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Purpose once you have it is like a magnet, there's two ends of it, one repulses and one draws the other magnet towards it.
Well, when you have a purpose for your life, maybe it's freedom and fulfillment, maybe it's love, maybe it's creating generosity, whatever that is, people that have an opposite or a non synergistic purpose tend to be pushed away in your life.
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Mark, thanks for joining us today.
Great to be with you.
Yes, it is great to have you, my friend.
So how about you get started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Well, I'm an author.
I wrote a book called Experiencing the American Dream.
I also am a money manager.
We manage over $11 billion for families all over the United States and North America.
We have 500 advisors we work with, and I specialize in helping people eliminate speculating and gambling from their portfolio and prudently invest, as well as using their money to fulfill in their purpose in life.
That thing, which is more important than money itself.
I love this. And I think oftentimes that the purpose aspect is lost in this and I don't want us to just kind of glaze over that and assume that everybody knows what purpose actually means when we're talking about it.
So when you think about your mission and your new book as it relates to purpose, what does that mean to you?
Yeah, so early on in my career, when I was in my early 30s, I noticed that there were certain people in life that had a lot of money.
My assumption as an investment advisor at the time was the more money you would have, the more safe you would feel.
And because you would feel safe, you would have a higher degree of happiness and fulfillment.
Otherwise, what was my job for?
I mean, helping people build their portfolios.
But what I actually noticed and saw was that some people, the more money they had, the more unhappy they became.
The more frustrated, the more fear, the more stress, the more anxiety, the more jealousy.
And so I started to see that money didn't actually make people happy.
And if you look throughout history, you can see all kinds of examples like Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe or Howard Hughes, the fame and the power and the money did nothing for them.
It actually helped destroy their life and create a life of misery and suffering.
So at a very young age, it was like, wait a minute, this thing about just helping people get more money, this is very empty and bankrupt.
So if it wasn't that, what would it be?
And what I discovered was that people had a purpose for their life, whether it was Martin Luther King or whether it was Ronald Reagan, I just saw that movie this weekend.
Or people like the Wright brothers, people that had a purpose greater than money itself, they were able to live a more fulfilling and happy life and stop speculating and gambling with their money at the same time.
So purpose became really key, and I've been focusing on that for the last 30 years.
I think especially considering your success in the financial industry and the amount of money that you and your team manage, you are a very credible arbiter for this story, because you've seen people who have it.
And I think it's easy if you don't have money to say, hey, money isn't everything, because that can be a lot that can be validating.
But for you to actually have seen the other side and really say, no, for real, money isn't everything.
I think that brings a lot of credibility.
Right. Yeah. And it is really quite counterintuitive.
I mean, we work with a lot of people getting ready for retirement in their in their lifespan, in their cycle, and they work 30, 40 years, 45 years.
If money doesn't make you happy, why did I work all those years trying to create more and grow my portfolio more?
And it's really quite counterintuitive in the lack of a purpose for life.
There's been scientific studies now that show people that have a purpose greater than money itself, they live longer, they have less cancer, they have better relationships, they have better health overall, they have have higher reported feelings of fulfillment in their life, they have better relationships
with family members and people they love.
There's a new science of purpose.
And the correlation between purpose and a fulfilling life and extraordinary life has been proven to be very robust.
I agree. And I think it is validating for so many people who have been saying that thing, maybe philosophically or religiously or whatever tool that you use to get to that conclusion.
So many people have arrived at the same place and it's really validating to see science is substantiating that.
And I can hear the grumbling of listeners saying, Kwame, Mark, this is quite intellectually stimulating, but I'm here for negotiation.
What are we talking about here?
And I love this because I wanted to set the stage, this foundation of purpose and then transition here, too, because a lot of times when we think about in the financial world, we're negotiating deals, we're trying to maximize the money that we make.
But a lot of times we do that to the detriment of our mental health and happiness.
And it helps us to recognize that before we get in front of somebody negotiating monetary value and going into a transaction, we have to have a conversation with ourselves to figure out what it is that we really want.
Because a lot of times we are just driven by what society tells us we should have, which is oftentimes in the financial world, just more money.
But we didn't come here just to make more money.
So for those people who are saying, yes, I want to become wealthy or I want to become better stewards of my money, but I also want to have purpose in my life.
When it comes to that internal negotiation that they have with themselves, how does one actually go about understanding what the purpose is for their life?
Well, I love that. And it is, you know, that's a great question.
Look, most people think they go out and find a purpose.
I'll go find my purpose.
No, you don't find a purpose.
You create a purpose.
So it's not an organ in your body.
There's not a purpose organ.
Even your brain is not a purpose organ.
There's not a you're not born with it.
You don't go out and find it.
What you do is you create it and you create it by thinking about what is it that's so important to you that is more important than money?
People have even died for their purposes.
And that's how powerful a purpose can be that people lay down their life for their purpose.
And is it if you can ask yourself if I lived my life in this way based on this purpose, maybe it's love or maybe it's creativity or maybe it's generosity or maybe it's freedom.
But if I live my life this way, would I be inspired and fulfilled by my own life?
If I lived my purpose this way, would I be inspired and fulfilled, motivated and passionate about my own life?
And when you start to answer yes to that question, then you start to say, OK, I'm getting close to that purpose.
And then you can fine tune it.
Now, to your other great question is, well, what could this possibly mean to negotiation?
Well, purpose once you have it is like a magnet.
There's two ends of it, one repulses and one draws the other magnet towards it.
Well, when you have a purpose for your life, maybe it's freedom and fulfillment, maybe it's love, maybe it's creating generosity, whatever that is.
People that have an opposite or a non synergistic purpose tend to be pushed away in your life and you'll notice that and you won't want to deal with them.
And guess what? If you make your purpose clear, they won't want to deal with you either.
But if you have a synergistic purpose to other people who believe that they want to create something valuable in their life and be of service to other people, you'll find that you will.
I found in my life anyways that those relationships grow, they get connected, they create wealth and prosperity and they they have longevity instead of just transactional.
Mark, I love this. And what I love about this is that I think if we would have started with this, we probably would have lost some people who said this is too woo woo and just non specific and intangible.
But what we recognize is that we all have some kind of purpose that is just not directly attached with money.
Because if we think about it in terms of just hoarding cash, I mean, what are we going to do at the end of the day?
Just swim in it. The money is a tool.
It gets us someplace.
But if we forget that tool aspect to it, then we just get money for the sake of money and then we get lost in it.
And so it shows just how important it is for us to understand our purpose before we even begin having these tough conversations.
Because otherwise, we just engage in these conversations more tactically than strategically.
And even if we get exactly what it is that we want in that negotiation, it might be really, really bad for us simply because it's not in alignment with our purpose.
Well, that's the worst thing that can happen.
You get what you want and you start out happy.
That's a dark day. And there's been - look, people have a default purpose for money.
The default purpose that we're born with is struggle and survival.
Scarcity, money's for most people's way of thinking.
Money scares. It's hard to get, hard to make, hard to keep, hard to invest.
And therefore it's a me versus them type of situation.
And for me to win, they have to lose.
And money is a struggle, and it feels like a sacrifice.
It feels like there's never enough and therefore it's never really fulfilling.
And it leaves you feeling doubt, fear, especially today.
I mean, you think about, look, 30, 40 years ago, you read the newspaper, maybe maybe watched a half an hour of news.
Now you're bombarded 24 -7.
You got all these news channels, 24 -7 cable.
You got your cell phone.
You've got Instagram.
You've got social. You've got all - and a lot of them are fear -based to get you in a state where your eyeballs are connected to buying advertising products.
And so people play on your fear and they play on that feeling of suffering and this feeling of not having enoughness around your money.
And that gives you a very destructive and toxic relationship with money.
I agree 100%. And I think a lot of times one of the first things we have to do is figure out where we begin and where society ends and vice versa, because a lot of times we don't recognize that many of our thoughts are not our own and we just go about navigating the world as if they are.
And then we go in the wrong direction.
And one of the things that you said, the purpose can help us to repel the people and opportunities that are not for us and attract the people and opportunities that are for us.
So again, audience, you recognize why we had to start here, because if we just started talking about strategies and tactics, you might've been using the right strategies and tactics, but moving in the wrong direction.
And so this is how we can just organically, without getting too tactical or strategic, still have much better results in our negotiations.
Just because of that clarity.
I just love that so much.
People tend to think of purpose as a soft science, but if you think about it, you just look at history, anything that's ever been created that was incredible, including the United States of America, started with purpose.
You had the purpose to be free from the monarchy, and then you had a stated declaration based on that purpose of what you were going to create.
Dr. Martin Luther King had a purpose that we should all be engaged by our character, not the color of our skin.
You looked at JFK, put men on the moon, and then came back.
Walt Disney created Disneyland and all the media.
So anybody that's ever created and winning World War II, the most horrific, terrible time in human existence, that was based on purpose, declaration, and negotiation between the Axis that then would fight the Axis of Evil, the alliances that we formed that then defeated.
So it's not a soft science at all.
It's very, very critical.
Absolutely. Negotiation and creating teams.
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One hundred percent.
And so it's important for all of us to start there because I love those examples because that shows us just how powerful purpose can be.
And with your book, Experiencing the American Dream, now we can see how purpose is aligned in that.
And we can also recognize, like we talked about, we're not saying money is not important.
Clearly it is, but we understand that it is just thinking about money alone is limiting.
And so I think what we should do for the rest of this conversation is first, I want to get your perspective on what the American dream really means.
I want to touch on that, and then I want to broaden that because I think even for people who don't live in America, they can still appreciate the ideals and the aspirations and then they could figure out how it is that they can use negotiation to further those goals.
So when you think about the American dream, what does that mean to you?
So I'll start off with what it looks like for most people.
There was a survey just done by the Wall Street Journal asking people, what does your American dream look like?
People want a house.
They want a home ownership.
Most people still want to have children.
They want to be able to retire.
They like to help their kids go to college if they can.
Those are the typical things that people think about in terms of the American dream.
The question is, do most people believe in the American dream?
Studies will say that in the ballpark, around 50 percent will still say, yes, I think the American dream is possible.
I think it's real. But then you also have the American dream haters.
Not only do they not think it's possible, but they think it was never possible.
And they think the very idea of it's destructive because they think it's based on they believe it's based on greed and materialism.
But the American dream, I was born in West Virginia, my father and my grandfather, the coal mines and the chemical factories there.
And I'm sure my grandfather had the view that the American dream was evil and that the only way that you can make money was if you ripped ripped other people off and stole it from them.
And my dad and he also died a victim, always thinking I'm never going to have it.
My dad, on the other hand, asked the question, how can I escape this poverty and create value for other people and get out of these hills and hollers with all this destitute poverty?
And they literally in the wintertime, they would cut the top off of instant carnation milk cans and nail it to the baseboard to keep the rats from coming into their into their little shack that they had by the railroad.
So they really came from destitute poverty.
The way to look at the American dream is it's based on the ideals of freedom.
And I saw that your podcast, dude, it's incredible.
A hundred and eighty countries.
Thank you. I mean, that's incredible.
We think that the American dream, the ideals based on freedom, are not just good in America, but they're great for every place across the world because this idea of freedom is inherent in being a human being and even God given.
So this idea of freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom to create your own business, freedom to decide what happiness is for you, freedom to own your own company if you want to, freedom to raise your children.
I mean, these types of freedom are basic.
But when I look at the American dream, I've expanded it out to where the American dream isn't just about these ideas of a house and retirement and a family.
To me, it's a screen by which you see the world and by which you function in the world.
So victimhood and entitlement is the opposite.
And the American dream screen, which is created in language, is created by the ideals and the commitment and declaration to live the American dream and make it part of your life.
And I was really, really lucky to have a father that built that into me from the time I was very young.
I was 10 years old.
He first gave me Think and Grow Rich, and he said, read this and study it for the rest of your life.
I did. But the American dream is real and those people that see it as a screen by which they see the world end up creating a lot of wealth and prosperity that other people that don't have that screen can't.
And what's funny is to think about how you got Think and Grow Rich as a child and somebody else might get experiencing the American dream as a child.
That's powerful, right?
Oh, man, that's so much heart, bro.
Thank you. Yeah. And when you think about this, what I recognize too, and this is a little bit of an aside too, because we have clients right now.
We do conflict and negotiation trainings and everything like that.
And there are a lot of companies that are struggling with political conversations like difficulties in political conversations internally.
And when I think about the different sides of the coin, when people perceive the American dream, a lot of times we create a false dichotomy where we say, OK, it's either everybody has the right and ability to become just multi -millionaires and make a bunch of money or nobody has the right or it's not real
or it was never real, those type of things.
But what you're doing here with the way that you're approaching it and tell me if I'm off on this, this is more of a mindset, it's more of a life philosophy that you use to filter through the world.
So you're saying I am not in control of everything, but I'm going to focus on those things that I am in control of and I'm going to look for the opportunities.
I'm going to acknowledge and recognize barriers and I'm going to do the very best I can to navigate around them.
And in America, more so than other countries, we have the ability to do that.
You're not saying that it's perfect, but you're saying that it is doable.
Oh, yeah, definitely not saying it's perfect.
And I'm definitely not saying that people don't go through really hard things.
When I was, you know, when I when I was only 30, I contracted a disease called osteonecrosis in my hips and they started to disintegrate.
And it was from prednisone that I had for asthma.
So at the age of 30, they're like, well, we're going to have to go in and cut out your hips and put in artificial hips at 30.
And, you know, I'm feeling very sorry for myself.
I'm feeling like a victim.
I'm feeling like I should be entitled to have a life without suffering.
And I went into a doctor's office and there were 10 kids and they were all getting they were little, probably 10 years old, they were all getting chemotherapy and they were actually having fun.
They were playing with their cars and coloring books and talking and, you know, and they were they had a good attitude.
And I thought, Mark, you're sitting here being a victim.
You're sitting here being entitled that life should be easy for you.
And then those little kids over there, they're over there fighting for their life.
And you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Stop being a victim.
Stop being you're not entitled to a life without suffering.
And it's OK to go through those those periods.
But the American dream experience mindset is that I'm responsible for my life and I might go there and stay there for a while.
But if I stay there too long, then I end up being a victim and that destroys my life.
And I do live in I think it's still the greatest country in the world.
If I'm born in China, there's no I'm not on a podcast doing the China dream event or Venezuela or Cuba or Iran.
I mean, there's just so many places in the world where the ideas of freedom and the principles of self -expression are subverted and destroyed.
And I'm very grateful to be here.
It's not easy. Oh, the survey said, is it going to be easy to reach your American dream?
Eight percent, only eight percent said it would be easy.
But I think the survey was was messed up.
No one ever said it should be about easy.
It's hard work living your American dream.
It's not easy. It's not just given to you.
You have a right to work for it and earn it.
And when I tell people like, well, how do you earn it?
Well, you ask the question, how can I be of service to other people?
How can I if I help other people create their American dream and I'm automatically going to achieve mine and it has to be other people focused?
And if I can do that, I can also live a more fulfilling, happy life because I'm not, Thoreau said, you're living the life of quiet desperation.
I'm focusing on others.
I'm living an extraordinary life, creating value, creating money, creating opportunities.
And I'm not sitting around feeling sorry for myself, feeling like a victim.
Yeah, I love this. And I love thinking about this through the lens of a mindset.
That's a choice. That's an intentional choice.
And if you choose to believe it, then it will change the way that you look at it.
It's like what Henry Ford said.
If you believe you can or believe you can't.
You're true. It's true.
Right. You're right.
You're right. And so if you train your mind to say, hey, there are no opportunities for me, then you won't see opportunities.
If you train your mind to say there are opportunities, then you will find those opportunities.
I think about the examples.
I was going to call out my son, but I mean, my son is just a clone of me when I was younger.
And when when it is aged now, there are times where my parents would tell me and I tell Kai, hey, find this thing.
And I'm in a bad mood.
I'm like, it's not there.
It's not there. They told me to look there.
It's not there. And then I walk in.
There it is. And I can't get that mad at him, Mark, because I mean, he is me.
I did the same thing, but it's all about that mindset.
Right. And so I think about this in terms of difficult conversations and negotiations.
That's one of the things that I always mention.
If you have to change your mindset to look at conflict as an opportunity, difficult conversations as an opportunity, if we think about it as something to be afraid of and we see the damage that can be dealt through this conversation, we're either going to avoid it completely or not engage wholeheartedly
during it. But if we recognize, oh, no, this is an opportunity, it forces you to say, OK, if this is an opportunity, if this is true, then there has to be something here and you'll look for it because you're training your mind to look for it.
So when you think about what is required to experience the American dream and people are looking for opportunities to experience that freedom, where should they focus?
And then we can actually talk about the conversations that are required to accomplish that.
I think one of the greatest places to look, especially for young people, is the idea of being an entrepreneur at the foundation of the American dream is freedom, capitalism and the ability to create value for others.
And I see entrepreneur, I think Adam Smith and Karl Marx both got it wrong.
Both of them said that that business people make money out of greed.
Now, Adam Smith said because of competition, it'll be the best value to society.
Karl Marx said, no, they'll amass too much capital and they'll destroy and hurt other people.
But both of them said that it was still based on greed.
But I know a lot of entrepreneurs and almost none of them are driven by money.
What they're driven by, they really are driven by helping other people have a better life.
The great ones always are like that.
Disney didn't just stand around going, oh, how can I make more money?
He was like, how can I create a theme park and create the happiest place in the world?
So it goes back to what you're trying to create.
And you've got a great opportunity to be an entrepreneur in our country.
The other thing is that for an entrepreneur, it's a form of expression and creation.
It's a business as a form of an art.
So an artist might work on canvas or clay or sculpture.
A business person, an entrepreneur, an innovator, creates their business as an expression of who they are and what they want to create for the world.
So it's a form of expression and freedom and creativity.
And the greatest entrepreneurs, whether it's an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Disney, they create massive amounts of wealth, not because of the money.
Most of them didn't even spend near any of the money that they had.
They did it because it was a form of creativity and expression.
And I think that's a great opportunity for young people to create businesses and grow as entrepreneurs.
I am extremely biased and I say yes.
As a fellow entrepreneur, I agree 100 percent.
And for me, as my family, being a first generation American, my family, most a good amount of them started businesses here and flourishing and thriving here, too.
So I agree. And I think a lot of times, again, going back to what I said before about the false dichotomy about the American dream, I think there's a false dichotomy about entrepreneurship.
It's either you're fully entrepreneurial like starting your own business or you're fully within a company.
But people with side hustles are doing extremely well.
And when you think about the negotiations that really help entrepreneurs take their enterprises to the next level, what are the things that come to mind the most for you?
Well, I think about finding good strategic partners that share your values.
For me, I was 27 years old.
I was fed up with the investing industry.
Everything I was doing for my clients was a bust.
I was told try to pick the best stocks, try to get in and out of the market at the right time, try to find the best managers and put your clients money in it.
And I was being told this by my big brokerage firm that I worked for.
And after only three or four years, it was really clear to me this didn't work.
We weren't beating the market.
We weren't able to time it.
We weren't able to find the managers that would repeat.
Sure, we found the ones that were great in the past, but they had zero correlation with they were going to succeed in the future.
And I went to the head of the president of my broker dealer and I said, this is broken, it's hurting people.
And what are we going to do about it?
And he said, what do you care?
He said, just sell him something else and get another commission.
I knew immediately I had to get out.
I didn't have an answer, but I knew I couldn't work with this guy anymore.
Couldn't work with this firm anymore because my values didn't align.
And then I went to a debate and I heard Donald Jochen, which was a five star money manager, debate this guy named Rex Seinfeld, who was an academic from the University of Chicago.
And he said the reason that stock picking and market timing and track record investing don't work is that all the knowable and predictable information is already in the price today.
Therefore, only random or unpredictable information changes prices going forward.
Therefore, you don't want to speculate and gamble with your money.
You want to use science and math.
And there are Nobel prize winning investment methodologies like Efficient Market Theory, the three factor model, modern portfolio theory.
And I don't expect anybody to know this.
It's in the book. But people have dedicated their whole life to understanding markets.
It's one of the one of the strategies in the book is ask a good question.
My grandfather's asked the question, why am I stuck to live in this poverty for the rest of my life?
My dad asked the question, how can I escape this poverty and create prosperity for other people?
The question that I asked was how can I eliminate speculating and gambling and use science to actually help people prudently invest and then coach them to stay disciplined over a lifetime?
And that's what created the company that I have today.
So in negotiating, I always try to negotiate or form relationships from values and belief systems.
And to the best of my ability, science and math in my business for sure.
And then eliminate people that just just that are going to hurt people, not buy into it, no matter how much the money.
Mark, what I love about this, when you talked about how you pick your partners, you focused on values and beliefs.
And then science and math came next.
And I think a lot of people would have just said math.
I think that's where people mess up.
And again, I think it's so validating to see somebody who's achieved what you have achieved focusing on these core elements of purpose, values, belief, because a lot of times, Mark, if you just focus on making sure that you have values, alignment, alignment and beliefs and those type of things, a lot
of times the rest falls into play.
And I recognize that, too.
And in my business, I can think about the times where I'm most successful.
And it was the times where I had the best team in place.
Like when things really started to align with the team, with the aligning with the partnerships, that's when things really got moving.
And it's about the being values driven.
So not only values driven in terms of knowing and understanding what your personal values are, but being values driven in terms of creating value for other people.
People don't want to work with me or for me if I'm not creating value for them and their family and helping them to achieve their dreams.
People aren't going to work with me when it comes to these clients and these big clients that we have.
If we weren't generating value for them and we work with publicly traded companies, they don't have time to waste.
Right. So yes, you have to be able to provide value.
But again, we have that alignment.
I think that's crucial.
And I know your time, you're on a you're on a busy book schedule here.
So I want to respect that.
And I am going to do something that I typically don't do.
I'm going to I'm going to be selfish for a moment.
I like where this is going, let's do it.
So I have a I have a keynote coming up and with a client, the million dollar roundtable, so it's a bunch of lots of financial professionals.
And this is an opportunity for you to to speak to those folks and then also the 500 advisors that you have.
When you think about negotiation, conflict resolution and communication in general, what are the core skills that money managers, people who are in the financial services space, what are the core skills that they need in order to serve their clients?
Well, they I've been doing this business a long time.
I have taught and trained over 3000 financial advisors.
The number one skill is actually caring about your client.
Everyone, of course, says they do.
Everyone says they do.
But you go to class in this industry, this broker dealer, financial wealth management industry.
And it's all about how to put butts in seats.
It's about buying units.
It's about bonding and rapport to manipulate.
It's about using past performance to sell people.
It's about using fear to make them buy products.
It's about it's a very especially in the investment end of it.
The million dollar roundtable is usually an insurance thing where they sell a lot of life insurance, which is great.
People definitely need life insurance.
So I'm a big believer.
That's where I started.
But on the investment side, people I call them Wall Street bullies.
And they manipulate and control people so they can sell product.
The thing that we didn't talk about is the the psychology of investing.
Once you know the science of it, then you have to stay disciplined to it over a lifetime.
And the advisors have just as hard of a time as the investors do because it's things like hurting bias.
If everybody's doing it, you you want to do it, too.
It's FOMO, fear of missing out.
If everybody's getting rich on the video or crypto, people want to get into the video or crypto.
It's familiarity bias.
If everybody knows Apple, and that's the popular name, everybody wants to buy Apple.
And if you're a financial professional, you want to try to sell people typically what was hot over the last three or four years.
And they end up with these Frankenstein portfolios, portfolios that don't make sense from science.
They don't make sense from math.
They don't make sense from history.
And so putting the client above yourself and telling the client, no, even if that's going to cost you the client when it's the right thing to do for the client, that's one of the hardest skills is a financial professional that I've ever seen.
There are a rare few that can do it.
And if you can find somebody like that, I would stick with them.
Mark, that is powerful, powerful stuff, man.
I listen, I appreciate you coming on the show.
And again, before you go, I want to give you a chance to shout out the book and how people can get in touch.
Yeah. So the book is called Experiencing the American Dream.
It's a national best seller.
My buddy Rob Lowe wrote the forward to it.
Shout out to Rob Lowe.
I got Arnold Schwarzenegger that endorsed it.
Steve Forbes, Steve Moore.
So we got a powerhouse.
Also, Dr. Art Laffer wrote The Prolog, who worked with Reagan on his economic policy to turn the country around.
Great movie, by the way.
So you can get on Amazon experiencing the American dream.
It's great for your family, great for kids.
And I always tell people, look, the American dream is only one generation from dying.
It's not something you're born with.
It's something you have to be taught.
And if you believe in your American dream and you want to build that into your family, it's a great book to read.
You can grab it on Amazon.
Mark, incredible work today.
And thank you for sharing your American dream with us.
Really appreciate it.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks a ton. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before.
Just kidding. I've told you before about it.
You should listen to it again.
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