Understanding #DarrellEvans Entrepreneurship Journey #shahiddurrani #superentrepreneurs

[Music] welcome to Super entrepreneurs podcast today we have with us Daryl Evans Daryl how are you Shahid I'm gr I'm super glad to be here really pumped up and excited to share some some ideas with your audience today thanks for having me oh that's great you know I'm I know you're so busy and we had to I had I had to think reschedule once too so I'm so grateful that you um you know took the time to come out and and speak to me it's really about a very laidback friendly conversation right like we just like to kind of provide value to the audience something that gives them an an a little push or a nudge or something that will guide them or provide some kind of value so you're definitely the kind of right guy to be here right now and I'm GR ful to you for coming on the show I'm super glad to be here and hopefully I can deliver on that promise to your audience you will don't worry you will you're awesome thank you so much Daryl so let me kind of let the stage take the stage to introduce yourself to the audience um all the amazing things that you do and we'll take it from there you know I appreciate that uh amazing things I think everyone has amazing Stories an amazing background but anyway my name is darl Evans thanks again for having me born and raised here in Las Vegas Nevada and got started in entrepreneurship in my early days of college uh kind of Dipping my toe in the water uh got an early start in leadership I was also a restaurant manager for a little company called Taco Bell not sure if if your audience is familiar with that College college kids favorite food restaurant because it's the cheapest one to eat at um but I started working and working in leadership there I was actually a general manager at age 20 and uh the entrepreneurship bug bit me and just decided to to really take it full on probably around the age of 30 so 10 years I kind of dibbled and dabbled you know still had work plus entrepreneurship on the side uh and then a life event around 98 99 happened and uh it forced my hand on making a decision and it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made uh the life situation was certainly not fun to go through but uh nevertheless sometimes you need those defining moments in your life those triggering events that to set you on a path to your future and so fast forward to today I've been running a digital marketing agency now for the last uh 11 years with a business partner outside of some Consulting and some other things but that's our primary business and uh we've been running that now since 200 late 2010 early 2011 and we're partnered up with HubSpot marketing automation CRM the whole bit and uh really been doing well with companies I think we're north of 300 million uh or so in revenue for the clients that we work with so that's been our journey in a short snippet that's awesome so are you actually targeting that type of clientele or do you have a specific size that you look at when you work with someone yeah so our agency really is think of our agency as uh the outsourced digital marketing department for a small to midsize firm so we're we're a bit big we're bigger than the company that's just sort of the one person solopreneur um you know they've gotten to you know a couple million in Revenue three million in Revenue maybe they're in that 3 to 10 million Revenue spot although there have been some bigger companies we've got companies that are 30 50 80 million but we do St we tend to stay away from the fortune the big Fortune companies right because uh our agency brings both strategy plus execution and a team of experts so the problem with big companies we have found nothing wrong with the big giants we have had our fair share of opportunities there is we tended to get put into a little Silo and inside of a massive Marketing System so you think of a company that has 15 or 20 uh marketing team you know they just really need somebody to do some execution in leaden or cro or you know data analysis or Facebook ads and that just wasn't what we wanted to do we wanted to come in and partner with companies to help them grow and scale one of the big statistics that weighs on my mind every day that I I I do my work is the uh 5% of companies that actually make more than a million dollars a year and the 95% that don't so we're really in this market to really help those companies that get to a million figure out how to scale and and get to what the entrepreneur really wants right which is the freedom of time freedom of Life freedom of of of Revenue and income and if they choose to get the business in a place where it can be sold and that may not always be the goal but uh we just find a lot of business owners own a job that they actually hate and so we try to alleviate that by bringing in the right marketing and sales systems from a digital perspective because that's where our expertise lies and in your entrepreneur Journey what type of businesses were you in before you started this one oh yeah great question so I I would say the F so the very first business uh sheid was a uh what would today be called e-commerce I called it trunk Commerce I guess now because I I started a a retail business out of the trunk of my car at the swap meet when I was in college so I played Sports growing up football baseball basketball and I so still to this day a massive sports fan so I always find myself after after a business attire I'm always in sportsware so I'm a Lakers fan Dodgers fan Rams fan because I grew up in Vegas at that time we had no sports teams so today we have the Raiders the golden knights the aces we have a lot of teams now here in Vegas but we didn't have teams when I grew up so I just decided hey let me find someone who sells uh merchandise and I would set up my back my little Honda Civic up to a space I'd run a space for the weekend I'd be out there from 6:30 in the morning till 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday I couldn't be there Friday because I had school and work uh but on the weekends I was out there and I'd pop up my table and sell some some merchandise and that was sort of my first little Hustle but so that was a first little thing I had a business with a business partner with a friend of mine in college which was the janitorial service that didn't go well uh we didn't we still are friends to this day but that business didn't make it uh fast forward into the 2000 Arena I was in the real estate and mortgage lending industry I ended up owning a real estate sorry a mortgage company uh while carrying a real estate license through that entire period and that was a home run for me um not just a home run because of the industry but because I actually got a degree in finance and it just paired really well with what I studied thinking I wanted to go work on Wall Street and do portfolio Theory portfolio analysis and trading uh it just paired very well with me and um so that was the run from 2000 to 2010 and around 2008 Nish when the market was crashing of course uh we obviously took some lumps as a small mortgage outfit and I just be you know I had done some work in 2005 with my business and life coach at that time and I just started evaluating whether the trajectory of the mortgage industry in my career was going to get me where I wanted to go and uh the answer became no and so I started looking for some new opportunities and I had started with digital marketing around 2004 2005 in that industry and by the time I looked up the industry needed digital because a lot of people that were coming into my market were coming in from Canada they're coming in from you know overseas and the local market customer base was tapped because they were either their their house was upside down they couldn't do anything with it nobody was buying homes at that time except people from out of the area so it was my online marketing that kept my business float and and really kept me full of Pipeline and I was like looking around and all these business owners can't get any mortgages they can't get cash out of their properties because the bank only gives you money when you don't need it um and I'm like wait a minute they're not doing digital marketing they're they're like I'm doing okay and they're struggling because they're still doing radio TV Billboards and so anyway it just became an open door for me and I wanted some freedom of location um I was also tired of getting calls at 5 o'clock at night 6 o'clock night when I was coaching football because I coach youth football and so the the the shift for me was like okay I've got this skill set no one else seems to have and how do I apply that and then I can actually pair that with some of my bigger life goals and so that was a shift and I met my business partner a couple years before that we decided to to pair up and launch the company that we're in today and uh that's kind of the short run of of those couple of careers and I had a little Fitness thing on the side as well because I'm a big Fitness guy but I wouldn't have called that a business business that's more of a side hustle that's cool I love hearing these things you know like it's um it's Fascinate like it fascinates me when I hear like the journey that people go through and and all the the experiences um I have my experiences I know but then when you hear other people's experiences you can relate like because we're all connected like we're all like we're all in it you know and we we when we hear these things from each other it just you just feel some points feel good some feels you know you some feel that hey I can do better or I can help make sure I don't go through what this person went through I can do this different you know what I mean so it adds some clarity so I love I love hearing this and back to that part when you went in your trunk right selling from the trunk was that was there some kind of trigger that made you want to do that like what was it that you why did you take that leap like you know but let me step back like your parents are they in business or are they employees nto5 no they were they were uh career they were career professionals my dad was uh in the uh he was in sales he was in the the uh jewelry business for a long period of time and then he was in the financial sales business for for some time my mom was in banking and uh retail store management so those were her two tracks that that were most prominent in my memory uh she was in retail management then she went to banking management and then after 20 years there she went back to retail on the tail end of her career and um so no no entrepreneurship in my in my in my family lineage that I'm aware of my grandmother did have a real estate license um at some point in her journey but she was a registered nurse so no just a professional um uh career path and and i' I've said this to some folks I was really blessed that I didn't have anyone in my family try to talk me out of Entrepreneurship um and which was great because a lot of times you get loved ones who say you know what are you doing and believe me Shahid I've taken some lumps uh I've taken some serious lumps and as any entrepreneur does but again I think when you make decisions about your future and being able to sit in the seat of your life 25 years from now and doing that hard work you can make decisions about what risks you're willing to take what chances because you only get one shot at this right we all only get one shot at this and I just didn't have a settling mentality and I was good at what I did in my job I'm a great Stu I was a great student I had good grades I was great in my first career um call it a career because I was a general manager for tabell um I didn't need a degree to do as well as I did and I was good at it it was fine but I also realized it wasn't enough it wasn't as fulfilling it wasn't as rewarding and it got boring pretty quick and I'm not saying boring because I was that good but it just got boring and so I'm just one of those people who understands my DNA and I I teach this in my in my work with with some of the entrepreneurs and I'm like I'm always trying to figure out what an entrepreneur's DNA is and DNA means definite natural ability and for me I learned early on that my ability wasn't going to fit well in the corporate environment and it wasn't because I couldn't follow the rules of a corporate environment I can but it was just because I was going to get bored quickly and a lot of times I think people listen to the show even can figure out they're not happy they're not settled with what they're doing but they're afraid to take the risk and so I just decided early on the worst thing that can happen is it doesn't work out and I go get a job that's the worst thing that can happen you know it's not business failure it's not Financial failure because those things have happened along the way and I'm still here so it's not as painful as you think it hurts for the moment but if you take it as a learning lesson and move on to the next thing you'll be fine mhm but when you look back at that time was there something that cuz your family wasn't in business right like you what was that did you feel something inside you that say you know what I gotta get into business like I gotta I gota the funny story is I used to go to the grocery store with my mom all the time in my teens and I would go and not go because I wanted to be in the grocery store although ironically today I'm the cook of the house so uh yeah I love love to cook it's it's a hobby of mine I I'm fascinated by eggs oh my favorite one of my favorite but but here was the interesting part when I would I would peel off from the from the grocery basket and ask my mom if I could go to the magazine rack and I just noticed that the top of my mind was always Entrepreneur magazine business opportunity magazine Forbes Inc that's what I would flip through when I was there it wasn't it wasn't so that was just where my mind was gravitated to and so I can only say to you that when that opportunity presented itself uh at the time when I decided to do the swap meet it was more of a I've been reading about this it seems interesting it has my mind and here's a fun fact I started college as an electrical engineering major for no other reason other than the fact that I I liked walkie-talkies and radios and boom boxes and I just thought it looked interesting so I just chose to do something but then I got into business with Taco Bell and I was getting into a place of leadership and it that became pnls you know I started understanding p&l and ordering an inventory and team management and hiring and training and empowerment and all of the stuff that they provided me which again a lot of people don't realize happens inside of a fast food restaurant because those systems are very critical to what I believe helped me as an entrepreneur because a lot of entrepreneurs they they they kind of flail around and they don't have structure and they think well I'm I'm My Own Boss well being Your Own Boss can be your own detriment too if you don't if you don't have the right systems in place but for me it was one of those things let me do this and let me do something I actually like which is you know so I think a lot of times people do things in entrepreneurship to chase money and I was like the worst thing that can happen is I I have more clothes of of sports teams like that was the worst thing that I could do um so I just it just was like let me do this and see if I can earn money as an entrepreneur because I already know how to earn money as an employee right and so for these weekends i' I'd earn a couple bucks a weekend it wasn't like you it wasn't like you know walk away from the job money but it was like it was enough to prove the concept that oh I can buy something for this price and sell it at another price if I bring it to a Marketplace that might be interested and it was just an early lesson in marketing and sales and I didn't have to sell anything actually because you and I both know if you're a Rams fan you're not you know you're not buying Denver Broncos stuff right so I figured out that I'm on the west coast so I had Oakland Raiders I had Frisco I had all the West Coast stuff right it has to sell so so that's awesome and if you look like I'm a I'm a big believer in that you know every human being that's on the planet is here for a purpose so you going to those magazines and everything and then where you are right now impacting lives helping entrepreneurs you know bringing them business being successful providing for your family you know all these beautiful things that you're doing started from that so something guided you you know what I mean like there's a path that you took and then you took the right path because you were here for a purpose and this you know I don't know do you feel like this is your purpose yes uh you hit on a great point it took me some time to get to maybe the realization because in some cases you're just trying to feed your family in other cases it's you know in other cas is it's like I've got to do what I've got to do because I've now made this new decision but I guess now looking at it and I'm going to say 20 you know 21 years now full-time entrepreneurship I would say that this was the only path for me and that life event that happened probably needed to happen in some way shape or form and again as I look back on it now it it just it had to happen it it needed to happen right it had to happen it's by Design no it's all by Design and sometimes we don't love it when it happens and we don't understand how it happens um and then to fast forward to where I'm yeah when it and and you know there's a um phrase I I've read and I've heard and I I in fact it came from a pastor and he said nothing just happens under this this Universal spiritual world that we live in nothing just happens even the good and the bad when the mortgage industry fell apart when the real estate industry fell apart that had to happen for me to get here yeah if that doesn't happen I probably don't make the change that has blessed my last my life the last 11 years and it wasn't that my life wasn't blessed then but that distinction that triggering event was a pivot point for inflection and reflection for me and it may not have changed where I'm at today so again all things happened by the way for your listening audience my company went under in that collapse because the banks pulled all the credit lines of small mortgage compan like mine now my mortgage company was small we were doing 100 million in in revenue or you know Topline sales but that's a relatively small number when you consider that at that time a Countrywide home uh loan company was doing 300 400 million a day I'm doing it a year yeah right so so just so that's how small we really were but when they started pulling credit lines for no reasons whatsoever because they were collapsing they just pulled credit lines um we didn't have the capital to meet the um fha's New Capital requirement which was extending your credit lines in a market that was collapsing so we just couldn't do anything about it and so that was a tough window of time so there was sort of I call it a forced business failure although there were certainly some things we probably could have done differently along the way but we were just too small to stay and um so that forced a hand in decision and thinking and so again everything happens for a reason so 98 something happens 2008 something something happens I got to tell you something else 2018 in my agency and we could even jump forward to co 2018 in my agency we lose our biggest client and it was it was one of those scenarios where we didn't realize although we probably did we just didn't pay attention that our concentration with this one company because he had three companies that the owner of this group they had three companies in our portfolio and we didn't realize how much money they were paying us I we did but we didn't realize what the balance was in our agency and they were about 28% of our revenue and then he decided to go a different direction and our business was quickly in in some interesting Waters and so then you fast forward to co and all of the a lot of our clients were like everybody was told hey you're not going to do business right now if you're not a essential service so the category of essential and non-essential was defined when Co started yes and the lockdown in March of the third week of March is what it hit us 57% of our Revenue disappeared in 14 days I can agree with that so messed up a lot of entrepreneurs yeah yeah and so in that as much as as painful as that was and of course the government came in and did their thing but it's p that doesn't replace the revenue that was sustenance money right so you couldn't just get the PPP money and think your business was going to survive if you had bad economics um so it that situation every pivot point every thing that we think of as a adverse situation there's something to take from it and um it's part of how I have adjusted as as the years have gone on and so in this moment of 57% loss of Revenue okay so Co is a fact we are been told to sit on the sideline our clients were told to sit on the sideline okay so there's a group of people that are called essential businesses so of the essential group who can we help right so you got to pay and and before you know it now you've got essential and non-essential and obviously uh you just have to make those adjustments so entrepreneur entrepreneurship is very much about your ability to adjust on the Fly and you I hear so many stories like especially with Co the entrepreneurs the the pivot they did and the things that they went through is just incredible and and I'm glad that everything is okay now and you guys are are on fire you know what I mean and the audience you know and people that are listening to this you can see you can hear in Daryl's um voice you can see in his eyes you can hear you can see the mindset behind all this like what did he go through just really think about this stuff like really this is supposed to be valuable right so listen to everything that he's saying and where he is right now and what he went through we don't have all the details but he's been through a lot what kind of mindset did Daryl have to have right and then what do you think about mindset said darl like how do you how did that play a role in your overall Journey uh 100% everything I tell people all the time that I've I've spent uh 29 or 30 years now working on myself a little bit every single day and had I not started back in the days I'm G to go and give credit where credits due for I I grew up in the church so I give my parents credit for getting me involved in the church and and so uh Biblical teaching sits at the root of all of it of course fast forward into the to the my 20s and it's Anthony Robbins Tony uh sorry it's Anthony Robbins it's zig Ziggler it's Jim rone it's Les Brown It's uh Brian Tracy early mentors of mine I call them mentors although I've only I've only met Les Brown out of all that group um their mentors that they became uh I realized that in entrepreneurship I couldn't look left or right and find advice at that age there wasn't there there probably were masterminds and group communities like we have today online but there weren't as many in the 990s and so it was always going to a seminar I was always looking for another CD Series right so I'm aging myself I'm 51 I'm not a dinosaur but that's what we had I kept my car on what I called car University so I was constantly getting fed something about my mindset and Tony Robbins gets the most credit because it was his material that I latched on to early on unlimited power awaken the giant within um his power hour series and so he gets a lot of credit for have for the constant uh helping me understand how to adapt and so but today the 1998 situation began a situation where I had to deal with my own Frameworks in my own mentality and I've developed something over the years that I've realized really comes down to four steps as it relates to the mindset of of how I deal with not just when things knock us down right when things set us back but also how I address new goals and so the four steps I call it the Mind shift method as opposed to the mindset method and it's really the name of my podcast which is the Mind shift podcast and really it just says it's four things right number one it's making peace with the facts as we see them today so Co for example was a fact the situation with us losing the revenue was a fact we didn't do anything wrong to lose the revenue the revenue was you know it made sense that the company wouldn't keep paying us if they couldn't keep doing business so making peace with the facts and a lot of people instead of making peace with the facts they make excuses about the facts they blame others about the facts and the answer is the reality is the facts are the facts So the faster we can make mental peace with the facts the more we can move to step two which is making a decision a new decision based on the facts right so now as I mentioned just go back to that situation okay 57% of the revenue is gone I've got new decisions to make am I laying people off who are we going to have as customers now what are we doing so I've got to make new decisions one of those decisions at that time was we weren't going to lay anybody off because we knew the facts though they were facts they were temporary facts so I'm not going to lay off people and risk not getting them back on a on a short-term layoff because they have livelihoods and they have to go do other things so my business partner and R we were like hey uh don't think we're going to be able I mean we're not going to leave by off because this is we still work to do and we have a bunch of Specialties so we can't just you know we can't the person who if we use a car metaphor the person who handles paint in an auto Factory isn't the one working on the engine right it's not the same person the person who's working on the you know the the different the car has a manufacturing process what we do in our agency for growth has a manufacturing is type process I can't take the person who does paid ads and all of a sudden make them the web developer it doesn't work that way MH I agree so I can't just get rid of the top three salaries and cut the bottom line because the skill sets are cross-dimensional and I can't expect that person who does paid as to understand how to write blogs right it's just not the way it works so we just made new decisions so step two is make new decisions based on those facts step three is come up with a plan that will help you lead to the successful outcome of your decision and this is where you you know you probably know this as well as I and probably all your guests sometimes we don't have the answers we can make a decision we can make peace we can make a decision but we don't have a plan that's where coaches Mentor guides masterminds training programs come in and you've got to invest in that in that in that process go find someone who can help you get through this process and our business adviser was was key for us uh he doesn't know digital he's just a business adviser yeah but he was key um and then we just started looking around the industry at who was making similar pivots to what we were doing yeah and so you got to find that step three which is figuring out the plan and then step four is is obviously the hard part which is making the Daily Commitment to action on that plan on that plan long after your feeling left you when you made the decision right so it's hard to say I'm not going to let anybody go yeah but the payroll is coming due and the revenue is not coming the revenue is gone the payroll is still there it's it's you got to keep the decision to the commitment and and make the action so the action for us was in this one example is we've got to make more sales so how do we do that we can't go meet people like we used to we can't all my business partner he's a speaker by the way he's a speaker and author he can't travel all of his travel was canceled all of his speaking gigs were canceled so we had to turn virtual events on and we had to do all the same stuff a lot of people had to do so the question though in step four is are you going to be committed to the action steps and keep your energy and belief Factor high and I think that's where some people get derailed they make a decision in their head it doesn't attach to their heart and then they lose motivation and so I say any decision in your head has to get attached somewhere in your heart and for me what was that the heart was looking on that zoom camera knowing that nine or 11 people re they believed in me and my partner to figure this out I didn't know how it was going to go I just didn't but I knew that looking in that Zoom screen when we broke broke our company into virtual those 9 11 people were sitting there believing that we would get it figured out [Music] yeah that's what I thought about every night yeah right our clients emotional connection you got to get it to your heart yeah because if my head said my head said there's a faster way to fix the bottom line yeah and there would have been there's a faster way to fix the bottom line but that that's that's not going to you know that's all the decision- making that goes into so that's just one example um of course many in in my career yeah and decision making it's you know you make the decision you have to make a quick decision of what you have and you make it work but that point that you mentioned about connecting it to your heart that right there is everything and and unfortunately people don't realize that your emotional side of you is what makes this body move you know and makes things happen so by connecting those two you know you it's amazing I love that I'm going to definitely recommend if anybody's listening to check out this uh information that Daryl is sharing about the four steps um now my next question is are you getting this done or is it natural the beard the color the color oh yeah no that's natural that's my so this is the co beard this is the co beard it's just coming in the way it's coming in people ask me it was an experience people people ask me too right that is that colored or is it natural natural but yeah yours is that's yeah the two the two Grays are coming in on the sides of the chin yeah so it's kind awesome yeah that's great and then you mentioned about a a life event I'm sure you don't want to share that right like what happened or anything that no perfectly fine oh you can no it's perfectly fine I can share yeah it's it's perfectly fine it I usually don't just jump into it unless someone wants to hear about it but yeah so um the life event that sort of shaped what I call the mind shift method and really has shaped I you know the underlying process that I go through now and am now confident that I can deal with anything is that I had two children in my 20s with uh my girlfriend at the time we split in 98 and during that time period she decided to move from Vegas to Texas and so now as a father who has a history of his father leaving him uh I could have easily thought about those facts and and got into blame mode like why did she do that why did she take my kids across state lines we were 1,75 miles away roughly and but I my decision at the time was okay the facts are the facts she's not coming back and she's a grownup she's an adult she can do that she had family there it made logical sense it hurt like heck to not have my kids in my life every day but the truth of the matter was I had new decisions to make and so the decision was I'm going to be a good father and I'm going to be pres of my kids' lives no matter how far away we are and I didn't know what that meant I didn't know what it looked like obviously we had all the visitation and stuff set up but when I said I sort of had to make the decision about entrepreneurship the way visitation was set up I I would get my kids all summer they were eight and two at the time and and I would get them for certain holidays and the way the court broke it down it was kind of weird so her and I worked out kind of a an ad you know the summer stayed in place we just kind of flipped the holidays because it just didn't make sense the way the court broke it down and so we were very uh we we worked together as co-parents and the reality was my decision for entrepreneurship was it's just not logical that I'm going to see my kids that much over the summer if I have a regular job yeah so I'm gonna put them in daycare and I'm gonna go to work all day and it's a a lot of parents have to deal with this but I just was like this ain't acceptable it's just not acceptable so I wanted a situation where I was pretty much off all summer or I could choose to be off most to the summer and spend a high amount of quality time with them and so what I did was I of course chose entrepreneurship I was in the mortgage industry at the time which in the mortgage industry you're self-employed and I was able to set my schedule up and set my business model up such that during the summer when they were uh in in in town I pretty much I I I don't by the way money was not by the way let's be clear about another thing I wasn't I wasn't killing it in finances I I made decisions in other words I wasn't just so wealthy that I could just take the whole summer off and goof off no I just decided to live at a certain point of my means such that I could pay for the money to travel back and forth because remember you can't put a kid on a plane at eight and two and send them on their own way I had to go travel and get them for five years I had to travel over and back over and back over and back over and back over and back right that was my responsibility so you think about the cost Factor uh planes are a little cheap today than they were then I I remember playing as much as $1,400 to get over him back um but anyway that was one of the things that happened that shaped me as a as a human um the decision to be present and do everything I could to be present as much as you possibly can for an eight and a two-year-old uh decisions to call every weekend even if I didn't I got silence on the other side um and be consistent with that uh be consistent with supporting her as as a parent in her household as the boys got older and they can be a little defant um it wasn't like you're going to run to Dad and bail you out no Mom said those are the rules that's just the way it works you're going to respect her um and one time when my older son didn't do something and she called me and and I said listen if I get on a plane and come down there we're gonna have a problem and I was willing to do that at any given point in time and so just my decision to you know the methodology right I decided the facts were the facts I decided what I wanted to do from side of it as as a decision to move forward to be a good dad do what I could I didn't have a plan I didn't know what it looked like the plan eventually became be an entrepreneur because if you're an entrepreneur you can control your schedule a bit more you have a chance for bigger Revenue than you would if you're just at a regular job that gets two to three four five% increase every year you don't have to worry about people telling you when you can and can't have time off but now your job is to prove the model and then the fourth piece is uh making it happen right so um that that you just don't know what that looks like but um the reason I use the word mind shift instead of mindset and I'm a big believer mindset the reason I say mind shift is that I believe as I look back at a lot of these decisions I had to make that there was a non-negotiable aspect to the decision and that means I have to be a different person I have to show up as a different person I have to behave in a certain way Jim rone used to say it this way um when you set a goal um you got to set a goal big enough that makes you you got to set a goal that makes you become somebody different M because if you're the same person when you reach this goal as you were before you set the goal you really didn't grow and so a goal should push you to have to become a different person and for me it was maturity and for me it was um owning up to my own mistakes and for me it was looking myself in the mirror every day when it was hard and when I was sleeping on the floor and there are some pieces to the story that again some other people here can recognize when I made this decision I was sleeping on my grandmother's couch out of two duffel bags it was a really tough time how dare I say that I'm gonna be an entrepreneur sleeping on my grandmother's couch out of two duffel bags with a 472 fical score I'd made some mistakes he and who do I think I am right but it became a ownership of my responsibility in that moment and it became non-negotiable and I started setting goals and it it made me become a new person it forced me and by the way I already had eight years of personal development in me right so I had a little bit of Base but I was in a point of emotion where I I had to get myself out of that emotion because I had enough personal development I had enough spiritual but I had to get myself into to where I believed Faithfully that that was going to happen like the things that I said were going to happen were going to happen um it didn't magically make them happen but the doors began to open the the work that I put in um began to elevate the situation and and things have um things have gone okay and so again a lot of people will say oh you know on the other side of success and this and that but yeah but are you willing to do the stuff that no one saw um and that's the key uh not just in entrepreneurship but in life like be willing to do the hard work when no one's looking when nobody's there to applaud you and um I say this a lot and that is one of the hardest things about entrepreneurship is your ability to keep commitments to yourself and that's where I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle they just don't keep commitments to themselves they they set the goal today 30 days 60 days 90 days later the goal is not that important yeah but you know the like you mentioned the goal has to be really big and beautiful um and when it's not people kind of drift kind of get well it has to go from here to here yeah the heart the heart if you don't get the goal out of here yeah if you don't get the goal out of your head and get it into your heart you'll quit yeah you got to have a desired field you know you got to be like burning with it obsessed with it let me let me let me share another quick example when I grew up my dad was a very disciplined dude like he's from the south he had a disciplin process I wasn't wild about his discipline process but it worked uh I didn't die but he believed in belts he believed in whooping you when you didn't do stuff right that's just the way he was raised I decided I wasn't gonna do that but that's just what he did but let me tell you when when I had a goal to have good grades it was kind of a force goal because I knew there was a consequence for not getting the good grades right there was two consequences one there was a possib ility of getting a whooping number two I definitely wouldn't play sports because that was a condition of our household environment you don't get to play sports unless you have good grades and if you you really screw up uh there could be some some some backlash um that got from my head to my heart believe me because my emotion yeah didn't want to have nothing to do with that belt no nothing yeah as little as possible yeah no for sure that's like is that connection the heart and your conscious mind and connecting to your heart that is everything and that connection is where people fall short and we see that struggle and the three key words that you said that are amazing in this interview are you know goal belief and decisions these three if you bring that into your life you'll start seeing um um major shifts because nothing starts without making a decision and you made some serious ones and I'm I'm grateful to have you on the show my friend and I appreciate your time one last question we always like to ask our guests what's their inner superpower that got them to this point oh wow uh empathy nice um it wasn't always a known superpower and I'll explain what I mean by that I have had the interesting Walk of Life to be involved in work I I've been I've been involved in all sorts of scenarios uh interracial Multicultural multi ethnic people from all walks of life I've been interacting with now for 25 30 years I have been in businesses now working with almost a thousand companies the last 11 years and in order to really uh someone said this to me about 15 years ago they said darl you're just like a Comm million like you just can kind of e and flow with whatever environment you're in how do you that and and I think that's when I realized that I just have the I have an in uncanny ability to just try to understand the room the environment the person the background the possibility their thinking and so I have a philosophy that I believe whenever I'm challenged to to do the human thing which is to reply or respond in an adverse way uh I remember getting a onar review uh on a business uh deliverable with a company and we were 100% in the right but that person chose to leave a one-star review and that person wrote a book uh public book by the way if you know anything about Google reviews you can't just remove them and I've just developed this idea that okay before we reply or respond pause just pump the breakes get be careful before your emotions take over and then step two in this little mindset process is put yourself in their shoes and try to gain their perspective and if you can gain it doesn't mean you agree with their perspective but just try to gain their perspective because if you get those two steps you know and then you go ahead with your reply and try to end up in a healthy discourse of dialogue whatever that may be uh we don't have to go too far back in history in the last couple of years both in our political environment as in the United States and racial tensions and things that nature and it's just a matter of so empathy for me I always try to understand where could this person be coming from where what teaching what lessons what learning could they just be ingrained in their in their Walk of Life I may not agree with it but can I at least try to understand where they're coming from yeah I'd hope that the world would be a more empathetic place I think we're moving more towards the world having more empathy for others and um I I think for me that's what it's been it's helped me in business more often than not um it helps me with I last little quick side bit I I when I was in my mortgage career I worked with company I worked with individuals who were high net worth and then I worked with people who were first-time buyers who were buying a $60,000 condo those are two different buyers buying the same product but there's two different demographics and psychographics and I just don't know how I figured it out but I just figured out just try to sit in their seat for a little bit um and understand where they're coming from understand what motivates them what drives them and again give giving some credit to Tony Robbins because I understand uh I learned his six human needs and don't ask me to quote them but in his work he talks about all of us have these six basic human needs and so I think about the aspect of those and then Robert chalini was another great influence on me understanding human psychology and I just think I just try to live in that perspective so long answer for the word empathy but that's that's my perspective no it's good yeah because empathy but you could actually look at it as perception as well you have a very powerful perception and I think perception is the key as well in business is how you look at things and you're you're able with empathy with perception you're able to look at different directions to provide a solution so this empathy this perception could do wonders for your clients so you know I hope that you serve more and more people I hope you have all the success in the world and you keep growing you keep impacting the world uh because we need good people we need people like this in business more and more so I appreciate you I appreciate everything you do and um thank you so much for being on the show yeah let me say this thank you as well appreciate you having me um I just want to say for you as well we're at a place right now where digital creators like yourself entrepreneurs like yourself um we're putting we have the ability to bring platforms like this together and so I'm super humbled uh to have the opportunity uh keep doing what you're doing because I think we're all taking our own journey in making a bigger a Bigg excuse me this and just opening up dialogue and sharing convers and the fny about it what I've learned is the more we talk and dialogue through these mediums the more we realize how similar we are which is something I really believe we're all made up of the same stuff and we're more we're more alike than we are not alike in the end so thank you so much for having me Shahid it's a pleasure being here and I hope to continue to collaborate with you in the future for sure and I appreciate that what you just said is that we are connected like every in our universe is all connected like even scientists now are saying that we're made from Stardust you know and they've been saying that for a long time but now they're bringing now they're having proof and that's huge you know like that shows that we're all connected we have to serve each other and covid has been the biggest thing that happened in our lives to create this environment you'll see more and more people are becoming more uh compassionate and and you know they're they're coming out they're serving they helping more people and through these mediums and I just want to want you to know that after this interview I still want to continue to know you and interact with what you do and be supportive any way that possible that you need anything from me always open doors for me I want to be you know grow a relationships with anybody I meet everyone I meet because I genuinely love everyone like I want to grow uh with with everyone that I meet so hopefully we keep in touch and we grow together absolutely I 100% agree with you and support 100% of the idea awesome great sounds great Daryl thank you again thanks youread take [Music] care super