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Episode Summary
You look at the founder who just sold for nine figures and wonder if it was luck or design. Mark Lachance has lived both sides. He had a clean exit in 2006, rolled every dollar (plus personal guarantees) into one real estate bet in 2007, and was staring down bankruptcy eighteen months later. The formula he pulled out of that crater is what’s behind his current company, Maxi Media: close to 300 employees in four and a half years, with a sizable acquisition offer already on the table. We got into why recurring revenue is what protects you when clients fire you, why the entrepreneur’s dilemma (believing you have to be best at every function) is the wall every owner hits, the three Dan Sullivan questions that change how you launch anything new, and how Mark blitzscaled by rolling $50K of monthly free cash flow back into hires instead of distributions. The part I keep thinking about: Mark didn’t get lucky meeting the president of the Buffalo Bills at a biohacking event. He engineered the room where that conversation could happen.
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## Top 10 Takeaways- Never go all in on one bet. Personal guarantees stacked on personal guarantees is how millionaires go bankrupt overnight.
- Without recurring revenue, losing two clients can erase 30% of your business in a single week.
- The entrepreneur’s dilemma is believing you have to be best at every function. It’s the wall every owner hits.
- Your ego is the bottleneck. Hire people better than you at the job and step out of the way.
- Before launching anything new, ask: how do I achieve this doing nothing, and who is the who?
- Luck isn’t a fluke. It’s a formula. You stack routines, environment, and rooms until something good lands.
- $50K of monthly free cash flow split as distributions does almost nothing. Rolled into hires, it compounds.
- Blitzscaling private companies is real. Whiteboard 24 months of hires tied to revenue, then execute one row at a time.
- Recurring revenue isn’t only SaaS. Diversify verticals and clients and you create the same protection.
- Performance pricing aligns you with your client’s outcome. Hourly pricing aligns you with your timesheet.
Sound Bites
“Luck is not a fluke, it’s a formula.” (@TBD) — Mark Lachance
“Never go all in, like literally all in. All the personal guarantees, roll it all in. Everything, everything, millions of dollars, push it on red. Don’t ever do that.” (@TBD) — Mark Lachance
“Companies that are stuck have a CEO or a leader that believes they need to be the best in every aspect of the business.” (@TBD) — Mark Lachance
“If you’re very intentional to grow value, you’re not picking an outcome today. You’re saying I’m going to engineer this entire situation and the value that I want to have as many freaking choices as possible.” (@TBD) — Ryan Tansom
“I’m lucky on purpose.” (@TBD) — Mark Lachance
About This Episode
Mark Lachance is a serial entrepreneur and author of The Lucky Formula: How to Stack the Odds in Your Favor and Cash in on Success. He spent nearly two decades in the payments space as a founding member of Pivotal Payments and Versapay (which went public in 2010), and as founder of EVO Payments International Canada, which he sold in 2016 after scaling it from one employee to 215. After a near-bankruptcy in 2008 from going all-in on a 2007 real estate bet, he rebuilt and now runs Maxi Media, a performance marketing agency he co-founded in 2018 that has scaled to nearly 300 employees. The book is the playbook he wishes he’d had earlier.
Resources Mentioned
- The Lucky Formula by Mark Lachance — Mark’s book on stacking the odds in your favor.
- The Lucky Quiz — Rates how lucky you are on a 0-100 scale with tips to improve. — theluckyformula.com/quiz
- Mark on Instagram — @mrluckyofficial
- Maxi Media — Mark’s performance marketing agency.
- Tony Robbins Business Mastery — The event Mark credits with breaking him out of his entrepreneur’s dilemma.
- Strategic Coach (Dan Sullivan) — Source of the three “who not how” launch questions.
- Dave Asprey’s biohacking event — Where the Buffalo Bills conversation happened.
- Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh — Referenced for the blitzscaling concept applied to private companies.
- Arkona Intentional Growth Digital Course — arkona.io
Connections
Phase + Module:
- Module 5 — Predictable Revenue — Recurring revenue, diversification, and performance pricing as a revenue architecture
- Module 7 — Leadership Team — Hiring people better than you and getting out of their way
- Module 3 — Owner’s Playbook — The “why” behind the engineering
Milestones:
- Milestone 13 — Strategic Plan — The 24-month whiteboard of hires tied to revenue
- Milestone 15 — Revenue Systems & Forecasting — Performance pricing as a revenue system
- Milestone 19 — Functional Leaders — The C-suite swap that unlocks the next level
- Milestone 21 — Leadership Development — Building a self-managing business
Concepts referenced:
- The Owner-Operator Trap™ — The entrepreneur’s dilemma Mark hit at 200 employees
- Free Cash Flow — The $50K monthly decision (distribute or compound)
- Noble Aim — The “why” that pulls you through the hard years
- The One Thing — Focusing on the work only you can do