In this inspiring episode of One Small Change, host Yvonne McCoy welcomes a special guest, Mark Entrekin, to explore how unexpected moments and seemingly small decisions can spark profound personal and professional transformation. The conversation dives into overcoming adversity, breaking down prejudice and anger, the importance of focusing on long-term improvement, and how unity and curiosity lead to stronger relationships and meaningful change. Listeners will come away with practical tools for fostering growth—individually and within organizations—by shifting mindsets, asking better questions, and embracing the power of small, intentional changes.

Guest Bio:

Mark Entrekin is a dynamic speaker, coach, and founder of Reality Focused Dynamics, dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and organizations achieve unity and lasting success. Drawing on a remarkable personal journey that began with a life-changing accident and led him from a technical IT background into transformational coaching, Mark specializes in dismantling division, managing anger, and building stronger connections. Known for his creative use of memorable acronyms and practical strategies, Mark empowers others to move from frustration and stagnation to clarity and positive action.

Chapters:

00:00 "Exploring Transformative Small Changes"

05:51 Blood Transfusion Experience

07:10 "Unity and Equal Parenting"

09:51 Generational Trauma and Wartime Memories

14:55 Managing Anger for Entrepreneurial Success

17:51 "Research, Connect, Engage Positively"

21:58 Deepening Understanding Through Repetition

23:35 "Change vs. Long-Term Improvement"

28:32 "Achieving Unity Guide"

29:37 "Make Learning Last"

32:54 Embrace Change and Curiosity

Quote from the Guest:

“We are or at least can be as awesome as we choose to be. But we first have to make that choice.”

Links:

Get your copy of Mark’s  “Achieving Unity Guide to Help End Frustration, Disconnection and Prejudice”

https://www.MarkEntrekin.com/achieving-unity-guide

Welcome to the One Small Change. I am thrilled that you are taking

time out of your busy schedule to be with us today.

This is a journey of exploration and transformation and

I am so glad you've decided to take it with me. I'm Your host, Yvonne

McCoy and I bring almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience and a

passion for discovering growth through the power of

seemingly small change. You can be amazed at

what happens when you make a small change. So again, thank you

for joining me and I want to introduce an amazing

new friend, Mark Intrican and he's

going to tell us what's unexpected and

insignificant decision sparked a remarkable transformation

and growth in either his personal, professional or both.

Mark, so glad you're here today.

Thank you so much, Yvonne. I'm excited and I'm honored to be

here. This is so wonderful. I love your program.

I love how you're the women's business strategist

because the strategies that we take are truly what puts us to

that next higher level, right? Absolutely,

absolutely. So I want you

to talk about what you do and how

you got there. What made you go to where you are and what

kind of impact is it having? Yvonne, that's a great

story and I love telling it, but it's going to take just about seven or

eight hours. Do we have that much time in a different

universe? Okay. It all

started back when I was a small child. Now, well, in a

way it was. Started as a small child.

But this small child was an 18 year old. He had a

scholarship to the University of Alabama. And if you know football,

that was back in Bear Bryant's time when he was just

winning, just championship after championship.

I was there, but I was now I was on a scholastic scholarship. I was

not on a football scholarship, but I was ready to go. I

was excited. And my brother in law and I were coming home

one night from the restaurant. We were coming around the curve,

front left tire blew out, took the car into the ditch,

boom, hit the ditch. I went through the windshield.

Oh, and when I went through that windshield, of course I ducked and did this.

I've got scars in my hand. I don't know if you can see them on

the camera, but there's large scars on my head which you can't see

because I let what little hair I have grow grow over them.

But I spent some 17 days in the

hospital, 17 to 20 days. And the hospital can't tell me exactly. They don't keep

records back that long. And I checked them many

years ago for that, but they never gave Me, the exact dates, but I know

I spent five days in intensive care. This is just.

Am I going to make it? Am I not going to make it? Head injuries

went in, they removed the glass. Everything else they came out,

issues with more glass. They took me back in, removed more glass.

And so I was there for the five days in the

emergency room, the 17 days in the hospital. Finally

get to come home. And where do I come home to? Back to my

home high school town where I was so ready to get

out of. I'd been there going through school, through my third grade,

through senior in high school. Small town, southeastern

New Mexico, middle of nowhere. I was stuck for

six months for rehab. Finally I said, well,

I'll be able to go back. Called University

of Alabama. They said they'd hold my scholarship for me. Great, great. I was excited.

But after a few months, things just started happening.

Mom didn't want me to get away from home yet, quite yet. Want me wait

another semester. So I went to Texas Tech

University in Lubbock, Texas. Good school, loved it, great

people. And during that semester, I kind of lost my

interest in the University of Alabama. I don't know why, but I

did. And then after that, I got

married. Wonderful. Had two beautiful kids,

had a boy, had a girl. Perfect family. Boom,

there went the divorce. And, oh, the divorce was so

dramatic, like you see on tv. I want those television type divorces where

every time I walked into that courtroom, oh, there's a deadbeat dad.

Wait a minute. I'm paying all of this money from

alimony, child support, paying her attorney

fees. What do you mean? Going back and fighting and fighting

and fighting. And one day

it just hit me. Hold on,

let's do some thinking here. I was in Southern

Mississippi when the accident happened. I was in the

Hattiesburg Hospital neurosurgical unit, and

I'm getting blood. What, what blood did I get?

I didn't know as much about blood back then.

I'm in the divorce. I walk into the divorce court at

9am in the morning, sometime between 9am and 4pm Whenever the

judges would work. And I'm being tossed around like the,

the minority of the century. I, I just walk in and people are just

pointing fingers at me. Oh, a deadbeat dad in the courtroom with a divorce.

And I thought, wait a minute, what's going on here? And

then I remembered a little bit back about my science. And you know, there's four

blood types in this world, around the world,

not just in the United States. Every country

go to Russia. You need blood. Guess What? There's four blood types. China,

Antarctica, wherever you go, four blood types.

What blood did I receive? Well, I received either

one of the A groups. A positive is what blood type I have, or type

O or type O negative. And it's not one of those situations, Yvonne,

where they said, oh, Mark needs blood. Let's call his good old friends

back home and just get some blood from a college

educated high school guy who wants to achieve in life.

They don't have that, Yvonne. They just gave me

whatever blood was available that matched my.

I didn't know if they were, but they were a darker color skin, lighter colored

skin. Didn't know if they had tattooed, didn't know if they smoked, didn't know if

they even had a college education or high school education. All of a

sudden it started coming to me, understanding we

are the same, just a little bit different color,

lighter and darker skin. That's it. No

matter where we are around the world.

My divorce. Yes. A male.

Why was I being so ridiculed in the court system?

And it started coming to me. It's all about

our culture, what we are taught from the

time we are just a few days old,

through the time we learn. The difference I'm trying to

teach today is that we are all the

same and we need to be treated that way. Mothers,

fathers, the best parent is both parents.

It's not one over the other. I can't have a child,

but I can parent a child and I can do it well.

And that's what we need to think about, what we're doing. And we need to

end all the anger in this world, all the

frustrations that we seem to have day after day.

Times that we're just doing things, just getting mad over

the smallest things. And then we create a distancing.

That distancing is kind of like a hate. And that hate is

nothing more than having accelerated troubled expectations. H A T

E our anger. Nothing more than actions

not gaining effective results. A N G E R

It all came to me that there is a better way.

We are the same. We are, or at least

can be, as awesome as we choose to be.

But we first have to make that choice. And that's

what started me into what I do today. Going from a technical background,

IT information technology and computers, to doing more on the personal

side and helping us all get together

for better tomorrow, achieving the unity that we

all deserve. That is a great story. And I have

to say to you, one of the things that you and I kind of share

in common is the idea that, you know, when we're

born and when we're, you know, you're young kids, we're like a clean

slate. You know, we're not born. We are, we're not

born with any of that stuff. And, you know, it comes

from what we're taught and the

experiences that we have. And, you know, I had an experience

where I was an exchange student. I was in Holland

for. Yeah, yeah, it was great. I'm so jealous.

It was, it was. That was like the, one of the big changes, you

know, small changes that, that happened to me. And even in my

60s, my brother said to me, you've never been right

since you went overseas. Because I

view the world totally differently. You know, it wasn't just about my

town and about America. It was like, we're a global community.

But it was the first time, I think that I actually

encountered real hate. And,

you know, for me, I was a teenager, so, like, I hate peas.

I hate, you know, mustard colored clothes or whatever.

And, you know, and I can't, I can't, you know, fault them

because, you know, they lived through World War II. They

had to. They hid Jewish families in their

basement and they had, they had to bike out of town to

get food, so nobody reported them for having more food than they were supposed

to, that kind of thing. And so every time we, every time we

passed like a, a bunker or something that was in the

field, I had to say, I hate Germans.

That, you know, my family said, I hate Germans. And

it was, you know, it was like hate on a totally different level than

I had ever experienced in my life. And for good reason.

Don't get me wrong. I'm, you know, I. But it was, it was like,

oh, so there are people in the world that have

this level of hate, right? And,

you know, I could have. I could have come from a family. You

know, we were the only black family in a white neighborhood. So I could have

come from a family that brought us up to be hateful,

you know, but I didn't, you know, luckily I was very lucky. My

dad brought us up. You know, you take every person as

that person, you know, you don't prejudge

them. You don't, you know, whatever. So. So

this is not about me, but it could be.

That's a good story. And I wished I would have done that. And Holland was

a place I was thinking of. My aunt had a foreign exchange

student with them during their senior year and a junior, I think

it was, but. And I thought about it, but didn't do

it and I wish I would have. I'm so

glad you did. I wish I'd known you back then to have told me about

it, so I would have done the same thing. That's such a learning

experience, right? Like you said, it

totally changed my, my viewpoint

on things that are important, things that aren't important,

that kind of thing. But anyway, so

how are you using this professionally now or

personally? What I

do as much as I can every day is teach more

and more people about the things that we just talked about. And

that is ending to anger. Instead of anger,

we need to be calm because it.

Canceling anger leads motivation. C A L

M I help people get beyond that anger,

even things such as prejudice. Prejudice is just such

a childish attitude. But I think as we're

both saying, it is something that we do because

it's what we were taught. And so what I'm doing is

I specialize in helping individuals, organizations

in all levels, in couples, married couples, especially in

parenting time, helping them build stronger, commit stronger

connections, dismantling the vision and

creating a lasting success through the power of

achieving unity. Because through that unity,

we have the strength beyond every

imaginable idea that we have of doing anything by

ourselves. Well, I think, you know,

if you're an entrepreneur, there's, there's an

old proverb that says something like, if you want to go fast, go by

yourself. If you want to go long, go with others.

And, you know, you can. My, my, my add on

to that is it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the

wrong direction. So that's right. I think as

entrepreneurs, it is really important

to travel with other people, to find a community, find a couple of people

that you can do connection and, and you know,

collaboration with, because it will save you so many mistakes.

It will open up ideas for you that you will never have on your own.

And not because you're not capable of it, but just because

we are stuck in our own little silo, our

thought silo. You know,

another thing that happened for me was I took a

positivity course and he talked about, you

know, we tend to default to our, our background and our past,

our comfort level. Yes. And also we

collect evidence to support the belief that we have. So if you

fail and you, you know, you say, oh, it's another time I failed.

You're just building up that evidence. If you say, you know,

I experimented and look, I had success or I learned

something, then it, then it becomes a positive learning experience. But

anyway, so the course taught me to say

when things come up, am I being judgmental or am I being

curious? And oh, my God, that changed my

life. That's a great point, too, because that's what I do.

Helping entrepreneurs in the ending, that anger and

the hate and helping others. Because

if we come into our office in the morning or if we're going to an

appointment and we run into. Just take an example of road rage

and somebody pulls in front of us and we have to make a quick turn

and let's say we spilled our coffee or our cold drink on our sin,

we are so mad. And a lot of times we just yell and scream

and flip our hand up and those kind of things.

What we have done too many times is

messed up our next customer because

we're going to take too many times again. We're going to

take that anger with us to that

next appointment, to that next phone call, to that next

interview, to next video session.

We need to let those things go, get

beyond whatever everyone else is feeling and

start grabbing onto us. Because what we're building

is a better life. And if we don't

let go of that extra weight that weighed on our shoulder

because of someone else, what someone else said or did,

we're dragging ourselves down. And as an entrepreneur,

we don't want that. Right? So. So,

okay, you've mentioned

that we do better with our clients

and with our interactions if we can let those negative and

hateful feelings go. One of the things that I do that

I think kind of irritates people is when I

have a connection call. I do not go to LinkedIn and I do

not read their profile. And I do not do all these things

because I want to start with a clean slate. I want to

just see how we connect with each other. What you

put on your LinkedIn profile could be two years old and you're doing something

totally different. And I've made assumptions, and then you're not

there anymore. And so, you know, I've had people say, you didn't go

to my website. I'm like, no, because I want to see how you

tell me what you do. I want to see how well we connect.

And some people find that really annoying, I guess.

But my thing is I want to be open to the experience.

I want to have a clean slate so that I can

experience for myself that person.

And I think that way you're not bringing preconceived

ideas, you know, that that old, you know, assume makes an ass out

of you and me kind of thing. So that's One

thing is meet each person as a

brand new open connection

without any preconceived ideas. I think,

and I like what you're saying, Yvonne, and I take it similar,

but I always find out as much as I can about who

I'm talking with ahead of time. Going out to their website, going out to

their LinkedIn, see if they're on Facebook, see you. If

anything I can find out about them because

I want to be able to at least build a base or

foundation. And that's where we all need

to start, is somewhere strong. But

what assume does only builds

questions. And then I help leaders especially

in asking those questions. You can't see it right now, but

right here on my wall, several of them, it says, always

smile first as you respond with a positive

question. A smiley face on it, but that's what it says, always

smile first as you respond with a positive question. So when I'm talking

to someone and I've seen something on their website

or just by talking with them, I'll say,

this is what I saw, this is what I heard. What does that mean?

Let them open up and then share. And like you're saying,

Yvonne, sometimes I say, oh, that's what I was working on a couple of years

ago. I'm not doing that anymore. I could assume from that

point or I could ask another question, oh, what are you doing now?

And so that's the thing that we both do in common, is ask questions.

So when I meet somebody, I go, how can I support you?

Tell me more, tell me, you know, how you got here,

right? And ask questions, you know,

to get clarity and stuff about what it is they're doing and that kind of

thing. And so before we run out of time, there's one

other thing that I kind of want to talk about is you've got this great

graphic in your background and I'm not sure that we've touched

on that or if it's even relevant.

That is my, my son did the graphic. He put that together

for me. But that was my company, Reality

Focused Dynamics. And that comes from a lot of the things that we're talking about

today, Yvonne. And from my past, from my college

days to my accident, what is reality?

And too many times we realize first that reality is

our own perception, how we perceive our

life, our day, our next event is our reality.

So it's Reality Focused Dynamics.

And first off, My phone number is

303-focused.

303-362-8733. That is

303-focused. Because focus is where we need to be.

So what's great about focused? We can build success

focused solutions. That's my logo.

Reality focused dynamics. Where are we? What is

our reality? Let's focus on those. And as we

focused on reality, let's focus on the success

and the solutions. Because as we focus, which means

really, truly put your mind,

your mindset to taking that success

forward based on your realities, you're going to come up

with the right solution based on the dynamics that

you use to get there. Well, we agree

on that. Because, you know, one of the things that I, you know, one

of my taglines is you don't need to be fixed, you need to be found.

And the way you do that is focus on your, your

unique powers, your unique skill set. And part of that is

style. So, you know, we've, we've exhibited two

different styles. You like to dig in

so that you've got information so you can get to know people. I

like a clean slate so I can dig in when I've got the person,

right? And so those are our different styles, right?

Our different unique powers, the way we go about things. So

I. But they're going through the same dynamics though, right?

We're. The idea is get to know the person, the person,

not the ethnic group, not the, you know,

whatever that, that they're going through. And, And I think, you

know, our reality.

How can I say this? Our reality

can change in the sense

that as we bring in more information, it's like a

tapestry. You're adding more threads and

more depth and that kind of thing. And that's one of the things that I

found by doing the same workshop over and over again

is that I just got better at it. Instead of being spreading out wider and

wider, I was going deeper and deeper and finding, you

know, the things that, that were really working and stuff. And, and

I always thought I would be really bored because I'm a typical

entrepreneurial squirrel, you know, always

making programs and, you know, all kinds of stuff. And so, you

know, the idea of doing one thing over and over again was like, oh my

God, this is going to be horrible. And, and it has been the best thing.

I have to keep myself from saying this is going to be the best

workshop, you know, because I found something different.

And I think what it does going to your dynamics and

I, I may be misunderstanding this is.

You've. You've got to keep moving forward. I mean, the world is

changing. It is changing faster than it ever has. If

you are not moving and have dynamics, you are going

to stagnate and become irrelevant. That is so true. And let

me play with a couple of words or one of the words that we use

just in this conversation and that's the word change.

Things do change, but change is

short term improvement is the

reality that we must focus, focus on for our

dynamics to go forward. Because change

is short term, improvement is long term. So

our reality focused dynamics takes us long term

as we build those success focused solutions

because that's where we have to be long term,

continual process improvement. And that's how I help companies

get beyond that stagnation. Running in the mud, just

having that weight of some kind of hate or

anger or, or learning

any of that weighing down on our shoulders. But

instead shed that away and take that

small change, turn it into a large improvement and you

then have the dynamics to reach the solution that you've

desired the whole time. Right. And

so if I were to reword that just a little bit,

I always think of changes. If you think of a wheel with

spokes in it, change is kind of the center.

And as it you keep implementing it and growing into

it, the spokes get further and further apart. And so the

area got a dog, guys. So the area

of improvement gets bigger and bigger the longer you can do

it. And the thing that really had an impact on

me is when I learned about

the change, a change model. It talked about you have

to end something first or make room for a change

before you can do kind of the new beginning and in the middle is called

the neutral zone. And it is anything but neutral.

I mean I think they got that from a car, you know, shifting gears

first, forward, neutral. And, and you know, my mantra

is I must be making a great change because I've never been this miserable

before.

Because change doesn't happen in a vacuum. You

change something and other things start to change around it that you didn't even

know we're connected. Right. And so

it, it is. I think people don't expect to

change. They make a decision and they don't expect to experience the other stuff

that comes with the change that to get to the improvement, if

that makes any sense. It does. And that,

that's where I come up with this saying. And this is one of my domains

is called you have something come up you didn't expect and you say

what the frustration. And

sometimes that can be frustrating to see that change.

That's why you make that change. Then you go forward and make sure

you're taking things down and breaking them down. That's another one of my

speeches it's called Bidwid Rid Gid.

Break it down, write it down, review its

dependencies, get it done. And that's how we

focus on those changes, make sure that they turn into long

term improvements. Would that work for you?

It does. And I say when you focus you can be much

more strategic because you've got a long term goal that you're

working on. And so even if you have to auto correct or you

know, self correct as you're going along, you're still headed towards your, your

North Star. So guess what, our time is up.

I need to, I need to. This has been great. I got a

couple of things. So just real fast. Some of the things that we talked

about is knowing that, you know,

we collect evidence to support an old idea and

so we need to be more curious and ask more questions about

things. I think

we talked about treating each person as an individual with

value the way they are.

I don't know. Give me a, give me a third one that I missed. One

of them that I want to emphasize is assumptions

must only create further questions.

Don't assume and believe it. Don't believe your assumption because as you said,

it just makes an ass out of you and me. That's assume me. You

want to make sure that that assumption, when you assume something,

ask the question and don't be afraid to ask. So that's the

biggest one as far as something to build from

is assumptions. Make questions. Always smile

first as you ask that positive question going forward.

Okay. And, and so also tell us about your gift.

Oh, I have a wonderful gift and I'll put the link in the

chat, but it's called my Achieving Unity Guide.

You can also get it on my website,

www.achievingunity.com or

www.markentrican.com. right there. And

find my Achieving Unity Guide. Roll down the first page

and it helps us talk about how we can end anger,

hate and prejudice. And I go into some acronyms that

are very catchy that help us think about

all those items. That anger is nothing more than a

frustration, hates nothing more than a disconnect. And I

break down frustrate. I'm sorry, I break down prejudice into two

different acronyms of how

prejudice used to be and how it is today. Do you have time for me

to go through them quickly? I don't think so, but I. Okay,

we'll go through those next time. Tell you that, that you and

I are like the acronym, you know, king and queen. Because I'm

really into acronyms. Right. They help us remember don't they?

They do. Because my thing is you can't. You, you know, you can't use it

if you can't remember it. I, you know, I used to say in corporate, we

got this great training, but when you got into the, you know, the heat of

it, you know, your brain would go, which binder was that in?

And so you defaulted back to what you automatically did

before. So that's why, that's why I, you know,

and I follow that in, in. In the podcast of

make your learning last. You learn something, you apply it, you share

it with others, because it. It makes it clearer for you, but it also makes

you more of an expert that you're being generous and sharing your information.

But the most important proactive, pick a time trigger.

When is the situation? I'm going to need this so that you know

when to look for it. Okay, so here we go.

When was the last time you did something new for the first time?

The newest things I've done is my podcast. And then getting on

more and more. I have a podcast I love you. Come be a guest on.

I want to thank you so much for being a letting me be a guest

on yours. And that's my newest thing to start being on other

professionals and their podcasts like yours. This is

my new thing that I'm working on right now, and I'm enjoying it because not

only do I get to meet people like you, you know, you and I knew

each other, but get to know each other better and help us

build a better world for all of us. Well,

the reason I did the podcast is, like I said, I wanted to

help my clients and my community expand the people that

they were exposed to so that. That, you know, because I'm not

gonna. I'm never gonna know everything about everything

right, either. And so, you know, the best way to do that is

have connection with other people. So here

we go. It's time for the commercial. The best that I can do

it. I want to make sure that you subscribe and share the

podcast and engage on social media. And the reason I did

this, I wanted to supercharge your business. And. And one of the ways to

do that is connecting you to other people that maybe you wouldn't have run into

before. And so this is my way of giving back to the community and

helping you to grow and have impact. And so I hope

you'll continue to join me on the one small change. And

let's keep going on this journey where even the smallest shift can yield

a huge transformation. And I want you to grow your vision.

So it's a bold vision and you have innovative possibilities.

Mark, have you got any last words of wisdom to share?

And I'll try to go through this fast, Yvonne, but instead of getting frustrated or

angry. Angry is. Anger is just actions not gaining

effective results. Get calm. C A L M Calm

cancels. Anger leads motivation. Instead of

disconnecting or hating. Where hate is nothing more than having

accelerated troubled expectations. Be

the help. And that help is having excellent leadership plans.

Life is truly what we make it. So if you're not making it awesome,

you're letting someone else make your life what they want it to be. Now we

can make it all up to ourselves, because isn't it time

to make your life awesome? Achieving unity helps you achieve the

credit that you deserve. Thank you so much.

That is so true. All right, guys, we're bringing it to an

end. So I want you to remember, change is simple, but it's not always

easy. It requires courage, resilience, and a willingness to stability.

Step out of your comfort zone. So I hope you'll continue to join me for

the one small change and keep this momentum going.

And until next time, stay very curious.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Yvonne. It's been a pleasure. It

has been.