Mario: Man, I’m so ready, let’s do this.

John: Yes. Mario arrived in the USA just eight years ago with nothing. And since then, he’s created and sold multiple successful businesses. Mario is a bestselling author and won the 2012 JMI Marketer of the Year Award. He’s also the creator of MissionPreneur Podcast, helping entrepreneurs to create a lifestyle business that’s fun, highly lucrative and truly makes a difference. So, Mario fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse into your personal life.

Mario: Yeah, sure, so I’m super passionate about entrepreneurship and I help entrepreneurs reach that next level. I’m in San Diego right now. I was born actually in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in Germany. That’s quite a story around that that I can share later on. And about ten months ago my son, Oliver Maximus, was born so that is something obviously I’m also very passionate about and yeah, right now, just living the lifestyle dream so to speak and teaching other people how to create online businesses.

John: Oliver Maximus, still one of my favorite names. Way to knock it out of the park there Mario and little insight Fire Nation, myself and Mario met a couple years ago here actually at a networking party in San Diego, right when Kate and I had moved back, you know, we met this great couple, Mario and Maria. We have since hung out numerous times, played a plethora of catchphrase games, both at my house and at his at some nice entrepreneurial get togethers that we have here in San Diego every now and then. But he’s leaving us; he’s going to Las Vegas, Henderson specifically, and by the time you’re hearing this actually, he’s going to have been moved if everything goes to plan.

So, if you’re in the Henderson, Nevada, area, definitely look up Mario Brown because he’s gonna be the kinda guy that’s attracting all the all-star entrepreneurs around him. And speaking of that Mario, let’s just picture that you are at a networking party in Henderson if they have those things and someone walks up to you and they say, “What do you do?” How do you respond in ten seconds?

Mario: Yeah, and it’s a frustrating question. Usually, people don’t get what I do so honestly, I usually say I’m a business coach and a marketing coach and when they wanna know a little bit more, I tell them that I help entrepreneurs create a business that is fun, that is highly lucrative and also truly makes a difference. That would be like the full response.

John: And I can tell you Fire Nation, I’ve seen Mario hosts his own events, I’ve seen him on stage; he is alive on stage and he is in command of the audience and drops value bombs left and right.

Mario: That’s right.

John: Mario, you just put some money down towards your dream house. You’re gonna be moving your family out to Henderson, Nevada. You know all this stuff does cost money. It cost money to live life and that’s what we do here at Entrepreneur On Fire, we talk about ways to becoming viable entrepreneurs, to create real businesses that generate revenue. So, Mario tell us, share with Fire Nation the ways that you are currently generating revenue.

Mario: Yeah, great. So, there’s three main ways that I make money online and that is No. 1, product creation, so I create my own products and marketing funnels could be information products and home study courses and so forth. The big income revenue for me, No. 2, is definitely affiliate marketing so recommending other people’s products that I truly believe in and you wanna make sure that you test them of course but the affiliate marketing would be the second big source of revenue.

And then the third one would be group coaching and one on one coaching so literally working with entrepreneurs one on one via Skype conversations or they fly in and we do masterminds and they pay me monthly for group or one on one coaching. So, those are like the main three ones.

John: Okay, this is kind of putting you on the spot here, but just real quick go with your gut, what’s your favorite personal product that you’ve ever created yourself?

Mario: I would say Video Product Oro which was teaching people, because it was recent, it was really teaching people how to put together their own product and a simple easy way how to use ScreenFlow, how to get your audio right but in a very easy to implement way so that is more one of the recent ones. Like overall, I would say webinar mastery, just teaching people how to do webinars.

John: Love that. Now, what’s your favorite affiliate product that you’ve ever promoted? Of course, you know, taking podcasts as paradise out of the equation.

Mario: Right, right, right, if I had to pick one I would say LeadPages because when they launched that product, it changed my world in terms of so easily creating websites.

John: Love LeadPages; was actually just hanging out with Tim Paige at Podcast Movement who is the podcast host and webinar host for all of LeadPages and he crushed his talk at that great conference. So, Mario let’s break it down. Let’s talk with Fire Nation about a story; not just any story and not a happy story, but what you would consider your worst entrepreneurial moment to date. This is a business moment that you think was your absolute worst. Now, take us there Mario, tell us that story.

Mario: Yeah, sure. So, let’s see, I would have to go back to the beginning because when you start out with something new, everything feels even more painful because you have all your hopes up.

So, when I started with, you know, I was fortunate enough to start out in the Internet marketing world where it was all about creating revenue online so I learned about product launches and that you have to get JVs, Joint Venture Partners, onboard and I was so driven I wanted to do my first big product launch and it was a product back in the day called Google Places so I went to different events, I handed out business cards, I approached people, I created the product, I put it on ClickBank and I was so fired up and I worked for months and months on this and when the final day came and I had to launch it, and I was awake for 48 hours, it was a total disaster.

John: No.

Mario: It was bad. Nobody bought. We had issues with the video wouldn’t play, the audio wasn’t good, the hosting gave up on us and it just didn’t convert and when you’re just starting out and you have all your hopes up and you think you’re gonna make a couple hundred thousand or something like this because you see those other people rocking it, it was really, really tough. I have to say, you know, I’m a strong guy but that was a rough moment in my career and I remember I had tears in my eyes because if you don’t sleep for 48 hours and you put all your hopes into something and then it doesn’t work out, you know, it rocked my world.

And looking back now, of course I know that it led me to be now a stronger marketer, better marketer and I’m glad now it happened but back then, geez man, I was shut down.

John: And I can tell you Fire Nation, for something to rock Mario’s world, I mean this is like a 6’5” just, you know, absolute Hercules of a man here and to see that he was brought to tears by this knows, you know, I know that this is definitely a tough time for him and it’s just one of those things Fire Nation, you know, we talk about these worst moments because we look at Mario Brown and we see what he’s done and the other entrepreneurs that I’ve on this show and we’re just like I could never get there.

Well, guess what, they weren’t there where you see them right now when they started either. There’s been disastrous moments for us all and when Mario put all that energy, effort, time, bandwidth, money into that one thing and he failed terribly, well guess what, he went to bed, he slept off that 48 hour and he woke up and he said you know what, it was bad and my world is rocked right now but I’m still alive, you know, like I still have all my limbs, I’m not wiped from this earth, now it’s not that bad, let’s get up, let’s dust ourselves off and let’s make it happen. And Mario, that’s my big takeaway, but what do you wanna make sure that our listeners get from that worst moment you experienced?

Mario: Yeah, from that worst moment what I learned was a big lesson and that was that you can fail in different roles but it doesn’t mean that you as a person failed. So, sometimes you might not, you know, you might not be the best dad every day, you might not be the best entrepreneur every day, you might not be the best brother or son every day so you might fail in one thing, but that doesn’t mean that you fail as a person.

So, back then I understood you know what, “this product launch failed,” and this day for me as an entrepreneur wasn’t great but I’m still a great son, a great husband, a great man, a great basketball player so there’re all these other areas that I can still be proud of and obviously over time as I got more into self-development I learned that, you know what, failure is a good thing. You have to fail fast and the more you fail the closer you get actually to your dreams, but it would be that there’re different roles and just because you get rocked in one there’re still other things in life that you can be appreciated for. Does that make sense?

John: It makes a ton a sense and specifically because the reality is the roles. We are gonna fail at certain roles every time we try something new, but then we know they’re now identified, these are the roles that we need to either A.) Improve upon, or B.) Bring on somebody that’s good at those roles that can take that off our plate for the next round until we’ve built a team, a system, something in place that can knock it out of the park. And Mario, I’m not gonna keep you dwelling on this moment that rocked your world so thank you for sharing that with us.

Now, we’re gonna move into an ah ha moment, a light bulb that was turned on at some point in your journey as an entrepreneur and you’ve had a ton of these my friend, but you know Fire Nation, we’re entrepreneurs. Tell us a story that you think we’re gonna resonate with of a time that you had an epiphany and that you took that epiphany, that idea, and turned it into success.

Mario: Yeah, great. So, when I started on my journey as an online entrepreneur, you know how it is, you start out and you try different things and they don’t work out or you, you know, it’s the shiny object syndrome, you keeping buying different things but you don’t execute so at some point, like way, way, way at the beginning when I started, I was spending a lot of money but I didn’t have a lot left and there was an event happening in San Diego – back then I was living in Miami – that was started by Frank Kernan.

You had to buy a $2,000.00 product though to get to the event and I was like oh my, and I knew that if I have to tell Maria that we have to invest another 2k she’s gonna kill me. So, I still told her and after a couple of days she was like okay, this is the last time, if you don’t make some money with this stuff, this is it. And I was like okay, let’s do it. I bought the product, flew out to San Diego and something happened there.

Like if you immerse yourself with a live event and you just got back from one yourself, I was hanging out with those people; yes, there were some speakers on stage sharing stories, but it was more what came from hanging out with the people and then there was a couple of young guys that invited me for lunch and so they invited me for lunch and they told me what they do and they were in different industries doing online marketing and they were all millionaires and they were just regular guys talking about sports and this and girls and fun and I was like wow.

And then I had this moment John where I was like you know what, they’re just regular guys, if they can do it literally, I can do it too. And I flew home, created my first $7.00 product, I put it on the forum, sold it, made my first sales ever and I never looked back since then. I jumped on it like a dog because once you get that small success John, you just need a little bit where you start believing and then you get the belief and bam, I jumped on it and since then, you know, that was eight years ago, I never looked back.

John: Man, the word that really just rings in my ears when I hear this story is real. No. 1, you found out that the people that were crushing it, that were making seven figures, that were doing great things, they were just real people and so what did that do? That made you take real action. Then you went home and you made your first product, not some crazy $2,000.00 product but a $7.00 product and then guess what Mario? You made sales. That made it real. Now you had created something basically out of thin air, put it out there to the world and the world said yes, we want this and how it’s real.

So, Fire Nation, how are you gonna make your entrepreneurial journey real to you? Take a moment, step back, think about that, press pause if you want to because it has to be real. I’m a real guy, Mario’s a real guy, we hang out, we play basketball, we do fun things and just realize that it takes that first step to make it real for you. So, Mario that’s my take away from your story, but what do you really wanna make sure that Fire Nation gets from that ah ha moment?

Mario: Yeah, it’s the one thing that I – it’s my mantra, it’s what I teach all my students and that is massive imperfect action. When I started my first product man, I didn’t know Pay Pal, I didn’t know AWeber, I didn’t know of that stuff like how do people get the product after they buy but you know what, I put it out there. I didn’t know how to write copy so I just shared my personal journey and then I did my first webinar and it was terrible. Then I did my first live event and nobody showed up. Then I took my book, put it on Amazon to make it a bestseller and none of those projects were perfect, none of them.

So, the problem is if you try to make something perfect, how can I explain this like I’ve been learning Spanish for a long time. I went to Ecuador for seven months and, you know, I’m fluent, it’s cool, but if I wanna be perfect, I would have to spend another ten years to get that extra 5 percent so it’s about taking imperfect action. Sometimes good is good enough, you put it out there, you get results from the marketplace and then you improve.

Now, of course, once you have results from the marketplace or feedback then you can make it was perfect as possible but in the beginning for people listening to this, just starting out on this journey, imperfect action is where it’s at. Don’t try to be perfect. Make sure you put something out there. Get that little momentum going and before you know, you’re up and flying and rocking and rolling.

John: A lot of gold you dropped there Mario; specifically, one thing that you just kind of ran over that I loved which is sometimes good is good enough; I mean think about that Fire Nation. It’s good enough. Now, Mario let’s move into what you consider your biggest weakness as an entrepreneur.

Mario: Biggest weakness? Definitely by far it is follow up for me like I am terrible at follow up and at some point I thought it just a limiting belief but then I learned it’s not, it’s just a fact. So, when it comes to email follow up when people – even friends reach out to me and I’m supposed to follow up with them –

John: Yeah, dude, you never got back to me from that text.

Mario: Yeah, you see.

John: Just kidding.

Mario: I know, I know. No, but seriously, that’s my biggest weakness and fortunately, Maria, my wife, she’s great at that so that helps of course. That’s gonna make up for it.

John: We’re both pretty lucky with the ladies we have involved in our businesses Mario.

Mario: Oh, yes.

John: So, what is your biggest strength?

Mario: Biggest strength is definitely taking action, what I told you in terms of imperfect action and I would say I have a knack for kinda seeing opportunities. It’s difficult to explain it, but when it comes to, I don’t know, podcasting, online marketing, whatever it is, or live events, I have a knack for seeing okay, where’s an opportunity where people might be struggling with something where we could create a product that’s gonna help them overcome that in terms of coming up with solutions. So, it’s a little bit difficult to explain but you know what I mean?

John: I do and speaking of podcasting, product services, events, I mean you have a lot of things going on right now. Share the one thing that you are most fired up about with Fire Nation right now?

Mario: Right now what I’m fired up about is in August to take a vacation so, you know, this year I’ve been really going for it and pushing and it was like all go mode and it’s good.

I started the podcast and I did different projects so I’m excited about going to Germany and spending some time with the family, but businesswise for me, right now I’m most excited about coming up with the next big solution which I want to be a software that serves the masses like, you know, coaching, online marketing, it’s great revenue, but I also understand that if you wanna build something that is lasting, you wanna build an asset and so I’m talking about things like LeadPages, OptimizePress, I don’t know, GoToMeeting, things like that where the masses, they can use it and it really helps people.

And potentially, if one day I wanna exit, I could sell it if I wanted to. You know I love personality driven businesses. My business is based around me, but I do understand maybe in 20, 30, 40 years it changes and then it’s really difficult to exit if it’s all just on me. Does that make sense?

John: It makes a ton of sense. One of our good friends, Omar Zenhom, with Mr. Webinar Ninja himself is coming up with that nice SAS product because he realizes, you realize Mario, I realize the importance and the value of creating something that, 1.) SAS offers a service, 2.) Has that MRR, that Monthly Recurring Revenue, and 3.) Is an asset that could be sold down the road and really allows for an exit. So, a ton of great things my friend, looking forward to keeping tabs on you and hopefully there’ll be an investor opportunity, who knows, we’ll see, but Fire Nation –

Mario: Let’s do it.

John: – we are about to enter the lightning round, but before we do, let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors. Mario, are you prepared for the lightning round?

Mario: Let’s do it.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Mario: It was just myself or in other words excuses like, you know, if you talk about lack of money, lack of time, at the end of the day, honestly it’s just limiting beliefs. It was myself and once I got over that mentally and I set my goals and I understood I have to treat this like a business and not like a hobby, once I mastered my mind then everything took care of itself so it was myself actually.

John: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Mario: That’s a great one. I have to set that up for just a second John. So, basically when people set goals and they hustle, hustle, hustle then what you’re doing is you’re going after your ideal self-image. So, let’s say you’re starting a podcast and you wanna have 10,000 downloads so you wanna have, I don’t know, make $10,000.00 a month. Once you reach that John then obviously it’s just human nature, you wanna make $15,000.00 and $20,000.00. So, what happened to me a couple of times John unfortunately is that I burned out along the way because you reach your goal and boom, your self-image always grows.

It’s always out there so the biggest advice that I’ve received was from Dan Sullivan where he said, “The secret is this. As you take one step after another to reach your goal, sometimes, you know what, you have to stop, turn around, look back and actually appreciate where you came from.” So, now I’m much better at celebrating the small successes with Maria and it could be like the movies, going for dinner, a staycation, but you have to celebrate even if it’s just an extra ten downloads or an extra 50 bucks, a hundred bucks. If I don’t wanna get burned out, I have to appreciate the journey and look back and celebrate. That would be the biggest advice.

John: And let’s be honest, nobody’s feeling bad for staycations in San Diego.

Mario: Exactly.

John: Maybe Henderson, Nevada, but –

Mario: There you go.

John: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Mario: Right now I would say monitoring my language. Like in general, it would be getting inspired listening to audio books but what I’ve started a couple of months ago, and I’m not perfect at it, it’s a challenge, is just really monitor what I talk to – you know when I talk to myself, make sure I don’t sell myself short. All those doubts, that little voice in my mind that is trying to me yeah, you can’t do that, why would you be the right one, trying to kill that voice or at least get it to say something else. So, monitoring my language, my self-talk, that would be a habit right now that’s helping me.

John: What is a personal resource like in Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Mario: In January, I bought a wall calendar, a huge wall calendar from Amazon. I put it on the wall and I mapped out 90 days, always just 90 days. And since I did that – so, it’s not an online tool unfortunately, but I gotta tell you, that was the biggest change for me this year in terms of productivity. A big wall calendar, put it on the wall and map out 90 days because once it’s on the calendar and in front of you, it’s gonna happen.

John: And then when do you get that next 90 day calendar?

Mario: Well, so, the calendar is for the year, but I only map out 90 days and that got inspired by the book The 12 Week Year.

John: The 12 Week Year, cool. Well, speaking of books, if you could recommend just one book for our listeners, what would it be and why?

Mario: It’s tough but if I can only pick one, I would have to go with The Go Giver. I love The Go Giver because it teaches you in just, you know, 90 minutes you can read the book. It teaches you everything that you need to be successful in business and enjoy the journey. So, there are some really good high-level lessons. It’s a quick read, it’s written like a fiction book and it’s absolutely my favorite book.

John: Yeah, I haven’t had many repeat guests Mario, but Bob Burg has been in EOFire twice now because that book is epic and just his mentality and philosophy is awesome.

Mario: I agree.

John: So, Fire Nation, I know you love audio so I teamed up with Audiobooks and if you haven’t already, you can get an amazing audio book for free at eofirebook.com. And Mario, this is the last question of the lightning round but it’s a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to earth but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have, your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Mario: Great question. So, I would try to generate more revenue and I’m gonna be very specific here right now. If I have a laptop and 500 bucks, what I would do specifically is I would first of all, the first three days I would be doing research online. I would look for the biggest trends right now, if it’s in weight loss or nutrition, juicing, whatever it is, Internet marketing, entrepreneurship and see what people are struggling with. I would go to the forums and see what do people complain about when it comes to podcasting or whatever it is and try to see if I can create a product around it.

Then the next step, the 500 bucks, I would take about 150 bucks, I would get hosting, I would get ScreenFlow, LeadPages, AWeber and a membership script like WishList and a headset. And then the next two days John what I would do is I would create a product that solves that problem. So, I would take my USB headset and ScreenFlow and I would record a solution and now I have two days left.

What I would do right now is I would hustle. I’d take the other 400 bucks, put in Facebook advertising. I would hit up Joint Venture Partners, I would try to be a guest speaker on podcasts that I can share my message with and I would find people who are already settled in the market and get them to promote my product through them to generate revenue. So, pretty specific, but you know I’m just anal about that stuff.

John: Well, that’s awesome and that’s what’s led to your success Mario, by being focused on the details. And let’s do this brother. Let’s end today on fire with you sharing one parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say goodbye.

Mario: Okay, absolutely. So, again, the best tip absolutely, take imperfect action. If there’s one thing that you guys get away from this knowledge wise, take imperfect action and don’t be a perfectionist anymore. If you wanna find out more about myself, go to mariobrown.net. There’s a lot of information about myself and MissionPreneur.net if you wanna check out the podcast.

John: So, listen Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you have been hanging out with Mario B. and JLD today so keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com, type Mario in the search bar, his show notes pages will pop right up. Of course, we’ll be listing everything that we talked about today from the books to the resources to Mario’s websites and all the greatness we chatted about.

Go directly to mariobrown.net; we’ll have MissionPreneur podcasts linked up on the show notes page as well. And Mario, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Mario: Thank you.