How We Built Markowski Investments

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It’s like sharing day today here. You know, we’re sharing. I’m going to tell you some secrets. How we built Markowski investments. I spend, you know, I feel like I have to. It’s a right thing to do. Particularly many of the kids that I used to mentor, I used to coach in La Crosse. Some of them want to come back. They come back as work as interns for us. They

come in, they want to, you learn about how I run my business and how everything works. Many of them are, you know, taking business classes, finance in college, and they want no part more often than not, they want little to no part of what we do. Why? It’s really, really hard.

How was Markowski Investments built over 30 years? Brick by brick, little by little, every single day. What we do, managing people’s money, having a national firm being run by my brothers and I, the three of us, started the firm. My nephew.

working for us as well now and now we have some 25 offices around the country. How do we do it? Well, first and foremost, bit of an advantage in the fact that the three of us, brothers and I, we’re each different and we each have our own talents and abilities. And Matt does his thing, Michael does his thing.

and I do my thing. And we bust our hump every single day, utilizing our God given talents to build our business and help people. Some of the things that people need to understand in regards to this industry, we started it and we decided that, you know what, we were going to build a niche.

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First off, we’re gonna do things differently. We weren’t going to put a velvet rope. I’ve talked about this velvet rope outside the door saying, hey, oh, you can only work with us if you’ve got $5 million. No, we opened it up to everyone. Basically, we wanted to provide the highest level of service, a family office experience, and offer it to everyone. And again, ridiculed.

Ridiculed now you can’t do that. That’s dumb. You’re wasting your time on all of it You know, they would tell you those piker clients. Why would you waste your time on them? That’s stupid You need to be spending your money on the big ticket guys and selling all these things and I’m like No No again My brothers and I have a similar way of thinking and wanting to basically build our lives

I and my brothers, we want to spend time with our family. We wanted to coach our kids. We didn’t want to go sniffing around golf clubs and country clubs. don’t golf. People are amazed. I don’t golf. don’t know what I, you now all the kids are out, but I’m still, you know, they’re all in college and I’m still going to ballgames. I still don’t have the time to learn how to play. That’s just not my bag.

I could say, Chris, you got to go out and entertain. You got to go do this. No, I don’t have to do that. All I need to do is to provide the highest level of service for my clients. I’m not there. I’m not there to entertain. I’m not there to be their golfing buddy or dinner buddy. If I have the time to do it, we have the time to do we’re going to do it. But again, the clients that we have, they understand that because they have a similar mentality.

family oriented people. It’s a great way to build your business if you have people that think and feel the same way that you do. 30 years, know, a lot of failures, a lot of falling on one’s face, things that we’ve tried, things that haven’t worked out. Again, prior to having the radio show, I did guest appearances on radio shows, which I still do.

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Again, I was a lot more prolific in my writing back in the 1990s with my newsletter. I did a lot more of that. it’s, know, media has changed. The medium has changed. I don’t do as much writing. I do these podcasts. I still do on the radio show, still making appearances, and it does take up, you know, quite a bit of my time, quite frankly. That’s just the reality of the situation. And by doing that and grinding away, again, we started out with

a lousy two radio stations. Yeah, I was actually, you know, had a mix up on my own thing, you know, have the computer automatically fire when songs would come on all this stuff. And again, just plug in, plug in away. Before that, you know, plug in away sending out mass faxes to

radio station producers, producers of talk radio shows around the country with various different ideas that I had. There was a software program back then was called WinFacts where I would just constantly be sending stuff out all the time. Again, grinding. Cause that’s what it is. It’s a grind. Yeah. I wrote a, I wrote a story about this years ago. It was called the win the boss shrugs. So oftentimes, you know, after

you spend years, certain people, again, it’s unfortunate people have to be this way. They’ll see sometimes the fruits of what you’ve built and they automatically assume that, boom, it just fell in your lap. They don’t see the backstory. They don’t see the second jobs that you were taking when you first started out trying to build up your business, the sacrifices they make. They don’t…

Understand when you get up in the morning the hours that you put in let’s just be perfectly frank here Okay, and again, I make this clear I make this clear to the you know, the kids are coming in and asking about what I do and how I do it I said, I’m lucky I can you know, I could Handle and I’ve been able to handle my schedule. I can not miss my kids things and coach their teams and do all that But that also means I’m getting up pretty darn early in the morning every single day

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And the reality is, own your own business. You’re never on vacation. You’re never truly on vacation. That’s part of it. You just can’t. You go on vacation, but work is still there. Work is always there. It’s never gonna go away. You can’t see it. You’ve got people that you’re responsible for, not just your clients, but your employees that have to put food on the table. And that’s something to consider. And oftentimes people quite frankly don’t really

appreciate Some of the other bit of advice I would give to people that would be looking to start out any any type of a Startup or a new business be careful Be careful of taking money. I know it’s easy sometimes especially in today’s day and age would venture capital throwing money around all over the place be careful with that Be careful with you know thinking that you need to Make we’re just ridiculous expenditures

on things. I’m gonna tell you a real dumb one. A real dumb one that we did when we first, so we have plenty of dumb ones that we start. first started Markowski Investments, a photocopier. I don’t know how, I must have been weak that day or something like that. We got sold on a, you know, having a photocopier that we barely use. You know, we used it, it was my father.

He was a bit OCD with his paperwork and loved photocopying things. I think it was almost like a toy to him. He’d come into the office and use that stupid thing. another thing like I mentioned before is understand your niche. Okay, you can’t be all things to all people if you want to be good at what you do. You don’t find many, put it so, you don’t find many Italian

sushi, steak house, you just you’re combining too much nonsense. Find out who you want to be doing to find out what your niche is. And guess what? Go at it and be the best at that. Another thing, and this is again, I’m telling you things that I have been guilty of where. Quite honestly, you know, I’m again, I’m learning to be a little bit better in taking.

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More time off Again, my wife yells at me when we’re away when we take time off. Yeah, I still do The podcast and you know, I’m ready to go if I need to if I have to do an interview I’m there but you need to get away Okay, the reality of the situation when you’re busting your butt you do get your mind gets mushy Your mind gets mushy and it’s sometimes you just need to stop for a little bit and then you start having a bit of a different perspective

You need to go on vacation. You need to take holidays. Another one, don’t waste your time on stupid conferences. Again, we used to do that. We used to do that. We used to go, our clearing banks used to hold these big conferences and we’d go. And again, it was okay in the sense that I began, I bring.

entire family along kids sometimes I bring my parents my in laws would be there I didn’t care so like if you know we’re all going okay so Mark house claims on but you know more often than not I’m you know

I’m just trying to get out of these ridiculous meetings and then sometimes these people offer some of the worst advice out there and they have their little rooms there where they’re always trying to pitch in, sell you on stuff you don’t need. It’s more often than not, it’s a waste of time. Here’s another one, okay? Your office. Okay, if you don’t need an office,

Don’t spend money on one.

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Don’t spend money on one. Again, people are still amazed at the fact that we have one small little office space in Tampa. I’m in my house right now. Yeah, I’m in my house right now. don’t, well again, I live in a city and Tampa’s not a big commute, but I don’t waste time on commuting. I don’t have to do that. Again, every business is different.

Um, and it has to be handled as such. But again, I, I am not going to get a fancy office with fancy artwork and all this stuff. I, you know, do people ever ask question? I’m like, well, who’s paying for that fancy artwork? Who’s paying for that fancy office? My clients are, and I don’t want them to pay for it. I’d rather run a, you know, do the Oxburger lean mean fighting machine.

and keep the costs down for my clients. It makes more sense and it makes me a hell of a lot more efficient. Yeah, sometimes you know what? You can’t hold on to losers. Same thing when comes to investments. You try something out, you see how long it works, and if it doesn’t, you cut it loose. Any type of marketing endeavor that we get into, I make it perfectly clear.

Okay that you know, i’m it’s gonna we’re gonna try it test the waters for a couple You know months if it doesn’t work. We’re done. So you better make sure that it works Again, i’ve got great fishing captains down here in florida We’ll sometimes but we’re out fishing out there offshore The captain will know we’ll be on a spot For less than a couple minutes. No bites. We’re out boom. He knows You know have to know when to you know, basically get out of dodge

Here’s another one. You cannot, again, and it’s hard sometimes, and I’m not very good at getting rid of people, but you got lazy people, they have to go. And you have to give honest and sometimes harsh feedback to your employees in the same way that I can be bit harsh here on the program when it comes to finances and decisions that people make, or I might be harsh.

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with the kids that I coach. I gotta be honest with them. What, you want me to lie? No, I’m gonna be honest and that’s something that you have to do as a boss. Just a few things. Again, we like to separate ourselves from everybody else and we like the way things run here. And you know what? God willing, we’ll continue to do this moving forward. Again.

I know a lot of younger people, a of college kids listening to this program. get feedback from them all the time. Questions, comments, whatever it may be on startups, this industry, feel free. Reach out. Watchdogonwallstreet.com.