From Loss to Leadership: Help For Kids Who Have Lost a Parent with Mark Cook

Join us for a heart-to-heart conversation with Mark Cook, an acclaimed leadership consultant, coach, and trainer, who has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies. This episode is not just an interview; it's Mark's raw, personal narrative, one that unfolds the void left by the premature death of his father and examines the impact it had on his life. 

Mark's striking journey from this deep personal loss to his inspiring career is a moving testament to resilience, shedding light on the labyrinth of adolescence marked by fatherlessness. As he navigated his transition to adulthood, Mark grappled with feelings of uncertainty and loss, ultimately leading him to the path of mentoring and leadership training. For those wrestling with similar circumstances, he offers invaluable advice and guidance, serving as a beacon of hope in the face of adversity. Listen in, as we delve into a conversation that's not just about surviving life's harshest trials, but also about thriving despite them.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Gentlemen Project podcast. I'm Kirk Chug.

Speaker 2: 0:04

And I'm Corey Moore. Today in the studio I have Mark Cook with us and Mark and I have recently met. He's been following the podcast, has a very interesting story, is a leadership consultant and coach and trainer. For those of you who are in the business world might know Mark or worked with him. Mark, thanks for spending some time with us. Love to be here. Mark has a little bit different perspective. I think we're going to hear today, which will be great, A great story for us to hear and for our listeners to hear, on the importance of fatherhood. Yeah Right, Mark. So why don't you give us some context, give us a little more about you, your family and what you do for a living, just to give the audience, you know, a vision of big picture, who you are.

Speaker 3: 0:51

I thought I cut the bug for ideas and leadership when I was working for Stephen Covey. Turns out it was much earlier than that, which we'll talk about today. I've ended up married to an amazing woman, anika. She has a voice, she has a voice Academy, super successful voice Academy, and I have five sons, no daughters, two two grandsons, no granddaughters. So we're all boys, and Anika for her and, and I've I've just loved doing research on how people lead and are successful at work for decades, and that is what I'm all about professionally.

Speaker 1: 1:30

The name of your company is Windfall Partners right Windfall Partners?

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yeah, and you go to that website. It's full of information on how to contact, get a hold of it.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Well, and I think he's he's spoken in front of four just about every Fortune 500 company that there is, according to the website. So very talented trainer. So tell us about your background and why fatherhood has become an important enough thing that you would come and be on the podcast today.

Speaker 3: 2:03

Yeah, well, as Corey and I discovered last time we met, we had this in common and, in preparation for meeting, didn't know, and I immediately left and realized that I was on the other side of this, and so, as we talked again, the three of us decided to have me on this show. And here I am, and the perspective is this that there are one in three men at the current moment that grow up without a father and it's it's no picnic, and I'm one of those people, and so would you like me to tell that story Anything, please?

Speaker 2: 2:43

Yes, yes, we'd love to start from the beginning.

Speaker 3: 2:45

You know I've never really told this story publicly so and we don't want to go on too long so I'll leave out some details. But when I was 13, I was just at the end of junior high and I was happy and a house full of people. My big brother, Rich, was a star football player halfway through high school and finishing high school, and my sister, Julie, was a collegiate athlete just beginning college and my mom was literally the best mother who ever walked. There she was. She was raising his full time, finishing this family, the last third and I was the youngest and one day my father.

Speaker 3: 3:30

By the way, my father was a former chaplain in the Air Force and he had started. He was an entrepreneur and he had run into trouble not too long before this, His partner and hooded and bezels a lot and imploded the business and their finances and insurance and all the things and partner and actually went to prison. He was in the clink for a long time, actually for several things he did at that time. So rough, rough time for my dad. And to add insult to injury, they called us in the front room one day. They said it's we're really sad to tell you that dad has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and it's advanced and he probably won't live more than three months and that was a rough moment for us. He fought really hard for a little over a year and it was a crazy time obviously, always in the hospital, all of us, and back then treatment was much worse than it is now.

Speaker 3: 4:39

So it was. It was a very painful and very difficult time. We got through a lot, and one day my mom screams loudly Mark, come in. And I ran into the bedroom and my dad was in the process of dying, and so I picked him up in my arms and his eyes rolled back and he passed and put him on the bed and shook him and he woke up.

Speaker 3: 5:07

My mom was on the phone calling the doctor a couple of houses away because 911 wouldn't be fast enough and we revived him quickly before the doctor came and my dad couldn't really speak and really well, but he kept nodding to me because it was the day, my first football game in high school and and I was supposed to catch the kickoff. So he kept saying get out of here, get out of here. With his face and he smiled at me as though he were to say this is going to be rough but it'll all work out, maybe in 70 years or whatever. And and he kept nodding and he was insistent that I go. He loved going to my games and all my siblings things and he went to all of them and he, he got me to go.

Speaker 3: 5:54

My cousin picked me up and I missed the bus and I walked on the field and I kind of motioned to the other person to get off one of the other two and I caught the kickoff and and and returned and played the game and after I went up to my brother, rich, and I said how's dad? And he said he got really sad and he said he passed Mark and I didn't think through anything from that moment on for a long time and I ripped his shirt open and I punched him in the sternum and said no many times loud and started an uncontrollable cry for quite a long time. I even had one gentleman walk by us on the field as we left. I was leaving with my brother in law, he was going to drive me home and this man said it's OK, you'll get him next time, which was very difficult to hear from in that moment.

Speaker 3: 6:52

But so that was. That was the intense part of the story. It was the beginning of over the next little while, the next few months, the sand and the quick sand was about to shift even more. But that's the essence of how I lost my dad. So that was. That was a dark day. So that's that's the story that gets me here, and what we'll probably talk about next is hopefully good for your audience to hear.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So, at 15 years old, you're now without a dad. What happens with your family?

Speaker 3: 7:28

Well, my brother was just done with high school and college age, either heading off to the world or he chose to go on a religious mission to California for two years and my sister quickly fell in love and got married in 82. And my mom, who had been home with us raising us, which is customary back then, was forced back in the work force full time. Great people gave her work and she was gone too. And I suddenly found myself sitting in a home alone. And I did have good friends. I had terrific three girls that adopted me Nancy, heather and Aaron adopted me as kind of their civilian, and I had a one male friend, matt Miller, who really got you know, inquisitive and emotional and supportive, really mature for his age. And but his parents immediately moved him to St George, which was even another blow, and you can imagine that for a couple years I wasn't the best student or the best behaved and it was a rough, dark time and had no idea how to move forward. I didn't know how to. I was a boy, I felt very boyish, I was a starter on the football team, I wanted to be a man, but over the next couple years I just was numb and I didn't for some reason, if a man came and was authoritative or told me what to do, it was very difficult for me Because he wasn't my dad. And I think there were many angels that came to me and buoyed me up Dean Kaelin, famous guy locally that helps American Idol people, and also Dale Simon, a former football coach, who gave me the illustrious opportunity to be the driver's ed aide. But they, they, what I, what I, as I reflected on this episode, what they did is they they got me to just a very first stage, which was non-catastrophe stage. They didn't solve my problems, they just kept me from literally imploding emotionally and and hurting others and hurting myself, I think. And and that was an important first step, you know, and I had, you know, those girls did that too and my brother was gone, and then I was gone Because I got myself together and so my brother and I had been dear, close friends. You know, we had a little time in between, four years, but that was it, and so we were kind of absent and split up for life, and split us up for four years, your sister gone, so that that began my adulthood.

Speaker 3: 10:28

You know, here I am, coming home and ready to face the world as an adult male with zero idea how to pull that off, and that's been. You know, I feel there are many worse things that happen to people. For sure, I'm a little nervous about this story because I know there that some that haven't gone through this thing, well, there's worse things that have happened. It happens to so many people. So, but, as I talked to those that never found a mentor or never had a great stepfather show up or, you know, did not face this version of it. You just have to trust us that are in this particular segment of that group. It's rough. My brother based it a whole different way and says it was the defining and still is the defining moment of his life. I just talked to him last night about it. So it's a very unique, interesting thing that highlights the importance of fathers, and I think that's I think that's why I'm here.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Maybe you could give us some the listener, some advice. Yeah, this is going to be a little bit of a loaded question, yeah. So advice to a young person going through this, advice to someone who's, then maybe advice to the person who's you know, a parent who's dealing with kids going through a loss of a spouse, right and then maybe talk to those third party people the angels you mentioned, right. So from the kid's perspective, the parent's perspective and from someone who's there to help third party that's there to help what advice would you give to each one of those groups, now that you've been able to live through all this and then reflect? Yeah, I know that's a loaded question.

Speaker 3: 12:22

It's a big. It's a big and difficult question and I'll tell you I have worked my entire career, probably because of this event, to answer the professional segment of that and have some really great answers for the professional. So the reason it's such a hard question for me is is that I was fortunate because I did have the best mom in the world and I do have, I think, the best siblings ever, and through osmosis and brief lunches and things like that, emotionally and spiritually, even though I was behaving horrendously I don't know that anyone even knew it at the time, but I was but I had a compass and I knew that I couldn't keep being numb and just seeking comfort in any type or version of positive emotion, and I just knew that at some point I had to come up for air, and so that was that first phase of just having a compass that I needed to go up and take a breath above the water, and I did that. So for those people in that position, I think that's really what your question is for this moment, and that is that it's interesting. I had a couple of lunches with older people. It felt like they wanted to help, so they invite me to lunch and that is such an amazing heroic thing because 99 out of 100 people probably or actually didn't do that and probably don't do that. But even if you're the one out of 100, one lunch will not boy someone in that young of a stage that lost their whole life, basically.

Speaker 3: 14:19

So what I would suggest is projecting a careful and casual not a very adult because an 18 year old's still a kid, 25's still a kid and projecting a casual, friendly series of interactions, not unlike what you guys based and started this whole project on. And if it's not dad, it's gotta be someone, and so that would be a big piece of advice. Just if I had known that there would be that kind of a mentor that was going to invest a little time and it was gonna be flexible and friendly, and at my age level that would have been super powerful Couple people got close you know, kaylin got really close to doing that and saved my bacon and Simon's in our twice a week drives was very friendly, it was very close to what he did, but it wasn't the content of what you guys described. Where you're talking about what does it mean to be a gentleman? That was not there, and I think that would have been a positive even for the angels that saved me. Yeah, I think it's a good pattern.

Speaker 1: 15:48

So advice for maybe a kid who's in your situation, who might find this podcast based on some keyword searches or something like. Speak directly to that kid who might be 13, 14, 15 years old. Lost their dad.

Speaker 3: 16:03

Yeah, like you're gonna make me cry, because I probably helped a thousand of those kids, not because I'm great, just because I've ended up in front of them in life for various reasons, and they just asked me and I talked about things like finding jobs and such, or I teach them something, and I think it's because I have so much compassion for that 15-year-old me and I don't have any answer on what to do with that from this point on, to do a better job. But I do have some advice probably for them. I would come at it through their mom, the mothers. My mother had to deal with all this, in addition to the small fact that she lost her, the love of her life, and so she did a terrific job. She was both mother and father to some extent and she backed off because she was a strict mom. She had some good guardrails before he passed and she didn't want me to plow right through them and I probably would have. So she backed off and I think you can keep, you have to, I would keep the guardrails up, I would turn them flexible and I think that would be a good thing because, boy, we need guardrails at that young age when that happens.

Speaker 3: 17:37

And then to the boy or the girl I would say ask. And this seems like a very simple thing, but when you're in that situation, the last thing you are that you consider obvious as a young person is to ask specifically for something that you need. Not that you want because other want things are dangerous but to think about the deeper part of your core and not what you want and the fun you need or the avoidance, but to think, hey, I need more than this lunch, if you are willing. And I wonder if we could go to lunch every week. Or I wonder if we could talk by phone every once in a while. And I sure wouldn't have asked for that back then, but I've got decades behind me now and I would plead for them to ask that.

Speaker 3: 18:47

My brother has a really powerful, different answer. He, like I said, we were separated. He approached us all differently at that point for years until we came back into each other's life and he sought for one person. He sought for mentors that were the best at something, and so he got very interested in work, and he was a little older than I was, so it was time and that made a big difference to him. So I think that's the best thing to do is to find a mentor and just get busy in the work world and keep your compass spiritually and emotionally and morally heading to goodness. Just keep heading to goodness. So that would be the recommendation for that young person on the personal side, I think.

Speaker 1: 19:41

I would imagine that in that situation where you're trying to bridge the gap from where you are to where you think you should be, that they use the crutch of drugs, alcohol, pornography, things like that to help them through those stages of wanting to feel wanted or comfortable, and that that's probably a pretty common temptation for young people who have gone through grief and loss to be able to just deal with their emotions that way. Could you speak to that?

Speaker 3: 20:20

Yeah, for sure it brings up. I haven't thought too much about this piece of it, which is that at that point, if I wanted to get into pornography, I would have had to ride my bike to the University of Utah bowling alley. See, I even know where it is, and right there, next to what was the pool hall, was a magazine rack, and then you'd have to talk the guy into reaching at the top. I can see right where they were, because we knew where they were. We went bowling once in a while and that's the only place you could really get it, unless you had a friend's dad. That was not good and that happened occasionally, but you didn't have easy access to that. So, wow, today, when it's in your pocket, I guess I would have to default to the other things that were more available and lump them together, and I did not solve this part of it myself.

Speaker 3: 21:23

But I do think that there were angels that were in my life, like those gentlemen I've already mentioned, but there were others, because I was not oblivious or resistant at all to doing bad things at all. Like life was. Life was kind of over for me. It felt like, and so who cares? I just don't want to feel like this right now. So whatever I need to do, I'm going to do. And yet it's strange. I do remember specific times driving to rugby. I ended up playing rugby with the opponents over at East or at Thailand, and I remember a couple of times being offered cocaine in the car on the way to practice and I don't know why I said no to that, I don't know. I remember another time I was offered to practice. I don't know why I said no to that. But I do know that it's not all, because I haven't heard a couple of friends that have are so successful personally and professionally that may they may have participated in those sorts of things. But I have others that I know that it's really taken decades, and like three decades, four decades out of their life because they made a choice to get involved with some of that stuff. And so I guess the answer is along the lines that I tell my sons that I've told my sons occasionally in the past, which is, I think it's like a freeway, you know, it's one thing to change lanes without signaling and get a ticket. It's another thing to swerve clear across all four lanes and plow into the median and go right through the guardrail and I would. My best advice, I think, for the first phase of not stability but to save you from catastrophe, is to stay away from the guardrail.

Speaker 3: 23:43

And I won't judge anyone because of this experience. It's really easy for me to judge people, like the rest of the people on earth but but it's also very easy for me to forgive people. You know the bad things that Martin Luther King did and like I just laugh. I'm like, so his body of work was the most amazing thing in the world. The bad things that Abraham Lincoln may or may not have done. Come on, are you gonna compare that to the great work that he did? It's not even close. The religious leaders that we we criticize for a sentence or two. Please spare me. I hope you didn't go to high school with me, because what you would say about me would be so much worse.

Speaker 3: 24:30

So I think that don't feel like you're gonna be judged if you're gonna change lanes without signaling in life, so to speak. They're kind of 16 to 18 year olds. That's an analogy. That'll be close to home. But do not do the big things like you mentioned and swore across all four, endangering others, and plows through the guard route rails that have been set up for you. Just stay in your lane as much as you can. That would be my advice to them, just in a short amount of advice. You know plenty more, but for today, in a short venue, be that.

Speaker 2: 25:10

So it seems like I'm kind of I'm like giving myself advice as you're talking, right, like what would I do? What would I do? And then I'm listening to you and I'm thinking give this young person, help him with some vision. Yeah right, like we, I realized that life feels like it's basically over.

Speaker 2: 25:33

There's nowhere to turn. If you could give him some vision of you know you, you someday are going to have a career and you're someday gonna have your own marriage and you're someday gonna have your own kids and, as much as it doesn't feel like it, decisions you make today are gonna affect your ability to have those things. Yeah, and let's talk about the person you want to be. So giving him vision seems like it would be a good idea.

Speaker 3: 25:56

Yeah, yeah, but I would. I would back back up a little bit first and it's a great segue into the last side of life, and I would say this that in fact, after our last meeting it was the first time I connected this whole issue with my professional life. I didn't even realize the two were connected and I don't really know what to do with that now, other than I know that I'm gonna have some sort of an organization with a small start without dad or some other name, and and and do it more formally and actively, maybe start with a retreat or something to talk about what you've just asked me, because the first step is when you're in that situation. You don't think you're gonna contribute to society. I didn't. How could I? I had nothing. I had no direction or resources that were bigger than high school or football.

Speaker 3: 26:52

My brothers were young and very. The older one was in a very specific line of work that and he'd been in a long time and in it he was very. He was also a stabilizer to some degree, but he had his own family and his own boys, not much younger than me, to raise and and so I would say you have to back down to the day in the week and the realm of the day in the week, you know, the day is this planet's unit of work, it's this planet's unit of fun, this planet's unit of contribution. And you start there and you say, all right, let me head to goodness rather than malevolence today, and that's the place you start and that starts, and if you can just think that far, then it starts to look like a goal and and the personal realm, with you and maybe one other person at most, is kind of the realm of the goal. Goals should be personal. If they're not personal, they usually don't happen.

Speaker 3: 28:03

And there's obviously old science and behind that and I teach that professionally but it has to be your location on the path.

Speaker 3: 28:11

You have to start with these particular people that have lost so much, that's, they have to see that usually, if I walk into a company, the place we start is a vision, because the vision is your destination and and while our country spends two billion dollars a year on GPS, the reason it makes 60 billion plus a year for our economy is because we already know where we are. We just have to enter the destination for that it's two billion to go to work, and so that's when you're healthy. That's a great place to start is the five-year vision. It's and make it visceral and you can see it. But that all travels up a path and one of the mistakes that leaders make and I think it's a mistake to try to to present too much fact at a young boy in this situation, where there's a million important things in life, you know you start talking and giving advice and really what they need is a path so they realize where they are and today must be good and today could build to something exciting this week.

Speaker 3: 29:11

That is exciting in a goodness way because they want excitement at 18 and it needs to be goodness excitement. And then it the realm of the week turns into the realm where nothing great happens without other people, and they don't know that I was all alone in my house and and fun things happened with other people, but I didn't really recognize that good and meaningful things have to happen with other people. I've been taught at my whole life, I taught it every Sunday, but you just don't internalize it unless something big like this happens. And so the next, the next thing to realize is that, hey, if you can handle this week, you might be able to handle 12. And on the 13th, if you're involving other people whether it's a club or whether it's a class or whether it's a team or whether whatever it is If you can involve other people and orchestrate their actions towards goodness over 12 weeks, the 13th week is a quarter, and that's where you enter the world of adults, this world and they don't know that you never even heard that concept. But this economy, this society, this world is very familiar with quarters and if you can lead a few people and orchestrate just a few and some day many, but just a few something good for a few weeks and then to 12, you can celebrate the 13th when you achieve something that's specific. You suddenly entered the world of contribution and adulthood and then you keep going and you ignore the business cliche of mission. My discovery, my research, is one of the most meaningful things I've ever discovered in the nine studies I've done about leading work results is that this cliche of mission is shared by about 85% of leaders, and the rare leaders that get rare client outcomes and financial results have something more specific in mind.

Speaker 3: 31:17

Mission is not the synonym of purpose. The purpose, what we do at three different levels and three dimensions for clients and customers and people in society is what we do today, it's what we do in a week, it's what we do in a quarter, it's what we do in five years. It's the path we do it, it's our core. That's why we gather together on zooms and offices to do something specific. It's not to save the whole planet, which is very popular to think about purpose right now. Think about how distracting that is. If focus requires really just one or two things and we're trying to do everything for everyone, that's a problem for an organization, no matter how big it is. And if we're chasing the great dollar for the stockholders alone and our bonus that has a short life in the grand scheme of things. So really it's, why are we gathered to help human beings? We call a target market and a person, specifically, sequentially, one at a time. That's a new thought for a young person that you could gather some people together, identify someone, whether there's money involved or not, and in a quarter help them and then in a year or two you get accomplished something life changing for them or job changing for them. And that's what a mission means to the rare leader. Yes, we do X, but we do X and we achieve for them A and B. And when those specifics are put forward and shown to everyone, they galvanize and march forward together, not just one team, but cross functional teams and multiple teams, because we're on a mission.

Speaker 3: 33:04

We don't have a mission, we don't write a mission. We're on a mission and we succeed, we achieve, we accomplish a mission. You know, jfk didn't say we're going to start trying to get into space. He said we're going to send a man to the moon and bring him home safely. And when those famous Chileans, or or or an age of the miners that got stuck, you know the rescue people didn't say, hey, let's save people, we save people better than anyone. They said, let's go get those people and bring them to the surface and we're either going to succeed or we're going to fail. And it happens in military settings. And I think I think some of these very actionable realms of society and work have fed into leadership to the degree and I think that they have inspired the rare leaders you know.

Speaker 3: 33:53

A mission is not just your purpose. Use the word purpose for your purpose and it has to be three dimensionally deep. But your mission is of one or two years and we either do it or we don't, and it gets everyone very motivated to do it or to not do it. And so that's, that's the next step. And it's one to two years out. And the vision that you talked about is probably the final conversation with one of these young people. You say now, because it's hard to look five years out. It's hard, it's been shown that it's five. It's very difficult to look beyond five years for an exceptional leader. That's why I prefer five years to 10 or some of the other popular numbers. But but five years is is a hard place for an 18 to 25 year old to go, and so it's the last thing.

Speaker 3: 34:40

And once you've built some of these other steps, these milestones on a path, then you can start talking about the destination and say can you see that someday in the future you're going to be an engineer?

Speaker 3: 34:51

And if you, it's going to take a while, it's going to take a lot of work, but you're doing it already in baby steps. You could be an engineer that builds a bridge like that or a building like that, or you can do whatever you needed to do, and and and fish for one of the 12 most important things that we do in life and say which one are you interested in, and it's going to. It might take decades for them to pick what they want to do, but they may decide right then it varies. So one of the last thing I'll say about all that is that One of the other great discoveries was that these, these pages that get sent out, or emails that get sent out, or discussions with each other that we have about strategy, and they're on left to right English symbols we call letters, and they're not. They're not accessible to every mind, but it's interesting, the single most innate thing about us as an organism is our ability to open our eyes and see a destination often a toothbrush and pursue it between obstacles.

Speaker 3: 36:04

We see a path subconsciously, we don't even realize it and we do that all day long. And if we can project for these young people or a lost leader or someone who is stuck, if we can project a path forward from today to five years out, with milestones that are specific, we have given them a huge gift where they don't have to sit around and wait for us to tell them what to do or be an 18 year old that's lost because he has no one to tell him how to be in the world. If someone spends a few weeks and paints that picture of that road forward with those milestones and destination, it's an enormous gift I think.

Speaker 1: 36:48

I hope that people that are listening, and perhaps some of those youth that might be listening, dot what you intended to give them in what you just said in your path from where you are to being a contributing, accountable adult in our society. I feel like I've got the first half of your story and I want to know the rest of your story. Moving from, you had some of these people that stepped in, kept you from catastrophe, and then how did you, how did you make it to where you are now? Or something or someone else, or a realization, a lesson, a revelation, something that helped you to get to now where you are and what you do as a father, being able to contribute and make sure that your children have what they need from their father. Can you, can you like, finish the rest of that story for me?

Speaker 3: 38:01

Yeah, I feel like why your podcast touched me so much is that I feel like I'm still in that process, even though I've quote unquote, finished it several times. I've got two manuscripts no one will ever read and I've tried to, I've tried my best to accumulate what I need to know to talk to five sons. And there was a time in my career, you know, I'd started C seven with a dear friend, kelly Phillips, and we co founded C seven years ago and and it was a tremendous experience. It made you know the found the founding funders a lot of money and helped us a teeny tiny bit, but it was a tremendous experience and and at the end it got hairy because Ray Norda was the funder and he was getting all and getting ready to pass and it got. It got very difficult because his daughter came into town and and launched a lawsuit to try to get hold of all the companies. It was. It was. It was an interesting moment and there were even a couple of people that because it was such a crazy time and I don't want to blame the business for all this, but there were a couple of people that committed suicide. Actually in that frame of time it was a. It was a serious moment to young people that were just trying to do something exciting and good in business.

Speaker 3: 39:28

And as I drove home from Utah County each day, because we'd build a building down there and and we had exited part of it and we were exiting another part, and as I drove and the time went on, I I thought, wow, this is really hard. It's really hard and I and I want to, I want to have a better answer for my five sons than this about career. And so I started eagerly asking people. Instead of listening to music or listening to talk radio or books on tape, I graduated at that moment to a time when I was calling people on the phone saying how in the heck were you so successful? And and it came from growing up at Covey, where I'd sold for nine months the idea of starting a magazine and the bug of filling in this void was fulfilled earlier by them saying yes, and I'd reach out to the greatest people on the planet.

Speaker 3: 40:29

I've interviewed Herb Kelleher and Lydie Dole and Johann Siddod and Arnold Palmer and Gary Player and Ken Griffey Jr. And I've interviewed some tremendous people Dr Lara, and just goes on and on and one of the greatest people I interviewed, not then but more recently, is Brad Parkinson, who's the father of the GPS system. He led five huge teams to create GPS and it's where I discovered that the most innate ability we have is a path to see a destination and avoid obstacles. And so I use the GPS when I talk about these things, because it's our map now and that instinct of just reaching out to people and saying how in the world do you do this? How did you get here and finding yourself driving an limousine with Carl Lewis and he said some interesting things about focus. I've never heard anywhere else like we're all wearing headphones right now and every track star you probably ever see wears headphones and earbuds. And I remember him saying oh, I'd get after those rookies when they'd come to the professional ranks and they were wearing earphones. He says where's your focus? You can't focus on listening to music. It's such a radical idea Just strange things that were given to me by hundreds of people that I just started in my career.

Speaker 3: 42:07

Even if I took an executive position or even my CEO position, I didn't take it If I didn't think I had to investigate how to do something new and do it better, because I just had that bug, and that's why I do what I do instead of go take a job somewhere, and I think that's one of the solutions you reach out aggressively and you don't stop to everyone that you think might be able to give you ideas on how to be part of this humanity. And one thing I do need to clean up is I use the adult world word contribute, which is not an 18-year-old, friendly word. But what we adults mean by contribute is no, we want you to be part of this. You're not alone, and you don't think anyone wants you to be part of this. You don't feel belonging. It's there, you just have to go get it. You can't wait for it, you have to go get it. And so contribute just means when you go and you team up with a courier clerk and you find out that together you can do something greater than each of you can do alone times three, the synergies are there and that you have something to give it. You have something that courier clerk doesn't have, that you can give, and so it's not like hey, we want you to go do service, dear 18-year-old, it's my dear 18-year-old. There's something that you've experienced and no one else has, and you have it to give. So go, start talking to people and get outside your inner circle and talk to everyone you can that you think would be wise to talk to on how to become that and contribute something that's unique to you, and they'll tell you if you're kind and you approach them. There's ways to do it, but that's anyway. That's what I would say about that.

Speaker 3: 44:08

The other one that's much shorter that is not my method was my brother's and he went out to the single best. So I went to, I went broad and I went as good as I could think I could get, and I didn't have really a methodology or approach. I just wanted to know about success and leading work in an organization. I thought I was going to end up in organizations not where I am today and I loved it. I loved that.

Speaker 3: 44:33

But he knew he was never going to work in a big company, he was going to be an entrepreneur and so he would go and find the very best people on the planet and he started with golf.

Speaker 3: 44:45

Actually, he went and found the very best person at Golf at Willow Creek and he snuggled up to him with a lot of effort and a lot of creativity and a lot of persistence and they're still friends. In fact they're partners now and he became a great golfer and he just qualified for the amateur as an old guy because he just wanted to do that. So he found the best and he followed the best and he did that in business. He went and chased my brother in his profession for decades and then he went and found a developing mind and an attorney that were involved with real estate and he found the best and they are partners at Regal Holm. So he would go specific and deep and develop a long-term relationship in mentorship and I don't know why that didn't work out as well for me. I wouldn't trade it because I've had tremendous experiences with some of the greatest leaders on the planet that are broad and brief. But those are two very different paths and I think both of them are worthy of recommendation for someone who doesn't have a way.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Do you think that this kind of thirst for knowledge it sounds like that helped you a lot and your brother yeah. You think that's trying to fill the void that you were filling.

Speaker 3: 46:07

Is that what that's about?

Speaker 2: 46:07

It's the only thing it's about and it filled it and it's helped.

Speaker 3: 46:11

It's interesting. Neither of us feel like it filled it. It's very strange. Here I am 56. And I'm saying this is the first time I've ever talked about this publicly. I have something on my podcast and something on my YouTube channel that talks about my first job and mentions that my dad died. I've never talked in depth about it like this publicly and I've been careful too. I'm sure I've made a lot of mistakes and offended someone, but it's worthy of talking about, based on your mission in this podcast and who your audience is. And I decided to take that chance and I think in talking to my brother I was surprised that he said the same thing. He said no, no, still.

Speaker 3: 46:53

Today is the defining moment of my life and we've been married, both to wonderful women. We've had children in there. All more important, in fact, four years ago I almost lost my own life with a spine infection that ended up going septic and I was on my back for four months, which wasn't conducive to professional career or stuff. But that 15-year-old moment dwarfs. My wife wouldn't say that. She would say that obviously my near demise was far bigger, but maybe it was because I was on morphine in the hospital, but it's a common thing.

Speaker 3: 47:31

We run into a lot of people like us. There's a lot of us out there and it's like we're on the same wavelength and we don't stop talking to each other for a long time when we meet with each other and this topic comes up and I don't think you ever fill the void. But I do agree with what you're saying, that maybe we did and we don't realize it because we don't know what we didn't have, and it propelled us to learn even more. Maybe but I don't know that it could have replaced all of that man that I loved Of course, I think all of this information has been really good for anybody who's listened to it.

Speaker 1: 48:09

Hopefully, the targeted information that you talked about today will help individuals that are listening to the podcast and those who it doesn't apply directly to. You're going to know someone or have an opportunity to be a mentor to someone who has been in this or will be in this situation. So thank you for sharing and being open with everyone today about your story and helping us understand what that's like and how we can help, because I think a gentleman is again aware of his surroundings and can see things like this. Hopefully, put their arm around people who need it and bring them into the fold, like people did for you.

Speaker 3: 49:03

The math works out that you know somebody. I know it's probably time. Do you mind if I share one of our last things? Sure, please. There's another unexpected dimension to this. That is advice I'd give.

Speaker 3: 49:16

Whatever you're doing, any of us not just these young men and women, but anyone who's trying to pursue the path and get to a milestone destination inevitably hits obstacles. It is what life is, I've come to believe. It's not really anything great that happens without other people, but it's also true that there's not really anything great that doesn't come without near catastrophe or difficulty. That is unbelievable. And so you do hit obstacles as you're going places and you have to have a reasonable way to solve problems. And I'd like to just recommend that thinking yourself and brainstorming is not acceptable. It's the natural instinct and we even do it in business. We get in a conference room and we sit and we talk to each other and put sticky notes on the wall and we think we're problem solving.

Speaker 3: 50:11

And I've come to discover, through 2 million brighter people than I am in my research, that that's a really bad way to solve a problem. Just a high level, without going into the technicalities. Really, the ideas that you can get in life come from a few really basic places. You can get them from another mind that you're trying to serve, as probably the first place. So the first thing you should do is try to serve someone. If you're feeling dark and stuck, figure out someone you can help in the smallest way, even if it's a kid at school that's not paid attention to and then go talk and discover their problems and try to help solve them if at all possible and you'll have to get other people involved, likely. But that's step one is reach out to the person, someone that you're trying to help.

Speaker 3: 51:05

The second thing to solve a problem is really to get in the space of the problem. So many of us try to solve problems from our office and as I interviewed Steve McCurry, he's the famous photographer that took a picture of that Afghan girl that was a National Geographic decades ago but is still recognizable by 90% of the population and he said something funny to me. He said hey, I kind of think it's funny how you business people try to solve problems and do great work from your offices. You have to get out in the world and go to the place where you're trying to discover something. So the second step that I would suggest is going out to the places where the people you're trying to serve buy and use and do a little ethnography and see it for yourself and have a bold immersion in that place. And then the third thing and then I'll quit there and skip the last two that are really part of the solution side.

Speaker 3: 52:04

The third thing is that there are people that also help those types of people and they're adjacent to you. So if you're a lawyer helping someone and they probably have a life insurance man, they probably have a health insurance person, they probably have a construction person like Big D and Corey, and if you can have conversations about how they help the same type of people, the same target market they may not even share the same target market exactly, but they have. And you say how do you serve them and what did you find worked best there? You have this virtual team. Briefly, if you so choose, it could be permanent partnership later, but at least briefly you could have a team instead of yourself in a conference room or a park thinking all by yourself how can I get out of this problem? So you reach out in those three directions and in the morning you can solve a problem that has been stewing wherever you are for a month, and that's a very valuable piece of advice and tool for people that are stuck and lost and don't know how to get forward.

Speaker 1: 53:12

And I think that applies to parenthood and fatherhood as well because we encourage you to reach out to those people who are in your immediate vicinity and people that you love, respect and want to learn from and ask them to share. Yeah, for sure and create that environment. So there's another reminder.

Speaker 2: 53:32

Well, we must end it. It went so fast, but we must end it. So we always ask the same question to our guests. So the last question is what does it mean to be a gentleman, Mark? What does it mean to be a gentleman to you?

Speaker 3: 53:48

It means serving the one, and this is also a discovery in my last couple of decades. I grew up in marketing so I thought you did market research and found the commonalities among thousands and pursued that commonality and served it. And I've discovered through others they're brighter than I am and through my own work afterwards they really go one at a time. I've heard a few stories lately that are really powerful. I'll end on one that's really popular. That represents what I'm trying to say, that I do. But I'm not equating myself to Taylor Swift, I promise.

Speaker 3: 54:34

But I was talking to a friend and he said his daughter went up to a camp and they said, hey, we have a special singer-songwriter and she's going to come play some songs for us and we're excited. So they all met and the singer-songwriter came and played with her guitar and then, anyway, there's terrific. And then she stayed after and she met every one of the 100 girls she talked to. Every one of the 100 girls stayed all night till his bedtime. It was Taylor Swift and I think that's why she rules the planet right now is that she goes out one at a time and relentlessly serves the one. It works. So that's what it means to be a gentleman, serve the one.

Speaker 2: 55:28

Love that answer. Thank you Great example.

Speaker 1: 55:32

Well, thank you, thank you for joining us, mark. Thank you for listening to the podcast to today. If you've felt something today, or if you know somebody who might have been in Mark's situation that you think ought to hear this podcast, that might not know about it yet, send it over to him. Back to each good thought. I'm Kirk Chug.

Speaker 2: 55:52

And I'm Corey Moore. Focus on the one. Thanks everyone, Thank you.