If you’re looking to scale your business, reinvent your career, or just hear a story that's as heartfelt as it is instructive, you won’t want to miss this candid conversation.

Hosts Glenn Harper and Julie Smith sit down with the dynamic Marc L. Daniels—also known as the Billion Dollar Coach. From his entrepreneurial beginnings in New Jersey to orchestrating multi-million dollar exits and even running an alpaca farm on Martha’s Vineyard, Marc L. Daniels shares a wild ride packed with sharp business insights and personal transformation.

This episode goes into Marc L. Daniels's unexpected pivots: rescuing a Radio Shack dealership from the brink, revolutionizing startups, and leading companies through explosive growth—all while staying grounded with stories of family, resilience, and a healthy dose of humor.

Along the way, he opens up about the life-changing events that shaped his fearless approach, the strategies behind his success, and why having a plan is non-negotiable for any entrepreneur.

This episode is brought to you by PureTax, LLC. Tax preparation services without the pressure. When all you need is to get your tax return done, take the stress out of tax season by working with a firm that has simplified the process and the pricing. Find out more about how we started.

Moments

07:34 "Winning Scholarship and Career Path"

11:24 "West Milford's Economic Decline"

19:17 "Visionary Paper Route Deal"

26:54 "First Business Pivot Success"

28:48 "Whiteboard Dashboard for Metrics"

36:52 "Board Management Tech Amid Crisis"

43:48 "Weaknesses and Unpredictable Threats"

46:11 "Finding Profitable Industry Trends"

52:53 AI: Business Tool, Not Trend

55:53 "Meetings Matter for Project Success"

01:00:59 Accountants: Helping is Core Value

Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.

Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.

Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success

Our clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.

Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.

Here are three key takeaways:

1. Embrace the Pivot: Marc’s story is proof that changing directions—whether it’s switching industries or business models—can be your biggest opportunity. He spotted industry trends early and wasn’t afraid to pivot, from computers to consulting to farming, and then back to business again.
2. Strategic Planning Wins: Marc emphasized that “hope is not a strategy and hustle is not a plan.” He encourages every entrepreneur to have a written business plan, regularly meet with their team, and use tools (like AI) to leverage trends. Execution is everything.
3. Know Your Endgame: Marc challenges entrepreneurs to plan their exit early. Whether it’s selling, passing on, or scaling down, having clarity on your business’s future is critical for long-term success.

Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year. 

An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.

Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. 

Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.

Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm Glenn Harper, Julie Smith. What's going on, Julie?

Well, you know, it's not as cold as it was last time, so I'll take it as a win. We're trending in the right direction.

We're down to about maybe what, 10 inches of snow from 21? This is great. Well, we're good times here in Columbus, Ohio. We've got a great show lined up for today. Today we got our guest. I'd like to introduce Mark Daniels, the Billion Dollar Coach. That's right. Ilian with a B. He's an entrepreneur extraordinaire that landed in the best place for someone who has helped many a company scale, for an exit and cash out.

He has mastered being an owner-operator and an owner-investor. He has never met an exit he didn't plan for, and by putting his stamp on it, he has made the exit more ludicrous than expected. He is the owner and founder of MarkLDaniels.com, which helps entrepreneurs and startups scale and exit for the highest price allowed by law. I just made that part up. Mark sits on many a board and his wisdom is sought after by companies all around the world. Mark has an accounting degree, which automatically makes him cooler than any other guest as he speaks the language of numbers. Mark's journey in the corporate world and ultimately landing in the billion-dollar coach reads like a Stephen King novel. Please sit back and enjoy Mark sharing the keys to success in the dog-eat-dog world of business.

Thanks, Mark, for being on our show.

Well, thank you, Glenn and Julie. What an introduction. Now I have a lot to live up to here.

This is true.

I mean, I'm glad you haven't broke the law.

Yes, we don't do that over here. It's good. Well, you know, we love to, uh, you know, part of what the fun part of the show is, is to get to know somebody a little bit, where they come from, what makes them tick, and then see their journey. And provide inspiration for other entrepreneurs that might be bored in their car listening to the show or wanting to figure things out. So we start from the beginning and I do a little bit of research on the internet to find out a little bit about you. And, uh, I look at all police files and FBI and all the things. And, uh, I've come up with, uh, it says you grew up in West Chop, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and you're a big Yankees fan. Is that all true?

No, that's not totally true. Okay. I grew up in New Jersey, in West Milford, New Jersey, in Oakland, New Jersey. And that's really where I was for 51 years. Then I actually retired to the island of Martha's Vineyard when I was in my early 50s and took a year off. I really needed that time to heal. And then said, you know, I'm not really enjoying just running this big alpaca farm. I had actually launched an alpaca farm.

And I got back into business consulting and helping companies grow. And that was on Martha's Vineyard. And that was in West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard. So yes, there is— I spent 13 years in On Martha's Vineyard. And recently we relocated to, um, um, Avon, Connecticut. So, uh, that's where we are.

Can we, can we talk about that alpaca farm? So what, what did you not enjoy about it?

Well, I loved it. Um, you know, but you can't make money with alpacas. Um, to bring hay onto Martha's Vineyard, we were paying crazy amounts. We, we at one point in time had over 50 alpacas. That's a lot. And you really can't make money selling yarn. And I don't want to start this, this podcast off in a negative way, but you have cheap South American labor shearing alpacas and sending that yarn to the USA. And you can't make money with shearing alpacas.

I did make a fair amount of money selling alpacas, breeding them and selling them. So, I loved it. It got me healthy. When I got to Martha's Vineyard, I was overweight from being in business meetings coast to coast with the company I was with, Diligent Board Member Services. I lost 50 pounds and just got in fantastic shape. Just working on a farm, you'd walk 5 miles a day. It's, it's lot. a.

We always say you're exactly where you need to be, maybe not where you wanna be. So it sounds like that's what you needed, maybe not what you wanted.

I needed need it. I did it at that point.

In time, which is so funny. The, who farmers, as we know, they, it's, it's a very, very, you have to be very passionate about it. It's, everybody's kind of against you because it's just really hard to make money in farming. So it's a, a labor of love. We all know. But that is one of the hardest jobs to do, cuz it's 24/7, 365. So you leave corporate America where you're doing that and you say, I'm gonna find my respite here in doing farming, which is very ironic, but that proves the point that it's not as as joy— long as you enjoy what you do, you can find it relaxing.

Yeah. And it was very relaxing and, and healthy for me. And my wife actually launched a whole business as a side shoot of that. She, She now paints with fiber. So she does fiber paintings and she's an award-winning artist, uh, uh, you know, on the East Coast. So, um, we, we, we still have 5 sheep. We got rid of all the alpacas. We still have 5 sheep at my little farm here in Connecticut.

That's fantastic. Still on the farm. That's great. So, you know, we go back to New Jersey. You grew up here in this West and, uh, Milford you know, mom and dad, were they entrepreneurs? Were they working for the man? What was the story?

My father worked in a record store, um, and was a record store manager. Manager and was a Broadway theater critic at night. It was, it was really an incredible time growing up. I would go to work with him every Saturday, record store in Englewood Cliffs. I hung out with John Travolta and Dan Dave Bennett. They were regulars in his store in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. I was a, you know, I got to meet incredible people through my father. And, you know, he was definitely very instrumental in my life, but not good at making money.

He wrote a book or two, but never, never made a ton of money. My mother, on the other hand, and my father, they actually got divorced. And my mother went on to be a professor at Penn State and taught there till about 10 years ago. So, so, you know, I decided in high school, actually won an award for a television commercial. We had to be on the energy crisis. Julie, you don't remember the energy crisis. Glenn, you remember the— I remember we.

To— had we were trying to buy a Honda Civic and thinking that was the way to get around it.

But, but there were gas lines, odd-even days. It was in the '70s. And, you know, the television, television commercial, and this all leads into how I became an entrepreneur. So the television commercial had to be about the energy crisis. So I had a guy and a girl on a sofa, the guy sitting on one end of the sofa, the girl sitting on the other end of the 3-cushion sofa. And he nervously reaches up and turns off the light. And then he moves up to the girl. He looks over at the girl.

She smiles at him. He looks back at the girl. He reaches around, turns off the other light. The screen went to black and it said, enjoy the energy crisis. Turn off all unnecessary lights.

That's fantastic.

So I won first place in the state, you know, and I got a little scholarship to a state school. I could go to any state school in New Jersey. It was a small scholarship. It didn't pay everything, but schools weren't that expensive back then in the '70s. And I said, well, let my major be television, you know, let me go in. And because I'd done this television commercial, I was too foolish and young to understand that what I was probably good at was marketing and sales. So anyway, but I went into television, right? And then in my beginning of my sophomore year, I had saved up a lot of money. I was working 3 different jobs.

I had actually saved as like a 19-year-old, I had saved about $18,000.

That's huge back then.

It was. And it was because I was working and just a lot of different things. And I was really good at banking money. 1/3 went for the girlfriend, 1/3 went into the bank, and 1/3 went for the car.

And you still save that much? That's impressive.

Yeah, but that's what I did. I just kept chucking money into the savings account. I started that probably when I was like 15. So, um, I went— the house was going on bank auction. We went to go look at this house that had been burnt out, but it was on Upper Greenwood Lake, New York, which is in West Milford, New Jersey. A drunk driver crossed the wrong side of the road, hit me head-on. Right up and over my car. I turned to my girlfriend at the time and I said, are you okay? And she said, yeah, I'm okay.

And she said, are you okay? And I said, yeah. And as I reached up, blood was just spurting out of my shoulder. Literally, my arm had been cut off and it was hanging from the armpit.

Whoa.

It works. Yeah, barely, but it works. I don't have full rotation on it. You know, I'll never be a pitcher. But spent a month in the hospital. And that was a turning point in my life because I realized at age 19 how life short could suddenly become. And as she was walking away from the car, my girlfriend, to get help, She squeezed out one of the windows, and I remember saying, God, this is not the way I wanted to die. And with that, a driver by from a nearby town, not even from that town, stopped, and he said, I'm the captain of the Mahwah, New Jersey, first aid squad.

You're bleeding out. Can I get you out of the car? Do I have your permission to extract you from the car? And he got me out and sat on my shoulder until the ambulance arrived. A month later in the hospital, I said, you know, this television thing is, is really challenging because television, even today, in movie or acting or anything, it's all controlled by the unions. So if you don't know somebody in the union, you're never going to hold the camera on the sidelines of an NFL game. You're never going to be a scriptwriter unless you know somebody. So it's a really challenging field to break into. So what did I switch to?

Marketing?

Nope. Accounting. I have a degree in finance.

It makes total sense.

Well, I thought maybe there was one.

More, one more turn on the road. I could bring home— who controls the money?

Yes.

So, um, so, um, so Glenn, you know, so I don't have a CPA like you, but, you know, I came out of college and I was working as an accountant. And my internship was at a Radio Shack dealership in West Milford, New Jersey.

Oh, the old Radio Shack. Those places were great.

And Joe Russo, who was my early— one of my early mentors in business, he had just acquired this Radio Shack. But at that point in time, the Ford Mahwah plant had closed. Jungle Habitat sold off all their animals to a new Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat, which is a big amusement park in West Milford. Sold off all its animals to a new park opening up called Six Flags in New Jersey. The, the drinking age in New Jersey had just been lowered to 18, so nobody would drive up to New York State, which was on the border of West Milford, to drink because they didn't need to drive up there anymore. Bars were burning, literally burning, you know, every month another bar on Greenwood Lake, New York would burn to the ground. I wonder what was going on there. But, um, so the town was totally depressed.

One-third of the town was unemployed. And I'm doing the books for him, and I do a forecast, and I say, Joe, you're going to be out of business in 5 months. And he goes, crazy kid, redo the numbers again, redo the numbers. I did the numbers. I said, Joe, I was wrong. You're going to be out of business in 4 months. So, um, The next week we were at a Radio Shack convention and everybody was talking about this company called Pan American Electronics in Texas that was mail-ordering Radio Shack computers and undercutting every Radio Shack franchise and every Radio Shack dealer in the United States. With that, light bulb went off my head.

I literally drug Joe away and we went to the bar, which wasn't even open yet. And literally, I wrote it down on a map, on a napkin, a map of the United States. I said, you're one little speck in this town, and if we start advertising that we have the best prices in the United States, we can save your company. And, and he didn't want to spend money at first. I literally placed an ad on my very first credit card for, um, for being in the back of the Wall Street Journal, call 201-728-7555. That really was the phone number. I'm not even an 800 number Um, yet.

No.

And, um, uh, for the best prices in the USA on the TRS-80 Model 1. The next day I walked in, the phones were ringing off the wall. We only had 3 lines. We didn't need any more than 3 lines as a little Radio Shack dealer. No, they were loaded. He comes in about an hour later and he says, what's going on? I said, Joe, you know the ad that you didn't want to do? I ran it. I paid for it out of my own money. And I said, take this catalog and start writing orders.

He said, what are you selling, Matt? I said, just look at the Radio Shack catalog, take 10% off, write the order, get their credit card.

Boom.

That business was $1 million within a year. It was $2 million in the next year. It was $4 million in year 3. And it continued to double for many years after that. So, that was how I got— that was my first entrepreneurial— Were you a partner in that?

Were you a partner in that or you were just an employee and then.

He— I was an employee, but he made me a partner in the mail order division because we ended up opening 3 stores. Stores, and he owned all the stores outright, and I ran and became a 50% owner, actually 49% owner in the mail order business unit. Years later, I struck a deal with him and he continued on with the 5 retail stores and I took over the whole mail order division and then I paid him I did an exit package with him where I would pay him a pretty large sum every year for the next 5 years.

So here's the question. Obviously, as a kid, you weren't mowing grass or doing entrepreneurial things. You're going with your dad, hanging out at the record store. He worked there. You got to meet some cool people. But at some point, like you said, this car wreck thing maybe changed your whole way of thinking. But What is it? Were you doing this thing? Most people are scared to take that first step, to do the ad or to do the thing or to do the ask for the partnership. You didn't seem like you had any fear at all.

You're just like, no, I'm doing this.

I really believed it would work. I knew it would work. If somebody walks into a convention and all these people are complaining that this company in Texas is destroying them, I said, well, let's become one of those people. I mean, I know that sounds negative, but let's become another one. And there were only 3 of us doing it. There was in Cairo, Georgia, there was one called Micromanagement, there's Pan American Electronics, and there was us. And we were called Computer Discount of America. Now, I'll tell you a little bit more about that.

I took the risk and I've always been, not always. After that, I learned a little bit more about making more educated decisions when you're taking a risk. But when I started this company, I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, yeah, I'd taken some business law classes and finance, and, but, you know, so I really needed to learn a lot. So I just became an avid reader. And even to this day, I still read or listen to at least one book a week. It's just something that I love reading and learning. So I read all the books.

There weren't that many books out there. A lot of people came out afterward with, you know, one of the first books I read was about Rockefeller. And then 5 years later, Verne Harnish comes out with a book called Rockefeller Habits. And I said, well, I've already done that. You know, I did that by reading about Rockefeller, right? You know, so I just needed to learn everything. I had to learn a lot about the mail order industry, the shipping industry. FedEx didn't even exist yet. FedEx started in 1977, so I was using UPS for shipping.

So, you know, it was really a very educational process. Then I did my first pivot, and I should let you ask some questions. I'm going to pause for a second.

We love that word pivot.

Yeah, it's a, it's a good word. There's no failure.

But I have a question. And Glenn talked about, you just did it, right? But can you look back through your childhood and maybe up until that point, and are you clearly just a visionary and you can kind of see through the noise, if we want to say? And so for you, placing that ad was like, you could kind of see, I don't want to say the finish line, because I don't necessarily think that's true, but you could see what could happen. And maybe that, that held true in your childhood as well.

Well, it did. You know, I had a first— I was, when I was young, like 12 years old, I was selling TV guides door to door.

Okay.

A lot of people don't even know what a TV guide is anymore. But, and then I sold, then I did newspapers. And in the newspaper route with the West Paterson Morning News, or the Paterson Morning News in New Jersey, You couldn't be a— you couldn't have more than 120 customers. So then there's this kid, Gary Dawson. I'd bump into him at the end of my route. He had a paper route. So I said, Gary, I'll buy your route from you. But they wouldn't let me do that because that would have brought my route to 220.

So I said, Gary, you keep the route, you'll get the money, but I'll deliver all the papers and you'll get 10%. So, now I had a paper route every morning where I was delivering 220 papers. So, I was always like, was I always a visionary? I mean, that's sort of a visionary step like, okay, can't buy the route from him. I'll just cut a deal with him and I'll just pay him a royalty. So, all of a sudden, I did have a route of over 200. So, yeah, I think I've always sort of been Even the television commercial, I, you know, I, you know, I did. Yeah, I was a young kid and yeah, you know, when you're making out with a girl, it's nice to do it in a dark environment that just came into my head one day. You know, like turn off all the lights, turn off the lights, more fun when all the lights are turned off.

Right. So.

Question for you on, you know, this is a— I'm just curious, when you put the money out for the ad in the Wall Street Journal, It was cheap though.

Back then, this was a classified ad in the back, less than $500.

How long did it take your, uh, I guess your boss slash became partner, when did he reimburse you for that, or did he ever?

Oh, I'm, I'm sure he did at some point in time, but within weeks we were running. I originally bought the East Coast region, and within weeks we had gone national, and it was costing us X to do per day and X to do, you know, 3 or 4 days a week. So we'd be in the classified section of business equipment because there wasn't a specific category of computers yet.

No, they just started.

And you couldn't buy computers anywhere except at a Radio Shack dealer. There was no CompUSA. There was no Apple Stores. There was, there was nothing back then, you know.

So I have, I have another question, minor. So different than Glenn's question, so hang tight. That girlfriend that was in the car accident with you.

Yes.

What happened?

She visited me every day in the hospital. I proposed to her in a— on a ski slope or in a ski chalet in Vermont. And then when she went to college, She was studying French, and she went to France and met a gay Paris guy, and we broke off the engagement. And today she is still working at the American University in Paris. And at least once a year, I still trade. It'll be 50th anniversary of that accident this November.

Wow.

So I still, I still, you know, will trade text messages with her or, you know, messages with her. That was a curious question. I've never been asked that question by anybody, not even my wife.

Well, I didn't know if it became your wife or did— like, I was like, this could go one or two ways.

It's such a traumatic experience. You never know how people respond to that, right? Yeah. Everybody's different.

Her father had passed away, so I I remember driving her all over the country, looking at different universities, McGill up in Canada, Amherst, all these different universities. But she finally ended up going to Drew University in New Jersey and majoring in French. And, you know, for the first 3 years, I paid that tuition. So, you know, we were very close and we've stayed in touch over the years. It happens.

So tell me, how did you meet your now wife?

I hired her.

Well done.

Oh my gosh, this is a really interesting podcast.

I told you we're all over.

So you are all over. So my— I hired her and she was going through a divorce and I was going through divorce. We became very friendly and she was working for me. And then I went to Martha's Vineyard, and we decided to go there because neither one of us had been there with anybody before. So you really threw— this is a really cool curveball you guys threw me. So anyway, I, you know, we're walking down the beach there, and I said, I'm going to buy you a house there one day. That was sometime in the '90s. Okay.

I did buy her a house in 2012 there. So Anyway, we get back from the trip and I'm called into the office by the CEO, Bob Trenkamp. And Bob looks at me and he says, I need to know the truth. Were you on vacation with Mary Beth Corallo? And I said, yeah, I was. And he said, well, she reports to you. And I said, well, I wanted to talk to you that before we did reviews because reviews are coming up. So, I was going to talk to you about it. He said, just sit tight for a minute.

He leaves the conference room and I hear our lawyer and our CFO yelling at each other in the other room. And he comes back in and he says, Mark, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're no longer head of sales and marketing. I'd like you to pack up your stuff and leave today. I nearly died. And as I start to stand up, you know, I thought I was going to throw up or puke. You know, I was like really a wreck. He says, oh, and by the way, we'd like you to rejoin us tomorrow as chief operating officer.

That sucker. That's awesome. He got you good. He got you good.

And I said, but, but that's Kevin's job. Well, it won't be 2 hours from now.

Wow.

True story. So anyway, we— my wife and I met at work. And oh, and one other thing. He said, you better make this relationship work because we don't want any lawsuits.

The pressure, the pressure.

So I did end up marrying her. And, you know, now we have 5 kids and 5 grandkids and And she's right now at the— everybody will know when this is taped now, but she's at the Olympics right now hanging out with Apollo Ono.

So I'm going to go back.

I feel like you've got to tell that story.

That's a great story.

If nobody asks, you have to tell it because it's a really defining moment. And I think all of that leads you to where you are now.

It is. It did in a lot of ways.

Well, here's— this is a weird question I've got. It's interesting. So you went, you're working for a guy, you became partners, you did this whole thing, and then somehow you got back into corporate America working for a company. Like, what made you leave the entrepreneurial world and go back to corporate?

Oh, well, corporate ended up really interesting. So when I— when first off, computers got so competitive and the prices were falling falling apart. The margins were getting thin. There was this skinny little snot-nosed kid called Michael Dell that had just entered the market. He was buying all his chips overseas and building computers in Texas. So, the margins were going like— In the beginning, I was making 20%, then then 18%, 16%, and it just kept on going down. The margins were just terrible. Then we had to change.

This is the first pivot I did. I realized that we were making a lot of money when like a lawyer would call us and they needed a printer that could look like it came off a typewriter. Because back then there was a lot of dot matrix printers. Or an architect would call and they'd need a $10,000 plotter to draw the architectural diagram. Or an IndyCar race team would call me and need a really powerful computer that could measure cast and camber on a car. So we were making an enormous amount of money on these systems that we put together. So the first thing we had to do is get the word discount out of our name. So we went to CDA Computer Sales, from Computer Discount of America, CDA, to CDA Computer Sales.

And, you know, we would build customized systems. So if you needed to put a big screen on your Macintosh so you could run PageMaker,. You had to buy a special video card for your Macintosh. You couldn't have a big screen hanging off the original Macintoshes. You had to get a special video card. You had to get more memory. You know, so we were building customized systems for specific industries. And that really led to some, you know, incredible years of profit and growth.

But then even that became where that margin was going away because Apple then started to build all these components into their computers. And they had a sealed architecture. So, you couldn't even open it up and put more memory in it easily. And, you know, so I sold the company and avoided bankruptcy effectively, because that's the way it was heading. I sold the company. And then that's when I to went college.

That good old accounting degree really came in handy then.

Oh, you know, people talk about having a dashboard, right? I had a dashboard. It was a whiteboard hanging outside of my office with lines painted on it. And, you know, every morning we'd look at the dashboard as an executive team and say, why, why, why are the hold times in customer service 2 minutes? We can't let somebody hold for 2 minutes. Why are the hold times in— why are we getting so many returns of monitors? Well, they're not being packed properly. So this dashboard was really helpful because it would show you just— they're all leading metrics, not lagging metrics. How many calls did we get? How long did the calls hold? What's our conversion rate to order? What's the dollar equivalency of the order? I never cared about the revenue number because I knew the revenue number would get there. Right? If you look at the leading metrics, so right in the beginning, I had dashboards like that. But then when I left there, I needed to find something to do.

Within 3 months, I was at this company, Varityper, which is where I eventually hired my now wife. I was at Varityper and I entered into this company and they were failing. And I said, why didn't I do my due diligence ahead of time? And I launched a brand new division for them called Prepress Direct. We launched a new image setter that actually would create a plate ready for the newspaper presses. You used to have to burn 3, 5-piece, 4 pieces of plastic, and then lay it on a metal drum and then hit that with a laser. Well, this took out a whole step so the newspaper could have it on their screen and go to press within an hour, not 2 hours. So we sold these units to every newspaper in the United States and every place in Canada. All the Canadian and all the US newspapers were using Panther image setters.

So that was a product that really came out of— that was something I helped create. You know, they always used to use numbers. Oh, it's the 4200, it's the 60. I said, give it a name. And it was only black and white because later on we added, brought in a color model. So it only had to burn one plate, right? So, and what's the color of a panther? Black. And so, you know, so I came up with, we're going to call it Panther Image Setter. And that product took off and saved that company.

That company years later sold to Monotype or one of the typesetting companies. I think it was Monotype for around $50 million. During that period of time, I did a business plan for a friend of mine. And he acquired the company from the bankruptcy courts, and he sold that company to Flextronics for $300 million. From zero to $300 million in a sale in 6 or 7 years. Wow. Um, in the interim, I launched a candy company. Um, I launched gamedealer.com.

I sold gamedealer.com to Electronics Boutique for a small amount, $2 million. And then Ken sold that company to Flextronics for $300 million. And he was really struggling dealing with corporate. When you own your own business, you don't have to deal with anything. You know, it's a whole different animal. When you're in corporate America, you really have to have a different— you have to put on a different mask. You have to put on a different persona almost. And I had had some of that experience from working at Varityper and prepress.

So Ken asked me to come in as his chief operating officer, and I became the chief operating officer of Flextronics Test. Worst job I ever had in my life. I had to go around the United States closing down facilities and moving labor to Dongguan, China, Guadalajara, Mexico. Flextronics is a subcontract manufacturer. They have plants in over 30 cities, over 40 countries. I said cities, countries, 30, 40 countries today. I don't know what they're up to. Last I looked, they were $6 billion.

I don't follow them anymore. So, but he sold that company for $300 million. So, then I got done with that and I got a call from my ex-wife. There was 10 years of a wife in between my girlfriend and— I see Julie going, oh my gosh. So, I got a call from my ex-wife. She's in London and she said, Mark, we have this new company that we've started and we really need you to join it. They don't know what they're doing. And we could really use you.

I said, I can't convince my present wife that I'm going to go to work for my ex-wife. She said, well, I'm going to FedEx you a package of information. So I got that information. And it landed on my FedEx package. It was at my house and was sitting on the coffee table in my living room for about a week or two. And I opened it up one Sunday. Before we went to church. And I don't know what the minister was talking about that day, and I don't remember anything about the sermon, but I realized that what the company that she was creating with these other 6 founders, with her 5 founders, was incredible in that my next selling job had to be to sell my present wife that I was going to go to work for a company run by my ex-wife.

Wow.

That's a lot.

Well, I pulled it off. And that was called Diligent Board Member Services, and they were doing everything wrong. They brought me in as Chief Operating Officer. And after 2 weeks, we had a meeting and I said, I'm done operating. I said, you got 3 clients. I said, there's nothing to operate here. You know, what you really need is sales and marketing. They said, Mark, will you do that for us? I said, okay, I'll do that.

So, I basically became the EVP of sales and marketing and grew that company to, from 2 clients to 2,000. We raised $10 million on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in 2006. The company was acquired in 2016 by private equity for $941 million.

So when these, these companies where you go in and you do this, do you ask for any ownership?

I owned, I owned 5% of Diligent, um, because there were already 6 people already running it. But then when we brought in, when we went public, we sold off a portion of that ownership. So my, my percentage of ownership went down to about 3 point something percent. Okay, so I own 3% of that. Now don't get too excited. $941 million, those were New Zealand dollars. That was only $600 million USD. And I only owned about 3% or less by that time because I had sold off some stock to do other things, right? So, but that, that was the diligent journey and that was an incredible journey.

Basically Diligent board members at that time, and today Diligent's still in business, and they have more than 50% of the global market supporting board of directors. So this will bring me right back to Ohio now because I know that's where you are. So Diligent did board packages for board of directors. And so you didn't have to get this big thick paper board book before the board meeting. So when the financial crisis came in 2008, I guess it was 2009, all the people we were dealing with— Exxon, Motorola, all the people that we were close— we were growing pretty smoothly, but everybody put on the brakes. They said, we love your product, but we can't move forward with it at this time. We love your product, can't move forward at this time. I immediately sat down with the CFO that I had hired.

And I said, you know, we got to stop the bleeding right away. And we laid off half the sales staff. And then I was looking through the numbers. And I said, man, I wish I hadn't laid off the sales staff because 4 of the 11 clients that we had signed that month were banks. So what's the first thing that Bush and Obama did? They started auditing the banks so the bankers couldn't go to their board meeting and play golf and eat food. They actually had to look at the data now. So these boards were meeting twice per month, and the board material on a bank is like this when you're looking through all the notes and who's in arrears And, you know, the books were monstrous. So again, I went to the CEO, great guy, Alex Sodi.

I loved working with him. And but he didn't want me to sign up to do all the banking shows. So what did I do? Once again, I went to the next banking show on my own American Express.

You know it.

And after that, we signed banks everywhere. Now, what was magical about that is the banks were so easy to sign because they couldn't put together these big thick paper books. They were taking so long. I would go into the halls in the corporate suites, would be stacks of paper as they were trying to collate all these board books to ship out to the directors. And it wasn't secure. They would ship one to the director's house, one to their vacation house. And they'd also print a third one in case the stupid director didn't bring it with them. Right.

So they'd print 3 of them for every board member. Almost every board would do this. It was crazy. So you weren't talking about 18 books, you were talking— or 12, or you're talking about 18 times 3 books. So we signed banks, and I went to every banking show there was. For— from in 2008, '09, '10, I was at every banking show, whether it was in Hawaii, whether it was on the West Coast, whether it was the American Bankers Association, the Western Banking Association. All those shows I went to. One of the banks we signed was Fifth Third.

You're a little bit familiar with them, right?

Yeah, buddy.

Okay. Okay. Um, one of the board members on that bank sat on the board of Chiquita. Now, don't ask me why Chiquita Bananas is based in Ohio, but that's where their headquarters was at that time. I don't know if it still is, but it really was Chiquita. So I go into Chiquita and they said, oh yeah, one of our board members is using your books over at Fifth Third and they really want us to look at you. So even though we were originally chasing corporate, you know, Fortune 500, And then we switched gears and we're chasing all the banks. All the Fortune 500 companies came in like a wave afterwards.

So it was mind-boggling what happened after that, because then we were signing not just banking boards, we were signing all the other boards that these directors sat on, like a massive tsunami. Came upon us at that point in time. And we were growing like rapid, so rapidly. It was really an incredible experience there.

Is this where you retired to the alpaca farm?

That's where I retired to the alpaca farm. 2012 is when I actually— I resigned in 2013, I think, is when I resigned. I moved to Martha's Vineyard full-time in 2012, commuted back to New York and did a lot of work. could I work remotely a lot.

So, so question for you.

Yes.

Trying to figure out, you have a very unique skill set for sure. And I'm, I can't tell if it's anticipating trends, if it's the forward-looking data that you can look at to predict the future, or is it your, just your intuition?

What is— I think when someone tells him no, It always works out.

Yeah, apparently.

No, it's actually— it's what I've developed. I've helped so many companies do this. Now, you remember the old-school SWOT, right? S-W-O-T. That was invented by Albert Humphrey in 1960 at MIT. It's old school. Take a company, any company. Give me— tell me what your strength is. Tell me what your weakness is.

Then Albert Humphrey would say, oh, list all the opportunities. The heck with that. Don't list all the opportunities. Cross that off your list. I want you to look at the biggest obstacle you face. Is it funding? Well, then for the next year, you better work on putting together a stock offering in New Zealand or Toronto or US if you can afford to pull that off quickly and raise money, or you're going to need to find an angel investor, or you're going to need to find a bank. But if your biggest obstacle is funding, you got to go find it. But then the magical one, trend.

What's that spell? Still spells SWOT.

Yep.

Trend. So every trend, every quarter, pick a trend that you see happening in your industry, in your geographic region, in the world. And create a strategic project to leverage that trend. 3 projects every quarter, projects that's aligned with your strength. That's a sure bet. That's a sure bet. Glenn, your strength is finance. Boom.

That's a sure bet. You follow what I'm saying? Now, what's your biggest weakness? I don't know what it is, but if you're running a business, what's your biggest weakness? So I find out what your biggest— let's come up with a project to blow that weakness away or mitigate that weakness. The other thing that Albert Humphrey would look at would be threats, right? The heck with threats. Did somebody— if you had a business plan in 2019 and put— and went away and did a strategic planning in January of 2020, with your executive team. It was garbage by the time March came along. Okay? So, if you owned a business in the panhandle of Florida, did you know a hurricane was going to hit you and totally wipe out your entire boatyard? No. Usually, when you look at a business, the threat that takes them out, they never identified ahead of time. All the businesses that failed around Lehman times, Did we know that these bad notes that were being crafted by Deutsche Bank and by other people— Deutsche Bank held a lot of those bad notes, or no, they created the system to create those bad notes.

know, You did we know that 2008 was going to happen? No. Might have seen some economists might have predicted it, but like the threats don't usually— the threats you can write down today don't typically take you out. It's something unknown. So that's why I don't worry about threats a lot. I mean, that maybe can be interpreted as your biggest obstacle, or if you have a threat that's really a big threat, that might be your biggest weakness. But I cross threats off too, and I look at trends. Now, you're going to be wrong on trends, but if you do a new trend project every quarter, It's just like being a surfer. I'm out there in the ocean.

I see a big wave coming up. Here it comes.

Oh, that one wasn't the one.

Wasn't the one. I'm trying not to use a bad word like sucky or something. Okay. Okay. Now another one comes. I was okay, but now— oh, here comes a big one. The third quarter, right? Boom. I ride it all the way into shore.

So, if you're identifying a trend in your industry and sometimes what happens is you see, you know, like that trend that brought you all the way into Shore, it would even be better if you refined it and made it stronger. Right? And I sort of got that from, I got that early on from Computer Discount of America because when we did the pivot, I said, let's chase lawyers. Then I said, let's chase architects. Then I said, let's— heck with them, let's chase desktop publishers. Then the one that was the most explosive was musicians because they could plug their musical instruments into the back of the computer. So So music was the bigger of— so every— I would come up with another vertical every quarter for us to chase. It was the musicians that put that company back into such a crazy profitable zone because everybody needed what's called a MIDI interface, musical instrument digital interface, put into the computer.

So I have one— I have— well, I have a few more questions here before we wrap up, but one is I can't get your career and then get to how you just had an alpaca farm. I can't close the loop over here.

It's a big— it's a big pivot.

Like, you know, I needed— I got to tell you, with Diligent, I was working 70-hour weeks. I was traveling coast to coast. I fell down the stairs in New York City. Of an ice-covered subway. I flew out to Phoenix because— not Phoenix, maybe it was, no, it wasn't Phoenix. I flew out west to meet with a financial company that had decided not to go with us because they thought our finances, our financial package was too weak. I sat down with her, CFO, big company, I can't remember the name of it now. And Sat down with her, got on a red-eye back.

The next day I had a webcast. I'm in the webcast and I start having trouble breathing. I get through the webinar, I leave. They want to bring me to the hospital, all my employees. I said, no, I'm driving home. I get in my car, call my wife on the way. I said, meet me at the hospital, I'm having trouble breathing. As I get to the hospital, I see the emergency room, but I'm starting to pass out.

And I drive across the parking lot in my Dodge Durango, hitting those white parking berms that are in a lot of parking lots, nearly slam into the side. They said, we don't know how you were still alive and how you're still awake. You should have passed out. Your blood oxygen is so low. I had a pulmonary embolism. It was caused by rolling down those stairs weeks before and then flying back and forth across the country. So in answer to your question, Julie, I had money. I didn't need to keep them working like that, right? I had a farm, and I had a house on Martha's Vineyard.

My wife and I went to an ag fair, and we, we had bought 3 alpacas sort of as pets. I said, okay, now what I'm going to do? I'm going to stop doing all this traveling. Um, and that's how I got into alpaca farming. And they're beautiful animals, and they're kind, and they're You know, they all have personalities. And then we took birthing classes. And, you know, we— I've delivered lots of alpacas. You know, probably delivered— my wife's probably delivered 20 of them. And I've delivered 2 or 3 all by my lonesome when she wasn't around.

So, you know, it became just a passion of mine. And it was relaxing. And healthy, very meditative. It was a healing moment in my life. Think about it. I've been on a treadmill for 30 years.

Right. So it was more of a— the passion was still there, maybe, but the body, the stress, it just wasn't working. You're missing out too many things with the family. You're just like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't need to. So you took a step back, but now you're like, well, Maybe I don't go to the grind, but I can still help a lot of people because, you know, well, that's what I did.

And I sold an alpaca to a guy on Nantucket, on the neighboring island of Nantucket. And he owned a pool company and I started helping him with his business and doing business consulting again. Um, his pool company has, has grown from, um, Well, I won't say what from, but it's up to a $5 million a year, um, pool company right now. Doing really quite well, making a lot of money. Um, so that's sort of my sweet spot. I love helping small businesses, $2 to $3 million, ramp up. I'm working with a chain of yogurt stores in Jersey City and Hoboken. Um, um, Jersey City, Hoboken, and they actually have a yogurt shop underneath the old World Trade Center, which is called the Oculus.

Um, beautiful food court down below where all the trains come in from New Jersey. Um, so I'm coaching them. I'm coaching somebody else that I can't talk about yet because it's a really incredible application, um, that will help companies— help candidates win their election. And then, you know, I want to talk a little bit more about the trend though. You said, how do I help companies grow? And is it just that I take a risk? No. Now I try to figure out what's trending. And everybody thinks, you know, AI is a trend. AI is not a trend.

AI is a tool. Everybody had to go out and buy fax machines when they invented this thing called the fax machine. And it wiped out everybody on a bike who was biking around New York delivering papers. Because if a paper had to make it from Chase Manhattan Bank down to the World Trade Center, it was done on a bike. But then the fax machine took out that industry totally. There were no more deliverymen with the little satchels on the back of their bikes anymore in the streets of New York. The fax machines killed them. So I just— it's an amazing technology, AI.

And, you know, I encourage every business owner to look to see if there's ways to apply the tool of AI to identify a trend within their industry, or to minimize their labor force by using AI, or to enhance their labor force by using AI. When I say enhance, free up the time of of doing things that AI can do now. So they're doing more dedicated, more creative work that only a human being can do. So while AI, you know, I'm just trying to get all, every business that I work with, you know, I said, well, AI is a trend. Yeah, it's a trend, but it's a tool. Think about it as a tool. It's no different than when the telephone came out. Now I can call in, I can place a phone call and order something.

It's no different than when I launched my first online store. By the way, I launched it in Ohio as part of CompuServe's electronic mall. I had to fly into Columbus, Ohio. It was a building the size of 2 football fields filled with computers. And I was one of the first 100 merchants on CompuServe's electronic mall. That's another trend. Nobody had online stores yet. CompuServe electronic mall was the first online shopping mechanism.

And every day I'd come in, there'd be green bar paper with 20 or 30 orders sitting in my office that had come in the night before from CompuServe. They didn't even show you pictures of what you were buying. There's only a description.

People just wanted to do it that way, right? They just wanted the online presence. It was such a— I think it.

Was Columbus that I had to fly into to meet with the people there. I think that's where the big CompuServe electronic mall headquarters was.

Correct. In Upper Arlington.

So, yep.

So I have one last question for you as we've kind of, you know, taken the path of your journey and, you know, all the things, including the alpacas, what is your endgame? Where do you land?

Well, that's, that's really good. And that's what I, I try to work with my clients on that because my, um, you know, so many business leaders that I deal with don't have 3 things. They don't have a business plan. You know, I'd say about 70% of the clients that I start working with, they don't have a written business plan. So, I really stress putting together a plan. I'm going to get to your question. The next thing they don't have is they don't meet with their— if they have projects or goals, they don't meet with their executive team once a week. Believe me, I hate meetings.

There's a book written, I forget who wrote it, Cameron Harold. He wrote it 20 years ago, 15 years ago, just called Meetings Suck. And believe me, I worked at Flextronics and I know meetings stink. I hate meetings. But you have to meet with your executive team once a week. If you have a goal or a project that you're working on, if you don't meet every week on that project, and you've defined it as one of the 3 or 4 major projects that you're working on in this quarter, you have no chance to correct it if it falls behind. You get done with the quarter and say, what happened to the project that you started at the beginning of the quarter? Nowhere to be seen. So they don't— and then the final thing I always ask anybody, especially if they're over 40, is what's your endgame? So, one of the things I do is I work with CPAs like yourself to make sure that they have a business that they can sell, to make sure that they have a business that's— the books are clean.

And when it comes time when they're in their mid-50s or when they're mid-60s, that this thing is clean enough to sell or transition to a family ownership. Or to sell off a portion of it. A lot of entrepreneurs don't have an exit plan. So what's my exit plan? Well, I'm writing a book. I'm releasing a new piece of software. This piece of software is using AI and it helps business leaders put together a strategic business plan and then helps guide them along every week all year long to execute the plan.. And, you know, so I'm basing that on my Strategic Planning Academy that I released about 3, 4 years ago. The book, I can give you the title now, it's called Plan or Fail.

It's got a subtitle on it. It's like, or plan, and then I have another book following that. It's called Execute or Die. Now, I know Plan or Fail, is sort of stolen from Ben Franklin, who said, you know, I forget exactly what his quote— Churchill had a similar quote, you know, without a plan, you're planning to fail. And it's that simple. 50% of all companies don't survive the first 5 years. You need a plan.

Agree.

And even if you don't have a plan today, don't give up on 2026. It's not too late to put together a plan. Um, so, uh, and, and then you do want to think about, once you have a successful business, what your exit, exit is. So my exit is just to teach as many people as I can over the next 7 years. Um, get, get these books out and get a piece of software out. I only take on 4 or 5 direct clients a year. I do do a group coaching class. But eventually, you know, I'll stop doing that.

Thank God I'm healthy right now. And, you know, love helping companies. I get immense pleasure out of helping companies. I only work 6 to 8 hours a day. So, you know, I'm not stressed like I was when I was managing a large staff of salespeople or having to figure out how we're going to plug the next hole in the cash shortage or anything like that.

So, well, I love your answer and I love that you talked about exit. However, you kept going after your exit, just to be noted.

Okay. Sorry.

No, no, no, it's perfect. But someone like yourself that's kind of gone through the journey that kind of has figured it out, right? You're never going to stop. You can't. You may be down to 1 hour a day or 1 hour a week, but your knowledge and what you do, you have such a passion for it. There's no way that you— you may exit, but I guarantee you, you do something else in regards to what you talked about. So it was a trick question. You can exit all you want, but you have no endgame.

Yeah, you're going to keep going. You know too much. Why would you stop? You can help so many people. You're being selective.

I still, as long as I'm capable, I'll still, you know, I'll still be helping people. Um, it's, and who knows what kind.

Of farm is in your future.

Helping Joe Russo, that store, that Radio Shack dealership. He had tears in his eyes when I told him that he would be out of business. He said, I just signed an SBA loan and his house was on the line. Yep. So of course I use my credit card. To do something that I thought might save him.

Well, that's a trade-off.

It worked. So be it. I would have burnt $250 or $400, whatever the cost of that classified ad was. I've burnt $400 before, many times, stupidly.

That's the curse and the benefit or the perk of being an accountant is we want to help. That's a core value. We can't get away from that. We just want to help people because we know how to help them. And that's what you did. And you saw it and did it and look how it turned out for everybody. Well, I can tell you what, we really appreciate the conversation today. I'm glad you took some time to spend some time with us.

Do you have a plug or something where we can— people get your book?

I'll just make it real straight and simple. Please visit my website. It's mark with a C, l daniels.com. I run frequent free workshops on doing strategic planning. And, you know, I'll just close with this. You know, hope is, is not a strategy and hustle is not a plan. Decide where you're going, write it down and execute relentlessly. Plan or fail.

Mic drop. That was awesome. Mark, I really appreciate your time today on our Entrepreneurial Podcast.

Pleasure.

We're happy to have you. And, uh, that's Glenn Harper signing off.

Julie Smith.