Jeremy Weisz
And your son has been on business trips with you. So he’s definitely around you.
Mark Timm
So So he says, He knows the drill. And he’s like, I’ll talk for everybody. My daughter’s like, Okay, fine. We don’t say anything, we’ll go up on stage. So like, this literally happens in the span of minutes. I can’t prep them anything. And they call him up on stage. And it’s the three of them and I’m standing there just completely exposed. And the guy says, I just have one question for you. What was it like to grow up the child of an entrepreneur?
Jeremy Weisz
Well, what did you, what did you think they were gonna say, at that point?
Mark Timm
I didn’t have any clue because my daughter said they didn’t want to talk at all. And you know, and I had no time to prep them. I knew what I wanted them to say. But I had no control. It was like one of those moments where I just had no control over the situation. I had no idea what they’re gonna say. So my son gives the kind of correct answer and you know, and it just kind of what what you would expect him maybe to say cuz he traveled with me a lot. So then he finishes and they pass the mic, and I’m like, Oh, no, they’re not going to talk. And my my middle daughter, so she grabs the mic and she passes it down to my youngest daughter. She’s like, okay, I just passed this sucker down. I’m done. And so my youngest daughter sits there. And it’s like this painful silence, just nothing. And all of a sudden, she starts speaking and her voice is shaking. She’s like, shaking because she’s so afraid if she there’s 400 people here by the way, let’s put context. It’s not like there’s four people, there’s 400 people. And she said, I hated my dad being an entrepreneur. I hated that he missed everything, that he wasn’t there. I hated that he traveled all the time. I didn’t, I didn’t care what he did, because I didn’t like whatever it was he was doing. And, you know, I was mad at at him being an entrepreneur. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, how is this gonna end. And then she said, but about five, six years ago, my dad made a decision to make us His most valuable business. And it changed everything. It changed my life forever. It changed our family’s life forever. And I can tell you that I don’t want my dad doing anything else. But being an entrepreneur, and I’m so thing I’m getting teary eyed, just telling you the story. But I don’t want my dad doing anything but doing what he’s doing. And I’m so thankful that he’s an entrepreneur. And I’m so thankful that he’s our father. And I’m so thankful that he figured out his most valuable business. And I’m telling you, I turned around, and 400 Hungarians, there wasn’t a dry eye in that entire room. There were people in the floor, there were people consoling other people that were outwardly sobbing. And later, I asked the organizer, you know, why were they so emotionally, you know, taken by this experience, and it’s because there was a room full of first generation entrepreneurs, Jeremy, they were, they were, they were moms out there that it’s the first thing they’ve done outside of caring for their kids. And the only thing that they want, is, at some point in their life for their children to say, I’m so thankful that my mom or dad is an entrepreneur, I don’t want them doing anything else. But that. And so they were crying not because of me. And not because of Grace, they were crying because that’s what they most want, in their deepest desires of their heart is for their family to say that exact same thing. And then, of course, my middle sister daughter, she got the microphone, and she talked about how she left school her freshman year, you know how critical your freshman year is right. She literally left high school for an entire year to travel with me for a year. And we went on over 30 trips together. Her and I she traveled is my personal assistant. And she just added to the the tear fest that was going on there. But it was it was without a doubt, one of the top five moments of my entire life was at that moment where I had no control of what was happening. And it was because you know, the book starts out with this driveway moment where I’m sitting in my driveway, and I don’t want to go home. And the reason I don’t want to go home is because I just have one of the best days of my life in business. I had the biggest sale in my life, I made every decision with confidence. And I knew I was going home to a situation of chaos and confusion. And I didn’t want the euphoria to end. But it was at that moment that I said, I’ve got everything screwed up. I’ve got my whole life upside down. That what if what if the most valuable business I will ever own ever operate everything be a part of was the one I was going home to not the one I went to that day. And that’s when everything changed for me. And I started treating business like practice, like everything I did in business was practice so that I could get it perfect at home. And my business did become my most valuable business. I legally incorporated my business, Jeremy, I you can look up the 2BTimms, LLC is a legal entity. That’s how far I went to make sure that I got this right. And Hungary was the ultimate, you know, test of whether or not this experiment mattered. And I can tell you now my kids are young adults and their life was forever changed because of that one decision at the end of my driveway.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, Mark there’s another cool moment of the book when you talk about naming that company.
Mark Timm
Yeah, so, you know, so I’m gonna, there’s two parts to that story. So the name of the company is to be letter B Timm’s LLC. But we named it to be Timm’s LLC because we wanted the family business to be about what’s it mean to be a Tim, what is what does it mean to be a temp? And what about being a Timm? Right? And and what’s the enterprise value and we created a logo and a mission statement and all the stuff that you do in business we did that. But here’s what happened is that at one point there was an executive session called the family business not by My wife or I buy the kids. And the reason it was called was because my wife and I are a blended family. And there were three kids in our family that I love, like my own son and daughter, even though they’re not my biological children. But they bought into this family business, they were sold out in the family business, they absolutely were all in. But there was a problem. And the problem was that if they were equal shareholders, because they own the same amount of shares is mom and dad. But the difference is, is that their mom’s last name was Timm, and there’s wasn’t. And they held an executive session and said, if we’re going to own equal shares of this family business, then we better get this right. And we need our last names to be Timm. Well, and the part of the story that I didn’t tell, you know, earlier was that the young lady, my daughter, who traveled with me for a year is not my biological daughter. She is my wife’s daughter, we’re the modern day Brady Bunch three boys and three girls. And so so that daughter, what we were able to achieve, traveling together in in Uber’s. And, and on airplanes, and the relationship that we build, like I just went out to see her she’s an all the way on the west coast in college, and I just went out for the weekend just to spend time with her. And so what happened was, is that that completed the merger, like we were a blended family before that moment. After that moment, we were a corporate merger. Like we brought two businesses together, and they became one. And and from that point forward, we were officially 2BTimms and it’s just a beautiful thing. It was the and and the cool thing is, is that this family business was not his, not hers, not theirs, not ours. But every single member of the family had equal voice, equal vote, equal shares. And it was it just brought us together in such an incredible way. And so if you’re out there listening, and you can relate to any of this, you know, maybe maybe you need to make your family your most valuable business and, and treat everything else you do outside of it like practice. So you can really get it right when it matters, because I’m going to tell you something where we were at prior that decision was not pretty. I can only share this with you because we got it wrong. I got it wrong for a long time before I got it right. In fact, I got it wrong for longer than I’ve gotten it right. But I got it right just in time. And it’s made all the difference in my marriage, in my family. And in my relationships.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, Mark, I want to talk about mentors. And I want to talk about Zig Ziglar. Kevin Harrington, before I do, I want to stick on this topic for a little bit, just to you know, give someone next steps. You know, someone’s out there many entrepreneurs out there, they can relate to your story. And some of I don’t care who you are, and I can, and how do you start? What should people start to do to run their family? as serious as their business?
Mark Timm
Yep. So basically, I’ll take the pressure off, if you’re good at anything, I don’t care. If you’re an entrepreneur, you work for someone else. If you’re good at your work, you can be that good at home. You just have to take what you’re good at and start doing it at home. I can’t function in my work without meetings. I’m really good at them. I’m efficient. I have agendas. I get stuff done. yet. prior to making my family a business. I had not had an intentional meeting with my family ever. Like we sat down at dinner. What are you doing tomorrow? What are you doing next week? Whatever. That’s not a family meeting. I mean, what’s the purpose of our family? Why were we put together? What are we supposed to accomplish? You know, what’s our mission statement? What’s our values? What? What’s our enterprise value? What’s our reputation? What What do we need to learn? How can we be better as a family? Those are the kind of things we started talking about in our family meeting. So every Sunday night, we had a family meeting, every Sunday night, we every Monday I had business meetings like every Monday, my business is all met and talked about what we’re going to accomplish that week. And what we what why we existed as a business, we started doing that. I’m good at marketing. All my businesses have logos, they have mission statements. So we did logos and mission statements at one point, okay, get this I use the same logo crowdsourcing for my family that I did my business we had for my business. I got 97 logos for my business when I use crowdsourcing Okay, 97 logos for my family. I got 185 logo submissions for my family, twice as many for my family as I did for my business. It was such an epic adventure to create a logo for our family, and you know what it cost me 99 bucks $99 and I got a home Hundred and 85 submissions for my family cuz I think these designers around the world were just like, this is so cool I want in on this. And so, you know, so my point is, is that family meetings are a logical place to start, you know, because they just they kind of became the hub for us. And and by the way, one of the gifts that I’ll give, if you go to Kevinmentor.com, I will give you my family meeting guide. So I actually have a family meeting guide, it’s one of the gifts that will give if you go to Kevinmentor.com, if you want to know how to run an effective family meeting, and I have two versions, one for little kids and one for teenagers. Because people ask me all the time, they’re like, Yeah, but my kids are older. I didn’t start doing this until my oldest was 15. Okay, so it’s not like I started when they were five, you know, is 15 years old. So you know, so we were a little late, you know, on the curve of this, but but it’s better late than ever. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. And so you know, so get started today. So the bottom line is, is that you can do this, if you’re good at anything, you can be that good at at family, you just got to connect them. You got to integrate them. Okay. We talked and we teased about balanced. The truth is, is that family work life balance is actually a myth. It’s like a holy grail, the true balance that we want to achieve is integration. It’s work life integration, integrate your work and your life. And by the way, COVID and quarantine is forcing us to integrate that a lot more. And so why not do it on purpose? Why not be intentional about it instead of just being forced into it?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, I mean, listen, it’s crazy mark, like, I don’t know, if people have a hesitation in, like spending $20 for someone’s life’s work in pages. Right. But just to add, add to it, Kevinmentor.com, you know, you can get actually how to run the meeting, and kind of going from family to mentors. Um, you have, I think it’s turtles around your house.
Mark Timm
And well, significantly over 40 turtles or 40 turtles in my house, not live turtles, but like, like, you know, like statues and little, you know, stuff and everything like that. And so, you know, so the, by the way, it’s not even $20. Amazon has our book on sale for 10% off. So it’s like, it’s like $18. And if you have a prime account, it’s free shipping. So that’s that’s exactly. Okay, so turtles are the reason we have turtles all over our house, like you can’t go to a single room in our house without seeing a turtle. And the reason is, is because one time a mentor of mine told me a story about a turtle on a fence post. And I’m thinking a turtle on a fence post, like no turtle can get on the fence post. What in the world is the turtle doing on a fence post? And he said, That’s the point. If you ever see a turtle on a fence post, there’s only one thing you know, for absolute certain that turtle did not get there by himself. And the concept is so powerful, because so many times we find ourselves on a post, maybe maybe we won an award, maybe we maybe we were fortunate enough to get a promotion, maybe we got a raise, maybe something good happened to us. That is the equivalent of being on a fence post. Well, guess what? You didn’t get there by yourself? Okay, you had you had encouragers, you had supporters, you had people who believe in you, you had mentors that got you there. So we had these turtles all over our house, because we wanted our kids to make sure that every time something good happened in their life, we wanted them to remember how they get there. Okay, now, I will tell you, if you’re listening to this, there’s the reverse of this as well. And we talked about it in the book. And the reverse is, is that when our kids did something wrong, that was a different kind of fence post. But it was a fence post all the same. Do you know almost without exception, anytime our kids made a bad decision, there was somebody else that contributed to that bad decision, either gave them bad advice, where they’re encouraged them than them to do the wrong thing. You know, or didn’t stop them from doing the wrong thing. So when it came time to talk about why something shouldn’t be done, we often talked about the turtle example as well. You didn’t get there by yourself, who were the people that put you on that bad fence post, as much as being on the good fence post. And by the way, in our family, the turtle example, was played out like this. My wife and I were soccer coaches. We coached our kids soccer teams. We realized early on that if someone scored a goal, they got a lot of glory. But we always in practice, it was about the pass, the pass the pass, the pass the past. It wasn’t about the goal. It was about the past. So we decided that other teams when someone would score a goal, the person who scored the goal got all these heights. fives. So on our team, if someone scored a goal, the person who passed the ball to the person who scored the goal got all the high fives. Well, because the person who scored the goal got the glory of the goal, they did not need the high fives. But the person who passed him the ball got, they got to in fact, on our team, you the person who passed in the ball, got to run down the sideline and got high fives, but everybody, but the person who scored the goals stayed on the field. Okay. So in our family, during family meetings, you were rewarded for finding something that one of your siblings did during the week, that was a fence post moment, not the person who was on the fence posts, but the person who noticed them being on the fence post. So that was equivalent of passing the ball. So you got more accolades and more kudos by noticing your brother or sister doing something special than your brother or sister who did the special thing. And what that did is it taught our kids to look for good and others to be abundant in their thinking that it was more joyful to give than to receive that that Zig Ziglar is we talked about his famous quote that I live my life by you can have everything in life you want, if you’ll just help other people get what they want. And and that’s really that’s the definition of abundance versus scarcity. We want our kids to live that life not look at me, look how awesome I am. We want them to find other people and help other people accomplish their dreams. And then it will come back to them a hundredfold.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, Mark, I want to talk about Zig Ziglar. Because Zig Ziglar ultimately left the cut, you know, you know led to Kevin Harrington, I remember listening to his audio cassettes in my car over and over and over. And that southern drawl the quote that you just said playing in my mind. And there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t think about that, or say that out loud. So, um, how did you discover Zig Ziglar?
Mark Timm
So I you know, you talked about in the, in the early in the the intro to me a motivational speaker. So I spoken a lot of stages as a young man was very gifted, public speaker and I spoke on the same stage as Zig Ziglar when I was 19 years old. Wow. And he came up to me in that southern drawl. And he put his arm around me and I’m not even going to pretend to to emulate it because I can’t. But he basically said, you know, Mark, I want you to come be my personal guest at my born to win seminar on my dime, and Dallas, Texas, and I want you to stay with me, and I want to mentor you. And I took him up on it. He was my first mentor. Like I had my grandparents, my parents, I realize now they were mentoring me, but the first person that actually said the word mentor. And so so I went down to Dallas, Texas,
Jeremy Weisz
and he say that, Mark, what what made him do that you think that dad
Mark Timm
I know. I know what made him do it. It’s the same thing that made him sit down and write a five page handwritten letter to a prisoner on death row that that could never buy his books could never buy his audio cassette. It’s the same reason that he would stand in the back of a room after a speech and sign his books for five hours until he literally passed out. You have to understand that Zig Ziglar impacted 250 million people while he was alive. There was no Facebook, no Instagram, no podcast, no digital anything. He did it one person at a time, one speech at a time, one event at a time. And he did it by simply living out that quote, he was willing to help people regardless of the cost, and it came back to him a hundredfold a thousandfold. Why did he pick me? I don’t know. You know, why did he choose to put his arm around me? I just I believe I was just so blessed to be in the right place at the right time. But I can tell you that my life was forever changed because of that. That that I I’m only on this this podcast right now because of that early mentorship by Zig Ziglar. And the coolest thing is, is that I didn’t know Kevin Harrington i’m uh, I’m just sitting at home loving Shark Tank. I mean, it was one of the things that me and the kids had in common. The kids love Shark Tank. I love Shark Tank. And and my kids love Kevin Harrington. Like he was their favorite shark. He was on the first you know, few seasons was their favorite shark. And so so they’re like talking about Kevin Harrington and Dad, you should meet him. You know him. I’m like, I don’t know Kevin Harrington. And so But lo and behold, my mentors, children. Tom Ziglar, Julie Ziglar, Cindy Ziglar. They were in conversations with Kevin Harrington because Kevin Harrington also wanted to help the Zigler family continue their dad’s legacy. I wanted to help the Zigler family. And so the family was like, Look, we got this great guy, Kevin Harrington. We got this great guy, Mark, Timm. We should introduce them. And so our mentor that’s that This earth isn’t even alive. Our mentor Zig Ziglar, was impacting us in such an meaningful way through his children. And that’s why this book that we’re talking about Mentor to Millions, it needs to be said right now, millions has nothing to do with money. This is not a book about money. This is a book about impact. And if you want to impact the world, if you have a product, a purpose or passion that the world needs, the fastest way, and the biggest way to get this to the world, is through mentorship. Zig Ziglar is the best example. Because I would never have met Kevin Harrington, if it wasn’t for my mentor, Zig Ziglar. So even in his death, passed his time on this earth, his mentorship legacy is living on its rippling, you know, through hundreds of millions of more people. And so, so Kevin Harrington, and I get together, and we know the secrets of Steve Jobs. We know the secrets of Warren Buffett, we know the secrets of of all of these Uber successful people that we all say, wow, what would it be like to be them? Well, guess what the secret is, they all had mentors. They all had mentors in their life, they had people who breathed into them wisdom when they needed it most. And when they were at their most vulnerable point of their life, they were there to help them maybe when they were failing there to pull them back up. When they were succeeding, they were there to hold them, you know, back on planet Earth, but they were there in their lives. And so the reason we wrote this book is because we want everybody to know, do you know that over 50% of all people listening to this, do not have mentors, do not have mentors, there are fewer people walking on planet earth that have mentors than there are to do, hmm, and so you know, so the fact is, that’s going to change, if we’re going to rise up, if we’re going to be the best versions of ourselves, we have to have mentors, that’s how people get super successful is they have people accelerating their, you know, uniqueness, their unique abilities, and those people are called mentors.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, if the extent of trying to carry the legacy on in the book, we talk, you talk about finding trying to find a company to have a hologram of Zig Ziglar. People who doubt that mission, they need to listen to that part of the book, because that is the ultimate Okay, we want to bring this person back. But um, Talk About Kevin Harrington. So you meet Kevin Harrington, your biggest takeaways from the mentorship even before biggest takeaways. There’s one piece of being introduced, there’s another piece of actually becoming mentor mentee.
Mark Timm
Yeah. So you know, Kevin is probably he’s the busiest person that I know. Like, I’m sure there are people busier, you know, but I don’t know anybody on this earth is busier than Kevin Harrington. I mean, he’s, he’s involved in 50 different companies. He’s had 700 different ventures in his lifetime. He’s the inventor of the infomercial, he’s got more deal flow coming in than you can imagine. So why in the world, would this guy take time to mentor me? And so when people ask me that all the time, how did you get a shark from Shark Tank to mentor you? Well, the first thing I did was, it wasn’t my first mentor, by the way. So you don’t your first mentor probably shouldn’t be a shark from Shark Tank, you should probably work yourself up. And so so I’d had other mentors, so I knew how to get the most out of a mentor relationship. And so I said, Kevin, I want you to mentor me, I want to learn how to scale I what I most wanted from him was how to scale businesses, because I had some successful businesses, but never scaled like he did. And so I said, here’s the deal. I am going to, I’m going to, I’m going to respect your time, your crazy busy, I’m going to value your time, I’m going to make this easy for you, this will not be hard for you, and here’s the catch. I will become your best student. There will be no better student you’ve ever had than me. And that was what got him to say, I’m in I’ll be your mentor. Okay, cuz he never had anyone give him that pitch. The man has heard over 50,000 pitches. I pitched him and and I pitched him the right way. And he said, Yes. And so you know, so he becomes my mentor. Well, I had to become his best student. Like I had to actually pay attention because guess what, he’s so busy, that he had no almost no time for me. So I literally started traveling with him. I started traveling and helping him with some of the stuff he was doing. And so and it was it was again in airplanes and in Ubers and at hotels and dinners that I learned watching him on stage watching him interact with people. It was caught more than it was taught. And then I could follow up and ask him Well, here’s what happened. I become his best student. All of a sudden he’s got time for me. Like he finds time for me because every mentor wants to spend time with their Have a student, because he’s seeing me change. And by the way, I’m starting to impact him. Every time I show up, I’ve got one of my kids. And he’s like, what the heck, you’re always bringing your kids. And I’m like, I’m like, Yeah, man, my kids are my most valuable business. I gotta bring him with me. He’s like, That’s so cool. And so he started looking at his own family differently and his own children differently. And so, you know, so I’m impacting him. And so we start to like each other, we start to know each other, we start to trust each other, we end up going into business together. Okay. And so you know, but in that journey, I learned a couple things from him. And one of the biggest things I learned and people ask me all the time, you know, I want to start a business. What business should I start? And I’m like, Okay, this is the lesson I learned from Kevin Harrington. In the chapter. We call it aggressive curiosity. That’s one of the earliest chapters, but the reality of it is, is follow the eyeballs. Where are people looking? Where are people looking? And so like, right now, a great place to start a business is e-commerce because people are shopping online. That’s where their eyeballs are. And then after that, it’s like, well, what habits are people forming, that are new? Well, one of the habits people are forming is, is that they still have aches and pains and hurts and arms, they just don’t want to go to the doctor. So they’re self treating themselves for muscle cramps or arthritis. And so one of our businesses is just blowing up bigger than we can imagine. And it’s an e-commerce around helping people with their bumps and bruises and, and aches, pains that going to the doctor. So if you’re out there wanting to start a business, where are the eyeballs, because you can have a great business over here. But if no one’s looking at it, it’s not gonna succeed. But you can have a good business or an OK business where people are looking, and it’s going to succeed, because that’s the difference between where are people looking versus where are they not looking like right now, during quarantine. The last place I would have set up a business is a bricks and mortar business where people had to walk into the store, I could have the best store that’s ever been created. But if nobody’s walking in the door, I’m in trouble. And so I would rather have an okay business where everybody’s at. So aggressive curiosity, follow the eyeballs, big lesson for me. Second thing was Dream Team. So guess what, Jeremy, I whenever I was growing my businesses, I can tell you I never scaled. And it’s because I always hired who I could afford. Think about that for a second. Me and 99.99% of all people in business, hire who we can afford. Kevin never hired who could afford he hired who was needed to take him to where he wanted to go. And he figured out a way to do that. And he said mark, I would rather have 10% of a CFO, that could take me to 100 million dollars 10% of his time, then 100% of a CFO that was never going to get me past a million dollars. Because that CFO that million dollar CFO, they could work 100 hours a week, and never get me past a million dollars. But that hundred million dollar CFO, even working six to eight hours a week could take me to 100 million dollars. That’s a Dream Team. That’s putting a dream team in place that can take you where you want to go, instead of what you can afford. If you put the dream team in place, you’ll afford that dream team because they’ll take you to the point you can afford them. So I started when and then when I implemented this, I am I can tell you today, I am well on my way to my first $100 million business. And it’s because I set up a business in the path of the eyeballs around habits that people were forming. And I have a dream team in place. I’m only on this podcast because that dream team is running that business. And I trust them to be running that business. And they are the dream team that’s going to take it to 100 million dollars. They are not the team that would have stalled out like all my other businesses. So I implemented what I learned from him. And I’m now seeing the fruits of that implementation. So those are two things I learned. And it’s not just things I learned it’s things on implementing on acting on on being his best student. And now I’m seeing the rewards of having the right mentor.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, thanks for sharing that mark. And there’s an amazing portion of the book Mentor to Millions where Kevin Harrington, you are on a plane so people should listen to that part because that’s really aggressive curiosity at its finest. So you have to listen that part of the book to to know what I’m talking about. But I just I
Mark Timm
gotta go and just tell I’ll tell the snippet. I want you to get the book anyway. But it was like it was one of the few times in my life I thought I was on Canon camera. And so I it was it was a first like long plane trip. I went on with Kevin and we show up the airport together and I moved my family down to St Petersburg so I could travel From the same airport as him, and and I’m in Indiana, so it wasn’t bad to move them down to Florida during the cold season. So it was fine. I had buy in from the, it was a unanimous vote at the family meeting,
Jeremy Weisz
I would vote for that. Yeah.
Mark Timm
And so we’re on a three hour flight from Tampa to Toronto. And he shows up with this bag that’s got his laptop in it, I recognized it. And another bag that I’d never seen, and it was like, bursting full, it was like, packed full. And he puts them both up above. And when they when the dinner goes off, and we get up and get our bags, he gets up and he doesn’t get his laptop down, I get my laptop down, I’m like Wi Fi gonna do emails and stuff. He gets this other bag down. And he opens it up. And he starts pulling out newspapers and trade journals and articles. And he’s he’s ripping articles out, put them in a manila folder. And then he’s throwing the, the discarded papers, magazines in front of him, like he’s just throwing them in front of him because he’s just ripping through them, and just chewing through the content, aggressive curiosity at its finest. And all of a sudden, there’s like a pile this all the way up to his knees, it’s like, way high. And I’m like, I’m like watching this going, what is going on, I don’t want to bother him. You know. And then almost like in queue, as I’m thinking, what you can do with all that stuff in front of him. The stewardess shows up with a empty trash bag, and fills it all full of all of that newspapers and magazines. And he never even looked up like like if she was in on the gig, like I’m the only person here that doesn’t know what’s going on. And she takes it all away. And then he keeps going and he does it again. And he like piles up this huge pile. And she shows up again, and she takes it all away. And what he’s done, he’s got this little folder full of the main content of all of that. And then I just couldn’t help myself. And I’m like, What in the world is going on? And he’s like, Look, he said, if you’re going to be successful in business, you’ve got to follow the eyeballs, you have to know what people are looking at. What are they reading? What are they looking at? And he, by the way, was more interested in the advertisements. He was more interested, because if he could see multiple advertisements, what are people spending money on what products are out there. And he recognized if it was a hot product, and he saw it in multiple trade journals, but it wasn’t in e commerce, he would follow up with them and see if they needed a commerce partner to take them into his his lane of business. And so and he would send that stuff on to his son Brian. And so anyway, it was just this amazing example, do you know that super successful people read at least three hours a day? I mean, Warren Buffett is like five or six hours a day Bill Gates is is multiple hours a day, Zig Ziglar three hours every single day, Kevin Harrington subscribes to five newspapers, five newspapers, okay, trade journals, magazines, because he’s consuming this content, because he’s aggressively curious about where the world is looking. And what they are buying.
Jeremy Weisz
Mark, you know, thanks for sharing that. But I was gonna make people read the book, but that’s fine. There’s
Mark Timm
stories like that. That’s like one of 100
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, so if you
Mark Timm
like that story, you got to get the book because it’s loaded with them. You know,
Jeremy Weisz
you ran a successful manufacturing ecommerce company, many other companies. I’m wondering from the end, it was a musical gifts. Musical gift box. Right? Um, so talk about from that company, maybe one big lesson on the front of success. And maybe one big lesson on the challenge front?
Mark Timm
Yeah. So the success side of it was is that we became the largest supplier of music boxes when I mean music boxes, like you lift them up, and they go Ding, ding, ding, you know, it’s playing music. At one point, we were selling over a million of those a year. Wow. And, and and what the reason it was so successful is because you could change out the face paper, the music box, so you would give it to your mom, and it said, Mom, you’re so amazing. But then mom would take it and put a photo of her kids in it. And it went from being a gift to an heirloom. And so we took a lot of risk off of the retailer, we took a risk off of the consumer, because ultimately, anyone could personalize and customize it. If they had an iPhone or a camera, they could turn it into a personalized gift. And so that was the success side. The failure side was we were so successful, that our local bank came along and said, you know, you could be more successful if you just had more money. And at the time, we were a debt free company. And I’m like, Well, what do you mean more money and they’re like, well, we see your business, we see how much money you’re making. We’ll give you a million dollars, a million dollars, we’ll give you a line of credit. I’m like, well, a million dollars I could be a billion dollar company man if I had a million dollars, right? So they give me a million dollars. And instead of staying true to our music box, we started coming up with all kinds of other products. Well, they weren’t products that that solve the problem. They weren’t products that solve the problem of the retailer and solve the problem of the consumer, they were just me to products. Next thing you know, I wake up that million dollar line of credit is now a million dollars of debt. So I went from a debt free company to in debt, a million dollars, and frankly, I almost lost the business. And it was I had to get back to the core focus of solving problems, solving problems of retailers solving problems of consumers. And thankfully, I was able to get that company out of debt. And I ended up even exiting that company for a very nice multiple as a result, but I learned some valuable lessons through of success and also failure inside of that company. And I, I go into much more detail inside the book, but that’s one of the that’s one of the big case study where we have a chapter in the book called failure to Phoenix. Yeah, Phoenix is a mythical bird that only gets stronger if the previous version of itself dies. And so in an entrepreneurial world, that means our idea fails, we only get stronger when we fail. Zig Ziglar used to say nobody drowns from falling in water, they drown from staying in water. And so that’s, that’s why people drown. So you got to get up, dust yourself off. And that’s what mentors do. They do. They help you get up, they help you learn what you’ve, you know, why you failed and, and learn lessons from it so that you can be stronger and a better version of yourself. Kevin Harrington failed, more than anybody I’ve ever met in my life. 700 different products, we celebrate that 21 of them made it to 100 million dollars, but what happened to the other, you know, 679 of them. Okay, so you’ve he failed a lot on his way to massive success.
Jeremy Weisz
Mark, first of all, I want to thank you i one last question. But I want to point people towards Kevinmentor.com, right. Where else can we point people to check out the book, mentor to millions
Mark Timm
on Amazon is probably the best place I mean, I I have to tell you, our sales have been so extraordinary. The reviews, you mentioned it, we’re we’re a USA Today best selling book, we find out about Wall Street Journal, very soon. And so thousands of thousands of these books have already been bought. So go to Amazon, they still have it in stock. That’s probably the best place but you can you can find on Barnes and Noble, you can find them at books, a million anywhere books are bought, then go back to Kevinmentor.com shows you bought it. And then we’ll give you the mentorship for free will give you I’ll give you the family meeting guide. You know for free will, whatever it takes for you to be able to implement what we’re talking about in the book, the books, not a how to. It’s not a step by step. The book is a story of an entrepreneur and his mentor and our journey through our relationship and the lessons we learned in that process of a family of business and relationships. So if you’d like to have more success in business, family or relationships, then this is absolutely the book for you.
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, definitely. Kevinmentor.com. Last question Mark and I figure this is, you know, kind of full circle. I’m your favorite Zig Ziglar story that you have.
Mark Timm
My favorite Zig Ziglar story. All right, so so you have to know that Zig tells a lot of stories. All right, he tells a lot of stories, and they’re all just amazing. But the story that probably impacted me, the most, you know, is his prime the pump, you know that you got to put something in to get something out. And if you’ll Google Zig Ziglar prime the pump, you can see him tell it it’s his most famous story, he used to travel around with the pump. But I’m going to tell you a less famous story, okay, because anyone can find prime the pump. So I’m going to tell you a story that I remember him telling that how to use a profound impact on on my life. And he literally I remember sitting there and I remember him, I’m sitting there in front of him. And he’s talking about a rich RCB he’s talking about a farmer in Texas. Now this farmer in Texas, he’s got a lot of land. So by all rights, you know, he was he was better than most as a farmer, you know, but he was farming and he was making an honest living, but wealthy no way by any stretch. But all of a sudden someone came along and said Hey, would you mind if we check your land for oil? Because we we’ve heard there’s some oil in the area? And would you mind if we check your land? He’s like, Sure, no problem. Check it. He’s like, you know what we think we found some oil. And so we’d like to draw on your land and we’ll give you 15% of the proceeds. If we find anything we let us drill. Yep, well let you drill. Well, back then they built oil rigs out of wood, it was called Derek and they built this well they drill down and when they hit oil at this particular farmers feel the pressure that came out of it when they hit it was so strong that it obliterated the Derrick like it went into a million pieces and and it took weeks just to cap the Well, that well became known as spindle top five recognized companies on the New York Stock Exchange were born out of that single Well, it produced more barrels of oil than any well in the history of oil. Up to this time, I don’t know if anybody’s beat it. So here comes along, you know, so you can imagine this farmer went from owning some land to being a multi, multi, multi multi millionaire, if not billionaire from just the royalties off this. So, a reporter one day asked him, so what was it like to be an instant Millionaire? And he thought about it. And he said, I don’t know what you mean. What do you mean? And he’s like, Well, you know, your instant millionaire. And he said, you know, the way I look at it, is that I became a millionaire. 30 years ago, the day I signed the deed for this property.
I just needed somebody to come along and show me where the riches were buried. Now, why is that story so impactful to me? Because that is exactly what we’re talking about. I firmly believe that every person listening was born a millionaire. I believe that you were born with extraordinary gifts with extraordinary talents to impact the world. What a shame if we die with those millions inside of us? What a shame if nobody ever shows us where those are buried. That’s the job of a mentor. That’s what a mentor does. A mentor comes on in your life and says you are extraordinarily valuable. You are a multi millionaire to this world to this society. And this is where your riches are buried. We’ll just drill over here. You could impact millions of people. So that story, that story about the oil well, was really about mentorship. That story is about us being open to other people coming in and showing us where our riches are buried, and then reaping the rewards for the rest of our life. So that’s my favorite story. And that’s why, you know, it’s so appropriate to tell that story as the last piece of our time together.
Jeremy Weisz
Mark, I’ll be the first one to thank you everyone. Check out Kevinmentor.com. Get the book mentor millions. Thanks, everyone.
