Interviewer: Couldn't be more ready.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yes.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Hey, Superhero Engineer by profession, Marc is a social entrepreneur dedicated to empowering others for the passion for learning and exploring and living a life of purpose as an everyday superhero.

He launched an online school known as Superhero Academy, where he helps train entrepreneurs to step up into their superhero personas.

Marc, give Fire Nation just a little insight. So share more about you personally, expand upon the biz.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Sure. So as you mentioned earlier, I am a Superhero Engineer by profession these days. And my 8-year-old self would be pretty proud of that title, I'm pretty sure.

But what that means is that I really help social entrepreneurs, not just any entrepreneur, but people who really wanna step up into greatness, people who really have bold ideas that are going to change the world, that are – you know I use Peter Diamandis' quote, "Billion person problems." And I like to support these people through a variety of means via Superhero Academy. And that means that it's not just social entrepreneurs that are at the highest stages, but it's also people at all stages of the game.

And for me, I've noticed in my life that every time I jumped off the cliff, every time that I made a bold move, or I took a big daring step, I always found that it rewarded me; I always found that being that superhero that my childhood dream you know that everyone would laugh at when I was a child, that actually empowered me. That's what got me the most excited.

And so I really feel that other people should do that same. I really feel that it's a real shame if people don't follow their bliss, if they don't live their dreams, and that's what I help people do. And I've seen that success with the nonprofit self-starter called the Valhalla Movement Foundation, and the various different start-ups and businesses that are still in operation today that have all founded, and it's been an amazing career as a social entrepreneur.

Interviewer: Marc, I've gotta agree with you. I am pretty darn sure that your 8-year-old self would be pretty stoked if you were going to go back and say to them, you know what when you grow up you're gonna be superhero engineer. I'd be like, sweet! And the reality is, unfortunately, most of us listening, and I know me at most points in my career, if my 8-year-old self was to hear a certified public accountant or data processor or fill-in the blank of most of the jobs that you know we have for job titles out there, that 8-year-old self wouldn't be that excited.

So Fire Nation, if you're gonna launch out into this entrepreneurship world, why not make an awesome name for yourself just like that, and then go ahead and fulfill those dreams.

And Marc, we're gonna do a lot things today. You know one of those things is gonna be diving into your journey twice, with two specific stories. But before we even go there, I wanna do a little swing here and get some insights into the mind of Marc Angelo Coppola. This is what I call the one-minute mindsets. Five questions, take about a minute-ish to answer these.

And Number 1, Marc, ideally, what do the first 60 minutes of your day look like?

Marc Angelo Coppola: In an ideal world I think I would get up and give myself a little pat on the back for having made it through another day. No, but seriously, I think the true answer to that would be that I spend a good amount of time meditating, that I do not use electronics, and that I kind of do a mini workout/yoga routine that just kind of gets me in the zone that gets me flowing, that gets me into my body and not worried about what's going on in the world. And just kind of not make time be something that is concerning me at that moment.

Interviewer: What's your biggest weakness as an entrepreneur?

Marc Angelo Coppola: My biggest weakness, I think, is synonymous with my biggest strength. And my biggest strength and weakness to me is being bold.

I really like to take on massive challenges, I really like to try and step into things that I've never done before. And when I do that, it kind of invigorates me into a position which is very powerful in many, many instances but at the same time, whatever empowers you sometimes cripples you. And that's to me, is my biggest weakness is that at times I literally have so much ambition, I have so many ideas, that it splits my focus and attention and, therefore, I always need to keep myself in check when it comes to my focus and to my power.

Interviewer: Fortune favors the bold, Marc. So you know, I'm not gonna use that as a weakness because that is your strength, I totally agree with that on so many levels that it can be synonymous, but the reality is it's a strength. Being bold, I mean, that's just what we as entrepreneurs that's a trait that we need to have on every single level.

So dig a little deeper here and let's go with the weakness. Again, you just knocked your strength out, awesome. But would be a weakness that you would just like to correct, you know that's what a weakness is, and you don't wanna you know correct being bold, but what do you wanna correct?

Marc Angelo Coppola: To me it's a question of, like I think the Number 1 thing that challenged me on a consistent basis really boils down to focus.

It's being able to eliminate the noise, being able to step into a space where I can truthfully find the ability to not worry about all the other things that are on my list, right. And when we, as entrepreneurs, all know that that endless list of things is just never going to end and we're never gonna reach that level of perfection where everything is done and everything's perfect. And stepping down from that into focusing on one task at a time is something that consistently challenges me. So I think for me it's really focus has been kind of my kryptonite.

Interviewer: Marc, do you know what my acronym for the word focus is?

Marc Angelo Coppola: Actually, I don't.

Interviewer: Follow one course until success.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Oh, wow, that's a good one.

Interviewer: Right? That's a superhero acronym right there.

Marc Angelo Coppola: That is great, I'm gonna use that.

Interviewer: Well, I'm gonna ask you to go off on a little side tangent. I meant to do this earlier, but if you had to take my superhero persona what would that be?

Marc Angelo Coppola: First of all, you're the most consistent person in the world. I mean, I've never seen somebody who has been able to put out awesomeness on a daily basis and be able to do it with that attitude, with that energy that you bring to each and every one of your podcasts.

So I think the power of consistency you are absolutely unrivaled on that. And what that looks like in terms of like a superhero, I don't know what –

Interviewer: Captain Consistency!

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yeah, like what superhero is like the most consistent. I mean maybe like Wolverine, he's consistently a bad ass. I think you gotta little Wolverine in you, I don't know.

Interviewer: All right, I'm looking at my fingers right now. I can see some blaze on these guys right here.

But you know, hey, in the Army I was a Captain so I'll go with Captain Consistency. We can make up my own superhero.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Oh, that's –

Interviewer: Thanks for those kind words, Marc, appreciate it.

And let's move into a habit that you wish you had.

Marc Angelo Coppola: A habit that I wish I had. I wish that I woke up every day and felt like the weight of the world was not crushing me at times and taking over my entire schedule and my entire being. And I wish that I did more to actually schedule fun.

You know, this is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with is that we forget to have fun. We schedule all the meetings, the calls, the Skypes, the interviews, everything that we do on our day-to-day basis it's all about our mission. And sometimes the most effective thing that you can do for your mission is to schedule fun. And it's something that I think I am being challenged with over the last couple of years and improving slowly, but you know, definitely a habit that I'd like to like see in my agenda, fun time.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. And that's one of those things, too, Fire Nation. If you don't schedule it it's not gonna happen. So it might sound silly to schedule fun, it's not! It's stupid not to. I'm gonna go ahead and say it right now; schedule, it gets done.

And Marc, you have a lot of things that are pretty awesome right now despite the fact that the weight of the world is crushing you every single morning when you wake up. Share with Fire Nation the one thing that has you most fired up right now.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yeah. So what's got me extremely fired up is something that I dived into, I don't wanna say dived into, I fell backward into developing these new eco houses. I always thought that one of the main things that needed to happen is that we need to make sustainability mainstream. And to do that we have to make it sexy and fun. And the Number 1 thing that I'm excited about is that I'm actually working with a team of engineers and architects developing these new houses that we're gonna be releasing this year. And it's just so fun.

` I never thought that in my entrepreneurial journey, you know having studied marketing and entrepreneurship, that I would end up doing like architecture and talking about what would it take to build an amazing off-the-grid structure that appeals to people. And it's just, it's amazing how this kind of multi-disciplinarian approach is needed for tackling a problem of this nature. So that's really got me fired up.

Interviewer: So Marc, what has me fired up is the fact that you understand the power of story. You know, you understand the power of the superhero, and behind every good superhero is a great story. And that's what I want you to really be focusing on now, is the story of your worst entrepreneurial moment. Take us there, share with us that story.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yeah. So the worst entrepreneurial moment definitely is a pretty powerful story. And I think it's a powerful story that resonated across the entire world, but it uniquely hit me because of the way that it happened.

So my first business, actually the worst entrepreneurial moment was it happened in my first business. I was 18 and I had this idea of building this lounge and I ended up walking into this indoor skate park. And the skate park was this huge indoor skate park, and it's indoors because I'm from Montreal and it's really cold in the winter.

So skateboarders need a place, like a haven, to be able to go inside and skateboard and they had this huge space that they weren't using, it was about 7,000 square foot kind of mezzanine that looked on to the skate park. And I was like, wow, what if I could transform this into a lounge where people can come and discuss and get together and truthfully do things that were different than just going to the bars and clubs, right. And as an 18-year-old that's all I cared about at that point, I guess.

And a week after I walked into that skate park I was talking about buying it, and then I ended up being a 50 percent owner. So what I was doing – and at the same time I was in a university studying marketing entrepreneurship, actually at that time I was studying accounting and finance and I switched – I started building my business plan. And this in 2007 when I bought it, and I started building my business plan and I finally had all the pieces together of a proper business plan that I presented to a bank and I got approved for a loan.

Now I know you're wondering why that's the worst entrepreneurial moment. Because what happened is when I got approved I went in a week later to actually sign all the papers and get the actual money in my hands. Okay, and this is like a year after, you know it took me a year to get this all together. And then the financial crisis hit.

Literally, the day like in that week that I went from getting approved to the financial crisis hitting and getting that money in my hand, that just it just completely disseminated and destroyed everything that I was working on. Because there was absolutely no way that they were going to finance a kind of half-restaurant half-lounge start-up in Montreal for an 18-year-old at that time.

And even though I had bought this kind of failing skate park that wasn't working turned it around in a year and turned it into a profitable company with my partners and we had the rent paid; we had an overhead of $20,000 a month we were still paying it. They were just not willing to make it happen.

And so I did everything possible. I went to every bank. In Canada we have eight major banks, I went to every single one of them, got turned down at all of them. Went to all the Angel you know investors and I looked for grants, and I just could not get the money. It absolutely just, I've never been hit by a wall so hard at that age, and just I had never really felt that adversity because I lived a pretty privileged life, I'm not gonna lie. I always had the fortune of being a good student or of finding it easy to ace the test. But when it came down to that, it struck me and I had no way of controlling it.

There was nothing that I can do to save the economy and make them give me that loan at that moment; they were just not giving loans to anyone. So that to me crippled me even further. When I actually learned where money came from, and I know this is maybe unconventional for a group of entrepreneurs to hear this, but when I learned that there was more debt than there was money it kind of shook me. I had watched [Inaudible] [00:13:46], I'm a huge documentary buff, I spent a year watching 50-plus documentaries and it literally depressed me more than anything. But then it inspired me.

Interviewer: It educated you, there's a couple of things, yeah.

Marc Angelo Coppola: It educated me. There's a whole beautiful side to that, too, and I talk about it pretty frequently now.

That moment where I learned not only that I got refused for a loan, and I think that happens all the time, okay, and that's not necessarily game-changing, but when I learned how the whole financial system was based on this big game of musical chairs it devastated me. It absolutely, literally for a year I almost felt like I was out of commission, I couldn't do anything, I didn't really, I kept running the skate park and it went well and things were going good. But it really depressed how I felt about the man and about the system kind of thing.

Interviewer: You know the analogy that I would kick out here?

Marc Angelo Coppola: Sure.

Interviewer: Probably somebody that spent their entire life, like into their 30s or 40s, thinking the world is flat and then finding out it was round. I mean that must have been a total mindbender.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Exactly, and then when you hear about being an entrepreneur, and my mom was an entrepreneur when I was going up, the main thing that it was about was money. Okay, you go out you have an idea, if your ideas serves people and it creates value then you get a loan and you run a business, you make money and then you pay it back. And once you pay it back, eventually you have a good business and maybe you sell it or maybe you just continue running it and you make a career out of it.

And so it was like the only, it was The Path, right. I went down The Path, the paved beautiful path, and met this road block and the road block wasn't just a road block it was like an earthquake that shattered the bridge onto the other side. It was the day that I was getting the money. I was just like I couldn't believe it.

I remember literally going to the bank, and they didn't tell me, I went to the bank physically and I was, okay where do I sign. And they're like, oh, yeah, we didn't tell you but we're actually slowing down the loan process right now. I think we're going to wait and see if this storm is gonna pass financially, we'll get back to you shortly, and shortly never really came.

Interviewer: Yeah, surely was never.

So Marc, let's do a quick shift because we've been sitting on this topic. I mean that's a powerful moment and it opened your eyes up, it armed you, it gave you ammunition going forward. At the same time, even though it did depress you, it made you a lot more of a worldly person just understanding how things work. I mean that's always preferable even if that understanding isn't always the best solution.

But let's talk about an aha moment, an epiphany. And again, just like you told the story, I mean, I felt like I was there with you when they turned you down for that loan after already approving you. What's that light bulb that went on at some point in your journey? Take us to that moment, tell us that story.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Absolutely. So I mean, in any entrepreneurial career I think there's many, many, many aha moments and it's hard to pick one. But I'm gonna go down the same vein of this story and what this actually taught me. Because, you know and every time that you face one of these kind of brick walls it's really truthfully an opportunity.

You really have the ability to shift out of that and see it as a potential opportunity for creating something different or taking a different path that might lead you to a better place. And obviously, at the time I couldn't imagine that that would be the case but it actually did end up happening.

So after that year of depression, if you will, that kind of ensued where I'd watch a whole bunch of documentaries and my life started to swirl and my focus was kind of going in many different directions, what I started to realized was that business wasn't just about money. What I started to realize was business was about relations, business was about creating deep truthful relationships with people and creating value. Because I mentioned it earlier, the traditional path is, yes, you start a business, you create value, you make-sell something of some kind that people buy and then you make money.

But the truth was I was focusing so much on the money portion of the equation, but I didn't need money I needed what money bought me. I needed equipment, to build this lounge I needed couches, I needed kitchen gear, I needed a bar, I needed TVs, I needed forks and knives, I needed things, things that money could buy me surely. But at the same time I needed those things, and I saw the opportunity that also presented itself through the financial crisis, which was that there were tons of businesses closing including restaurants. And restaurants had everything that I needed to open a lounge.

So slowly but surely I actually started creating value, literally out of thin air in the same way that they would make money I guess, by connecting people who wanted to sell their equipment to the people who were actually willing to buy it; used kind of equipment buyers and resellers.

And what I would do is I would scour Craig's List, I became a pro at Craig's List, and I'd find a restaurant that was failing. I'd go and see the owner and say hi, this is really unfortunate, sorry to hear that, but I do have somebody who can buy your equipment and will probably pay you a better price than just selling them one at a time because this is not what you do.

And so I would connect them with that person and that person would come in, buy all the equipment in the restaurant. But I had prearranged the deal that if I sold all the equipment or that I had brought in a buyer, that I would take the microwave, for example. And I did it over and over and over again, and I actually manifested the lounge through creating value for people who were failing into people who needed the equipment and were gonna resell it.

And I did it day in and day out. So everyday my job became, okay, this week I need this oven. And then I would scour Craig's List and see, or I would go and check out some of the foreclosed restaurants and see if they had something similar that could match that. And if they had it, I would add it to my checklist, I'd go in there and check it, if it made sense now I would call my guy who would come in and he'd buy it. And so what I learned that day helped me kind of piece together on a bootstrap kind of way this lounge.

But what really happened that day was that I learned that business is not just about money, it's really about relationships. This is about the people that you truthfully connect with, the people that you truthfully help. And if you truthfully help people, people will truthfully help you.

You know, I learned something the other day; to be rich you must enrich. Let me say that again; to be rich you must enrich.

If you want to be rich enrich people's lives. Help people, create value, and don't even expect anything in return, but they will give you more than you'd ever ask in return; and if you're there and you see the challenges – those kinds of worst entrepreneurial moments if you will – as opportunities instead then you can overcome anything.

Interviewer: So Marc, there's one over-arching theme that I really wanna pull out here. Business is about relationships, creating value for and through those relationships.

Fire Nation, if that's something that you can really absorb, that over-arching theme that Marc just took us through on this aha moment story that he had of creating something amazing literally from nothing, just exchanging value, that was what it was, then you are on your way.

And Marc, I'm not letting you go anywhere, my friend, because we have a lot to talk about. But before we enter The Lightening Round let's take a minute to thank our sponsors.

Marc, welcome to The Lightening Round where you get to share incredible resources in mind-blowing answers. Sound like a plan?

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yeah, let's do it.

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

Marc Angelo Coppola: I think the main thing that was holding me back from becoming an entrepreneur when I was younger, and this happened to me at an early age, was seeing my mom actually get out of it and seeing the stress that she had had as an entrepreneur, and then going from that to a 9 to 5 and being happier that way.

And I kind of felt that maybe I should follow that path, and maybe I shouldn't jump into being an entrepreneur, but I think it's definitely not something that I regret in any way, shape, or form at this point.

Interviewer: What's the best advice you ever received?

Marc Angelo Coppola: The best advice I've ever, ever, ever received is that attitude is everything. If you can shift your attitude then you can shift the energy that you are embodying in your mind. And through our mind perspective is really everything, and that perspective is shaped by our attitude in how we receive what is happening to us.

We can't control everything that's out there in the universe and that's a good thing, and that's exactly what creates an opportunity and that's what creates the spice of life. So if you meet whatever comes your way, however, with a good attitude you will be able to overcome, surpass, break through, or enjoy any moment that comes your way.

Interviewer: What's a personal habit you do have that you believe contributes to your success?

Marc Angelo Coppola: So the Number 1 habit that I've kind of adopted given my problem with focus is something I call Power Hour. I literally bought a physical hour glass, I have no idea how long it runs, I know I'm serious, I have no idea how long it runs. And when I wanna focus I schedule a Power Hour into my day and I try and do it in the mornings, and I flip the hour glass and I work on one thing and one thing only the entire time.

I shutdown Facebook, emails, put away my phone, and I just work on that one thing that day. And I believe that if you achieve one thing a day, if you take a single step in a day closer towards dreams, at some point you look behind you and you've traveled a long way. And so to me, that Power Hour hour glass literally changed my life.

Interviewer: Wow! Just love the physical aspect of this, seeing it there on your desk. I mean we can all do those counters in our cell phone or in the browsers, but man game-changing.

Marc, do you have an internet resource like Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Marc Angelo Coppola: Yeah, I think the Number 1 resource that everyone needs to get is a scheduler, and not every entrepreneur has it. And they spend a lot of time emailing back and forth trying to figure out or coordinate when they should meet up with what said person that is in their contact list, I guess.

And the Number 1 internet resource that I would promote to people is Calendly.com. It's an amazing scheduler, it really synchs well, it sends a notification, it's just super beautiful and easy. And I've gotten tons of compliments on it before, and for me it just saved hours upon hours in my life and helped me schedule much, much more efficiently.

Interviewer: Yeah, I can tell you, I actually used a scheduler once, but after being on somebody else's Calendly I was incredibly impressed. And if I could re-turn the clock back I probably would've gone that route. But right now I'm in too deep.

Marc, if you could recommend one book for our listeners, what would it be and why?

Marc Angelo Coppola: So there are many books that I think many of your listeners should listen to, but one of the ones that I'm diving deep into right now, and I'm actually having Peter Diamandis on my podcast tomorrow, is Bold, the new book by Peter Diamandis. It just came out. I've been listening to it pretty much all day in the audio book format. And just the level of thinking, when you think about being what is called an exponential entrepreneur or solving billion-person problems and thinking on a scale that is so big and a longer term scale, that to me is the kind of mindset of a superhero.

And so anybody who's looking to be a superhero read Bold by Peter Diamandis, it's gonna change your life.

Interviewer: Yeah, you did a great interview on Tim Ferriss' podcast recently, where you made the comment, "Yeah, guess what I just don't seem to have a lot of competition in the asteroid mining field."

And I just love that mindset. It's like if you're bold and you go out there and you do something crazy, you know then who's gonna be competing with you, nobody. You're out there on your own. So that's definitely on my to-listen-to list, and Fire Nation it should be yours as well, so Bold.

And I know you love audio so I teamed up with Audible. And if you haven't already, you can get an amazing audio book like Bold for free at eofirebook.com.

Marc, this next question's the last of The Lightening Round, but it's a doozey. 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 current have, your food and shelter taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Marc Angelo Coppola: So the first thing that I would do is I would actually buy a ticket to an amazing kind of power, my mastermind meeting, meetings of some amazing entrepreneurs. And I would actually go to an event. It sounds crazy but I would go to an event and network with people. I would actually meet people on this new earth, setting this new paradigm, and actually find a way to serve them, find a way to create real value, find a way to ask them about their real problems and challenges, and how I can help them.

And from that I think I would come back to the drawing board, after the event I would come back to that, and I would build a website that branded myself with a story. You know, through I don't know Squarespace or something, and make a quick little website with a couple of bucks and brand myself to cater to those exact needs and then reach back out to the person and see if I can help him. I think that's exactly what I would do.

Interviewer: Doesn't sound crazy to me at all. I definitely traced my origin story of being an entrepreneur to BlogWorld 2012 New York City. It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like that, total eye-opener and game-changer. So Fire Nation invest in yourself, hit up a conference.

I'm actually going to a couple of conference parties tonight at Traffic & Conversion here in San Diego because that's what it's all about, building those relationships.

And Marc, let's end today the same way we started on fire with you sharing one parting piece of guidance, the best way we can connect with you, then we'll say goodbye.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Sure. The one thing that if I can leave you with, is to be bold, think big, the crazier it is the more achievable it actually becomes.

The more that you want to step into that greatness, the more that you truthfully commit into something that you and everyone around you thinks it's crazy, the more it's actually worth doing. And if you can do that and adopt a superhero mindset and think about not just the short-term but that long-term thinking, then that I think will change your life.

And as to where you can find more, you can definitely go and check out more at superheroacademy.net; you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, or All That Jazz. And you can also go and check out the valhallamovement.com if you're interested in learning about how we're making sustainability mainstream.

Interviewer: Wow! I mean, Fire Nation, you know this. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you have been hanging out with Marc and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com; just type Marc in the search bar, his show-no page will pop right up. And it's gonna have all the stuff that we talked about today.

SuperheroAcademy.net; his book recommendation resource you name it, it's there, Fire Nation.

Marc, thank you brother for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today, and for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Marc Angelo Coppola: Have a good one.

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