IAM848- Coach Helps Entrepreneurs Actualize Their Aspirations

One of the best in the world at delivering on his promise of supercharging the energy, focus, and productivity of small, women, and minority-owned businesses Coach Powell creates consistent winners all over the world! As the founder and creator of the world-famous VisionQuest90(TM) Program, Coach Powell has helped thousands of entrepreneurs for more than 30 years to realize and actualize their highest aspirations. As a master networker Coach Powell is proud to share the best tips and strategies to help anyone create an amazing network of people that stand at the ready to help provide the information and contacts to ensure your success. So sit back, relax, and get ready for Coach Marvin Powell!!

• CEO Hack: Focus and staying in alignment
• CEO Nugget: Asking three questions- Who are you? Are you really who you say you are? Are you all that you ought to be?
• CEO Defined: Leadership – helping people get the best out of themselves

Website – http://ninetydaypowerplay.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvinpowell/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CPTandD
Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/MyRoundTable/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and have a very special guest on the show today. I have Marvin Powell of the Roundtable. Marvin, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:39 – Marvin Powell

It's wonderful to be here, Gresh. And you're one of my favorite people.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless:

You're one of my favorite people as well too, which is why I'm so excited and pumped to have you on the show. Before we jump in, I wanted to read a little bit more about Marvin so you can hear about all the wonderful things that he's doing as well. As one of the best in the world at delivering on his promise of supercharging the energy, focus, and productivity of small women and minority-owned businesses, Coach Powell creates consistent winners all over the world.

As the founder and creator of the world-famous VisionQuest 90 program, Coach Powell has helped thousands of entrepreneurs for more than 30 years to realize and actualize their highest aspirations. As a master networker, Coach Powell is proud to share the best tips and strategies to help anyone create an amazing network of people who stand at the ready to help provide the information and context to ensure your success. So sit back, relax, and get ready for Coach Marvin Powell. Coach, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:36 – Marvin Powell

Oh my God, that was a great introduction. I am so ready.

01:40 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. This is a mic drop moment, I feel like. But what I wanted to do to kick everything off is hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? And what led you to all the awesome things you're working on now?

01:50 – Marvin Powell:

Oh my God. I think I've been preparing to be an entrepreneur my entire life. I started out my first gig and I'm going to say I'm going to call it a gig when I was hustling newspapers at 10 years old for the Washington Post, or the Washington Star then. And later on, I picked up several routes with the Washington Post. I won several contests and trips, and I just fell in love with sales and services and the delivery of sales and services. And I went on from there to literally become what I call the drive-through king at McDonald's, at the local McDonald's there in Oxon Hill, Maryland. I really loved working there. I would get in there. It would be my delight to upsell every customer who came through that drive-thru.

I mean, if you came through that drive-thru, you didn't buy anything more. It was because you just didn't, you just didn't, I don't know, I couldn't do a good job. But if I did a good job, everybody was going to add a little something extra to that order. And so I got really used to helping people understand and provide benefits and services. I took that on into college, school, and into The first start of my financial career when I first started at Prudential Financial Services, probably looking at around 1996 or so, and I was in the financial services industry for 16 years.

I literally taught entrepreneurs and business leaders how to use insurance and financial products to make sure they were optimizing everything they could from a financial point of view for their businesses, whether that's going to be for business succession or moving forward and just growing and accumulating wealth. So I enjoyed that. I enjoyed it so much. And I started to, especially in the latter parts of my career as a financial agent and investment advisor, that kind of good stuff, I began to understand that there was, my hands were tied as to how much I can actually help entrepreneurs and small business leaders and they were just my love, my passion.

I'd gone to school to prepare to work with them. I'd understood everything. I have 3 degrees in economics, sociology, and African studies. And so I just love being able to share what I know and my wisdom about certain things. And I've learned so much more. You know, you graduate from college, you're thinking everything, but then, you know, you actually sit down and start working in a career and you learn so much more. I was blessed to be offered the opportunity to work under Dr. Stephen Covey and learn the 7 habits of how to affect people and be willing to be one of the people who are certified to use that information to train and develop others in the company.

And I just fell in love with personal development and helping people understand what they need to do to maximize the value of their gifts. Whatever they bring to the table, whatever they've learned and created, it really can be turned up and dialed up if you know how to. So I created processing programs, and today that's what I do. I create programs and processes to help people really dial up that effort, really dial up that energy and focus, and create maximum kinds of productivity that can lead them into that next trajectory in their lives, their business, and their careers. And that's really what's necessary is to tap into, you know, their God-given talents and abilities and be ready to ride that all the way to the future.

And That's what I love doing. I love working with people about that right now. And that's what I do in my company. So today, I've got several programs, products, and services that I participate in. My love is, and my passion is the Round Table, as you mentioned earlier. That's the co-partnership between myself and my good friend, Darren Marquardt. We get together on a regular consistent basis and really figure out ways to help business leaders strategize to learn what we call the art and science of networking. Because most entrepreneurial ventures or most networking organizations sort of get together and they just slam people in a room and they say, okay, now introduce yourself and see what you come back with.

And that's a horrible way to network because if you haven't learned really the techniques and the strategies you need to use to network effectively. You're going to waste your time because no one's going to listen to you, no one's going to pay attention to you, no one's going to follow up with you, and you're just not going to have a good strategy in place that can help you win. This is so important because 5 times success is really at the root of this strategy, the program. We've already done the studies with neuroscientists sociologists and economists, economists have done this research over the years and determined that most people who are successful are successful not because of their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

I mean, your KSAs are important, right? Don't get me wrong. But you're not successful because of those things. You're successful because the people who know you, like you, and trust you. And even more so, you can multiply that number from 5 to 7, if you add accountability into the mix. So there are 2 things that we have to learn that nobody teaches us growing up. There are no courses in accountability and relationship building, professional relationship building, that you can learn and go to really come out with a strategy that's going to help you win from the time you're in elementary school all the way up through your professional career.

This is a skill, this is an essential skill to professional and human development that if we don't get at any time in our lives, then we just lose out on any opportunities. And if you understand compounded interest as a former financial advisor, I focus on that, right? If you don't learn to network, you start your career, and you go through your career, 20, or 30 years, and you still don't know how to network, you have missed out on tremendous opportunities that people have locked up in them. Everybody that you meet has information and gifts that can be used at your disposal. You just have to learn how to unlock those secrets and unlock those opportunities. And that's what we teach at the roundtable. So I love doing that.

08:00 – Gresham Harkless

So would you consider your ability to be able to see that what I call your secret sauce which is something you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart and makes you unique?

08:09 – Marvin Powell

It really boils down to my passion and my passion and my gifting is to really help others find their passion and find their golden nugget. What is it that they can run off into the sunset and create?

08:25 – Gresham Harkless:

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:35 – Marvin Powell

It's really about what you said earlier. It's like it's that it's that focus and that staying in alignment

08:41 – Gresham Harkless:

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happened to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

08:53 – Marvin Powell

So I learned this nugget. And this is how this is really the secret sauce to the genius for me. A long time ago when I was taking a course in Pan-African Studies at Kinsley University, a gentleman by the name of Maulana Koringa, who is the founder of Kwanzaa, a K-Bow organization. And he hit me right between my eyes with 3 questions. These are the 3 questions that I still ask myself today, and 3 questions still help me focus and stay energetic in moving forward in every possibility that I can. The questions are, number one, who are you? Number 2, are you really who you say you are? And number 3, are you all that you ought to be?

So Dr. Karenga says that these are the questions that ancient Africans asked and remain and keep asking way before Socrates or, you know, any of the great Plato, Aristotle, or any of the great Greek philosophers started asking those questions. You know, ancient Africans were already dealing with those questions and asking those questions. And so I asked myself those questions on a regular consistent basis. I review the answers that I give myself and the answers that I share with other people.

And those doing that helps me stay focused, it helps me stay energetic, helps me stay on point, helps me stay aligned so I don't get hijacked by other people's thoughts and ideas and all that kind of stuff, because I'm really focused on, you know, why I was here, why I was born, what's my purpose, what's my mission, where am I going? And more importantly, you know, what are the values that I want to carry forward? And I want to live my entire life around it.

10:35 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, that's so powerful. And it's so funny because of those 3 questions, a lot of times you think it's like the square root of pi or E equals MC squared. They're like really complex questions. But a lot of the questions that really help you with alignment are for one, that simple, but it's something we often don't do. We don't take the time to make sure we answer those questions and make sure we're asking them on a regular to make sure we don't get hijacked, as you said.

And I think that when we understand that, it starts to manifest itself in the decisions that we make, the organizations that we're a part of, and what we try to start and build. So I think that's definitely a powerful nugget. So I appreciate that. And I wanted to ask you now what I call my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're open to having different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Marvin, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:25 – Marvin Powell:

I mean, it's about leadership. It is, it is all about leadership. And I will tell you, it is about helping people get the best out of themselves. So when you have a whole team of people that you're leading and they're all working together to be better than they could have ever been by themselves, now you're a real leader. Now you're the kind of leader that people, you know, it's going to be hard when people find things that they really should do outside of you. It's going to be hard for them to separate themselves from your leadership because they're so connected and they feel so valued and they feel such possibilities because you are there as their example. You are there as a guide to guidance and directing.

You are there providing me with vision possibility and hope. This is what leaders do and this is what great CEOs always have to do because you can be a CEO, you can be a great CEO for a quarter. Fetch the numbers around, do some things that are gonna make the numbers look good, and all that kind of stuff. And then you'll be great stock options, everything will be working really well for about a quarter. But then now, you know, when the real game starts, when, you know, you have to do it again and again and again and again and again. That's gonna require a whole different, you can't do that by counting only. You have to do that by actually plugging into people and helping them find their mojo. And helping them find their mojo is not your mojo. You never suck as a CEO. Ooh, I never said that before. We keep that, that rhyme.

13:08 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. Put that on a bumper sticker for sure. And I think that's a phenomenal kind of definition because I think, like you said, it's being able to make the impact that by being around you and being under your leadership or with your leadership, maybe a better way to say it, the people or the organizations wouldn't get to the level that they could. And I think that as you kind of talked about wanting to be able to win and wanting to be able to execute in order to win. That's not something you do just one day. It's not something you do for just a quarter. It's consistency over and over and over and over again. We see it in sports, we see it in business as those that are consistently able to show up and win on a regular basis are those phenomenal CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, whatever title we might give, but it's the consistency with that leadership that really takes things.

13:51 – Marvin Powell:

I'll say one more thing about that, just that I don't wanna talk over you or anything, but I just forgot to mention this, and this is very, this is so important. Probably might be more important than anything else. In my mind, the CEO who considers himself or herself a servant leader is the best. The people who really think along the lines of collaborative leadership, not the authoritarian type or totalitarian type of leader, but the collaborative leader who considers himself a servant leader are going to be better and longer lasting and more sustainable than any other.

14:33 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, and it's so powerful. I'm glad you added that in because I feel like it ties everything into how you even started with your CEO story and the newspaper where I was being of service and at McDonald's and all of those different aspects. It's all about giving and being able, you're able to be of service and provide value to people. So truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:03 – Marvin Powell:

So, I am not going to send people to, you know, all the technological solutions and the passive, you know, kind of situations that help them in contact with me. I really want to contact people. And so what I want you to do, if you want to reach out to me, call me. Call me at 703-201-4267. Or text me at 703-201-4267. Because that's the best way for me to actually engage and interact. You can also join me on LinkedIn. Look at Marvin L. Powell or Marvin Coach Powell on LinkedIn and you'll find me.

There's a whole bunch of Marvin Powell's out there, but there's not a whole bunch that looks like me or talks like me. So I should be pretty easy to find on LinkedIn or Facebook or anything like that. You just want to passively engage with me. Use one of those tools, right? But if you want to talk, if you want to share, if you have some want to figure out how to take that next step in your life or your business, you probably should give me a call and I'll answer. All right. Look forward to talking to you.

16:05 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Coach Powell. What we'll do is we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, to make it even easier for people to get ahold of you passively or un-passively if that's even the right opposite word. But I truly appreciate you again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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