In this episode of Digital Marketing Masters, I sit down with execution coach Mark Delaney from the School of Execution to unpack the “worst kept secret” of success: doing the work boldly, consistently, effectively and getting a little better every day. We explore why most people stall at “good enough,” how to apply critical self-review to improve faster, and why intention, accountability, and doing what’s required (not just what’s comfortable) separate achievers from the average. Mark shares his drill-sergeant-for-hire approach, the importance of facing rejection, and how improving your body can be the gateway to better execution in business, relationships, and life.
We also dig into practical AI use: the role of context in prompts, using AI as a tough-love thinking partner, and leveraging it to clarify complex ideas without outsourcing your judgment. From iterating on processes and shipping the book you’ll actually use, to surrounding yourself with people who push you higher, this conversation is a candid blueprint for building momentum, overcoming avoidance, and choosing to be victorious over your past every single day. Resources and communities mentioned include Mark’s School of Execution, Ben Albert’s Grow Getters, and Audrey Quan’s group for marketing agencies.
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[00:00:00]
AI Narrator #1:
Today on Digital Marketing Masters, with your host, Matt Rouse, our guest is Mark Dulaney from the School of Execution, your personal drill Sergeant, sergeant. Martuleni.
[00:00:35] Matt Rouse:
And welcome back to Digital Marketing Masters. I'm your host, Matt Rouse. And today, my guest is the one and only Mark Delaney. Mark, how are you doing? Matt, I'm honored to be here. I'm excited to see how we can help your audience better use AI or in any other way improve their lives. Excited big time. As we're kind of talking about it in the green room, it doesn't all have to be about, you know, AI all the time. I think we you have a a lot of experience and expertise in realms other than AI as well, so I think we should talk about that a bit first. But we definitely have some cool AI stuff to talk about as usual. Mark, what is the worst kept secret? Execution.
[00:01:16] Mark Delaney:
Doing what you learned in podcast like this, doing what you learned from whatever I say that intrigues you, all of those, studying that you do about sales, marketing, business, whatever it is, the your ability to go out every day to boldly, consistently, and effectively do what you learned, but most importantly, get better and better at it every day. And that's the part I think most people miss, the getting better at it every day. I can't begin to tell you how many people say, oh, I tried that once or twice, and then they just stop. Like, no one ever became successful that way. So getting people to do what they know, even if they suck at it, just learn to get better every time. My favorite saying is get a little better every day and in every way.
[00:01:59] Matt Rouse:
I I heard a interesting interview the other day. He's the Les Claypool. He's the bass player from a band called Primus. He's, like, just an amazing bass guitar player. But, anyway, the question to him was, how did you learn how to play these complicated bass lines and be able to sing at the same time? And the answer was, I just played the bass line over and over again until it was part of my subconscious. And that's the thing. Just practice and practice and practice and practice and practice. Right? That's right. That's it. You get incrementally better. Almost everything that I've ever accomplished in my life that had any meaning to it was because it was something I practiced and got incrementally better at. And I 100% agree with that. And but
[00:02:46] Mark Delaney:
an element of it is not just practicing and doing the same thing over and over again, but critical analysis. What did I do right? What could I do better? What should I never do again? Like, those questions end up being a big part of how you actually get better and the difference between becoming an expert as opposed to it being a hobby thing. I think there's also something interesting there on the AI kind of front about that. And I've been hearing people talk about this more recently
[00:03:12] Matt Rouse:
is that they're using their their AI, like chat g p t or whatever they're using as, like, a companion to kind of talk through their ideas and stuff.
[00:03:20] Mark Delaney:
And it always cheers you on and always says you're gonna kill it with whatever you're doing. Right? Not not not not very critical. Not not mine. Mine has told me, Mark, that's not the best way to go. Try this instead. I u my my AI tool is called Future Me, and I've told it what I wanna be in ten years. And it has frequently told me, Mark, that's not the best way to go. You need to do this, this instead. So I don't know how I program to do that, but it does tell me. Sometimes mine does tell me. Well, I think context is the most important thing when you're using AI. Right? So you're saying,
[00:03:53] Matt Rouse:
look. This is the result I'm trying to achieve. It will do what it can to try and help you, you know, achieve that result as long as it understands what the result is. Right? Right. I think what a lot of people do is they just say, well, okay. I need a marketing plan for my business. I'm a real estate agent, and you were a real estate agent previously. Right? Yes. I was. We can say, okay. I'm a real estate agent. So I want a digital marketing plan for my Instagram, and it's gonna give you some ideas. Maybe I should do this instead, or maybe I should change this thing, or you tell it, I don't wanna do that. I wanna do this. I don't wanna be on video. Whatever. And then it's gonna give you a list of the same things as it could be like, yeah. You go out there. You're gonna kill it. And that is not true.
[00:04:36] Mark Delaney:
Right? I agree. That is definitely not true. I think that what we have to do is we have to be critical when we do something. First of all, you never learn from the first time you do something whether it's gonna work or not. So you when you do it, you do have to ask yourself questions about how do I do this better, and you have to look at the results that you're getting, the honest results you're getting, and say, this is not what I wanted. I want this. So how do I need to make these major changes? And then the changes should get smaller and smaller as you go along because you're getting better and you're getting better.
And don't hesitate to run it by people who are critical of you, who will be critical of you, not just be your cheerleader, but actually say, you know, I think this is bad, and, I think this is good. I'm not important thing, though, is do it over the course of of of time, and you will get better at it as long as you're critical in your assessment of your performance.
[00:05:29] Matt Rouse:
Where do you think people go wrong when they're trying to execute? One thing is everybody
[00:05:35] Mark Delaney:
wants the benefit of execution. Very few people actually want to do the executing.
[00:05:40] Matt Rouse:
And, Bart, let me interrupt you for one second. Do you think we should define what we mean by execution?
[00:05:46] Mark Delaney:
We can. Yes. It is execution, I define as doing what is required boldly, consistently, and effectively to create the results that create the life I want. That's a good definition. Yeah. Yeah. So there's specific execution for your marriage, specific for being a parent, specific for marketing, specific for your how you take care of your body. And we often default to what we want to do, what we like to do, what we feel enjoy doing, and we don't do what's required. And I think doing the required part is what most people miss out on. And you'll you'll hear people say things like, oh, I'm not good at that, and I'm not really good at that. And it's not that they're not good at it. They just are afraid. And so, generally speaking, whatever we're afraid to do is the thing we need to be doing the most. The idea of the road less traveled. Right? The hard thing is the thing that nobody wants to do, but that's the thing that gives you the most benefit. Correct. The thing that you're probably avoiding is the thing that will get you the results that you want more than the stuff that you enjoy doing. So Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, obviously, and he was physically gifted.
But what we don't see are the hours he spent in the gym. We don't see the number of jump shots he took, how when he was in pain, he still showed up and played. We wanna do everything when it's on our time and when we feel good about it, and that's just not how you create success. That's how you create normal and average life. You know, I I read something interesting along those lines the other day. This is strategy by Seth Godin. All the low hanging fruit has already been picked. And there's a lot of truth in that. Right? Right. If anyone could do anything that was simple and easy to make a business and make a bunch of money or whatever it is that they wanna do, somebody's already done it. It's too late. Right. So the only stuff that's left is the stuff that's difficult. Unless you create something totally brand new that no one's ever tried before that you love, you're gonna have to do something to make yourself uncomfortable.
You're gonna have to challenge your comfort zones at some point if you wanna create success, unless you're just lucky and you happen to be this unique person. Maybe maybe you have three hands, and you can do something faster than anybody else. But if you're just working with the regular body like the rest of us, you're gonna have to be better than us, and you only get better by practicing it and doing it over and over and over again. How many episodes of this podcast have you done?
[00:08:03] Matt Rouse:
This is episode 274.
[00:08:06] Mark Delaney:
Are you better today than you were in episode 10? A lot better. And it's the only way At least I think so, anyway. The only way you can out. The only way you get better at it is by doing it, and that's the biggest thing that most people don't wanna do.
[00:08:21] Matt Rouse:
Well, I can tell you the one thing that I find really interesting is that people lock into a pattern often even if they get good at something, especially when it comes to business tasks or processes. They lock into they lock in a process when they think the process is at the point that it's good, which is kind of good enough, and then iteration stops. So I wrote a book a while back, couple years ago now, that was called how we've always done it. And the problem is that once people put a process in place that they've created that that fits their original requirements,
[00:08:54] Mark Delaney:
it becomes set in stone, and nobody looks at it again. So I behind me, which I know you can't see in the podcast, is the book. And one of the things interesting people want everyone wants to be an author. No one wants to sell their book. Everyone wants to write the book because they're at their computer. They're in a safe environment. They've literally published books. And I believe that just because they wrote it, people are gonna buy it. They don't wanna go out and market it. I've looked people in the eye and says, you you writing this book. Right? You gotta start posting about it on social media. You gotta start talking about it. They don't wanna do that. But sitting at a computer comfortably writing a book is very comfortable, and that's why a lot of people write books that never ever actually get sold. Where they write books that never get finished? Or they write books that never get finished. I'll tell you an interesting story about that. My business partner, Scott, he was, when he was living in Oregon, he was gonna move to Arizona and needed a place to stay for a while. And so he rented a room off this guy who had been writing a book, and one day his laptop broke.
[00:09:48] Matt Rouse:
And not Scott, the guy he's living with. The guy he's living with is freaking out. He's like, I gotta get my book on there because I don't have a backup. And Scott's like, well, I didn't know you're writing a book. He's like, yeah. I've been writing it for eleven years. I'm like, if you've been writing your book for eleven years, like, it's never coming out. Unless it's like some epic overarching
[00:10:12] Mark Delaney:
story that, you know, spans decades kind of thing. Like, let's face it. It's you're never writing that book. Right? You know? Right. And That's my The other one is I know a guy that goes to my church. He wrote a book. It's like this is thick. It's hardcover, great cover image. He never sells them. He just gives them away, and he wonders why his business isn't isn't growing. But and if you try to talk to him about it, he looks at you like you're crazy. Like, I don't need to do that. And so it's interesting. I think writing a book is one of the easiest things that people can do if they don't wanna if they wanna face rejection.
[00:10:50] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. I think one of the best things I ever did was write a book honestly and give it away. But in my industry, I'm at the point where I've gotten to, like, I got the meeting with somebody. You know? And now I gotta show them what what are we gonna do, how are we gonna solve their problems, that kind of stuff. And I come in, and I give them my book instead of a business card. Right? Right. And then what happens is every other person that goes to see them who's trying to sell something similar to whatever we're doing, they're just some salesperson with a laptop, and I'm the expert who wrote the book on it. Right? Right. We are the only choice
[00:11:28] Mark Delaney:
because who wrote the book. And so in your case, you're actually using the book for a purpose. Right. You're not just giving it away to random people, and that's why I think that your idea is great. He was just giving the book to random people. Here, read this, and here, read that. But he had no follow-up or anything like that. And Yeah. That's not a process that's gonna work. Right? He needs to iterate on that process. He does. Except that you can't tell some people some things because they think they know everything already.
[00:11:55] Matt Rouse:
And Yeah. There's a lot of that. Right? Another thing about execution that I think is interesting is intention. Right? What what's your intent
[00:12:05] Mark Delaney:
when you're gonna execute on whatever it is that you're trying to get done? I think intent is a major part of it. I think the other part of it is what are they trying to avoid by what they're choosing to execute on. So in the case of of the book book guide I was talking about, he doesn't wanna get rejected, so he gives his book away. So he's avoiding rejection. If you're avoiding rejection, you're you're missing the opportunity to really create success. You have to put yourself in a position to be rejected or else you're not in a position to be told yes. So intention is a is a great thing, but also what are we avoiding? What are we intentionally avoiding?
So hard work, rejection,
[00:12:43] Matt Rouse:
public speaking, asking for what you want, all of those things are just as important as the intention. It's also a lot of money to get somebody to buy, like, a a 400 page hardcover book.
[00:12:55] Mark Delaney:
Yes. Probably costs $30 just to print it. You know? Yes. Like, it's hard to go out there and say, hey. Buy my book for $50. Right? When they don't know if it's gonna do whatever the the point of the book is. Right? So before someone writes a book, I would recommend they sit down and think about what is this book gonna do for me? Why am I writing this book? You were brilliant in how you gave it and it separated you from everyone else, but most people think that writing a book is a panaceas.
[00:13:21] Matt Rouse:
I was like, okay. I get it now. You know what? I could write shorter books that cost less to print, that still have, you know, great information in them that people need. But then each time I put it out, now I'm more of an expert because I have more books. Right. And and, honestly, it does make you more of an expert because now you're out researching. Right? You're trying to put stuff in practice. You're trying to put your thoughts down and and get them organized properly, and you kind of learn a lot of things in the doing.
[00:13:48] Mark Delaney:
Right? And I think what you said was if you're doing a sales presentation and get somebody else with just a business card or brochure, you clearly look more like the expert because you have that book. And your book tells them how to do things. So I definitely think that that's a great thing that you did. That's why I love that idea when you said it.
[00:14:07] Matt Rouse:
Except for my new book, which is is doesn't really have a direct business purpose. It's kind of just for because I like writing books. And it's will AI take my job too, available on Amazon.
[00:14:19] Mark Delaney:
Go buy my book. I've heard about I've heard about the book, and I'm I'm gonna attend your event next week at one of the groups that we're in together. But I just wanna say, before you wrote the book, you had a clear purpose for it. Correct? Yeah. I mean, the idea was
[00:14:33] Matt Rouse:
I have to do all the research and stuff anyway. Sort of kind of ring the alarm bells a little bit. Right? And I can say, look. You need to plan for what's coming. And just like we're planning for what's coming, but it also gives me a purpose to do the research and continue to do it. Now getting back to one of the topics that we started with was AI.
[00:14:53] Mark Delaney:
I imagine,
[00:14:54] Matt Rouse:
I haven't done it with AI, that AI makes it tremendously easier to write a book. It depends how you use it. Right? Since my book is about AI, I used AI in parts of the book. Right? So in the first book, I had the AI write the forward to the book. But in this in in book number two, Will AI Take My Job two, that AI is only used for two things. It writes the three key takeaways from each chapter that are included at the end. So it's basically summarizing, which we also edit, right, manually. But also, I I used it a lot where I would write a paragraph about something that's a complicated subject, and I would put it in, and I'd say, could you help me explain this more clearly? Right? And it would spit something out, and then I would, of course, fact check it, edit it, and that kind of thing. So there are times when I need to figure out where the gap is between what I know about AI and what your average person who doesn't really know anything about AI.
How do I explain a fairly complex subject? Like, what what is the token when it comes to AI? Right? That's that's something that people don't understand. And a token is like a symbol or a syllable or part of a word, and AI systems run on tokens. And the more tokens that it uses, the more it costs. Right? The more it costs to run it, and tokens are how you track the cost of use of an AI. So if my software application that I'm using uses a million tokens from GBT 5, it cost me $15. And a million tokens is roughly 700,000 words. So that whole thing is explained in the book in more detail and better explained, obviously, because we don't have all the time in the world. But that is something that I struggled with. I was like, how do I explain what a token is? I I never knew that they you did they did that, so you helped me understand it.
[00:16:55] Mark Delaney:
I I I keep say I keep wanting to switch to something that everybody, no matter what your technology level is, is how you take care of your body. Because without your body, nothing else works. Right. And so when we talk about people starting everyone who can walk should start by walking and should have some kind of a escalation plan. And I think that the you can learn a lot about yourself because no one else the reason I start all my clients off working with their body is because they don't need permission from anybody else. They don't have to sell anybody else. All they have to do is take control of themselves. And I can get someone starting out with exercise and eating better and then have that transition. It's a better use in relationships, sales, and marketing.
And so if someone's looking for a way to be better at execution,
[00:17:39] Matt Rouse:
improving your body is a great start. Yeah. So just to be clear, when you're working with clients, like, how would you describe
[00:17:48] Mark Delaney:
what it is that you do so that people understand better? So my my term you've heard me say many times. I'm a drill sergeant for hire, and I want you to be more afraid of me than you are of what you're afraid of doing. And if I can get you to be more afraid of me than what you're afraid of doing, then I can get you to do more things than you would do normally. The second thing that I would say is execution has a level of quality and quantity and consistency. So not just getting you to do something once and go, oh, I'm successful, but getting you to do it over and over again so you learn how to do it better every time is what I help my clients do. So whether it's exercise and diet, whether it's selling and marketing, whether it's being loving to the people in your lives, I help people do those things and get better and better, a little better every day and in every way.
[00:18:39] Matt Rouse:
Right. You know, one thing that it kinda reminds me of, and and I had described this previously in one of my books was, about kind of the the difficult things that you do are the ones that end up being worthwhile, and the idea of kind of kind of like you're climbing a hill. Right? It's difficult to climb up the hill, but you can't see how good things are gonna be on the other side of the hill until you get to the top. And when you get to the top of that hill, everything on the other side of the hill is better, but the other thing that's on side on the other side of that hill is another hill. So then you climb the next hill, and then everything on the other side of that hill is better than it was on the previous hill. Right? So each hill that you climb, each time you do something that is more difficult ends up being more rewarding as well.
[00:19:28] Mark Delaney:
That that's that's that's a great analogy. I think that it's an interesting thing. It's a little bit different topic, but when someone sets out to do something and they don't live up to their own standards, two things happen. Number one, they don't get what they want. But then number two, they find a way that's negative to pacify themselves with their negative feelings. Right. So whether it's watching television, doing some kind of a inebriation, whether or not it's things that they shouldn't do. So when we don't execute, not only do do we miss the benefits of the execution, but then we execute something negative that takes away from the quality of our lives. I think that's absolutely true. The other thing is, I know Ben we both know Ben Albert.
[00:20:10] Matt Rouse:
Right? Because we're in Ben Albert's group. That's where we met. Right? And, Ben Albert was on the podcast as well last year. I'm gonna be on his show in a couple weeks. But, anyways, look up Ben Albert. He's a good guy. Ben Albert was talking about kind of the idea that it's it's like people who kind of step out of their comfort zone and, you know, take a chance and they execute just like you're talking about and do these things, right, you end up becoming almost a different person. Right? And and you almost become a different group of people. Like, everyone in our networking group are people who have done these things. They've stepped out on their own. They've gone outside the box. They're doing things that, you know, the average kind of person doesn't normally do.
They are reliant on themselves. You know, and and there's all these things that kind of come together without rambling too much off topic on this. The idea that doing difficult things sets you apart from other people. Every every morning when we wake up, I believe we make a decision.
[00:21:19] Mark Delaney:
We are either a victim of our past or we commit to being victorious in our future. And whenever somebody says I'm not good at that, they're being a victim of their past. I don't care what it is. If you say I'm not good at marketing, I'm not good at sales, I'm not good in relationships, it's not based on you today, it's based on what happened to you in the past. Now being a black man, there are a ton of black people in every city that are still affected by slavery. There are women who are affected by the misogyny and the sexism that occurs. I I don't know how things are in Canada, so I can't speak to that. Every morning, we make a decision that we're either gonna limit ourselves by what's happened to us in the past, whether it's history or it happened to us specifically, or we're gonna be victorious and create the future we want. And that's really every decision we make from there emanates from that one big decision. You know, you can you can sort of see
[00:22:12] Matt Rouse:
the idea of of, like, Internet anonymity has had kind of it's been like a two edged sword. Obviously, there's a lot of negative things that come from anonymity on the Internet, and we all know what those things are. But I think there's also been this thing where people could go out and they can build businesses and they can do things and they can make their own success without anyone ever having known what they look like, what their name is. It it's been that anonymity has been a way to sort of avoid the traps of, you know, being marginalized.
We all know there's still lots of problems in those neighborhoods. A friend of mine used to say, he used to say excuses are failure in advance. And and I say excuses are your way of rejecting yourself. Yeah. And I don't mean to make little of, you know, the the traumas that people have had in the past because, of course, those those are real things. Right? Also, there's a lot of people out there. So I apologize. They're not always they're not always real things, Matt. Sometimes we've been taught this is the way things are. They never actually happened to us, but if we were taught that this is how things are, then we have this place that we stay locked into because we believe what someone taught us. That's true. I just had to throw that in there. There is tons of people who have every opportunity and every advantage in the world who don't do shit with their life. That's true.
A lot of times, you might hear this kind of as a slang thing on social media and stuff where people, especially younger people, call them NPCs. Stands for non player character. It's somebody who is, like, in a video game that's just like a background character that doesn't do anything. Right? They're they're they're an NPC. They're not important. And there's a lot of people who live their life on autopilot. They don't really do anything, put themselves out there. They don't excel at anything. I'm not saying that that's the only value people have, but there's definitely a lot more value, I think, personally,
[00:24:04] Mark Delaney:
to accomplishing things. And it certainly makes life, and it makes the world a better place when people accomplish things. There are some people who are truly content with what they have. Right. But I think most of us are just afraid to venture out to something better. We're like we're like king of 10 people when we could be, and for lack of a better term, a jack of a thousand people, we'd be way better off by being a jack of a thousand people and being a king of our 10 people who love us. Yeah. And I I don't think that it's just a monetary
[00:24:35] Matt Rouse:
or, like, a a physical thing, right, like having stuff. I think, you know, a lot of ways, it's about having less stuff, honestly, but having a better life in general, a better life for your family, and, you know, being able to connect with people and you know? Can you imagine if I just stayed in my tech support job that I had before I ever went to The United States. I I didn't work at all those places. I didn't start a marketing agency, and you and I would have never met. You know?
[00:25:07] Mark Delaney:
That's true. That's definitely true. I I also think that experiences from the past show up in benefits of things you never thought of would ever happen in the future. And That's true. That's why those experiences become so important because, wow, I did this I remember doing that years ago, so I got a little bit of a head start on someone who's never done that before. I've been I've been married and divorced twice. And now I'm dating a woman that I want to marry, and I learned so much from my past two divorces that I don't make the same mistakes that I made back then.
There there's a there's a theory, and I don't theory might not be the right word, but your failures, if you take the time to learn from them, can become your greatest successes or greatest assets moving forward in the future. And so that's the thing that I try to do. I try to take all the stuff that I've learned from the past, and I try to use it to create a better future. One thing I would say, Matt, though, is that someone's gonna listen to us today, and they're gonna be like, well, this is good. This is good stuff. Yeah. They're right. But I tell you, I had to get cancer, prostate cancer, to wake me up to doing all the stuff that I know, and I don't want that to happen to anyone in your audience. I want I don't wanna I don't want that to happen to you. You're already doing things. But I think sometimes there's a saying, it's not what happens. It's how you respond to whatever happens. Well, me getting cancer created a response in me that created a greater sense of urgency towards business and financial success than I ever had before I had cancer. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but I really I really believe that bad things will happen to us.
The question is, how do we turn it to our advantage? How do we grow from it? How do we learn from it? How do we overcome it? I remember this this
[00:26:51] Matt Rouse:
just unbelievable story I heard one time. It was actually on the radio, and I was I was traveling at the time, so I never got the name of the guy who who did, like, was telling the story. But it was about his family, and he had left his family basically to go away to go to school and did some traveling. And he came back, and they were just, like, you know, going downhill. They, you know, they lived in a a dilapidated trailer, and it's, like, the only thing their whole family owned. And there's a lot of smoking and drinking and drug abuse and stuff like that going on in their home. And, basically, they disowned him because he was, like, didn't want that life. He ended up leaving for quite a while, and he came back, I think it was something like ten, fifteen years later, and they're all in the same place, still living in the same house. Like, the one guy had, like I think his foot had been amputated from drug use.
Like, there's holes in the walls that the place is a disaster, and and they're just like his mother has one of those speech boxes in her throat because of throat cancer from smoking and, you know, like, everything just degraded incrementally over time. But they were still like, yeah, this is our life kind of thing. Right? And what happens is is the the opposite effect happens. If you're not out there pushing for your life to get better, it will incrementally get worse.
[00:28:10] Mark Delaney:
Correct. So when you tell that story, I I remember I used to be in a network marketing company, and we we call it invaded Canada, a company called Nu Skin. And, basically, this guy said he told a story about Canadian crabs, that if one crab is crawling out of a bucket, the others will pull them back down. Right. Now now I don't know if that's true of crabs or not, but I do know that when you're trying to climb out of a bad place, the way people who are in that bad place justify is by telling you out there is something you don't wanna go to. You don't wanna graduate from us. Right. But then when you do graduate, they wanna share in your success. One of the interesting things about LeBron James, and I was never a big fan of his teams, but he's surrounded by some pretty powerful people.
And that's why his business grows to be close to a billion dollars. So who you surround yourself says a lot about who you want to be. When I joined Grow Getters, Ben Alberts group, I wanna be around people on the same journey as I as I'm on. I wanna grow. I wanna get better. But if you spend your time if you're the highest income earner, if you're the best in your circle of influence, you're gonna be the you're gonna be stuck where you are. Get with people who are better than you in at what you wanna be good at and learn from them. And, Matt, that's why I'm honored to be here today, and I wanted to be on your podcast because every time you say something, it's pretty insightful.
[00:29:30] Matt Rouse:
Oh, Well, thank you. I hope that I hope that it's true also.
[00:29:34] Mark Delaney:
It's true to me. But so the second part of my thing so one of the things I say is execution is the worst kept secret, but it's also the most avoided secret. If you find yourself finding reasons not to do something you know you should do, you're avoiding something. And you're probably avoiding the one thing that's gonna make the biggest difference in your life. So that most avoided part is the thing that I really think people should focus on. What am I avoiding doing because I'm scared? Because I don't think I would be good at it. That's the thing you should focus on doing.
[00:30:05] Matt Rouse:
A 100%. Mark, if somebody wants to reach out to you or chat or to get more information, what do you think is the best way for them to do that? The best way is the schoolofexecution.com.
[00:30:17] Mark Delaney:
And you can spell it sch00l or sk00l, but the schoolofexecution.com is my platform. I have a community there. We'll give you a course, seven day course, called the executioner fast start program. It's seven day trial. It's free. You'll learn enough to go out on your own. If you wanna stay with us, I'll help you implement it and do more
[00:30:38] Matt Rouse:
with it. Mark Delaney. And, also, I wanted to give another shout out. Also, Grow Getters is the name of the group. We're in with Ben Albert where business owners meet regularly. And, I'm also in another group that I was actually on before I came on to the recording today, with Audrey Quan, which is a group specifically for marketing agencies. So if that's something, you guys are interested in, I would definitely check out that group, Audrey Quan's group. If you had one piece of advice, Mark, for people who are having trouble kind of getting the motivation to get started, who do you think that would be? Number one, it would be motivation is fleeting.
[00:31:16] Mark Delaney:
So don't depend on it. Number two is you always have control of what you do with your body and your mouth and your thoughts. Take control of your thoughts. It leads to better action, leads to better words and everything in your brain, and it's probably longer than you want it to, but everything in your brain starts with a question. What question are you asking yourself that makes you afraid? What questions are you asking yourself that makes you hesitant? Change your questions. You'll change your thoughts. Change your choices. Change your actions. Change your words. Perfect. Mark Delaney, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. I'm glad you had me.
[00:31:52] Cassidy:
Thank you for listening to the digital masters. Sorry. Oh, my God, Cassidy. Say it right. Thank you for listening to the digital marketing masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. Don't forget to pick up Matt's new book, Will AI Take My Job Too? And get a glimpse into the future of AI for work and for businesses. Good job, Rachel. Oh, and tell them the thing about, well, you know. Oh, right. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and leave us a 10 star review on your favorite podcast app. It only goes up to five stars, Rachel.
Whatever, Cassidy. Just don't forget to pick up the book, Will AI Take My Job Too. It might just save your job from someone like me.
Today on Digital Marketing Masters, with your host, Matt Rouse, our guest is Mark Dulaney from the School of Execution, your personal drill Sergeant, sergeant. Martuleni.
[00:00:35] Matt Rouse:
And welcome back to Digital Marketing Masters. I'm your host, Matt Rouse. And today, my guest is the one and only Mark Delaney. Mark, how are you doing? Matt, I'm honored to be here. I'm excited to see how we can help your audience better use AI or in any other way improve their lives. Excited big time. As we're kind of talking about it in the green room, it doesn't all have to be about, you know, AI all the time. I think we you have a a lot of experience and expertise in realms other than AI as well, so I think we should talk about that a bit first. But we definitely have some cool AI stuff to talk about as usual. Mark, what is the worst kept secret? Execution.
[00:01:16] Mark Delaney:
Doing what you learned in podcast like this, doing what you learned from whatever I say that intrigues you, all of those, studying that you do about sales, marketing, business, whatever it is, the your ability to go out every day to boldly, consistently, and effectively do what you learned, but most importantly, get better and better at it every day. And that's the part I think most people miss, the getting better at it every day. I can't begin to tell you how many people say, oh, I tried that once or twice, and then they just stop. Like, no one ever became successful that way. So getting people to do what they know, even if they suck at it, just learn to get better every time. My favorite saying is get a little better every day and in every way.
[00:01:59] Matt Rouse:
I I heard a interesting interview the other day. He's the Les Claypool. He's the bass player from a band called Primus. He's, like, just an amazing bass guitar player. But, anyway, the question to him was, how did you learn how to play these complicated bass lines and be able to sing at the same time? And the answer was, I just played the bass line over and over again until it was part of my subconscious. And that's the thing. Just practice and practice and practice and practice and practice. Right? That's right. That's it. You get incrementally better. Almost everything that I've ever accomplished in my life that had any meaning to it was because it was something I practiced and got incrementally better at. And I 100% agree with that. And but
[00:02:46] Mark Delaney:
an element of it is not just practicing and doing the same thing over and over again, but critical analysis. What did I do right? What could I do better? What should I never do again? Like, those questions end up being a big part of how you actually get better and the difference between becoming an expert as opposed to it being a hobby thing. I think there's also something interesting there on the AI kind of front about that. And I've been hearing people talk about this more recently
[00:03:12] Matt Rouse:
is that they're using their their AI, like chat g p t or whatever they're using as, like, a companion to kind of talk through their ideas and stuff.
[00:03:20] Mark Delaney:
And it always cheers you on and always says you're gonna kill it with whatever you're doing. Right? Not not not not very critical. Not not mine. Mine has told me, Mark, that's not the best way to go. Try this instead. I u my my AI tool is called Future Me, and I've told it what I wanna be in ten years. And it has frequently told me, Mark, that's not the best way to go. You need to do this, this instead. So I don't know how I program to do that, but it does tell me. Sometimes mine does tell me. Well, I think context is the most important thing when you're using AI. Right? So you're saying,
[00:03:53] Matt Rouse:
look. This is the result I'm trying to achieve. It will do what it can to try and help you, you know, achieve that result as long as it understands what the result is. Right? Right. I think what a lot of people do is they just say, well, okay. I need a marketing plan for my business. I'm a real estate agent, and you were a real estate agent previously. Right? Yes. I was. We can say, okay. I'm a real estate agent. So I want a digital marketing plan for my Instagram, and it's gonna give you some ideas. Maybe I should do this instead, or maybe I should change this thing, or you tell it, I don't wanna do that. I wanna do this. I don't wanna be on video. Whatever. And then it's gonna give you a list of the same things as it could be like, yeah. You go out there. You're gonna kill it. And that is not true.
[00:04:36] Mark Delaney:
Right? I agree. That is definitely not true. I think that what we have to do is we have to be critical when we do something. First of all, you never learn from the first time you do something whether it's gonna work or not. So you when you do it, you do have to ask yourself questions about how do I do this better, and you have to look at the results that you're getting, the honest results you're getting, and say, this is not what I wanted. I want this. So how do I need to make these major changes? And then the changes should get smaller and smaller as you go along because you're getting better and you're getting better.
And don't hesitate to run it by people who are critical of you, who will be critical of you, not just be your cheerleader, but actually say, you know, I think this is bad, and, I think this is good. I'm not important thing, though, is do it over the course of of of time, and you will get better at it as long as you're critical in your assessment of your performance.
[00:05:29] Matt Rouse:
Where do you think people go wrong when they're trying to execute? One thing is everybody
[00:05:35] Mark Delaney:
wants the benefit of execution. Very few people actually want to do the executing.
[00:05:40] Matt Rouse:
And, Bart, let me interrupt you for one second. Do you think we should define what we mean by execution?
[00:05:46] Mark Delaney:
We can. Yes. It is execution, I define as doing what is required boldly, consistently, and effectively to create the results that create the life I want. That's a good definition. Yeah. Yeah. So there's specific execution for your marriage, specific for being a parent, specific for marketing, specific for your how you take care of your body. And we often default to what we want to do, what we like to do, what we feel enjoy doing, and we don't do what's required. And I think doing the required part is what most people miss out on. And you'll you'll hear people say things like, oh, I'm not good at that, and I'm not really good at that. And it's not that they're not good at it. They just are afraid. And so, generally speaking, whatever we're afraid to do is the thing we need to be doing the most. The idea of the road less traveled. Right? The hard thing is the thing that nobody wants to do, but that's the thing that gives you the most benefit. Correct. The thing that you're probably avoiding is the thing that will get you the results that you want more than the stuff that you enjoy doing. So Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, obviously, and he was physically gifted.
But what we don't see are the hours he spent in the gym. We don't see the number of jump shots he took, how when he was in pain, he still showed up and played. We wanna do everything when it's on our time and when we feel good about it, and that's just not how you create success. That's how you create normal and average life. You know, I I read something interesting along those lines the other day. This is strategy by Seth Godin. All the low hanging fruit has already been picked. And there's a lot of truth in that. Right? Right. If anyone could do anything that was simple and easy to make a business and make a bunch of money or whatever it is that they wanna do, somebody's already done it. It's too late. Right. So the only stuff that's left is the stuff that's difficult. Unless you create something totally brand new that no one's ever tried before that you love, you're gonna have to do something to make yourself uncomfortable.
You're gonna have to challenge your comfort zones at some point if you wanna create success, unless you're just lucky and you happen to be this unique person. Maybe maybe you have three hands, and you can do something faster than anybody else. But if you're just working with the regular body like the rest of us, you're gonna have to be better than us, and you only get better by practicing it and doing it over and over and over again. How many episodes of this podcast have you done?
[00:08:03] Matt Rouse:
This is episode 274.
[00:08:06] Mark Delaney:
Are you better today than you were in episode 10? A lot better. And it's the only way At least I think so, anyway. The only way you can out. The only way you get better at it is by doing it, and that's the biggest thing that most people don't wanna do.
[00:08:21] Matt Rouse:
Well, I can tell you the one thing that I find really interesting is that people lock into a pattern often even if they get good at something, especially when it comes to business tasks or processes. They lock into they lock in a process when they think the process is at the point that it's good, which is kind of good enough, and then iteration stops. So I wrote a book a while back, couple years ago now, that was called how we've always done it. And the problem is that once people put a process in place that they've created that that fits their original requirements,
[00:08:54] Mark Delaney:
it becomes set in stone, and nobody looks at it again. So I behind me, which I know you can't see in the podcast, is the book. And one of the things interesting people want everyone wants to be an author. No one wants to sell their book. Everyone wants to write the book because they're at their computer. They're in a safe environment. They've literally published books. And I believe that just because they wrote it, people are gonna buy it. They don't wanna go out and market it. I've looked people in the eye and says, you you writing this book. Right? You gotta start posting about it on social media. You gotta start talking about it. They don't wanna do that. But sitting at a computer comfortably writing a book is very comfortable, and that's why a lot of people write books that never ever actually get sold. Where they write books that never get finished? Or they write books that never get finished. I'll tell you an interesting story about that. My business partner, Scott, he was, when he was living in Oregon, he was gonna move to Arizona and needed a place to stay for a while. And so he rented a room off this guy who had been writing a book, and one day his laptop broke.
[00:09:48] Matt Rouse:
And not Scott, the guy he's living with. The guy he's living with is freaking out. He's like, I gotta get my book on there because I don't have a backup. And Scott's like, well, I didn't know you're writing a book. He's like, yeah. I've been writing it for eleven years. I'm like, if you've been writing your book for eleven years, like, it's never coming out. Unless it's like some epic overarching
[00:10:12] Mark Delaney:
story that, you know, spans decades kind of thing. Like, let's face it. It's you're never writing that book. Right? You know? Right. And That's my The other one is I know a guy that goes to my church. He wrote a book. It's like this is thick. It's hardcover, great cover image. He never sells them. He just gives them away, and he wonders why his business isn't isn't growing. But and if you try to talk to him about it, he looks at you like you're crazy. Like, I don't need to do that. And so it's interesting. I think writing a book is one of the easiest things that people can do if they don't wanna if they wanna face rejection.
[00:10:50] Matt Rouse:
Yeah. I think one of the best things I ever did was write a book honestly and give it away. But in my industry, I'm at the point where I've gotten to, like, I got the meeting with somebody. You know? And now I gotta show them what what are we gonna do, how are we gonna solve their problems, that kind of stuff. And I come in, and I give them my book instead of a business card. Right? Right. And then what happens is every other person that goes to see them who's trying to sell something similar to whatever we're doing, they're just some salesperson with a laptop, and I'm the expert who wrote the book on it. Right? Right. We are the only choice
[00:11:28] Mark Delaney:
because who wrote the book. And so in your case, you're actually using the book for a purpose. Right. You're not just giving it away to random people, and that's why I think that your idea is great. He was just giving the book to random people. Here, read this, and here, read that. But he had no follow-up or anything like that. And Yeah. That's not a process that's gonna work. Right? He needs to iterate on that process. He does. Except that you can't tell some people some things because they think they know everything already.
[00:11:55] Matt Rouse:
And Yeah. There's a lot of that. Right? Another thing about execution that I think is interesting is intention. Right? What what's your intent
[00:12:05] Mark Delaney:
when you're gonna execute on whatever it is that you're trying to get done? I think intent is a major part of it. I think the other part of it is what are they trying to avoid by what they're choosing to execute on. So in the case of of the book book guide I was talking about, he doesn't wanna get rejected, so he gives his book away. So he's avoiding rejection. If you're avoiding rejection, you're you're missing the opportunity to really create success. You have to put yourself in a position to be rejected or else you're not in a position to be told yes. So intention is a is a great thing, but also what are we avoiding? What are we intentionally avoiding?
So hard work, rejection,
[00:12:43] Matt Rouse:
public speaking, asking for what you want, all of those things are just as important as the intention. It's also a lot of money to get somebody to buy, like, a a 400 page hardcover book.
[00:12:55] Mark Delaney:
Yes. Probably costs $30 just to print it. You know? Yes. Like, it's hard to go out there and say, hey. Buy my book for $50. Right? When they don't know if it's gonna do whatever the the point of the book is. Right? So before someone writes a book, I would recommend they sit down and think about what is this book gonna do for me? Why am I writing this book? You were brilliant in how you gave it and it separated you from everyone else, but most people think that writing a book is a panaceas.
[00:13:21] Matt Rouse:
I was like, okay. I get it now. You know what? I could write shorter books that cost less to print, that still have, you know, great information in them that people need. But then each time I put it out, now I'm more of an expert because I have more books. Right. And and, honestly, it does make you more of an expert because now you're out researching. Right? You're trying to put stuff in practice. You're trying to put your thoughts down and and get them organized properly, and you kind of learn a lot of things in the doing.
[00:13:48] Mark Delaney:
Right? And I think what you said was if you're doing a sales presentation and get somebody else with just a business card or brochure, you clearly look more like the expert because you have that book. And your book tells them how to do things. So I definitely think that that's a great thing that you did. That's why I love that idea when you said it.
[00:14:07] Matt Rouse:
Except for my new book, which is is doesn't really have a direct business purpose. It's kind of just for because I like writing books. And it's will AI take my job too, available on Amazon.
[00:14:19] Mark Delaney:
Go buy my book. I've heard about I've heard about the book, and I'm I'm gonna attend your event next week at one of the groups that we're in together. But I just wanna say, before you wrote the book, you had a clear purpose for it. Correct? Yeah. I mean, the idea was
[00:14:33] Matt Rouse:
I have to do all the research and stuff anyway. Sort of kind of ring the alarm bells a little bit. Right? And I can say, look. You need to plan for what's coming. And just like we're planning for what's coming, but it also gives me a purpose to do the research and continue to do it. Now getting back to one of the topics that we started with was AI.
[00:14:53] Mark Delaney:
I imagine,
[00:14:54] Matt Rouse:
I haven't done it with AI, that AI makes it tremendously easier to write a book. It depends how you use it. Right? Since my book is about AI, I used AI in parts of the book. Right? So in the first book, I had the AI write the forward to the book. But in this in in book number two, Will AI Take My Job two, that AI is only used for two things. It writes the three key takeaways from each chapter that are included at the end. So it's basically summarizing, which we also edit, right, manually. But also, I I used it a lot where I would write a paragraph about something that's a complicated subject, and I would put it in, and I'd say, could you help me explain this more clearly? Right? And it would spit something out, and then I would, of course, fact check it, edit it, and that kind of thing. So there are times when I need to figure out where the gap is between what I know about AI and what your average person who doesn't really know anything about AI.
How do I explain a fairly complex subject? Like, what what is the token when it comes to AI? Right? That's that's something that people don't understand. And a token is like a symbol or a syllable or part of a word, and AI systems run on tokens. And the more tokens that it uses, the more it costs. Right? The more it costs to run it, and tokens are how you track the cost of use of an AI. So if my software application that I'm using uses a million tokens from GBT 5, it cost me $15. And a million tokens is roughly 700,000 words. So that whole thing is explained in the book in more detail and better explained, obviously, because we don't have all the time in the world. But that is something that I struggled with. I was like, how do I explain what a token is? I I never knew that they you did they did that, so you helped me understand it.
[00:16:55] Mark Delaney:
I I I keep say I keep wanting to switch to something that everybody, no matter what your technology level is, is how you take care of your body. Because without your body, nothing else works. Right. And so when we talk about people starting everyone who can walk should start by walking and should have some kind of a escalation plan. And I think that the you can learn a lot about yourself because no one else the reason I start all my clients off working with their body is because they don't need permission from anybody else. They don't have to sell anybody else. All they have to do is take control of themselves. And I can get someone starting out with exercise and eating better and then have that transition. It's a better use in relationships, sales, and marketing.
And so if someone's looking for a way to be better at execution,
[00:17:39] Matt Rouse:
improving your body is a great start. Yeah. So just to be clear, when you're working with clients, like, how would you describe
[00:17:48] Mark Delaney:
what it is that you do so that people understand better? So my my term you've heard me say many times. I'm a drill sergeant for hire, and I want you to be more afraid of me than you are of what you're afraid of doing. And if I can get you to be more afraid of me than what you're afraid of doing, then I can get you to do more things than you would do normally. The second thing that I would say is execution has a level of quality and quantity and consistency. So not just getting you to do something once and go, oh, I'm successful, but getting you to do it over and over again so you learn how to do it better every time is what I help my clients do. So whether it's exercise and diet, whether it's selling and marketing, whether it's being loving to the people in your lives, I help people do those things and get better and better, a little better every day and in every way.
[00:18:39] Matt Rouse:
Right. You know, one thing that it kinda reminds me of, and and I had described this previously in one of my books was, about kind of the the difficult things that you do are the ones that end up being worthwhile, and the idea of kind of kind of like you're climbing a hill. Right? It's difficult to climb up the hill, but you can't see how good things are gonna be on the other side of the hill until you get to the top. And when you get to the top of that hill, everything on the other side of the hill is better, but the other thing that's on side on the other side of that hill is another hill. So then you climb the next hill, and then everything on the other side of that hill is better than it was on the previous hill. Right? So each hill that you climb, each time you do something that is more difficult ends up being more rewarding as well.
[00:19:28] Mark Delaney:
That that's that's that's a great analogy. I think that it's an interesting thing. It's a little bit different topic, but when someone sets out to do something and they don't live up to their own standards, two things happen. Number one, they don't get what they want. But then number two, they find a way that's negative to pacify themselves with their negative feelings. Right. So whether it's watching television, doing some kind of a inebriation, whether or not it's things that they shouldn't do. So when we don't execute, not only do do we miss the benefits of the execution, but then we execute something negative that takes away from the quality of our lives. I think that's absolutely true. The other thing is, I know Ben we both know Ben Albert.
[00:20:10] Matt Rouse:
Right? Because we're in Ben Albert's group. That's where we met. Right? And, Ben Albert was on the podcast as well last year. I'm gonna be on his show in a couple weeks. But, anyways, look up Ben Albert. He's a good guy. Ben Albert was talking about kind of the idea that it's it's like people who kind of step out of their comfort zone and, you know, take a chance and they execute just like you're talking about and do these things, right, you end up becoming almost a different person. Right? And and you almost become a different group of people. Like, everyone in our networking group are people who have done these things. They've stepped out on their own. They've gone outside the box. They're doing things that, you know, the average kind of person doesn't normally do.
They are reliant on themselves. You know, and and there's all these things that kind of come together without rambling too much off topic on this. The idea that doing difficult things sets you apart from other people. Every every morning when we wake up, I believe we make a decision.
[00:21:19] Mark Delaney:
We are either a victim of our past or we commit to being victorious in our future. And whenever somebody says I'm not good at that, they're being a victim of their past. I don't care what it is. If you say I'm not good at marketing, I'm not good at sales, I'm not good in relationships, it's not based on you today, it's based on what happened to you in the past. Now being a black man, there are a ton of black people in every city that are still affected by slavery. There are women who are affected by the misogyny and the sexism that occurs. I I don't know how things are in Canada, so I can't speak to that. Every morning, we make a decision that we're either gonna limit ourselves by what's happened to us in the past, whether it's history or it happened to us specifically, or we're gonna be victorious and create the future we want. And that's really every decision we make from there emanates from that one big decision. You know, you can you can sort of see
[00:22:12] Matt Rouse:
the idea of of, like, Internet anonymity has had kind of it's been like a two edged sword. Obviously, there's a lot of negative things that come from anonymity on the Internet, and we all know what those things are. But I think there's also been this thing where people could go out and they can build businesses and they can do things and they can make their own success without anyone ever having known what they look like, what their name is. It it's been that anonymity has been a way to sort of avoid the traps of, you know, being marginalized.
We all know there's still lots of problems in those neighborhoods. A friend of mine used to say, he used to say excuses are failure in advance. And and I say excuses are your way of rejecting yourself. Yeah. And I don't mean to make little of, you know, the the traumas that people have had in the past because, of course, those those are real things. Right? Also, there's a lot of people out there. So I apologize. They're not always they're not always real things, Matt. Sometimes we've been taught this is the way things are. They never actually happened to us, but if we were taught that this is how things are, then we have this place that we stay locked into because we believe what someone taught us. That's true. I just had to throw that in there. There is tons of people who have every opportunity and every advantage in the world who don't do shit with their life. That's true.
A lot of times, you might hear this kind of as a slang thing on social media and stuff where people, especially younger people, call them NPCs. Stands for non player character. It's somebody who is, like, in a video game that's just like a background character that doesn't do anything. Right? They're they're they're an NPC. They're not important. And there's a lot of people who live their life on autopilot. They don't really do anything, put themselves out there. They don't excel at anything. I'm not saying that that's the only value people have, but there's definitely a lot more value, I think, personally,
[00:24:04] Mark Delaney:
to accomplishing things. And it certainly makes life, and it makes the world a better place when people accomplish things. There are some people who are truly content with what they have. Right. But I think most of us are just afraid to venture out to something better. We're like we're like king of 10 people when we could be, and for lack of a better term, a jack of a thousand people, we'd be way better off by being a jack of a thousand people and being a king of our 10 people who love us. Yeah. And I I don't think that it's just a monetary
[00:24:35] Matt Rouse:
or, like, a a physical thing, right, like having stuff. I think, you know, a lot of ways, it's about having less stuff, honestly, but having a better life in general, a better life for your family, and, you know, being able to connect with people and you know? Can you imagine if I just stayed in my tech support job that I had before I ever went to The United States. I I didn't work at all those places. I didn't start a marketing agency, and you and I would have never met. You know?
[00:25:07] Mark Delaney:
That's true. That's definitely true. I I also think that experiences from the past show up in benefits of things you never thought of would ever happen in the future. And That's true. That's why those experiences become so important because, wow, I did this I remember doing that years ago, so I got a little bit of a head start on someone who's never done that before. I've been I've been married and divorced twice. And now I'm dating a woman that I want to marry, and I learned so much from my past two divorces that I don't make the same mistakes that I made back then.
There there's a there's a theory, and I don't theory might not be the right word, but your failures, if you take the time to learn from them, can become your greatest successes or greatest assets moving forward in the future. And so that's the thing that I try to do. I try to take all the stuff that I've learned from the past, and I try to use it to create a better future. One thing I would say, Matt, though, is that someone's gonna listen to us today, and they're gonna be like, well, this is good. This is good stuff. Yeah. They're right. But I tell you, I had to get cancer, prostate cancer, to wake me up to doing all the stuff that I know, and I don't want that to happen to anyone in your audience. I want I don't wanna I don't want that to happen to you. You're already doing things. But I think sometimes there's a saying, it's not what happens. It's how you respond to whatever happens. Well, me getting cancer created a response in me that created a greater sense of urgency towards business and financial success than I ever had before I had cancer. I don't know if that makes sense or not, but I really I really believe that bad things will happen to us.
The question is, how do we turn it to our advantage? How do we grow from it? How do we learn from it? How do we overcome it? I remember this this
[00:26:51] Matt Rouse:
just unbelievable story I heard one time. It was actually on the radio, and I was I was traveling at the time, so I never got the name of the guy who who did, like, was telling the story. But it was about his family, and he had left his family basically to go away to go to school and did some traveling. And he came back, and they were just, like, you know, going downhill. They, you know, they lived in a a dilapidated trailer, and it's, like, the only thing their whole family owned. And there's a lot of smoking and drinking and drug abuse and stuff like that going on in their home. And, basically, they disowned him because he was, like, didn't want that life. He ended up leaving for quite a while, and he came back, I think it was something like ten, fifteen years later, and they're all in the same place, still living in the same house. Like, the one guy had, like I think his foot had been amputated from drug use.
Like, there's holes in the walls that the place is a disaster, and and they're just like his mother has one of those speech boxes in her throat because of throat cancer from smoking and, you know, like, everything just degraded incrementally over time. But they were still like, yeah, this is our life kind of thing. Right? And what happens is is the the opposite effect happens. If you're not out there pushing for your life to get better, it will incrementally get worse.
[00:28:10] Mark Delaney:
Correct. So when you tell that story, I I remember I used to be in a network marketing company, and we we call it invaded Canada, a company called Nu Skin. And, basically, this guy said he told a story about Canadian crabs, that if one crab is crawling out of a bucket, the others will pull them back down. Right. Now now I don't know if that's true of crabs or not, but I do know that when you're trying to climb out of a bad place, the way people who are in that bad place justify is by telling you out there is something you don't wanna go to. You don't wanna graduate from us. Right. But then when you do graduate, they wanna share in your success. One of the interesting things about LeBron James, and I was never a big fan of his teams, but he's surrounded by some pretty powerful people.
And that's why his business grows to be close to a billion dollars. So who you surround yourself says a lot about who you want to be. When I joined Grow Getters, Ben Alberts group, I wanna be around people on the same journey as I as I'm on. I wanna grow. I wanna get better. But if you spend your time if you're the highest income earner, if you're the best in your circle of influence, you're gonna be the you're gonna be stuck where you are. Get with people who are better than you in at what you wanna be good at and learn from them. And, Matt, that's why I'm honored to be here today, and I wanted to be on your podcast because every time you say something, it's pretty insightful.
[00:29:30] Matt Rouse:
Oh, Well, thank you. I hope that I hope that it's true also.
[00:29:34] Mark Delaney:
It's true to me. But so the second part of my thing so one of the things I say is execution is the worst kept secret, but it's also the most avoided secret. If you find yourself finding reasons not to do something you know you should do, you're avoiding something. And you're probably avoiding the one thing that's gonna make the biggest difference in your life. So that most avoided part is the thing that I really think people should focus on. What am I avoiding doing because I'm scared? Because I don't think I would be good at it. That's the thing you should focus on doing.
[00:30:05] Matt Rouse:
A 100%. Mark, if somebody wants to reach out to you or chat or to get more information, what do you think is the best way for them to do that? The best way is the schoolofexecution.com.
[00:30:17] Mark Delaney:
And you can spell it sch00l or sk00l, but the schoolofexecution.com is my platform. I have a community there. We'll give you a course, seven day course, called the executioner fast start program. It's seven day trial. It's free. You'll learn enough to go out on your own. If you wanna stay with us, I'll help you implement it and do more
[00:30:38] Matt Rouse:
with it. Mark Delaney. And, also, I wanted to give another shout out. Also, Grow Getters is the name of the group. We're in with Ben Albert where business owners meet regularly. And, I'm also in another group that I was actually on before I came on to the recording today, with Audrey Quan, which is a group specifically for marketing agencies. So if that's something, you guys are interested in, I would definitely check out that group, Audrey Quan's group. If you had one piece of advice, Mark, for people who are having trouble kind of getting the motivation to get started, who do you think that would be? Number one, it would be motivation is fleeting.
[00:31:16] Mark Delaney:
So don't depend on it. Number two is you always have control of what you do with your body and your mouth and your thoughts. Take control of your thoughts. It leads to better action, leads to better words and everything in your brain, and it's probably longer than you want it to, but everything in your brain starts with a question. What question are you asking yourself that makes you afraid? What questions are you asking yourself that makes you hesitant? Change your questions. You'll change your thoughts. Change your choices. Change your actions. Change your words. Perfect. Mark Delaney, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. I'm glad you had me.
[00:31:52] Cassidy:
Thank you for listening to the digital masters. Sorry. Oh, my God, Cassidy. Say it right. Thank you for listening to the digital marketing masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. Don't forget to pick up Matt's new book, Will AI Take My Job Too? And get a glimpse into the future of AI for work and for businesses. Good job, Rachel. Oh, and tell them the thing about, well, you know. Oh, right. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode and leave us a 10 star review on your favorite podcast app. It only goes up to five stars, Rachel.
Whatever, Cassidy. Just don't forget to pick up the book, Will AI Take My Job Too. It might just save your job from someone like me.
Opening, intros, and setting the theme: execution
What is the "worst kept secret"? Consistent execution
Using AI as a critical thinking partner with context
Defining execution and doing what is required
Hard things, low-hanging fruit, and practice over time
Process stagnation: "how weve always done it"
Books as tools: writing vs. selling and rejection
Purpose-driven authorship and AIs role in writing
Explaining tokens and making complex topics simple
Why Mark starts with the body: building execution muscles
Drill sergeant for hire: quality, quantity, consistency
Doing difficult things changes who you are and your circle
Victim vs. victorious mindset and learned limitations
Accomplishment beyond money: designing a better life
Learning from failure, urgency from adversity (cancer)
Environment and community: crabs in a bucket vs. Grow Getters
The most avoided secret: what are you avoiding?
How to reach Mark and closing advice on motivation
