Turning Setbacks and Failures Into a 9-Figure Exit with Joel Marion – EP 296

Justin Donald: What's up, Joel? Good to have you on the show.

Joel Marion: Well, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. We're looking very forward to doing this.

Justin Donald: Well, me as well, and it's been a long time coming, and we're long overdue for a hangout. We were just talking off-air how we want to actually get together in person here. And so, I would imagine here between Tampa and Austin at some point we'll make that happen.

Joel Marion: Yeah, of course. Of course. The last time we were in the flesh together was for a dear friend's memorial, John Ruhlin.

Justin Donald: That's right. That's right.

Joel Marion: So, in the spirit of him, we need to continue and prioritize relationship.

Justin Donald: That's right. Well, I'm ready to do so. I know you are, and so glad that he brought us together.

Joel Marion: Absolutely.

Justin Donald: We're actually going to be spending some time with his family here in, what, just about 10 days,

Joel Marion: Wow. Beautiful. Yeah. Such a beautiful family. I was just talking to Lindsay on text the other day.

Justin Donald: They're just wonderful. Yeah, my heart goes out to them, and just glad that all of us can be in and around their orbit and get a chance to just continue to do life with them, so.

Joel Marion: Yeah, 100%.

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, I'm thrilled to share your story, a guy who started as a physical education teacher turned entrepreneur. But not just any entrepreneur. I mean, I don't know of anyone else, I mean, the list is super small of anyone who actually ramped revenue to $100 million inside of their first year starting a company. It's rare air to be successful as an entrepreneur. It's extremely rare air to have that type of success right out of the gates. And so, I can't wait to kind of break this down and talk a little bit more with you about it.

Joel Marion: It's a classic 20-year overnight success story.

Justin Donald: Right. Well, let's actually talk about you as a high school teacher. This is going back to when you were 25 years old, and so I'm curious, back then, what did success look like versus today? I think it probably looks a little different. And kind of what made you pivot away from teaching?

Joel Marion: Yeah. So, teaching was honestly a safe job out of college. I'm kind of grateful. My dad's more conservative when it comes to all this stuff. The fact if I had the wiring of my mom and my dad, I'd never be an entrepreneur. However, his advice, I was actually going to school for fitness. I was an athlete growing up, and then I kind of hung up my basketball shoes. I could've like played Division III, but I didn't want like I knew there was no future there.

Justin Donald: Well, you're definitely a tall guy. I'll give you that. I feel like I'm pretty tall at 6'1", maybe a little taller depending on the shoes that I got on, what kind of sneakers I got on, and you're towering over me.

Joel Marion: Yeah. I played basketball. It was a love of mine growing up. I actually went back and coached basketball for a couple of years, and recently, we'll probably get into some of that impact stuff after the success. But I knew it was time to shift to something else. I ended up falling in love with fitness my freshman year in college, coming from an athlete background, and I wanted to be a personal trainer. I didn't really know what that looked like, and my dad's like, these guy… He found a newspaper article, or maybe his mom gave it to him, where it had average income for different professions. And then for a personal trainer was like $20,000 a year or something like that.

Justin Donald: Super well, yeah.

Joel Marion: Yeah. And for the average personal trainer, sure, of course, we all know very successful people in that space, but on average, it was one of the lower-paying career paths on that sheet. And he's like, "Look, you can't do this. You know, you can't..." He's like, "You're never going to make any money." He's like, "At least, you should at least major and get your teaching certificate if you're getting all these same courses out of the way." And I was actually the first person in my entire family to graduate from college or even attend.

Justin Donald: By the way, we share that in common.

Joel Marion: Yes.

Justin Donald: By the way, we came from parents that were not entrepreneurs, so it was not the normal path, and then first person in my family to actually graduate college. So, you and I were very much alike there.

Joel Marion: Yeah. My parents came from the hippie generation and were just in survival mode. And the first house that I lived in, my parents paid $23,000 for it. So, I come from very humble beginnings, and I guess I don't know what it was. I always saw that there was more. I saw people with more. I saw people living a lifestyle with more freedom that weren't oppressed by their financial capabilities. And I wasn't thinking like I'm going to be like super mega rich millionaire or anything like that, but I'm just like it's something better than this.

Justin Donald: Yeah, right.

Joel Marion: So, I really focused on what I thought was the path to success, which was get good grades. I graduated valedictorian of my high school, small class, but still, I mean, my grade point average was like 99 point whatever it was. And then I went to college, graduated with honors, magna cum laude, and I took my dad's advice. I got my teaching cert. I double majored in health and exercise science and then physical education teaching, and immediate opportunity for a job that was paid decent in the 40s. $42,000 is what I made as a high school teacher. It was a good start, but I knew like this is not the end career path for me. I knew that going into it. I enjoyed aspects of it, but like everything that I...

And I never wanted to be wealthy just to be wealthy. I wanted to be wealthy to have freedom. And when I had to be up at 5:30 every morning, and at school at 6:30, and teaching my first class at 7:00 AM, and dealing with the bureaucracy of the administration like I'm not a guy who's... I'm not meant to be an employee. That's not my wiring. So, just answering to a principal, and I don't know that I have an authority problem or anything, but like everyone just felt like they were too important for what they were doing. And I enjoyed working with the kids. That was the best part of it, but everything else was not the end for me. So, fitness was my passion. I was on all these message boards just like freely giving up my time. I was super passionate of it.

I was just completely engulfed in the science behind body transformation and all this stuff. And when I was in college, I actually entered, I don't know if anyone listening remembers a book called Body for Life, and they were…

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Joel Marion: And the supplement company, experimental.

Justin Donald: That thing blew up, right? That was huge.

Joel Marion: Yeah, it was on the bestseller list, I don't know, for like five years straight on New York Times. Huge book. They had a partner magazine called Muscle Media, and then they had an annual body transformation contest called Body for Life Challenge. So, when I was in college, I entered that contest, and like much of my career, I set these like really audacious goals, and I have this belief in myself that I don't know if it's warranted or not. It's just worked out for me. But I entered the contest with the intention to win it. There are 250,000 people or whatever entered this thing, but like my mindset was like, "I want to win it." I didn't even think any other possibility.

So, I end up winning it for my age. And gender, male, 18 to 25 years old, was the category that I won. And as a 19-year-old kid, I get a check for $25,000 and an all-expenses-paid. And I got to see like, okay, here's what a little taste a little bit of like things going right looks for you.

Justin Donald: Well, yeah. I mean, in one moment, and whatever it took to train, I think you were going to train anyway, so it's like this sliver of time, you just made 60% or 65% of your annual income, probably closer to depending on taxes and all that, maybe it's closer to 75%.

Joel Marion: Right. Yeah. So, I had a passion to be an author. That was my main thing. And as I was teaching, I was always working on that stuff on the side. Now, and this kind of gets into the next part of the story, but my path to success is riddled with failure. I mean, it's just completely no, no, no, no, no times 100 for like three or four years. And then, oh, a minor breakthrough. And then up my foot in the door over here. But it was a grind. And I always give the analogy I think James Clear talks about in his Atomic Habits book, of the stone cutter, and you're wailing away on this stone over and over and over again, right? And it's like you think nothing's happening, and then all of a sudden, on like the 97th blow, the whole stone breaks in half, right?

Well, does that mean that you did something magical on number 97? No, it's a compounding effort where it looks like there's nothing happening, but it's all laying the groundwork for, oh, boom, one breakthrough, and the next thing you know, things can take off like a rocket. So, I've had several of those moments. My early career was just riddled with article rejections, trying to write for magazines. And then I got an article published with Muscle Media, who was the partner of the Body for Life challenge. Maybe that was like a charity publishing at that point because I was one of their champions. But it allowed me to start writing for a prominent magazine and work on my writing with the editor there, who became a good friend.

Then next thing you know, I got an article published here. I got an article published on an online website. Then next thing you know, I'm on the training advisory board for Men's Fitness Magazine and writing for them regularly. So, it looks like it's going well, but freelance writing for magazines doesn't really pay the bills.

Justin Donald: You're not making anything.

Joel Marion: Yeah, I'm making like $7,000, $8,000 a year just getting my name out there, and extra income.

Justin Donald: But that'll prove to actually be pretty big, right?

Joel Marion: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Donald: You're basically attracting and building an audience. Whether you're capturing it or not, you're building a name. The money's not there, but hopefully, in time, you're going to monetize it.

Joel Marion: That’s the other part, the capture. I had no idea what I was doing at the time when it got… So, I put a website up joelmarion.net, and I had like a newsletter sign-up thing in the right corner, which proved to serve me well when I kind of pivoted, which we'll get into that part of the story. But I'd never sent an email. And I was like, "Oh, it's $20 a month to send email? Like, I'm not signing up for that. I'll just collect some." You know, like that was like, man, I could never see it paying for itself, you know what I mean, which obviously, for those who know me, email marketing is how I kind of generate all my wealth.

Justin Donald: That's hysterical. And by the way, I actually love this story because, so what we're hearing here, because a lot of people just talk about how successful they are and this and that, but I love hearing like, "Hey, these are the roadblocks. I barely got my foot in the door.” Like, it took me a while. We finally got a breakthrough because everyone sees the success. They don't know the story of the failures. But then the mindset shifting as well, where you're like, "I'm not paying $20 a month." Like, I love hearing that because, I mean, it just shows like the difference, the pivot, and where a lot of us live. By the way, similar upbringing, right?

So, I looked very scarcely at things where I was like, "This much money? No way," right? Like, my parents would never approve of this, and I'm just kind of modeling after what I had learned, probably similar for you, and that ends up being the thing over time that is your biggest source of wealth.

Joel Marion: Yeah, you have to understand the difference between investment and an expense. And obviously, it would be the cost to send email as an investment into the ROI that it can bring. However, I had no idea how to monetize an email list or anything like that, as the point. So, just to fast-forward in the story, I was writing for articles for a while. And I became pretty successful at that, but it was never a huge earner. And then I had an article idea that I said, "You know what? This is going to be better as a book." It was a diet book called The Cheat to Lose Diet, which is kind of counterintuitive, and it was about how to use your favorite foods to trick your metabolism to overcome dieting plateaus and lose weight faster.

So, I'm like, "Who wouldn't want to eat pizza and lose fat faster?" So, I had the science behind it all, and it was like a totally nerdy concept from a science standpoint, and this hormone leptin, and I had 200 and some research studies. I wrote the book, or at least the first four chapters, and then a pretty extensive book proposal. And I had the hardest time in the world getting anyone's attention to represent me, but my platform wasn't quite there yet, and my audience wasn't quite there yet. And that was like six to nine months of just agent rejection after rejection after rejection. For one reason or another, some of them liked it, had a conflict of interest with another client. Some of them, "Hey, come back."

Another agent wanted to do a paperback book. That really wasn't my vision. I had my eyes set on New York Times bestseller, and I'm not going to have a start with a paperback. And then eventually, the unique part of the story, I was about to mass submit to all these agents, which is frowned upon because people want the opportunity to decline before you move on to the next one. But I'm like, "I'm not waiting anymore." So, then I hit up the editor of Men's Health, and I said, "Hey, I'm kind of getting a little frustrated. I wait two months to hear from somebody. They like the idea, and then they have some other some reason why they're not going to bring me on as a client." And I said, "Do you have anyone else that I could get like a warm intro to or something before I go and just try and mass email a bunch of people?"

Justin Donald: Yep.

Joel Marion: So, he said, "I actually don't have a warm intro." He's like, "But if you want to talk to a guy, try to research this guy, his name's Mel Berger. He's rep Barry Sears in The Zone. He's rep Jillian Michaels. He's in all these people." So, all I had was a name. That's it. Like, he didn't even know the guy. So, I go, and I don't know if you remember this thing called the WayBack Machine on the internet. It's where you could find pages that don't even exist anymore. They're like old, archived websites, right? So, I couldn't find any contact information for him that was reliable. So, I go on the WayBack Machine, and I see an AOL email address for this agent on some page that was published years ago on some article that he was interviewed in.

I put my proposal together. I email Mel Berger on his AOL personal email address. He gets back to me in 24 hours. Signs me to a contract the next day. We sell the book for $100,000 the day after that.

Justin Donald: Oh, my goodness.

Joel Marion: So, this is nine months of nothing, and then in three days, I got a six-figure book deal. Then spend the next year and a half anticipating the dream, only to have the book release, and it totally bombed. So, now I'm back at less than square one. I'm substitute teaching just to pay my bills, right? Because I took the year off. I went on sabbatical, and I only did that because I had no intention of returning to teaching. I'm like, "This is it. I'm going to become an author."

Justin Donald: Yeah. Write the book. You're going to be big time.

Joel Marion: Yeah, this is my career path. I'm just going to keep writing books and have a nice income and whatever. And thank God it didn't work out, because the ceiling for an author is a lot less than the money that I made.

Justin Donald: For sure. Yeah, most people don't realize this, but I mean, I think the stats are that 99% of authors are never going to make any, like, real money with their book. So, you've got... it's 1%, I believe, of authors that ever achieve over a million copies of their books sold. Right? And so, you're probably not making a whole lot of money if you're not at that, at least money to live on. Maybe if you're top 5%, it's enough for, like, hey, nice little side hustle, a nice little amount to go on vacation with. But to really make money, you need to be over at least over 500,000 copies. But usually, it kind of tails off, too, right? So, you have a big first year.

Joel Marion: Yeah, you got to have multiple books and all that. But in my situation, if the first book doesn't work, there is no second book, unless something radically shifts years later. But there's no follow-up to that. The market proved that either, A, they didn't want it, or B, you don't have an audience big enough to sell the books. Publisher made all these promises, didn't really deliver, but it was the biggest gift for me because it forced me to learn how to build an audience and also sell my own information. So, I took the failed book concept. Just to go back, I was substitute teaching, and I ended up going back teaching full-time the next year. The substitute teaching part of my career was like…

Justin Donald: So, this is 26? You're 26 now?

Joel Marion: Yeah, I was somewhere around there, yep, 26, 27.

Justin Donald: Okay. Because I think 27 is when you started your company, right?

Joel Marion: Yeah, that's when I launched the company, was after this failure. Again, I was substitute teaching. Like the last thing that I... And I just want to hit the emotion of this period of my life, because I think it's important for other people who are trying to get something off the ground to hear this stuff. I'm substitute teaching. I'm probably more depressed than I've ever been, and this is coming off of just getting a $100,000 book deal, but it wasn't going to go the way that I wanted for the long term, and I saw that. I'm substitute teaching, making $100 a day just to pay my rent. And I'm depressed as could be.

I didn't even want to go out to the grocery store to run into somebody that I knew, because they would ask me, "How's the book doing?" And that's the last conversation that I wanted to freaking have. I either got to be fake about it, or like I'm not going to... Nobody wants to hear the real reality. "Oh, I'm substitute teaching and totally bombed," you know? And here's the thing. As a substitute teacher, the way that this whole thing works is they call you at 5:00 in the morning and tell you it's a job, what school district you're going to, and whatever. So, my phone's on, and this is back when you actually had a phone that plugged into the wall.

And my phone would ring, and if it was a job at my high school that I taught at, I would not take the job, because I was too embarrassed to go back there in my sabbatical year for my promotion of my book, for me to be substitute teaching and deal with all the questions. So, it was a humbling experience for me, but it really motivated me to figure out plan B. Now, I could have just, and I think most people would at this point, just say, “I tried. It's not for me. Teaching's a safer route. Let me work my way up to making $65,000 a year with a nice pension or whatever.”

Justin Donald: Well, that's what most people do, right? And by the way, I know this very well, because my wife's mother was a teacher. My mother-in-law was a teacher, great teacher, and that's how she retired. My wife was also a teacher, and that's just the path, right? Like, that is the path that most people, once you get into the profession, take.

Joel Marion: Yeah, it was the easier way to go, especially after this heartbreaking book launched that did not go as planned. I could have maybe continued to write articles, made a little side income there, and went back to being a teacher. But that was so not what I wanted to do. So, I knew some guys who I was writing in the magazine industry who were also selling e-books. And they were like, "Yeah, it pays my mortgage," or, "Pays my car payment," or whatever. And I'm like, "If these guys can make a couple grand a month off this, if I really just...” This was my mentality, “If I really study this craft, and if I really give it my all, I should be able to replace my teaching income and then some.”

So, that was the intent of that season of my life was simply to do something that I'm more passionate about and make the same amount of money, and have freedom and not have to be up at 5:30 in the morning, and not have to request off, and all these things just to get…

Justin Donald: And it's hard to get off in the summer if you're teaching. Like, I mean, this was the big thing why I wanted to retire my wife is because she'd have summers off. I was busy working at that time. That was my busiest season. She'd have winter break off that was busy for me. And so, we were just not on the same schedule. And the ability to get time during the school year was just not a reality.

Joel Marion: Yeah. Two personal days during the school year. You're either off when the kids are off, and then that's it, unless you call in and take a sick day. But no ability to say yes to people who are inviting you to things or whatever, unless "Oh, it's a weekend and I got to be there on a Friday night." Well, I can't. I got to work on Friday. So, all of these things were what motivated me to keep at it. Long story short, I took the failed book concept. I rebranded it from The Cheat to Lose Diet to Cheat Your Way Thin. I rewrote the whole book because they had rights to it. I turned it into a multimedia course that had audio and video, and I never sold the audio rights to it, so some chapters that I just read. That was easy, repurpose of that content.

For some, I turned it to like a Camtasia screen record and made a lesson out of it. And then I just broke down the nuts and bolts into easy-to-follow PDF manuals. So, it was like six manuals and several audios, several videos, and I ended up selling that for $97 as a course as opposed to a book that I was making $3.50 per book sold on that has a ceiling in the bookstores at the time of probably like 28, 29.95 or something like that. And now I repurpose... Same info. I'm charging $97 for it now.

Justin Donald: And just for clarity's sake, we're about the same age, I think. So, this is back in about 2009 era?

Joel Marion: Yep, 2009 was when I launched this business. I started actually before the e-book thing. I launched an online... I started to learn direct response marketing. And then I started to learn from a guy about how to sell higher ticket coaching, right? So, as I went back to school, I launched an online personal training business that I charged $250 a month for them to work with me, and I had credibility writing for these magazines and all that stuff, and I would give them customized diet and fitness program. That 2,000-person email list that I had that I never emailed once, I learned marketing. I did a four-email drip sequence. I signed 50 people up to pay $250 a month, and now I'm making $12,000 a month.

Justin Donald: Nice. That's incredible. And by the way…

Joel Marion: So, I already eclipsed my high school, but I already committed to go back for the year, and I know I got to do more than just this online thing. I got to learn the e-book business. So, I taught, and I learned, and I networked, and I built all the relationships and all of that. In the spring of that year, back teaching, I relaunched the book. We charged $97 for the course. I knew I had built relationships with all the top affiliates in the health and fitness space, and this is something we could probably jump off and talk about, just by being a good human. And I became friends with everybody. And I had no email list. I had no way to promote them back.

I had no to add that direct value at the time. I was like, "Hey, I'm curious about getting into this business." And then I found ways that I could add value to them. And next thing you know, one of the largest guys in the space, Mike Geary, he had the number one e-book on ClickBank, which is the biggest digital marketplace in the world. He happened to live 10 minutes from me. I had no idea until I offered to send him a hard copy of my book, as part of this ongoing conversation that we're having, and I was interviewing him for Men's Fitness, so that was the value that I could give to him, right? And I said, "Hey, let me ship. What's your address?" And then I'm like, "Oh, you live in Morristown. I live in Burlington. We're literally right down Route 38 from one another.”

So, we met up to have a beer at this bar called PJ's, and that was the next thing that changed my life. Then we hit it off. I was a good guy. He liked me a lot. Then he invited me to another affiliate fitness marketer's 30th birthday that he was having in New York City. I met probably two dozen people that I wanted to connect with just at that one event. I drove up there to New York from New Jersey with him. But I launched that e-book, and I did $450,000 in three days. And that was off of seven months of preparation to launch it the right way, building all the relationships and all that. After that, like I knew I'm good. I understand. I have the audience. I just got 8,000 new customers for this book. I understand email marketing.

I'm sending an email promoting complementary products every day, along with a little article or something. I'm making $1,500 a day. Like, I'm good at this point. So, I put in my resignation for teaching for good this time. I didn't say sabbatical year. I said, "You know, I'm resigning." And my dream was to move to Florida. I hated the New Jersey winters, the fact that it was 4:00 and pitch black every time I was leaving work. It was just miserable. I love the people there. I love the summers there, but as far as that, I knew when I was a teenager, this is not where I want to be living for the rest of my life.

Justin Donald: Yep. And by the way, for context, I just want to point this out. You're having your biggest income years during the global financial crisis.

Joel Marion: Yes.

Justin Donald: So, you felt it, you experienced it in a whole different way, which is really fascinating.

Joel Marion: I didn't have any idea that anything was going on. I had no money to lose in the first place.

Justin Donald: That is so crazy.

Joel Marion: And then I built the business, and I did $700,000 in net profit my first year in business.

Justin Donald: Oh, my goodness.

Joel Marion: When I launched my online business. The next year, I did a couple of million. The year after that, I was making like between 3 million and 4 million net.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Joel Marion: Just from this. And the funny thing is, I actually became known as the launch guy in the fitness industry, and then I became a publisher. So, the thing that failed for me the first time, which was relying on a publisher to really add value, I became a publisher, and I was like, "I'm actually going to add value." So, I would launch two of my... I would do four launches a year, one a quarter. I would do two of my own new products and books or courses, and then I would partner with two other people. And I had, like, a lineup of people who wanted me to launch their thing, because they knew if Joel's behind it, all their affiliates are going to be behind it. And I took 80% of the profit, but we share the customer list.

So, I'm like, "Look, if you understand anything about anything in this business, if you want to be successful, everything's in the customer list and what you're going to do with it after. You can make no money on the front end. So, the fact that we're splitting it 80/20, you should just be thrilled to get 10,000 customers, and then you're good for life if you have any clue of what you're doing." So, I took people that had good concepts who also had at least some understanding of marketing, because I wanted them to be successful afterward, and I didn't want to manage the whole thing ongoing. I just wanted to do the launch. And built a really successful launch-based business, and then one of the guys who I did a launch with became my business partner in the supplement company, Josh Bezoni. We launched…

Justin Donald: Yeah, he's a friend of mine as well. We actually just played pickleball.

Joel Marion: Yeah. Nice. Nice.

Justin Donald: Together, and he's awesome.

Joel Marion: Josh and I met in an interesting way. Another guy, Rob Poulos, who was in the fitness industry at the time, introduced us. Josh was coming off of a nightmare in his first supplement company in pivoting into fitness publishing. And he heard my name several times. Rob said, "Let me introduce you," and then he connects me. And Josh, he was running a $10 million supplement company before that, so he's not the typical person I'm doing a product launch with who was like really needs me to make this work. But I didn't care. I had two slots available for the year, so you either take the deal or don't. So, I also had a little bit of an ego back then, and so did he, so our exchange was very comical.

Our first exchange was basically, he said, "Hey, you know, Rob connected us. I'm interested in helping launch this book, 'Belly Fat Free.' What does that look like?" So, I just sent him a whole pitch. "It's 80%/20. Here's why this is a great deal for you," like all this stuff. And then he basically emailed back. He's like, "Yeah, I just sold $40 million in supplements the last few years. I think I'm good on this deal." He's like, "You probably want my firstborn, too," he says. So, I said, "Yeah, have a good one." Like, I could care less. I was moving on. Like, “I'm making a spot available for you, bro,” was my attitude.

Justin Donald: That's the spirit.

Joel Marion: Interestingly enough, yeah, he puts on an event in Austin and invites... He's very smart and strategic, as you know by knowing him.

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Joel Marion: So, he puts on an event in Austin. He's like, "Okay, this jolt thing's not going to work out, so let me do this another way." So, he puts on an event in Austin, invites all the fitness marketers, including myself, has Tim Ferriss there, has Joe Polish there, has all these... He has Dean Graziosi there, who's friends that he's networked with over the years, and invites everybody to this event where he pretty much made no money on it, but the relationship was so that he could get to know everybody and show them a great time, right? So, I ended up going there speaking, and we became best friends that weekend.

Justin Donald: That's awesome.

Joel Marion: It was. And then we revisited the thing. He's like, "Hey man, that was such a..." We laughed the whole time. I was cracking him up. Like our personalities just hit. And we laugh about our initial exchange because we went on to create a company that did a billion dollars in revenue together. But we revisited it after that, and he's like, "Hey, look, can we work something else out? The 80% is not going to work here, but I'd love to have you on board at a limited capacity." So, I ended up helping him launch it. I did way more than the 25% that I was making from it, but it worked itself out because…

Justin Donald: Sounds like it.

Joel Marion: He approaches me about the supplement company, which obviously became the biggest part of my entrepreneurial career.

Justin Donald: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, how many people have run a company that had a billion dollars in revenue? I mean, it’s incredible.

Joel Marion: Yeah, I wish I didn’t, because we were only supposed to run it for five years and exit it, and it ended up taking twice as long. So, I can say that we did a billion dollars, but not by choice. I would’ve been very happy doing $400 to $500 million and selling it when we originally planned. And that’s the whole thing. You’re never not going to have issues. I had a heartbreaking situation running a $100 million company, where we were on the one-yard line in the Super Bowl selling the company, and then the deal fell apart in the 12th hour. And then we had to go back and totally revamp the company, like almost start over.

We lost a lot of our executives. The team fell apart. It was like locker room drama. Everyone’s blaming each other on why we lost the big game. And it was basically like a rebuilding year for us the next year, and then rebuilding the year after that, and then rebuilding the year after that. And then five years later, we…

Justin Donald: By the way, I also think it’s super common when you’re going through the process, you kind of take your foot off the pedal as well. You’re like, “Oh, this thing’s going to exit. We’re done. We’re wrapping it up. This thing, it’s a done deal,” even though it’s not yet.

Joel Marion: Yeah. We’re thinking we’re going to walk away, and then I went, and then you go from walking away after a five-year grind, I mean, to get to that point, thinking it’s like you just ran a marathon, you crossed the finish line, and then somebody says, “Hey, just kidding. You got to run another one,” which is where we were, which was at the emotional gravity of that was just so much to deal with. That was one of the most difficult years of my adult life dealing with that.

And then I end up having some real issues with Josh as a result of that. All this stuff, thank God, worked itself out, and as you surrender, I’m a huge faith-based person and I just ended up surrendering all this stuff and in hindsight, like I see it had to work out exactly the way that it did. Like, if I exited at that time, I would not have been ready for that type of wealth.

Don’t get me wrong, I was doing very well. We were splitting $20 million a year net profit. But like, to be sitting on a $80 million extra liquid in my account and then in a phase where I thought I was retiring at whatever I was at the time, maybe 35 years old. So, that wasn’t the right time for me. I had a lot of other lessons to learn. And through this whole situation that I end up having with Josh, I learned a tremendous amount of lessons that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t go through it.

Justin Donald: All right, I would tell people, my best lessons come in the failures because as you’re crushing it, you think you’re smarter than you are and you don’t give enough credit to outside factors, luck, timing, all these different things. So, it’s like, you’re on top of the mountain and you can do no wrong. It’s like you got to be humbled a little bit to say, “Okay, let me step back here. I’m not as good as I thought I was. Let’s retool here. Let’s figure this out.”

Joel Marion: Yeah, and that was the reality that we did $100 million in revenue. We gradually grew that for four years. I think we did $127 million or something our fourth year. We went to market. All the revenue generation of the company primarily fell on me, and they’re like, I’m getting a lot of pressure from Josh and from our CFO, who owned equity as well, about hitting certain budgetary numbers. And I’m like, “Yeah, guys, okay, you’re projecting double the net profit of last year. That’s the number I got to hit for you guys to be happy with the exit number” I’m like, “How about you? How about you go generate some revenue?”

But I did it. We did $12 million the year before, and then we did $21 million the next year. And EBITDA, worst year of my life, though, $21 million in EBITDA, probably the worst year of my life, except for the next year, which was even worse after we’d failed to sell the company. But I’m like, “Okay, hit the number.” I sacrificed everything. I sacrificed my family. I sacrificed sleep. I carried my laptop around all day. I got revenue reports every two hours to make sure that we were on track, because if I fell behind a day…

Justin Donald: It’s hard to catch up.

Joel Marion: Now, I’m going to fall behind the week, now I’m going to fall behind the month, and now I got to play catch-up next month. So, I had to stay on top of it. And, like, I couldn’t access reports on my phone. So, I’m literally, I’m out at dinner with my laptop for a year. It was insane. I had to check in on everything all the time. And I did what was needed to do to hit the number, and then we failed to sell the company. And I learned real quick that revenue is not the only thing. There was too much risk associated with certain areas of the company.

And ultimately, I learned the company is not worth anything. At least it’s not worth a number that would be reasonable to pay for a $100 million company. We could’ve fire saled it for $20 million or something. But when you’re looking at selling the company for $150 to $250 million, and that’s where you’ve got your eyes set, and you realize there’s not a soul in the world who’s willing to pay that. It was a very humbling experience to walk through. And then the reset was a very difficult time.

Now, we did it and we sold the company five years later for a nine-figure exit. But these are not the stories that are typical. And like, failure has been part of not– it’s not just, oh, Joel the teacher can’t get an article published. And then it’s like, oh, the guy who published 100 articles can’t get an agent to represent him. Or now, I got a book deal, I can’t get the book to work. And now, I got a successful e-book company, and we launch this buyer trust thing and then we can’t sell it. And like, it’s just over and over and over again.

Most people would say after five years of that and all the hell that we went through, like, this crap’s not worth it. Like, just let it run on autopilot, make whatever it makes, and most people would be done at that point. And I’m not even saying possibly, that would’ve been a better decision for my lifestyle, for my family, and all of that, and what was involved the next five years. But we ended up doing it and successfully exiting the company in 2021. In 2021, I was 39 years old at the time, and now then onto the next chapter of life. But it was not an easy road. Any of these milestones had a million different failures along the way.

Justin Donald: Well, it’s incredible that you were able to rebuild it again. So, five years, basically went down to nothing. You rebuilt it again in another five years. It’s like a brand-new company. It’s like you did two companies, each of them five years’ time you were able to kind…

Joel Marion: We went from $127 million revenue to $30 million revenue that year.

Justin Donald: Whoa. That’s crazy.

Joel Marion: This is after gradually growing $100 million, $110 million, $115 million, $121, $127, and then $30 million, so for multiple reasons.

Justin Donald: I happen to know or have good intel, I think, on what your exit was, and we don’t have to talk about the specifics there unless you want to. But that number, if what I know is correct, is a massive number, like, well into the nine figures. So, you’re at another stratosphere of wealth, financial success that most people spend their whole lives pursuing, and you achieved it at, what, 39 years old, I think you said.

Joel Marion: Yeah.

Justin Donald: So, I’m curious, like, what surprised you the most about success? And how did your definition of wealth change during that time, during your 30s, and even how you look at it today?

Joel Marion: Yeah. So, I had this idea of what it was to be wealthy earlier on as I was building a company, and it was just like, “I got more money, let me spend it on something cool.” I live in Tampa, so what do I do? LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh are on the Miami Heat, which is my favorite team to watch, so I buy season tickets at the half court line.

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

Joel Marion: And then I buy a condo across from the stadium. And then not only did I buy a condo, I gutted it. I combined two units, gutted it, remodeled the whole thing. The unit was on the cover of Florida Design. You think like all this stuff that looks super cool. And all of it was, like, rather empty. I didn’t realistically get down to the games as often as I would like. Then LeBron James leaves and goes back to Cleveland. Now, I’m traveling to Cleveland for games, and my condo is being occupied by friends because I’m like, I never get down there.

So, I have a $4 million condo across from arena. I’m giving my tickets away to business friends. I’m allowing them and their families to stay, which is great to be able to be a blessing to people when I operate from a position of generosity. However, it’s a little bit different when somebody calls you because, again, I’m not down there occupying this and I don’t have a house management company, I’m not renting it. I’m just letting friends use it.

Somebody gets to the condo. I’m at dinner with my wife, and I get a text message, “Hey there, the air conditioning’s not working, bro. It’s super, super hot in here.” And I’m like, last thing I want is for these people to be dealing with that. These are personal friends of mine. It’s like my $4 million condo that I don’t use is now a freaking problem at dinner for me.

Justin Donald: It’s affecting your quality of life.

Joel Marion: Right. Right. Yeah. So, I realized that more stuff, more homes in different locations and all that was not bringing me any joy. The stuff starts to own you rather than you owning it. Similar to BioTrust, where the business started to own you rather than me being a business owner. But that year I totally was carrying my laptop around everywhere that I was going. Those are not the positions that you want to be in, where something is affecting your quality of life to the degree that, “Why am I doing this?” You start asking yourself the question.

And then you go back to them like, “Hey, there’s hundreds of millions of people in the United States that would trade their life for yours in a heartbeat. Be grateful.” But I also have decisions to make, like, what’s working and what’s not working. And what I thought was successful did not bring me a lot of joy. More stuff, more houses, overstacking the calendar, all these things with things to do was stressing me out more than it was. I had the ability to do it, but doing it all was not the answer. So, that’s what success I thought was back then.

And it’s interesting because I tell this story. I feel like I can tell any young entrepreneur who’s coming into money this story and like, you’re just going to have to figure it out yourself, because everybody wants to own the stuff.

Justin Donald: Totally own it.

Joel Marion: It’s like, “Oh, look at this sick house that I’m building.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I mean, that’s cool. It’s not your main house. How often are you actually going to get there? You’re running this company.” Like, you try to help. It’s just I don’t think anybody could’ve said anything to me to the contrary that I would’ve listened to until I experienced it myself. So, if you’re listening, hopefully, you’re different. But most people will have to learn this one, because it’s cool for a minute to have the house, the condo that you remodeled with an elite designer that’s on the cover of Florida Design, but it’s very fleeting. And it did not bring me long-term joy.

What brings me long-term joy now and what wealth is for me now is having peace in my life and having time with my kids and having true freedom, not just financial freedom, but true freedom in my day to where I can create my own schedule the way that I want to. And again, I can be my worst enemy on some of these things. I literally just canceled flying to Philadelphia tomorrow night to go to a concert with some old buddies because I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed on some other things that I have on my plate.

And then back when I put all this stuff on the calendar a couple months ago, I didn’t really fully understand what I was going to be navigating through right now. But my calendar tends even today to be a little extensive. Now, for me, I’m built for that for the most part. But even I will run into times where like, “Hey, I’m feeling overwhelmed. I got to cancel a trip.” And that’s growth on my part because I would never cancel anything before.

I’d feel like I’m letting the friends down. I feel like I’m going to miss out on something. I booked this for a reason. I should be grateful that I get to go do this rather than the fact that right now, it’s probably going to create more stress for me to go and do this fun thing than it would be for me to just, like, kind of hunker down and get some things off my plate.

Justin Donald: Yeah. And I love that you’re mentioning here, like the thing that I talk about a ton is buying your time back, owning it, having true freedom, right, to make the calls that you want to make. And you got to be careful because your schedule will fill up. It’ll fill up kind of by default if you’re not intentionally scheduling it. But I think more than owning the stuff, because the stuff ultimately owns you, the business owns you, your possessions own you, I think more important than any of that is just the ability to actually own your time, have financial freedom. And one of my favorite quotes is, “Rich people have a lot of money, and wealthy people have a lot of time.” And that’s really the mantra that I try to live my life by as well.

Joel Marion: Yeah, I would say, to add onto that, they have a lot of time and they have a lot of love in their life. They have a lot of quality relationships, which to me is honestly the only thing that matters at the end of the day. I never wanted to become wealthy to have a bunch of stuff. That became a little game for a little bit, but my whole drive was so that I could take care of my parents, was that so that I could actually go do fun things and have fun experiences, was that my kids, I went on one vacation when I was a kid my entire childhood and it wasn’t even a great one. It was to Disney, but my family state was not such that it was a good trip.

I want to give my kids better than I had. I wanted to be able to have the freedom to– if I want to book an epic vacation and go to Europe with my family, that’s a possibility. But it was all about life experiences and more so about everybody else than really it was about me, was my drive. It was like, man, wouldn’t it be cool to pay my parents’ house off? Okay, I did that. Wouldn’t it be cool to buy my dad his dream car? Okay, I did that. Wouldn’t it be cool to take my mom to Italy? Because, again, the Jersey Shore was our vacation every year. We had to overnight at a motel one night at the Jersey Shore. That was our big thing to look forward to every summer.

I didn’t know any different back when I was a kid. But as I start to get older, I start to see there’s more out here than that. And my drive to acquire wealth was for that reason. What can I do for other people in my life that it’s going to leave a lasting impact, create memories more so than the wealth? And nobody’s taking the stuff with them. If you’re lucky, you have some stuff left over to leave on to benefit the next generation. But the only thing that you got at the end of life is your experiences and the people that you experienced it with and what those experiences meant to you or the joy that they brought to you. You say, “Man, I lived a full life.”

Nobody is looking at their bank account at that point. They’re looking at, “Well, that epic story in Europe, that fun thing that we did, that game seven that we were at.” And I’ve had a lot of those moments, I’m very fortunate, and I’ve learned to pare down some of the extensiveness of the calendar. But those experiences are all my anchors. I don’t ever think about how much money did I make that month.

Justin Donald: Yep. Well, and that’s it, right? You’re naming, like, this is what I’m most passionate about is like creating epic experiences with the people that matter most. I love having the time and freedom to go to Europe for a month every year, and I’m so excited. We wanted to get this podcast in before I left, and I know you’ve got some travel plans as well. But I can’t wait to get extended time with my family and hit up all the fun countries we’re going to go to, it’s like, and we’re going to hit up off-the-beaten-path places that we haven’t been. We’re going to go to Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica. We’ll go to France. We’ll spend some time in Paris too. But I just cannot wait for that time, that adventure, those experiences with the two people that matter most to me. And I know that’s where you are as well.

Joel Marion: Oh, 100%. We leave in a few weeks to go to Amalfi Coast with our two best friends.

Justin Donald: Nice. Love it there.

Joel Marion: Just a couples’ trip. Yeah, I’ve been to Italy three different times, but never been to Amalfi. So, this trip actually comes as a re– we were supposed to do this trip last year to London to see Coldplay three different nights at Wembley Stadium.

Justin Donald: That’s awesome.

Joel Marion: I had so much stuff going on in my life last summer that we ended up canceling the trip. I came back from Norway on a Ritz-Carlton cruise and in four days, we were supposed to leave to go to London. Now, Coldplay is probably my favorite band, top three for sure, to see live. I’m a huge, huge music guy.

Justin Donald: Double digit times. Yeah, it’s awesome.

Joel Marion: Yeah. So, I was really looking forward to it. Now, the summer before that, me and my wife did a solo trip where we went and we saw them in Athens, Greece, and then we did the Greek Isles, and then we saw them in Romania, and then we saw them…

Justin Donald: Wait, were you there two summers ago? You were in Greek Isles two summers ago in Athens?

Joel Marion: Yes.

Justin Donald: So were we. Oh, that’s surreal.

Joel Marion: Yeah, fun. Did you go to the Coldplay show?

Justin Donald: I didn’t even know they were playing, but we’d spent some time in Athens, and then we hit up some of the off-the-beaten-path islands that most people don’t go to.

Joel Marion: Yeah, well, we’ve done the Greek Isle, and this is what I’m talking about. I don’t say this to brag and throw out terminology. Like, we did private yacht in the Greek Isles three years in a row. That was my honeymoon, and then we did it with friends the next year, and then we did it on my anniversary the next year.

And this Coldplay trip that we did was a separate trip. We did Athens, and then we went to Bucharest, Romania, and then we went to Budapest. Budapest is a phenomenal city. It’s like one of my favorite cities in the world. So, those are the things that I love that we can do those things, that we can create those memories and just share those experiences. But we’re going to Amalfi, and this is a remake, a redo of the Coldplay trip last year that we didn’t. And this year has been another transformational year for me of really learning about what’s important all over again, because I ended up going through a lawsuit after we sold the company. Not getting into the details of that. Tremendous amount of stress for me for like a year and a half.

And then I was overextended in a lot of investments that I had. And then I’m also a byproduct of being divorced at the height of my business career. Very expensive, and a lot of ongoing payments. So, my liquidity last summer was like, you know, and then I own properties that I paid cash for and all this stuff. So, my balance sheet looks very healthy, but my liquidity was kind of running thin with all my obligations.

And the reason why we ended up canceling the trip was because, like, I had to go back to work. I had to really take a look at the– and since I rebuilt my email marketing business back up, it’s doing phenomenal again. We have a great cushion. We’ve liquidated some properties, and all those short-term problems are solved. But I’m very excited about this Amalfi trip that we’re doing.

And about the memories thing, like some people, or I’m 44 years old and people ask me, “Hey, do you want to build another company? Or are you just kind of in memory mode right now?” And I’m like, “Why not both?” And I’m such a passionate music enthusiast. What I’m about to say probably seems like it’s contradictive to what I’ve been saying, but I probably go to 150 shows a year.

Justin Donald: Oh, my goodness. That’s crazy. That’s insane.

Joel Marion: Yeah. Probably three a week on average.

Justin Donald: Wow.

Joel Marion: Some more than that. Some it’s a trip where it’s a concert every night, and that’s the way that we just love to experience new cities is by going to shows. We went to London over Thanksgiving break two years ago, and in a 10-day span, we went to five shows in London. We saw The Script. We saw, my wife’s favorite, Beth Hart, who’s an awesome blues, just a super soulful musician. We saw Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit in an iconic venue in London. We saw Rag’n’Bone Man, and then our friend, our good friend James TW was doing an album release party, which was the whole catalyst for us going over there. Like, “Hey, let’s go support James launch his album.” And then we found four other shows that were happening while we were doing it.

But I’m actually in the middle of launching a live music experience brand. That’s the next big thing for me. And it’s not like some big festival thing. It’s all about creating core memories, like something that’s not out there. It’s a 60-person room in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s our favorite restaurant in the world. We fly in to this restaurant multiple times a year just for dinner. They have a nightclub music venue that’s right downstairs.

We’ve hosted these private events where we’ve done birthday things and we have this Michelin dinner at Dante, and then we go downstairs to CODA, which is the nightclub, and we’ll bring in bigger name artists, artists that will normally you would see them in a 3,000-person theater or maybe even in an arena, and now you get to experience them in a 60-person setting. So, I’m so excited about launching this because we’ve already been living this.

And then we plan on bolting on music pilgrimage experiences in Europe and stuff like that. But I’ve already been living it. Like, instead of using my business to fund my life, I’m now saying, “What does my life look like?” And let me bring how we live to other people. And that’s the thing that I’m most excited about.

Justin Donald: What a gift.

Joel Marion: I could not be more excited. And I’m back kind of grinding on it and I’m obsessed with it just like I am with everything that matters in my life. And this probably annoys my wife to some degree. But my wife is an event producer as well. So, we’re doing this together. So, I literally get to, with my best friend, launch a business that is the life that we’re already living. Like, I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing in this phase of my life.

Justin Donald: Well, you’ll appreciate this. I got a chance to meet Jason Isbell and kind of hang out with him on a trip to Necker Island with Richard Branson. Totally small group. He put on a private show for like, I don’t know, I think there were only 25 to 30 of us there. It was awesome. It was such a cool experience.

Joel Marion: Who’d you do the trip with? Who organized it?

Justin Donald: I had a buddy that was trying to organize some people to go there, and it was during COVID, so it was really kind of hard to make it happen. And so, everyone was bailing out, and he’s like, “Do you want to go?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll go. That sounds fantastic.” And so, I had a chance to go and spend a week there.

Joel Marion: That’s amazing.

Justin Donald: It was killer.

Joel Marion: Jason’s one of my favorites. A mentor of mine was asking, because a mentor of mine puts on a lot of these trips to Necker Island, Yanik Silver.

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah, I love Yanik. I think we’re going to co-run an event there next year, March of 2027.

Joel Marion: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, Yanik knows me well. I attribute a lot of my copywriting success to early– here’s a quick funny story before we wrap. But when I started, I had no money to invest in courses and stuff. I was coming off of a– I got $100,000, spent it all real quick, paid taxes and spent, thinking more was coming. I’m with my buddies at the first row of the Eagles games and all this stuff. And then next thing, I’m substitute teaching. So, I have no expendable income. I’m substitute teaching just to pay my car note every month.

So, I started to learn about who the players are who teach this stuff in internet marketing. So, I saw this Yanik Silver guy has the ultimate copywriting workshop. It’s a $2,000 course. I got binders, CDs, DVDs, all this stuff. I had no money to afford $2,000. There were no payment plans or anything like that. I end up buying a course on eBay for 200 bucks, I told Yanik this story. And that was where I learned copywriting. That’s how I launched my coaching business that was then doing 12 grand a month through sifting through binders that arrived on my doorstep in used condition and that was where I learned copywriting.

And I’ve become known. And again, I don’t say any of this stuff to brag. I put in the time and the effort into being what other people say about me. If people say, “Hey, he’s the Le-LeBron James of email marketing,” or “He’s one of the greatest copywriters in the direct response fitness space,” I did that because I took the time to learn it.

Justin Donald: Yeah. You’re a student of this.

Joel Marion: And it started with Yanik. This is a full circle moment for me. Several years later, after I was a broke substitute teacher reading through his course, I’m on stage at his event, Underground Internet Marketing Conference, and I win Underground Internet Marketer of the Year at Yanik’s event. So, that was like a really cool full circle. And I got $10,000 as the prize, and I donated it to my church.

Justin Donald: That’s cool.

Joel Marion: So, you see, like, how different of a place I was when I first learned about who Yanik was. He was this huge celebrity to me. And next thing you know, and like $10,000 was a fricking fortune to me at that point. Three years later, I’m on his stage, win the honor of the event or being called Underground Marketer of the Year as selected by the audience, and then take the 10 grand and donate it to my church.

Justin Donald: That’s awesome. I love your heart for people. I love your heart for giving. I love how important your faith is and the things that you’re teaching your girls and your family. You’re just leading by example in a way that I think everyone is going to resonate with that watches or listens to our show today. So, thank you for spending time with us. And where can people learn more about you and your business?

Joel Marion: Well, I have my fitness stuff. If you go to JoelMarion.com, you can see some of that stuff there. What we are launching this music business, the website will probably be up in a couple weeks. It’s called Sound and Soul, SoundandSoul.live will be the website. So, by the time you listen to this, check it out, see if it’s up yet. But we’re very excited to launch these experiences. It’s because it’s stuff we’re already doing. We do this stuff. We do a couple private events a year with musicians for my friends and family, and now we get to do it and invite.

And it’s not only a benefit to us, but it’s a benefit to other music enthusiasts who never have an opportunity to have these experiences. They can’t drop $100,000 to bring an artist in. But you can spend a fraction of that to attend an event where you have the same feeling. And then we get to do more events where we don’t have to pay for every single one of them that we’re doing. We actually create a business and add value to other people. And it’s great for the artist because they’re starving for rooms that actually care. Like, most of them shy away from doing…

Justin Donald: Or diehard fans.

Joel Marion: Right. Yeah, it’s just like who’s going to pay 2,500 bucks a person or more, depending on who the artist is, to be in that room? They’re going to be the people who– like, you’re going to feel the energy in that room. And performing for 60 people in a nightclub environment is a lot different feel than you’re going to be in an arena or even in a theater with a lot of people who it’s just date night and happen to be the local act of the night. So, people are going to travel in to Cleveland, most of them, and we’re going to do dinner with the artist. It’s not just a dinner, and then a show. It’s like actual real– the whole point is to humanize the artist, because I’ve become…

Justin Donald: And probably like story time. You get all the intimate stories you would otherwise not know. That’s cool.

Joel Marion: Yes.

Justin Donald: Oh, I love what you’re building, Joel.

Joel Marion: A lot of these artists have become very close friends of mine and they’re all just normal people who are very talented. But everybody’s at the core of it, they’re all just human beings, different spots along our journey. But it feels a lot different in these rooms when we bring them in, and I want other people to be able to experience that.

Justin Donald: That’s cool. Love it. Another music enthusiast saying, “Heck yeah, keep going.” That sounds awesome. I’ll join you on one of these days. And thank you for joining us. I love ending every episode that we do with a question for our audience, so if you’re tuning in here, what’s one step you can take today to move towards financial freedom and really move towards living the life that you desire that’s on your terms, not a life by default like most people, but a life by design? Thanks, and we’ll catch you next week.

Joel Marion: See you, guys. Thanks.