#319 - John Marsh - Taking Wise Counsel, Influence, Our Blind Spots, Forgiveness, & A Little Thing Called Humility

Chris Powers: Every time you need something, if you live in a town with a university, you should reach out to their business for whatever school and say, what, who's your top student doing next? I'd love to meet them. And who's doing your podcast? And they told Johnny, and Johnny showed up at my office.

When he had done all this research on me, he had a folder prepared. I mean, wow, I was expecting some college kid to walk in and say, I do podcasts, and that wasn't what happened. He showed up and said, okay, we'll take you into employment. And six years later, we're still working together. Now, he works on 6 of the biggest podcasts in the country.

John Marsh: What an incredible story. You know, it's interesting. Influence is powerful. Many people will ask for money, income, or investment, but they need to understand the power of persuasion.

Chris Powers: What's the power of influence?

John Marsh: Well, think how you open doors by doing podcasts. You got them connected with other people.

Maybe they saw the work you're doing. Like we can leverage, we have a platform. For influence, all of us do that, you know, and we can use power for good.

Chris Powers: Does everybody have the power to influence, or is it unless you're on an island alone?

John Marsh: Yeah. I mean, with your kids your neighbor, love is so powerful and rare.

It looks like you're lighting a candle in a dark cave. It's so rare to see somebody. We had lunch yesterday and back in Montgomery. And they were like, this young man treated us kindly and did a good job. And I was like, that will get you a long way.

Chris Powers: What did he do?

John Marsh: Well, he was attentive to what we were doing.

He answered our questions. He was kind and on top of it in a fast food-type place. I just said, you know, you're a unicorn. He's like, what do you mean? I said, look how you've taken care of us. You solved our problems. You've cared deeply. I said, you're fully present. You're not distracted. I said, this is unusual.

So that'll take you a long way right there, my friend.

Chris Powers: Is that unusual in America, or is that unusual across the globe?

John Marsh: You know, America's quite different. I mean, it's funny. I always used to wonder, when we go places, why things happen so unique, like amazing life transformations, all these things. And I realized it was; it was them, not us.

Chris Powers: What do you mean?

John Marsh: I mean, it was the same guy here sharing a mic with leaders. And people leave and, that was good stretch a little bit, have some coffee in another, in other countries. Sometimes, they'll change their whole life. They'll bring their family in and make a commitment in front of you and what they will do with what you said.

It's a humbling thing because you better not just run your mouth about loose stuff, you know; I'll give you an example. I was there once and speaking to a bunch of leaders in Mexico, probably 20 or 30 leaders, and started talking about marriage, and the men began weeping, and they started just giving up the goods. We're doing wrong, so you don't hardly see this anywhere in the States, right?

Chris Powers: Why is it our culture? Is it how we grow up?

John Marsh: And it's hard to be as blessed as we are and not be affected by it. I mean, every room's air-conditioned, and as you so creatively taught me, nobody's praying for cheaper jet fuel. You know, what's interesting, though, about this is.

You know, there are so many things that happen in our lives. Every great season starts with meeting somebody. And so does every bad one you look back at your life. You can set seasons and reasons often by the people you met and what that did. And so meeting people is essential. I was sharing with our buddy here.

If you want to ask the right questions, one of my focuses is to learn to ask the right questions. We've got a question journal. The power of them curates them. And as I see them working, they move up in priority. But there are ten questions I always ask. And a few of those, what I learned is if you ask the same question from many, many wise people, what you get to do is borrow their perspective or their glasses on the topic.

So imagine if you ask older men about marriage or business, and you ask specifically. And you ask the same questions. Well, now you're borrowing ten leaders' perspectives on that one topic. So, for example, one thing I ask is how has failure shaped your life? Well, when you get these lenses to borrow, and I document them, I've got hundreds of people's responses to that one question.

Well, it gives me this incredible context to it, to look at it and borrow those glasses and look at my situations through those. And one of the other questions, if you're interested in leveraging your life, is who do you know? What I should know: would you introduce me to someone who will take me worldwide?

Chris Powers: What have you found the person most people think you should know? Is it their most successful friend, their friend with the most money? Like, what is the common theme or relationship between that person and the person you should know?

John Marsh: For me, it's interesting. It just depends on how in the world they met me. If they think I'm a real estate guy, they tell me about their real estate friend.

If people think I'm a married guy, they'd send me whatever they think I am at any given time because they want to. People want to put you in the Rolodex section, and they need help if you're in a different area.

So, wait a minute. Are you a real estate guy or development guy or an old town guy or, you know, marriage, whatever context you're in, that's what, what I see and how they open doors. But what I begin to do is be better about that. So listen, I'm interested in doing many different things, but here are the things I care about.

Here are the things I'm working on right now. And this is what is on my mind. And then, do you know anyone I should know about this? And I ended up meeting great people.

Chris Powers: Something I've learned from you and growing up is how quickly I know myself. Somebody can walk into a room, and you can profile them, slice them, eat them, and put them in categories in seconds.

And then, I went to OnSite about a year and a half ago and spent a week there. And one of the rules there was you can't tell anybody what you do for a living, and you can't tell anybody your last name. And I thought we're not going to have shit to talk about. We're not going to have anything to talk about.

And it was unbelievable that once those last name and your profession was off the table. We had so much to talk about, but when that tends to be the thing that, especially in the business entrepreneur world, you lead out with I'm Chris and. I'm in real estate, or I'm with Fort Capitol, or we do industrial or, boom, like the profile sets, you go through a lot of life living that way.

John Marsh: It's a problem. And I thought about it, you know, people are assessing your value and net worth with questions and a wide variety of questions like, Oh, what do you do for a living? I'm in real estate. Ooh, how much land have you got? One acre, it's in Manhattan. They're figuring out whether you're valuable enough.

And then some people, like when they get to a place like Jess Corral, our friend, says he's a farmer. Now, he owns banks and an insurance company and does investments all over America, but he's a farmer. So it's fun to like. In the future, I'm going to be like temporary pool services.

I've got this career mindset change where I want to start having my little pool service where I'm doing my pool maintenance, not only on my own but in the future. One that we'll do in a community we're building, so that's fun. It disarms people.

Chris Powers: Okay. So, you just answered the next question, which is, why is humility so attractive?

So if we took it to Jess or somebody and you said, well, what are you doing? They're like, I own 30 banks. I've got to, you know, insure. I mean, just dad, dad, dad. By the end of hearing it, you're like, ah, it's just, something about that turns you off. But then when you hear, oh, I'm a farmer, but then you go on in your world to learn about what they do as you're learning more, that person's almost becoming more attractive to you because they just said, I'm a farmer.

Why is it that humility is so attractive?

John Marsh: To our point before, it's rare, you know, when you're very accomplished, just rare. When you've accomplished a lot, the world praises, it's rare. I mean, what do you, you know, it's interesting; I just had this codified more, and I don't want to butcher it because it was such a powerful statement, but I used to think everybody puts a number on other people's heads.

And so, let's say in that initial conversation, you're adjusting numbers. Oh, he's a banker. Oh, eight. He's a farmer. He's four. You're adjusting based on your values. I mean, if a farmer was asking that, he may think, Hey, this guy's fantastic, but you're putting a number in what, what I think is the hardest thing to do is to not to hold on to the hot potato for a long time and wait and see who they are, not what they do.

And that's hard. But humility is so attractive when it's true because it's approachable. You know, I always, and I say this, and I'm, I'm not as good at this as I will. It's a constant struggle, discretion, and discipline. What do I say, and when do I say it? I screw this up all the time.

Like I say the wrong things. I don't want to say, and I tell them at the bad timing, and it's more challenging for different wirings. Okay. Like the more your feelings are out on you or the way that you approach the world and the way you talk. You'll say stuff you don't want to say. It's great till it's not.

And the tricky thing is to make the decision. Am I here to impress people, or am I here to empower them? And if I have to choose to impress or empower cause, I can't do both. Empowering is to be humble. Maybe somebody can; it's a constant struggle for me to say, what are you here to do?

Are you here to make people's lives better? Are you here to make them think more of you? And if you do that. You're playing a game, and then every time you fail it, it knocks your points down.

Chris Powers: Okay. Let's continue on this thread. So we can talk about marriage, but I think let's start more just with entrepreneur-type people.

So, on one end, you've reconciled hundreds of marriages, but out of many of those marriages, one of the spouses was an entrepreneur. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast. It's an entrepreneur podcast. What are the things or the blind spots that entrepreneurs may think that these are entrepreneur types?

I'm just categorizing a personality type, think they're doing right, but then wake up one day and they're in a hole.

John Marsh: I mean, I can tell you from my own life I cared more about what people thought than what God thought. And if people are your God, you've got a rough system to work in.

Chris Powers: Why?

John Marsh: They're going to if they can praise you. And empower you; they can critique you and take it away, and it keeps getting pulled back and forth; serve us, and we'll do right. You have to serve something, and the most complex person to serve is yourself. Think about how hard it is to be selfish.

You lose so much, and so, as entrepreneurs, the courage to go against the grain in business and to try things and to fail. Often, in the suffering, how do you keep that in its correct spot? It's tough in a hierarchy system. To me, it became businesses that were like babies. And every time I lost one, it, I haven't lost a child, but I know I've suffered great grieving from losing things that I invested a lot in either having to shut them down, you know, because it had to, or I chose to, or whatever.

And most people haven't lost a lot. We started 60 businesses, probably had 30 of them that we had, or 40 we had to close in some way, or I don't know the number, maybe 20, but it's a lot. It's enough. I suffered greatly, and I wouldn't say I liked it. And every time I see it coming, I clinch because I know what it feels like.

Chris Powers: When I say it's lonely at the top, how do you interpret that? Why do you get these people who have succeeded in significant ways? And they end up becoming more lonely and more isolated than anybody else.

John Marsh: But they got to protect.

Chris Powers: Protect what?

John Marsh: Protect themselves, I mean, I think about it, like, I don't know how, I mean, everybody, I'm sure that's listening to entrepreneurs have been taken advantage of by people they trusted, right?

And I've got clients that are, you know, billionaires and multibillionaires that are very famous. If I knew the name you would, you would know them. They have reputation protection within every document they do. I mean, the ways they have to protect themselves change them.

That's one of the things. The second thing is you get your head up your butt and start thinking you're more valuable than everybody else because you got money, and money is just an amplifier of your character. If you have a good feeling, money can be good. And if you don't, it'll be what your character is.

Chris Powers: Go a little bit further on that. What do you mean a good person with money can do good things, and a wrong person with cash can do bad things? We'll start there.

John Marsh: Well, what's your definition of good and evil, you know, because whatever it is, that's what you'll do.

You know, if you thought something that the world says is wicked is good, you know, you could push that. I mean, some people move child slavery and pornography with money in a big way. Heroin, I mean, these things, again, it's what you got to ask yourself is who am I, because that'll tell you if you know your identity, it'll tell you what your money will grow like.

Chris Powers: And does doing good with money mean giving it away? Or are there other ways to think about it?

John Marsh: I mean, for me, generosity is the only thing that's pushed greed back. It's almost like for me, and I don't know, I mean, I've had my experience, but we know this so that my first mentor, when I was broke and stupid, we were upside down, we didn't have 500 to pay our power bill.

And he's, you know, worth, at the time, millions of millions of dollars. Could you give me some money? Please stop trying to talk to me about stuff that doesn't matter and help me. He said, well, I'm happy to help you. So, oh man, great. I'll do whatever. He said, okay, answer three questions, and I'll help you. Let's do it now.

And he said, how much is enough? What are you going to do when you get enough? Now that you have a living plan, what's your giving program? He said, you answer those three, and I'll help you. I'll teach you everything I know.

Chris Powers: Did you answer it on the spot?

John Marsh: It took six months. That's a challenging question. But I didn't know it was a tricky question.

He knew it was a tricky question. And what he learned is you need to know how much is enough to have enough. And I'm not saying you shouldn't earn more and more, but you got it for us. The freedom of knowing we do three budgets when doing the final thing. Number one is what does it take to survive?

Many survive, hanging on by their fingertips, drinking Maylocks, and making payments. They got way more months than they got money. And I've been there 99 thousand dollars drown, a thousand checks when you're 19,000 in NSF fees. Then, some people are comfortable. So it's survival, it's comfortable.

But the last one, wow, is the hard one. It's a lifestyle for some, and it isn't settling in stone, but it's just saying we have this, this is enough, how are we going to live? If we could live any way we wanted, we just laid out what that was, and we know the number. And so after that, we'll give it away.

We'll invest in it. We'll do whatever, but we don't have to have it.

Chris Powers: That was 30 years ago, as the number changed.

John Marsh: It was 20-something years ago. It brings me up to date because all I knew at the time and think about all I knew was net worth. I didn't have any other sense of what it was. So all we did was say net worth with a certain amount of what we could expect as a return on we get us to the place that we could live and give the way we hope to.

So that's a hard thing. Many people, Jess, for example, and other guys in our world, Pete Oaks and those in West Perry have a number, and they all sit down and talk about their number together. I'm not saying you should.

Chris Powers: Well, why did they talk about it together?

John Marsh: Well, first, because in the multitude of counselors, there's wisdom. You get wise men together, rational people, and ask their opinion on a specific subject they understand. Why do I ask you about the things I want to do financially? Cause you're wise, and I want your perspective, I want to take and hold that perspective with other views and try to make a wise decision.

And if I'm going to make a wise decision, my wife and I are going to be aligned, and I'm going to have wise counsel and people I believe in, and I'm going to have a peace in my heart that passes understanding when I do that, I floor it.

Chris Powers: So let's go back to those three gentlemen; they share to hold each other accountable to, Hey, your lifestyle is getting out of whack.

John Marsh: It's all about personal lifestyle. So, their companies generate; here are some of the questions I ask. What should someone be paid to steward or manage what I manage? If you're working 30 banks in an insurance company, there's a proper amount to pay. And so there's that side, and then the other side is just the side of, like, how do we want to live?

Because unlimited living doesn't produce unlimited flourishing from what we've seen, I'm not saying it doesn't. I am still waiting to see it, and I'd love to see it if it works. But the more you have, I mean, it's trouble. It's a challenge. Like what my mentor says, how much, John, does it take to ruin your kids?

That's part of my challenge right now. I could change both of my kid's life. Our oldest is 29, I have a five-year-old granddaughter, and our youngest is 21, and I've got a two-year-old grandson. And I could mess these guys' lives up in a heartbeat, right? I could pay off everything they have, get them new vehicles, buy them a new house, and send them on trips. And we could supersize this thing. If I did, they may need the character to sustain that. I watch them struggle to give them the feeling they'll need when I'm not here, to be good men.

Chris Powers: All right. So you just said giving them struggle builds character. I let them struggle, right?

John Marsh: They make the decisions to do crazy stuff. You know, both of my boys don't have, I mean, reliable transportation. There's hardly ever in their thing. They love working on cars. I want, they want to, if they got something that runs, I want to figure out how they can make it where it doesn't run.

Chris Powers: Do you think at the age of 29 or 21 or anybody? It has what it takes that anybody you've ever come across. They're at a point where if their parents started doing all these things for them, they could handle it. Or is this a thread that, like, you got to go through years of work and ups and downs to get there?

John Marsh: It's a good question. I've had two young friends. And, one of my friends, at 18, inherited like 100 million. It blew his life up. He ended up getting put in prison for drugs. The other one that got it ended up wrecking his marriage. He got four kids, and he got a hundred-something million.

Chris Powers: What happened?

John Marsh: They just lived large. His wife ended up getting addicted to alcohol, drinking, you know, high-end wine all day long and calling, I mean, boy, boredom will play on you. Now, you better have a purpose for your actions. You need to; how many spouses do you know that those two together have a unified sense that's worth writing checks with your life for?

If not, it's country clubs, playing tennis, spas, shopping, all that stuff, right?

Chris Powers: Yep, and you go through that every day.

John Marsh: Every day, you build a bubble of a life, but it's not a life that's meaningful in so many ways. It's hard to; the gym is a great example. Your life and your faith are like your muscle, time under tension.

Nobody would say, Hey, you're going to; you got a bunch of money. You're going to get abs. You don't have to work for it; you'll have abs. You got to work for.

Chris Powers: On not giving your children what you could provide them. How do you reconcile with, and maybe it's just the character that you've raised them until there doesn't become resentment that he could be doing these things for me?

And he's not as part of that; you be willing to deal with that kind of pressure and pain in the short term that maybe they are upset with me, or perhaps they resent me in the short time. Still, I know I'm investing for the long term, or is it? I've built their character enough to be able to handle in their twenties and thirties that dad's not going to pay off everything.

John Marsh: I'm not; I don't think I did the best job at parenting. Although I tried, Ash mat of the, you know, we've been married 31 years, and we've invested in our kids, but there were so many things I missed. I'll be a better granddad. You know, but I do know this: there are stages; in the first stage, you're a caretaker.

In the second, you're a cop. In the third, you're a coach. And in the fourth, if you're trustworthy, you get to be a counselor. And I'm at that stage, the fourth stage, with both. And thank goodness I'm in the conversation. They don't always listen to me, but I'm in the discussion, and they see. The most significant thing you can do is live out what you believe they will have the kind of marriage you have if you don't watch it.

They're going to treat money the way you treat it. If you don't watch it, don't listen to what I say. I tell my boys, I said, you want to know what a guy that man looks like? Watch me. If you don't like what I got, I got to wonder what I have if it's not attractive. If the way I treat your mom is not the standard for how a person should love a wife, don't listen to me because that's what they will do anyway.

Right. You think about how often our kids pick up what we're doing, and they duplicate it.

Chris Powers: You said something, you said, build a bubble of a life. How easy is deconstructing a drop of a life once it originates? And have you seen that happen before?

John Marsh: Mostly by bubbles popping or by stuff; it's like getting unpregnant any way you go. It's a little messy now. Getting pregnant's pretty darn easy and exciting. That last part is rough, and that's the way it is in anything. You have to ask yourself, or I do. Every time we have an idea, we're going to go up. What me and Ash ask each other is, what do we have to give up?

What happens when you get so many resources and opportunities? You feel like you don't have to give up anything. And for everything you gain, you lose something. I mean, you got to pay the price.

Chris Powers: What do you mean?

John Marsh: I mean, think about it. If you want, if you want to be in better shape, and you are now.

You're paying a price; you're paying a fee to do the medical work. You're paying a price to do the workouts, you're paying a price to walk, you're paying a price. And if you look at the price, all you have to do is price-to-price ratio. If the prize is clear, the price gets easy. If the price is fuzzy, the price is usually cheaper.

Chris Powers: Okay, so now tying this back to like the entrepreneur type who they have these visions for things, and that's what technically makes them so great. But what you just said is that the price becomes apparent when you know what the price is, but why is there a thread? And it could be marriage, it could be relationships.

You see, over and over, these people tend to trip up over and over and over when it comes to essential things.

John Marsh: I think it's like addiction. You know, habit is giving up everything for one thing. Why did I give up my marriage and my family for business and destroy the whole thing early on?

Because of how it made me feel, success made me feel so valuable. I couldn't shake it. Nothing, only two things made me feel that way, like success and business and money and sex. That's it, so there are only two things that are so rewarding. I go, Oh my gosh, you know, this is so rewarding. I feel valuable. And how many of us are trying to determine our identity?

Identity drives behavior. You want to know what you behave like? Look at what you believe. So your feet show that stuff, right? And so, for me as an entrepreneur, it takes so much momentum to get out of the, for most of us to get out of the atmosphere, right? To build something of worth, I mean.

You and I have similar stories. We both sacrificed everything to try to be successful at something. And I'm not saying the hardest thing I wish I could do again if I went back; I would not outgrow my spouse because that was the hardest thing. I outgrew Ash in so many ways. She's homeschooled the kid.

She stayed at home. All she wanted to do was have an adult talk after running that home CEO job that any CEO would say is worth twice what they're getting paid. If you did it, I mean, if you hang out with kids all day long and love them and care for them, but we outgrew each other. Her conversations were one way; mine were another.

She learned only some of the different financial instruments and things. So we just kept doing this. I should have now; it took us five years to return like this. I stopped growing. And for five years, I dedicated, I said, I'm only brainstorming with Ash first. And people say, well, you all work together.

Hey, this thing, you got to be on the same page. Suppose the person who's the closest to you likes you the least. It's a big deal. And so it's hard for entrepreneurs. Like, how do you tell all enough? They can be in a conversation where you can work together about what you're both writing checks with your life for.

Chris Powers: Okay. So, as I told you, an entrepreneur is usually optimistic. So let's say they're, we can call it marriage, but any relationship they tend to think. If I move this one out of the way, it'll get better the second go around. What's been your experience in watching that play out?

John Marsh: You know, the tricky thing is if you move to Idaho, you're there.

Your problems moved with you. But the hardest thing to do is identify my side of it and whether it's conflict, which is normal, neutral, and natural. All competition is what makes relationships great. We need to learn how to handle it. So, if you bury nuclear waste, don't think that's going away. You can lay carpet over it and some tile that thing's coming back.

And that's the reason when we get in a conflict with our partner or with our spouse, if there's nuclear waste in the basement, that's what you're talking about. You start on one thing. Hey, I thought it was about this deal point. No, no, no. Then we're back home, out where you have never honored me, and remember what, you know, and we do that to each other.

And I'm always surprised. Even now, when nuclear waste comes up, I mean, in my relationships, my partners in business, and with Ash, we still have it come up—questions about what you will do with it. You're going to; you're going to go to the trouble of burying that thing with a skid steer or backhoe again, bury it deep again so you can get it back.

If the conflict you're having differs from what you're discussing, something needs to be stable.

Chris Powers: How do you get rid of nuclear waste?

John Marsh: You know, the first thing you must do is drag it in the light. Light is purifying. Like talking about something without, are you trying to decide who's right or what's right?

Are you trying to be connected? You want to communicate with or correct them once you determine the motive. See, the hardest thing to do in a conflict is set the ball down. I throw a ball at you, a fastball, right? You're like, pow, you catch it. Well, you're like, I'm going to put this thing between his eyes, or you can just set the ball down.

It's hard to play ball with somebody who won't throw it back, right? Yeah. And so, in relationships we care about, if you want these relationships to last, sit the ball down and listen and take notes. As for me, when Ash is talking, especially when we're arguing, I try to take notes not to be correct but to understand. Are we fighting to understand or be understood in business?

Once you know that, it gets clear, right? I want to understand what you're going through. I want to see things your way. I want to know what you know so I can better be the role that I agreed to play: your partner, your collaborator, your spouse, whatever.

Chris Powers: But about in a bad relationship. Both sides want to be understood.

John Marsh: And they continue; they throw the ball as long until they get tired of throwing it back and forth. Bury the nuclear waste with an extensive trackgoing. We're going to do this again later.

Chris Powers: And for people listening, they might think, oh, this is happening in real-time. But this back and forth can happen over years and decades.

John Marsh: Sometimes past the grave. I meet people now who still have tremendous aught against their dead partner or dead spouse. I think about my previous partners, it's interesting. I went through this transition five years ago. Ash took over our businesses, and what, what it taught me, it would be one thing if I turned it over to a friend, like one of my partners, as Brad took them over, you know, it's another thing to turn it over to your wife.

Cause now people want her and not you. She gets texts, not you. Who calls their old doctor or dentist and sees what they're up to? That's how you feel. You're like, I don't have the value anymore, but you all need anything. Now we got it? Dang it. I did much more than this, but that's how it works.

We have to understand that it's challenging to manage these things, and relationships are the fabric that businesses and, you know, marriages and all that's the key. And most of us are relationally retarded. We need one or two good tools.

Chris Powers: What are the two good tools that somebody could have if, if they were relationally retarded and they want it to be un-relationally retarded? What would be two tools that they need to pick up?

John Marsh: Do you want me to give you the hardest thing in the world? Start there, forgiveness and love.

Chris Powers: Forgiveness is easy. I have to tell you, I forgive you, right?

John Marsh: Right. The only challenging part, and it's straightforward, is that it's just a little harder to live.

Chris Powers: Because it's not a one-stop shop.

John Marsh: You know, we think it's a vaccination.

Do you know how much you need to forgive someone? I don't; it's like we start with the fruit, our lips. But we keep working our way back down the tree trunk, and then we get to the roots, and we don't know how far the roots go. But I know one thing: if I'm arguing with you in the shower and you aren't there, and I'm winning, I got it.

Unforgiveness, if I have conflicts that I'm mentally stewing over and building my position, and of course, I make it so that you lose if I've got them, right? And then, I start layering it with expectations, which are unvoiced demands. And I start saying, well, if Chris, if he had changed, then if she had changed, now we don't tell them, cause that'd be too easy.

Then, they may change. We hold that thing. So they come at the right time. We get them.

Chris Powers: I can't tell you how many times I've been in solo and worked myself up beyond. It's almost like they were right there. Sometimes, I get more worked up than when you're with the person.

John Marsh: Well, the conversation flows better.

Chris Powers: Well, because you're right.

John Marsh: It's like, jokes, you are killing.

Chris Powers: So you're just like, it's like, you on 12 rounds of a boxing match. It's like, man, you didn't get hit.

John Marsh: Right. And you feel good at the end. Like you had the conflict, but that thing comes a little different when you're sitting in front of the person.

Chris Powers: We're all grown adults. Children can forgive more easily than adults can. How do you forgive, and how do you accept forgiveness in a way that gets the job done?

John Marsh: Interestingly, you said this. Let's ask this question. Why do you think children can forgive?

Chris Powers: Okay, let's start there.

John Marsh: Because they're fully present. They are not worried about the future as much, even if they may be thinking about tomorrow. We're thinking about ten years from now or ten years in the past if you live. In the past or the future, it's tough to be sensitive to what it means for other people to forgive them.

And forgiveness is a, see, the first thing you can't give what you do not possess. So, you must receive forgiveness first to forgive. I don't think you can; for me, you can't manufacture it. I believe you need to feel forgiven. As for me, I say God forgave me. Despite being an idiot, when I was at the pinnacle of being an idiot, he ignored me.

Chris Powers: Because you were good at being an idiot.

John Marsh: Dude, I was so good. I mean, I told people, I said, most of the people that were around me when they first tried drugs, it was with me, and I didn't want to sell them. I tried to consume them. I was just concerned they were going to stop making them. And so I think that, and I hurt people because you know what. I was so hurt.

I couldn't; I didn't have forgiveness for myself. And if I'm going to treat me rough, I will indeed treat you. If you want to know how you treat other people, you listen to those voices inside your head, talking to Chris and talking to John that you treat them a little better than that because you want to be kind.

Most people, I would whip anybody's butt that talked to me the way I spoke to me in the past.

Chris Powers: So you've said this before, and I'm going to ask you this question because we can agree that I'm very hard on myself.

John Marsh: As hard as anybody I've seen.

Chris Powers: Yeah, I'm working on that; that's my forever work.

John Marsh: Well, because you're worthy of being kind to.

Chris Powers: So the flip side is you meet people, and everybody listening to this knows that person in their life is just like the happiest person you've ever met. So happy. It sometimes makes me mad how glad they are. I'm like, you need to be angry at least once.

Do you think in their head? They're just like, like, how do you think they are treating themselves daily just like life? They're just telling themselves everything that they do is excellent. And life is but a box of chocolates. Like, I am so hard on myself, and sometimes that makes me want to be a better person to other people.

But when I see people that you, I, we all have those people in our life. You, you couldn't piss them off no matter how hard you tried. What are they telling themselves every day?

John Marsh: Well, there's, as you're saying it, I was thinking of Robin Williams. Did he not seem like the funniest guy ever?

Chris Powers: For sure.

John Marsh: See, it's the humor. And the light-heartedness masking suffering.

Chris Powers: So they're just using it differently.

John Marsh: It's just, yeah, and here's the thing. If you can play games, you can play this game. I mean, my wife never knew I did drugs till after we got married. I played a game. You can play a role.

But you know it's empty. If you lie to you, you know it. And it's chipping away at you.

Chris Powers: Do you think most people know when they lie to themselves? Like in the moment? Or is it always like in hindsight?

John Marsh: That's a great question. You know what I heard is that, so, you know how people say let your conscience be your guide?

Your conscience can only be a good guide if you are adequately level. Right. I mean, a seared conscience, a conscience that has, I mean, imagine if you were raised in Haiti where, and we were there after the earthquake one time where, I mean, where maybe prostitution or selling your kids is commonplace.

You never even knew any different. It didn't sear your conscience when you did it. Do you see what I'm saying? You have to load your conscience in your heart with positive things. But some people are just happy, and it's real. And those people are so contagious.

And the thing I encourage you is two things you can always use as some data points. Look in their eyes because the eyes are the window to the soul. Pure eyes look different. Look at your kids: the menace and sights. You see stuff. I'm not saying you can always identify what you see, but you know, dark eyes, too, right?

So look at that and listen to their lips. The overflow of a heart, the mouth speaks. If I can get people to like when we do stuff at our house, we do these, get couples together, sometimes high impact couples and do these marriage intents is when we do that, nobody can spend three days with us talking.

And it's not like they're standing in transparent plastic clothes.

Chris Powers: What is usually the trigger for someone to break?

John Marsh: It's as they begin to deal with their judgment responsibility.

Chris Powers: And like high impact couples and people that have access to people like you, that's a blessing, but there's a lot of people that don't have access to that.

So, it may require a third party. Maybe it doesn't like, what are things that you can start? Because nobody knows what their blind spots are. That's because they're blind. Nobody wakes up every day and says, like, I'm going to ruin my life today. That's not like I don't think anybody makes that decision.

What are ways that people can look in the mirror and ask a few questions they could even write down on a piece of paper and have to answer to themselves, even if they never show anybody the answer to reverse maybe? What's a lousy momentum?

John Marsh: Something simple is codifying. The hardest thing to do, especially for business guys and their spouses, is to speak objectively and not subjectively.

It takes work to have an objective conversation. That's not polarized. With the high energy of all the hurts, right? But if a husband and wife get alone and you say, I'll give you how we start. So if you don't have a vision, you have division, divisions, two eyes. Most marriages have multiple images in various areas, and they don't know it.

So, not having a plan is a plan. It's just a bad one. Let's wing this thing. And nobody wants to do that in their business. Nobody's investing venture capital into something without a plan. Yet we run marriages just well.

Chris Powers: We go through the biggest bubble of all time to make an argument. But I get what you are saying.

John Marsh: No, they got a plan, but it was wrong. But they looked at a performer. That's always surprisingly up to the right.

Chris Powers: I've never seen one that even flips down for a second.

John Marsh: It's just like, imagine if you showed them one like this, but we don't have that. So, imagine if you just took five areas, faith.

Family, fun, fitness, and finance, and you just rated yourself one to five on each one where you think you stand on what you believe, and then take your wife and order what you think hers are standing on how all you know about her or your partner.

Chris Powers: So you rate them one to five, but then you also write down two or three things that you believe about each one.

John Marsh: Right, and that way, it gives you some lens and then waits for the right timing because of the difference in a home run and a foul ball's timing, right? So, get good timing. And share those with the person and say, I was, and have them do the same thing. And you all sit down. The easiest thing we can do is, like, if you had 10 dollars, 10,000, or 10 million left at the end of the year, what would you do with it?

Your number one, two, and three things ask your partner. And then they write their one, two, and three. We've only seen them the same if people have a plan. And this is something as simple as money. There are way more complex kids and relatives. There's all these other areas, and then what happens, if you're like me, I'm polarizing.

I feel like I'm a blessing or a butthole, or nothing in between. Oh, it's a blessing, but swing back and forth. I want to stay centered, but I ride. The thing is trying to keep on track, but it is to get to the point. Well, I'll give you an example. I had this conversation with Ash a while back, and our family score was lower than I've ever seen.

I was like, what's wrong? She said we're not spending enough time with our elderly parents. And they won't be here soon, and we'll regret it. I said, well, let's change it. How do we take a three to a four, not a three to a five, or not a two to a five? How do I move at one number? And I asked her that question.

How can I move this score to one number? She said, how about we set family celebrations every quarter, and we bring our family in, and we pay for the food, and we love them. I said, perfect. But it has to turn into an actionable item. In our fitness, walk 10 minutes a day, three times, and it'll change your life if you're not walking.

Chris Powers: If I say this, what something comes to mind? What are a few things, one, two, three? You can rattle off as many as you want. Most couples agree with this. The obvious ones are that after you've worked with them, they need to decide. So somebody listening that's never done this.

I remember when I did it with Michael, there were a lot of things we agreed on. And then there were some things I was like, totally shocked that we weren't aligned on or amazed. I never thought that was something to think about, and it was one of her top five things. What comes to mind is that most people think they agree on this one thing, and they're not.

John Marsh: I mean, it's easy cause it's easy to count money.

How much is enough? What are we going to do when we get enough? Do we have a living plan and a giving plan? Like, what are we going to do with this gift we've, and how do we want to live? Like, I remember one couple, I was talking to him, and I said, what that we've got on the subject of net worth?

And I asked the husband said, listen, a hundred million dollars. I'm fine. The wife's like, well, let's don't stop there. We've got inflation. And then I'm like, what are you talking about? But she and we never got to the thing, but she was like, could we go 200 until I could adjust and look at the. It's just that way. We have different ways of seeing it. And what we drill down on is the hardest thing about that. I talked to you about getting to the ultimate lifestyle, which is figuring out what you would do with what you have. As for us, we decided we wanted to be part of our generosity in giving away homes.

So, we had to put a budget there for how many homes a year and how much they will cost. And so, I encourage you, it's easy as long as you talk generally. When you start talking specifically, stuff gets interesting. And the best thing to do is have a great series of questions.

Chris Powers: Do most people get divorced or split up because of too much money or a lack of funds?

Or is it just different thinking about money?

John Marsh: Yeah, different thinking and, and other expectations, and mostly, it's love and forgiveness. If I can only have two things to adjust in a marriage, love and forgiveness will solve all the rest because forgiveness allows you to define one another again when you mess up—true forgiveness because then what you did can go away and diminish.

And you're either growing or going in forgiveness. There's not an area of my life right now. I believe forgiveness is other than the fact that God forgave me for being an idiot, and he did it extravagantly, but with Ash and I, you know, we blew our marriage up early. That was 20-something years ago, maybe 26, 27, 28, whatever the number was, she knows, I'm sure I don't remember the years, but not long ago, we were in Italy, and I felt a guy was flirting with her and I saw her and the response she made didn't match what I believe she should have.

And it triggered a hurt that took me, you know, two months to figure out what in the world was going on.

Chris Powers: From an incident that happened 30 years ago.

John Marsh: I thought we talk about it all the time. You know, I thought we had sorted it out.

Chris Powers: How did you get over it?

John Marsh: It's interesting. That's why we're constantly trying to figure out how this works. If it were a system, I would nail it.

Chris Powers: Because you've talked. I mean, you've led people on these exact principles, yet you fell victim to your code, and you couldn't think your way out of it.

John Marsh: And Ash couldn't think her way out of it. And we couldn't believe our way out of it.

 Chris Powers: So what happened?

John Marsh: I was suffering.

Chris Powers: You have a good bacon cheeseburger and after that.

John Marsh: No, but it's funny. So, here's how it worked for us. And I'm not saying what. We're more messed up than most folks. So I don't want to think everybody else has to live like this, but so I, this thing happens, and I didn't say anything to her, but I judged it, and I didn't know my heart moved.

Then we go back. We're at our son's wedding. We spent two more weeks in Italy, eating at a restaurant. It gets buried, but it's not over yet. Cause I don't want to get close to her much anymore. Something that's like a force against it, and she starts going, why are you staying away from me?

I'm like, I don't know. So what Ash did in the past was she would come downstairs sometime, and I would be having a hard time, and she could see it on my face. I mean, I wake up in the morning, and something's terrible, and nothing's happened. Right? She says, what's wrong? I said I don't know. She said, can I, can I help you with it?

I said, not that I know of. Ash said, is it me? I'm like, no, she said, well, let me know if you need me. I'm here. I want to help you. That's what she tried this time, and it didn't work.

Chris Powers: But because in that situation, you knew what was upsetting you.

John Marsh: I didn't.

Chris Powers: But you did.

John Marsh: It blipped, boom. And then it was gone.

Chris Powers: But she had looked at a guy.

John Marsh: This guy said something to her, and I thought he sexually flirted with her. And I thought she didn't. I didn't see her respond to it, but I didn't think she pushed back from it the way I would have wanted to see it; needless to say, it was a tense situation when you're out of the country, and it's one of the people visiting your son's wedding.

So this thing happened, and then I knew something was wrong, but we're drinking wine and having a good time, and it just got scrambled up in the mix. And then we went about our trip, called home. And I realized whatever shifted. This thing had yet to line back up. I am not as, I mean, the minute you say something rude to your spouse and some, or your partner, and it does like this, you know, it, right.

I knew it happened, but then I thought it connected back up, and it didn't anyway. So Ash gave me my space for two months, and I went and sat in her office. I said I continue to want to push back from you. She said, well, I'm trying to give you your space. I said, well, it isn't working. So I said, what do we do?

I said I want you to hug me and kiss me and tell me how good I am and throw yourself all the time until we can figure out something else. That may work, and it did work. But I don't know. It's like, it is only sometimes, if it was a system, you write this stuff down. But it's a journey.

It's playing jazz in a way to teach one another. And I don't know if it was the way she was doing it, the way I was receiving it, but we worked through it together. And I said, tell you what, I'll let you know when it's working again. And for me, there's this. You may be familiar with the giant world of five voices and these things, but they have a teaching called the gears.

And it's like you have five gears in your life. Well, first gear is recharge, personal recharge. And when my private recharge is not working, I'm more susceptible to those things. And I'd had two relationships that had to go away, long-term relationships, plus this thing with Ash, and my heart broke before this happened.

Chris Powers: Real quick, long-term relationships have to go away. What does that mean?

John Marsh: Relationships are for a season, a reason, and a lifetime. And so, imagine one of these relationships I'd have for like five years, and the other one I'd have for like 20-something years. And both of them had to change.

And so, it's hard when you have to change a relationship. Like, one of those people, the person had been working with us and for us for years, and I love them.

Chris Powers: When you, looking back, because hindsight's more, we all know who those relationships are in our life that need to either Go away or change or something has to happen.

John Marsh: The funny thing, I didn't know this one for 20-some years. I was what you said: blind spot. I called deceived because the key to being deceived is you don't know it, right?

Chris Powers: Right, so my question is on some of these. You don't know, and it just happens, but some of them, maybe you do, and you kick the can down the road.

John Marsh: Because the, you know what, it's funny, I've heard the three things that we say you'll change is when it hurts too bad and costs too much when you know enough, you want to, or when the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same, that third one's what got me, the pain of staying the same was more significant than.

Chris Powers: Is there one of those three? That's usually the catalyst, or is it equal among all three?

John Marsh: You know, I find that I usually change when the pain is so dang high, I typically don't get it until and most everybody gets it around me before me. And then I'm like, yeah. The only thing that helped me there was that I began to seek wise counsel earlier.

And I took two older men, 60s and 80s, and said, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I'm thinking. What do you think about this? And I'm a little different. I'm radical when it comes to counsel. I only ask counsel if I plan on taking it.

Chris Powers: When somebody gives you counsel, the quote is when people provide you with advice, what they're doing is just telling you about themselves.

How do you decipher what to take and what to take? You get all this council, and you get five answers. Look, here's the common thread and all those answers, like, how do you know which is the best?

John Marsh: Such a great question, but, you know, I used to look for commonality and unity. And when I asked foolish questions, the answers were always the same.

So I could, I'd ask five smart people what I ought to do about a dumb thing I was trying to do. They would all say it's dumb. But when I started asking good questions about good things, the answers began being more varied, right from their perspective. And I learned I've got to let peace be the umpire.

If I decide on people, capital, or strategy, I want to agree with the people. I want to agree with Ash, and I want to agree with the people that I know. Most care for me and understand my world. And so that's how we let peace be it. If it's not at peace, I'll keep looking till I find peace. I allow peace to be the umpire.

Chris Powers: Marriage is arguably the most critical relationship in your life if you are married, but it's only necessarily the one if you work with the person you spend the most time with; there are other marriages. And maybe, again, this is an entrepreneurship podcast partner.

John Marsh: This is just like marriage without sex; a lot of times, it can be a good or a bad one, but it can be both, right?

Chris Powers: Does everything we just talked about? Could this be looked through the lens of how you treat your business partner, or are there elements that come to mind that say there are different things you maybe think about when you're dealing with because you've also had a consulting business that takes many of these principles? You've reworked family offices and family businesses where, I mean, you've told me stories, you'll go into a boardroom, they think they're about to talk numbers and graphs, and you've figured out in 10 minutes where all the conflicts in the company are and what's holding it back.

John Marsh: Most companies and organizations and families function at about 60 percent of their capacity because of, and they don't know it. Again, here's a great example of this. Just think about when you remember being healthy. Like, when's the most beneficial you ever remember being?

Well, that was a lie. That was just as healthy as you remember being, right? And so it's interesting for me, at 50-something years old, from a fitness standpoint, I'm the fittest I've been in my entire adult life. And I didn't know I wasn't until I started realizing it, right? And see, the reason I stayed away from fitness till 46 is I said, Hey, it's vanity.

It's about beach bodies. That's all it's about, but that's not what it's about. For some people, it is, and for those, go for it, but it's wellness. I mean, our body was made to move. If you want to live quality of life, it may not impact quantity, but it will affect quality.

And if you think about it, muscles, body armor, and why we lose it, we suffer for it. And so it's different, but there are differences between that, like, there's the preciousness of marriage. There's a whole different set of things that's there. It's the place you should be the most courageous and the most transparent.

And it's the place that should be a sanctuary from a complex world. As for me and Ash, we run to one another when we're hurting because it's the safest place on earth. And that's what it should be; any meaningful relationship should be a safe place. And those people should be willing to listen and let you be messy and work it out.

But you have to have the tools to do this. Most people are building one of the most complex things on earth. Your marriage is more complicated than an automatic transmission in your vehicle. And you can only work on something other than that thing. And, nobody tries to do their message, usually like, Hey, my transmission needs to be fixed.

I'm going to do it this weekend. I will restore it, fix it, and repair all that stuff. You work on transmissions, but you ask them about their marriage. It's like, no, we're going to read a book. And we went to a weekend thing, we're better. It's like, you better give at least a portion of the time you screwed it up to straighten it up.

And it's the same thing with partners. I mean, it's funny, me and my, I've gotten to points with partners every time that I wanted to divorce them. And I've had to decide what to do with that. And it's not easy because it's got social, spiritual, and economic consequences.

Chris Powers: What does that mean?

John Marsh: You know, there's just consequences across everything. There's financial, what would the bank say if they're on notes and things, you know, it's unscrambling eggs. It's not easy, right? But what I've learned is I asked myself, having a vision for the future. That's compelling if there's hope in your future power in your present, and what happens in relationships, especially business partners, is we lose a future vision of us seeing one another together, doing something meaningful. Once that's out, you're just slow playing the time you'll get to where you can't take it anymore.

Chris Powers: So a lot of what we have just talked about is relationships, building relationships, why they're essential, and what we still need to get to, which is how I want to bring this home. And so listeners were taking a left turn here.

It is where you've spent a lot of your career. And so anybody who listens to this goes to episode 197. If you want to learn more about the company that John and his wife Ash have built, but they're undertaking a project, there's something you said last night at dinner that spearheads us off here.

You all are in the hospitality business. Ash defines that as thinking of you before you got here. But you said you were like, it sucks in America, and you were talking about, you started it with like restaurants are too big, and the whole thing, the entire model in America screwed up compared to other places.

So, let's start with what's screwed up about most American restaurants that other parts of the world have gotten, right?

John Marsh: Well, and you know, one thing somebody sent me, my doctor sent me a picture of the beach in the 60s and then the same beach. Now, how lean all the men and women and children were at that time is mind-blowing.

Today, we think they're all runners or something. They're so lean, but they were all that way. And our food source is different. I mean, and we know this. If you don't, if you don't doubt it, go live in Italy for a month and come back and tell me you ate the same food over there you eat here.

I mean, in wine, for example, what they will allow in America, they would put you in prison for in Europe.

Chris Powers: And why does America let this happen?

John Marsh: I mean, it's money, right? And it's ease of shelf life. If you only have to look at the world through an economic lens, you have a different view.

And so there's a lot of reasons for that. And I'm glad that we've eliminated poverty in so many ways, but one thing we haven't stopped is people who are whole and sick with things that, I mean, to think if thought about like if a cheeseburger is 99 cent. The wrappers, the most expensive part of that thing, because it's like printing on it and it's good looking in the bag. The burger must be like that.

Chris Powers: Well, they've shown like a McDonald's burger sits there on the counter for like a year, and like nothing happens to it.

John Marsh: That's right. So first, we've got to say, Hey, we need to rethink our food source, but it's intentionality. Like, if you believe across the board, you didn't intentionality is where we're going.

We model Italy, Italy in some ways, as America in 1960. There are more minor roads; there are mom-and-pop shops. You don't see a franchise. And even when they started to put like a McDonald's in Rome, a movement started in the eighties called the slow food movement.

And it said, listen. Italy's food culture is so influential. We need to protect it, preserve it, and work on it. And they do; they have a slow food Institute in Bra Italy. And so we're just saying, what if, and especially the South, now we are ground zero for fat people. The heaviest people in America are in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, right?

Where are we sitting? They aren't closing the buffets. They're building more of them. These things are monsters. And I mean, my dad used to call it a hog trough.

Chris Powers: What's all you can eat? Not all you can't.

John Marsh: Right, people are down to, they're like, I'm up for the challenge. I'm meeting all I like. I used to see people. They'd eat breakfast and lunch in one sitting because I didn't want to. And of course, I'm not saying being poor is not a; it's hard to imagine eating healthy and not living on a farm and being poor. It's so darn expensive, right? But what we're asking and asking questions, we could fail at what we're trying to do.

But after 25 years of studying this and suffering, we're on the most exciting thing I've ever seen. Honestly, I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I'm so excited, and I can't wonder why other people haven't seen it yet. Is this real? Am I seeing this, or am I wrong? That hospitality for real estate is a force multiplier.

As our buddy, Eric Weatherholtz, called it a halo effect that is unduplicatable. It has this superpower to make real estate more valuable and attractive, especially places with great food, beverage, and hospitality. It's like wrestling porcupines. It takes work. That's why so many restaurants fail.

But there are some fundamental things. So, let's talk about sizing. One thing we need help with is the launch—of iconic food and beverage restaurants all over America. We're launching one in a town of 3,500 right now called Moments, Illinois. Okay. So how are you going to open a 2 million restaurant in a dead, dead downtown of 3,500 people?

Well, it better be good. You know, that town already has Subway, already have Burger King, so you're going to keep them from being knocked out. But we realized that if you're excellent, people will travel for excellence. And so that's one thing. If we can do something in an iconic way, that's excellent. Nobody says, Hey, I went to this town and had a fantastic time. What was it? Ruby Tuesdays. Nobody says that.

Chris Powers: What's your quote?

John Marsh: I said, Ruby Tuesday's goal is to disappoint us. We'll stay in, right? And so, many food offerings do that today. And so this unique idea, what Europe does, I think, well, as they right size it like, you know, Darden, the group that owns Olive Garden and, Red Lobster and others, they say, we need more seats, 300 seats or so.

Well, you can serve a lot of food, and you can serve great food. It takes a lot of work to serve a lot of great food. That's the reason your mama's kitchen still works. So it gets hot off the plate right there onto your thing. So we don't see chains, and we don't see these big restaurants in places.

We travel to Italy, 30, 40 seats is a big restaurant. Some have five.

Chris Powers: They need an olive garden in Italy.

John Marsh: No. And so, the food source is essential. We will source a portion of our menu from 25 miles or less.

Chris Powers: Okay. So farm to table or whatever you call it.

John Marsh: But better than that, that has gotten commercialized like gluten-free and everything else. Right. We're going to know the people personally, Bob, that's making things happen, so it's intentionality. Because foods incarnate, I mean, if I told you could build a great house out of crappy wood, you'd probably question my theology.

Chris Powers: Okay, so let me ask you this question. I'm going to battle with you. I don't know anything about it. I know what good food is, but I need to become a food person. But if any restaurant slaps farm-to-table on there, my American brain immediately goes, Ooh, they're better. They're more natural.

They're healthier, and you told me that they have commercialized it. How does the consumer know they're eating delicious food versus the guy next door who says, well, we've farmed a table too?

John Marsh: Well, first, no research is the wrong amount. I mean, you have to care.

Chris Powers: Do most people research where they will go to eat and everything? I go to Yelp and say.

John Marsh: Most people die sick and fat or whatever. I mean, honestly.

Chris Powers: Is that a trend you're picking up on in America that people will start paying labels?

John Marsh: I mean, I just saw a thing on Bluebell ice cream. It's a bioengineered additive stuck at the bottom. Now, I am still determining what that is. I know I don't want it. If you can't under, like, I'm not, I don't have a super education, you know, so I didn't go to, I got a PhD in challenging troubles. And then in debt and the fact that debt's a heavy weight to carry, you know, in belly-flopping your marriage, I wouldn't recommend the path I took, honestly, but what you realize as far as food if you can't understand the ingredients, I'm asking you why you're eating. It's best not to have elements we don't understand.

We know that it doesn't take long, but. Secondly, again, the food system is broken. It's hard for me because I'm telling you what I want. I'm not telling you how I'm not judging other people's plans. I don't want that. If the Cisco truck is and the U S food truck is all the foods coming off, I'm struggling to believe how much of it is actually from a farm that I would want.

It's a commodity. So, what is real food? Straightforwardly and is sized appropriately, it has a tremendous opportunity. It is a vertical that's, I can't see, the end to the potential of it.

Chris Powers: And you said sized appropriately. What do you mean?

John Marsh: So, like most restaurants, you know, we struggle because a restaurant, the first in the restaurant business as a whole, the first million, has very little profit.

Usually, it may have 10% industry standards. The second one, you can get to like 20%. The third one goes like 30 or 40%. And what it is, those hard calls are hard to cover initially, right? So, in a right-sizing relationship, we look at the number of seats to the number of people it will take to create a unique hospitality experience to the type of offering we will do. If I'm going to build a 300-seat restaurant, I'm going to use a 16-foot hood with five friars and six flights. I must have all this gear to produce all this at that thing. Well, now I need a loading dock to get the stuff off the truck so I can make it at this rate, but then we're better to have dumpsters.

Cause I got half stuff's going to get thrown away in there. And then we've got to keep the rats that pick them up. It just gets bigger, bigger, bigger.

Chris Powers: These are fundamental considerations.

John Marsh: Dude, they're everywhere.

Chris Powers: Nobody thinks about this stuff.

John Marsh: Well, like if I go to a construction site. All I want to see is a dumpster.

I don't have to talk to anybody else. So I know how the job's being run by watching the dumpsters. Cause they're hauling off what you're paying for retail for. And so we think differently about this, simple, but our model is small. Offerings that we do thoughtfully, our model for the future we're creating for this community we're building, and really, it's the culmination of 25 years of work.

Chris Powers: This is an Opelika, Alabama.

John Marsh: And so around the country, 12 cities, we're helping them launch restaurants do overnight stay. Like hospitality, boutique hotels, and celebratory events, event space. We did them all disconnected, and they had a significant impact. The towns would revitalized like Jess's town, and his little restaurant in a city of 3,000 sees 8,800 people monthly.

So it tells you, and we're drawing from about an hour away there. Okay, because Jess's serving grand, he's serving beef, pork, and poultry raised on his farms, grass-fed, finished in his processing facility that his son owns and served on their plate. It's the best protein source in America like that.

So we will come at this differently and say we want a 24-hour dinner. Every town needs one. A fabulous one, okay, a 24-hour offering, because we're not just a society where people live in particular, you know, go to work when the sun comes up, go home when it goes down now, our communities are different.

We're going to have fine dining because you need that. We'll have a fabulous lunch, and then we'll have different offerings that can move around. One thing we're doing that will propel us in the future is number 1: we will prep everything in a central prep kitchen.

That's more like what you would see at a resort like Disney. So whoever's cutting lemons will be good at doing it. And they'll cut them for the dishes, for the drinks, and for everything. So a lot of prep, in the, in what we do in our world is we've got servers trying to wrap napkins when they're not busy.

They're trying to help bus tables. They're dealing with the people, and sometimes they'll go back and enable watch dishes. They're just, we're taking the people that should be focused on connection and forcing them to be in the production. That's different from what we want to do. We want to do it like a stage where everyone who's there for connection, that's what their skills are, and they know it, and they can operate that.

And then, we will handle most of the production in a single facility with sophistication in one community. So, our community is seven acres. It'll have 55 overnight stay rooms. It'll have eight. Food and beverage restaurant concepts have three event spaces. We will design it in such a way that, think about this: our alcohol license spread over eight ideas, all your food licensing over eight concepts, your marketing shared services can do eight images instead of one, your HR, your accounting administration, all these things are hard to pull off with a single store.

Chris Powers: And the only way to pull it off is if you're willing to be the owner of the real estate, right? Also, the operator of the real estate, you can't fragment, you can't. It's like, you can't run it. Can it be run? Like, what do they call them? Whatever kitchens were food halls, you have different operators who own each. Do you have to hold everything to make it work?

John Marsh: I don't think you have to; we use ours like a laboratory.

We've watched many food halls not work because they're competitive in those small environments. In an ideal world, one person stewards food and beverage. Even if you had eight small concepts and the thing you can do like we're building, we're calling them stages, but imagine a small space that has a three-base sink and grease trap and maybe a turbojet oven like Subway has, well, that could either be a taco shop possibly, or it could be a ramen shop.

We can adjust the small concepts based on what we're doing. We're building what we consider to be resorts spread over an area. So imagine a small community we go into; you could buy 30 or 40 buildings because it's dead as a hammer. Nobody wants to go there, and you program overnight, stay fabulous food and beverage and events.

Well, now you've taken in a town. I'll give you an example. We're working in town. I don't want to say the city, but because we're still buying, our client there and our, he bought 40 buildings for four and a half million dollars, 250 000 square foot. Well, our current model is if we put 12 million on top of that for the other renovations required, the thing with 16 million in it can produce four and a half million dollars a year in profit to the bottom line.

So if you look at that, we roll all those incomes, like some things we do differently. First, for every food and beverage concept, they design the operations before anything else in the Performa. Because if we have successful operators, everything else will stay intact. So we'll do the Performa for them and find breakeven.

And breakeven is as low as we can make it. And then we ratchet up as restaurants go up, and their sales go up. We ratchet up the base rents based on a percentage of gross, and it becomes the new base. Well, now we can borrow on those new base rents. And what we do is align. We want them to survive and then thrive, right?

And so that's how we do it when we do it with other operators. So the future of small towns, broken towns, and even some greenfield developments is fabulous food and beverage. It's restaurants with rooms. The driving force is excellent hospitality that drives rooms and celebratory events.

Chris Powers: What does a town need to possess? So there are tons of 3 500 cities of 3, 500 people. Do all of them work, or is there some characteristic or a couple of features that a town must possess besides size? Let's assume even with a thousand people, it might work.

John Marsh: Yeah, 800 is fine.

Chris Powers: Okay, so what's the common thread?

John Marsh: The common threads, number one, we got to have for us a patron. That's someone willing; the most excellent fertilizers the owner shadows. Somebody is to care about it, and so I don't see this working In the same way we care about it without a person that's a patron of a place. They care about a place they want to live close to their investment.

They want to invest in something like our Winter Haven, Florida, group. I mean, we're down there, there's a community development fund where they've raised, you know, 80 million bucks from 60 locals. All of those guys visit the restaurants. They want to be there. Those families want this thing to work, right?

That's a big thing. Number two, you've got to have two and a half blocks of historic fabric, or you'll have to build that much. So we need 80 to 100 thousand square feet of existing buildings, or you'll have to make it. And if you build it, it's a whole different thing we're doing that outside of here, working on Project Everman right outside of here, and that's all new. So it has new items. So those are two things. And then the third thing, it is a benefit if it's two hours or less from a major.

Chris Powers: And from what you've seen, most of these city governments or councils, even at the small towns, they're pleased to see this stuff happen.

John Marsh: So they'll let you do anything because it's dead. It's so quiet. All the buildings are, you know, underused or just vacant. And the amount of what's that, like look to town here, Laredo, Texas. One time, somebody asked me about doing something here. That town was sitting there with fabulous structures that were too good that we couldn't build for a thousand dollars a foot.

Chris Powers: Every building we pass in Fort Worth, like, that'd be an excellent hospitality book.

John Marsh: So, and the other thing is this, is that there's a minimum viable experience like an MVE, which is like Thursday to Saturday.

So when we start looking for a target, we say, what could an average couple enjoy? What would they enjoy spending on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday for a trip? You said 2, 500 or we set a budget based on our knowledge. And then, we craft an experience that allows them to experience that. Well, if you go to a town and you have a fantastic time, great food and beverage, great event, whatever it is, and you leave there, some people start going, you know, I could see myself living here, but people don't say that without good food and beverage or a great place to stay.

It's a lot harder, so where are we going? Hey, nowhere, two hours away.

Chris Powers: So now I'm going to flip it. So you said, and that's the critical ingredient that you got to get right. So then you've probably walked a million developments that suck. They're lifeless, soulless. They have all the money in the world thrown at them.

John Marsh: Yes, Because money can't fix this.

Chris Powers: Okay. So what are those developers thinking is the thing, too? Perhaps they still believe in the same concept. They're just getting it wrong. Or do you see when you see developers focusing on something else, like, you know, it's going to be a bust.

John Marsh: Well, many times, they are doing it from the standpoint of financial engineering. They know their dang spreadsheets. Developers understand what cap rate they're going in and what they plan on coming out; they're more hit and run a lot of them. They want to get it done and get out. Enduring assets are more complex to think about. If you consider what an investment is worth for 50 years, that's harder.

But they also don't want to take it. The amount of suffering it takes. How many fantastic food and beverage experiences, you know, do you know around America that you'll travel to because they're so good? It's a small number.

Chris Powers: In your case, are most of your people coming in from, obviously, maybe most of them are regional, but are they coming in from all over the? Are you planning nationwide or worldwide?

John Marsh: Worldwide, we want to be so good because here's what we think the South matters. Its hospitality is incredible, and it's unrepresented in the way we want to see it as we've never had an experience that represents a dinner at my grandmother's house or a good friend's house. I asked, what's the best hospitality you've ever experienced?

She said at our house, and it's just intentional.

Chris Powers: Okay. Then I'm going to take that to the comment you also made last night at dinner, which was you said restaurants get it wrong because they have production lined up with a connection with the people who are all scrambled, and they're not doing the right things. What does that mean?

John Marsh: Well, it's so hard. I mean, think about this. Even the alignment of wages, like the tipping model, needs to be revised. Do you imagine if you got paid every day in cash, what you make? And the next day, you showed up and got settled in cash, and you spit it. It would be an exciting environment.

I need to remember what it's like, how much we make, cause you don't get it in cash, but the environment does not create human flourishing. So what we're hoping, I'm not saying we've done it yet, but we're going to take and pay a life-sustaining wage. We're going to spend like factories are great jobs.

We're going to do benefits. And then we're also going to hook all the tipping. If you tip, it tips to a pool. We want people if you list it to be spread from the dishwasher from the dish room to the boardroom, you know, all the way, whoever has a contribution, that's a different way of thinking about it.

And also, in so many ways, we're going to train our hospitality. Our goal is to build a hospitality institute there as well, which will allow us to teach people how we do this because it makes sense, but it needs to be more common sense. It's an entirely different way to think about this. And so we found our best success is getting people from other industries, unlike we don't usually hire just bartenders because they've learned so much, and unteaching them is more complicated than teaching them.

Chris Powers: Okay. On that thread of the bar, you were just kind of saying the way a bar maybe should be set up is you have bartenders that are trying to make drinks, but they're also trying to connect and build relationships with people, and the busier they get; they screw up both.

John Marsh: Right. You get an inferior cocktail. And then they're not spending time with you because they got 10 of them to make. So we went to a bar not long ago, which is interesting in Phoenix. It's the top Tiki bar in that region. And it seats 48 people. Your seating is 45 minutes or an hour, and you prepay for your first cocktail.

And then we took three hours to get in. And so what if we start seeing, like in our community, the zero-proof offering will be as sophisticated? And as thoughtful as any alcohol offering, because we're saying beverages are unique, not alcoholic drinks are excellent, right? It's just a free way of framing the whole thing.

One of the best bars the guy who owns thinks death, and Cohen, one of the best bars in the world in New York, has a new bar where he doesn't. It's 21 and up, of course, but he doesn't tell you if the drink has alcohol or not. He tells you it's fantastic. There's a movement of people who don't want to slam a bunch of drinks and want to have fun with their friends and enjoy it and love taste.

So, we're trying to balance our belief that some of the brokenness in this world is from addiction. And how do we not cause it right? So for us, we're doing ways to think about that even if you're going to get hammered at our place, you're going to have to work hard at it because we're going to make it like a rat's maze to do it. You get 45 minutes of seating.

Chris Powers: And what do you do after 45 minutes? You're like, thanks for coming. Can you get back in line?

John Marsh: No, go to the next concept; see what's happening here. But yeah, the correct sizing is tricky. If you look at, if you've been to a waffle house in the South,

They got it in that store. It's funny. I was in there the other night we wanted to go. It just reminds us of the South. We're sitting there, a little girl's like, it's so dang cold in here. She said, now, whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it made me laugh. She's like, we have to keep the air conditioning at like 62.

I said, why? She said it's in our rule book. I said, why? She said it makes people get out of here faster. They're freezing. I thought, well, that'll work. I'm freezing.

Chris Powers: I visited my first Waffle House in Albuquerque, New Mexico, about three months ago.

John Marsh: Oh man, you're a newbie.

Chris Powers: And I got to be honest with you, I'm not begging to go back right now.

John Marsh: It's way better at certain things. Well, and just certain things. There are things they do right and things they get wrong, but it's an incredible business model that's existed for a long, long time.

And they've been bought out from, what I understand, by private equity. And I think they lost some of who they are.

Chris Powers: Well, I think private equity, to some degree, not all private equity is good at helping people lose their way.

John Marsh: Well, I mean it. So, hospitality is a force multiplier, the halo effect for real estate.

If you can do it well, it can make things you have worth a lot more. It's. What else could we build in a small town that'll produce, you know, four or 5 million worth of profit a year, be worth 40 or 50 million in a city of 3000? I can't think of it other than a factory.

Chris Powers: That's a perfect way to bring this to a conclusion. Thank you very much.

John Marsh: Thank you.