Impacting Millions of People Through Mentorship with Mark Timm

0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with us right now, we've got serial entrepreneur and co author of the book Mentor to Millions, with co author, your co author Mark, Kevin Harrington, whom I just recently interviewed. And, Mark, thank you so much for joining us.

0:54
Hey, Josh, thank you for having me. We're super excited about the book, but really about our message of mentorship that we want to share with the world. Yeah, what

1:03
is it about mentorship, particularly in your 2020, that you think is so important?

1:09
Well, we wrote the book over a couple years, we didn't realize just how relevant it would be today and these uncertain times, right? I mean, you know, there

1:16
was only a pandemic. That's, that's good. Yeah.

1:19
And, and, and we need mentors, we need people who've been there who've done that who've experienced and struggled and failed. And so you know, the idea for the book was, every time Kevin would go out and speak, and I'd be with him, people would come up and say, Kevin, I just need one question, can I just have five minutes it would change my life? And they always ask the same question, what's the one thing that I can do in my business, or my family, or my life to make me successful? And we started talking about that we realize the one secret success, the one secret that Uber successful people have and know, is mentorship, really successful people had people early in their lives that reached down and said, I'm going to teach you, I'm going to help you. And then they applied their own genius to that wisdom. And that's why they became super successful. So if you want to impact millions, the book is called mentor to millions, if not millions of dollars, it's millions impacted. And the fastest way to impact millions of people is through mentorship, you've got to have the right mentors, and then you've got to be the right mentor to others. And that is the secret exponential formula.

2:25
Yeah, yeah. You know, I kind of think about, you know, the ways that folks learn. And so of course, you know, you've got your learn knowledge, your activity, knowledge, modeling knowledge. Gosh, I'm thinking of one teaching knowledge, right. And, you know, doing the thing is, is so impactful. But but there's, there's something to be said, for having someone who's already kind of skin their knees quite a bit, saying, Well, let me save you six months. Let me give you my perspective. Yeah.

3:03
Yeah. And failure is big. I mean, so like, in the chat in the book, we got a whole chapter on failure. You people ask me what kind of mentor Should I get. And I always say, you want one that's failed, like, ask them about their failures. If they failed a lot, then they've done a lot of wisdom, they've got a lot of learning, if they're still standing after all that failure. That's someone you want to listen to. So we've got a ton of stories in the book about failure. In fact, the chapter is called failure to Phoenix. Phoenix is a mythical bird that only gets stronger if the previous version of itself dies. So in the entrepreneurial world, that means one of your ideas has failed. And so it's not about the failure. It's about how you learn from that failure, how you recovered from that failure, and can you get up stronger because of that failure? And that's why these crazy times that we're in, why want people that have failed during these uncertain times that have struggled before in their life that have said, I know what the other side looks like, follow me. Listen to me, because I've got wisdom, because right now, we need that wisdom.

4:07
Yeah, you know, I would question someone who has never failed. Who has this guru persona, have never failed? I would question their resiliency, because eventually they're going to be very disappointed.

4:23
And men, many times, they just got it lucky out of the gate. You know, Kevin talks about how he got lucky in the beginning with his ginzu knives on on the infomercials. But then he had nine failures after that. So he could have quit at any point in time after that first success, but he didn't quit. And he realized that that was the secret to success. The secret to success is being willing to fail, fail fast, fail cheap. Our mutual mentor we Kevin and I actually met through a mutual mentor by the name of Zig Ziglar. He was the motivational inspirational guru. And Zig had some really famous quotes and he said One of his quotes that I love, it makes me chuckle is nobody drowns from falling in water, they only drown from staying in the water. Okay, so we're inevitably going to fall, we're never going to fall in water, it's just get up, dry off, dust ourselves off, and learn, don't step there, because that doesn't end well. And so learn from your failures. And definitely don't get a mentor that only knows one path and is only had one major success no matter how big that success is. Yeah,

5:27
what what would be some, if you don't mind? Some things we might look for, if we, if you know, let's say someone comes to us in our lives, are we find them or we see them constantly advertised to us? Are there any, you know, signs aside from Well, I don't see that they've necessarily failed. But man, they talk a good game, like, Are there any things that we might want to look for? And say, yeah, I'm not sure that that's fits Mark's definition of kind of a mentor should be looking for?

5:59
Yeah, so obviously, failure. So you can ask them and find out they fail. But here's the criteria you need most, obviously, you're going to pick someone that you believe has some wisdom, or has had some success, or is on a path that you'd like to go. So here's what makes a really good mentor. We were given two years, and only one mouth, and a mentor that doesn't know that and spends all their time talking over you and telling you instead of listening to you, and finding out what is it you're trying to accomplish, what's your product, purpose, or passion that the world needs, and really listens and understands what you're trying to achieve in the world then imparts the wisdom. Like, it's not even, you know, obviously, I want them to have failed, obviously, you need to know and like them, and trust them, those are the obvious things. But the not so obvious is, are the a good listener, the best mentors are great listeners, then they teach. And then you need to be at that point, when they when they're done listening, and they're ready to teach guess what you got to do, you got to be their best student. Usually, you pick a mentor that's busy, that's successful, that has very little time. So you've got to double down and say, if this is my mentor, I better be willing to be their best student. Because when you implement what they're teaching, they will want to teach you more, they'll do more for you. At that point, they'll find time to help you at that point. So you got to find the right mentor, you got to be their best student. And then you got to take everything you've learned and teach someone else. That's the trifecta of exponential mentorship and exponential impact that we talked about in the book. Yeah, for sure. Um,

7:33
any other best practices for being a great student?

7:38
Well, being a great student is I believe in proximity. Now that can be virtual proximity. But oftentimes more is caught than taught. So be in proximity, be willing to spend time with your mentor, be willing, I was willing to go to events where Kevin was speaking, I was willing to travel with Kevin, I moved my family down to St. Petersburg for a month, just to be able to travel and at the different things we were doing on the same airplane, because he was busy. So we spent a lot of mentorship sessions sitting on an airplane, sitting at a hotel, in an Uber car in proximity. So be willing to be in proximity, be willing to invest, just being and watching and emulating. It's not all and it can be virtual, by the way it doesn't in these times, you may not be able to have physicality, but be willing to invest in some proximity and invest in time with your mentor.

8:29
So the if I look at your background, Mark, where did you come from? And what was your first kind of foray into business?

8:39
Yeah, I came from USA Today. So I was the director of marketing USA Today. And I left usa today to become an entrepreneur because I wanted to be the father and husband that I thought I was put on this earth to be, and I was being swallowed up in corporate America. So I become an entrepreneur. And next thing, you know, I just get swallowed up as an entrepreneur. So I created new jobs for myself, that kept me just as busy. And so the reason I'm actually even having this conversation with you is because during this mentorship journey, I've got six kids, by the way, so three boys, three girls, and I wanted to be I knew that I could be more I was having success in business, but not that same success at home. And so the undercurrent of mentor to millions is not just mentoring you to be super successful in business, but we want you to be just as successful at home. Many entrepreneurs are crushing it in business and getting crushed at home. And I had a driveway moment. That's where the book starts, where I figured out I had everything upside down. And I started saying 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 was going to. And I started taking every lesson I learned in business and from Kevin Harrington and from Zig Ziglar and applying it to my home. And then I started seeing results at home I couldn't even have dreamed of. And now my kids are young adults and I'm seeing the fruits of all of that effort. And labor, I got it wrong longer than I got it right, you need to know that I failed a lot. But I got it right just in time. And I want every entrepreneur to have that feeling of what it's like to have the confidence and clarity at home. Yeah, so

10:13
what would be our first steps there? Because it you know, we might be talking with someone's like, Look, you know, I'm working 7080 hours a week right now. And yeah, I really love spending time with my, my spouse, my partner, my kids. But, you know, I feel like I really have to keep grinding so that I can have that freedom. I see that as a, that's an that's an easy cycle to get into. Number one,

10:42
I say your normal. Number two, I say I've been there. Okay, number three, I will give you a very simple next couple steps. The first thing you need to do is sit your family down. If it's just you and your spouse, that's fine. If you've got kids, sit them down and say, I want you to know that even though I spent a lot of time in my business, you are the most important business I will ever have. You are the most important venture that I will ever embark in. And I realized that I haven't gotten it all right, but I'm ready to start getting it right. I literally Josh went out and incorporated my family, you can look it up in Indiana, it's to be Tim's LLC. It's a legal Corporation where my youngest child has the same amount of shares in that company as I do. Like I took that to the stream, because I had to because I knew I had to make a big change. And so the second thing I would do after exposing yourself and just being brutally honest with your family is say what am I good at in business? Like, I can't function in my businesses without a meeting, an efficient meeting. And so I actually started having family meetings, I call them shareholder meetings every Sunday night, and they weren't just casual. They were Who are we? What are we about? Why was this family created? Why were we put on this earth? And what are we going to do about it? And all of a sudden, the family started realizing they have a voice, they have a vote, dad's paying attention. He's plugged in, he really cares about us as a family. And it just made all the difference. Well, guess what? I just borrowed what I was already doing at work that I couldn't function without? How can we function as a family, if we're not having that kind of intentionality at home. So whatever you're good at in business, bring it home. And that is your next start. I believe you already know everything you need to know, to be just as good at home as you are in business.

12:29
And what happens if I don't know, you bring that you start bringing this up to your kids particularly I'm thinking of the teenagers, right? And like, Uh huh.

12:41
I started this when my my son was 14. And I had one of my sons, I don't think I've ever seen him do homework. And then all of a sudden, when I would call a family meeting, he would have three hours of homework. Ah, sorry, I can't I can't be there, Dad, this time for you. I'll catch you next time. I got homework to do. I mean, it was it was a journey. But we started doing treats. At the end of the meeting, we would do ice cream or s'mores or something fun where they started asking for the family meeting because they wanted this special thing that we were doing. So it's not always easy when you start. But what your kids are looking for is are you committed? And are you consistent in this idea. And if you can be consistent, and be committed, and really show them that you're all in for this, they'll buy in. By the time I was done. When my kids started leaving, they were leading the family meetings, not me. They were sitting up front, we did the disc personality profile, we did the Strength Finders, we did the love languages, anything I was doing in business, I brought it home. And you know what my kids learned from disk, they got permission to be different, that their sisters and brothers weren't just weird. They were just wired different. And it helped with family arguments. We did a family logo, we did a family mission statement. Anything I was doing in business, I started doing it at home, we had shirts made and and we you know, we just brought so much pride into our family. And all sudden our family started to mean something and started to matter. And that made all the difference in the world for our kids. And now for them as young adults. Yeah,

14:13
yeah. So in the book, mentor to millions. Now again, I understand that, you know, you know, I had Kevin on and obviously he's talking about the business lessons from this. But tell me more about you know, what's in the book for you know, again, having that wonderful mentor relationship with your family and your your kids.

14:37
So the book is actually a narrative. It's a it's a storytelling book. It starts off with me in my driveway having this driveway moment where I realized I got everything wrong. And it ends the book with me on in Hungary talking to 500 Hungarians and my children get called up on stage. And as a single question, what was it like to be the child of an entrepreneur and by the time they were done, there was In a dry eye in the audience, because they were brutal, they were, they were honest, saying it stunk for a while, like we resented it. But then everything changed. And we became his most valuable business. And then our life and our family changed forever. And now we love the fact that our dad is an entrepreneur. So the book is loaded with secrets of success in business, but also in relationships. In fact, when we teach a really powerful business concept in the book, I in the chapter showing you how you can apply that at home. So if you don't have a multi million dollar business, maybe you don't even have a business, you need to read this book. And you'll learn the lessons and say, let me just start by applying them at home to the most valuable business I have, and then let it flow out into being an entrepreneur. And so the book is a lot of stories about my family, a lot of stories about Kevin's life, and his journeys. But you literally people have read it picked it up to read a couple chapters. And next thing, you know, they're halfway through the book, and they can't put it down, because it's engaging. And it's filled with just awesome stories about mentorship about the relationship with a mentor. And when the book is done, you will undoubtedly say I need mentors in my life. And I need to be mentors for others. And that's actually the goal of the book. It's not to sell you anything. It's not a how to book, it's just to show you that you can impact the world by having mentors, by being a mentor. And the most important mentorship you can do is obviously the one at home.

16:31
Yeah, absolutely. So Mark, in terms of serving as a mentor, what are some of the? How will that impact your life?

16:43
Well, it here's how it works. Okay, behind me, it for those of you that are listening, I'll explain it, it's a brick wall. Okay, that's not an accident, because a brick wall we symbolize is something strong a foundation. And so this brick wall is really the word picture for the question you just asked, the mentor gives you the bricks, that's their job to hand you these really strong bricks, and then it's your job to stack them up, because you've got to learn it. Okay, you've got to pay attention and collect those bricks, but then all they are is a shaky wall of bricks, anybody can knock over the concrete that holds it together, is when you take that wisdom and you teach it to others. That's what locks it in. That's the glue. That's the mortar that turns bricks into a foundation and into a wall. If you just take and collect your wisdom, and you never teach anyone else, then you've deprived yourself of locking it in, you've deprived the world of knowing what you know. And that's what mentors do. And so that's what teaching other people does for you as well. You grow from it. You solidify the lessons you've learned in your life by teaching and sharing it with other people. And that's how you build a strong foundation that you can build business on relationships on and your family on top of.

17:58
Yeah. And so mark, what are the plans? Now? You know, it's kind of interesting, obviously launching a book during COVID. I mean, is that is that does that impact significantly? A book launch?

18:13
Well, I mean, obviously, we're more virtual, we're not going to do a physical book tour, clearly. But it has given us a real opportunity, because we've received, I mean, we've got some unbelievable national primetime media that's scheduled because the topic is so relevant. Right now people are asking, they're wondering, and they're afraid to raise their hand. The first step in getting a mentor is having the courage to raise your hand and say, I need help, like, I'm ready for help and put that out to your inner circle. And so we're getting on a lot of national syndicated, I'm doing a 20 city tour virtual tour in every major market in the country the day before a book launch, because the message of mentorship is so timely. We need it right now, during the times of COVID. These times of quarantine, families need permission to say I need help. And I need mentors and I don't know where to turn. And we're there to encourage them and push them and we want this book to be an example. In fact, Kevin and I have agreed that we're going to give anyone who actually buys the book goes to our link, get MTM gt MTM Comm. We'll send them to wherever books are bought, okay, so they don't buy it there. They just see more about the book and then they come back and show us they bought it. We give them 30 days of mentorship. This is also live mentorship not just recorded, we want people to develop the habit of mentorship and 30 days is enough time to develop a new habit. And after that 30 days of mentorship from a shark from Shark Tank from a serial entrepreneur family guy like me, they'll be ready to say I'm gonna raise my hand I'm competent to raise my hand and so that's why we want people to go to get MTM get started with their own mentorship journey.

19:54
Awesome so the website get mtm.com Is that right?

19:59
Yep mentor to millions MTM get mtm.com, they'll learn about Kevin and learn about the book, they'll learn about mentorship. And then they'll go get the book and come back and start their 30 days of mentorship with Kevin and I.

20:13
Awesome. What does that look like? are you jumping on in a virtual environment like a large,

20:17
basically what we did is we identified 30 different areas of mentorship that we've taught, or that we've caught ourselves. And so we teach on all of those 30. And so it is virtual, they jump on, they learn a lesson every single day. But then we do some live teaching as well, where we do what I call hot seat, mentorship. And what that is, is that we'll literally go on with people that have bought the book and will randomly choose people and will mentor them on the spot. And we'll help push them through or help them form that brick wall or help them get over whatever obstacles in their way. And so we're doing that during our whole launch week, we're doing a series of these hot seat mentorships for anybody that gets engaged in this community. And again, it's just about pushing people along. We can't personally mentor everybody, but we sure can get people jump forward and begin their own mentorship journey.

21:09
Excellent. All right, get MTM comm mark. Tim, thank you so much. Again, co author of mentor to millions with Kevin Harrington, serial entrepreneur, of course, it is your position within your family CEO.

21:26
Yeah, so. So the kids call me the CEO, dad. And so and that's just because I bring whatever I learned from my businesses home, but as you well know, I've got a co CEO and my wife. Oh, yeah. So that's the that's the best part about doing this family thing is that, you know, we do it together. We do it as a team. And, you know, everybody matters. Everybody has a vote. And that's the coolest part. And I want everybody to experience that.

21:51
Alright, Mark. Tim, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, john.

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