Ep557: Mario Bekes – You Don’t Know Everything, So Keep Learning

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Mario backage. Mario, are you ready to join the mission?

Mario Bekes 00:41
Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for having me today.

Andrew Stotz 00:44
Yeah, I'm happy to have you on and let me let me introduce you to the audience. Mario backage began his career with the Department of Defense Republic of Croatia in military police security services for seven years. In 1998, he worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Croatia in security intelligence services, secondment in Republic of Croatia, Consulate General in Sydney for further five years before founding insight intelligence in 2003. Mario, take a moment and share with us the value that you bring to this wonderful world.

01:23
Andrew, first of all, thank you again, you know, for him and your podcast, and I like to say what you do is it's a great it's a great mission and person with our mission, not with the mission with our mission. It's lost a lot that is from my personal experience. The day when I left government service, I'll find myself in a bed and believing I know everything around me, but I lost the mission. And I need to find this one. It's a very common thing to people mistake Syrian life with the military. It's the same. We on a mission either helped somebody to our services and our knowledge and our experiences or we are working for somebody else mission and that was my coach. Thank you for loving introduction on the child communism. 14 years old. My parents kicked me out on Christmas Eve my grandfather took me under his wing he was a second in charge of communist secret police he was Flavio semi military school. And you know like I believe it or gonna be the great gen one day well. Be careful what you wish for. Four years later, civil war broke out in Flavia in our farm itself on intersection 18 years old, and I went into war. I'm grateful for my government and people who supported me on my question, I heard that expression engine maybe you're gonna agree with me. It's not what you are by nature, but what you by nature. And on that part, I met a few people who helped me to build my curriculum, educating intelligence, human intelligence, counterterrorism and other aspects of the of the intelligence work. And then subsequently, the one day I decided to resign from military he told me you can't resign as you want because you are our investment. And somehow I've been transitioned from the path of defense to the Foreign Affairs intelligence sector, there was called there thought that seven fancy name and I've been sent in Australia now my knowledge has been all around the Intelligence and Investigation. And you know, that moment angel with somebody took advantage in your life. While I'm here, that doesn't happen again, and I build my business, inside intelligence around three pillars of my business 3x One is a fear, fight and freedom. People have the fear of losing money, because the reputation wasn't intellectual property, then the fight I take a fight for my client or call the fight, fight in terms that we are fighting for, against the criminal activities against the fraud and deceit espionage. And of course, the freedom freedom is the most important element all this because when we investigating or we are doing Information Management, which is covering it as you know, analysis of the competitors it's a freedom that they can do the work without interruption and that's the my abundant knowledge. And again, my company doesn't exist because it's just for me, but my company center just exists because of the people who are working with me in my company. So that's what I'm bringing to this world.

Andrew Stotz 04:48
Right. And let me ask you about that. What type of clients you know for the listeners out there to understand your business maybe you can describe the type of is it individuals is IT companies is a big company, small company? What type of people come to you for your services,

05:02
I started with a my voice investment. And I invested in people around me, who told me that they can bring with the clients. And then I realized that nobody can bring in the clients that myself and I had a 111 single approach. And, you know, I literally told my future client, give me one case, and that one case was related to the insurance company. It was comprised investigating clients claims in terms of fraud, workers compensation, TTP, a life insurance suspicious that five, and that was the my start, you know, that's what I'm supporting that for the my backbone of my businesses, insurance and financial sector will be providing factual, isolated investigations in terms of investigating claims, non genuine fraudulent claims for my cloud started as individual and then the growth into the corporations. Corporations in terms of pharmaceutical and then I was going into the frame and store sector stripe at first I need to break the barrier was difficult for me, because my English is not my first language. Second, people don't trust the X in all the local Russian market rather than, you know, the professional. But I need to take that stigmata and the push. So the my clients, it's very, you know, from the small to medium sized businesses. And as well, you know, we have the quite a bit large organizations, international insurance and banking sector.

Andrew Stotz 06:40
So my last question about your business that I was just curious about was, do people majority of time do people come to you when they're in trouble, or they come to you to prevent trouble?

06:52
Well, it's a toggle to the client, you know, first clients, which we're going on a regular basis and as a client, because we every year renewing the SLA is reviewing our work. And then the calmer the clients, as you say, who has a problem. And Andrew, you have the more experience with this one, and I'm the last person that come in. And that's what is when they don't do proper choice, due diligence to the business part. Background checks on employee, when they start missing money in all the internal tech that I'm the last person that come to me, and the only reason why they're coming to me because they're making wrong choices at the beginning. So they're coming to me with the way the problem arises. Right. So part one group, which reporting corporate clients on daily basis, individuals coming and interesting example, to see how the people should do better decisions.

Andrew Stotz 07:44
Mario, actually, I am the second to last person that they come to why because one of my services is what I do is called outsource CFO. Basically what we do is we generally go to companies, to CEOs, and owners of companies that are struggling with their accounting and finance. Yeah, a lot of reasons why people are struggling with accounting and finance and one of them is fraud. People who are defrauding a company tend to leave a mess that is very difficult to untangle. And also you have just incompetence and other other things. So for companies that don't spend the time and the effort to build the right accounting system with the right people, they end up in a mess, and it's very hard to untangle that mess. And that's what we do in our outsourced CFO. And then what ends up happening is we usually will start to uncover if there's fraud, we'll start to uncover that. And then, and then then we're going to have to hand them over to you, Mario. I wish,

08:46
I wish the people exclusively including me, I know people like yourself. And I think it's some kind of natural that we all have a tendency to do bad decision making. However, if you have consistent decision making which reflecting your finances, your business and everything else negatively impacting. I think the people like yourself, Andrew, should be there on all fronts and unhealthy people. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 09:13
yeah. And in fact, the best advice that I give people who said to kind of solve this problem is before it happens is just make sure that your accounting team delivers you monthly financial statements that are always on time and always accurate. If you can consistently have them deliver that to you, then chances are you don't have a problem with your accounting and finance. And so to get to that point is hard for a lot of people but yeah, well now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it then tell us your story.

09:56
Well, I woke up Try to find the proper words, you know, that I have no, my boss in Essen was actually myself. I think that was arrogance and ego. And I said that part of myself very, very much. I believe it was owed me, I believe that nobody doesn't know things like as I do. And most importantly, I wasn't prepared to learn nothing, I truly believe that I know things better even than Andrew Stotz and people who do this business. And I believe that my worst investment I could do was not to listen, and environment not to absorb what people do at from the beginning. So this, I invested into my alter ego, which drove me into insanity. Because I believe that anybody's gonna give me the work without, without actually asking for the world. My voice is, I suppose, not investing myself in learning how to run the business. So the operational aspect of the business on investigation was not a problem. The worst thing was that I believe it one day, when I have the beautiful business cards, which are the handle managing to print, you know, beautiful desk and everything else. I invested into the exterior right away the interior me. And then I was for two years, I was struggling to understand what's happened for me, subsequently. And that was it that led to the hiring people who I believe that can bring anything, you know, and heavily tested money, and at the end of the day being dumped. So I believe that my worst investment was not invested in myself to learn properly from people like yourself.

Andrew Stotz 11:47
So can you remember a specific day or period of time where you really realize I'm in trouble? And I've got to figure out how to get out of this?

11:57
Absolutely. I can, of course, of course, also the can posit or September 2014. It was my turning point, I did have some experience personally, when in my business, when I realized that I should act differently, and should noticing the changes in my business and the people working for my business. But I ignored because I really not. In all honesty, every businessman should be aware of the one thing when you're going up, you need to continue going up. But if you say like, Okay, now it's beautiful, I laid back, things start changing. And I lost that. I lost sight on my business. And again, I fed my ego. And of course, you know, that cost me a lot of money and a lot of suffering, emotionally and mentally. But yeah, fourth of September 2014.

Andrew Stotz 12:53
So how would you mean it's good, it's good that it's far away, because sometimes our worst investment can be even very close. And then it's really painful. But so how would you describe the lessons that you learned from this

13:09
that I need to learn, I need to learn so i Nobody can know everything what he does. And we all know how to NLP for how to operational run the our services, but what we need to be prepared to learn and which I take it late in my life last four years, five years apologists, five years, it's to be associate myself with the people as yourself your profile, to enhance my understanding of the business environment changing because nobody questioning my knowledge of investigation, intelligence, but I wanted to see how my business can be more prosperous. more profitable, not just for me, but for my clients, probably streamlining, how to do investment in the people who I need to hire, wanting to look how to hire people. So it's not just, you know, hype inside on me, you know, now take a deep breath. Do I need something and think about this? And you know, other aspects. You say something very interesting. Finances, money needs to be controlled. And I have the pool understanding how to do the bookkeeping, I just give them you know, accountant. And it wasn't smart idea because they don't care. And yeah, I didn't know what to do. So that was my subsequently the correlation between the bed is between the bed happenings and the good happens the last five years. I invested myself to learn from people who are in the business longer than me and a very smart people.

Andrew Stotz 14:47
Maybe I'll share what I take away from what you're saying. It reminds me of the book, the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And that book is a great book that describes about how we are technicians or We're, we're experts in a particular field, and then we think, Oh, well, I don't want to work for a company anymore doing this, I want to set this up as my own business, you know. And he uses the example of a bakery, or a person who's a baker or a plumber. And they say, you know, my boss is a jerk, and this is no good. If I did this on my own, I could do it so much better. And then you go into setup your own business, not realizing that the job of running a business is not the same job as being a specialist. In an area, a job of running a business requires understanding of hiring and setting the strategy, setting up the accounting in finance system. And it's really a difficult job, and you have very little time to do the specialist work that you would enjoyed so much when you are working for this bad boss. And so, you know, it's so many people, you know, congratulations, you've survived that, but most people don't survive that. And they gotta go back to the corporate world. So for the listeners out there, who are either in the situation where Mario was in, or you're planning on setting up your business with your specialized knowledge, go get that book, the E Myth by Michael Gerber, it will, it will wake you up, and help you to think about how you set it up. Because it's not only important that you build it, you hire the right people, and that you set up the right accounting system, but you've got to design your product and service to be scaled. And when you're a specialist, it's all about you. And you're, you know, producing a certain amount of output. But when you run a business, you got to think, how do I scale? So that's my main takeaway. Anything you would add to that?

16:43
No, absolutely. And I always say to one thing, we are good in what we do, maybe we specialize in certain areas. But what I forgot what I omitted to myself, and you know, somebody who's been in combat, and I saw things in my life, how should we probably plan and done, I lost sight on foundation or foundation if you're counting in your proper plan. You know, I was the guy that I don't need a plan. I know everything. I know everything. And it turns out wasn't. So now it's my weekly plan. It's not anymore, six months, one year, two weekly plan, which I'm meticulous walking. And as you said, I like to check that book. And then it because it's very interesting, looks very interesting. But it's like foundations are very important. foundations can be only established to the people, like if you step into, and they need to invest into that foundation, rather than just exterior.

Andrew Stotz 17:39
Yeah, I think the other thing I take away too is there's this dilemma that we all face, is that we can't become a master of everything, you know, you're not gonna go to school and study accounting for four years to get your accounting, right in your small business. So there's a balance, you're gonna have to delegate that. And then it's a question of, how much do I need to know about this? How much do I need to be involved in this, whether it's the marketing of the business, whether it's the operations of the business, whether it's the accounting of the business? And how do I make sure I'm delegating to the right people, and making sure now, in the space of accounting, and finance, I think the best thing to double check that you're doing it right is just have monthly financial statements, income statement balance sheet produced by the accountant, and you review it every single month, on the same day, pick the 15th of every single month, and you stop for one hour, and you go through it. But for marketing and others, you know, it's difficult, and you're gonna have to trust some people, and some people are gonna rip you off and not be what they thought that you thought they were going to be. But that's just part of the process of setting up a business. And it's why most businesses fail because you make a couple mistakes in that area, and then you could be knocked out. So

18:55
you agree, I agree, you're absolutely what you say. But again, if we don't learn, we're going to fail if we fail, you know, either we're gonna pick it up ourselves or continue. But as I agree with you what you say right now, is the mistakes have been done.

Andrew Stotz 19:10
So based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn what one action would you remember, would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

19:20
Absolutely. Before anybody goes into the business should clearly think, you know, not just a one moment with one for the sometimes running business is not the favorite fairy tale, your great Angel running business requires a lot of sacrifices. And after all, I said to my friend, I had a great friend of mine and I tell them this my friend, it's easy for you you go to war today you get paid for your job, you get sick way you get annual liberty or you get paid I need to fight for the man. In general speaking I need to fight for my English says I need to be constantly upfront consequently be updated. And when you Start running your business, always come back to the thing. You know your strength, at what your knowledge of density, but be prepared. That is a lot of sacrifices, a lot of persistence must be invested into the running business. And people always think it's hard to come on top, it's my thing, it's always easier to come to the top than to remain on a top. Because that's the because you're not only Congress, one in the market as my competitor. But the biggest thing we can do is invest into proper planning, proper financial structure. Because once I have this in place, how are you going to run your business? Now operationally, but your strategic objectives reaching every day, any future, to the finances to the planning and everything else, need to be invested into people? Who knows, you know, CFOs, and CEOs, and who can help you to run that business? Because that is why the people I can just focus. My takeaway,

Andrew Stotz 21:05
got it. They made me think about the entrepreneurial journeys fear that we're going to fail, you fight to make it survive, even though we make all these, you know, bad choices, and then a freedom that we eventually get after 10 years or whatever.

21:23
That's correct. That's correct. Yes. That's what I learned, after many years, what I'm actually I'm doing so, you know, a couple networking, networking events with chum coaching, several executives, because they've been approached through the different channels, social engineering, and they become like a honeypot. They become used for information for information and you know, for my job is to prevent that from happening. And when I talk to this very smart people like yourself, you know, they told me money, this is the fear, you know, I mean, I'm gonna lose, it's like, it's okay, that's the my pillows, actually, instead of Hi, Angel. I've been investigations and like yo, Kamara, you and everybody else. So rather than our customers, this is what we're doing so people can relate. And they can say, Okay, this is what I need or item.

Andrew Stotz 22:12
Right? So what is a resource that you've created, or you're doing, or one that you'd recommend for our listeners?

22:20
My resource is on my book, I wrote the with the professor class moment, it's called the workplace investigation. It was a it was a book, I wrote it entirely headed off supply was an editor. And it was difficult for me, Andrew, because I felt like again, English. So but subsequently, I entered into the program to finish my masters, which is another another touch of life. But this is a book I created, particularly for the people who are interested in investigation how to run investigations, not just when it comes to the fraud and criminal activity, but you can apply this on daily basis for analyzing competitors, or how to collect information about somebody or competitor for your employees or so that's I want to ask, How is it fair to my clients and separate to share with all your listeners, just contact Andrew and attend the courses? There is? No, there is no, there's no. There's no cost price to the knowledge to be shared.

Andrew Stotz 23:22
Got it. Alright, last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

23:27
My number goal? I wish I can say my goal. It's a mission to help 1 million people. I kind of say that one now. But my mission is to reduce internal test fraud and criminal activity for all my clients, current and future ones. And to have the more possible business business and abandoned business rather than having triplets by Who's stolen from them. And how far from that. That's fine for Michael,

Andrew Stotz 23:55
beautiful. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com Right now, and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude, Mario, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of at Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

24:24
But the audience said no, I don't I've just I was so glued into what you say you know, he thought mesmerizing and a magnetic no I don't you know, just stick with what well with your wanting to like thank you very much for having me today. And as I recommend everybody please listen to this podcast, my worst investment first and then secondly, the calls and I really enjoy it. So thank you, Andrew, for having me today on your show.

Andrew Stotz 24:51
Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is a time to celebrate the two Day we added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.