. The ability to choose what to do with your time and location freedom, the ability to choose where you want to spend that time. And most people miss those two and they think that all they need is financial freedom but you can build a huge business that does a lot of things that takes all of your time and locks you down into one spot and you’re not free.

Mark Kumar 25:34
So absolutely. You know, at the end of the day, if you think about it, or ask anybody doesn’t matter who that person is, could be the poorest person or the richest person. The one thing in common which we’ll call is the common currency which is the most valuable currency throughout the world no matter where you are, is time. Once you spend it, you will never get back.

Richard Matthews 25:56
Absolutely, so you work on building your business in such a way that you can have the time freedom Do you do the same thing for your clients where your goal is to focus on getting them their time back?

Absolutely. And that’s why I only focus on the digital world rather than a physical world because in the physical world, your tied up with the inventory, customers, and then returns and all that stuff with the digital world, you set it up once, even if it takes you six months, at most. Once you set it up, and it’s done. And then obviously, once here and there, you need to make a tweak, but that’s like a day or two worth of work, but the rest of the next six months you’re good to go. That’s awesome.

That’s one of my favorite things about the digital work that we do for people is that you put the effort in at the beginning. Sometimes you spend a lot of effort at the beginning, but it pays dividends for a long time. So awesome. So my next question for you is more on the practical line, right? So we call this the hero’s tool belt, right? So maybe you have a big magical hammer, like Thor. Or, bulletproof vest like your neighborhood police officer or nowadays, maybe It’s an N-95 mask to keep you from getting the COVID-19. Or maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts. What are some of the tools that you use in your business that you couldn’t live without, that really make it possible to do what you do?

Mark Kumar 27:16
Let’s see, the top one will be definitely the Google Suite. Their Google Doc, Excel, I mean the Google Sheets and all the stuff that will be top-level do number one. I cannot live without it and their email system is awesome. And number two will be my email marketing software that I customize. It is proprietary to what I needed to do. And I built it and I use it and it works flawlessly. And also my online store, which is the process email almost all customers. Those two things I built it customizable to my liking because the way I want it, and if I don’t have those, I’ll be in a really, really, really bad position.

Richard Matthews 28:04
It’s amazing too, because like some of the online stores and being able to roll your own email stuff nowadays, because of open source software and things like that. You have an amazing starting point where you don’t have to become a full-fledged developer to build some of those things. Maybe you found that to be the case?

Mark Kumar 28:21
Well, I don’t want to say that. I will be in that category because I, myself am a developer, web developer, because you are a full-fledged developer. I was at one point in time and now only create businesses or software just for certain individuals, including myself, and then people who I know. I only created for them, but otherwise, I might not like my own email marketing software, I built it myself, and then the back end side and also and my own online store where I’m able to sell digital product courses, online courses. And then also, there are other things on membership sites. I built them myself. So the reason why I did it was – go ahead.

Richard Matthews 28:59
So my next question for you then if you’re actually building, developing these things from the ground up, are you using like Amazon’s, what do you call them the I’m going to forget the name of it but like their hosting service where you can actually host your stuff and scale them as you know as much as you need to.

Mark Kumar 29:19
Actually that’s one of the platforms but the other thing that no one tells you about it, which is a secret here is as far as your video goes. Their Amazon is great, they’re the best thing out there. However, if you want to keep your costs down, you can use YouTube to host your video but not in a way where you embed it, and when it goes to your platform, it will be looking like, “Hey, it’s coming from YouTube.” It will look like just like a regular video, it will have no logo, no marketing thing backing, going back to YouTube. So that’s a secret.

Richard Matthews 29:54
That’s cool to utilize.

So build your own YouTube player, essentially.

Mark Kumar 30:00
Well, the hosting is done by YouTube. So all the files there, like the actual use, like, for example, any YouTube video that is out there, I can grab the URL and embed it into my system where it will only get the actual back end side of the YouTube URL. And you’ll have no display, no ads. No nothing related back to YouTube. Little marketing bit developers secret. So that also keeps your cost down and then no pop-up.

Richard Matthews 30:27
Absolutely. Anytime you can improve the margins, right? So you’re not spending the bandwidth dollars you spend when you host things on Amazon s3 or something.

Mark Kumar 30:35
Yes.

Richard Matthews 30:38
So my next question for you is about your own personal heroes, right? So just like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi-Wan or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, who were some of your heroes, were they real-life mentors, speakers, authors, peers who were a couple of years ahead of you and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your business? Oh my god, the top

Mark Kumar 30:56
The guy I could think of is somebody I think he’s an international guy. His name is Tony Robbins. He is the top person in MLS who’s like who taught me about self-development, always learning new things every single day. Up until now, I learned everything every day I learned something new. There hasn’t been done in a day. Like I haven’t learned since I got into this whole self-development thing. As far as Tony Robbins goes, and a next thing as Brian Tracy for a sales trainer, Brian Tracy is amazing sales trainers. Great. And then we got Jordan Belfort in terms of communication goals. He’s had the movie, The

Richard Matthews 31:40
Wolf of Wall Street, right?

Mark Kumar 31:41
That’s right. That’s the one. And his tonality course is amazing. Once you learn that, and you once you go through a training course and you learn it, you’d be surprised how effectively you can communicate with somebody in a way that they pay attention to you 100% of the time I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that. When you are talking to clients, we’re like, sometimes when you talk to clients, you’re saying one thing and they’re in their own world, blah, blah, blah, what’s going on? Let me see if I get home and cook my dinner, and have to take care of my wife. And that’s the conversation that’s happening in their head. But his course teaches you how you can stop that conversation so they can listen to what you are saying, and hold on to every single word you’re saying.

Richard Matthews 32:26
That’s really good. It’s an important skill to learn how to do to get right. How you can engage someone else’s act of listening, right? They say, what is it the average person spends? Listen listens for approximately 17 seconds before they start their own conversation in their head and start preparing their responses. So if you can figure out how to overcome that and then and learn how to communicate, you know, get them to listen the whole time and be really good.

Mark Kumar 32:51
Then there’s a whole bunch of thing you got the tonality level, which is like the way you speak, and then you obviously got the physical body languages and then 85% of the time people listen to your body language than they do with your tonality. And then you know, finale and the words of the very last, they don’t care. You could say, My name is blah. It’s the same word. But if you say, My name is Mark Kumar, it’s like – thing. And if you stay with a gesture, people actually listen to it more.

Richard Matthews 33:16
Yeah, absolutely. And then did they get into things like learning how to do mirroring and matching and that kind of stuff when you’re in physical conversations.

Mark Kumar 33:24
Absolutely it’s like, for example, I’ll give you an example. If the first time I saw you, in the way you sitting. And I saw you the very first time I come next to you or sit across from you, the same way you’re sitting by psychologically you want to build more trust in me just because I’m just like you, as compared to if your hands like this folding up, and I have my hands on my cheek, you’re gonna like this guy’s different. You know, it’s just like that small, small, small, small transitions, builds the trust.

Richard Matthews 33:55
That’s one of my favorite things with those techniques is when you learn how to do them. Really, really well and seamlessly, you can take someone from defensive positions, and you can actually get to move them into more open receptive positions over the course of a conversation which is it’s like dangerous almost.

Mark Kumar 34:14
That’s what I was going to – It’s almost dangerous and it does warn you like, the techniques I’m gonna teach you, you have to swear by that you’re not going to use it for evil cause could easily do it. I mean, you could easily implement literally anybody to do –

Richard Matthews 34:28
And if you’re familiar with this story, he absolutely did.

Mark Kumar 34:32
Literally.

Richard Matthews 34:34
That was what the whole Wolf of Wallstreet was about. So my next question for you here, I sort of want to bring home for our listeners and talk about your guiding principles. Top one or two actions or principles that you put into, action every day that you use that you think contribute to your success and your influence, maybe something you wish you know when you first started out?

Mark Kumar 35:03
Wow, that’s a really good question. And I do mean, they’re like, Wow, that’s a really good question. So one of the things I can think of is if I were to start over again, I would say, talk to as many people as you can on a regular basis. So that way, once you start to talk to them. When I say talk to them, just don’t talk to them actually listen to what they’re saying. Because when you start listening, they want to start to tell you the problems and the issues they’re having. And that’s going to be your golden opportunity to say, “Hey, maybe I should go focus on that.” Because if you talk to 10 people. Of the 10 people, five of them are gonna have the same issue, regardless of where you are.

Richard Matthews 35:48
And you can potentially help them with that. One of the things that I really, really loved, I hired a sales trainer a number of years ago. It cost me like $12,000 over the course of a year to work with this guy for a year. And one of the exercises he put me through was he gave me a list of strangers, their phone numbers and whatnot. And he was like, I want you to call every single one of these people. And he gave me a phone script. That was was essentially like, “Hey, my name is so and so. I have your name here on the list in front of me, can you tell me why I’m calling?” Because the goal of the conversation was just to learn how to find people’s problems, like to actually listen to them and see what they’re looking for, and learn how to basically turn any conversation into helping find someone’s actual issues or whatnot. And it was really interesting because I ended up calling like, 200 people over the course of a week. And it was just an exercise in learning how to do active listening and being able to pull out common problems and things like that. And it’s funny because like it actually turned into a business which is funny because they’re like, they were just a random list of people.

Mark Kumar 36:53
That’s why like, telemarketing is like a huge business. People call you randomly. We all get these calls once in a while, like, wow, oh my god, don’t these people have anything better to do? They’re making money that’s why they’re calling. You may hang up. There might be 200 other people will pick up like, “Oh, yeah, I have that problem.”

Richard Matthews 37:11
Absolutely. So your recommendation is for people to just learn to talk to more people and then listen to what they’re actually saying.

Mark Kumar 37:25
Just keep your mouth shut. That’s the best way I can put it, just give you my seal. I don’t want to share but keeping my seal and just listen to what they’re saying in three different ways. Watch what they’re saying, how they are communicating with you. Because if somebody is like this, and they’re saying it, then they’re not really opening up to you. Right? Number two, the way they’re saying it, they might be saying, hey, when like, for example, if you ask me how you do, I’m like, my days okay. Fine, then at that point, you have the opportunity to cheer that person up. And that’s all you need. Once you cheer that person up, then they’re going to open up and then you get to ask them. And three is like the words, the words, the last thing, but listen to what they’re saying in terms of physical payments and their tonality.

Richard Matthews 38:20
I had one of my mentors growing up, always used to say, “Your goal should always be to leave the person or the place, wherever you’re at, leave it better than you found it.” And if you are listening, you have the opportunity to leave that person better than you found them.

Mark Kumar 38:38
And another thing I want to add on to that, sorry, like for us when you are listening, just turn off the conversation that’s happening in your mind. Because if you’re in a sales presentation, like how do I get this guy to buy my stuff? How do I get this car to cost or blah, blah, blah, blah, if all those things there, an average smart person is gonna pick that up in a second and then there goes the person. So, just turned to the conversation –

Richard Matthews 39:03
I tell people all the time you have to genuinely care. You can’t fake it. You have to actually care about improving that person’s life and getting them results and doing those things. Because if you don’t, people will pick up on it. They’ll pick up on all those. What is it? 80% of that communication, that is less than what you said?

Mark Kumar 39:21
Absolutely. And I especially in the information age that we live in, people are a lot smarter compared to people who live in the 1800s. We are a lot smarter and they’ll pick up in half a second depending on which state you live in our country, especially in New York half a second we’ll get you out.

Richard Matthews 39:40
And it’s even worse now with texting like you can tell when someone texts weird you’re like, “Oh, something off about that text.”

Mark Kumar 39:47
Exactly.

Richard Matthews 39:48
So it’s pretty amazing. That basically wraps up the interview, but I do have one more thing we do at the end of all of our episodes, something I call the Hero’s Challenge. Hero’s Challenge is pretty simple. And it’s basically this, do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come and share their story with our audience?

Mark Kumar 40:16
Who could that be? I could think of Jim. He’s pretty cool. He has his own podcast, he interviews podcasters. He’s the only one I could think of at the moment. He could be ideal for someone who could come on the show.

Richard Matthews 40:38
So why do you think his story would be good to come and share?

Mark Kumar 40:44
Because he’s a go-getter and he’s the person I know – he will go out of his way until he gets what he wants. He works every single day, in terms of getting his podcast and getting his other business going on. And making money, obviously. In short, he’s the only one I could think of who would be a good fit for you.

Richard Matthews 41:15
Awesome. We’ll reach out later and get his contact information. Thank you so much for getting on the show Mark. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you if people are interested in your services? And second to that, probably more importantly, who are the right type of people to reach out?

Mark Kumar 41:31
People could find me, just go to my website https://markkumar.com/, I’ll spell it out for you guys, it’s M-A-R-K-K-U-M-A-R dot com. And also, thank you for listening to the show I have a special gift for you which you can get at https://markkumar.com/gift. Go there, get that, I can guarantee you it’s going to definitely help your business out. And what was the other question?

Richard Matthews 41:58
Who are the right types of people to reach out for your services?

Mark Kumar 42:00
The people who are actually serious about getting result. They are getting tired of working with these other people and didn’t get the result. If you know what you want, I’m the guy who’s going to get you there. Not just get you there, but could get you there faster. If you are in the world of creating a digital online business. I’m the one who’s going to get you there a lot faster. If you’re interested in creating your own product, I could tell you exactly what you need to do to create your own product for your ideal clients a lot faster. For your ideal product, or do your online course or be a membership site those things I know very well ‘cause I have done this for my business and other clients who I have worked with. If those are the things you’re looking for, I’m the guy, I’m going to get you there.

Richard Matthews 42:51
Awesome. Again, thank you so much for coming on the show. If you’re listening now, make sure you check out Mark Kumar https://markkumar.com/ or https://markkumar.com/gift to pick up the gift for any of our listeners there. And if you’re looking to create a digital product reach out to him. Again, Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. You got any final words of wisdom before we hit the stop record button?

Mark Kumar 43:11
First of all, thank you so much, Richard, for having me on your show. I truly appreciate it. And I hope we add a lot of value to people who are listening to the show. The only last words I could think of, Hey guys if you truly know what you want, you can definitely get there because the way I look at it, you can get there by keep on trying, and then one day you will succeed. Sooner or later.

Richard Matthews 43:37
Thank you much, Mark. I appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai