In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Marques Ogden about his morning routine, changing your mindset, being the CEO of your life, leadership lessons from the NFL and much more.
In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Marques Ogden about his morning routine, changing your mindset, being the CEO of your life, leadership lessons from the NFL and much more.
Ryan
Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the Morning Upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20-minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development to upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morningupgrade.com. Thanks for letting me share and now on to the show.
Announcer
Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote where we featured casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.
Ryan
Hey, Marques, welcome to the Morning upgrade podcast. How are you?
Marques
I'm doing well. Ryan, how are you, sir?
Ryan
Doing great. I'm excited to speak with you. Let's kick this off. Tell my audience of Morning Upgraders who you are, what you do for a living, and give us a big wind happening in your life right now.
Marques
So I am from Washington, DC. I currently now live in Raleigh, North Carolina with my wife and two daughters. I am a national international keynote speaker that could coach best-selling authors, a podcast co-host, brand ambassador, and business owner. And a big win going on in my life right now is working on a new mindset course for one of our clients that are going to be coming out probably in the summer or the early fall of this year. Very excited about it. Because if this course goes well as it was like I know it can go well, we're going to create more courses for the general public with this phenomenal partner.
Ryan
Excellent. I want to ask you a mindset question. So I'm going to circle back to that. But tell us what your morning looks like. What do you have a routine? How do you start today?
Marques
Great question where I am every day by 5:30 at the latest to help my wife and daughter, my wife is a teacher help her get off to work with my daughter who is seven, get off to school. Then from there. It's always the gym. I have really been big the last step always big on lifting cardio core all that but I've really gotten more focused in probably the last I'll say, five to six months on, you know, doing much more cardio watching what I eat. So I do like to run I run a mile between one to three and a half miles every other day. Or I play basketball every other day or I swim or I jump row, some form of cardio weightlifting, core, and push ups I do every day to start my day. So without that, Ryan, my day would not go as well. That's for sure.
Ryan
So I see you're into boxing too. Is that something new? Or you've always done that?
Marques
Great question. So my grandfather was a boxing trainer for over 60 years of his life for the Boys and Girls Club in the Washington DC area. I picked up boxing with a trainer bow maybe two months ago, I started that basically the New Year's resolution. I started at the beginning of the year. And I love it I go twice a month with him and then I do things on my own but I really love boxing and I love you know the cardio the mental conditioning, the mindset that you have to be and to do your best in the boxing training sessions.
Ryan
Absolutely agree. Before COVID I belonged to a gym right down the street from my work and he was boxing at the boxing club and it was one of the best workouts I've ever had. It was one that was great.
Marques
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Ryan
I don't know about you. Like, it was a group. It was a group effort. So we were to do like MIT work. And like each person would take a turn like everyone's watching you and just having like everyone's eyeballs on me like trying to do the moves like the patterns, the boxing patterns. It was I don't know, pushed me out of my comfort zone. I really enjoyed it.
Marques
Yeah, absolutely. Because then everybody's looking at you, you know, you need to do your best. So your focus becomes a lot more laser. And I tell my clients to want to be focused like a laser that can cut the wood diamond. And you do that by focusing on less and then obsessing.
Ryan
Yeah, let's stay on the topic of mindset for a second, I wanted to ask you, you know, since you're in the NFL, I want to ask you a question about just keeping yourself calm under pressure. I'm sure you were in a lot of situations, and the game was on the line or what have you that you had to keep yourself calm. And I think that directly relates to mindset. And you mentioned a course let's go there, what tips or strategies do you have around that?
Marques
So what you need to do is you need to understand that your mindset can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. And so if you're not focused on you know, believing in yourself, and really understanding that you deserve to succeed, and Ryan, that you're in the right place at the right time, which puts you in a position to upgrade your story to upgrade your life. If you're not doing those things, then you're missing the boat, like, for example, we had on our podcast and we published his episode yesterday, Michael stray Han. And that's really helped our podcast elevate to a higher level because we've been able to write mine and show people that we're able to take care of not just people who are, you know, celebrities like Michael, but also we have people that are just people that are everyday working people, business people, it's very diverse. So having Michael is an awesome opportunity for us to grow our podcast. But, you know, we had to believe that we deserve to have someone like Michael, not the thing of celebrity and all that stuff because Michael is awesome in that regard. But he's just so busy. Right, and that he would take time, and we were in the right place at the right time to land him as a guess, at the end to deliver a great episode because we didn't want to waste time. And so we knew right where we were right, Ryan was a great place to be for us to showcase Michael in an awesome way in it for Michael to do what educate our audience with his knowledge and his experiences.
Ryan
I'm really happy. You mentioned self-esteem markers. I think this is a huge topic that's not talked about a lot. I had a guest on my podcast a couple of weeks ago. And she was saying, you know, we're all familiar with journaling and gratitude practice and a huge believer in that do it every morning. But she was saying she'll so she got it from her coach, that she also writes down one or two things that she likes about herself or something she's proud of. And so I've been trying to steal that my girls, I have three daughters, and they're young, whether it's still whether they're still listening to me. Well, that went down was quickly shutting, but just sharing things you like about yourself? I agree. I think self-esteem is so critical. Self Confidence.
Marques
Oh, yeah. I mean, here's what I tell my clients, what should build your self-confidence. Right? But what do others say about you building your business? That makes sense.
Ryan
I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. So what pillar habits do you have besides exercise? Well, what's the first thing comes to mind? Pillar habit.
Marques
So a pillar habit I live by is I like to be disciplined in everything I do. Because if I'm not disciplined, and I'm not reliable, then I won't get where I need to go in my life. So discipline is a big pillar that I live by. Along with reliability. There are three things that I believe, right, Brian, that build trust, competency, reliability, and having your client or your team's best interest. And I always try my best to do what I need to do and be disciplined. But without a doubt, right, Ryan, I'm always going to be someone that's reliable to my clients, or to my prospective clients. Because if we cannot be reliable, then that's something that I feel is going to be an issue.
Ryan
Yeah, I think trusting you need to be yourself, you need to be reliable, and build that trust with your clients. And I think that also like the habits, you have the rituals and the structure that also helps build up your self-confidence. And it's just like one big cycle, you know, one big cycle that builds, let's go to business, Marcus, I'm gonna ask you some business questions. I'm going to let you choose which direction you take this, you know, in terms of growth, growing your business, your speaking your coaching and consulting, what have you had the most success in growing it? Or if you prefer, a challenge that you've recently had to overcome? And how did you do? And how did you do it?
Marques
So what I would say is what we're really trying to grow as our speaking business. And for two and a half years, we didn't get any paid speaking jobs in the business. And we just realized what I realized I was so focused on doing things that were all about me being famous, or getting notoriety and stuff like that. And what I realized is, is that literally, right that I needed to start focusing on living by the law of value, which was giving people more value than we took in payment. And that's something that I started to live by. And once I did that our business grew to a huge level.
Ryan
It's the first step in doing that. Are you saying that you're just getting yourself more on podcast speaking gigs, and just trying to pour your heart out? And then, you know, see what comes back? Like, is there a first step you took with that?
Marques
Yeah. And so what I did was is like you said, you need to really focus on being sure that you build up your credibility. That's how you do that through making sure that people know about you and it's through marketing. Okay, and that's huge, you know, and once you do that you're able to really then get people to say, right, why and that you are the person that they want to, you know, you know, be with a be around.
Ryan
That makes a lot of sense. So in terms of leadership, going back to your NFL days, what are some of the top things that stand out to you? And maybe it's from the coaches, maybe from the other players? The answer however you want, but what are some of the leadership lessons that really stand out to you from your years playing?
Marques
So what I would say is, is that one of the best lessons I ever got was from my rookie, coach, Jack Del Rio, and Jack said, Ryan, I'll never forget this, when we were drafted, we were his first draft class as a rookie head coach in life, be your own C.E.O., be your own chief executive officer. And that story, that information, that knowledge that Jack imparted on us that day, has stuck with me, and will for the rest of my life. Because Jack was basically telling us that we work for the Jaguars, but how we control what we do, how we get out in front of people, how we move within different spaces and the community and within our own halls, and how we do things. That's up to us. And that's an art control.
Ryan
Yeah, I love that, that really is a fantastic answer. I say that because I'm going through a coaching program right now called optimize. I'm also reading a book by Robert Robin Sharma, who wrote the monk who sold his Ferrari, and it's all about a book called an everyday hero. It's all about becoming like like you say, the CEO of your life, they say, the hero of your life, but same concepts like taking ownership, full accountability, and working on yourself. And being the best version of yourself. I thought I was thinking about the other day, I was going for a walk. And I was like, What if everyone had that mindset? Like what if everyone tried to become their own CEO or their own hero of their life? Like what would the effects be? It's mind-boggling and thinks about it. It's too big for me to even process but it's awesome.
Marques
Well, I'll tell you what, man, if everybody tried to live their lives, like that, it'd be a much more positive, much more free environment free loving community, because I feel so many people are focused on their own, gain their own success, and they don't know how to process and give people you know, what they need in order to help themselves. And that's where responsibility comes in. And that's where you make an external promise to someone else, to help them with their business and, or with what they need to do. And I feel a lot of people can't be responsible because they're not accountable to themselves, which goes back to the morning routine, I have to be accountable to myself to get up and work out and do like today, I didn't go to the gym because my daughter was a little bit ill. But I still got up, got my wife out to help her with stuff, got my daughter fed breakfast, and I went downstairs to my garage, and I did a workout within the garage, I have some kettlebells and a few weights and they'll say was back buys cardio, and score and situps. So I did some bicep curls and other curls with the kettlebell, do some back movements with that, a jump rope for probably about 10 to 15 minutes of no jump rope, you know, throughout the workout, got my you to know, 700 sit ups in and my core of the core and I got my push ups in. And that's what Jack meant, I feel by being your own CEO, right. And that's why I feel with my morning routine, it sets the day for me. Because if I don't get that stuff done, right, right, I don't feel the same. I don't feel you know, like myself. So I think it's very important for listeners to understand that they have to be the CEO of their own lives.
Ryan
I think that's a key part of this message here in this conversation. You know, I sometimes wonder what, it will take for people, to take that seriously. And I think sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. Like, they might not understand the concept or they've been exposed to the concept of being your own CEO or hero. But that's where conversations like we're having that's where this we're where these conversations come in. So I'm hoping someone listens to this. And they're like, You know what, I really resonate with me what Marcus said and I've never really thought about approaching life that way and I'm gonna give it a try. So hopefully that's what happens here. So I've got one last question for you, Marcus. And we're gonna wrap up with you telling everyone how they can learn more about you connect with you, etc. Do you know the meaning of life I like asking this question because obviously, it's a personal question? Your meeting is different than my meeting invite and, and my listeners so through the lens of Marques what is the meaning of life?
Marques
To me the meaning of life He is sharing your knowledge, your experiences, but most importantly, your failures or what you can call your learned lessons. So others can succeed. I feel so many people are caught up in how they can succeed or do things in life, which is great, but you are living by the law of value, and also by the law of influence with staves, that if you put people's needs abundantly, and or consistently, before yours, you will influence people for the best. And I feel that's a message that I hope your listeners get is to live life and help others succeed. Because if you end up helping others succeed, most of the time, right, you end up succeeding as well. So I think that's very big. That's very important. And it's a law that I live by the law of value and also the law of influence. And also feels good to help and provide impact and we think about like the most fulfilling parts of your days it might be when you're helping a friend or family member, etc. It just feels good to help people and it's like you said it's important.
Ryan
Absolutely. Marques, this is great. Time is up, but our conversation really enjoyed everything you shared. If someone wants to reach out to you, where should we send them?
Marques
They can go to our website, www.marquesogden.com. They can also connect with us on through email at Marques@Marquesogden.com or follow us on LinkedIn. We'd love to chat with you.
Ryan
Perfect. Thanks, everyone for listening. And thanks, Marques.
Marques
Have a good one. Thanks for having me on.
Ryan
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