Street Hustler to CEO: How Selling Drugs Prepared Marquel Russell for Big Business

Ryan Hanley: Even when I was in the street selling drugs, it was like I always knew that there was more. I never wanted to just be like a local corner boy and we just made a little bit of money. I'm like, hey, if we're going to do this, we need to do this thing big.

Marquel Russell: Dude, you are an interviewer's dream because I now have like 37 questions to ask you. Let's go.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look.

[Intro music plays]

Ryan Hanley: The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business. This is The Way.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Marquel Russell. He is the founder of Client Attraction University. He has an incredible story from coming from the streets of Atlanta, selling drugs, turning his life around in so much as moving into legal businesses, what that transition looks like, how he was able to see past his old life and the old limiting mindsets that kept him in that world and branch out into the entrepreneur space, having built businesses that scale very large.

Just an incredible storyteller. And there is a section of this podcast which you're going to hear – during the show I'm going to tell you to stop the podcast, take your fingers, slide the little marker back about 7 minutes and re-listen. Because there is a section of this podcast that is an absolute master class on defining exactly what you want and how to get it. You are going to love this show. And as always, I appreciate the hell out of you being here.

Now, you know that I do not run ads on this show, and the reason is because I just want you to enjoy this. I want you to get value. I want you to appreciate the people that come on. I want you to work with the people that come on this show if you find what they do to be valuable.

That being said, I am dropping my own course. It's called Master of the Close. This is for sales individuals, particularly those who handle inbound leads or want to build an inbound lead operation. My company, Rogue Risk, we were founded in 2020 and we were able to scale that business so fast that we were acquired within two years. And I was able to early exit that business in November of 2023. We were able to put over 1,200 clients on the books with almost a zero paid marketing budget in less than three years. And we did that because it wasn't just about lead acquisition, while that's a big part of it, it was about how we closed that sale.

This is a battle-tested, thousands and thousands of inbound leads over the course of my 20-year career that we then were able to test each line of this script, each line of this psychological process to come up with the highest closing ratio possible. Reps who started using this program came in at around a 25% to 30% close ratio, and within six months, they were closing north of 80% of the qualified leads. That means we were closing four out of every five qualified leads that came into our business. That is how we were able to scale. And I'm teaching that at masteroftheclose.com.

If that sounds good to you, if that sounds something you're interested, go over to masteroftheclose.com. If you're listening to this in the future, we are launching in October. So if you're listening to it before October, get on the wait list. If you're listening to it after October, go in, join the program. You're going to get detailed videos. You're going to get actual scripts. You're going to get tons of resources, the actual resources that we used and refined at my business. And I just look forward to dropping this for you guys and giving you this program. This is the best inbound lead sales system that exists in the world. I promise you that.

All right. With that pitch out of the way, I love you for listening to this show. I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Marquel Russell. Marquel, it's great to have you on the show. Appreciate you, bud. Appreciate your time.

Marquel Russell: I'm excited to be here. Let's get to it.

Ryan Hanley: Well, I was researching you. Your team reached out, and I was super interested in what you had going on. And then I started researching you, and your story is pretty incredible. I want to spend some time today, as we discussed beforehand, talking about how people get started and how you get started. And I think the power of that part of our conversation is set by kind of your backstory, like what was going on in your life when you were younger and how you were able to put yourself in the position today. So maybe if we could start as far back as you want to go and think is relevant.

Marquel Russell: Yeah, for sure. So let's just dive in. In short, I dropped out of high school in 10th grade. I grew up in a drug-infested environment. The earlier part of my life, my aunt actually raised me up until like third grade, and I actually thought my aunt was my mom. I was with her at a very young age, and then I met my biological mom in third grade and started living with her.

My aunt was a drug addict. We from Atlanta, we call them crackheads, but she's my aunt, so respectfully, she was a drug addict. But she was functional. She made sure we had a place to live and power and water, all that different type of stuff and everything that came with that.

Fast forward, in 10th grade, I dropped out of high school and went full time in the streets. The only people who I knew who were successful in my eyes at the time, who were making money and so forth, was drug dealers. So I went that path.

Fast forward a little bit more, 19, I met my first son for the first time in visitation. He was just born. My goal was to get out before he was born, which crazy enough, it was literally the same year LeBron James was drafted. I met my son for the first time there and I was like, okay, I got to do something different because my dad wasn't around when I was growing up. So I was like, I got to go a different path.

I got out, tried to do the job thing, the multiple jobs thing. It just wasn't really my cup of tea. So I defaulted back to what I knew best, which was the streets. But I used that money to start a record label. So I was doing artist management, club promotions, and so forth. I was always entrepreneurial. I just kind of used my entrepreneurial gift in the wrong way.

I went into the entertainment world doing artist management, club promotions, and so forth. I knew people who rapped. I knew people who did production. So I brought them together. My goal was never to be out front or be the personality or any of that type of stuff. It just kind of turned into a thing.

While I was in the club one night at a friend of mine's mixtape release party, a guy approaches me and he pitches me on network marketing. He didn't tell me it was network marketing. In network marketing, some people call it MLM. Some people call it a pyramid scheme. People have different names for it. He invited me to a home meeting that Wednesday to meet some of his mentors who are millionaires and they were looking to expand in the area.

Went to the meeting. They started talking about this ground floor opportunity and all I had to do was get two and they'll get two and they'll get two. I signed up. My brother paid half of his way to get in. And I was just like, oh, we're going to be rich from this thing. That didn't happen the way we wanted it to happen. However, it introduced me to personal development. And it also introduced me to the online marketing world because I had to learn how to generate leads and so forth.

So I went into that world. I started learning about marketing and direct response marketing and attraction marketing and so forth and realized there were people making money online, which was crazy. And I got bit by the bug. I bought my first $40 e-book that took me down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. And the niche I decided to go in at the time was teaching network marketers how I was growing my network marketing business online.

Then I discovered a massive opportunity because a lot of business owners were actually struggling because they didn't know how to get leads. So I really began to hone the craft of lead generation and started teaching people that. And then I started really honing the craft of converting leads into clients. People started reaching out asking me could I teach them what I was doing, and then I realized that coaching was an industry and a business in itself, which was mind-blowing to me.

So we started coaching companies, started coaching businesses on how to attract clients, and that actually turned into Client Attraction University. We grew Client Attraction University. We helped thousands of business owners with their marketing and their client acquisition systems. We helped our clients do over a billion in revenue. That company got Inc. 5000 fastest growing company list recognition.

But throughout that process, we realized that as we were helping businesses fix their lead generation and their client attraction and their revenue issues, in many cases, their business was imploding because they didn't have infrastructure. So they weren't set up to scale in terms of team and systems and processes and really operating as a CEO. So we started a company to fix that need called Strategic Scale Institute. And that's really what we focused on now: helping businesses scale to the seven-figure mark and beyond while actually taking more days off.

Because a lot of times people are scaling and they're generating more revenue and they're growing a bigger business faster, but it's swallowing their life and they're actually having less time with their family and with the people that matter most. So we're helping them build systems so the business can actually run and scale without them so they can actually enjoy all the other areas of their life that they actually enjoy. So yeah, that's a quick backstory of bringing me all the way up to this point of us having this conversation.

Ryan Hanley: Dude, you are an interviewer's dream because I now have like 37 questions to ask you. So we're good.

Marquel Russell: Good.

Ryan Hanley: I came out of probably what you'd call the white version of that, a very small drug-infested town in the middle of the woods in the north. So I have a different filter, but a similar understanding of the environment that you came out of. And of the town that I came out of, I'm literally the only one who made it out.

Marquel Russell: Yeah, me too. Anybody who was in three or four years around me.

Ryan Hanley: So I have a very strong appreciation for where you're at. I'm really interested in so many people who grow up in that type of environment. They don't make the mind shift that you made. My dad spent time in jail twice when I was a kid for years. I thankfully have avoided that, but I know so many who have been in and out forever. They don't have the wake-up call. They see the kid. Similar story, but for whatever reason, you were able to look at the world and say, I want something different and better for myself and for my family. What is it about you? Did you have a mentor? Did you meet someone? How were you able to make that pivot because so few are?

Marquel Russell: It's a great question. I think a lot of it came from I always wanted more. Even when I was in the street selling drugs, it was like I always knew that there was more. I never wanted to just be like a local corner boy and we just made a little bit of money. I'm like, hey, if we're going to do this, we need to do this thing big, drug kingpin style. Or earlier than that, I wanted to go to the NBA or I wanted to go to the NFL like most young kids, especially from my community.

However, one thing that people used to always say with their limiting beliefs was, "Well that sounds good, but have a plan B just in case." So my plan B was the only way I saw to make money. When I used to ask somebody for something, go to a candy lady or something like that, they'd say, "I don't got money, and money don't grow on trees," and all this different type of stuff. I was like, man, how can somebody work all week and never have any money? It was crazy to me. So I always wanted more, and my way of getting it was that way.

Then as I was exposed – my first book I bought was when I got into the music industry. I bought a book called *Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business* by Donald Passman because I wanted to learn it. I always had this hunger to learn. Even before I dropped out of school, I was great in school. I got A's and B's up until I wasn't interested anymore. Then I was just like, I don't see how Algebra 2 and all this stuff is going to make me a millionaire. It just didn't make sense to me. So I always kind of had this hunger for more.

I don't think I really heard the word "mentor" until I was like 25. That's when I was in the network marketing world, and I started hearing about mentors and coaches. That introduced me to the personal development world. Then I was introduced to guys like Jim Rohn and John Maxwell and Myles Munroe and Eric Thomas. These guys were just talking different, speaking a totally different language. And I'm still in the streets at the time. So I'm listening to like Young Jeezy, but then I'm also listening to Jim Rohn.

My guys who were around me, they were like, "Man, what is this stuff? You tripping. We smoking weed and all that and Jim Rohn is playing." Or *Success* magazine used to send out these magazines with a CD that came with it. I was listening to that, and we were in the spot and it was like, "What is this?" And I was like, "Bro, I don't know." It was just different. It just began to nurture something that I feel like God planted in me at some point. I started getting around these different environments where the game started to change.

Hopefully that answered your question, man. Looking back, you connect some of the dots. But I know early on, I just always wanted more. And maybe that just came from never having anything and just knowing there was more out there to be had.

Ryan Hanley: Did any of your guys pick up on it with you, or did they just give you hell for it?

Marquel Russell: They didn't give me hell for it, but they didn't really come along. One of my guys who I used to be with every day, I invited him into a network marketing meeting. He saw the presentation. He was like, "I'm in." And I followed up to get him signed up, and he stopped answering my phone calls. We went a while before we even connected again.

Nobody – one of my homies I went every day with, he went to prison. He was gone for like 17 years. Another one of my homies, he went and did like 18. And all of my other homies, some of them are still in the streets. Some of them are kind of transitioning out now. But none of them really was like, "Hey, I see what you're doing. I'm all in with this thing." But they also never was like, at least not to my face, giving me hell about it. They were just kind of doing their thing. I just knew I never judged them either. I was just like, I know everybody gets it at their own time. So I was patient with them. I'm like, hey, I'll pull up when I can pull up. But I can't just be in the environments that we used to be in because it's just not conducive to what I'm looking to build and what I'm doing.

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Ryan Hanley: I don't want to put rose-colored glasses on the drug game, but there are a lot of business lessons that you can take from that.

Marquel Russell: Oh, 100%.

Ryan Hanley: What do you think from having to be in that environment, having to make your numbers, having real consequences to making your numbers – not just getting your hand slapped by a boss – what did you take from that environment that has propelled you now?

Marquel Russell: Great question. Actually, all of it. One of the beautiful things about this whole experience was I was always a leader. I never actually was in an environment where I owed anybody any money. So I wasn't in a position where I would get my hand slapped from a boss or "hey, you're not making money in the corner." I always kind of ran my own organization, so to speak. So leadership is something that we can obviously take and that directly correlates to legitimate business.

Another thing is marketing. You got to be able to market your product because there's a lot of people selling the same thing, especially where I'm from. So why should people do business with you and not with somebody else? Sales, that goes without saying. Also critical thinking.

For me, I never – on TV a lot of times we see drug dealers on the corner and standing at the store and that type of thing. That was never my thing because it never made sense to me. I was like, if we stand out here, at some point the police is going to pull up and snatch everybody up, or we're going to sell to an undercover or something. So I always was like, okay, how do I sell to those guys who are on the dealing? They got to re-up with somebody. Why not be me?

And branding, of course. You know who has good product and who doesn't have good product. The people who have the good product is typically going to cost a little bit more. People who don't have as good, you probably can get it cheaper. So that's branding. That all correlates.

Analytics and knowing your numbers to the point that you mentioned – everything has to weigh up. If it doesn't weigh up the right way, it's going to affect your return on investment. So all those things have to match up. I get this question a lot: what all transitioned over? Everything transitioned over.

From being okay with risk – I took risk at the highest level. Every day I left out my house, I took penitentiary chances. Anything could happen. Everybody's against you. The people around you could be your enemy or they could be plotting on you. The girls you're dealing with could be plotting on you. Then you got the people who aren't with you. So it's a lot of different variables. You got to be moving a certain type of way. Literally all that came over into legitimate business. Because in a lot of ways, the legitimate business world is the same way. The characters just look different.

Ryan Hanley: I've never been in the drug game necessarily, but I can only imagine that it has to give you some confidence moving into a legitimate business. Not that selling drugs is illegitimate, it's just illegal. It's got to give you some confidence walking into those rooms knowing you've played at a level where the consequences were as dire as you get removed from society or worse. Did you feel that? Did you walk into those rooms maybe not necessarily with the same knowledge that you had from your previous life, but with a level of confidence having played such a risky game that you could operate and be successful in those spaces?

Marquel Russell: Great question. Early on, when I first came into this world, I actually thought everything that was an advantage for me, I actually looked at as a disadvantage. When I first came into the online world and was teaching and so forth, there weren't as many black people in this space teaching and being voices. Everybody was like, oh, the white guys normally had made money in real estate, got knocked out the game when 2008, 2009 happened. Or they were successful in corporate. But nobody looked like me.

So I was like, man, who's going to listen to me? A young black guy with gold teeth, tattoos, talk kind of fast from Atlanta, dropped out of school in 10th grade. Is anybody going to listen to me? So I had some of those limiting beliefs. I'm like, my story is totally different. It wasn't until I started being genuine and authentic. I was wearing suits and stuff like that to events because that's what we learned in network marketing. But it wasn't until I just started showing up authentic and people just started sharing my authentic story, I started realizing, to your point, that everything that I thought was a disadvantage is actually an advantage.

I played this game at the highest level and the highest level of risk. And then to come into this business world, I bring a lot of that with me that a lot of people are fearful of. A lot of people in this world are fearful of being told no. Somebody being quick. So I was in network marketing and I was like, let me ask my mentor. Let me make sure I get this right. So the worst thing that can happen is somebody tell me no or somebody quit. And it was like, yeah. And I was like, I'm going to kill this. Where I'm from, it's stacked. There's so many things that can go wrong. I'm like, we can make millions of dollars doing this. And the worst thing somebody can say is no. It was like, pretty much. And I was like, oh, it's a wrap. All I got to do is focus. Just like in the street game, I had the skills and so forth that I had to develop there. I'm like, if I put that same level of effort and focus and mastery here, I can do something with this. And I can actually go home and sleep at night and not worry about anybody trying to take anything from me or my life taken from me or my freedom taken from me.

Ryan Hanley: Now you're in the coaching game. Why do you think so many people literally lose sleep, lose hair, lose weight or put weight on about hearing the word "no"? Why is that word so scary to so many people, especially early on?

Marquel Russell: I think because we're people. Here's the craziest thing. I've seen clients and they'll be like, "Man, I'm getting a lot of no's." And they're having their consultation calls. And I'm like, let's slow down for a minute. Has anybody ever actually told you no? And it was like, not really. They just couldn't buy because they didn't have the money or they didn't speak to a wife or something like that. But nobody just flat out said no.

A lot of times people fear rejection. So they'll take anything other than a yes as rejection, or they'll call it an objection. One of the things I teach as part of our framework is that the sales world has called certain things objections that are not objections. For example, situations. If somebody says they don't have the money, they don't have the money. That's not an objection.

I like shows like *Law & Order: SVU*. Me and my wife nerd out on that stuff. One of the things when they're in court, if the attorney doesn't agree with what the DA is saying, they say "objection" because they don't agree with what's being said. The person on the phone isn't objecting to what you're offering. They're just saying they don't have the money, or they just don't believe in themselves and they're coming up with all other type of stories of why they're not buying.

I think a lot of it just comes from us being children and the trauma that we were raised with. Some adults are just hesitant about sales because they were told as children to not take money from strangers. Or they believe that $5,000 or $10,000 is a lot of money and people don't just have that laying around because of what they were taught about money growing up and their relationship with money. So they actually have a legit disdain for large amounts of money based on how they were raised. I think a lot of it goes back to childhood trauma and the fears that come with that.

Ryan Hanley: I completely agree. I had a couple of guys, they just wrote a book called *Start Thinking Rich*. It's an incredible book. One of the guys is a behavioral psychologist, and they have an entire chapter based on the phrase "money doesn't buy happiness." This particular phrase is so rooted in so many of the lower middle class, lower class, and poor families in our country as a way of making us feel better about what we believe our current station is. We'll say things like, "Well, money doesn't buy happiness, so you shouldn't go after it." They just terrorize and tear apart this phrase.

If you're struggling with sales, if you're struggling with large amounts of money or even being able to visualize the idea of having large amounts of money in your bank account – there's been studies done where people literally can't visualize having a million dollars in the bank account. They can't even put the picture in their mind of what that would look like. It comes back to this phrase and a few others. Their whole point is that's not true because your happiness has nothing to do with money to begin with. But it certainly gets you out of all the negative that comes with not having money. A lot of people listening to this right now, if you've tried anything, you've gone broke at least once. A lot of us came from situations where we were broke. So it certainly solves all the money problems that you got.

When you were talking about the transition out of the drug game into a legal business environment, you made an offhanded comment that the people act the same, they just look a little different. I 100% agree. I feel one of the things that we completely miss when we move up the ranks inside of organizations, or even just in a community if we're an entrepreneur, is we see people who will smile to our face, but behind us they either are rooting against us or are actively a competitor, or they want what we have.

I'm interested, did you find that? How did you deal with that? What was the difference between someone who maybe was open about coming after your business versus how you dealt with people when maybe you knew that was true, but they're going to smile and shake your hand and hang out with you at the party or the networking event?

Marquel Russell: It's crazily identical in a lot of ways. In this world, I've seen it regularly where I'm talking to somebody and they'll be talking about somebody else, gossiping about them. And in my mind, I'm like, I thought that was his man, because I see them together. One thing I've learned is that if somebody will gossip to me, they'll gossip about me. That's just who they are. I can't just be like, oh, no, he just does that to them. It's like, no.

It's also one of the rules that I have: I don't do business with brothers who cheat on their wives. Because if you cheat on your wife, who am I? I've seen that. And again, it's just like down the streets. Guys will come talk to you or women, and it'll be like it's all good, and they'll be talking about somebody else who I'm thinking is their people. But it's like, no, this is just who they are.

In the legitimate business world, it's fascinating because when you're dealing with humans, humans are typically easily manipulated by visual persuasion. People who look like they have money. I always tell people, looking like money doesn't have a look. The internet is like – some people are like, "Oh man, how are you going to be on stage with a backpack? Or how are you going to be on stage with a hoodie on and your hat to the back? If you want people to take you serious, you got to dress professional." And they're like, what does "dress professional" even mean?

Ryan Hanley: So it's like, well, will you take me more serious if I had a suit on?

Marquel Russell: Right.

Ryan Hanley: And I'm like, a lot of guys know that. That's why they put suits on and then they embezzle millions of dollars, because they knew all they had to do was show up with a suit, with a certain look, and they could get you that particular way. Right? And I'm like, wow. They call it white collar crime, right? But it's like, they're just doing it differently. Doing it through fraud and bank accounts and Ponzi schemes and all those different things. And it's like, that's no different in a lot of ways than dudes in the hood selling bricks or weed or pills or whatever. They're just doing it a little bit differently. They just figured out another side of the game. So the games are almost identical. And in both games, it's very rare that you're going to find individuals who are just authentically genuine in who they are. That's why a lot of these popular events and things of that nature, I like to stay away from. A lot of times people are like, "I don't see you here, I don't see you there, I don't ever see you with those guys." I'm like, well, I know of those guys, they know of me, and I'm cordial when I see them. We speak. We don't have a problem. But I'm just not in the social game. I don't play the social game, right? I like to—whoever my allies are, I run through walls with them. But I'm not trying to play the game where I'm just trying to say the right things or do the right things to get in certain rooms and get at certain tables. That's exhausting to me. I'd rather be at home with my kids and my wife and my handful of people who I really rock with on a daily basis.

Marquel Russell: Dude, we're completely aligned on that. The deeper that I've gotten into starting with the podcasting game and then moving into coaching and selling some courses, doing that kind of stuff—I want to say this the right way because I don't want a broad stroke—but I found there's two very clear types of people. There's the people who are talking to you because maybe they have a community or they have an offer. They care about what they're doing. They're trying to help. This is their delivery mechanism, et cetera. That's great. And there is a whole other group of people that it's like, build this list, hit them with this automation sequence, pitch them this, then you upsell them. And I'm listening to it, and I'm like, yeah, I get it. You make money. No doubt you do. That's awesome. Except at the end of the day, what are people getting? One, they don't have a clue who you actually are because this is all the game, the gimmick, the look, the picture with you perfectly framed in the one third. They got this whole equation. I get how it works. I completely understand the behavioral psychology. I completely get it. But it's like they spend so much time on the tactics and the gimmicks and the automations and all this kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, I'm like, but what are these people getting? What are they getting on the backside? And that is not to say that there aren't legitimate people also using those tactics. And if you can combine the two, you're an absolute killer. But to me, I just find it to be a little distasteful. I'm with you. I would rather make a little less money, but have a little more time to coach my kids' baseball team and be home and not have to be on the road and not have to go to this networking event and this mastermind thing just to meet this guy because he's got this list. I start to get to the point where I don't care. I'll take less. I'll give more to the people who do do business with me. And I'll be happier because then I can go coach my kids' baseball team, which is what I really want to do at the end of the day. I just want to coach my kids. That's where my happy place is. So if I'm doing all this gimmicky shit and have to be on the road and fly to this thing and that thing—like you said it, and this is kind of where I want to take this to your Strategic Scaling Institute—because you said something to me that I think is lost on so many people that are trying to come up right now. They don't see enough zeros in their bank account. They're feeling that pressure. They miss the season of transition out of the grind, which you have to do at the beginning, into what you're teaching. And I would love for you to go there next. How do these people—so that season, that early season of grinding, I believe it's 100% necessary. If you're going to get something off the ground, you've got to go to your kids, go to your wife, go to your partner, whoever, and say, "Look, for two months, I'm going to be putting in some nights. I'm going to be up early. I got to get this thing off the ground." But then there's a transition period where you're supposed to get your life back from doing that. And so many don't. So how do you help people make that transition and maybe even get into a little bit where you see some common mistakes in that place?

Marquel Russell: Yeah, for sure. So I think a big thing is this, right? Even in the earlier season. So I think a lot of times, even in the grind season that you spoke of, I was that guy where it was like, "Hey man, you shouldn't have time." I remember *Empire* first came out, the show. And I used to be one of the guys posting on social: "Man, if you're watching *Empire*, you should be focused on building your own empire. You shouldn't be watching basketball games or football games unless you own a team." I used to be on that type of stuff, right? But in reality, you should have a business that affords you the freedom to do whatever else you want to do, whether that's watch TV or watch the game or whatever the case may be. I think the biggest thing is we spend a lot of time—and I'm saying "we" because from a community standpoint—working off a scoreboard that is somebody else's scoreboard. I read this quote, I forget where it was from, but it basically said, "A life lived based on somebody else's scoreboard is a life not worth living." Right? And how often are we chasing somebody else's scoreboard? For example, earlier in my career, I was into the cars and the Lambos and the Ferraris and stuff like that. I went to the dealership one day and I got into one of those Ferraris. And I'm not even a big guy. I'm like five-seven. But even for me, it was so tiny. I was like, man, this is so small. How would I be comfortable riding in one of these? And then I was like, I want it. I want all these things. And a lot of these things I just wanted because I saw other people having them. And then as I did deeper work, I learned this thing called mimetic desire. Mimetic desire is essentially us just wanting things that we see other people with and we want to mimic them. So I think just to bring this all together, when it comes to strategic scale, most people think that scaling a business means bigger, faster. When in reality, scaling is about duplicating and multiplying and replicating so you can actually free up more of your time. Because at some point, the business should continue to grow without you and without you having to put as much effort into it. But we got to figure out how do we strategically do it. And also, when I say strategic scale, strategic scale actually means moving closer—focus on moving closer versus focusing on more. Here's what I mean by that. I had an event last weekend with some of our clients. We call them CEO camps. And a lot of times we have these revenue numbers. So somebody might be like, "I want to make eight figures." And I'm like, "Well, what's eight figures?" "Well, you know, eight figures." I'm like, "Well, eight figures is 10 million all the way to 99 million." Or somebody may say they want to make seven figures. And I'm like, "Well, that's a million all the way to 9 million." But a lot of times we just throw these numbers out because other people have said it. And then the next level of that is, "Why do you want to make that?" "Well, it just seems like it'd be good to make." And I'm like, "Well, have you actually sat down and ran the numbers of exactly how much you want to personally take home to afford the lifestyle that you want? Have you actually ran the numbers?" Most people haven't. However, when you do, you will realize, "Here's what I have to make personally take home. And because of that, that's now my business revenue goal, because my business has to make this at this particular profit margin for me to take this home." But a lot of people haven't sat down and ran those numbers. They're just chasing the goal because somebody else said a number and they feel like they got to say that same number to feel cool or fit in, or they got to say a bigger number to try to impress them. It sounds good on the internet, right? But we haven't done that. Now, once we do that, we'll say, "Okay, here's the number. And also, what else are you prioritizing?" So they may say they want to prioritize family. I give an example: I was speaking at an event in Kentucky with 250 leaders there. I was like, "How many of y'all want to spend more time with your kids?" Of course, everybody raised their hand. I was like, "How many have your kids on your calendar?" Everybody's hand went down but one person. I was like, "How many want to get in better shape, hit the gym more?" Everybody's hand went up. I was like, "How many got the gym on your calendar?" Most people's hand went down. I was like, "Well, if you prioritize family, and let's say success to you is being home when your kids are picking your kids up from school at four o'clock and doing homework with them, if that's success to you, if somebody calls you and says, 'Hey, I got this deal for you, I got a contract,' will you accept that if it takes you out of being able to pick your kids up at four? If you take that deal, then you're a liar because you're incongruent. Because if you said this is what you prioritize, you won't accept money and replace it, because this is what you're doing. So if your goal is moving closer to more time with your family, with your wife, with your husband, whatever that may look like—doing ministry or whatever—but making more money is pulling you away from that, we got to decide what you're going to go after." So what our clients do, we focus on moving them closer. So it's like, "Alright, what's the priority outside of money? Money is a byproduct. Money is just a means to an end. Money is just a tool to afford us the things that we want." So if it's more time with kids—I know the typical business stuff that people throw around the internet is they'll say, "Well, if you want to free up more time, just delegate, just hire somebody." And it's like, alright, cool, let's do that. Let's say you want to free up 12 hours a week so you can spend time with your family. Cool. Let's say you hire somebody and you say they're going to replace those 12 hours. But guess what? Now you got to manage this person because this person now needs a direct report. And if you don't have nobody to manage them, you probably added 12 hours to your week just managing this person. So that actually moved you further away. It didn't move you closer. It actually moved you further away. Now in reality, you could have probably zoomed out and this thing that you were trying to delegate probably could have just been eliminated. So we want to look at eliminating, then automating, and then delegating. A lot of times we're doing stuff every day just out of habit, but it can actually be eliminated or we can actually automate it. And then if it is something that's important, then we look at delegating it in a systemized way. So now we're doing the thing with the family. I got a guy flying me out to Dallas to do his podcast. He was like, "Well, what kind of room and stuff like that?" I was like, "To be honest with you, man, if I can fly out there after my kids leave for school, we do the show, and then I fly back out, you don't got to get me a hotel. Because my scoreboard is how many days I wake up and help my kids get ready for school, and then how many days am I there when they get home from school." So if I can shoot out there, serve you, serve your community, and then get back, that's a win for me. And that'll save you some money at the same time—two rooms because my videographer would be with me. And it was like, "Okay, perfect." So again, that's my philosophy. Being a recovering addict to faster, more, bigger, I'm like, "Man, if we do an event and we got 200 people there, we got to double it. We got to do 400 next time. Oh, we made $500,000 last month, we need to make a million this next month." Bigger, faster, grow. And all of that was pulling me away from my priorities with my family and my kids. That was actually moving me further away from the priorities that I had, which in reality I wanted to be closer and spend more time with the family. And that didn't look like growing bigger, growing faster. It looked like strategically scaling so I could multiply and then I could optimize for profit instead of top-line revenue, which is a whole other conversation. Also optimize it for happiness, client results, and then also creating this life that I want. So I feel like that was a super long answer, but does that make sense?

Ryan Hanley: Guys, I know I'm not supposed to say this in the podcast world or whatever, but I want you to hit pause right now. I want you to take your finger on whatever you're listening to this on—YouTube, Spotify, app, whatever—and slide it back about seven minutes and start and listen to that section again. That starts with, "Are you living by someone else's scorecard?" This is a freaking masterclass that Marquel has given us right now. And I couldn't agree with you more. My man, I have learned this lesson, made the mistake again, learned the lesson, made the mistake again over and over in my career. And I keep level setting. And I think the one thing that I want to add is if you find yourself in that place that you're doing all the things that Marquel is saying don't do, right? If family is your priority—because I think that's the place that we're at with this conversation—don't beat yourself up. I got buddies who will call me and they're almost in tears. They're like, "I've been on the road three weeks in a row and I'm trying to get this here." And I just am like, "Dude, take a deep breath. It's okay." Yeah, you may not love that you didn't see your kids or your wife or your spouse or whatever for the last three weeks. I get that. And that sucks. But let's just learn from it. Let's take this and start dialing back. When's the last time you said no to an event? If you're doing good work and you're putting your brand out in the marketplace, you're going to get invited to a ton of stuff. It's just the way that it happens. When's the last time you said no? Let's talk through them, dude. The next time you got a thing and you're not sure, call me. I'll just pepper you with questions and you can make the decision yourself. Find a buddy, find a friend, find a mentor, find a partner, talk to your spouse and just say, "Is this something I really want to do?" When I started asking myself that question and putting it through filters like you've described, I took my—I used to do 40 plus keynote speaking events a year. 40 plus. I basically didn't see my oldest son when he was one year old. I was just gone all the time. And in my mind, it's "I'm building this brand. I'm building this business. I'm in demand. I'd be an idiot not to take these events. I got to get my name." All those things in my head were going, "I got to, I got to, I got to." And then I come home and I'd be frigging miserable because I didn't get to see my kid do this, or I just hadn't seen him in days. It was brutal. And then you wake up and you start to say, "Well, I'm not leaving unless it's this amount or it's this type of person. I'm only taking 12 gigs a year tops. That's one a month. That's not a problem." So you start to put these filters in place. And then to your point, and I think this is the hardest part for people, and I'd love to hear if you have a strategy for this: holding themselves accountable to it. Because the number of people that I know, myself included, who've gone through an exercise and come up with a plan, like a filter—"I'm only going to take 12 gigs"—and then that 13th gig comes in and it sounds good and it's something you'd like to do, and you're like, "You know, it's only one more." And then another one comes in. And now we start to break that thing. So do you have a process, an idea, a belief structure for holding yourself accountable to some of these filters that we put in to guide our life by what you're talking about?

Marquel Russell: Yeah, I think so. Even with this, the relationship you have with your buddy, I think having relationships like that are solid and then letting them know these commitments. Otherwise—Kobe Bryant has this thing where he said one of the things that helped him become great is he never negotiated with himself. If he said he's going to the gym at five, when the alarm goes off, if he says, "I need 15 more minutes of sleep," that's him negotiating with himself. If he said, "I'm going to go and I'm going to put up 3,000 shots," if he says, "Man, you've been going hard this month, you deserve to just go a little easier today," that's him negotiating with himself. He said once he realized that he couldn't negotiate with himself, that's when things unlocked. So I think we have to do a better job of not negotiating with ourselves and then having solid people in our circle who are going to shoot us straight and can help us with those filters, because we're going to have our biases. And I think another thing for me is a lot of the stuff is ego driven. We're doing a lot of stuff for ego. When growing businesses, a lot of times we're growing based on ego, just to be able to go into the mastermind or go in these rooms and shout out your revenue numbers and you're making the most revenue or your team is bigger. So one time we scaled our team up to like 35 people. And I was like, "Man, we got a lot." I was like, "Let's get to the point where I don't even know a lot of people on the team. We're paying them, but I don't know a lot of people on the team." And you start realizing you got all this bloat. Yeah, you got a bigger team, you're generating more revenue, but it's costing you more money to make this revenue. And I'm like, "Well, we were making more profit when we were making less revenue with less people." So it was like, "OK, how do we begin to cut the grass and scale this thing back?" And then even with our coaching company, one of our other coaching companies, we were having our conferences. I remember having our events and I knew the people. I knew the clients. Their kids and all those different types of stuff. We got to the point where we were having the conferences and I asked my business partner, I was like, "Dude, I don't know anybody in here. This is great." And I enjoyed the people. I genuinely love the people and love being able to connect. But I was like, I couldn't do that. And we got to the point where events were so big, my team was like, "Hey, maybe we need to start getting security and stuff like that to make sure y'all are good. And y'all need to stay backstage and all this." And I was like, "No, I enjoy the people. I like to touch the people." It's exhausting for me after events. I like to go sleep and all that. And I have a limit. My social meter would deplete. But when I do, I like to be in touch with people. But we had got so far from that because we were just focusing on scale and grow and this and that and the third. And a lot of it was just ego driven. So I was like, I had to get realigned and be like, "OK, Marquel, why are you really doing this?" and get back in alignment with that.

Ryan Hanley: You've tangentially referenced faith or God a couple times. I'll share this with you. I believe—and I've written this down many times in my own little journal or whatever—I believe the phrase "I deserve" or "you deserve" are the words of the enemy. 100%. Because we don't deserve shit. We deserve nothing. We were given everything we could possibly need at birth by God. So when someone tells you, "Hey, Marquel, you deserve to be making another million bucks a year," in your head you go, "Oh shit, I do work hard. I do deserve that. I need to go get that." And then you start breaking all your filters. You start negotiating with yourself. Or the worst is, "I deserve. I'm not getting mine. Where's my Ferrari? Where's my McMansion in the suburbs or whatever your dream place is? I want a beach house someplace where I can take fancy pictures and put them on Instagram. I deserve that." And you want to talk about the worst decisions you're going to make in your life? They're going to come directly after "I deserve" or "you deserve." Those are going to be the worst decisions that you make in your life. "I deserve to be—you know, my wife doesn't appreciate me. I deserve someone that does. I'm going to leave her and go do this." Or, "My business partner isn't holding up. I deserve someone better. I'm going to go do..." The worst possible decisions you can make in your life come after "I deserve" or "you deserve." And I believe they're absolutely the language of the enemy. Not to get all—I know some of you aren't spiritual on here, but that's my take.

Marquel Russell: That's powerful. That's powerful. Super powerful.

Ryan Hanley: Dude, I could continue asking you questions for hours, man. I think what you're doing is phenomenal. I'm so glad that we've had a chance to connect. And guys, I was dead ass serious around minute 30-ish of this conversation, the part that starts with "someone else's scoreboard." Go re-listen to that section. Listen to that section. It's about eight or nine minutes long. I marked it down here. Listen to that section over and over. Your life will get better. It will reframe the way you think about it. That was a master class, my friend. I appreciate you showing up for us today. If people want to get to know you more, they want to get into your world, follow you, how do they do that?

Marquel Russell: Yeah, for sure. First of all, thank you so much for having me on, man. I'm definitely honored. I never take it lightly to get an opportunity to come on and have individuals introduce me to the community. So I'm grateful for that and grateful for you as well. So a couple different ways. Whatever your favorite social media platform is, connect with me. If you're on Instagram, connect with me on Instagram. Send me a direct message. Let's connect. I reply to my messages. I like to connect with people. If you're on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. Facebook, whatever your platform is. You're on YouTube, go type in "Marquel Russell." You'll see my YouTube channel. And we have a Strategic Scale Show where we sit down with businesses that are making $250,000 a year up to a million dollars a year or more. And we actually do real-time deep dives. Like if they paid me $10,000 an hour for consulting or whatever, you actually get to see behind the scenes of us working on their business. And it's not—we're digging in and the cameras are just rolling. So it's super uncut, super powerful. So those are a couple of social media platforms. I also put together a page with tons of resources, whether it's marketing, sales, scaling your business or whatever. If you go to scalemadeeasy.com—just scale, S-C-A-L-E, made, M-A-D-E, easy, E-A-S-Y, dot com—just go over there. We've got tons of resources. Go over there and dive in. Whatever kind of challenges or constraints you have in your business, I guarantee there's a resource over there that'll be a benefit for you. So scalemadeeasy.com.

Ryan Hanley: Guys, I'll have links to all this in the descriptions, whether you're on Apple, Spotify, wherever you're listening and watching. I'll have links as well. So just scroll down and you can find everything so you can connect with Marquel Russell. My friend, I wish you nothing but the best. I appreciate the hell out of you. And you got a fan for life now. So we'll talk again.

Marquel Russell: Definitely. Thank you so much. Let's go.

Ryan Hanley: Make it look easy.

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