Marques Ogden [00:00:00]:

After my NFL career, I struggled immensely with addiction, alcoholism, painkillers, gambling, nightlife, all these things.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:09]:

Marques Ogden is a former NFL player, five-time bestselling author, inspirational keynote speaker, business coach, and the founder and CEO of Ogden Ventures. He had a career in the NFL, something that many people can only dream of. After that, he went on and built a successful business.

Marques Ogden [00:00:23]:

We grew to become the largest African-American-owned subcontractor in Baltimore City, Maryland, and the DC area. We were bondable, and we crushed it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:35]:

But one major mistake cost him almost everything. Marques lost $3 million, went bankrupt, and then found himself working as a custodian for $8.25 an hour.

Marques Ogden [00:00:46]:

I got this massive internal problem called a massive ego. I went from a multi-million, multiple eight-figure construction company owner to a bankrupt, broke gentleman who was working for $8.25 an hour to feed his family.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:04]:

But instead of letting that moment define the rest of his life, he rebuilt himself from the ground up. Today, Marques speaks to leaders and teams around the world, including companies like Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, and Home Depot, helping them turn setbacks into fuel for success.

Marques Ogden [00:01:22]:

If you fail and you keep going, it's a learning lesson. It came through hard work, discipline, and never ever giving up. Because authenticity is your superpower. When you're authentic, real, and vulnerable, that's when the magic happens.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:39]:

Welcome to The Creator's Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:56]:

Marques, welcome to the show.

Marques Ogden [00:01:58]:

How you doing, Bryan? Thanks for having me on, my friend.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:01]:

Yeah, doing great. First question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing that either you did or are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Marques Ogden [00:02:10]:

I'll tell you what, Bryan. Our podcast, Get Authentic with Marques Ogden, has been one of the best things that we've done to allow us to help as many people as possible and to create the type of life that I want for myself and my daughters. I have a 22-year-old daughter and I have an 11-year-old daughter. And it's so great to have the podcast because what it allows us to do, right, Bryan? Interview people, grow our brand, connect with people. But we also make money through monetization, advertisers, getting more downloads, getting more reach. We're getting advertisers saying, "Oh, we want to — we're going to advertise on your show. Want you to do direct ad reach." So, it's really been great. But the podcast, right, Bryan, has been a huge asset to our brand for sure.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:57]:

Awesome. Yeah. It's an interesting answer. I don't think anyone else has had an answer like that before for this kind of question. But I think it's a really good point because I love doing this podcast here. I've told people multiple times that if it didn't have a marketing value, I would still do it because I get to talk with cool people like you all the time. But it helps our audience and it helps all these other things. And I think people might agree that over the past couple years there's been a feeling that, well, maybe I don't really have to do social media, or maybe I don't really have to do blog posts. But I don't feel I've seen as many people who were doing a podcast and said, "I'm going to not do the podcast."

Marques Ogden [00:03:39]:

Well, you know what's interesting, Bryan? What the podcast does for people who have a business: it allows you to build trust with people that you probably would not have that ability to do that with in an intimate way. For example, one of our premier clients, Bryan, is a company called Trucordia. They're a top 20 largest commercial insurance brokerage in the United States, and their CEO, Mr. Felix Morgan, is an amazing human being. And I met him because one of my other friends said, "Hey, Marques, you should have Felix on your podcast." I said, "Absolutely. Let's go have him on the podcast." And then they hired me to speak for them, right, Bryan, in February of this year in Scottsdale, Arizona, at The Phoenician. I did that job so well, they hired us two months later, right, Bryan, to do a large national sales event — they call it the producer performance series on how to improve sales through mindset and training and leadership and connecting with people. And they absolutely loved it and I love them. And as a matter of fact, we're working on a new book called Built for the Storm: The Bison Operating System, and Felix Morgan is going to write the foreword for that. He's writing the foreword. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:01]:

Cool. So, I want to go through a little bit of your backstory. You went from being an NFL player and a business owner to working as a custodian for $8.25 an hour. Can you kind of walk us through your story and the reasons behind that loss?

Marques Ogden [00:05:15]:

So, Bryan, after my NFL career, I struggled immensely with addiction, alcoholism, painkillers, gambling, nightlife, all these things. And I got into construction in 2008, and we started off as a small concrete contractor working in downtown Baltimore. And we grew to become the largest African-American-owned subcontractor in Baltimore City, Maryland, and the DC area in the scope of site work. So, hauling, grading, excavation, all these things you can think of, we did it. And we were bondable and we crushed it. But unfortunately, Bryan, as the company grew, I got this massive internal problem called a massive ego. And that ego got so big, so enormous that it just overtook everything. If you're listening to this podcast and you're either starting a business or you're in business for a little bit of your time, please listen to this. Never ever let your ego get bigger than the good part of your soul. Never. Because if you do that, what happens is you stop listening and you become this arrogant person. And that's what happened to me, right, Bryan? And I ended up losing everything that I owned in 2013 because I was on a project for a client and I spent about $3 million over budget. And when the client denied the change order and the developer denied the change order, the bank shut us down on December 23rd, 2012. I will never forget, Bryan, that phone call where the bank president said, "Marques, we've been meeting for 5 hours. We're going to shut Kayden down. That's it. You're out of business. Have a nice day. Happy New Year." And that's when I had to leave, Bryan. I left Baltimore and I had to move to Raleigh, North Carolina. And I got fired from two jobs in the same week. And I took a job as a custodian making $8.25 an hour on the graveyard shift from 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. So, it was a nightmare, man. All because my ego got bigger than the good part of my soul. That's how I went from a multi-million, multiple eight-figure construction company owner to a bankrupt, broke gentleman who was working for $8.25 an hour to feed his family.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:03]:

Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an online platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities, and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow. You can try for free for 30 days. Links in the description. Now, back to the podcast.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:32]:

Wow. Well, I guess going through that humbled you. But how — looking back on it, if you were going to find a way to fix that, how would you have done anything different to kind of keep your ego in check?

Marques Ogden [00:08:48]:

Bryan, I would have hired a coach. I would have hired somebody to keep me on track. When my father passed away in 2006, I didn't have anybody that I would listen to that I was going to say, "Yep, you're right. I need to stop doing this. Yep, you're right. I'm not treating my people correctly. I'm taking advantage of them. And I'm all about me, me, me." So, I had no coach. I had no leadership. I had nobody to guide me down the path. One of my favorite quotes, right, Bryan? "Purpose will start your journey. Passion will light your way." And I lost my passion because I became so focused on money and fame and all this stuff. And I tell you all the time, the passion should be helping other people. What we said earlier, right, Bryan, about the podcast — that's a passion of mine. I get to help other people share their story, talk about their business, talk about their brand, right? And ask questions and be curious and be inquisitive and be interested in people. That's right. Be interesting to people. So, if I would have really got a coach, if I would have really got someone to guide me and keep the passion burning the correct way along the journey, I would have never gone out of business. But once I lost that passion, once I lost that energy, once I lost my way, Bryan, that was it. So I tell people, I don't care who you are. If Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett hire coaches, so should you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:29]:

Yeah, that's great advice. I've talked about my thoughts before on this show about how the way I look at things is like, I want to be able to wake up and do the thing I would be doing if I never needed money again. And if you can find that for yourself, then you're kind of set. But I wonder, for somebody who maybe they think they have it, maybe they're not sure — what's a metric then that you can use to track yourself, or does that even matter? Do you just feel like, "I'm so passionate about this, I just care that I'm helping people"? I don't know if I'm being clear with that. But is there something that you want to look at besides the dollars going up? It's nice to see that, but what else do you keep track of?

Marques Ogden [00:11:18]:

You know what, Bryan? I love when our reputation goes up. I love when our credibility goes up. I love when people can tell that I'm doing this career for the right reasons. So, I spoke yesterday, Bryan, for MassMutual. This year is MassMutual's 175th anniversary. They were founded in 1851. Get this, right, Bryan. Think about this. Founded, and then 10 years later the Civil War happens. How about that? How crazy is that? And so, when I spoke for them yesterday in Boston, somebody came up to me after I spoke and said, "Marques, I'm going to give you one piece of feedback on your talk." I said, "Please, please, Brad, do so." He said, "Marques, I could tell when you were answering questions for people in the audience, you truly cared about them. You were truly connected to them in your responses. I could see it in your eyes. I could see it in your demeanor. I could feel it in your energy." And when I heard that, Bryan, I was like, man, thank you so much, Brad, because that's true. That's what it is. It's all I'm like, "I want to help people." Like, that's what I got into this career for, right? I didn't get into it for the money, because Bryan, it took me two and a half years to get my first paid job. Two and a half years. And when I finally got it, I had to go work another almost 12 months till I got my second paid job. And then another 12 months, I got my third paid job. Right? It didn't just happen like one paid job and boom, here it is. Oh, it took lots of sacrifice, lots of work, lots of determination. And so I got into this career to help people. So when people recognize that, that makes me feel great. Because what's the old Zig Ziglar saying? "Help enough people get what they want, and you'll get what you want."

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:26]:

Yep. So, we went through the story of how you lost everything and why. Then can you tell us more about now — how did you rebuild that when the titles, the money, the status, that was all gone?

Marques Ogden [00:13:40]:

So what I did was, man, to rebuild my career, I really looked at what it is that I do well. Right? If you're listening to this podcast and you're starting a business and you're trying to grow a business, we all have things that we do well. We all have things we need to work on. So it's part of the BISON acronym, right, Bryan? Self-awareness. So, the bison is the only animal that charges directly into the eye of the storm. It's an acronym for B.I.S.O.N.: Boldness, Integrity, Self-awareness, Ownership, Never ever quit. So for you as a business owner, if you want to grow something and elevate, be self-aware. But there's a catch. Being self-aware is not enough. You have to also be radically vulnerable and radically honest about what you don't do well. If all you're going to do is say, "I do everything okay. I don't need any help." That's BS. But we all need help. We all got to get better. I don't care how great you are. Jeff Bezos will tell you Amazon is a juggernaut, but it can always what? Get better. Look what Jeff Bezos did. He went from like what? Shipping and packaging, to then what? Streaming. And then what? Going off into space. And then what? It was always being ahead of the time, because that's how you stay ahead of the game. That's the same thing in your business. You have to learn. You need to be honest with yourself. I suck, Bryan, at producing a podcast. I suck at PowerPoints or emailing people like, you know, stuff like newsletters, blogs. I suck at all that social media content cutting up. You say, "Hey, Marques, prep this clip up into the 20-second clips" or you're dead. Put me in the gallows and it's going to hang me now. I'm done, because I don't know how to do it. And I'm okay with that. I'm going to tell you right now, we all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. So, what I've done, right, Bryan, is I've learned to surround myself with people who are great at what I suck at. So, you want to build your business, build your team. If you can't afford to build a team, that's okay, too. You can start to do what I used to do. Barter, trade. You have skill sets. You have something that people want. Do a trade. If you can't afford to hire a marketing person, say, "You know what? I'll get some of my services for 6 months for free. Help me market for 6 months for free. Barter, trade." That's how you build something special.

Bryan McAnulty [00:16:22]:

Yeah, that's great advice. I think not enough people realize how approachable it can be to offer some kind of trade to somebody. They think, "Oh, if I'm going to go and send a DM to somebody, they're going to think I want to sell them something, or they don't want to help me." But a lot of times, I think people way more experienced than you at whatever the thing is would be more than willing to give you some kind of advice, especially if you can help them with something that maybe they're not the absolute expert at.

Marques Ogden [00:16:49]:

Bryan, everybody in business has a weakness. I don't care who you are, who it is. Nobody's business, including Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett or Elon Musk, is a perfect business. No one does. Everybody needs some form of help. The question you have to ask yourself is, is what you're offering good enough, valuable enough? They're going to say, "Yes, I need that. I'll give you what I have, what you need, for free." That's where self-awareness comes in. If you can master that, right, Bryan? You can elevate. If you don't master that, it becomes very challenging to grow, because you're going to always run into what I call the "Father Time undefeated" motto. Father Time is undefeated. You can't beat him. You just can't. Because at the end of the day, we all have the same 24 hours, 7 days a week. That's what we got. How do you elevate? You got to find ways to execute within the hours that are allotted within your day.

Bryan McAnulty [00:18:01]:

Yeah, I really like that analogy. I think we fool ourselves. I know I've had to take a step back in my journey and realize like, okay, well, I'm doing this thing and I'm doing it what I previously thought was okay. But then realistically, if I want to grow, if I do have these 24 hours in the day that everybody else has, then is it really acceptable or is it really good enough the way that I'm doing it? Or even, is it really great? Maybe it's not. And so maybe there is a way that I can do that a lot better. Maybe there's a way that I can do a lot more of it. And maybe there's a way that somebody else is way better at it than I am, that they can already do that without me having to spend a year or two to try to learn it.

Marques Ogden [00:18:46]:

I mean, my website person, George — George has been with me since 2018. That first year, I could not pay him. I had no money. And so what I did was we bartered. He worked for me for that year for free in exchange for me referring him anybody that I knew that needed websites. And I, of course, did. In 2019, I was able to scrape together about 250 bucks a month to pay him. And now, over time, I pay him a good amount of money per month. He is an amazing website designer, coder, builder. And I still, Bryan, refer him clients, still to this day. Several of my current coaching clients use him for website design, SEO, smart tagging systems, CRM, you name it. Several of my clients have been using him for over two or three years each. That's because in the beginning, when I couldn't afford him and he couldn't afford to market, we traded. He gave me the website for free for a year. I marketed for his business for free for a year. And I pay him now, and I still market for him every single chance I get. Bryan, here we are — what's that? Eight years later — and we're just talking today.

Bryan McAnulty [00:20:13]:

Yep. So, one of the things you mentioned was never quit as well. And I've thought about that a lot myself, of how if you can find a way to keep going — as long as you don't quit, you can win. And I think there's a lot of people out there that if they were able to see for themselves that they could have the belief that if they eventually continue on, they know they will get to wherever they want to be, or probably way beyond wherever they imagined they could be. But I think so many people quit well before they can reach that point. So what would you suggest to them — what's a way that you can kind of have the confidence to keep going rather than quit?

Marques Ogden [00:20:54]:

Bryan, when I spoke for MassMutual at their amazing event, it was titled "A Legacy of Purpose Creates a Future of Possibilities." A legacy of purpose is the positive impact you want to be known for. To keep yourself going where you never quit, always remember your why. Always remember the reason you started your journey, your purpose, that desire you had. What is that why? Is it a person? Is it a thing? Is it an item? Is it a legacy? Whatever it is, remember that why. Your why is going to push you through the darkness. Again, take the bison. They're the only animal that will charge into the eye of the storm. The bison will thrive through the storm, because the bison knows, right, the fastest way out of a storm is through a storm. So never quitting means remembering your why at every cost, at every turn, and never ever letting that fear of failure stop you. Here's the thing: everybody fails. But if you quit, that's a failure. If you fail and you keep going, it's a learning lesson. Trust me on this. I failed at many businesses: construction, clothing, consulting. It took me a while to find this current business, and we're doing very well 12 and a half years later. But I'm telling you right now, it was not easy. It didn't come overnight. It didn't come like that. It came through hard work, discipline, and never ever giving up. So, if you're listening and you're thinking about quitting, don't you do it. Remember the why. Remember your reason for starting this awesome journey. And that will carry you through the dark days.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:59]:

That's great. So, I want to get into kind of a lightning round now. I'm looking for quick questions, a quick kind of like 10-second answer. All right, so first question: what's one ego mistake that successful people make without realizing it?

Marques Ogden [00:23:12]:

They stop listening to their trusted staff because they think they have it all figured out, like Marques Ogden did in 2012.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:25]:

What did losing $3 million teach you about success?

Marques Ogden [00:23:27]:

It taught me success is not permanent. You have to keep grinding. You have to keep working to achieve what you want, and nothing will be handed to you.

Bryan McAnulty [00:23:41]:

What's a hard truth that most entrepreneurs don't want to hear?

Marques Ogden [00:23:46]:

It's not going to happen as fast as you want it to. It's not. It will not happen as fast as you want it to. But it doesn't mean that it won't happen. Just keep after it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:24:02]:

And what's a moment in life that humbled you the most?

Marques Ogden [00:24:08]:

Getting someone's spoiled milk, rotten, nasty, disgusting meat all over me — crossing my rock bottom spoiled milk moment, when I had to clean myself up on the curb and cry and figure out what happened in my life. But that moment was the catalyst, was the purpose for me to start my journey along the way of being a keynote speaker, where I'm at today.

Bryan McAnulty [00:24:36]:

And what's advice that you would give to somebody who maybe just hit rock bottom?

Marques Ogden [00:24:41]:

It's not fatal. I know it feels like it. I know it feels like crap. I know it sucks — not having any money, being broke at the bottom. I've been there. 13 years ago, that was my reality. I'm here to tell you it's not fatal. Just don't quit.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:04]:

That's great. All right. And on the show, I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So, if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or kind of want to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Marques Ogden [00:25:17]:

What does authenticity mean to you? What does it mean? Because authenticity is your superpower. When you're authentic, real, and vulnerable, that's when the magic happens. So, that's my question to you, awesome people listening to this awesome podcast: what does authentic mean to you?

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:44]:

All right, Marques, that was great. Thanks so much. Before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Marques Ogden [00:25:49]:

They can go to our website, which is ogdenvictorymindset.com, or www.marquesogden.com. Go to ogdenvictorymindset.com, check out products and services, or go to marquesogden.com to check out anything about speaking, coaching, consulting, all that kind of good stuff.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:19]:

All right, Marques. Thank you.

Marques Ogden [00:26:21]:

No problem. Thanks for having me on, Bryan.

Bryan McAnulty [00:26:23]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.