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Charge Into the Storm: Marques Ogden on the Bison Mentality, Owning Your Story, and Building a Life Worth Leaving Behind

  • tbdomann
  • 18 hours ago
  • 7 min read

From Pro Mindset® Podcast with Host Craig Domann, featuring Marques Ogden, former NFL offensive lineman, TEDx speaker, author and business coach.



There's a moment in every person's life where the storm doesn't look like it's going to pass. The bills pile up. The relationship falls apart. The career stalls. And in that moment, you have a choice that will define everything that comes after it: run from the storm, or charge directly through it.


Marques Ogden knows that moment intimately. A former NFL offensive lineman, executive coach, entrepreneur, and author, Marques has lived on both sides of that choice — and the consequences of each. He joined Pro Mindset® Podcast host Craig Domann for a return conversation that was raw, practical, and packed with lessons for anyone who has ever found themselves at rock bottom wondering how to get back up.

The answer, it turns out, starts with a bison.


The bison is the only animal on earth that runs directly into a storm rather than away from it. Every other creature tries to outrun it, go around it, or wait it out. The bison charges straight through — because the bison understands something that most people spend years learning the hard way: the fastest way out of a storm is through it.


This is the foundation of Marques' entire coaching philosophy. The Bison Operating System is built on five principles, each one a letter in the acronym: Boldness, Integrity, Self-awareness, Ownership, and Never quit. Together they form a framework for what it looks like to stop being a victim of your circumstances and start becoming the author of your own story.


"There is no storm you can't persevere and thrive through," Marques told Craig, "when you develop and sustain the bison mentality."


It's a compelling idea on paper. But Marques doesn't teach it from a textbook. He teaches it because he had to live it.


In November 2022, Marques moved out of his marital home after filing for divorce. He had two weeks to find a place. What he found was a dilapidated apartment in an area that didn't feel safe — for him or his then eight-year-old daughter, Farah. For the next two months, he was, by his own admission, deep in victim mode.


"It was a pity party for Marques," he said. "Please, everybody feel sorry for me. Poor me, I had to file for divorce. Poor me, I don't live in my home anymore."


He was drinking heavily. Going out and losing himself. Not showing up as the man or the father he knew he could be. And he knew it. But knowing it and doing something about it are two very different things — until one January day when Farah sat down beside him and said what no child should have to say to their parent.


Daddy, I'm afraid to go to sleep at night. I don't like where we're living. I want a better quality of life.


That was the moment. Not a coaching session. Not a book. Not a motivational speech. A twelve-word gut punch from an eight-year-old that cracked open everything Marques had been avoiding.


"I said to myself — is that the legacy I want to leave for her? That when things get tough I just fold and stay in victim mode? And the answer was no."


He charged into the storm. By mid-May of that same year — roughly four months later — he had bought a brand new 3,100 square foot home in an upscale neighborhood for him and Farah.


If the bison mentality needed a case study, that is it.


Not everyone has a Farah. Not everyone has a child who will look them in the eye and say the thing that needs to be said. So what do you do when there's no external wake-up call coming?


Marques' answer is to go looking for the internal one — and it starts with a single question: what legacy do you want to leave behind?


Legacy, he explained, is simply the positive impact you want to be known for. When Marques hit rock bottom years earlier after losing his construction company and moving to Raleigh with $400 to his name, no credit cards, and no safety net, that question is what pulled him back. His father had worked hard to give Marques a better life than he had. The thought of letting that lineage of sacrifice die with his own failures was unbearable.

"Focus on what purpose you want to reignite, what passion you want to rekindle, and then focus on that legacy you want to be known for," he said. "We all have hardships. Just don't stay down."


It's not a complicated formula. But it requires a level of honesty that most people actively avoid — the kind that forces you to look in the mirror and ask whether the life you're living today is building toward the legacy you actually want to leave.


One of the clearest frameworks Marques brings to his coaching work is borrowed from Jack Canfield: Event plus Response equals Outcome.


The event is what happens to you. You get cut. You lose the contract. The relationship ends. The market turns. The event is outside your control, and pretending otherwise is a waste of energy. But the response — your thoughts, your behaviors, the images you focus on — that belongs entirely to you. And the response is what determines the outcome.


"Stop pointing the finger," Marques said. "Point the thumb. Because this," — gesturing outward — "you can't change. But this," — pointing back at himself — "you can."

This is what ownership actually looks like inside the Bison Operating System. Not self-blame. Not guilt. Just a clear-eyed acknowledgment that the only lever you can pull is the one connected to your own choices. If you don't like your weight, change your eating habits. If you don't like your salary, work hard while you find something better. If you don't like the direction your life is heading, stop waiting for someone else to redirect it.

"If you're not gonna face this person in the mirror," Marques said, "then you're not gonna be able to face anybody else outside of this."


One of the most practically useful parts of the conversation was Marques' breakdown of how to build consistency — not as a vague aspiration, but as an operational system.

The lesson came from his NFL days with the Buffalo Bills, courtesy of head coach Mike Malarkey. If you want to control your life and everything in it, Malarkey told his players, manage two things: your calendar and your clock. Because if you don't control your calendar and your clock, your day will run you.


Marques has carried that lesson for over two decades and passes it on to every coaching client. Time-block your calendar. Don't just write down what needs to get done — assign it a specific window. Because a task with no time block can get done anytime, which means it often gets done never.


"I don't go to sleep until everything on my calendar that's time-blocked is done and off my calendar," he said. "That's how you develop consistency."


He paired this with another NFL-era lesson, this one from Coach Jack Del Rio: be your own CEO. Don't wait to be told where to go, how to act, or how to show up as a professional. The players who lasted in the league were the ones who took ownership of their preparation, their film study, their fitness, and their mindset — without being asked. The ones who needed constant direction didn't last.


"Football is a big business with pads on," Marques said. "And if you're trying to achieve anything in life, you have to be your own self-starting, self-inspired CEO."


Craig asked Marques a pointed question midway through the conversation: looking back at your football career, what is the one thing from the Bison framework that you wish you'd had more of?


Without hesitating, Marques answered: self-awareness.

Specifically, the ability to receive constructive criticism without feeling attacked. As a young player and young man, he had a massive ego and that ego made it nearly impossible to hear feedback that could have made him better. He loved positive reinforcement. He hated being challenged. And that gap between what he was willing to hear and what he needed to hear cost him.


"I wish I would have been more self-aware of how to better myself and handle those situations," he said. "It would have helped me tremendously in my football career."

Today, he actively seeks out criticism. He recently overhauled his entire podcast intake system after acknowledging it was inefficient and disjointed. He hired people smarter than him in areas where he needed help. He rebuilt his brand workflows from scratch. The willingness to say "this isn't working and I need to fix it" — that's the self-awareness he didn't have at twenty-two. It's the thing he now teaches every client.


The ego lesson, he made clear, has a specific line. Confidence and self-belief are essential — you cannot succeed without them. But the moment your ego convinces you that you've already figured it out, that you no longer need to listen, that there's nothing left to learn — that's not the beginning of the end. That's the end.


"Never let your ego get bigger than the good part of your soul," he said. "The minute you stop listening to people who have the wisdom and expertise you need — that's when it's over."


When Craig Domann closed by asking Marques for his recipe for a massive breakthrough, the answer was as straightforward as everything else he'd shared.

Start small. Do something every day. Stack it.


"The small things add up to the big things," Marques said. "You didn't gain the weight in one day. You're not going to lose it in one day." He reached back to Aristotle: we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act — it's a habit. And habits are built one rep at a time, one time block at a time, one decision at a time to charge into the storm instead of running from it.


The victory mindset Marques teaches isn't about individual wins. It's about creating an environment where everyone around you wins too — your clients, your team, your family, your kids. It's the understanding that real greatness isn't something you achieve alone, and it isn't something you achieve once. It's built daily, in the small decisions that nobody sees, until one day the results are impossible to ignore.


Farah got her home. And Marques got his purpose back.



Listen to the full conversation with Marques Ogden here or here. Connect with Craig for coaching opportunities at Craig.ProMindset@gmail.com. Find Marques at https://www.marquesogden.com/ and follow along for resources built for athletes, coaches, and the parents who support them.




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For more information about Craig and his keynote speaking, coaching, or athlete representation, go to www.CraigDomann.com 


 
 
 

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