Mark Lachance is a renowned figure in the business world, who possesses a deep understanding of the sales process. Having owned and operated several businesses in which lead generation acted as a sales and marketing staple, Mark is a master of lead generation and continues to apply and grow his expertise through current projects.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Mark Lachance about mastering lead generation.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How you can stack the odds in your favor and cash in on that success.
– Why having internal mastery helps bring in more positive energy.
– How meditation can be beneficial for businesspeople because it helps silence the negative thoughts.
– What blitzscaling is and how it can lead to massive growth for your company.
– Why you should be delegating the tasks that stress you out the most.
Connect with Mark:
Links Mentioned:
theluckyformula.com/quiz
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@mlachance
Instagram
@misterluckyofficial
Facebook
facebook.com/mark.lachance.50
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/mark-lachance-74902615
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. Another episode of Publish, Promote Profit podcast is on the way, and I’m super excited to have a guest that I have some personal business questions for. I think you’re going to learn a lot from Mark Lachance, the CEO of Maxy Media. I believe that’s maxi.media as well, if you want to find that online. They’re one of the largest TikTok marketing agencies in the world and the highest spender on the platform in Canada. Mark’s the best-selling author of The Lucky Formula, how to stack the odds in your favor and cash in on success. Very, very cool. Mark’s made many investments in various industries, payment processing, cryptocurrency, which we have a lot in common. I love crypto, been investing since 2017 myself, also marketing, nutrition, fitness, sports. Over the last 25 years, he’s invested and consulted for dozens of ventures and has done very, very well. Mark is also a recent Floridian. As I learned, Mark and I both moved to Florida during the craziness that has gone on in the world. So Mark, great to have you on the podcast. Thanks for taking some time with us.
Mark Lachance:
Great to be here, Rob. Thanks for having me.
Rob Kosberg:
There’s a lot for us to talk about. Like I said, I have some personal questions, at least from a business perspective, to ask you about. TikTok, I think it is a very intriguing platform with over a billion users. Pretty amazing what they’ve done, but let’s start on the lucky formula. Obviously, the title itself would lend me to believe that you’re focused more on helping people in general with success. It’s not so much about your media buying agency or the specifics, the nuts and bolts of online marketing. Talk to me about why you wrote it, what the focus of it is for you.
Mark Lachance:
Well, lucky, Rob, we spoke before, Lachance, which is my last name outside the United States, actually means lucky. So, it’s the lucky formula by Mark Lachance or Lachance Mr. Lucky, which is my name on Instagram also. The book is about how to stack the odds in your favor and cash in that success, and the premise is that luck is not a fluke. It’s a formula. So, if you understand the formula, if you understand the formula to success, basically, so you can interchange the word luck with success. If you understand the steps and the formula, too, anybody can achieve it. That’s basically what it is. Now, the book starts out with my mega colossal failure in life. I’m sure you’ve had those. I’m sure many people that are listening now have had those mega colossal failures, and I had an epic one back in back in 2007.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Let’s share failures. I had mine in 2007 and 2008 as well. So let’s hear all about it.
Mark Lachance:
I bet you it’s wrapped around real estate like mine was. In 2006, fresh off a huge win, I sold shares in a company that I was one of the founders in and I had millions in the bank. Then, as often happens when you’re full of cash and you think you can do no wrong, you think you can do no wrong, I plowed it all into a real estate investment in Northern Quebec. This is interesting. I plowed into an investment called LeStudio. LeStudio was a place where many famous artists recorded like Sting, Celine Dion, David Bowie, The Police, the Bee Gees. Rush actually did, I think all seven of their biggest albums there. The whole idea was to buy the property, and it was 200 acres around a lake, develop it and sell it to the Brits because the English were rolling into Northern Quebec and currency was almost at two to one. Basically, they were getting property at half-price. Two other developments had already rocked it. They sold out within weeks. Low and behold, I get involved in a deal in 2007, and you know the date, and also with a not so scrupulous partner as well. Those two together led me down the path of almost near bankruptcy, anxiety, depression, and sort of awakening. I’m no longer the king of the hill and I have to crawl out from under a rock. That was really, really hard, so that’s where the book starts out anyway.
Rob Kosberg:
I appreciate you sharing that. I know some people call it cycling, not bicycling, but cycling where people often will cycle through a failure to really learn the lessons that they need to learn in their life and in their business so that the second to time around, when opportunity meets preparation, “luck” comes, that we’re prepared for it and prepared maybe to keep it rather than lose it. I assume that that’s part of the reason that you tell that story. Talk me through what the formula is. Share with me what the steps are, where that leads to in the process.
Mark Lachance:
The formula itself, number one, it’s internal mastery, so internal condition mastery plus external condition mastery, plus action, equals luck. So I plus E plus A equals luck. What does that mean? That means when you master your internal conditions, an example of that would be when you wake up in the morning, what do you tell yourself? I’ll give you an example around that. It’s language or narrative is one of the pieces of the formula. When you wake up in the morning, do you tell yourself you’re a Rockstar or do you tell yourself, “Oh, woe is me, I’m a loser.” What do you do? I would assume, just based on the brief time we’ve had here, you tell yourself, you are a Rockstar. The narrative, what I tell myself, is I am happy affirmations. I am happy. I am wealthy. I am healthy. I am a rock star. I’m amazing. You keep on repeating those things over and over, which brings energy to you. I’ve got energy exercises I do from Dr. Barry Morgulean that brings the energy in. It brings positive energy and you’re feeling great Meditation. You’re moving, your posture. All those pieces combined make your internal mastery. There’s 10 of them and they’re easily stackable. For example, one crazy one is looking in the mirror and just smile for two minutes. Sit up straight. You notice I sit up straight, my shoulders back. I’m not hunching, so all of these things together bring the positive energy and the power to you. That’s internal mastery and there’s many others. I don’t want to give away all the secrets here, Rob, so I’ll give you an example around story or narrative, or language that you tell yourself. I was at the physiotherapist. I’m getting both my shoulders worked on. He is working on my shoulders and a woman walks in and he says, “Hey, how you doing?” I think her name was Cindy. Maybe it wasn’t Cindy, but “How are you doing?” She’s like, “Terrible. My back hurts. My knees hurt. My shoulders hurt,” so think about her day. How is her day going to go? Is her day going to be lucky and awesome or is her day going to be just probably terrible and awful and I’m hurting. That’s part of language. So, if you’re waking up, if you’re telling yourself a great story all day long, if your narrative is telling yourself how great you are, then there’s a really good chance that you’re going to be great. If you read Tim Ferris’s book Tools of Titans, he interviews, I think it’s 500 very highly successful people in that book and 75 to 85% of the Titans in his book meditate. Success leaves clues, right? So for me, I tell the story of how meditation, for me, is my biggest game changer. Now why is that? This may be some of the people on your podcast as well, wake up in the middle of the night and have all these crazy thoughts through their head. When I launched my company in 2009, I’d wake up at three in the morning and think the board’s going to fire me. I’m going to get fired. Just crazy thoughts. How could I get fired when my company’s tracking to be the quickest company to cash a little positive in the payment space? The thoughts in your head are crazy. So what meditation did, especially the technique I use, it helped to cut those voices, those crazy voices and just maintain, focus on the large goal, which is to create a highly profitable company and employ hundreds of people, which we did. That’s internal mastery and I can continue on with external, if you want.
Rob Kosberg:
I wish you would. I’m super intrigued. I’m absolutely getting the book. I was already on it this morning and ordered it, but I’m interested in hearing more because I’m trying to think of how I go about my day and where these things kind of fit with what my practices are. Let’s talk about the next step in it.
Mark Lachance:
When you talk about external mastery, things like crew, crew is one of the sections, and crew is the people you hang around with. Jim Roan famously said, you’re the average. Maybe somebody else before him said that, but I learned it from Jim Roan, but you’re the average of the five people you hang around with. Think about that. If I hung around with you, you moved to Florida, I moved to Florida because of you and chances are we have the same thought process and the same mindset. It turns out when we moved here two months ago, and you know, this because you’re in Florida, the rental market’s so tight right now it’s ridiculous.
Mark Lachance:
I had to scramble to find a rent and it turns out that the place I’m renting right now, we just bought a place that we’re moving in the next couple weeks but the place I’m renting right now turns out he’s the Rockstar personal trainer in this whole area in Parkland, Florida. His name is Manny Mair. He runs an event called Soldier Rush. He just had 2000 people doing an obstacle course. He trains all the professional athletes here, all the Florida Panther hockey players. It just so happens that this is my personal trainer now because I moved into his house. That’s awesome, and it’s opened so many doors. So think about that. Manny’s part of my crew. So now Manny’s one of the people I hang around with, own here in Florida. He knows he trains professional athletes. He trains hedge fund managers. He trains business owners, so my circle of influence just grew massively because I hang around with Manny. Think about that. That a huge piece, right? Another example I give in the book about crew is the events that you go to, so personal development. Rob, I’ll bet you go to personal development events. I’m a huge Tony Robbins fan. Roll back the clock 11 years ago, 10 years ago, I was at an event that was in Las Vegas, Business Mastery. I happened to be sitting next to this gentleman named David. David is a good friend of mine now, and he has been for the last 10 years, and David introduced me to a gentleman that might buy my company for mega dollars. Who do you hang around with? It will largely dictate your future. Some people might be asking, “Yeah, well, it’s easy for you, Mark. You’re wealthy and you’re lucky and you’re all this other stuff,” but I didn’t start out that way. You’re going to read in the book that I actually started in construction working for my father working on the roof in the sweltering heat. So another piece of the formula is your why. Do you have a massive why? One of my massive why’s is to never wake up, look out that window and see that red blazing sun come up over the horizon so I never, ever, have to get on that roof again Have you ever worked in construction or been on the roof?
Rob Kosberg:
No, but I’ve worked in the fields. I’ve worked in orange groves, and I grew up in a kind of a country areas so I’ve bailed hay and run the fences and that’s horrible. That’s hard work.
Mark Lachance:
Look, that’s a huge why I work so hard, and I’ve learned investing in recurring revenue and cash flow yields because I never, ever, want to get on that roof again. It’s to a point where my wife is like, “Put up this picture,” and I’m like, “No, I don’t want to touch that hammer. I don’t want to do it.” So, you know, all that intertwined. Then, you know, you’ve got, how do you eat, your supplementation? How do you sleep? Last night, I had a rock star evening of sleep. I slept a solid eight hours, and I don’t usually get that. I usually get about six and a half. If you do your research, real science will tell you that between six and eight hours a night is what men should get of sleep. Last night, I had a solid eight. I feel like a Rockstar this morning. Another part of the formula is financial abundance. Other people might be saying, “Yeah, that’s easy for you, Mark. You’re wealthy,” but I didn’t start that way, Rob. I didn’t start as wealthy. My father, his family comes from the farm in Eastern Quebec. Nobody ever gave them anything, so work ethic is part of taking action, which is the last part of the formula. So it’s work ethic, right? Ingrained into our family is flat out work ethic. My grandfather was a farmer. My father worked on the farm. My father was in construction. My father was up at five in the morning to prepare the construction crew, on the job at six, back home at six o’clock at night. Working to prepare the plans for the next day because he also was the architect of all the deals that he did, right? I learned that type of work ethic from my father, and all that’s in the book. Again, I plus E plus A equals luck.
Rob Kosberg:
Mark, I love it. I mean, we’ll give some links. Obviously, people can get it on Amazon. You were just telling me as well, I mean, just recently launched and right now it’s number one on Kindle, so congratulations for that. Very, very cool.
Mark Lachance:
I’m going to actually tell you right now live where it is. It was on all of Kindle, and I think there’s over 9 million books on Kindle. So last night it was number 354 on all of Kindle and it was number one in certain categories today. It is number 20 in all of Kindle, and number one in three different categories. In business and investing, number one in personal transformation, and number one in personal finance.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, congratulations, my friend. You got a nice big marketing launch going on right now. I mean, you don’t get that success accidentally, right?
Mark Lachance:
Well it’s a lot about knowing the formula. There’s a formula to everything. There’s the lucky formula. Then there’s a lucky formula of marketing. Then there’s a lucky formula of building a business, building a successful podcast. So, I should ask you, tell me how you do a successful podcast, Rob.
Rob Kosberg:
Get amazing, great guests like you, interesting people to talk to makes for interesting listening. Let me shift gears because I want to get to the book. I mean, everything you’ve shared, I think is going to motivate a lot of people to want to get the book. I want to go a little more narrow and I want talk a little bit about Maxi Media, which I believe you have multiple ventures, or maybe you did and maybe you’ve sold and Maxi is your focus. I’m not sure, but either way, you’ve built one of the largest TikTok agencies in the world and are the highest spender on the platform in Canada. That’s significant. Talk to me about what you’re finding on that advertising platform for business owners, consulting, higher ticket type offers. I think in terms of a platform like that, and I think you could probably sell stuff on Shopify stores, t-shirts, things like that, collectibles, but is there an opportunity for someone like myself, a company like mine that does ghost writing, book publishing, book marketing, all those kinds of thing, to find my ideal clients? Is there a way for consultants to find their ideal clients on TikTok?
Mark Lachance:
Well, if you asked me that question a year ago, I would say no, but today I’m going to tell you, absolutely yes, because the demographic of the platform is skewing up every single day. I’m going to be frank. I am personally not on TikTok but the opportunity for anybody, that’s an influencer, and by the way, many influencers aren’t on TikTok right now. Many are not. I’m going to tell you it’s hard work, right? It is hard work, but you will be paid back quickly because you can grow your user base right now. It’s in its growth phase, tremendous growth phase, and you can get to a million followers pretty quickly if your content is interesting and you do all the right things. What I was thinking about is holding, for people like yourself, is holding a quick tutorial, a Zoom call. Maybe you can help me put that together with some top creators to give you guys tips and tricks on how to build, because many are top creators. One of them just hit 2 million followers on TikTok. We’ve got others with hundreds of thousands. These are all our internal creators, so we have them producing between five and 10 creatives or UGCs, they’re called, user generated content, five to 10 ads on a daily basis, and we’re launching between four and 600 ads on every single day, so this is paid advertising. For somebody like yourself, I think the opportunity is massive to create a brand on TikTok where it’ll be impossible for you to do it on Instagram right now, or on any other platform, because it’s just difficult to get reach. Right now, to get reach on TikTok is highly possible and highly doable and definitely doable. It requires work and it requires being creative and it requires launching, if you asked one of my top creators, they’ll tell you three videos a day, and while each of each one of those videos is somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute, it still takes work. It still takes time editing. Look, it’s work, but it will pay off, if you’re an influencer that wants to use any platform, I would definitely suggest to get on TikTok.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, first let me say, I totally want to take you up on your offer. We’ve done over a thousand books for clients. I do a live coaching call to my past clients and current clients every week, and I’ve never talked about TikTok. We primarily focus on and talk about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, et cetera, even some Google AdWords. I would love to have you on with my clients. When we’re done the podcast, we can schedule that. If you’re willing to do that, that would be fantastic.
Mark Lachance:
What I’ll do is, you don’t want me on for that. You want my creators.
Rob Kosberg:
I say the same thing about the book stuff. I’m like, you don’t want me writing your book. You want my writers doing that.
Mark Lachance:
That’s the way to build. We talk about blitz scaling in the book. We talk about massive growth. I learned this back in, in 2010. I launched my company called Evo Canada, which was a payments company. It still is in Canada. I sold it in 2016, but I launched it in 2009. I was the first employee in partnership with a group out of New York and I had a big chunk of equity in the company. We launched it in 2009, and a year and a half later, I have 200 and I’m sitting at my desk in December, right around this time 10 years ago. Ten years ago, I’m sitting at my desk completely stressed out of my mind, looking at my computer and I have thousands of emails. I’m like, “How am I going to get through this?” I stressed. I literally wanted to quit the company that I had launched a year and a half earlier, which got me out of depression, which got me out of anxiety, which got me out of bankruptcy. Financially, I was dead broke when I started and then fast forward a year and a half later, I’m back on top making a tremendous amount of cash. So, I’m sitting there and I’m like, “I need coaching. I need help. I need to get out of this stressful situation.” I was typing online business mentorship, coach, coach, coach, and guess whose name kept on coming up? Tony Robbins. Three weeks later he was having business mastery event in Las Vegas. I’m like, “This is $10 grand?” I’d never spent that much before on anything like this. So, I’m like, “You know what? I got to do it. I just have to do it.” I flew to Vegas, and the first thing you find out if you are the problem with your business. You’re the issue. Nobody else. So I find out that if you’re doing all the work, if your email box is clogged with finance stuff, sales stuff, customer service, legal compliance, blah, blah, blah, you’re not doing the right job. I didn’t have the right people in the right places, therefore my stress levels went up. I think I made this term up. I don’t know, but I call it the entrepreneur’s dilemma. Every entrepreneur thinks they need to be the smartest and the best and the brightest in every single thing in their business. Well, that’s a fallacy. That’s a joke. I learned really fast then in Dan Sullivan, also, from Strategic Coach. So, I’m part of his group as well. Dan tells you if there’s anything that gives you any stress, get out of it. Delegate it out, delegate it. You want to be in the lane that you want to be in. Here’s the secret to blitz-scaling a business. Get out of the way. Hire the best people and put them in a position and let them go. I learned that quickly, right then and there in 2010, it was now 2011, that hire the best. I came back from that event. I fired my VP of sales. My head of marketing, he had a call center. I cleaned house. I put the right people in the right spot, and within three, four months, I was like, “Oh my God.” My stress was gone. I was able to focus on what I wanted to focus on and grow the business. I’ve taken that learnings and brought it into the media business. The reason why you don’t want me on the creator because I haven’t created one creative my whole life. In a nutshell, how do you blitz scale a business? Hire the best people, put them in the right spots, let them do their job, and you oversee, and that’s it. That’s the secret. It’s all about dropping your ego and letting the best do the work. Drop your ego, which is part of the book as well. Part of the formula. That’s a hard thing for people to do.
Rob Kosberg:
I mean, there’s also logistical parts of that. Finding the best people, affording the best people. I mean, how would somebody scale this that isn’t already sitting on 200 employees, tremendous cash flow, et cetera. Talk to the coach or the consultant that is growing their business, and they’re getting to a million bucks, or $2 million or $3 million. To really scale it, they’re going to need to go from $3 to $10. What does that look like for them?
Mark Lachance:
I’m going to tell you, that’s easy. Why is it easy? It’s a story you tell yourself, that’s number one. I’ll give you a story around that. Most of our employees are sitting out of Montreal and the market right now, like everywhere else, the employment market is tight. We are looking for a head of finance, and people are telling me, “Oh, here’s over a hundred availabilities out there. You’re not going to find somebody. You’re not going to find somebody.” Yeah? Watch me. I wrote a kick-ass ad. I put it in Indeed, and they started flooding in. I had the choice. I’m the one who did the hiring in that case because I wanted to pick somebody that I liked running my finance department. I found the guy I wanted. Here’s the point. For that one, I had to pay a lot of money, but the point is, to answer your question, you can find undervalued assets everywhere. Now, one thing you have to get out of your head, that millennials or Gen Z are lazy. It’s not the case. It’s not true. That’s a bad story to tell yourself. When you meet my creators, Rob, you’re going to be like, “Wow. These people are awesome,” These are what, between the ages of 19 and 23 years old. I have hundreds of them. We’ve used our creator pool who are 1099s, I guess you call them. We pay them on a per video basis, but we’ve used that pool and we’ve filtered up the top creators in the top work ethic creators, and put them in positions of management, positions of leadership within the organization. You can find Gen Z at a very reasonable price and have them help you build your business. We built our business on Gen Z only.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s going to be fun. Thanks for the sharing. Let’s change the topic just a little bit. Back to the book, but more in regards to what this book is going to do for you and your business. How are you going to use this book? You’re a great marketer. You’re somebody that’s built multiple businesses. You didn’t write this book just with the idea that you want to write a book. You had a plan in place. You had things you were thinking about. How are you using it? What’s your plan? What are you looking to do with this book?
Mark Lachance:
Well, I’ll tell you the story around deciding to write the book. After my colossal crash and then my sort of resurgence in the payment space, I had a buddy of mine come to me and say, “Hey,” and he’s a gentleman who runs a marketing company as well. He’s like, “Listen. You have so many great stories. You could help so many people out. Why don’t you write a book?” This is 10 years ago. I put him off for 10 years, basically. I said, “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it.” Finally, about a year and a half ago, I said, “Now’s the time with all the craziness going around in the world and with the bleak outlook in the world, let’s write one. Let’s give some light at the end of the tunnel. So, I wrote it, number one, to satisfy my buddy. I’m just kidding. Number two is because I truly believe that the formula itself works and can help people. It can. If you’re somebody that wants to take action and get up and go, this formula works. It’s worked for me and it can work for you. I guess, lastly, is a lot of people write books for profit and for gain. I’m not really concerned about profit and gain. I wrote it for sort of thought leadership status, and the ability to make my, which I think it will make my company more valuable, which it’s doing already. It was kind of that, to be known as sort of a CEO who understands blitz scaling, a CEO who understands how to take a company from zero to a thousand really quickly. It’s kind of around that. It’s not really to get speaking gigs, and it’s not really to get profit, but just, I guess, notoriety in the thought leadership space.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s big. I mean, you already referenced that that has already raised the value of your company by raising the value of the most important part of the company, yourself. Clearly there’s that goal in mind. Now, it may lead to speaking and a lot of other opportunities which you may or may not take, but those opportunities, if they continue to raise your value, your celebrity status in your space, wow. Why not? And then there’s book two, book three, book four.
Mark Lachance:
I already have book two. I’ve started the thought process around that.
Rob Kosberg:
Very cool.
Mark Lachance:
It’s pretty cool. I’ll share that with you offline, Rob.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. I love it, man. Awesome. Any other thoughts? I mean, I don’t normally ask that, but there’s so many different places that we’ve already gone, and I think it’s been so valuable for people that are listening. Anything else that maybe I should have asked?
Mark Lachance:
Well, if I can give a gift out, that’d be great. Can I give a gift to your team, to your listeners?
Rob Kosberg:
I would totally love that. Yes. Let’s give them a gift.
Mark Lachance:
The gift is I created what’s called the lucky score. It’s a test. It’s a quiz that grades you on how lucky you are. On a scale from one to a hundred, it asks you a series of questions and it spits out a score at the end, and it gives you tips and tricks on how to get even more luckier and more successful. You can find the quiz at theluckyformula.com/quiz. Again, it’s the lucky formula.com/quiz. Go ahead, take the score. I’d love to hear the results back. I’d love to hear how lucky people are, and even if they’re not as lucky as they’d hoped, there there’s a light at the end of the tunnel There’s tips and tricks on how to get luckier.
Rob Kosberg:
Very cool, dude. I am going to take that as soon as we’re done with the podcast. That’s intriguing to me because I feel really lucky. I’m a lucky guy.
Mark Lachance:
You better email me. I want to know how lucky you are.
Rob Kosberg:
I will. I’ll totally do that. So, we got a place for them to go. I would imagine there, they can also get a copy of your book or are there are some other links there that we want to give them? We’ll obviously put the links in the show notes as well, but is all of your additional resources found in that place as well?
Mark Lachance:
You can also go to my website, which is Mark, M-A-R-K, Lachance, L-A-C-H-A-N-C-E, .com. To find out about the book, Find out about the book, find out a little bit more about me and they can also follow me on Instagram at Mr. Lucky official.
Rob Kosberg:
That is great, man. That’s great. Great to have you on. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Really, really good stuff. I mean, we went from the very broad to the very specific talking about TikTok, and I think there’s more stuff for you and I to do. Maybe down the road, there’s another opportunity for us to talk about book number two and share that with our listeners as well. So thank you so much for being on, brother.
Mark Lachance:
Awesome, Rob. Thanks for having me.
