Owning Your Story: Lessons from Marcus Ogden's Life

0:00 This episode, we have Marcus Ogden. He's sharing with us how he, after leaving the NFL, developed a company earning eight figures and then after several years ninety days, he lost it all and in his downward spiral, he eventually came to be making eight dollars and twenty four cents, but then deciding this is not the end of his story, turned it all around. Now he's an executive coach, motivational speaker, a highly sought after a trainer. He's going to share with us his story. Welcome to night Beat Media's Living the Dream podcast with your host Gregory Tucker, where we discussed the entrepreneur's journey of turning a dream into reality, showing you how to learn, overcome, and to strategic action steps. If you're ready to turn your dream into a reality, then get ready to take action. Here's your host, Gregory Tucker.

1:17 As always, Marcus, what we always like to ask our guests is to tell us about yourself. Gregory Marcus Ogden is a current national international keynote speaker, business coach, consultant, best selling author. Podcast hosts of the Get Authentic with Marcus Ogden show, We are right in the top one percent worldwide most popular podcast. Gregory and I am also from Washington, d C. And I currently now live in the Raleigh, North Carolina area as well. Okay, and one of the things as I was reading your bio in your history along your journey that amazed me and especially far As for show.

2:00 It's called living the dream, and that is the journey you took when you saw a failure. Now you were on the world stage of what most young men dream about, and that is becoming an NFL football player, being at the top of your game, and then one day leaving millions the millions of dollars and traveling around the world in order to come back or as from what I understand, eight dollars and twenty four cents tell us at any point that you have the reservation or were you at one point thinking how am I going to make this right here? Or falling into a downward spiral? Yes, Gregory. So when I moved to raw North Carolina after losing my business and everything that I owned, I went through making an eight figure I had an eight figure year construction company, and I made eight dollars and twenty five cents an hour on the Great Yard Shift Gregory as a custodian from ten pm until five am, and I was struggling, missy with how to support my family, what to do next, lots of hardships, lots of over drinking,

3:31 and this being very just mad at life and mad at the world. And what I realized at that time Gregory, was I had no accountability and I had no responsibility in my life. And I realized at that moment, which was called my spoiled milk moment, where someone was trash and rotten meat, Gregory nasty, protruding garbage over my body, my skin, and my clothes. And I had that moment. It made me real life either to get up off the curve and fix my life or stay on the curve and complain about my life every single day. And that's what drolls me to say, you know what I was meant for? More, I can do more, I can be more. Let's get going down the path. And that started me down the train of getting my life together to be where I'm at today as a speaker, author, coach, consult and of course a podcast host.

4:30 Okay, now all of those things, because a lot of people go through that and they begin to make their way back. But all of those things don't come together just overnight, because when we hear about the overnight success, usually that turns out to be years in the making. Tell us about that journey far as putting all those components together, if you would please, great question. So I ended up after my spoilt milk moment, I went home and I down my stream biggest strengths, and what I realized was I was a good communicator. I was a good storyteller, and I wanted to help people. And those three things formally me becoming a keynote speaker, and I began my entire business journey on that path. For two and a half years, though Gregory not one paid job, not one. And I tell people I realized now woman ever, I was fulfilled in my journey because I never gave up when times got hard, when things weren't looking right, I never gave up. I kept going forward and kept pushing forward. So I was very fulfilled in that aspect. And after a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice, I got my first page speaking job with Millermont College in April twenty sixteen, and from at that point Gregory I continued to work

6:01 and build, and I then started to really perfect the speaking business. Then I became an author. Then from there I became a business coach, then became a consultant. Then I became a brand ambassador and a business owner, and I became a podcast host, and I start now ISSU some pr and marketing for specific clients wanting to get on podcasts and grow their brand. So it did not happen overnight. I'm going to tell your listeners, in order to achieve what you want for the long term, you got to focus on the small steps. And I did that because if I didn't perfect speaking right Gregory, and learned the trade and learn how to actually connect with people the art of storytelling, the artic bringing value, I hadn't perfected that right, Gregory. Now I'm not where I am today as a business leader and all those type of things. Now you are hired by some major organizations in order to come in and train their staff. Tell us how did those things come to foolish? Well? I started off with and I talk with this all the time. Lean on your trusted circle. One of my good friends, Dave Missmisky, works for NetApp, a Fortune five hundred technology brand here in

7:33 the Raleigh area. I trained both of his sons in football private one oh one coaching lessons and technique. Well, Dad gave me my first chance to speak for a Fortune and fiverership brand for no money to build my resume. And after doing that speech, I thought I did phenomenal, But unfortunately I didn't do phenomenal because when I be pack from said Marcus, great, great passion, great energy, wrong topic, and I was talking a lot about my business and my business failure. And they were medical people, right grat they wouldn't care about my concussions and ct and football. And as a result of not knowing my audience and not knowing how to do what I need to do, I bombed my first ever Fortune VD client speaking job. Now, luckily I was a friend who gave me another opportunity to speak for them.

8:33 About six months later, did that job and I crushed it. But over time I've had to learn how to pull in parts of my story, parts of my life that really make the audience feel that the message is speaking directly to them. And once they feel and once they feel that energy, right Gregory, at that point you become a inspirational keynote speaker. I can do aspire in enlighten and educate audiences. Now, that was one of the things I had heard Les Brown say in one of his pieces, and that is when he was first starting out. That one time he was on his way to speaking, he had got finished speaking, and I guess he had came from an engagement and he was coming back and he said something like, oh, I can do that. But he said something to the effect that he stood up, but his mind shut down. And that is that, Hey, sometimes it's as you had mentioned, and that is the first time you bombed. But how did you overcome that fear? First of all, and that is stepping in front of an audience. My first ever speaking job was in October of twenty thirteen for the Boys and Girls Club. I remember holding

10:05 onto that podium for dear life like it was a force field that kept the audience away from me. And over time to practice through failure and through see back and through watching myself speak and learning how to stop saying oh and ah those killers and just continue to work on my crafty WoT that the morning you're after year, that's where things start to get better. So for me, if anybody's listening, learn how to enjoy the process and study and learn how to perfect your craft every single day, because the more you're perfecting your craft every single day, the more you're actually working towards learning goals into accomplishe every single day. So did you do U? Would you advise someone to utilize Toastmasters for instance? So absolutely, Gregory. Toast Masters is a phenomenal organization to practice your craft right anywhere you can go to get in front of people to perfect your craft and get feedback, it's going to be awesome. But doing things like what we're doing right, Gregory, getting on the podcast right.

11:35 People are consuming content now more than ever on podcasts, and when I go on every podcast, right Gregory, I treat it like a speaking job. I don't want to use space fillers. I don't want to stammer. I don't want to stutter. I don't want to for my words. I want to be very polished, I want to be very proficient. I want to be very excel at speaking because this is another opportunity to practice what I do. That's my job. I speak for a living. I talk, I coach, I educate, I inspire, I try to ENLiGHT. If I'm one podcast treating it like this. Oh, it's another podcast. It's gonna talk like this, and I'm just gonna go bs around, right, Gregory, that's not doing me any good to better myself at my crap of speaking. So I'm gonna challenge your listeners. Get into toast as if you want to speak awesome, but also get on the podcasts radio when you're having conversations with people, being titched about how you're talking. Good pace, good inflection, good energy. All those things are gonna make a huge impact on what you do. And it's with anything. What about having a coach, Oh, coaching is everything. I don't don't care graduate what you do, what, industry, professional sports, working, corporate America. Everybody needs a

13:09 coach, right. Plato was a successful teacher. He was taught by Socrates. Plato taught Aristotle in his school. Aristotle left the school when Plato died. Aristotle coached Alexander the Great to be a better, more well rounded individual, and that type of leadership did what made Alexander the Great one of the greatest conquerors of all time. Because he was coached by Aristotle. What how to be diverse, how to be well rounded? How to approach life from not just a war prospective, but math, astrology, English literature, poetry that made Alexander what prepared for anything on the battlefield. So coaching, Gregory, can change lies and the trajectory of time and mentorship. Mentorship is all about having somebody that you can trust that is going to give you sound advice when you reach out to them. And that's important because mentorship is another level of coaching, but as somebody you can lean on and talk to, have a dialogue you know has your best interest at heart. Okay, well, Barcus, this has been very valuable, especially far as to our listeners or

14:43 are looking to pursue that journey of going into being an inspirational or a motivational speaker. Now, what are some of the ways that they can contact you or that they can follow you on your social media? Thank you very much, Gregor. And they can follow me on Instagram at Marcus Ogden, m A r q U E s O g d E N. Facebook is Marcus Ogden, TikTok is at Marcus Ogden, seventy one's at Marcus Underscore Ogden, Late tinnis Marcus Ogden. We can also go to our site www dot marcusden dot com or shoot me an email Marcus at Marcusogden dot com. Reach out to us. We'd love to connect with you. Okay, this has been great right here. I know you're a very busy man and it is much appreciated that you took the time out of your busy day in order to appear on this podcast here. So as always we like to tell our viewers or our listeners, and that is, whenever you're writing the story of your life, make sure that you're holding the pen. And I'm hoping that our listeners have at their pen at they're ready, because you drop some very valuable gems

16:18 right there. Now. Is there anything else that you would like to leave the listeners with? I will say this and Plato made it very well known through his teaching, which I could agree with. More own your story. If you're going to go out and try to position yourself to speak coach and like start whatever, own your story. There's only one of you and that's more than enough. When you own your story, you own your place in the world. Wow. I hope you found that informative, inspiring and in doing so, hit the like button leave us a comment. We hope to have this story push this story out fars to other individuals who need inspiration.

17:15 Thanks for listening to night Beat Media's Living the Dream. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a comment or hit follow and subscribe on our late so you can stay up to date on new episodes until next time. When writing the story of your life, be sure you're holding the pen.