Creating your own path with Marcus A. Chan

[00:00:00] Brad Seaman: Let’s let’s just get after it. Tell me how’d you get how’d you get started doing what you’re

[00:00:05] Marcus Chan: doing to do what I do right now. Yes.

[00:00:08] Brad Seaman: Yeah. Tell me about six-figure sales academy and then tell us how.

[00:00:11] Marcus Chan: Yeah, man. So right now it’s with my business right now, I work directly with, you know, B2B sales professionals, typically like account executives, helping them earn additional 50 to a hundred thousand dollars more in income every single year by helping them master refine their entire BB sales process.

So I’ve been doing this now for about two years now and, you know, small things were it really. It’s not something I plan to do. I wasn’t planning to start my own business. It wasn’t really a, a goal of mine. In fact, you know, my parents were entreprenuers growing up and they said, okay, they had a restaurant, it was hard work.

We grew up just working our tails off. And I just saw it as very not cool way, way too much work and too little money. So I said to myself, I don’t, I don’t want to ever be an entrepreneur. What I want to do is I’ll work for a good corporation and make a lot of money doing. So before I went into this business, I was in corporate for over 14 years.

So I did that. I was at a B2B sales to get promoted, lean, massive teams for two major companies, to the point where I was leading teams. You know, 110 plus employees. So, and I got to the point where in my cohort, my business career, I’ve been going for like probably eight years and just had a lot of success leading big teams, doing tons of revenue, winning all these awards.

At that point, someone said to me to they’d say, Hey Marcus, you should write a, some price of books. You should write some books. Like how’d you get promoted like 10 times already in your career, highly such a massive team. How you have the success of. I’m just a regular dude who actually sucked at sales, who actually struggled, who made a lot of mistakes.

Sometimes I figured it out. So I said, okay, you know what I should do. I should probably write some books. So I actually learned how to write an ebook at the time before eBooks were things, how to run an ebook and had distributed live. So at that point, I started to write eBooks and to sell them online and it was making some money.

It wasn’t a lot of money, like

[00:02:01] Brad Seaman: $9.

[00:02:04] Marcus Chan: This is 2016, 2006. So at this,

[00:02:09] Brad Seaman: so, so, so real quick on the timeline. So you leave, you looked like you went to university. Right. So did you grow up in Oregon? I did your, okay. So grow up and go. You’re a duck. You graduate, you have some sales jobs, and then now you’re writing, you’re writing some eBooks and you’re getting a little traction.

[00:02:27] Marcus Chan: Yeah. Not a lot, nothing crazy if you extra hundred dollars a month, but you know, it was like to me, I was like, wow, strangers are paying. That was a really fascinating I’ll meet people that, because I came from the direct sell and sales role, I’m cold calling cold emailing, running sales calls face to face.

Like I’m used to that world and like complex deals. I’m not used to like putting something online, some, some stranger payment money. I’m like, that is the weirdest thing to me, but I’m like, wow, that’s pretty neat. Now at the time, because you know, I was doing so well. It’s like, it’s really hard to leave a great corporate and opportunity job have for $9 new book.

So I started learning more about internet marketing at this point. And at the time it’s now everyone, the mother’s an online course, but back then, it wasn’t as popular, only certain people had. So I still learned how to basically build an online course. I’m like, you know, what, if I could build something that could, I could charge a little more, but also scale have more, I can have more impact.

And I’m like, what do people ask me all the questions on? And I really thought to myself like, well, well I got a lot of questions. B2B sales stuff that I thought was kind of obvious stuff that I’ve just made mistakes over the years. And I’ve kind of figured out through trial and error. I figured it out and because I had, I ran so, so such big sales team, sales teams, I learned a system to kind of bring someone in and turn him into a superstar.

I’m like, if I could package it up and basically build something that was. For basically a past version of me when I started that would help me. That’d be awesome. So it took me actually a couple years got that time. I was traveling quite a bit. I mean, I was in hotel room, like at least a hundred nights a year, big sales or, and in my free time I built this course it’s going to is build out.

I built out as B2B sales from a to Z spent two years doing that, did a really soft launch in like early 2019. Just see what happened. Like at this point I’m like, crap. I just wasted. So, are you doing

[00:04:15] Brad Seaman: anything on LinkedIn? Are you just, you’re just being a sales guy. You’re writing this ebook. And are you trying to prep it up for like a big launch or like what’s, what’s the launch party?

[00:04:26] Marcus Chan: There was no real launch party. Right? So it was like, literally, like, I didn’t know what I was, dude, man, like literally I was like, Literally no joke. I was just like, I was on Instagram posts every day on Instagram, like at its whole like separate account at the time. And I was just like doing that, even stuff on LinkedIn.

Now my company was like, they weren’t really comfortable me doing this sort of side hustle stuff. They weren’t like real old school company been around since the great depression and they

[00:04:50] Brad Seaman: weren’t.

Yes. Is that where you’re at? I got a real, I got a super funny story to tell you about, to tell you about Cintas, but keep, keep talking. And then we’ll, as we change subjects, I’m going to tell you this really funny. There’s an entrepreneurial story that involves somebody that worked at that center.

[00:05:08] Marcus Chan: Awesome man.

So anyway, so, you know, they were like, so I, on LinkedIn, I was very careful because I, because I just didn’t like the, I don’t want them to misunderstand and add a big role and big responsibilities. And people knew him. He had a lot of influence too, so I’m like, all right, I gotta be careful here. So it was pretty much like, just like Instagram had like other like little lead magnet side builts writes on a very small email, us like 300 people on the email list.

And I remember, like, I remember like getting dealt with. Oh crap. Did I just literally waste two years of my life build this? Does anyone even walk this just like sends that email list, put it on Instagram, woke up, made $2,000 overnight and I’m like, oh wow. Like this actually works, you know? And I’m like, that’s actually,

[00:05:50] Brad Seaman: that’s kinda crazy.

You launched it on, you launched it on Instagram.

[00:05:54] Marcus Chan: Yeah, Instagram, like it’s like I put it on Instagram. I think we saw the swipe swipe up links back then too. It’s like swipe up links. Like, you know, I’d send my email list, right. There was no real launch. I mean, it was like, I didn’t know what I was doing.

All right. And I was like kind of a, kind of a launch. Now what I w w what I also did did I tried a little later on after that was a three video sequence that had a loan from somebody else. But from there, there was an aha moment though, that was like, Whoa, I can do something with this and it gets a point where I’m like, you know what?

This is pretty cool. But if I’ll make more impact across the board to more people outside of my organization, I have to go beyond this company. Right. That’s the only way. Cause they weren’t really cool to me building a bigger brand and doing these steam. That’s just, that’s just not

[00:06:38] Brad Seaman: their style. You get.

Are you getting are you getting brushed back from your boss then? Are they like, Hey. Hey Marcus. I was on Instagram over the weekend. I saw it. You know, I’ve been following you, corporate’s telling me that you got to stop doing all these videos. No, it was

[00:06:57] Marcus Chan: more of like the unspoken stuff, you know, it’s like, you know how every company has like unspoken norms.

They don’t post it anywhere. It’s just like, oh, snow. I see what you’re doing. Interesting. What’s your plan with that what’s going on with that, you know, just kinda like that, like, all right. I read between the lines, what you’re saying here.

[00:07:14] Brad Seaman: So you can’t really tell your, your boss said don’t judge.

Don’t judge me, bro.

[00:07:20] Marcus Chan: Right. So I I applied, I applied to that. Right. Cause at that point I’m like, I’m, you know what, like, let me kind of, if I’m making a move and go all in on as biz, I need, I need to be strategic with it. So it took me about nine months to plan it all out. Because if you think that I needed to fall into place, like number one, I might my presence club awards.

So it’s like a top elite trip at my free trip, you know, to five star resort in August. I wanted that it was free trip. I had a bunch of stock. I was like, We had an earnings call coming up. Cause I had all these things that I knew were going to skyrocket the stocks. I’m like part of my exit. I wanna make sure I cash out and roll up to, so I wait until literally till like the Logan earnings call in September, 2019, once it hit stock, went up, cashed up.

I rolled out the following week and now it all into business. So it been due for what, two years now it’s been a incredible journey. There’s ups and downs. Look at anything else, but it’s been a lot of fun having a lot of impact from.

[00:08:08] Brad Seaman: So there’s a guy here in Indianapolis and he’s Michael Crafton. He owns, what’s essentially a at this point, a pretty large HPAC business, but he started out cleaning hoods in the restaurant.

So if you grew up in the restaurant, you know, the guys will come over and they’ll clean the clean, the hoods and the clean, all the, all the grease straps. And so he’s working at Cintas and he’s he’s got a couple buddies that went to college with, and they’re all working there. And one night they go down to this area in Indianapolis called.

And they have a couple of too many drinks and while they’re drinking, they’re like Hey, let’s why don’t we just quit our job at, since I was, and we’re just going to all start our own thing tomorrow. And so they’re like, yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. So there’s, I think there was maybe, you know, five or six of these guys and they all agree that they’re going to quit their job and they say, Hey, we’re going to show up.

You know, we’re going to show up tomorrow or quit our jobs. So he goes in, he quits his job. Nobody else quits their job. He’s the only one that quits her job. And so when he gets home that day, he’s like, Hey, did y’all call it? No, we didn’t, we didn’t quit it. So he has a quick, so now he’s got to decide what he’s going to do.

So he said, this is, this is awesome. This is awesome. Like 22 year old entrepreneur logic. So he says, okay, here’s what I did. He’s like when I one summer I worked for he played football and I knew he’s like one summer. I worked with a buddy and we worked for a guy who lived in Ohio and he had a he had a business cleaning hoods and.

And he had a huge house and I just thought, man, this guy is rich. And so I’m going to, I’m going to do that. So he went down to the broad ripple public library. So this is like, you know, kind of Donna that I think it’s like 2008, he goes down and he gets a book on how to clean a hood. But he said he printed out all elated, all the copper prints out all the, all the copies.

And he said, he got up, you got a suit on. And he just went around and he, like he said, I showed up at the back door with a suit. I have all these restaurants and they immediately let me in because they thought I was an inspector. And so now I’m in the restaurant and I start like, you know, pitching him.

And he’s like, I got my first deal and he’s like, Brad, I kid you not a winner there. I sat down and I laid out. He’s like, I got scotch tape. And I laid out by radically the hood instructions that I just like went down and I played just like the instruction. So now he owns a thirty-five million dollar business cleaning hoods, but it all starts, it all started at Cintas.

[00:10:27] Marcus Chan: So typically the P the people that hire her sit down. So they’re pretty, like pretty gritty, right. They’re gritty, you know, like, like, Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean typically like, Hey, cause it’s like, it’s, it’s not easy. It’s a grind for sure. I’ll be very hard.

[00:10:44] Brad Seaman: You selling uniforms at Cintas or what was the, he was in a uniform division,

[00:10:48] Marcus Chan: but yeah, so I started a uniform rep, so I sold uniforms.

Right. But then the teams I had over time, they sold the facilities services to their deep, clean, to the uniforms, to inside reps, to whatever expanded out. So, but it’s typically look for people that. You know, like probably came from a tougher background. They’re willing to put the work in the world to put the hours in.

They’re willing to wear suit and shipped it back. Or a restaurant like that’s ideal. I’d love to hire, you know, because I got to

[00:11:14] Brad Seaman: this guy, this guy was hard. He’s his name’s Michael crafted and he he’s awesome. He’s he’s he’s hardcore, man. He did. Yeah. He was not, he was not playing around. He’d put his suit on and showed up back there and he got his first deal.

He just printed out the printed out the how to instructions for the library and got after it a

[00:11:32] Marcus Chan: lot. That’s awesome. That is awesome.

[00:11:34] Brad Seaman: So great. So you, so, so kind of moving, moving back to use, so you get this you know, you had this experience at Cintas. Did you feel like it, you know, you S you mentioned it being gritted.

Did you feel like, did it bring being at Cintas? Did it brings something.

[00:11:49] Marcus Chan: Well, so, I mean, even before this, like I mean, I grew up just really just like really gritty, right? I mean, I grew up me. My family was poor growing up. They’re, you know, they’re immigrants coming from China and Taiwan escaping a cultural revolution.

They came here with nothing. So I grew up in a, in an environment where we all. So we were already gritty, man. Like I, at five years old, I was only the back of the restaurant. My parents rushed her to helping clean prep, vegetables, wash dishes, and bus tables. So at a young age it was like, we all just hustled, man.

I mean, like I make the joke, like, you know, at the age of like seven, I had, I had a part-time 40 hour week. Right. Like, because we were just hustling nonstop, dude, all these things. But thing was like, from an income perspective, it’s not a lot of income. So even throughout all that, I remember like just different roles I’ve had, like going through school.

I could pick up all these odd jobs I did, I did whatever it took to graduate with zero debt. So the first role I

[00:12:44] Brad Seaman: had when your family was dead, it was there a family dynamic, the debt was negative, but you guys were really.

[00:12:51] Marcus Chan: Like, it was like, it was like, that was not a thing. Like don’t, don’t, don’t take OD debt, you know, do whatever you can to not have, you know, which is really key.

Right. But it was like, but it was also like, it wasn’t like cash only. It was like, Hey, leverage credit in. So I was like, Hey, if you got a credit card, like get the points to pay it off every month, you know, use, use the credit smart news smart way. So that was just part of how we grew up. So the real, like the, you know, even, even that green showed up, even when I was in college where, you know, the first, like, you know, Kind of a nicer role I did was at enterprise rent, a car, which you’re probably familiar with in the local Nova enterprise.

And I was an intern there for two summers and I worked part of the school year. And when I was there, like to me, I’m like, wow, because my parents were paying them minimum wage. So, and I think minimum wage was like $7 an hour at the time. And they were willing to pay, pay me $9 an hour. I’m like, oh, awesome.

And on top of that, So I’m going to convince my boss. So let me work 70, 80 hours a week during the summer, because I knew I’ll get to show a 30 to 40 hours overtime, a time and a half, which is way more than I was earning before. So I’m like, give me all the hours. I’m like, I’ll do better. And all the

[00:14:00] Brad Seaman: other kids are checking out and you’re, you’re you’re, you’re like keeps showing up.

He, everybody else’s out at 40 and you just keep showing.

[00:14:07] Marcus Chan: Yeah, my boss is like, you need to go home. I’m like, I’m like, oh, I’m call boss. I’m balsamic. If you have the other empty, who’s here working who you’re paying like $12 an hour at the overtime. I mean, now you’re paying them whatever that was $18 an hour, wherever that’s going to be.

Well, I’m, I’m your cheapest employee who has the best result. At $9 an hour with overtime, I’m your cheapest rep that you have. So let me make you more money. Cause anywhere I call plan, I’m like, I’ll make you more income for your branch. If you let me work with you, send them home. So

[00:14:39] Brad Seaman: here’s what I think is really interesting about your background.

So you got sent us enterprise. Both of those organizations seem to do in my, from my observation, seem to do a really good job of attracting young and up and coming to. What do you contribute that to you and as somebody that worked at both of those places? Cause I would say, you know, if I see Cintas or I see enterprise on somebody’s LinkedIn account, I know that they’d been identified, they’ve been taught like enterprise and Cintas identified something in you before you knew it was in yourself.

They attracted you to their business and then whether you stay or not, if you’re there for some period of time you know, they do a really good job of training. What do you like? Can you talk about those experiences? All.

[00:15:25] Marcus Chan: Yeah. A hundred percent. So typically it’s like the ones that kind of make it through, right?

So like most people that are at the enterprise or Cintas, they usually last maybe a year, maybe two years. So they can last longer than that, that already shows you probably have more grit and skills and like work ethic. The problem is

[00:15:42] Brad Seaman: how are they keeping? So how are they keeping you? Like, what’s the, what’s the message that’s resonating with somebody that’s been there for three years.

Sure in this environment,

[00:15:53] Marcus Chan: I think it starts with how they hire those, right. Because like first off, even with the enterprise piece, so like typically Cintas now, they typically don’t want to hire Radek college, that they won’t put you into like a management trainee program versus a sales role, but for the sales role perspective or even the manager perspective, it’s very similar to the enterprise mode.

So they’re looking for people that typically, you know, usually like show that they basically worked through. They’re involved a lot activities. They probably work, probably pay for school. They also usually have a certain type of personality or they look the parts as it was, it was called looked apart. It was like the unspoken rule by like typically they’ll act a certain way.

You know, they look like a, probably a former college athlete, probably involved with things. They probably take care of themselves, you know, usually. They care about how they look doesn’t mean they’re the best looking person in the world, but at least care about their appearance a little bit. So they notice these little things.

So even when they show up to the interview, they already are ahead of the game. So like they don’t do as much coaching in that perspective. Right. They usually have a show in like a past history, doing different things that shown a high level of. Right. So that could be maybe they did door to door sales and in college, you know you know, do some pest control or maybe they worked with their parents, you know, restaurant, or they had all these odd jobs and pay for school themselves.

They showed that their, they didn’t work, usually fell from a silver spoon that they’re able to do whatever it took to be successful. So they would hire those people. And when they bring them in a con, depends like for example, a couple of things that’s right. Track, at least for me was number one. I’m like, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I, to structure.

Cause you know, you normally know what, which, which doesn’t want a structure that was really appealing for me. Number two, upper mobility. So like being able to be painted the vision, Hey, you come in as a management trainee and you work really well and you, you perform certain sort of level. We’ll promote you to now a management assistant now in a system manager now a branch manager, et cetera, to the area metric, et cetera.

And then the incomes that come with it as well. So there’s like a status and prestige that you get to, you get to do as well. One of the things I remember back then, I don’t know if they still do it now, but they used to market it. Especially in my, in my area for enterprise was it was like getting paid to get your MBA.

That’s how they marketed it. Right. You get you come here, you know how to run a whole business without

[00:18:09] Brad Seaman: well paying for you to get an MBA. But the pitch was, we’re going to get, we’re going to, you’re going to get experience. You’re getting to experienced MBA. We’re going to show you how to run a business.

Correct. So you’re going to be in a branch. You’re going to be working around. You’re going to be mentored and we’re going to show you the different pieces of the business. You’re going to clean cars. You’re going to sell cars. That’s all part of the management

[00:18:30] Marcus Chan: training process. Yeah, you, you would S clean cars, sell cars, or you, you do like upgrades, upgrades to other vehicles.

You’d sell their insurance packages, et cetera. And then you get developed as well, but here’s the thing, just like anything else. Your experience is as high dependent on your manager. So if you have a branch manager who is not, well, they’re not that good, their job, you don’t get trained and you end up getting basically a D you just basically, as a highly paid.

So that’s why the high for a lot of people, that’s why a lot of people don’t, don’t make it through except for the people who understand the bigger vision. So for me, because I grew up in a restaurant where the dishwasher was out, I was washing dishes. I knew how to take care of the customer. I had no problem wearing a suit, washing cars, because I’m like, I’m gonna take care of the customers.

They’re gonna be super happy to see me do this. And now I’m going to upgrade them. And I’m also gonna sell them insurance, which by the way, we didn’t at the time, we did not get paid commission on either. So purely.

[00:19:22] Brad Seaman: I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize that you guys sold insurance.

[00:19:25] Marcus Chan: Yeah. So we would sell up sell insurance, that whole production packages.

[00:19:29] Brad Seaman: Is that like insurance, like on the car that I’m getting ready to drive off the lot or that’s like insurance. Okay. Gotta do it. That’s just like, Hey, do you want the, do you want the 29 99 insurance to cover you for incidentals outside of your so, yeah. So if you get, if you get in a car wreck, okay. So you’ve got insurance or in a rental car, you wreck it, does it, your insurance.

[00:19:52] Marcus Chan: So usually does, but I had this whole pitch that I cater around. So I sold the most. I wrote, I had this whole page, that kid around it to actually eliminate all these preset beliefs before I got to the pitch. So I had it all designed to increase my close ratio. So just like,

[00:20:09] Brad Seaman: I’m the kind of guy, like, I don’t know if my mom or my dad told me this, but at some point they said, Never saw don’t sign up for the extra insurance, like the cars, the devices, the, the whatever.

And I, my wife, one time she went out and got a car and I said, and I sent her to my best friend. I said, Hey, Russ is going to try to sell you the gap insurance, whatever you do, do not sign it. So she came back and she signed it and I’m like, honey, you gotta be kidding me. And she’s like, I don’t know. He was calling me honey and sugar.

I just felt like I had to do it, but I got a wreck. I got in a wreck and it saved me about 12 grand in the gap, or I think it was six grand in the gap. It saved me about six grand.

[00:20:50] Marcus Chan: Yeah. So it’s one of those things where it’s like rental cars, just a normal car. Yeah. Like with the rental cars, like the damage waiver was something that it was like, it was like, even today, I still think there’s nothing as a former,

[00:21:05] Brad Seaman: as a form where you get a real card, you

[00:21:07] Marcus Chan: buy the waiver insurance.

Okay. Yeah. For me, I don’t want to pay a $500 deductible and have my premium go up on a car. I don’t even know. Right. So, so that’s a good, that’s

[00:21:18] Brad Seaman: a good point. I never thought about not, not there. We’re on this podcast to talk about.

[00:21:25] Marcus Chan: I’m very algebraic. I’m telling you, like, literally I would preset these landmines in their head cause here’s like, everyone’s like, oh, I’m a good driver. I’m like, And I’d walk around. I apply for I’m like, I’m like, I’m like, Hey, we’re looking for like, you know, golf ball, sized dent, or a crack in the windshield.

And I think about his reality. Most people are actually very good drivers look like, I’m sure you are. Most of the time, it’s things they can’t control, like driving down and a rock chip hits, or they park at a grocery store and they come out and someone hit the. That’s usually what happens and I’m like, what?

You gotta pay five.

[00:21:56] Brad Seaman: Now you gotta pay 500 or so. So here’s what I think is important is that you understood in the sales process to try to get the objections for.

[00:22:05] Marcus Chan: A hundred percent. I would eliminate

[00:22:07] Brad Seaman: you. Didn’t go straight. Yeah. You didn’t go straight into like, Hey, do you want the 2,909?

[00:22:12] Marcus Chan: Oh no, no, not at all.

Now with newer in the airport’s a little bit different because they can’t walk around the car. So I would agree seed and future pace them around, around the car. I didn’t realize that I was doing that. I just kind of figured it out. I’m like, oh, this really works. When I kind of tell them these things are like they, before, before they got to the cold, like, oh, okay, cool.

Like, I don’t want to get an accent. I’m like, cool. Let me show you, how can I help you?

[00:22:34] Brad Seaman: That, that that’s awesome. So did you feel like you were talking about your experience. Did you feel like your experience? So there’s a Chinese restaurant down at, in the town over and I’m there one day and they’d got their probably fifth grade son who was blowing my mind.

So here’s, what’s happening. I walk in, he’s doing his home. He’s running the cash register. He’s talking to mom and he’s on the phone. And I was like, bro, you’re hired. How old are you? 12. I was like, you want to, do you want, do you want a job? I mean, I was blown away. I mean, this kid and he was just, this kid’s fifth grade.

He was just buttoned up. I mean, he was talking Chinese. He was yelling at the chefs. He’s asking questions about the homework. I mean, it was so did you feel like that experience really prepared? Because I’m guessing that’s kind of how it was, right. You’re up the front desk, mom and dad, or

[00:23:27] Marcus Chan: everyone is everything then English.

They, they, I mean, they do, they do much better now, but at the time they weren’t as good. So it, it, a hundred percent did, I mean, you, you learn so much about just like a life and business and everything. Right. I mean, even like, I didn’t realize, but I will learn all these things is because of my experience there, that prepared me for the future.

So. So my sister and I, before we got paid, like, like Naya minimum wage early on, but what we got, we got 100% of the tips that we earned and my parents were do festivals where we had a FUBU set up before FUBU sort of thing. So we had to go to festivals and we would get all the tips. So we knew if we structure things a certain way, we’d increase our amount of tips that her and I would get.

So she was like, you know, I was like eight. She was, you know, she’s three years, four years old. And so she was 12. So like we have positioned to where, like, if a file is up front or she’s upfront, we were very strategic about this. We would draw the most like amount of tips and there was ways we would do it psychologically to increase amount of tips that we would.

Because we observed certain patterns. So for example, like the smallest things, for example, we knew if there was a big sign on the tip jar at the. Then number one, they would see it, the first things, right front number two, when they gave us their cash or the gifts of cash that it’s a $20 bill, let’s say it in the meals, $12.

We take the $20 bills, the hour 20 and said, just put it into the, till we, we had like a little rock and we w w we would actually put it like all the 12 on top of the till, but the rock on top. So they could see a 20, which is right behind the tip jar.

[00:25:01] Brad Seaman: What’s the significance. What’s the significance of

[00:25:03] Marcus Chan: the rock.

[00:25:06] Brad Seaman: Oh, okay. They’re going to look at, because I’ve actually, I’ve seen that before. Okay. See,

[00:25:12] Marcus Chan: but also it’s like, it’s windy if it’s a, let them blow away. So one of the visible, a couple different number one, sometime people would say, oh, I gave you a a 20 and you’ll eat, you know, you’ll give me 10 for a tent.

They would lie. So you can see the money. It eliminates that issue. So we put these, the rock, hold it down. They could see it tip drugs right in front. We take out the chain, let’s say it’s $8. So then I would take a step back. So I’ll say out of 2012 and hour 20, they have to lean forward now their hand, which I’ll step back.

So the hands right over the tip jar, and then I’ll slow play the count 12 and 13, 14.

[00:25:51] Brad Seaman: And did anybody teach you this or you’re just learning us? No, I just, this is just, okay. This is what I love. This is what I love about why I think it’s so important for your kids to work in the bids. Thinking about the education that

[00:26:04] Marcus Chan: you got?

No, a hundred percent. So like sweat, we would get like, like some of these nights he’d be like 200 bucks in tips. So she’d get a hundred, I get a hundred, I’m like eight years old. She’s like 12, you know, so we know some of these weekends, we can make a couple hundred dollars and we got to take that money and how the extra money it was nice.

[00:26:21] Brad Seaman: You know, I wouldn’t add, like, I, you know, obviously there’s child labor laws in each state to protect abuse. Right. But I, but I look, I have a 12 year old kid that could very well run a restaurant. He, he, you know, he needs, you know, he, he could work a couple hours. He, he w he would do a great job. You know, he, and I just think it’s super important.

I just think we’re Robin are like, I get, you know, I want to be careful here. Cause I understand that people abuse. You know, the child, you don’t want your child, you don’t want a child to be abused, but there’s a line between abuse and giving them some exposure. That’s important.

[00:26:56] Marcus Chan: These developed so many life skills that maybe at the time, I really didn’t appreciate until I was older.

Like becoming older and being able to secure more job offers as a college graduate, because I could relay specific situations to the experience we’re looking for. Put me ahead of everybody else, or else is like, well, you know, like I kind of worked with a gap for like a couple hours a week. Let me show, let me explain to you what I had to do to pay for school.

And they’re like, oh my God, like, let me explain to you.

[00:27:27] Brad Seaman: So tell me about school. What’d you have to do to pay for.

[00:27:30] Marcus Chan: So so first of all, the first thing, the first thing I did was so my parents were Ross and they said, Marcus, you can go to any college you want, as long as you pay for. I said, fantastic grades.

So I’ll go university of Oregon. Cause it’s in-state right. I’m like, oh, let me go and start applying for as many scholarships. All right. And I was playing like, literally everywhere. Right. And then Lord you’ll follow starships and it wasn’t as easy back then as it is today. So it doesn’t many of the could got rejected lawyer.

Hundreds of times eventually got enough money for cover, just to. But this doesn’t cover anything else, whether it was books, other fees or anything else. And I’m like,

[00:28:06] Brad Seaman: okay, you got a scholarship that covered

[00:28:09] Marcus Chan: at least the big portion, the big portion. Yeah. So then my initial plan was actually to work my parents restaurant to basically pay for, pay for pay for college for anything else.

But then they sold the restaurant in 2002, which actually did me a huge solid, because it forced me to go. So I’m like, okay, that’s I guess I’ll do that. So the first job I got was at a Speedo source selling Speedos and speed accessories. So that was a ton of fun doing that because I was a competitive swimmer growing up.

So it made perfect sense. So that was like, I work maybe 10, 20 hours during the week, but on some weekends they’d have a swim meet and hour drive. Like I wake up at three in the morning, drive a couple hours set up. At a swim meet, sling Speedos for 12 to 14 hours. Then I drive back home within a couple hours and then do it again the next day, so that, you know, 20, 30, 40 hours a week, I do, you know, overall for the week, you may have helped me with,

[00:29:03] Brad Seaman: I love the boost sales.

So like my first. Kinda money-making deal was I made necklaces. And so I worked at state fair. I worked at state fair and some concerts on probably 12. And I loved just like the hustle, right? Like your trade, you know, you have this necklace that necklace you’re trading, which beads you want on it. You’re, you know, you’re exchanging cash or like the whole, like when I go, my kid plays lacrosse and they bring these kids in from Connecticut to sell those lacrosse team.

And I, I get just totally like, I just a total high watching these kids selling the t-shirts like just the whole movement, you know, you got, oh yeah. People grabbing stuff. I love it. It’s like, oh

[00:29:45] Marcus Chan: yeah. Yeah. So that was also, I D I did that. And then I also did and then also do a part-time assistant, some coaching as well.

So during some season for like high school, I would go and like, coach, that was a while. And then, you know, I’ll just do like random, odd. And I work with my parents. They also had festivals still, so they sold the restaurant, but they still the festivals too. So they sold, they own the titles of the rights to that.

So we do festivals as well on the weekends. So it was a mix of all of the above. And then finally, my junior year, You know, I was like, this is all minimum wage at this point. And I was going to graduate a couple years. I’m like, okay, I need to like, try to get some sort of internship or do something that’s going to hopefully like leading me to a real career.

Cause I don’t want to own a restaurant. I don’t want to sell spiels the rest of my life. And that’s when I was at the career fair. I remember like going to the career fair and looking at all the internships and I was going around wore suit or suit like. As many as I’d have one suit, I got one suit. What I’d same suit.

What’s it like every possible booth there to see what they had to offer and start applying for these scholar or for these internships. And that’s what I got offered the enterprise one. And that’s when I first started enterprise, it was my first like wore a shirt and tie, get to show. Felt good about myself.

Right. I used to have sideburns. I cut my cyber Itzhak cause they want

[00:31:07] Brad Seaman: some sweet some

[00:31:08] Marcus Chan: cybers. Oh yeah. So that was a ton of fun, but that, that’s how I paid for college. Just doing that and just working on stuff to make sure I graded zero debt.