This week our co-host, Marc Bernstein, best-selling author of The Fiscal Therapy Solution 1.0 introduces us to Marc Manieri, a high-performance coach. Marc talks with us about his journey from real estate to high-performance coaching. He shares with us that having intention and commitment are keys to achieving the goals and objectives you want in life. You don't want to miss this inspiring story.
Guest Co-host: Marc Bernstien
Podcast Guest: Marc Manieri
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:01
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:16
Morning, everybody, and welcome to Changing the Rules. Changing the Rules is a show that is designed to showcase some of the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world. And our definition are those people who are going out and actually redesign their own lives personally, and then live them under their own terms. And when you do that, life comes together and everything works well. And part of that is being able to deal with rules. You know, we all have too many rules in our lives anymore, and they start giving us rules when we're little kids, our parents give us rules. The schools give us rules, the churches give us roles, our jobs, give us rules. Often our sponsors give us rules too, but we may have to stick with. And then the whole idea is if you wind up living life, by everybody else's rules, you're not living your own life. So one of the things that the luckiest people in the world do is they know how to deal with rules, and how to filter with those through those rules, and take the ones that are important to them that are going to make their lives worthwhile and wonderful. So we have two guests today, we have Marc Bernstein is back again. And, uh, Marc is our co-host today. And Marc is also introducing us to a contact of his and a good friend of his Marc Manieri. And Mark is just well-marked one of the luckiest people in the world. That's all I can say. And you're going to be fascinated when you see how his life has evolved, especially over the last few years, and what he's doing now to help with the lives of others. So first of all, Marc Bernstein and because we have two Marcs, I'm gonna have a tough time today. But Marc Bernstein is the author of The Fiscal Therapy Solution. 1.0. Did I get that right this time?
Marc Bernstein02:17
Excellent, Ray, you're getting it.
Ray Loewe02:18
It's a best-selling book. And it is a definitive guide to living your life from a financial perspective. But integrating all those other lifestyle things that have to be there, too. So Marc, welcome back to changing the rules and make whatever comments you want, and introduce us to Marc.
Marc Bernstein02:42
Always my pleasure Ray, as I said to you guys this morning, quite an honor to be with two of my favorite people in the world and one podcast. So it's pretty cool. You know, I've been a guest on this podcast. And we talk about, you know how we are all lucky in life. But we all know that luck isn't something that just happens to you. It's something that you make out of the circumstances you have. And there's a lot of great stories and Ray, you've had a ton of great lives of different people and what they've done with those lives. It's really a great podcast in that perspective. And I've learned a lot from your podcasts. And you know, when I sked Marc to be on the show, he's one in my mind was one of the luckiest people in the world to but I also know that he you know, he made his luck to, you know, and he'll tell you what, you know, he, he talks a lot about intention. And he'll talk about that, and how he took intentions he had from a very young age and created the life he wanted to have. And like all these stories, it's a fascinating story. Marc, I know Marc as a high-performing coach for high performers. And in fact, he's been my coach for the last couple of years. And through that we've also become friends and we've become, I've gotten to know a lot about his background. And Marc, as we started, like, do you just, you know, talk a little bit about your childhood where you grew up? Because it's vastly different circumstances from where you are today. And we'll get to that. But why don't we start with that with your background and kind of the things you saw as a child. And when you start remembering your first intentions about what you wanted your life look like?
Marc Manieri04:31
Yeah, that's great. First of all, it's great to be here. And I want to acknowledge you, Ray for founding this podcast and Marc for you being here. And I love the spirit of this. So thank you for having me. So, I grew up in Rochester, New York in a middle-class neighborhood. And my mother was a school teacher. My father was an insurance salesman. And one of the things that I learned and discovered early on was that money doesn't grow on trees. And that you, you know, we couldn't just go out and have whatever we wanted. Because money was, let's say scarce in my family growing up, and it came in fits and bursts. And it was an interesting lesson for me. And I didn't realize I was learning it at the time. But one of the things I certainly discovered later on in life is I want to create freedom in my life. So I'm really certain that while things were scarce, let's say when I grew up, it created a foundation for me to discover one of the things that's most important to me, which is freedom. And while money in and of itself, doesn't grant freedom, it contributes to it. And so I started to orient myself in a way where I could create in my life, and I discovered that having money was a way to create freedom in my life. And, you know, my life started to move along that trajectory. So more I could say about that. But you know, what, what else would you like me to say about it? Well, Marc?
Marc Bernstein06:20
Well, one thing is I, I love that you you brought up about perception of money and scarcity. And it's not a plug for my book. But in the book, we talked about people's relationship with money, and their thoughts about money and their conditioning about money. And some of the ways that you can sort of break out of that. I know that your business background, I believe, I don't know if it started there, but a lot of your early business experience was in the mortgage business. And I know that your brother was an influence on you. Very positive influence in a lot of ways. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Marc Manieri06:54
Yeah, that's great. So the thumbnail sketch of it is I got started in real estate, actually, before mortgage and I, I went to every single seminar and training I could get my hands on in Rochester, New York, and had a pretty good rookie year, you know, was a six-figure earner in my first year, and at the age of 22-23 years old, like that was a that was a lot of money. And what I started to discover is man, I'm so inspired by what I'm learning from all these individuals that were teaching me that, I decided I wanted to be the teacher. So I discovered a local real estate sales training firm, and I went to work for them. And I made a lot less money than I did in real estate. But I began to realize what my calling is, and what really resonated with me, and I love contributing to others. And I also love the sales process and discovered that I was pretty good at sales. So then I went to work for another real estate sales training firm. And in this firm, we were at our high point, we grew this company, from five people to 85 people from half a million in sales to 10 million in sales in five years. And we are coaching 1000 people, many in the real estate industry in many in the mortgage industry. And I was watching the growth of all of our coaching clients. Now I was on the sales side of the business. And I was watching the growth of these people. And now we're getting to around 2005-2006. And I was in charge of all the sales on the US side. And it was a Canadian-based company. And at some point, somebody turned the lights out, like the sales on in the US side, they just weren't happening anymore. And there was a lot of say, immaturity in our company. And I realized, and I looked at all of our clients that were making all this growth, and I realized, man, I got to hire a coach. So that's when I discovered coaching. And I hired a coach. And I realized that being a part of this company didn't align for me anymore. So I left I moved to Florida, and my brother was running a very successful mortgage company, and I got into the mortgage industry. And that's how I really got into the mortgage industry. Marc and nobody knew that the financial crisis was coming. So by mid-2007, that company didn't even exist anymore. And from that day, I've been self-employed ever since. And I went back to my roots of training and then eventually got into coaching and, and over the next four years from 2007 to 2011 like life was a real challenge. It was a real struggle. You know, I was attempting to create sales training and sales coaching clients in the mortgage industry, when in the state of Florida when 90% of the people were getting out of that Business. And you know, you say my brother has been an influence on me. Well, my brother was always a guy that was willing to take risks. And because of the way I grew up with some scarcity, I was always risk-averse. And I remember one day being broke. And, you know, just feeling like, what why is this happening? Like, there is more in me than is happening right now. And I was on the phone with my brother. And he said, and I was talking to him about wanting to just earn $50,000 a year, and I remember he, he stopped me cold. He said, Dude, you're not a $ 50,000-year earner, you're half a million dollars a year earner? What are you doing? And like that just woke me right up. And that started to shift my relationship with money and my relationship with my own sense of self and what I could go create in the world. And I started to take some more risks. And, and with that, I started to, you know, upgrade my prospecting and going out in the world and started to create more clients. It was right about that time when I hired another coach, who, you know, Marc Bernstein, who changed my life forever. And that started my trajectory, on a totally different path over the last 10 to 12 years.
Marc Bernstein11:26
So I just like to set that up a second, I know, Ray's gonna want to ask you about your life today, and some of the recent intentions that you've acted upon. But since you brought that up, Marc, let's talk about so I first met you through a company that you're a partner in, called on to core and of course, called create powerful, which was powerful in my life. And in fact, um, I'll be doing it again for the third time this year. It's, that's how good it was. And that kind of leads into your meeting with your current partner. And I, let's talk about that for a couple minutes.
Marc Manieri12:02
Yeah, well, I was starting to get some traction in my sales training business that I was, you know, just driving up and down the east coast of Florida cold walking into mortgage company offices and sitting outside of sales manager offices, and anybody who was willing to let me spend an hour with their salespeople, I would do that I would train them for an hour. And then I would invite them to work with me for three months or six months, or even a year. And then at the time, I had a friend who mailed me a book, and he said, You got to read this book. And I've always well, not always. Back when I got into real estate, became a voracious reader. And I had a stack of books on my nightstand, you know, a dozen of them. And he sent me this book, and every week you would call me and he said, have you read the book yet? Have you read the book yet? I said, No, I haven't read the book yet. Finally, a couple months later, I'm like, alright, I'll read your book. And I read this book. And it was like the authors wrote it just for me. It was exactly what I needed to read at exactly the right time I consumed it in two days, I'll never forget, it was called the prosperous coach. And I was so taken by it that the authors, I research the authors and I, and I realized, in my research, they were holding a four-day workshop, that cost a couple $1,000. That was across the country in LA, and it was five days later. And I knew I had to be there. So I called these guys and they said, I want to sign up and they said, it's full. I said, Well, you don't understand. I told him the story of how I read their book. And I said, I got to be there, they opened up another space, I flew across the country. And I was at this event for four days. And it was a really powerful event. And at that event, there was about 50 students in the class, I was one of them. And every time this one person in the crowd spoke, the whole room was like, Oh, my gosh, what did that guy say? That he should be up there teaching the class? Well, it turned out that that guy was coaching the two individuals leading the workshop who had authored the book, and that guy turned out to be a guy by the name of Brandon Craig. And I flew home, and I called him and I said, What does it take to work with you? What would it take for me to hire you as my coach? Because you know, you are doing what I want to do you have a thriving, coaching practice. And I want that and I'm really struggling over here. And he told me what it takes to work with him and somebody had to pick me up off the floor because it was more money than I made the previous year in total. And so I went to my wife and I said, Hey, honey, I met this guy, and I think I need to hire him. And here's how much it costs and it's a lot of money. What do you think and She was brilliant. She said, Well, you're thinking about going to get your MBA. And you're about to spend $100,000 doing that. And that's a two-year program. And you could go be in debt 100 grand, and come out of that program and not have a thriving coaching practice two years later, you could spend almost as much money as that on this guy. And he's already doing what you want to do. And you could create what you want to create. So I'm behind you, whatever you decide. And that was amazing. And so I called him back. And I said, All right, I want to work with you. And he said that's great. Send me a check for the whole year to work with me, which you got to pay upfront. Because that's the definition of commitment that I learned. And I didn't have the money. But I went out and started to talk to people in a different way. Because I had already committed to working with him, I had to go out and find the money. And I ended up talking to people in my life and found four different people that were willing to invest in me. And that's how I came up with the money to hire him. And I hired him in the first year. And he taught me some key things around intention and commitment. And I ended up that year doubling my coaching business. And I hired him again. And then I doubled my coaching business again. And then I hired him again. And then I doubled my business again. And that was you know, how I really learned some key understandings around intention and commitment and leadership that has me, you know, teach those to other people today in the in the domain of high performance.
Ray Loewe16:42
Okay, my turn Marc. Okay. So so there are a couple things, you've told a great story so far, Marc about a couple of things. And, and this concept of, of commitment, and freedom, and drive, and the importance of coaching, okay, and, you know, I've met so many coaches, and they all have coaches. And it's interesting to me, okay, but that's part of what coaching is all about. It's like, we all need an accountability source. And we all need teachers, and we need to find them. But what I want to focus on is not that I want to focus on your spouse a little bit. I want to focus on some lifestyle changes that you brought into play. And the fact that you suddenly picked up then took 12 weeks off, and how you put that into your system, and then you moved all the way across country? And how did you do this and keep a business together? Because this is the lifestyle, I think that makes It's the freedom part of the money.
Marc Manieri17:47
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the question, Ray? So when I turned self-employed back in 2007, my wife was a Canadian, she moved in she wasn't self-employed, she, she wasn't employable for a year. So she took the year off, and she found really great things for us to do. And she's amazing at that. And she's a traveler, and she said, Okay, you know, this is the lifestyle that we want to live. And I was always too frightened to actually leave my home office and go anywhere for any substantial amount of time because I thought I had to grind it out. You know, and I was at a time in my life when I had to grind it out. And that was fine. And I was grinding for several years. And finally, a couple years later, she said, Look, we created a life very intentionally where we could travel because we don't have to answer to anybody. She was self-employed as a writer, after she could work, immigrating to the US, and I was a self-employed leadership and performance coach. She said It's time to go somewhere. So I was like, okay, whatever. And finally, she came to me one day, and she said, I've booked us a house. We've rented us a house in the mountains of western North Carolina. We're going to Asheville, North Carolina, and I said what we are, she said, Yes, we're going and we went that one summer, and that grew to eight weeks, and then that eight weeks grew to 12 weeks. And from basically 2009 on we've now traveled every summer. And so you know, that has been a key part of our lifestyle Ray, and I've loved every minute of it. And it's been fun to get out and see the world we've we've traveled across the country we've done Austin, Texas, we've done Lake Tahoe, we've done Portland, Oregon, we've done Vancouver. And then recently we grew out of Orlando, Florida, which is where we were living for 15 years and Kristen being Canadian and the US seeing some of the world. I forgot to mention we did Europe as well as Australia. And we realize we want to live somewhere beautiful. So we decided to move our life across the country to Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and we now live here full time.
Ray Loewe20:06
Okay, so there's, there's a message in here that you've got out to us, and I want to summarize it or have you summarize it. But it starts with this idea of intention. There's a piece in here that talks about, you know, money was important to you up to a point, but obviously, it's not all money because it's a lifestyle that's being able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do. Okay, so what's the message that you have for other people? How do you do this stuff? And I think it comes down to intention, and what do you want?
Marc Manieri20:44
Yeah. Well, intention, as I see, it, is having a real clear desire, and a clear aim on what it is that you want to go create. And, you know, one of the things that my now partner and coach, former coach, and now partner and mentor, Brandon says, is, is a great analogy. He says we're all, you know, like a boat. And if we don't have intention, we've got these two twin engines on the back of a power goal. We're all powerful individuals and human beings and creators. But without intention, we have no rudder. And we take all this power that we have inside of ourselves to create, and we just spin around in a circle. And intention is the rudder for our life, it's the thing that has us move in the direction that we want to go. And I love that analogy. And to be a boat without a rudder is really sad. Because man, we can do really special things, we could do anything that we want. And that starts with getting clear about it. So that's intention. And the second piece to it is commitment. And what I learned through my work with Brandon through the leadership work that we do, and that we teach is that commitment is to do what is necessary. Period, like, full stop, to do what is necessary to produce the outcomes in our life. And what that means is and it's going to sound so oversimplified is the only way we don't create our intention is if we quit, if commitment is the antithesis of, of quitting. So if we get a clear intention, we look into our life, we see what we want, and we just move towards it. And we're committed to never stopping, we can't not get that we can't not not get there, it will always happen. And, you know, I've discovered that in my life, and everything I've ever put my mind to is something that's been created. And I've seen that. And once people really understand this concept of intention and commitment, it's like, watch out, everything in life begins to change for them. So that's what I would say about intention and the commitment piece that goes with it.
Ray Loewe23:12
Cool. Okay, unfortunately, we're near the end of our time. So let's go back to Marc Bernstein for a minute. And, Marc, do you have any final comments that you want to say any final questions you want to get to our other Marc?
Marc Bernstein23:25
Over here? I'm just two things. One is, you know, I've worked with Marc. And when he talked about exactly what I've gotten out of it, I am now at the point in my life, where I was always a creator, I was always an innovator. I was always pretty good at my job. But I had a lot of things in my way, as many of us do, I had a lot of things that were blocking me out and that kind of thing. And the thing that he just talked about, about commitment being the antithesis of quitting is something I've learned. And just in the last couple of years, I've created some of the things you're aware of these forward focus forums and some other things I'm doing out of the blue and I look back on and said, Wow, that, you know, in a pandemic, out of nowhere, over the internet, you know, that you can create these things. And I now am a big believer that whatever I want to create, and whatever plan intentions are for the future will happen. My only question left for Marc, in terms of his own journey is what next? Do you have anything to say about what's next?
Marc Manieri24:32
Well, there's a set of intentions that guide me that you are aware of Marc, and there's four of them. And those are to make money to make connection. And by connection I mean, spending quality time with like-minded and like-valued individuals to make love and to make a contribution. And when I'm in those four intentions, that's what's next for me what that actually looks like, you know, I don't really know I let it unfold as it's supposed to. But those four intentions I've gotten really clear about and they've produced phenomenal experiences, and until they're going to change, then for now, I live by them, and they really work for me.
Ray Loewe25:29
And I think, you know, you summarize everything really well, there, you don't exactly know where you're going. And I think that's one of the problems sometimes is that people think they have to have this exact path. But what you need to have is the intentions you need to have your guiding principles in place, is that what we're talking about?
Marc Manieri25:48
Yeah, and I think the clarity of intention is defined by the individual, you know, I do put up a number in terms of making money, and I and I, so I have some specificity there, Ray, but you don't have to, you know, you know, it all lives within the individual. And so we could be specific, and specificity can really serve us at times. And other times, you know, if we just get clear about a guiding principle that can make a difference in our life as well. So there's no clear formula to it. And I think that's useful.
Marc Bernstein26:23
For Ray, I'll just mention, for those who are not, you know, as goal-oriented and don't want to be that specific about it. The book that I read, really, at the beginning, starting at the beginning, when I worked with Marc, that really influenced me, and I know it was an influence on him was The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. And that's such a miraculous story of, you know, just having an intention, basically a guy who just wanted to meditate, and everything that came out of that. So that's for anyone interested in that subject? I think it's one of the best books out there. And it's something that I keep going back to because it's a, and also is the book which was the prologue to that, which is called The Surrender Experiment. were amazing books on that subject. Well, well, this
Ray Loewe27:10
is great. Thanks to both of the Marcs over here.Mark Bernstein, Thanks for being back with us again. Marc Manieri, it's been a pleasure to meet you and to understand uh what's driving you and how you make life work for you. And I think you're very definitely one of the luckiest people in the world. You've got it together, you figured out what's meaningful to you. And thank you so much for being with us today.
Marc Manieri27:34
It's been my pleasure. Thank you, guys.
Ray Loewe27:36
and Taylor sign us off.
Kris Parsons27:40
Thank you for listening to changing the rules are a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life. Now you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.