Desmond Clark’s Move from the NFL to Leading Bear Down Logistics

Pamela Bardhi: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Underdog podcast. Today I have an incredible guest here with me. Desmond. How are you, my friend?

Desmond Clark: I’m doing well. How, you doing, Pamela?

Pamela Bardhi: I’m doing awesome, I am so freaking excited to hear, like, all about your story, man. I read your introduction and everything, I’m like, badass. Like, I can’t wait to hear the story about every, you know, like, how you got to where you got to. When it was in the NFL and then building up your business now bear logistics. It’s just, it’s amazing. And I’m like, I know there’s a journey there. There’s a story there, and I’m just, I’m honored to be here today with you to showcase that.

Desmond Clark: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. You know, I’ve told a story, a few times, and it’s always different. Shows bring out different aspects of that story. So I’m looking forward to sharing.

Pamela Bardhi: I’m looking forward to it as well. And one of the first things that I do is I always try to, like, reel it back quite a bit, right. Because we want to take it back to almost, origination point, if you will. Right. As a kid growing up, what was your dream like? What did you want to be when you grew up?

Desmond Clark: I was always a sports minded kid. We lived in a neighborhood that, we had a lot of kids that played sports. We lived in a cul de sac, and right at the end of the cul de sac, we had this big park. And they had a basketball court out there. Of course, they had the playground, but they had this big, huge field where we would play baseball, football. Whatever it was, for the year, that’s what we’ll be playing. So, a lot of times when I’m on stage, I tell the story about how I used to run around.

Thinking, hey, if one day I could be like Walter Payton. If one day I could be like the Jerry rices, of the NFL and Randall Cunningham’s. You know, when I was growing up. So that was, like, what I wanted, that’s what I envisioned. That’s what I, you know, I didn’t know that at some point I would get there. That was like my dream. Like every kid’s dream, that played football or baseball or basketball, whoever’s the best at that time. That’s who you look at and say, man, one day if I could be one of these guys, that’d be awesome.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s amazing. So ever since you were younger, you wanted to be in the sports field. You know what’s really funny is like, our childhoods really mirror. And like certain things get imprinted on us at a young age. Then we manifest into this being that we don’t even realize. Like, that seed was planted when you were a child.

Desmond Clark: Absolutely, and like I say, it wasn’t one of those things that, that’s what I was focused on. That was just like running around, playing in the park, just having a good time. And just, you know, just like any other kid looking up to. You know, whoever the best players are in that sport that you played at that time. Not in my wildest dreams, when I was really like 13, 1415. When you really start thinking about what life can be like. That I think that I would have gone to play twelve years in the NFL, which is.

Pamela Bardhi: So, so, so incredible. And to kind of backtrack on that and piggyback on that a little bit growing up. Who or what was your biggest source of inspiration? Like, I know you mentioned, in the cul de sac in your neighborhood where you were living. That’s where you all played a lot of sports. Were there any particular person that you looked up to or just like whatever it is during that year?

Desmond Clark: So as I grew up, I mean, my mom and my dad, for different reasons, became people that were inspirational for me. To me, my dad, because he was doing the wrong things. I learned from him what the wrong things could bring about in life. My mom, how she had to pick herself up when our family totally broke down. How she had to rebuild herself, it gave me both sides of the story. And then my dad ultimately, you know, he recovered from his drug addiction when I was a little older. Then that showed me an even different side of the story.

So I was always, and I’ve always believed in the people that you’re closest around. Those are the people that have the most effect on you. No different for me. Like just watching my mom struggle and then rebuild herself and watch my dad struggle with his drug addiction. Rebuilding himself couldn’t have been two better examples for two different reasons. And then I always talk about my coach, Jay’s coach, Joanna, Coach Joe, Coach Jackson and Coach Jones. My middle in high school football and basketball coaches.

You know, those guys were, like, very instrumental, into my development. Once I got, you know, into my teenage years, they made sure that I was taken care of. Made sure that they didn’t let me quit and stop. And do stupid things when I wanted to do stupid things, made sure I got the class, got the grades. Those were some of the people, especially my mom and my dad and my two older brothers and my coach J’s. I would say those were probably the most inspirational people in my life. The people who I looked up to the most.

Pamela Bardhi: I absolutely love that, Desmond, I love that. I love that you use, like, the parallels between your parents and, like, how that was inspirational for you. You know, I think that’s incredibly powerful because sometimes we have role models that show us what not to do. Not just what to do, but what not to do.

Desmond Clark: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and it was because, what I see from my father of what not to do. That I, you know, when I was a young teenager, I made a decision. I made a clear decision to myself that I wanted to be successful and that I was going to be successful. Just because of all the things that I was seeing around me that were not success leading activities. And I say, you know what? I see it, I understand it, so I’m not going to do it. So, you know, in. Tell you the truth, it was more because of the bad influence that influenced me to do good. It was the good influence that showed me how to do good. But the decision came because of the bad influence.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that. There’s a lot of lessons there, right. And I think what’s really powerful, and I’m not even sure if you realize how powerful this is. But you made that choice to break the cycle.

Desmond Clark: Absolutely.

A conscious decision to go to college through sports

Pamela Bardhi: That takes a lot of heart. It takes a lot of power, takes a lot of discipline, too. Right. Because if this is what you’ve seen around you or it’s been a pattern. You know, wherever, and you made that conscious choice, that’s something super, super powerful. Like, I’ve met with a lot of people that are like, you know, this has been the pattern in my family. Or this is what’s going on with my parents. And it’s like that decision, like, you could have very easily won a different route.

Desmond Clark: Yeah. And when I was young, you know, I wasn’t thinking about it. In terms and how I look at it in the perspective that I look at it now.

Pamela Bardhi: Yeah.

Desmond Clark: Like you said, I had to stand out, right? Not, like, stand out like I was better than everybody else, but stand out, like, I had to make different decisions. I wanted to make different decisions while everybody where 90% of the people was going to the right. You know, me and the other 10% of people were going to the left. Just so we were going in a direction that was taking us to eventually where we want, to go. And, you know, as a kid, sometimes that comes with ridicule. Or that comes with not being in the crowd as much, all of those things. But for me, it was a bigger picture.

You know, I wanted to be successful, I knew that I had to graduate high school. I knew that I had to find some type of way to go to college. That was the reason why I became competitive, because I saw my path to going to college was through sports. At that moment, that was the only way I saw myself getting to college, I didn’t know anything about grants. And I, my grades probably were not good enough to get academic scholarships. But, you know, I didn’t know anything about community college and I just knew, hey, we ain’t got no money. Right? So we gotta find a way to get to college.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that, I just, I honor you so much for making that decision. But it was completely unconscious when you were younger, you know, like it was in your subconscious, really. But I genuinely honor you for making that choice and taking that route because it’s not the difficult route. 90% of people were going here, 10% were going here, and you still did that. And even through all that.

So I just, I honor you tremendously for making that choice because it shifted your whole life story. Which I think is absolutely magical. And sports being kind of like the access point to everything, right? Walk me through like college and then into the NFL days. You played for twelve years. That’s amazing, and a bunch of different teams like Broncos, the Dolphins, all over. I would love to kind of hear that, that journey with you, too.

Desmond Clark: Yeah. By the time I graduated high school, I kind of had a certain mindset about myself. About how I wanted to compete, how I always looked at, you know, how can I continue to get better? So I got to wake Forest, did start my first year but my second year I was like. Okay, my goal is to start after my second year, I was starting then. My goal was to, all right, who’s the best in the ACC? I want to compete with the best people in the accident. Led ACC and catches that year. And then that’s when I really started thinking about the NFL.

It wasn’t until then, and then I’m going into my senior year, you know, had another pretty good year. And got drafted into the NFL but, my college days it was just all about how good can I be compared to my peers. How far can I push myself to be as good as I can be? I try to tell kids this all the time now. We get caught up in all the hype and the fame and the money and all of this. But it’s never going to come if you don’t focus on yourself. If you focus on all that stuff on the outside, you kind of get distracted.

You kind of lose, lose focus. But I believe, the people who are the most successful. Or who have the best chance of being successful are those people that understand what they should be focused on. Because it’s a lot of distractions out here for entrepreneurs, for athletes, for students, for everybody. Right. Just knowing where to focus and really that’s focusing on yourself. And how do you get better at doing what you want to do. Those are going to be the people that make it more times than not.

Pamela Bardhi: Absolutely. I love that, I love that in kind of leading into that space.

 The things that helped Desmond

I mean, you mentioned mindset a lot and making those decisions. You know, what were some of, like, your mantras and everything that you developed? Because you’ve got a chance mentality, right. So would love to hear, like, some of the things that, like, helped you, was it breath work? Was it some meditation, was it like a certain walk to run in the morning workouts? What was it that helped you get in that state to really activate your competitiveness? And just, like, your mindset to get it where it is? Like you said, you have to be rock solid in order to get to a certain goal, especially at that level. Right. Champions mentality.

Desmond Clark: Well, I didn’t get into meditation until maybe six months ago, really? Now it’s something that I do on a daily basis and I feel like it helps me with what I’m doing now. When I was younger, you know, it was really about just standing in the right mind frame. Like using your energy the right way. There’s so many things that happen that if we react to everything, we’re just misusing our energy for the wrong reasons. Right? I always talk about, we all will sit here. And we’ll all say that life is not just going to just be a coast. You’re going to have ups and downs, right? So if we know that we’re going to have downs throughout our life when the downs come. Why do we get so emotionally down when we knew that they were coming?

Why do we use up so much negative energy when you know that life is going to throw some curveballs. Instead of using that negative emotion, you have to find a way to see a lesson in it. Or see how you can get better with something that happened that’s negative, for instance, just happened to me. I just had a freaking company that closed their doors and said, you know what, Desmond? We’re not paying any of our creditors, I know we owe you money. They send in a letter, we know we owe you, but we’re not paying our creditors. Now, I could have sat here and I could have been in the dumps. And I could have transferred all of that negative energy to. To all the people that work with me. But instead, I let them know what was going on.

I told them, hey, we got to do some, some magic here, but we’re going to make it happen. And just with that focus, over the course of time, we’ve picked up four new clients, another government contract. By the end of this year, that hole that we, that other company put us in. We’ll be so far out of that hole. I mean, we’ll be building another foundation to build a house on top of it by the end of the year. But if I would have sat and been down in the dump, especially being the leader of a company. Just being a leader of myself, the focus wouldn’t have been there to keep pushing. To go out and get more so we can make up for what we just lost.

Pamela Bardhi: I absolutely love that. And essentially, you’re alchemizing energy that way, right? You’re retransmuting it. It’s retransmutation of energy because, like you said, in reactive state. Nothing positive is going to come out of reaction mode, right? Because reactions create those triggers, and those triggers, you gotta. There’s a whole lot of work you gotta do to make sure those triggers don’t get you to react, right. So there’s a whole, it’s like a domino effect, right? I love that you handled it in that way and you alchemized that. You said, how are we gonna use. Utilize this in a positive way? How are we gonna problem solve as opposed to, you know, go out there and just, you know, go crazy? Right? Is the truth.

Desmond Clark: You’re using a lot of words. Alchemize, transmuting. So I know that you’re on a different level, because only people. Yeah. On that level use those type of words. Right?

Started meditation six months ago

And so I could talk to you on a different level. We know some of the universal laws the laws of, blowing it right now.

Pamela Bardhi: Laws of the universe, yeah, just the laws of the universe. Yeah.

Desmond Clark: But it’s one in particular that I’m talking about. Well, hey, you’re going to have swings, right? But duality. Not duality. That’s another one. It’ll come to me sometime in this interview, and I’ll come back to it. We know that we’re going to have swings in life, but the people who can stay solid. And they can stay right where they want to be mentally, you know, physically, emotionally. When that thing swings the opposite direction right now, we don’t get caught up in that swing that’s going. Going opposite of where we want to go because we anchored ourselves exactly where we want to be.

Pamela Bardhi: Amen. It’s almost like the law of detachment kind of comes into play here. Because it’s like you’re detaching yourself from the outcome, right. You know what the outcome is going to be, but you’re not married to whatever’s happening. So, like, that’s kind of what happened with this company, right? You kind of detach, you said, okay, this is not going to work here. We’re just going to work it out on this other side and just create more magic this way. And I love that, I mean, the universal law, some people are ready for this conversation. Whoever’s listening, and then some are not.

And I love being the one to bring that entry point in because there is so much magic and it’s so crazy. Like, the most successful people I’ve ever met in my life and the ones that I’ve interviewed. The universal laws have absolutely come into play with all of it. In your case, too, like, I’m just, I’m curious to see. So going from the NFL into getting into bear down logistics, I would love to hear that journey. Maybe how these laws came into effect at that point and maybe your journey throughout that. Because you said you started meditation six months ago. I just asked you a very loaded question, so feel free to break it up anyway.

Desmond Clark: No. So it’s a lot there, and I’ll say this, I really try to focus on the universal law of oneness. Like, we’re all one, right? We’re all connected. And I have, you know, I wrote this thing back in 20 1314, and it’s my purpose statement. It says, well, excellence being the standard. My purpose is to enhance the lives of others through any expertise or resource available to me within reason. With respect for my family, who are primary. Making every effort to transform strangers and associates alike into extended family members. I didn’t know at the time that I was telling myself.

Hey, man, I’m connected to everybody and everybody’s connected to me and everything is connected to me, right? And I really believe in that, and I really believe in, hey, if we just show love, we’ll get love back. That has really been the thing, I believe that has gotten me to a lot of places that I’ve been able to go. I’ve always been considered a good teammate, right? I believe one of the reasons why I was around for twelve years is because I was a good teammate. I was actually told by some of my coaches when they brought me back in my last couple of years.

My last year, I’m sorry that they brought me back just because I was a good teammate. And I was like, and I only played in three games that year. But they, paying me all of this money, I was like, well, y’all just want me to be a good teammate. They knew that if I had to go into the game that I couldn’t do it. I’ll take that, I wasn’t happy about it because I wanted to play, but, you know, I took it. So just now, thinking back on some of the things that kind of drove me forward. I look at those things like, I didn’t understand it then, but I understand it now. Like the law of action, you got too many people.

That’s, oh, man, I wanna, I wish I can, well, go take some action on it. Just do the work, do the work. And you said something earlier, detach yourself from the results. Do the process, just focus on the process and it will come. I have something right here in front of me. It says, chase the vision, not the money. The money will end up following you. It’s just those types of thoughts that I always had that I believe just kept me in the right mind frame. To just go do the work and be a good person to other people, and everything just worked out.

Pamela Bardhi: I, so love that, I mean, we’re all one. That’s the thing that people don’t realize is that there’s a, I think it’s a ram dass quote that says. We’re all just here to walk each other home. And when you, when you hear that, you’re just like, why are we fighting with each. What is the point of all this separation, right? Like that, you know, stereotypes, and this is like, we’re all one. At the end of the day, we’re just here to help each other.

How to think positive and put out positive results

The other thing that came up recently was the whole mirror concept that those in your life. And how you perceive things and people that show up in your world are mirrors of you.

Pamela Bardhi: And I was like, oh, that’s scary. I was like, that is scary. But it’s so true because one of my coaches, she’s just like, so. What did you do for that person to show up in that way? I’m just like, you know, like, these realizations, like, they sound so simple, but there’s so much behind it, right? So that, and then it reflects in your real time, right? Because in your world, the way that you were able, like, you were mentioning this earlier in your company. That you were able to reposition because you alchemize that energy, right? Because that’s what exists within you, you were able to transmute that, right? Wasn’t in you. You would have reacted and gone nuts and who knows what else, right?

Desmond Clark: Exactly. Whatever’s inside of you will come out. That’s going to decide what materializes from all your day to day activity, what you’re putting out. And so it’s a conscious choice just to think positive. Not only to think positive, but to do positive and to put out positive, because what’s the alternative? When you look at it like that, it’s like, is that what I want to be? No, absolutely not. So let me be who I want to be, and let me be what I want to be. Everybody talks about, hey, I want to be a positive person, this, that, and other. But then we’ll go back. We’ll do all of these other things, that goes against everything that you say that you want to be.

When you start to take control of that and say, you know what? I’m not going to let, Amb situation turn me into something that I know I don’t want to be. I’m not going to let the way that somebody else approaches something. Make me be something that I don’t want to be, because I have a choice in this. I can choose to deal with anything the way that I want to. Nothing’s making me do anything but me, so. And I have to catch myself sometimes because I don’t know about you, Pamela. But I’m not perfect, and I have to catch myself sometime, like, damn. Like, yeah, I probably could have handled that, a little different. Yeah, you know what? I did get outside of myself then, 100%.

Pamela Bardhi: But we’re human. It’s part of the process. You know, it’d be crazy to say, yeah, we got it all down but I mean. What I also love, too, is, like, you know, you wrote the principles of winning, too. This is all within you, too, which is amazing. It was just like, I feel like that’s been a major ethos for you in writing that. And it’s just like, it’s not just like a book that you wrote to write a book, right? Like, it’s like, I feel like that’s your mantra. That’s like, right, so that’s amazing. So if you want to share some amazing tips from there or your. Well, we want everybody to read the book, so not everything, but the, you know.

Desmond Clark: I couldn’t even share everything. We’ll have to be on, for a long time for me to share that. But, I mean, even the shirt I have on the day, man, I’m all about winning. And I had a chance to look up the origin meaning of the word win. It kind of changed how I looked at it, I was like, okay, this makes a lot of sense. The origin meaning of the word win is to succeed or gain by struggle. So win and succeed, every, I mean, gain and succeed. Everybody knows that part, everybody attaches themselves to that part. It’s the struggle part that people don’t want to dive into, but think about when you win. Especially in sports, it’s a struggle a lot of times against another team, right?

When you win in business it is a struggle of, hey, I got to go out, I got to win clients. And then I got to execute. I got to deliver. That’s the struggle. So one of the things that I love about what I do now. That I found, that, the definition of win is I always try to identify the struggle. Where’s the struggle going to be in six months, in a year, you know? Because if I can identify the struggle and I could game plan around that struggle to defeat that struggle. Now, it’s just going to catapult, to me, for, right. Same thing like in sports. You have a great defensive tackle, and you’re planning on running the ball. Well, you’re going to have a game plan on how I need to block that defensive tackle. Right.

If you got a great cornerback on one side, your game plan, you probably, not going to throw the ball. At that cornerback as much as on the other side where you have a mismatch. Right, because that’s going to be a struggle. And if you win enough of those struggles, you’ll ultimately win the game. That’s not in the principles of winning. When I write 2.0 that will be in the principles of winning. Because I think that is a principle that if people can wrap their head around it. Let me find out where I’m going to struggle. Talk about everyday life, talk about, like, hey, just, just wanting to be healthy. Well, where is it that I struggle the most with being healthy? Right, and let me game plan around that struggle. It works for all parts in all, all walks of life.

Pamela Bardhi: Absolutely it does. Because you’re pre planning for what your mind is going to stop at.

Desmond Clark: Right.

Pamela Bardhi: You know, if that’s an obstacle that you’re going to hit, you pre plan for. And you train your brain around it, then you know how to handle it.

Desmond Clark: Mm

Pamela Bardhi: Risk mitigation. I love that.

Desmond Clark: But then you got it, but then you got to go out and execute, though. That’s the thing.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s, hard part.

Desmond Clark: So, yeah, so that’s the process of greatness, right? If you want to win and win consistently, you got, to get into the process of greatness. Which is, execute the details in excellence consistently over time. And there’s no one, unless really you have a physical or mental handicap. That can’t do that for whatever it is that you’re doing in life, execute the details in excellence.

There’s a standard there, right? Then you got to do it consistently. So you can’t do it, a couple days, and then a couple days you don’t do it. You know, that’s not going to get you the results that you’re looking for. And then you got to do it for a long period of time. I always challenge people, Pam, to say, look at people who you feel like are great. Or look at companies that you feel like are great companies.

Transitioned into becoming an entrepreneur after the NFL

And that’s all they did. They just executed the details in excellence at a high level consistently over a long period of time. Then somewhere over that period of time, everybody saw looking at that person or that kind of, like. Man, that’s a great company, man, that’s a great teacher. You know what? That’s a great ball player. But it doesn’t happen in the short term, they happen over time.

Pamela Bardhi: Over time, and it’s that resiliency that you’re building in the meantime. You know, no one wants to talk about those long hours or the struggles or the lessons or all of that stuff. It’s like, you know, we tend to pay attention when it’s, when things blow up. Right. In a good way. Like, oh, my God, this person got x award, oh, my God, they hit a revenue of x amount. Oh, my God, and you’re just like, yeah, but I’ve been putting into work for how many years? And I’m sure it was like that with bear down, too. I would love to hear, like, how you transitioned into becoming an entrepreneur after the NFL, too. It would be just like, how or why did you get into that industry and really how you began scaling it up like crazy.

Desmond Clark: So, yeah, I got it, I got into this industry really, on accident. I had, wrote my book, principles and winning, and I say, hey, I’m getting out of corporate America. I’m going out here to inspire greatness from people, because I believe everybody has greatness in them. Then the pandemic happened, and, yeah, no speaking engagements during the pandemic unless it was on Zoom. They didn’t pay a lot, so, couldn’t make a living doing that. And then right when it was coming back, I started marketing myself. Brian, the owner of Dray Depot, became my mentor. He actually wanted me to work with him in his company. That’s when I learned about logistics, he brought me in, he showed me his company, showed me what he’d do.

He taught me all the basics. And eventually I turned him down and said, hey, I don’t want to work for someone, but I love this industry. What do you think about helping me to start a company that’s not going to compete with yours? Because he was doing a drayage and I’m doing other modes of transportation, and he said, let’s go for it. That was October of 2021. So I researched study into May of 2022, and started in May of 2022, like, real life operations. Just picking up the phone, calling people, and you talking about ups and downs and. Yeah, and the stories. Like, I just recently got published in Ink magazine, but, two and a half years ago. I don’t have, no, hair, and I wanted to pull out my hair because it was a struggle.

Pamela Bardhi: Struggle trying to.

Desmond Clark: Trying to learn, because now I’m the owner of a company, and it’s just me. But trying to learn how to go out and get these clients. Never worked in this industry before.

Pamela Bardhi: Right.

Desmond Clark: And so once I did get clients, and then I went out and hired my first two people. Now I never had to manage people before, and not like this, how do I do this? Then now I got overhead, I got an office, and the biggest thing was, the accounting. Accounting was my worst enemy. I used to have to spend three to 5 hours a day just figuring out how to do this stuff. How to work these systems, how to coordinate that system with this system. My first outside hire was an accountant, and he made my life so much easier. But all of that comes with expenses, right? So as I’m gaining all these expenses, we got to make money also.

Or this thing is going to go belly up fast, so five months into it, four months into it. We got on a hot streak in October, November, December, we had $100,000 plus revenue every month. And now, okay, now we’re cooking with fire, I mean, cooking with grease. That fire is burning hot, and I went out and hired all these people. I hired five new people and I hired three producers, and two of them didn’t produce anything. Oh, absolutely nothing, and so now, I got all this overhead and no money is coming in. So after three, three and a half months, now I had to cut bait. Because I was like, if I don’t do this, we’re burning through $20,000 a month with nothing coming back.

Well, I’m not going to say nothing, coming back. We were losing $20,000 a month, but that was with revenue coming in minus the expenses. So I learned a quick lesson there. Also, hire slowly, do my due diligence. And then I also learned in that period how I wanted to run my company. I went from a two model where I was paying people, salary, and I went to a broker agent model. Where everybody was 1099 because it was. My broker agent was the only salesperson in the office that was making money, I wonder why. Because if he doesn’t go out and get any deals, he’s not getting paid anything. Everybody else, they’re getting paid regardless.

Pamela Bardhi: Huh?

Desmond Clark: Light bulb, so it’s been a whole lot of other lessons since then. One of the big things that I had to overcome is being new in the industry. When you’re new in the industry, factoring companies don’t want to work with you. Factoring companies are people that pay the bills and collect the bills for. Like the carriers or for the broker because so, you know, keep cash flow and they’ll take a percentage. And so we’ll call out to truck drivers and, hey, we got this load. Oh, we can’t work with you, man, your MC number is too new, your business too new, like what? What is this? How, we all supposed to get any business? So we sat down, we wanted to win, what was our struggle? We couldn’t get any carriers to move any loads.

For us, it wasn’t the carriers, it was the factoring. Companies, tell them, tell them they couldn’t do it. We went to each and every big factoring company and said this, okay, we understand that we’re new. But we’re good at what we do. Give us a shot, give us $2,500, give us $5,000 worth of credit. So we can move one, two, three lows with you. If we do good with those one or two, three lows, continue to extend our credit. That’s how we went from early on, not being able to get any carriers to. By the time October came around, we were making $100,000 a month and all the carriers were working with us. And it was just, simply just going to ask. That was like the first major hurdle that we got over as a company.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s amazing.

Went to the factoring companies 

Well, I love that you pulled a risk mitigation factor here, which I think is really important. You went to the factoring companies and you’re like, okay, who’s the problem? Where’s the obstacle? How are we going to overcome it? It’s like, okay, it’s not these guys that the companies that want us to handle the loads, it’s the factory companies. We’ve got to talk to them to then execute a game plan. Are we going to get around them? See this connects right to football. So your gameplays that you learn in the NFL, like I’m seeing this all connect. This is so cool. But like basically now you all right, what’s the play to get around them? Okay, cool, this is what we’re going to do.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s awesome.

Desmond Clark: How to eliminate all this overhead and eliminate that too.

Pamela Bardhi: Yeah. Motivation.

Desmond Clark: And then I was like, all right, we don’t need this office. If we go all remote. Then I could hire from a bigger talent pool around the world, and so that’s why we’re all remote now. I literally have people all around the world and I say that because I have one employee in the Philippines. It’s literally all around the world now. We can build a team. Low overhead, everybody is pulling from the same side of the rope.

My job now is to help my broker agents be successful. I don’t sell anymore, I maintain all of the back office systems processes. So when they bring in an opportunity, we could process all that opportunity for them. And it’s my job to make sure that I’m helping them to build their business. Because the bigger they build their business, the bigger the overall buried down logistics become.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that. Well, you found your zone of genius and you found the right game plan, if you will.

Desmond Clark: Right. I don’t know if it’s genius or, you know, I’m just stumbling into the right situations.

Pamela Bardhi: You created that, I love that, Desmond. I love that.

What would Desmond number one piece of advice for anybody listening

Oh, my goodness. And throughout your career and in your business, like, with bear down and everything. What would you say is, like, your number one piece of advice for anybody who’s listening? That’s like, you know, looking to start a company or, scaling up or maybe struggling, whatever comes to you, like that. One thing that they need to know.

Desmond Clark: About building a business, again, it’s about where you focus in, and you have to focus on yourself. You see that 1% back there?

Pamela Bardhi: Yep.

Desmond Clark: That’s our vision, statement, sorta top 1%. What that means for us is that we want to be, top, 1% people. If we continue to develop ourselves to be top 1% people, we’ll have a top 1% company. I’m a firm believer in you, don’t get what you deserve. You get what you are. And if you are continuously developing yourself to be that top 1%, the outcomes will come. But we’re not focused on outcomes. 

We’re focused on a process, and that process has been processing yourself and everything about you. To be in the top 1%, is it easy? Hell, no, it ain’t easy. Like, you got to do stuff that other people may not do, right. But in order to get what other people can’t have, sometimes you got, not. Sometimes you got to do what other people are not willing or not able to do.

Pamela Bardhi: Absolutely. I love that.

Study the Bible early in life and understand the esoteric meaning of it

And then this is because I always saved the best question for last. Of course I do. To piggyback off of that, what would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know now. This could be business. It could be personal, whatever comes to your heart with it.

Desmond Clark: Two things. Study the Bible early in life and understand the esoteric meaning of it. It’ll put you way ahead of the game. And then two, take care of your dollars when you get them. Because if you take care of your dollars. Your dollars will take care of you if you use them the right way. Right. I look back on the money that I made in my younger days, right. If I would have been more diligent with it, I would be even farther along than I am now.

But I don’t have any regrets at all, because I’m here now. And this is the only place that I can be, but if I was going to tell my younger self. It’d be those two things. Understand. Dig into the word and understand what the word is really telling you. The esoteric meanings of it so you could take care of yourself. Then just take care of the spiritual financial blessings that are given to you. So that you can continue to prosper and multiply over time.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that, Desmond. Those are some nuggets right there, man. Wow. Powerful stuff. Yeah, and I mean, the Bible, there’s so much behind that. So much symbolism, so much esoteric meaning, so much man. And it’s different every time you read it, and it is every time.

Desmond Clark: It’s like, what? Come on. I read this before and I never got, and I’ve never got that understanding out of it.

Desmond Clark: But you know, as you keep studying. Yeah, it’s, I told my wife today, a quick story. So I’m reading this book called God Mandev and it’s my third time reading it. Because it’s a difficult read if you’re trying to like, understand it. This morning, I got to the end of the book and I told her I felt, myself being, disappointed. I didn’t want the book to end, I wanted to keep learning. But all I’m going to do is pick it up in another month. Or so and go back and read it all over again.

But just reading. Reading some of these mystical books and understanding, like the true nature of what’s being said in the Bible. And understanding and going back and looking up the words and understanding the meanings of certain words. It will make you be like, oh, damn. Like, seriously? So I’m just going to leave that out there for everybody that’s listening, it’s a game changer. It’s really, it really is a game changer.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that. It’s just so crazy how it’s like different stages of your life. You just start to understand things and you don’t understand what’s going on at the time. But every time you look back, you’re able to connect the dots. And that’s why I tell everyone, I’m like, no matter what you’re going through right now. Just get through it, right with positivity and just keep, keep moving, you know, move through your emotions. Don’t repress them by any means, but you’ll understand later.

Pamela Bardhi: Right. You’ll understand later. And that’s okay, you know, it’s part of the process. That’s why we’re here, you know. So, I love that. I love that, Desmond. Oh, man, you are so awesome, I love it. Then, like, in your world, what’s happening in the next, like, few months. Any events coming up? Like, what’s up in your world?

Desmond Clark: Oh, man, work, more work, football practice, family, that’s all I have time for right now. Hopefully we can get a good trip or something out of this. But no, man, I love, I love working, I love building, I love taking care of my family. That’s the thing that makes me the happiest. And then playing a little golf every now and again, going fishing every now and again. Coaching my son out on the football field and all these other little knuckle headed kids that I get to. It’s a joy, it’s really a joy to do that. I’m a really, like, simple guy. Not a whole lot of razzle dazzle, but, yeah. So got a couple speaking engagements, a couple leadership development engagements.

That’s coming up. Besides that, man, all these new contracts, and I got a couple new broker associates. Broker agents that just came on that they bringing over new accounts and all of that stuff. Like, I genuinely can’t sleep at night half the time I’m up at two. I was this morning, 203:00 in the morning, because my head is going like, oh, man. So when I wake up, man, I get to take care of this, I get to take care of that. Let me make sure I get them set up for this. Oh, man. Then we got this coming up, and I woke up this morning. Drawing football plays, I love that this is what I was doing at 04:00 in the morning.

Desmond Clark says simple things keep him going

Pamela Bardhi: Oh, my God.

Desmond Clark: Cause I was practicing yesterday, I seen some stuff. I was like, oh, man, if we could just. So it’s just those simple things for me that keep me going and keep me excited. You know, seeing my wife in school, getting her master’s degree, just knowing that, hey, she can do that. She don’t have to. That’s all she got to do is go to school, of course, take care of me and the family. And then, yeah, just being able to see my son go to a school and I enjoy himself. Those little things, such, a blessing.

Pamela Bardhi: Oh, my goodness. And I know that everyone who’s been listening is like, oh, my goodness, where can I connect with Desmond? Where can we find all of your magic, my friend?

Desmond Clark: Yeah, I haven’t been posting a lot lately, but, I’m on just about every social media at Des Clarke. D e z c l. a r k 88. That’s instagram, that’s what’s on, ah, TikTok. But I do most of my posting on LinkedIn. Desmond Clarke on LinkedIn, Facebook, Desmond Clark. So, yeah, I’m not that hard to find, if you wanted to find me, I’m out there. I promise you I will be posting a lot more here over the next couple months. Because it’s been crazy these last two months, so I haven’t had time to get in front of the camera. And do some of this stuff and edit some of this stuff, but it’s coming.

Pamela Bardhi: I love that. Desmond, you are amazing, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Like, all your wisdom, all your insights, man, it was just. This is so beautiful, and I’m so honored to have walked the journey with you here today. Thank you so much, my friend.

Desmond Clark: All right. Thank you for having me on and more blessings to you and your podcast. And, man, I hope it continues to soar and soar even higher.

Pamela Bardhi: Thank you so, so much.

Underdog is a weekly podcast featuring advice from underdogs

So that’s it for today’s episode of Underdog. Catch us next week. Always dropping on Thursdays. And remember, if you’re interested in real estate or want to learn how to create more money and magic in your life. Check out meetwithpamala.com and let’s chat. Sending you so, so much love.