Episode 93--Get Authentic with Marques Ogden

In this week’s episode, Billy talks with Marques Ogden, the host of the Get Authentic podcast and a former NFL player. Marques is also a keynote speaker, business coach, and corporate consultant with a unique approach to elevating people and the company’s success to the next level. 

Marques creates presentations designed around The Success Cycle, which brings value back to the core basics of fundamental relationship building and success when it comes to communication, sales, leadership, management, generational issues, transition, innovation, customer experience, and diversity & inclusion.

Billy and Marques discuss:

–How being open about failures made him more authentic
–Keeping it real
–How to balance ego so it doesn't get carried away
–The life lessons he is teaching his kids

Want more from Marques Ogden?
Check out his IG, website, and LinkedIn

If you liked this episode, check out these episodes as well:

• Episode 29--Discover Your Inner Awesome by Being Unapologetically You with Life Coach Jill Dahler
• Episode 30--Outperform the Norm with Personal Performance Coach Scott Welle
• Episode 31--Ride the Wave of Healthy Risk-Taking with John Wessinger
• Episode 51--The Pursuit for Higher Consciousness with Dr. David DeMarkis
• Episode 58--How to Make Being Selfish Work for You with Val Jones

All of our episodes are available at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com

Sign up for the Mindful Midlife Community Virtual Mindfulness Sessions!
Get a free week of BetterHelp using Billy's referral code!

Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis!
We hope you enjoy this week’s episode!
If this episode resonates with you, please share it with your family and friends.

Sign up for our newsletter!   
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Topics?
Email Billy at mindfulmidlifecrisis@gmail.com.

Follow us!
Instagram:  @mindful_midlife_crisis
Twitter:  @mindfulmidlife
Facebook: The Mindful Midlife Crisis Podcast
LinkedIn: Billy Lahr

Please leave us a 5-Star Review!  Doing so helps other people looking for a podcast like ours find it!

We hope you enjoy this week’s episode! If you’re really feeling gracious, you can make a donation to https://www.buymeacoffee.com/MMCpodcast.   Your donations will be used to cover all of our production costs. Thank you so much!

Transcript

Billy: Coming up on The Mindful Midlife Crisis

Marques:  What I mean by that is don't get to the extreme of failure like I did. We're all going to make mistakes along the way. None of us are perfect. No one is going to be able to wave a wand and say, poof! Here I am. Let's go. Not going to happen. What's going to happen is. Is that I want my clients and our keynote speaking clients, coaching, consulting, all that I interact with to learn how to rebound from mistakes.

Because, again, you're going to make mistakes. But what I don't want people to resort to for extreme of what I had to go through in order to get in that regard.

Billy:  Welcome to The Mindful Midlife Crisis, a podcast for people navigating the complexities and possibilities of life's second half. I'm your host, Billy Long and educator, personal trainer, meditation teacher and Overthinker who talks to experts who specialize in social and emotional learning, mindfulness, physical and emotional wellness, cultural awareness, finances, communication, relationships, dating and parenting all in an effort to help us better reflect, learn and grow.

So we can live a more purpose filled life. Take a deep breath, embrace the present and journey with me through The Mindful Midlife Crisis. 

Welcome to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. I'm your host, Billy Lahr. Thank you for tuning in wherever you are. The purpose of the show is to provide a platform that gives people the space and permission to share their expertise and life experiences in order to help others navigate the complexities and possibilities of life's second half.

And remember, this free and useful information is helpful to people of all ages. Wisdom isn't about one's age. Wisdom comes from our ability to reflect, learn and grow from our own life experiences, while also learning from the experience of others, regardless of what stage of life we are in. Because you just never know what life is going to throw at you.

So there just might be a conversation or two from past episodes that help you feel better prepared for the challenges you might face in life or that you're facing right now. Whether those challenges be your emotional, mental and or physical health, your relationships with others, including your partner and children, your career, your finances, whatever curveballs life is throwing your way right now, just know that you are not alone in your experience.

And the conversations I'm having here are with people who have been there before or have done the research to help you navigate these situations with more awareness, openness, curiosity and compassion so you can live a more purpose filled life. And trust me, I take all of the conversations I'm having, the heart as well, and I try to apply what I'm learning from these conversations, which is why I do solo episodes the first Wednesday of every month, because I think of the show as a running dialog between me and you, the listener, because my hope is that you can see and hear the growth I'm making in my own life.

So that inspires you to seek out the connections between our shared experiences so that you too can take intentional and inspired action. So if you're looking for more ways to help, you better navigate whatever you've got going on in your life from someone who's been through it before, check out some of our other episodes at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

This entire month's episodes will focus on what it means to be authentic to yourself and how you can bring your authentic self to life. Today's episode focuses on the ups and downs that lead to self-actualize nation. If you want to listen to more episodes like that, check out Episode 29 with Jill Dahler about how to discover your inner awesome.

Episode 30 with Scott Welle about how to outperform the norm. Episode 31 with John Wessinger about the importance of taking healthy risks. Episode 51 with Dr. David DeMarkis about his pursuit for higher consciousness. And Episode 58 with Val Jones about how to make being selfish work to your advantage. So with that, let's meet today's guest. Our guest today is Marques Ogden.

Marques is the host of the Get Authentic Podcast. He is also a former NFL player, a keynote speaker, business coach and corporate consultant with a unique approach to elevating people and company's success to the next level. Marques creates presentations designed around the success cycle, which brings value back to the core basics of fundamental relationship building and success when it comes to communication, sales, leadership management, generational issues, transition, innovation, customer experience and diversity and inclusion.

He is here today to talk about what it means to get authentic. So welcome to the show, Marques Ogden.

Marques:  Appreciate you doing that, sir.

Billy:  Hey. I know you got a short timeframe here, so a lot of times we like to ask people what ten roles they play. We're going to kind of just skip through that because I think most people are going to get an idea as to who you are as we go through this conversation. So let's just kick it off right here.

Talking about your podcast, your podcast explores what it means to be authentic, and in your first episode, you defined authenticity as the innate ability to be really honest and open with people no matter how they might look at you and or judge you. Talk a little bit more about what it means to you to be authentic.

Marques:  Great question. Really, to me, it's all about your ability just to share who you are, your truth, and just be vulnerable and be real with people. And if they judge you, doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, we all have our issues, we all have our skeletons in the closet, we all have things we have to deal with.

So if somebody is going to look at me and judge me because I have a skeleton in my closet, something I'm dealing with, that means to me that you're somebody that thinks you're perfect, which none of us are. So what I've learned is being authentic, which is being strong enough and being real up to say, You know what?

Here I am. This is who I am. Hate me or love me, and this is what I'm all about. And that's that.

Billy:  Yeah. And you go on to talk about to how people are often afraid to talk about who they are and how their failures struggle is adversity is actually got them to where they are today because society puts so much pressure on us to be the best, to be perfect. So as you reflect on your successes as a keynote speaker, an executive coach, a best selling author, a consultant, a podcast host, and a former NFL player, how has being open about your failures made you more and more comfortable with being authentic?

Marques:  What it does, Billy, is it allows you to relate to people more. When you tell your story, tell your faults, tell your mistakes, tell your omissions. Because people look at you and say, Wow, okay, here's somebody that I know is telling me the truth and they're not just telling me something to try to get me to feel a certain way or act a certain way.

The time's up because they want me to actually not make the same mistake that they made. I step out all the time. My clients hire me, right? So they don't end up like me. And it's really I feel, especially if I a speaker, right. You're going to be a speaker out. Try to inspire the masses and move the needle and get people excited about a brighter tomorrow.

If you're not going to give your real raw story that I feel you're doing, not just the client's a disservice and you're doing yourself a disservice at the same time as well.

Billy:  How do you help people navigate then, the need to go through failure in order to experience success? Because when you say you don't want your clients to end up like you, I don't know that being Marques Ogden is really a bad thing, you know what I mean? So how do you kind of encourage them to see, Hey, it's okay to make failures because it's going to lead to success so that they're willing to take calculated risks.

Marques:  So what I mean by that is don't get to the extreme of failure like I did. We're all going to make mistakes along the way. None of us are perfect. No one is going to be able to wave a wand and say, poof, here I am, let's go. It's not going to happen. What's going to happen is, is that I want my clients and our keynote speaking clients, coaching, consulting, all as I interact with to learn how to rebound from mistakes.

Because you're going to make mistakes. But what I don't want people to reach to for extreme of what I had to go through in order to get in that regard.

Billy:  Now, when you talk about get authentic, you use that phrase keeping it real. And whenever I hear that, I'm reminded of those old Chappelle's Show episodes when keeping It real goes bad. How have you learned to keep it real, to be authentic with the tact so that things don't get flipped on their head?

Marques:  Well, what I've learned to do is just give people my story, but at the same time, I don't have to delve deep into a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, right? I mean, I don't have to tell people all about the nights that I had and the staying up. The stress is like those conferences were like with people as I was dealing with high anxiety and high stress and high emotional rollercoaster and the cussing I was doing every night because I was just so disappointed in myself and I felt like such a freakin failure, an idiot, because I let myself get to that point by trusting people and then this door and cussing everybody out to get through all that. What I say is I've made a mistake. I trusted somebody that I have trusted and I talk about all the time. When you work with clients, treat each job as an individual stand alone job because it is. And you don't want to put yourself in a position where you think somebody is your friend because you've worked for them in the past.

You know, the new job you have in your eyes, cross your TS and watch out for yourself and you could be exposed and that's exactly what happened to me. I was exposed because I dropped my guard, because I had a client that I trusted that paid me earlier than other jobs. And took care of me. And I said, Oh, wait, care of me on other jobs.

They're not here to hurt me. And really every job stands alone. So again, it's giving people my truth. But I don't have to go into all the actual Freddy Krueger nightmares type of things because at the end of the day, that's not why I'm here. Because I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to learn from me is a huge difference.

Billy:  When you alluded to that bad business deal and in one of my recent newsletters I talked about ego and how ego isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can give us a level of confidence that sparks us into inspired and intentional action. But just like fire, if you don't manage that flame, it can burn you. You know, when we think about athletes, you were in the NFL at one point in time.

We often either love them or hate them for their ego. And when you look back on your journey from NFL player to successful business owner to going bankrupt and working as a janitor, what did the trajectory of your ego look like and how have you since learned to fan the flame when it needs to burn a little hotter while still keeping it under control so that it doesn't burn you again?

Marques:  So when I lost everything, my ego was at the height of everything I was doing. So what I mean by that is that ego for me was just like everything I did was right, and nobody around me could speak to me or talk to me. And I had an acronym for Ego, which is exaggerated, glorified opinions, and constantly lie about how great I was.

I chase glory, and I always had to have the last word. And today I'm confident in what I'm able to do. But I don't have to brag about it. I don't have to sit there and say, Oh, I've got this and this and this. Now, if you're in my circle, in my team with one of my key people, like my financial planner or my attorney or realtor or CPA, well, I'm going to have this conversation with you about what I have because we need to have those conversations that, you know, where I'm at, where I'm trying to go.

But as far as like, you know, everything else, it's not really worth getting into all those discussions because really for me, I am very confident in what I can do and I'm very fortunate. What I can do. But my ego is not. I mean, everybody has an ego, right? But I never let my ego get bigger than the good part of my soul.

So I always tell people the minute your ego gets bigger and the good part of your soul, you're screwed because you don't have the ability to make rational decisions because you're playing off emotion. Because if your ego is taking over your soul, nine times out of ten, you're being a emotional type of individual and not a cognitive individual.

So I tell people the good part of your soul should be cognitive, reasonable, logical ego. A lot of times it's our emotions. It is us reacting to situations. And again, you want to use your ego to kind of get inspired and kind of get yourself full of energy and full of life. No way to go, but if you are going to be doing something, you need to really think things through and be a little bit more cognitive.

Your ego can never, ever get bigger than the good party. So because it does, most of the time you can make bad decisions.

Billy:  You know, you're able to recognize that in yourself. And I like your acronym for Ego, and I like that idea of not letting your ego outgrow your soul and the good parts of your soul. How much of what you've seen over the years then in your many, many roles that you've played is really just false bravado and inauthenticity.

Are you good at recognizing that? Are you good at seeing through that? And then how do you say to someone who's doing that, Hey, just drop the act and be real with me, dude.

Marques:  Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I have a saying where you lose everything, you appreciate everything and I am able to pick up quickly if someone is giving me a bunch of B.S. or they're trying to make themselves look bigger or better than what they really are, or someone's trying to make themselves look a certain way or have certain things in reality, they don't have them and they are not in that position.

It's about time. I don't care what you have. I care how you treat me so you don't have to try to be this big superstar or this big shot. Because for me, that's the determining fact we can work together or not. Unfortunately, though, a lot of people and a lot of this in society, especially social media, which can be a gift and a curse, a lot of people are living with a false bravado, with an inflated, pompous ego trying to be bigger than what they are trying to have the flashiest cars, the biggest houses, all these different things.

And in reality, it's not necessary. It's not. I was having a conversation with somebody and there's a lot of big, big name celebrities. I'll never say who they are. Ton of big name celebrities that go to borrow money for projects that you would never, ever think because they appear to have everything together homes, cars, trips, travel, all these things.

But as I'm getting to grow with our podcast and look to interview people, I'm finding out more about even some big name celebrities. I'm like, Wow, even these people are not living an authentic life because they're so afraid. If they let people know how they really are, they may lose their followers. They may get less likes on Instagram or Facebook or Tik Tok.

So they keep going with that lie. So my point is, is that at the end of the day, you just have to be who you are. And I can definitely pick up on that false bravado that an authentic way of life, because I used to be exactly like that one.

Billy:  It sounds like people are putting up appearances. Right. And you have a keynote speech about dropping the poker face when it comes to sales. And my good friend and former co-host Brian on the bass is a master salesman. And he would always say, Billy, everything is sales. And my dad, who is also a master salesman, used to say things like Don't drop your pants all the way when referring to negotiating.

So if we go by what Bryan says and believe that everything in life is sales to some degree, which is actually something that author Daniel Pink suggests, but we don't want to get screwed over, as I imagine that's kind of what my dad is trying to communicate with his little quip. How do we maintain authenticity when it comes to connecting and relating to other people?

Marques:  You have to figure out what type of person you are talking to and we're dealing with. There are two types of buyers or two types of people in the world a visionary buyer and an operational buyer. A visionary buyer, someone that buys off of emotion what they see a geographical region and certain area, a certain curb appeal that speaks volumes to them that you have an operational buyer.

So it was more about the numbers. They are more, if not all black and white. There's no gray. They don't see curb appeal. They don't see what something looks like. They see the numbers. Does it work or does it not? When you're trying to sell in, walk, connect with people, know who you're talking to, know who you're dealing with, and figure out what type of language that person speaks.

Because if you're trying to relate to somebody and be authentic and get their business through relationship building, not transactional selling, if you don't know who you're speaking to and you're talking language that doesn't relate to them, resonate with them or does not appeal to them, then yes, you're going to more than populate not get that sale.

Billy:  Talk a little bit about the work you're doing with J-O-B and how that's having an impact on diversity, equity and inclusion. And I imagine that when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, having conversations around authenticity is a real struggle, particularly for corporations who may only want to look the part but maybe not play the part.

Marques:  I tell clients that if you hire me for a keynote speech, consulting, coaching, whatever, I'm going to tell your team, your audience my story, or I call it my custom suit. As part of our presentation, I'm going to be real with them and I'm going to ask them at the end of any questions that we're going to engage and make sure they get the whole gamut of the presentation.

If someone doesn't want me to share my story in a way in which it's the truth, again, I know how to relate my story to who the audience is and what the audience wants me to speak on. I have had to learn that over the years, but I'm still going to tell my truth, are still going to tell my story, and I'm going to connect with the audience through storytelling.

Just like Aristotle said, one of the five keeps me as successful. Salesperson is telling metaphors and telling stories, which I agree with. So what I do all the time is I'm going to tell my story, but I'll tell it in a way that relates best to your audience, but also at the same time, the message that you want me to portray will come across crystal clear throughout the entire presentation.

Billy:  So I'll get you out of here on this. Your dad played a significant role in your life when it comes to teaching you the importance of perseverance and fairness. What life lessons around perseverance, fairness and authenticity are you teaching your children at the age they are now so they can understand those higher level social emotional skills as they grow up?

Marques:  What I'm teaching them is to be active listeners and learn how to engage people and not try to only come across for what you want the conversation or the interaction to go like. Learn how to value others again. Listen to understand. Don't listen to respond and learn how to process what people are saying at that time. You can then tell them what you are hoping to gain from it and what value you're looking for.

But be sure that the value that you are going to bring to the table far supersedes what they are going to pay you or what you want in return. And if you have that mentality, you'll always be successful. For example, Guy hired me, him, his fiancee hired me. They paid me for coaching to sponsor my podcast and we've been working together now for two weeks.

And as of today, he has a 7x return on his investment in less than two weeks, 7x return. And what makes me happy is it's just the beginning. He's got so far to go. So what I tell my daughters is to learn how to be an active listener, listen to understand, not to respond, and at the same time bring much more value to the table that you're looking to get back to that person.

And when you have that mentality, you will always have a successful business and a successful life in general as well.

Billy:  Well, Marques, I want to thank you for adding value to this show. Really appreciate all of your insights. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today.

Marques:  Appreciate having me on.

Billy:  Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please do me a favor and hit the subscribe button. Also, giving the show a quick five-star review with a few kind words helps others find a benefit from this podcast just like you are. Finally, please spread the wealth of free knowledge and advice in this episode by sharing it with the people in your life who may find this information and my mission to help others live a more purpose filled life valuable.

My hope is that these conversations resonate with others and inspire people to live their best lives. Thanks again. And now, back to the show. Hey, if you enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to look in the show notes for all of Marques’ contact information. Don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you're an Apple listener, you can do that by clicking the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner.

Also, please do me a favor and leave a five-star review with a few kind words. Or if you're a Spotify listener. Click those five stars under the show hour after you click the follow button. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this week's episode, you can find all of my contact information in the show notes as well.

Feel free to email your takeaways from this conversation to MindfulMidlifeCrisis@gmail.com. You can also follow me and Demi on Instagram @mindful_midlife_crisis. You can find me on LinkedIn at Billy Lahr. That's L A H R. Or you can send a message to the contact page at www.mindfulmidlifecrisis.com. While you're there, feel free to join our mindful midlife community for free resources that will help you live your life with more curiosity, openness, compassion and awareness.

And hey, if you normally tune out during this part of the episode, you may want to tune in. Because if you're interested in learning more about the benefits of mindfulness, I invite you to join our mindful meditation community, where I'll be leading free virtual guided mindful meditations every Monday evening at 8 p.m.. Central Standard Time, and every Tuesday evening at 8 p.m. Korea Standard Time.

For more information, click on the link in the show notes. It's something new that I wanted to offer you, so be sure to check that out. Finally, I know Marques and I would greatly appreciate it if you would share this episode with the people in your life who may benefit from Marques’ expertise and experiences. Remember, the purpose of the show is to help you navigate the complexities and possibilities of life's second half.

And I hope this conversation provides some insight that will help you reflect, learn and grow so you can live a more purpose-filled life. So for Marques, this is Billie. Thank you for listening to The Mindful Midlife Crisis. You feel happy, healthy, and loved. 

Take care, friends.